Ghosts by Gaslight

by Jack Dann

  When Ekrem did arrive, Mr. Emanetoglu took him aside as soon as Ceylan had scolded and released him, and asked him earnestly, “Nephew, would you say that the hodja would know how to deal with ghosts? Think carefully before you answer.”

  Superfluous advice: Ekrem always thought things through with great precision. He replied, “How many ghosts, Uncle?”

  Mr. Emanetoglu had no idea, and said so. “Maybe a lot—maybe only one. I suppose we had better assume there would be a good many.”

  Ekrem shook his head decidedly. “Then no. Not for a lot of ghosts, not the hodja. I am sorry.” He read the disappointment in his uncle’s face and brightened suddenly. “But the hodja has a hodja himself, did you know that? I think the old hodja would know all about ghosts.”

  “The hodja’s hodja?” Mr. Emanetoglu felt as though he had not laughed in years. Ekrem himself laughed delightedly at his amusement, very proud of himself for causing it. Mr. Emanetoglu said, “Tell me, boy, where does the old hodja live, then?”

  “I will take you there right away.” Ekrem scratched his head solemnly. “You know, Uncle, maybe it would be a good idea for you to bring them both to see the ghosts. Two hodjas . . . they could surely fight all the ghosts in London, couldn’t they?” He spread his arms as wide as he could. “All the ghosts in England!”

  “I will be happy if they can help me get rid of all the spirits in your father’s house. One or a thousand, however many there may be.” Mr. Emanetoglu patted his nephew’s shoulder. “Thank you, Ekrem. I knew you would find a way.”

  So it came about that Mr. Emanetoglu, dressed, not in English clothing but in his finest summer mintan and salvar trousers, was standing on the doorstep of the Geraldine Row house at two o’clock the next afternoon. Behind him, folded hands hidden in the sleeves of their long robes, stood two bearded old men, one notably older and taller than the other. The second man, on the other hand, was notably plumper, and still had a scattering of black in his chest-long gray beard, while the first man’s beard was closer trimmed, and as white as his hair. Both hodjas had an air of scholarly command about them, but each wore it lightly, as though they had no reason to parade overweening knowledge or virtue. They were looking, not at the front door, nor at Mr. Emanetoglu, but at each other, their hands already weaving empty cat’s cradles in the air, as though they were trying to capture the soft, wild grieving that all three men had heard all the way up the street. Mr. Emanetoglu wanted badly to cover his ears with his own hands, but in the presence of the hodjas he dared not.

  The old men bowed to Griffith, who opened the door at Mr. Emanetoglu’s knock, without speaking. Mr. Emanetoglu said politely, “God save the Queen and Princess Maude. I am honored to present Hodja Abbas”—indicating the older man—“and Hodja Cenghiz.” He added something poetically insulting in Turkish and walked calmly past Griffith, followed by the two old men.

  Angelos was coming down the stair to greet him, followed by his two other housemates, each looking that much more worn than the day before. Mr. Emanetoglu introduced the hodjas to them all.

  Angelos bowed himself, as only Scheuch beside him did, saying, “I am most pleased to meet you both,” and, to Mr. Emanetoglu, “Do they speak any English?”

  Mr. Emanetoglu replied, “They understand quite well, but speak poorly. I shall translate as necessary.” He watched the old men moving in the vestibule, heard them whispering to each other, saw them raising their heads, just as he had done—only a day ago?—flaring their nostrils to sample the lightning taste of the air. Hodja Abbas turned to look straight at him, and Mr. Emanetoglu felt himself cringe inside, like a schoolboy who knows an answer is wrong even as he gives it. Little Ekrem would never feel like that, but I do. What is the good of being grown?

  Hodja Abbas spoke in Turkish, and Angelos looked questioningly at Mr. Emanetoglu. “Was he speaking to me?”

  Mr. Emanetoglu nodded. “He wishes to know whether you have had any training in the philosophy of magic. Magic of any sort—even English.” He could not keep from smiling at the expression on Angelos’s face—nor on the ancient shaman’s stern countenance either. “I am of the opinion that Hodja Abbas does not think very much of English magic.”

  Angelos almost laughed, but looked over at the tall old Turk and muffled the sound into something like a sneeze. “Tell him no—tell him I’ve no training at all, except in medicine, and not much of that. We English haven’t studied magic since Merlin, tell him. We believe in machinery, just like the Germans. Tell him that.”

