Black Amber

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “That means it has begun again,” he said.

  His words had no meaning for her, yet they had an ominous ring.

  “What do you mean? What has begun again?”

  “The work of our evil genius. Our poltergeist, or what have you. Was any damage done to my papers and drawings?”

  “Not as far as I could see,” Tracy admitted. “It was as though a child had mixed everything up.”

  “It was not a child.” He continued to regard her with an odd concentration. When he spoke again his words took her by surprise. “Those earbobs you’re wearing—I suppose you found them in the bazaar?”

  Startled, her hands flew to the earrings she had almost forgotten. “Nursel gave them to me. I admired them and she took them right off and handed them to me. She wouldn’t let me refuse.”

  He nodded. “You have to be careful what you admire. The Turks are a wildly generous and hospitable lot. But you shouldn’t wear the things. They don’t suit you.”

  “But I like them,” she said, beginning to breathe hard.

  He set down his palette and brush on the folding stand beside his easel and came over to her. Before she knew what he meant to do, he pulled off the clipped earrings and held them out to her.

  “That’s better. Now you’re all of one piece.”

  She was both outraged and disconcerted as the earrings dropped into her hand. Suddenly old memory was strong. It was as if she were a young girl again and her father had just thrown her first lipstick into a wastebasket. The words he’d spoken so long ago rang in her ears as if she heard them now, “Don’t try to look like your sister Anabel. Just be yourself.”

  But she was not a child now, she thought indignantly, and Miles Radburn had no authority to tell her what she might wear. Nevertheless, the old feeling of having made herself ridiculous—because she could never be like Anabel—possessed her as it used to do, shattering all self-confidence.

  “What do you mean—all of one piece?” she faltered, hating the very uncertainty of her words.

  He went calmly back to his easel and began to put his painting things away. “Don’t blame me for seeing as a painter sees. How is your barked shin?”

  “It’s all right, thank you,” she managed in a choked voice.

  He continued without looking around. “You ought not wander around old ruins in the dark. If you get into trouble so easily, perhaps you’d better not stay in Turkey until your week is up.”

  This was exactly what Dr. Erim had said at breakfast, and she found she was tired of being told to go home. She walked away without another word, her chin stiffly atilt. She would not be scolded and frightened, and she would not go home.

  Halfway across the courtyard she clipped on the earrings again. They set up a small defiant dance against her cheeks, and she told herself that it made no difference if Miles Radburn was right. Even if she wasn’t the type for dangling earrings, even if she was no match for Anabel’s memory, he had behaved in an outrageous manner. She would wear what she liked and do as she pleased. But he had spoiled her delight in the baubles and she would not readily forgive him.

  He must have put his painting things away rather quickly, for he caught up with her before she left the courtyard.

  “There’s something you ought to see,” he said. “Hold on a minute.”

  She reminded him coolly that Nursel had been waiting for her quite a while, but he brushed her words aside.

  “You wanted to see something of Istanbul. Look up there.”

  They were close to one of the minarets, and she looked straight upward at a tiny balcony that circled one needlelike finger near the top. The tower seemed unbelievably tall and thin, and the man who had climbed the stairs within it and stood upon the balcony seemed small as a puppet figure. The muezzin wore no robes and carried no trumpet. In his black business suit he stood within the high circle and cupped his hands about his mouth. His long, wailing cry was almost lost to them on the wind, so they heard only a faint warbling. Then he turned and cried out again, and this time the call to prayer came toward them and they could hear the liquid sound of the words:

  “Allahu akbar! La ilaha illa’ llah!”

  “‘God is most great … there is no God but God …’” Miles Radburn repeated softly.

  Tracy found that she was unexpectedly stirred by the sound. Her indignation was fading in spite of herself.

  “Even this is passing,” Miles said, as the man completed his calls and disappeared into the darkness of the minaret. “There are a good many mosques these days where you’ll find the muezzin sitting comfortably on the ground, warbling into a microphone. Can’t say I blame them. I climbed a flight of stairs inside a minaret once. Those fellows have to keep in trim, even if their flocks are falling off.”

