The Story

by Victoria Hislop

  The passenger returned to the airfield with not very much time for the next plane. He was greeted by the familiar officials and hustled through the formalities of the next flight. Indeed it seemed they were genuinely pleased to see him – welcoming him back to this scene like some one-line actor who had accidentally added a hint of farce to the show. ‘So you managed to put in a couple of hours,’ said one. ‘The time didn’t hang too heavy, I hope?’

  ‘No, no – not in the least.’ The passenger went out onto the tarmac which this evening was living up to its tradition of great wings and high wind. As he walked towards the plane he was almost blown off his feet by a gust from the east. Was he always to be reminded of human lightness?

  And yet time had hung something upon him after all. It was not only that he was now decorated with beads, with a flower, with counterfeit gold coin, that he carried a little doubtful praise and some misplaced envy. His responsibilities were enlarged. In his own eyes, for better or worse, he had gained weight of a kind. Ahead the great blank eyes of the machine glared impatiently. But the single, late passenger moved steadily, unhurriedly towards the gangway.

  The Prescription

  Penelope Fitzgerald

  Penelope Fitzgerald (1916–2000) was a Man Booker Prize-winning English novelist, poet, essayist and biographer. In 2008, The Times included her in a list of the ‘50 Greatest British writers since 1945’ and, in 2012, the Observer named her final novel, The Blue Flower, as one of ‘The 10 best historical novels’. A collection of Fitzgerald’s short stories, The Means of Escape, and a volume of her non-fiction writings, A House of Air, were published posthumously.

  After Petros Zarifi’s wife died his shop began to make less and less money. His wife had acted as cashier. That was all over now. The shelves emptied gradually as the unpaid wholesalers refused to supply him with goods. In his tiny room at the back of the shop he had, like many Greek storekeepers, an oleograph in vivid colours of his patron saint, with the motto Embros – Forward! But he had now lost all ambition except in the matter of his son Alecco.

  The shop was not too badly placed, on the very edge of the Phanar, where Zarifi should have been able to sell to both Greeks and Turks. One of his remaining customers, in fact, was an elderly Stamboullu who worked as dispenser to a prosperous doctor in the Beyazit district. Both old Yousuf and Dr Mehmet drank raki, which they regarded as permissible because it had not been invented in the days of the Prophet. One evening when he was refilling the bottles Zarifi asked Yousuf to speak for him to Mehmet Bey.

  ‘Ask him if he will take my son Alecco, who has just turned fourteen, into his employment.’

  ‘Can’t his own relatives provide for him?’ asked the old man.

  ‘Don’t give a father advice on this matter,’ said Zarifi. ‘What else does he think about when he lies awake at nights?’

  Mehmet Bey took the virtue of compassion seriously. Once he had been told that Zarifi was a good Greek, who had won a reputation for honesty, and, possibly as a result, had been unfortunate, he sent word that he would see him.

  ‘Your son can clean my boots and run errands. That is all I have to offer. Don’t let him have ambitions. There are too many doctors in Stamboul, and, above all, far too many Greeks.’

  ‘Good, well, I understand you, bey effendi, you may trust both my son and me.’

  It was arranged that Alecco should work and sleep at the doctor’s house in Hayreddin Pasha Street. His room was not much larger than a cupboard, but then, neither had it been at home. Loneliness was his trouble, not discomfort. The doctor’s wife, Azizié Hanoum, kept to her quarters, and old Yousuf, who was a poor relation of hers, jealously guarded the dispensary, where the drugs must have been arranged on some kind of system since he was able, given time, to make up a prescription when called upon. As to Mehmet Bey himself, his hours were regular. After a sluggish evening visit to the coffee-house to read the newspaper he would return and spend a few hours more than half asleep in the bosom of his family. But Alecco understood very well, or thought he understood, what it was that his father expected him to do.