  Mr. Emanetoglu translated, plainly with a certain trepidation. Hodja Abbas’s lean face lost all color; even his dark eyes seemed to pale. He began to speak very fast, his normally deep voice rising in pitch until the words clattered and rang against each other like swords. Mr. Emanetoglu had trouble keeping up with the right English words, but he did his best.

  “He says that you are a magician born . . . and the biggest fool he has ever met. He says that he would kill you here and now and bury you under a lime tree, to protect the world from your—forgive me, Mr. Angelos—from your stupidity”—Angelos was not the only one who had noticed the curved dagger in the old man’s belt—“if it were not that since he went to Mecca he has sworn never again to take a life.”

  “Decent of the old boy,” Griffith snickered wearily. “Bet he’s left a few flourishing lime trees behind him in his time. Along with assorted wives and babas.” But the words lacked his usual scornful snap, and he sank down on the stair, leaning his head against the balustrade.

  Hodja Abbas appeared to have finished his tirade, but then he burst out again in a further spittle-embroidered rant, which Mr. Emanetoglu did not bother to pretend he was not censoring as he went along. “He says he wants to see your rooms, the place where you do your . . . stupid work. He thinks he knows what you have . . . ah, where you have gone wrong, and there is a chance that he and Hodja Cenghiz may be able to help. But he must see where you . . . did it.” He looked wretchedly apologetic when he finished, saying, “I am sorry, Mr. Angelos. He is a very old man.”

  Angelos laughed outright, but it took the remaining strength in his body, and he actually lurched against Mr. Emanetoglu. He said, “Old and tactless he may well be—and downright vulgar, that too—but of course he’s absolutely right. But I do wish he’d tell me exactly what it is I’m supposed to have done, so I can apologize for it. Please ask him that, when he calms down a bit.”

  Mr. Emanetoglu did ask, but Hodja Abbas refused to comment further outside of Angelos’s rooms. So they climbed the long stair, Englishmen and Turkish sages crowded together, and Hodja Abbas strode in the lead. Hodja Cenghiz, who had not yet said a word during the entire visit, and who clearly had bellows to mend, toiled in the rear, breathing hard and distinctly wheezing. Scheuch fell back beside him, impulsively offering the small old man his arm. But Hodja Cenghiz smiled, showing a full set of brown teeth, and said gently, “I thank you, no. It is good for fat old men to sweat in the middle of children. I shall survive.”

  “I didn’t know you spoke English.” Scheuch was frantically going back over his behavior toward both old Turks. “I’m sure I would have—I don’t know—paid more attention, if I’d known.”

  “Yes,” said Hodja Cenghiz. “I am sure you would have.”

  The stairway funneled the monstrously suffering voice—as Scheuch had long since come to think of it—making it sound louder than he knew it was. He said as much to Hodja Cenghiz, who responded simply, “It is loud enough.” Pausing momentarily on the stair to catch his breath, he added, “Loud enough to shake the sun loose in the sky. I sometimes wonder why this has never happened.” Scheuch did not know how to respond.

  At the top floor, prowling in Angelos’s rooms, Hodja Abbas moved impatiently from instrument to instrument, device to homemade device, muttering to himself as a curious counterpoint to the haunting, horrible wailing that rose and fell and rose, and never went away. Mr. Emanetoglu, embarrassed but determined, stayed on his heels, translating a je
weled chaplet of Turkish obscenities as Hodja Abbas cursed several generations of Angelos’s ancestors backwards and forwards for bringing such an imbecile to birth. Angelos himself, not knowing the language, and being more exhausted than even he recognized, only smiled feebly and made sounds that he was certain were words. It was Mr. Emanetoglu who finally plucked up enough courage to demand of the hodja, “What has he done, after all? What crime have his experiments committed?”

  The two old men looked at each other for a long moment before Hodja Abbas spoke again—this time, surprisingly in hoarse, limited, but comprehensible English. “Sorrow . . . Heart of Sorrow . . . he have prowoke—awake—no . . .” He shook his head irritably, groping for the right word. “Touch. He have touch in deep, deep place, world place. The Sorrowheart. We call.” He turned toward Hodja Cenghiz for confirmation.