  “There seemed to be a great number of men coming into the mosque,” Tracy said.

  “Mostly of the older generations, I suspect. It’s too bad some of the younger Turks are turning away from religion—with nothing to put in the place of what they’re chucking out.”

  “There were no women,” Tracy mused. “I saw only men kneeling on the carpets inside.”

  “The women are in separate niches at the back,” Miles said. “You’ll always see a few sitting cross-legged, keeping out of the way of the men but no less devout. Shall we go along now and find Nursel? Perhaps you’ll both have lunch with me.”

  The earrings bobbed against her cheeks, but she no longer felt defiant. She did not particularly want to lunch with Miles Radburn, but something in her had quieted, temporarily at least. An unspoken truce had been declared. An uneasy truce, perhaps, because his strange words about a poltergeist lingered at the back of her mind, as well as his quick changing of the subject after he had spoken.

  Nursel was waiting patiently in the car. She accepted Miles Radburn’s invitation to lunch with the guarded courtesy she adopted toward him. Tracy had a feeling that Miles himself did not suspect how thoroughly he was disliked by Nursel Erim. Further evidence, perhaps, of the blank side he turned toward the feelings of others. Further evidence of the barrier he placed between himself and the world.

  Again they drove a short distance and left the car in an open place not far from the Spice Bazaar. When they got out, Nursel explained to Miles about the samovar—that she dared not leave it behind.

  He lifted the ungainly package out in its newspaper and string wrapping. “I don’t suppose this is the same one …” he began.

  Nursel broke in quickly. “Yes—it is the same. Sylvana purchased it long ago. She waited to bring it home because it might remind you of unhappy things. But now a little time has passed.”

  “Yes,” Miles said, “time has passed. We’ll take it with us and see that no harm befalls it. Though I gather that it has weathered history better than those who have owned it.”

  Together they walked through crowded streets. Near the Spice Bazaar the roadway was filled with cars and taxis, with carts and horses and donkeys, with teeming humanity. Awnings overhung open stalls where spices were sold and flapped in the wind above fruit stands. The Istanbul smell of dust was pleasantly cut by the scent of Eastern spices and the odor of ripe fruit.

  The restaurant in the Spice Bazaar to which Miles took them was very old. They climbed narrow stairs to a room at the top and were shown to a table near a deep window that overlooked Galata Bridge and the Golden Horn. A glass chandelier hung from the dome of the ceiling and there was blue and black tilework around the walls.

  The menu was in English as well as Turkish, and Miles ordered for them—swordfish on skewers, alternating with bits of bay leaf, tomato, and lemon slices. Tracy looked out the window toward building across the Golden Horn in newer Istanbul, where an ancient fire tower topped a mound of less picturesque buildings than graced the old quarter.

  “We build only in stone now,” Nursel said. “No longer are wooden houses permitted. Istanbul has burned down too many times.”

  On a nearby wall hung the familiar picture
of Mustapha Kemal—Atatürk—that Tracy had begun to see everywhere.

  Nursel saw her eyes on the picture. “My father fought with the Ghazi, as they called him—the Victor—in the campaign that saved Turkey. Ahmet Effendi was with him in those days also. My older brother and Murat and I grew up on stories of those times. Ahmet Effendi would have given his life for my brother, as he would for Murat also.”

  “But not for you?” Tracy asked.

  Nursel smiled. “I am a woman. It is not the same. Still he is loyal to any of our family. Even to Sylvana.”

  She began to discuss the current political situation with Miles, and Tracy found herself watching him as she listened. Even now, when he had invited them to lunch, he remained somewhat absent, lapsing into an occasional moody silence almost in the middle of a sentence. She had again the feeling that she was looking at someone who had ceased to be alive. Ceased deliberately.

  The swordfish, when it came, was delicious. Mediterranean waters and those of the Marmara and the Bosporus all offered their wares to Istanbul, and fish was a favorite food with the Turks.