  Polishing the boots of the hakim bashi did not take up much of the day. Always obedient, he went about with the doctor as a servant, keeping several paces behind, carrying his bag and his stethoscope. Once a week Mehmet Bey, as a good Moslem, gave his services to the hospital for the poor on the waterfront, and Alecco learned in the wards to recognize the face of leprosy and of death itself. Then, because he was so quick, he began to help a little with the accounts, and from the ledgers he gathered in a few weeks how the practice was run and which were the commonest complaints and how much could be charged for them in each case – always excepting the bills of the very rich, which were presented by Mehmet Bey in person. The doctor, for his part, recognized that this boy was sharp, and did not much like it. A subject race, he reflected, is a penance to the ruler. But he reminded himself that the father was trustworthy and honourable, and in time the son’s sharpness might turn into nothing worse than industry, which is harmless.

  Every day Alecco asked himself: have I gone one step forward, or one backward? What have I learned that I didn’t know yesterday? Books are teachers to those who have none, but the doctor’s library reposed behind the wooden shutters of the cupboards fitted into the walls of his consulting-room. His student Materia Medica were there, along with herbals in Arabic and the Gulistan, or Rose Garden of Medicines. Lately he had acquired a brand-new book, Gray’s Anatomy in a French translation. Alecco had seen him turning it over heavily, during the late afternoon. But it was put away with the others, and there was no chance to look at it, still less to copy the illustrations.

  The dispensary, also, was kept locked and bolted. But that year the month of Ramazan fell in the hot weather, and both the doctor and old Yousuf, being obliged to fast all day until sunset, went out through the hours of darkness to take refreshment, Mehmet Bey at the homes of his friends, Yousuf at the tea-house. Security was less strict, and the house itself, windowless against the street, seemed to relax at the end of its tedious day. During the second week of the fast, Alecco found the door of the dispensary unfastened.

  Just before dawn began to lift, Mehmet Bey returned and saw that a single candle lamp was burning in his dispensary. The Greek boy was standing at the bench, copying out prescriptions. He had also taken down a measuring-glass, a pestle and a number of bottles and jars.

  Bath-boy, tellak, son of a whore, the doctor thought. The hurt pierced deep. His friends had warned him, his wife had told him he was a fool. But in the end he had made a burden for his own back.

  Alecco was so deeply absorbed that his keen sense of danger failed him. He did not move until Mehmet Bey towered close behind him. Then he turned, not dropping the pen and ink which he had stolen but gripping them closely to him, and stared up with the leaden eyes of a woken sleepwalker at his master.

  ‘I see that you are studying my prescriptions,’ said Mehmet Bey. ‘I know from experience that you learn quickly.’

  He picked up the empty glass. ‘Now: make up a medicine for yourself.’

  Sweating and trembling, Alecco shook in a measure of this and a measure of that, always keeping his eyes on his master. He could not have said what he was doing. Mehmet Bey, however, saw a dose of aphrodisiac go into the glass, and then the dried flowers of agnus castas, which inhibits sex, opium, lavender, ecballium elaterium, the most violent of all purgatives, datura, either 14 grams, inducing insanity, or 22½ grams (death) and finally mustard and cinnamon. Silently he pointed to the fuller’s earth, which prevents the patient from vomiting. Alecco added a handful.

  ‘Drink!’

  The doctor’s voice, raised to a pitch of sacred rage, woke up Azizié Hanoum, and standing terrified in her old wrapper at the door of the women’s quarters she saw her husband seize the Greek boy by the nose, from which water poured out, and force his head backwards to dislocation point while something black as pitch ran from the measuring-glass down his throat.r />
  In the morning Alecco, who had been crammed into his room unconscious, appeared smiling with the doctor’s cleaned boots in his hands. Mehmet Bey made a sign to avert evil.

  ‘You’re well? You’re alive?’

  ‘My prescription did me a world of good.’

  The doctor called his servants and had him turned out of the house. Picking himself up, Alecco walked away with fourteen-year-old jauntiness along the new horse tramway until he was out of sight. Not until he reached the foot of the Galata Bridge did his will-power give way and he collapsed groaning like vermin on a dung-hill.