  Griffith, having seated himself in the one armchair when Angelos opened his rooms, had promptly fallen asleep, mouth open and his hands futilely covering both ears, since the voice was always more pervasive here, though no stronger. Hodja Cenghiz said, “What you are hearing—what Mr. Angelos has reached, roused, by accident—is the grief at the center, the heart of the world. It is just as old as human beings, to the minute, and it is always a woman’s voice. We Turks call it Sorrowheart—other times, other languages, some other name. But always a woman.” He bowed to Angelos, slightly but unmistakably. “How Mr. Angelos reached it, touched it with his little electrical researches, I have no idea—only a very few of our poets have ever done that before. Most of them went mad.” He sighed and shrugged. “I sincerely congratulate you, Mr. Angelos.”

  In the silence, Scheuch’s sharp ears heard Angelos’s laughter begin, impossibly deep in his belly, well before it ever billowed into daylight. It was not loud laughter, nor did it last very long; but it woke Griffith, and caused even Hodja Abbas to take a step backward and regard him with the same anxiety—though less of it—as Mr. Emanetoglu. Angelos said at last, “So. Let me understand. We here, we will all continue to hear these voices?” The two hodjas looked at each other and then back to him without answering. Angelos asked, “Forever?”

  Vordran echoed him. “Forever? For the rest of our lives?”

  Hodja Cenghiz answered him slowly, “Not all the voices. Only the one. And not all of you: only for him.” Angelos stared back at him, not laughing now, his tired eyes as blank as walls. Hodja Cenghiz said, “The other voices, they are a different matter—whoever they were, they will pass on ahead, causing no trouble, only showing us the way we will go in our turn. Hodja Abbas can make certain that no one living in this house, now or in future, will any longer hear or listen to them. That we can promise in good faith.” Angelos nodded.

  Scheuch looked away from both Angelos and the hodjas, wrapping his arms around his own shoulders. Griffith started to speak and then stopped. Mr. Emanetoglu could not take his eyes from Angelos. To his own considerable surprise, his heart hurt for the Englishman in that moment, as it would have hurt for Ekrem. Hodja Cenghiz continued, “But that voice—the voice of the Sorrowheart—that voice your friend will never stop hearing. It is not just, for he surely meant no harm. But Allah’s justice is not ours.” Hodja Cenghiz cleared his throat. “For what it is worth, which is nothing, I am sad for you, Mr. Angelos.”

  Griffith was already dozing off again, and Vordran’s eyes had turned as unfocused as when he first listened to Angelos’s stethoscope. Scheuch seemed to be the only person reacting to the reality of what Angelos had just been told. He said loudly, “I say, you can’t do that! Set that voice trailing him everywhere—haunting him forever! Who do you chaps think you are, anyway?”

  Neither Hodja Abbas nor Hodja Cenghiz even bothered to look at him, so Mr. Emanetoglu plucked up his courage and intervened, saying sternly and earnestly, “Mr. Scheuch, these gentlemen are scholars, healers—even what you would call magistrates, when necessary. Surely you must be at peace with their judgment.”

  “No, I mustn’t be at bloody peace with a damned thing,” Scheuch mocked him. “And you’re a bloody hypocrite for saying so, Emanetoggle.” He had never gotten closer than that to the proper pronunciation. “You heard him say it—it’s not right, and you all buggering know it! Like Job in the bloody Bible, and I never understood that story either, if you want to know. How you can stand there and say be at peace . . .”

  He was very tired, and he ran out of words and rage at more or less the same time. Mr. Emanetoglu, looking on heartsick, saw Vordran puzzled and irritated, and Griffith not entirely among those present. Angelos, of them all, remained as strangely calm as though he were opening a letter that promised to be interesting. He said, “Well. Don’t exactly see myself staying on in Geraldine Row, I suppose.”

  Hodja Cenghiz coughed and cleared his throat. “Mr. Angelos, I am afraid that you cannot really stay anywhere, not for long. The Sorrowheart, the deepest pain of the world, has chosen to speak to you, and wherever you go it will follow—wherever you rest, those near you will hear its voice and feel its grief. It will spread like a marsh under a poorly drained road, growing steadily deeper and wider, and sucking everything—everything—down into it on every side.” His own voice was very nearly imploring. “Do you understand, Mr. Angelos? Please, do you understand me now?”

