By the time they went down to dance again she felt that she had done her duty, and could compile a report of general interest which would satisfy even that exacting master Kazdim, so was free to enjoy herself until it was time to go home. She liked Peter, his long clean limbs, fair boyish good looks and charming manners, all appealed to her, so when they returned once more to their box she began to question him about himself.
He told her of his lovely old home in Gloucestershire; of the shooting in the autumn and hunting in the winter; of his vast family—nearly all soldiers or civil servants with a sprinkling of clergymen, rather strait-laced but decent people; of his mother who was quite young but had snow-white hair and was very beautiful; of his father the General who was a holy terror but a darned good sort; and of his sisters—all three married to promising soldiers now. Tania listened to it all with envious interest and a growing sadness so that, suddenly catching sight of the moisture in her eyes, he stopped, quite overcome by the contrast of his mother and sisters living in comfort and security, with the pathetic fate of this young girl of equally good family who had nothing but a job behind a bookstall between her and starvation—and an invalid parent to support.
In the silence that followed he looked awkwardly away from her down into the well of the restaurant. The dance-floor was beginning to empty. Some of the patrons of the place were now a little drunk. The big Swedish sailor who had spoken to Tania earlier in the evening was spanking a young woman across his knee to the hilarious diversion of their party. One of the ladies of the cabaret stood with arms akimbo violently abusing a pasty-faced man in a corner—suddenly she struck him savagely in the mouth, Peter felt more convinced than ever that Tania could not have known the sort of place it was when she had suggested supping there, and blamed himself for not having carried her off, directly he arrived, to somewhere at least outwardly respectable.
The door at the back of the box opened suddenly. A fat dark man with a hooky nose and fleshy lips stood there swaying slightly.
“A la bonheur, Tania,” he muttered with a crooked grin.
“Que desirez vous, M’sieur?” Tania exclaimed sharply.
“Come and dance,” said the fat man thickly in bad French.
She stood up and went over to him but began to protest nervously that it was impossible because she was already engaged.
Peter’s French was by no means excellent but good enough for him to catch a few of the intruder’s phrases in response to Tania’s low-voiced entreaties that he should leave the box. From friendly importunity the man suddenly passed to indignant abuse:
“Why do you allow one visitor to occupy your whole evening—What if he has paid for your supper—Have I not paid myself many times for the food you waste—but I have not grudged it that you should dance for a little with another. You are a woman of the house—here every night—I am a regular patron and so to me you shall be polite—if not I will make trouble. The management shall take your box from you and for the future you shall sit with the cheap women on the dance-floor to be picked up by anyone who chooses.”
“Get out!” exclaimed Peter furiously and, pulling Tania aside he gave the fat man a violent push in the chest which sent him reeling back into the corridor. Then he slammed the door in his face.
He would have acted sooner had he not been temporarily stunned by that appalling revelation. During the course of the day he had built up a castle of illusion which had grown to magnificent proportions—now it had been shattered to its foundations in one awful moment. For a dozen hours he had allowed his romantic imagination to endow this girl with all the qualities of a fairy-tale princess, robbed of her birthright and enslaved to labour by some wicked witch’s spell—only to learn that she was a professional harpy in this shoddy night resort. He saw now how she procured the money for her expensive clothes, those necessary trappings to her trade, and realised why she had ordered that long elaborate supper with the costly but undrinkable champagne; she got a percentage on the bill of course, and the more she could induce her clients to spend the better for her pocket. He did not grudge the money but his vanity was wounded to the quick. Like any callow trusting fool he had believed her lies about her gallant struggle against fate, and that as an occasional relaxation from her monotonous life she allowed herself to go out to supper with someone whom she specially liked—yet all the time she was the property of any drunken brute who cared to buy drinks from the management of this dive. She had played up to him with the most sordid motives from the very start just as she would have to any rough-neck sailor from the port, and her caresses were to be had by right of purchase by any vicious tough. He wondered, with a misery which almost made him physically sick, what other duties of the establishment she undertook and concluded that few of its patrons would be willing to pay her for no more than eating supper with them.
Then with the brutality of which only youth is capable when its generosity had been abused he pulled out his wallet and flung a bank-note upon the table.
“There you are,” he sneered angrily. “Fair payment for your evening—or something for your invalid mother if you prefer to keep up that farce. Now you had better go and make your peace with that loathsome-looking friend of yours in the corridor. I’ll settle the bill on my way out.”
