“Your flock,” the Sultan repeated. “As simple as that.”
Eleonora smiled in confirmation.
“In any case,” Abdulhamid continued, changing the subject, “I understand that you were able to read through the documents I sent, and that you found them interesting.”
“Yes, Your Excellency. I did.”
“What was your impression of them?”
Eleonora shuffled her heel against the floor.
“I found them quite interesting,” she said. “There were a few letters I did not entirely understand, but for the most part I found them very interesting.”
“Which letters didn’t you understand?”
“It’s hard to say.”
She addressed herself to the Grand Vizier, who had asked the question. Then, remembering the rules of protocol, she turned back to the Sultan.
“There was, for example, one letter from the Russian Consul to the palace, outlining the terms of a prisoner exchange, and then there was also an early draft of the Treaty of San Stefano. I don’t think I entirely understand the political context of either situation.”
“With so many documents,” the Sultan reassured her, “and such a complicated set of politics, I did not expect you to understand every detail. Though surely I can furnish you with documents to provide context for these two situations.”
He turned to Grand Vizier.
“Will you see that this gets done?”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
“Now,” the Sultan continued, turning his attention back to Eleonora. “Although you have not had the opportunity to read through all the pertinent documents, I would enjoy hearing your impressions of the situation as a whole, as well as any advice you may have.”
Eleonora clenched her fists, pushing her fingernails into her palms. The enormity of the Sultan’s question enveloped her like a cloud of gnats. She opened her mouth to excuse herself, to tell them that she was very tired and, in all honesty, she didn’t really have an impression of the situation as a whole. Before she could speak, however, the Sultan’s mother broke in.
“You do know that your previous advice to His Excellency was enacted? And, so far at least, it has been successful.”
“No,” Eleonora said. “I did not.”
“It was in all the local papers.”
“I don’t read the local papers.”
“It was in the international press as well,” the Grand Vizier persisted, jotting something in his notebook.
“I don’t read any papers,” said Eleonora. “If I was supposed to, I apologize. I thought I was just supposed to read what was in the crates.”
The Grand Vizier put his notebook aside. He looked as if he were going to ask a question, but instead he just wrinkled his nose.
“Your strategy was quite successful,” the Sultan said. “When they saw that we weren’t going to engage, the Russians stopped bothering us and went back to Sevastopol. As for the Germans, they were rather upset at first, but in the end they almost seemed glad that we ignored their suggestion.”
The Grand Vizier cleared his throat.
“Which is why I would very much like to hear your impressions of our political situation in general.”
Eleonora wiped her palms down the back of her dress and swallowed. It was just as Mrs. Damakan had said. She had to trust herself. There was nothing else. Her mind swarmed with caliphs and muftis, long-dead kings and abandoned capitals. If only she could think of an appropriate analogy.
“The situation of the empire in general,” she said, grabbing on to the first complete thought that came into her head, “is not dissimilar, I would think, to that of the Hyrcanians, as described by Xenophon in his Cyropaedia.”
Eleonora paused to gauge the effect of this analogy. It seemed, however, that no one present was familiar with the Hyrcanians—or Xenophon, for that matter.
“The Hyrcanians were subjects of their more powerful neighbors, the Assyrians, and badly used by them in matters political as well as military. In the particular occasion Xenophon describes, the Hyrcanian cavalry was ordered to bring up the rear of an Assyrian column, so that if any danger should threaten from behind they would bear the brunt of it. But—”
Eleonora paused for a moment to wet her lips. As she did, her head swam. The sun shifted from behind a cloud and shone down into the room, illuminating the patch of marble on which she stood.
“As they,” she said, trying to put her thoughts in order. “They—”
With that, Eleonora collapsed. First she sank to her knees. Then, with a violent shudder, she crumpled and fell to the floor. There, on the floor, in the middle of the Sultan’s audience chamber, her seizures began in earnest, and her mind went blank. The last thing she remembered was the sound of the Sultan shouting for a doctor.
Although Eleonora had read the entire Koran—had memorized it, in fact—the revelations within had not particularly resonated with her. Unless called upon by circumstance, she rarely reflected much on its contents. It was strange then that the Sura of the Overwhelming Calamity was the first thing that came into her mind when she opened her eyes and, blinking, tried to make sense of her surroundings. Therein is a fountain flowing / Therein are thrones raised high / And drinking-cups ready placed / And cushions set in a row / And carpets spread out. Through an open doorway, she could see a vast courtyard peopled with beautiful young women, plucking at string instruments and murmuring to each other in quiet, giggling tones. Here was the fountain flowing, there the carpets spread out and cushions set in a row.
She was lying facedown on a high divan in the middle of a small room just off of the courtyard. Her head was supported by a den of velvet pillows and her feet were bare. There was a tingling numbness in her right hand, which, she soon realized, was trapped between her body and the cushion. With some difficulty, Eleonora pulled the hand out from under herself and rolled onto her back. When she did, she saw that she was being watched over by the Sultan’s mother. She tried to sit up, but when she raised her head, a sharp pain pierced through from one temple to the other. Just then, the end of the sura came to her and it seemed to make sense. Therefore do remind. / For you are only a reminder / You are not a watcher over them.