  “I understand you.” Angelos rocked on his heels and ran a hand through his hair. Such ordinary gestures, Mr. Emanetoglu marveled dazedly, for someone who has just had his life shattered, undeservedly. Could I behave so? I wonder. Angelos said, “Well, if you will excuse me, I’ll need, as the phrase has it, to get my affairs in order. I can be gone by tomorrow night.” Mr. Emanetoglu saw nothing but affable flatness in his expression.

  The hodjas consulted, the elder stooping like a hawk to mutter in the younger man’s ear. Hodja Cenghiz said, “Hodja Abbas will speak to the other voices in the house and tell them to be silent. It will take some little while.”

  “By all means. Fumigate the baseboards to your hearts’ content.” Angelos bowed formally to the two old men. “I will be at Christ’s, seeing whether I can possibly pry some of my fees out of their grasp, since I will clearly not be attending classes this term.” He turned to Mr. Emanetoglu, holding out an envelope. “My usual payment.”

  Mr. Emanetoglu accepted it, shaking his head miserably. “It will be too much by half. You will not have been here the whole month.” Their eyes met, and Mr. Emanetoglu whispered, “I am sorry—I am so sorry. I should never have brought them here.”

  Angelos patted his arm. “You did the best thing for everyone, sir. Even, it may well be, for me. After all, I was never much of a medical student, and I have always wanted to travel. And there will certainly always be company”—he chuckled suddenly—“and voices may be answered, spoken to as well as heard. Imagine . . . imagine, if I should actually strike up a conversation with the sorrowing heart of the world.” He touched Mr. Emanetoglu’s arm a second time. “Perhaps that is what I’m supposed to do, old man. Who knows?”

  Behind them, Hodja Abbas paced back and forth in what had been Angelos’s rooms, talking to himself—as it seemed—in ponderous, rolling Turkish. Hodja Cenghiz followed him, step by step, writing down the words he recited on the strips of gilded paper they had brought with them from Haringey. Folding the strips according to a precise pattern, he then inserted them into various cracks in the floor and in the molding. Mr. Emanetoglu, watching, thought, Nothing exists for us Turks unless it is written down. Even our magic has to be in writing. He turned to say this over his shoulder, but Angelos had already left.

  The night was cold and still when Angelos finally came back, well after the hodjas and Mr. Emanetoglu were gone, and Scheuch, Vordran and Griffith long abed. The only voice he heard was the one he knew, the one that continued and continued: wordlessly, incomprehensibly, pounding itself through his skull like a blazing nail. He stood and listened for a long while, before he finally said aloud, “We will be friends, you and I. There’s plenty of time for us to understand one anot
her.” He went to bed then, and slept, if not well and deeply, at least without dreams.

  Oddly, it was Griffith who was the most help in packing his belongings the next day. Scheuch, being as burly as a navvy, carried most of his bags and boxes to the hired wagon waiting in the street; but Griffith actually quarreled with him for the privilege. He appeared on the edge of telling Angelos the full story behind his failure to return to Oxford after the war, but they were interrupted by Vordran’s farewell, which was awkwardly emotional and vaguely accusatory at the same time. Angelos never did learn the truth of Griffith’s Balliol days, but he rather suspected that there had been a monkey involved.

  Scheuch never said goodbye. He simply shook hands with Angelos, handed him the original envelope Angelos had given Mr. Emanetoglu the day before—it contained the same cheque, as well, and a short message from the Turk—growled, “I believe you know where I live,” and walked away. Angelos got up beside the driver, said to someone the driver could not see, “If you don’t care for the new digs, we won’t be there long,” and the cart rumbled away out of Russell Square.

  None of his former housemates ever saw Angelos again. Mr. Emanetoglu’s brother Ismail quickly found a tenant to replace him, and he jogged along as well with the others as Angelos ever had. Scheuch eventually married and went to work in a Bristol branch of his London bank, while Vordran was eventually and unwillingly pensioned off from the Bishopsgate law firm where he was never a clerk. Griffith moved back to Oxford, went mad so genteelly that no one recognized it for quite some while, and ended his days in Bensham, as Angelos had feared for himself. Russell Square no longer played host to constant shadowy voices seeping down Geraldine Row—most especially not that one which had set children and their cowering parents running futilely indoors with their hands over their ears. There were, over time, legends of similar occurrences in Bayswater, Clerkenwell and Holborn; but each of those faded with the passing months and years of the new century, as happened even with that awful business up in Durham, so there you are.