  Not until the meal was half over did Miles put a sudden question to Nursel, giving her his full attention for the first time.

  “You know about what happened this morning?” he asked.

  Nursel stared at her plate. “Yes, Tracy has told me.”

  “It sounds like the old game starting up again.”

  “Perhaps it is a warning.” Nursel smiled, attempting to treat the subject lightly.

  “It won’t be easy for anyone to frighten Miss Hubbard away,” Miles said. “I suspect she’ll make a stand.”

  “Of course I will!” Tracy felt the earrings dance vehemently against her cheeks. His unexpected support braced her to further resist leaving.

  He did not let the matter drop. “From what quarter do you think such a warning might come?” he asked Nursel.

  “I make only a small joke,” the Turkish girl said. “I do not know who does this thing.” But she sounded uneasy.

  “Last time there were hints dropped that it might be Anabel playing these tricks,” Miles pointed out. “What happened this morning seems to indicate that it couldn’t have been.”

  Nursel spoke quickly. “I have never believed this of Anabel! But, please—it is better not to talk of such things. This—poltergeist, as you say, is only mischievous. He does no harm.”

  “He frightened Anabel half out of her wits,” Miles said. “Tracy is made of sterner stuff. Perhaps she’ll frighten him.” He flashed his unexpected smile upon Tracy. “After all, she has managed to intimidate me. Perhaps your Turkish spirits had better look out for themselves.”

  This was no longer a joke to Nursel. “One must not speak aloud the name of evil,” she protested.

  A spark seemed to have been lighted in the bleak inner landscape of Miles’s being and now it burned more intensely.

  “I don’t agree. I’m inclined to think that evil has a name—a human name. Perhaps there are times when it’s better to cry it as loudly as possible—even from the rooftops. Once the name is known, of course.”

  Nursel said nothing more, withdrawing herself pointedly from so distasteful a subject. Apathy fell upon Miles again. They finished the meal with little conversation, but Tracy could not forget the glimpse she’d had of unexpected fire in the man who had been Anabel’s husband.

  It had been surprising to see his indifference kindle into something verging on excitement. True, it was a dark excitement and Tracy had the uncomfortable feeling that a hint of violence might lie beneath the surface. Yet it showed him alive and not wholly indifferent to what happened around him.

  When the meal was over and they left the restaurant, Miles carried the samovar to Nursel’s car, packing it away again in the rear seat.

  “I believe I’ll start home myself,” he said. “I need to get on with that strip of calligraphy I’m doing for Sylvana. And I want to have a look at our mischief-maker’s new trick.”

  Tracy caught him up at once. “In that case, I’ll start cleaning up the muddle as soon as you’ve looked it over. Then I can get on with my work.”

  For an instant he seemed disconcerted. As they drove off, Tracy glanced back and saw him staring after the car with an expression that seemed part annoyance, part dismay.

  On the trip home, crossing on the ferry, and driving along the road on the Anatolian side, she and Nursel talked idly and at random, not touching again on the subject of Miles Radburn or the disturbance in his study. Questions teemed in Tracy’s mind, but she dared push them no further at the moment.

  When they reached the yali Halide came to carry the samovar upstairs.

  “Come with me while I take it to Sylvana,” Nursel suggested. “It will be amusing to see her open it. She has coveted this for very long.”

  As the three climbed to the second floor of the kiosk the door of Sylvana’s salon was flung suddenly open and a sound of angry voices reached them. Dr. Erim appeared abruptly at the head of the stairs and it was clear that he was enraged. Though the argument was in Turkish, there was no mistaking Murat’s anger or Sylvana’s indignation.

  As he started down the stairs, Halide squealed and ducked out of his way with the samovar and Tracy drew back against the rail to let him pass. Nursel reached a hand toward her brother, but he brushed it aside and rushed downstairs. Whatever had occurred, the quarrel had been thorough.

  “I am sorry,” Nursel said. “I must go to him. I must learn what has happened. This time she has pushed him too far. Please—you will take the samovar upstairs to Mrs. Erim.”