  Preparing slowly for his rounds, Mehmet Bey at first congratulated himself, since if the boy had died he was not quite certain how he would have stood with the law. But the household’s peace was destroyed. Old Yousuf was so perturbed by the mess in the dispensary that he collapsed with a slight stroke. He had never been able to read, and now that the drugs were out of order he could find nothing. Azizié Hanoum poured reproaches on her husband and declared that if the little Greek had been better treated he could have been trained to help Yousuf. Zarifi mourned his son, who did not return either to the Phanar or to Hayreddin Pasha Street. In a few months the grocer’s shop was bankrupt.

  Alecco had been picked up on the waterfront by a Greek ship’s cook, coming back on board after a night’s absence. He had some confused idea of conciliating the captain, who, he knew, was short of a boy. The Andromeda was an irregular trading vessel carrying mail via Malta and Gibraltar, and by the time she reached London Alecco had been seasick to such an extent that he was clear of the poison’s last traces. This seemed a kind of providence; he could never have cheated Death without some help. The captain had fancied him from the start, and when the crew were paid off at Albert Docks he gave him five pounds in English money to make a good start in life.

  Ten years later Dr Mehmet’s career had reached its highest point and was also (he was sixty-five) approaching its end. Having been called, not for the first time, for consultation at the Old Serail, he settled down for a long waiting period before an attendant arrived to escort him to the ante-rooms. He took a seat overlooking the Sea of Marmara, and resigned himself. In contemplation of the lazing water, he allowed his energies to sleep. The ladies here were the old and the pensioned-off, but the appointment was an honour.

  Quite without warning, and faintly disagreeable, was the appearance of a secretary: Lelia Hanoum had wished for a second opinion, and he had the honour to present a distinguished young colleague who had hurried here from another appointment. But when a young man walked in wearing a black stambouline, the professional’s frock-coat, and followed by a servant carrying his bag and stethoscope, Mehmet Bey knew not only who he was, but that he had been expecting him.

  ‘I decline to accept you as a colleague, Alexander Zarifi.’

  ‘I am qualified,’ Dr Zarifi replied.

  ‘Your word is not good enough.’

  Alecco took out from the upper pocket of his stamboulim a card printed in gilt, which showed that he had recently been appointed to attend the Serail. This could not be contradicted, and after putting it away he said:

  ‘I am honoured, then, to join you as a consultant.’ He waited for the usual, in fact necessary, reply: ‘The honour is mine,’ but instead Mehmet Bey said loudly: ‘There is no need for us to waste time in each other’s company. I know the case history of Lelia Hanoum, you may consult my notes. I have already made the diagnosis. Last year the patient complained of acute pain in the left side and a distention as though a ball or globe was rising from the abdomen to the throat. Palpitations, fits of crying, quantities of wind passed per rectum. A typical case of hysteria, all too common in the Serail, and entirely the result of an ill-balanced regimen. I advised firm treatment, iron pills and a gentian tonic. Recently, however, she has described the initial pain as on the right side. Accordingly I have changed my diagnosis to acute appendicitis, and I propose to operate as soon as permission can be got from the Palace. She is rather old for the operation to be successful, but that is in God’s hands.’

  ‘I cannot agree,’ Dr Zarifi replied. ‘The very fact that the patient is uncertain whether she feels pain on the left or the right side means that we must look beneath her symptoms for an unconscious or subconscious factor. During my training in Vienna I was fortunate enough to work with Dr Josef Breuer, the great specialist in hysteria. It is for the woman herself to lead us to the hidden factor, perhaps under hypnosis. It is my belief that there is no need for medication, still less surgical interference. We must aim at setting her free.’

  ‘Well, now I have your opinion,’ said Mehmet Bey. ‘If I reject it, it is because I have studied the art of healing, not so much from personal ambition as to answer the simplest of all appeals – hastayim, I am ill. I accept that since we last met you have had the advantage of a good training, but your nature will not have changed. You are still Alexander Zarifi. What is more, there are universal laws, which govern all human beings, not excepting men of science. Cast your memory back, and answer me this question: Knowledge is good, but what is the use of knowledge without honesty?’

  Dr Alecco looked down at the ground, and withdrew his diagnosis.

  How Did I Get Away with Killing One of the Biggest Lawyers in the State? It Was Easy.