“You don’t have to move. Just rest, lie here.”
The Sultan’s mother touched Eleonora’s forehead with the back of her hand and raised a large chalice to her lips.
“Here,” she said. “Drink this.”
The contents were deep red and had the sweetish tang of pomegranate. When Eleonora was finished drinking, the Sultan’s mother placed the half-empty cup on the floor.
“You were thirsty.”
Eleonora nodded and brought her own tingling, sweaty hand to her forehead. She wanted to ask where they were, what had happened, and so on, but she was too tired to speak. She was too tired to think, really.
“The Sultan is very concerned with your well-being,” said his mother. “Once it was determined that your condition was stable, he insisted that you be brought here, to his private quarters. It was thought that this would be the most comfortable place for you to recover.”
Eleonora again tried to speak, but the words didn’t come. They lost themselves on their way from her mind to her mouth, and by the time she realized they were gone, she had forgotten what she wanted to say.
“Take another sip of pomegranate juice. It will give you strength.”
As she drank, Eleonora could feel the strength rushing back to her, the sugar pumping through her bloodstream. With the strength, however, there was also a wobbly lightness of mind.
“What do you remember?” the Sultan’s mother asked her, stroking the back of her hand. “Do you remember what you said to us?”
Eleonora raised her chin in order to shake her head.
“You don’t remember anything you told us? About Reverend Muehler and the puzzle? About Moncef Bey and that strange young man at the Café Europa?”
“No,” she whispered, forcing the word out.
Besides the Hyrcanians, she remembered nothing. “What did I say?”
“It’s not important,” said the Sultan’s mother. Standing, she brushed a strand of Eleonora’s hair off her forehead. “It’s for the best really that you don’t remember.”
Eleonora rested her head on the pillow and gazed out again onto the courtyard, with the young women and their string instruments, trying to recall what she had said. When she could not, she returned her thoughts to their current surroundings.
“Who are those women?” Eleonora asked. “Are they the Sultan’s musicians?”
“You could say that,” said Abdulhamid’s mother, looking back over her shoulder to hide a smile. “Music is a common pursuit among those who live in the harem.”
“They live here?” Eleonora asked. “All of them?”
“Yes,” the Sultan’s mother replied. “All of them live here.”
“Where are their parents?”
The Sultan’s mother paused, as if she had never really considered this question.
“They are mostly orphans,” she said finally. “Those with parents were sent here to improve their status. I was once a young odalisque myself, you know, in the court of Ahmed IV, Abdul hamid’s father. It’s a rather charmed life.”
“Were you an orphan?”
“Yes,” the woman said eventually. “I lost both my parents at a young age, just like you.”
Eleonora wanted to ask more questions, about the palace, and the odalisques, and the music they were playing, but she was enveloped at that moment by an irresistible fatigue.
Later that afternoon, Eleonora was transported back to the Bey’s house. She spent most of the following week in bed, resting. Drapes pulled shut and covers cinched up around her chin, she ate toast dipped in tea and drank such quantities of pomegranate juice that her teeth took on a purple hue around the edges. She was not sick, nor was she injured. As she explained to the Bey, to Mrs. Damakan, and to the interminable stream of doctors sent by the palace, she had merely lost her strength. It was, she told them, as if she had been tapped somewhere close to the core of her being and all the strength had drained out of her. The doctors had other, more scientific theories, ranging from epilepsy to meningitis to sugar sickness, but none of them could say for sure. And it didn’t really matter. Whatever it was that afflicted her, she was on the mend.
Meanwhile, Stamboul was humming with gossip. Even as the imperial carriage brought Eleonora back across the Galata Bridge, the story of her episode seeped out under the palace gates and rolled down the hill toward the heart of the city. If you listened carefully, you could almost hear it, that unmistakable sound of gossip. Like a swarm of locusts, it descended from on high and, buzzing, progressed from house to house. Borne lightly on the breath of its hosts, it mutated as it spread.
Eleonora had done nothing wrong, nothing untoward or immoral. As such, it was not a full-blown scandal. Still, one could not deny that it was an interesting story. Despite Stamboul being a city of 2 million souls, scores of neighborhoods, and dozens of languages, gossip traveled as quickly as through the square of a small village. By the time Eleonora climbed into her warm, white bed and slipped off to sleep, the rumor had already broken into two competing strains.
The first branch, which held that Eleonora was a seer or prophet of some sort, spread along the banks of the Bosporus, stopping in at the summer houses of the rich on its way to the Princes’ Islands. The story stewed on the islands for a few days, paying visits at all the right galas and dinner parties, before making its way back to Stamboul proper on the backs of returning servants. The second branch, which purported that Eleonora was a British spy sent to disrupt the Ottoman-German alliance, made its way straight across the Galata Bridge and up the hill to Pera, where the foreign communities whispered it among themselves. Glancing over their shoulders occasionally to be sure that no other spies were listening, they relayed the story of the young orphan, a charge of Moncef Barcous Bey, who was agitating against the Kaiser.