  Thus directed, Tracy and Halide climbed the remaining steps. Tracy had no desire for an encounter while Sylvana was in a temper. Her own presence in this household was too uncertain, too tenuous. There was, however, no avoiding what was to come. Sylvana stood in the open door of her salon, clearly struggling to regain control of herself. Her air of calm was gone and she seemed at the point of angry tears.

  She glanced impatiently at Tracy, then saw the package in Halide’s arms. She seized upon it as a distraction.

  “Good—you have brought home the samovar!”

  There was no opportunity for Tracy to slip away. She was waved into the room in Halide’s wake and could only watch uncomfortably as the maid placed her burden upon a table and Sylvana began to rip away its covering. The great, handsome thing emerged into view, and at once assumed an aristocratic air, as if its presence made any place a palace.

  As Sylvana walked about the samovar, exclaiming raptly in French, her hands clasped in admiration, the fury of her quarrel with her brother-in-law died out a little. Her color remained higher than usual and she was far from tranquil, but the samovar was indeed serving as a distraction.

  “It has been neglected,” she said, touching the plump sides with admiring hands. “Of course I shall not use it, but the exterior must be polished to a fine gloss. This I will do myself.”

  She spoke to Halide in Turkish, apparently explaining to the village girl where the samovar had come from, perhaps something of its story, for Halide’s eyes began to widen. Suddenly she backed away as the boy in the shop had done, and ran out of the room.

  Sylvana laughed, something of her surface tranquillity restored. “Our girls from the villages are still fearful and superstitious,” she told Tracy. “They cling to the old ways in their customs. You notice that Halide keeps her head covered. That is because it is still regarded as unseemly to let a man see one’s hair.”

  She circled the small table upon which the samovar stood, admiring it anew, pointing out to Tracy the art that had gone into its creation.

  “The Anatolian Samovar!” she said softly. “That is the name by which it is called. Of course such a thing is not in itself evil, as Halide imagines. It has merely been witness to much wickedness. Legend has it that the Sultan’s mother was drinking tea made from this very samovar on the afternoon when she was stabbed to death. The ruins of her summer palace where she died are only a sh
ort distance from this house.”

  “The ruins I explored yesterday?” Tracy asked.

  “Yes—the very same. How is your injury?”

  “It doesn’t bother me,” Tracy said.

  Sylvana’s attention could not be drawn for long from her new treasure, and she continued with her story.

  “The accounts of tragedy that surround the samovar go on and on. The strangling of a young prince occurred in its presence. With all the princelings there were in the harem, there was much jealousy and those who stood close to the Sultan were always in danger of their lives. Both because of ladies who wanted their own sons to succeed to the throne, and court officials who feared their power might be usurped. All the Bosporus area has a history of wickedness to curdle the blood. It is said that a man died much later when the samovar was stolen from the museum. How fortunate that I am a Frenchwoman and am able to savor such stories without being frightened by them!”

  Tracy’s attention had begun to wander. Now that she was here, she remembered the scarf she had found in the ruins last night. Her glance moved about the room, seeking. This was surely the place—yes, there was the pattern among cushions on a divan below the windows. A pattern of plum-colored stripes.

  She picked up the cushion. “What very pretty silk this is.”

  Sylvana nodded absently. “Yes—it is from Damascus. I bought a length of it last year.”

  “It would make a lovely scarf,” Tracy mused.

  Sylvana patted the samovar and circled it possessively, her interest upon her treasure.

  “I don’t suppose you have any of this material left?” Tracy persisted.

  Sylvana glanced indifferently at the cushion. “No, it has all been used. The last of it went into a scarf. A gift I made for Nursel.” Then her attention seemed at last to focus upon Tracy. “I understand that Mr. Radburn will permit you a week here after all. You are working? How does the task progress?”

  “Not very fast,” Tracy said. “There are too many interruptions.” She watched Sylvana’s face, wondering how much she knew of what had happened in Miles’s study.