  Alice Walker

  Alice Walker (b. 1944) is an American author, poet, feminist and activist. She is best known for the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple, published in 1982, for which she won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Walker’s published works include seven novels, four collections of short stories, four children’s books and volumes of essays and poetry.

  “My mother and father were not married. I never knew him. My mother must have loved him, though; she never talked against him when I was little. It was like he never existed. We lived on Poultry Street. Why it was called Poultry Street I never knew. I guess at one time there must have been a chicken factory somewhere along there. It was right near the center of town. I could walk to the state capitol in less than ten minutes. I could see the top – it was gold – of the capitol building from the front yard. When I was a little girl I used to think it was real gold, shining up there, and then they bought an eagle and put him on top, and when I used to walk up there I couldn’t see the top of the building from the ground, it was so high, and I used to reach down and run my hand over the grass. It was like a rug, that grass was, so springy and silky and deep. They had these big old trees, too. Oaks and magnolias; and I thought the magnolia trees were beautiful and one night I climbed up in one of them and got a bloom and took it home. But the air in our house blighted it; it turned brown the minute I took it inside and the petals dropped off.

  “Mama worked in private homes. That’s how she described her job, to make it sound nicer. ‘I work in private homes,’ she would say, and that sounded nicer, she thought, than saying ‘I’m a maid.’

  “Sometimes she made six dollars a day, working in two private homes. Most of the time she didn’t make that much. By the time she paid the rent and bought milk and bananas there wasn’t anything left.

  “She used to leave me alone sometimes because there was no one to keep me – and then there was an old woman up the street who looked after me for a while – and by the time she died she was more like a mother to me than Mama was. Mama was so tired every night when she came home I never hardly got the chance to talk to her. And then sometimes she would go out at night, or bring men home – but they never thought of marrying her. And they sure didn’t want to be bothered with me. I guess most of them were like my own father; had children somewhere of their own that they’d left. And then they came to my Mama, who fell for them every time. And I think she may have had a couple of abortions, like some of the women did, who couldn’t feed any more mouths. But she tried.

  “Anyway, she was a nervous kind of woman. I think she had spells or something because she was so tired. But I didn’t understand anything then about exhaus
tion, worry, lack of a proper diet; I just thought she wanted to work, to be away from the house. I didn’t blame her. Where we lived people sometimes just threw pieces of furniture they didn’t want over the railing. And there was broken glass and rags everywhere. The place stunk, especially in the summer. And children were always screaming and men were always cussing and women were always yelling about something… It was nothing for a girl or woman to be raped. I was raped myself, when I was twelve, and my Mama never knew and I never told anybody. For, what could they do? It was just a boy, passing through. Somebody’s cousin from the North.

  “One time my Mama was doing day’s work at a private home and took me with her. It was like being in fairyland. Everything was spotless and new, even before Mama started cleaning. I met the woman in the house and played with her children. I didn’t even see the man, but he was in there somewhere, while I was out in the yard with the children. I was fourteen, but I guess I looked like a grown woman. Or maybe I looked fourteen. Anyway, the next day he picked me up when I was coming from school and he said my Mama had asked him to do it. I got in the car with him… he took me to his law office, a big office in the middle of town, and he started asking me questions about ‘how do you all live?’ and ‘what grade are you in?’ and stuff like that. And then he began to touch me, and I pulled away. But he kept touching me and I was scared… he raped me. But afterward he told me he hadn’t forced me, that I felt something for him, and he gave me some money. I was crying, going down the stairs. I wanted to kill him.

  “I never told Mama. I thought that would be the end of it. But about two days later, on my way from school, he stopped his car again, and I got in. This time we went to his house; nobody was there. And he made me get into his wife’s bed. After we’d been doing this for about three weeks, he told me he loved me. I didn’t love him, but he had begun to look a little better to me. Really, I think, because he was so clean. He bathed a lot and never smelled even alive, to tell the truth. Or maybe it was the money he gave me, or the presents he bought. I told Mama I had a job after school baby-sitting. And she was glad that I could buy things I needed for school. But it was all from him.