Inside the palace, the first version dominated and was bolstered by firsthand accounts of Eleonora’s dramatic seizure in the audience chamber. Certain factions in the government, however, including the Grand Vizier, held on to and repeated the second branch of the gossip, insistent that Eleonora was a foreign agent or at least a puppet exploited by Moncef Barcous Bey. What the Sultan himself thought was a mystery, though over the next few weeks it became clear that he had taken Eleonora’s advice very much to heart.
Chapter Twenty-Three
A steady dribble and tap of rain persisted to the edge of morning, rinsing the dust off the red tile roofs of Robert’s College and restoring some luster to its foliage. Even with the windows shut, the Reverend’s study smelled of damp earth and pollen, the same smell as the dandelion field behind St. Ignatius. The Reverend bit the tip of his pen and clacked it between his teeth, allowing himself a brief reverie. The gutters babbled and the light that fell from the stained glass window above his desk had a rinsed-out quality, as if it, too, were submerged. As exquisite as the light was, however, one needed to concentrate on the task at hand. Laying his palms flat on either side of the letter in front of him, he read over what he had written so far.
My dear Donald,
I sincerely hope this letter finds you in good health and spirits, and that you will excuse the extended absence
Capping his pen, the Reverend rambled across his study to the fireplace. The correct word was “delay,” not “absence,” but he was in no mood to start the letter over again. When it came down to brass tacks, he didn’t care what Donald Stork thought of his epistolary style—or much of anything else, for that matter. Why their correspondence had continued for so long was a question of obsequiousness and courtesy rather than friendship. The Reverend was certainly not interested in Donald’s exploits on Wall Street, nor did he care much about the parties he and his wife attended. To be fair, James could not imagine Donald had much interest in the intricacies of Stamboul society or the steady development of Robert’s College. He probably would have found some curiosity in the city’s covert underbelly, but even James knew better than to post such sensitive information in a letter. Leaning against the cool stone of the mantel, Reverend Muehler noticed his aspidistra was drooping. He reminded himself that he must talk to Mrs. Eskioglu about the proper manner of looking after houseplants. Even as he made this mental note, he knew it would be lost in the shuffle of tasks that needed attending to before his dinner that evening with Fredrick.
Fredrick Sutton. Of all his friends from Yale College, Fredrick was among the last James would have expected to pay him a visit. Not that they hadn’t been close. Both being sons of working families, he and Fredrick had always had a certain inescapable mixture of affinity and rivalry. The tides of life, however, had drawn them in nearly opposite directions: Reverend Muehler to the cloth and Fredrick to the grubby toil of journalism. In addition to this professional divergence, Fredrick had never been much of a letter-writer. They had exchanged postcards for a few years after graduation, but these updates soon wilted to nothing. He continued to hear Fredrick’s news from other, more conscientious friends. He knew about the promotions, the affairs, the move to New York, but he had not received word from the man himself in at least two years. Until a month ago, that is, when he found a yellow telegram on his desk with the following message: Coming to Stamboul on the second of August. Holland America lines. See you then my friend. Fredrick Sutton.
In spite of the perfectly comfortable guest quarters available at Robert’s College, Fredrick had insisted on staying at the Pera Palace. James was somewhat hurt by his friend’s decision to stay at a hotel, but in the end it was probably for the best. He had a great deal of work to accomplish in the next two weeks, and the last thing he needed was a houseguest to entertain. Just that afternoon, he wanted to finish his letter to Donald Stork, prepare the outline of his report to the American Consul, and go over the final draft of his article on the varied manifestations of childhoo
d genius. Before submerging himself again in his work, however, he thought it would be best to take a short walk, to clear his head.
Outside, the air was heavy with evaporation and the sun bled through a shelf of swiftly moving cirrus. The trees hung with soggy moss, and just outside his study a group of first-formers were playing some sort of circular game with a ball. The simplicity of childhood, he thought, could only be appreciated from a distance. He raised a hand to the students in greeting as he crossed the main yard to his favorite contemplation spot, a wooden bench overlooking the Bosporus. It appeared that the storm had cleared all the way to Princes’ Islands, where a school of ships scuttled out from under a low curtain of thunder clouds. He shielded his eyes from what sun there was and squinted. Perhaps one of those was Fredrick’s. One never knew. One never knew which ship was which until they came out from under the glare of the sun.
Following an hour or so of meandering contemplation, the Reverend rose with a clear head and a newfound determination to accomplish whatever needed accomplishing. He was walking along the narrow path between the chapel and his study, drafting the next section of his letter to Donald Stork, when a student waylaid him. A slight, squirlish child he had engaged months before to keep a watch on Eleonora’s movements, the boy was panting and his collar was stained with perspiration. He took a moment to catch his breath.
“Have you heard?” he said. “Sir, have you heard the news?”
The Reverend nodded absently, giving the child leave to continue.
“Miss Cohen,” the boy said. “She was at the Sultan’s palace yesterday and she fainted. She was shaking on the ground and speaking in tongues.”
“My child,” said the Reverend, in his most admonishing voice. “Think about what you are saying. Shaking on the ground? Speaking in tongues? This is very difficult for me to believe. Tell me where you heard this.”
“Everybody’s talking about it, sir.”
The Oracle of Stamboul Page 21