Not trusting himself to look at his fallen idol lest she should laugh openly at his mortification, and burning with shame at the memory of the idiotic things he had said which must have given her much food for secret merriment, he turned brusquely towards the door.
“Oh please,” she gasped. “One moment!”
He halted, his chin stuck out, his eyes grown hard, staring at her: “Well?”
“I know what you think,” she stammered twisting her fingers together nervously, “and it’s true. Not all of it—but nearly all. I do come here every night. This is my box and I rent it. I make men spend all the money that I can here and of course I get a rake-off. I know I lied to you—but most of the men who come to the bookstall and take me out expect this sort of thing. I didn’t realise until this evening that you were different. Then you were so sweet to me that I just hadn’t got the courage to shame myself by admitting the sort of life I lead. It’s a rotten game—and I hate it—and the men are nearly always beastly—but I liked you so I didn’t want you to know. I’m sorry about the supper and that poisonous champagne, but if we hadn’t ordered it the manager would have come along and made a fuss—besides it is true about my mother. She’s an invalid with heart trouble—her medicines are horribly expensive and as she was brought up in luxury she has never got used to being poor, she is always asking me for costly things. What the hotel people give me for running the bookstall isn’t half enough. It hardly keeps the roof over our heads so I just have to do this as well.”
After that spate of words she suddenly went silent and Peter saw that two great tears were running down her cheeks. There was such a ring of sincerity in her voice that he could not help but believe her and his heart melted afresh at her pathetic fate.
They were standing close together in the semi-darkness at the back of the box. Suddenly he put his arms round her and as her dark head fell forward on his shoulder she burst into a fit of heart-rending sobs.
“You poor little girl,” he murmured softly. “You must have had a rotten life.”
CHAPTER XIV
‘FOR THEM THERE ARE GARDENS BENEATH WHICH RIVERS FLOW’
(The Qur’ân)
It was past three o’clock when Tania arrived home at her apartment. She had insisted on Peter dropping her at some distance from it since she did not wish him to see the poor tumbledown row of houses in which it was situated.
He had watched her disappear into a dimly-lit thoroughfare with considerable misgivings, fearing that her smart clothes might make her the object of unwelcome attentions at that hour of night, and he would have been even more uneasy if he could have seen her a few moments later as she turned into an evil-looking cul-de-sac, but he need not have worried, for Tani
a knew every broken window, garbage tin, and frowsty shuttered shop-front in that unsavoury area, as well as most of its now slumbering inhabitants. Her income had increased considerably in the last few years but, her mother’s insatiable craving for petty luxuries having increased with it, there had never been sufficient cash in hand for them to risk a move to better quarters from this sordid slum in which they had lived for years.
A baker’s shop occupied the ground floor and basement of the small two-storied house in which Tania dwelt. The men were busy at their nightly baking and the stench of refuse in the gutters was temporarily overcome by the appetising odour of new bread. One of them called a cheery greeting to her as she inserted her key in the lock of the side door which led to the rooms above; they all knew and liked her, for having been desperately poor herself, she often helped unfortunates with a little money and was free with her piastres to the ragged children who thronged the narrow court in daytime.
There was no hallway to the house, only a steep flight of rickety uncarpeted stairs. The place was black as pitch but, as Tank’s head came level with the landing, she saw a streak of light below the door which opened directly into the sitting-room.
For a moment she feared that her mother had had an attack—although she had seen the old lady in bed and asleep before departing for the Grandpère—but on flinging open the door she found, with mixed feelings of fear and relief, that despite the lateness of the hour they had a visitor. The vast form of Kazdim Hari Bekar was wedged into their largest arm-chair.
He was smoking placidly and a little mountain of cigarette stubs beside him in a brass ashtray betrayed the fact that he had been there for some time.
The Baroness Vorontzoff, fat, blowsy, and dull-eyed, was seated near him on a couch, which also served for Tania’s bed, since she preferred that to sharing the only other room of the apartment with her mother. The old woman was clad in a shabby dressing-gown and untidy wisps of grey hair straggled about her unnaturally red cheeks. Vanity was not her vice, the sole interest which she had retained in life after the shattering experiences of her flight from Russia was her stomach. As Tania appeared she roused herself from her lethargy;
“Ah, there you are at last, daughter. I thought you would never come, and the Effendi Kazdim has done us the honour to visit us in this miserable hovel.”
The Eunuch slowly turned his beady eyes upon her. “Effendi is a word no longer used in Turkey,” he said unctuously. “All titles were abolished several years ago as I have told you many times before.”
“Pardon,” she fluttered. “Pardon an old woman’s forgetfulness. I will refer to you as our protector then.” She was shrewd enough to know that this man who had spent his youth as a palace slave liked being addressed as ‘Lord’ and that he bitterly resented the law which robbed him of the official distinction he had gained in the troublesome times after the War.
His little rosebud mouth curved into a smile between the huge hanging cheeks wrinkled like withered apple skin. “Protector, yes,” he piped. “I am your protector as long as you obey my every word—if not …” He made a sudden cutting gesture with his plump beringed hand, then stubbed out the cigarette it held with a slow almost caressing finality.
“You cannot know how grateful we are …” began the Baroness in a cringing whine but Tania, unable to bear the sight of her mother’s servility any longer, cut in.
“Do you wish to talk to me?”
He nodded ponderously, creasing his many chins, and switched his eyes meaningly in the direction of her mother.
The Baroness, catching his glance, hurriedly struggled to her feet with the aid of an ebony stick and drew her faded dressing-gown around her. “I will leave you then,” she smirked. “Tania is a good girl and will do everything you wish. Good night, Effendi, we are so grateful to you, and honoured by your visit.”
Kazdim sat impassively smoking yet another cigarette. He made the faintest gesture with it waving her away but not the least sign of impatience as Tania helped her mother slowly across the room. He seemed almost a fixture there. Huge, sinister, implacable, relentless, as though the passage of time had no meaning for him.
“That fiend,” muttered the old woman as soon as she was in the other room, “what does he want with you at this hour? He has never come so late before.”
“I don’t know, mother,” Tania replied wearily.
“You—you haven’t been fool enough to displease him?” The Baroness’s eyes showed sudden fear.
“No, no, mother. I do my job, so he has no cause to grumble. Go to bed now please, I mustn’t keep him waiting.”
“That’s right—do as he says, then your poor mother may at least die in a bed and not in the gutter. It is a pity though that you cannot make him give you more money.”
“Would you like to try making him give you anything?” Tania asked a little bitterly.
“No, no, don’t misunderstand me. You are such a touchy girl, but in summer good fruit is a necessity. Those peaches you bought yesterday were very poor, three of them were woolly ones.”
“They came from the Tokatlian” said Tania sullenly, “and the season is almost over.”
“Ah, well, it cannot be helped I suppose. If only I were not an invalid I would go out and choose such things myself—then we should fare better. Where is the new bottle of French cognac, a little drop would help me to get off to sleep I think.”
Tania’s shoulders sagged and her eyes closed with weariness. She had meant to bring a fresh bottle back with her from the Grandpère where they let her have it at trade rates, but the totally unexpected scene with the young Englishman had put all thought of it out of her head.
“You—you haven’t forgotten it?” The old woman’s rheumy eyes filled with facile tears.
“I’m sorry, mother.” Tania suddenly felt an awful beast. She always did when her mother wept, no matter how absurd the trifling disappointment to her appetites which caused her to give way.
“I am sorry,” she repeated desperately. “I’ll get up early to-morrow morning and fetch it for you then. Now please don’t cry any more. There’s some Slivowitz left—look, here in the cupboard. Have that instead.”
“Very well,” the old woman quavered, “but you are not to get up early for the cognac—to-morrow night will do. As it is you sleep too little my dear—and what would happen to us if you were to become ill?”
Tania knew that no thought but affection for herself lay behind the words yet she was certain that her mother would be peevish and querulous all next day unless she had her cognac. She poured out the Slivowitz, set it on the table beside the bed, kissed the old lady and murmured “Don’t worry about me dearest. I’m strong as a horse, but I must go now. I dare not keep Kazdim waiting any longer.”
Having returned to the sitting-room she lit a cigarette, leaned negligently against the big porcelain stove, and waited for the Eunuch to address her. Inwardly she was as terrified of him as her mother, and she was searching her mind frantically as to what fault she could have committed in her work to bring him there at that unusual hour, but she would not show her fear.
“Well,” he piped, glancing up at her, “what have you to tell me of that young man with whom you supped this evening?”
“Nothing of much value,” she replied laconically. “He was easy enough but he is new to his job and has only visited Brussels, Berlin and Warsaw. I got his views on certain subjects for what they are worth and you shall have them in my report to-morrow. Surely you did not come here to ask me that?”
“No, I am here on account of the letter which you sent me from the Pera Palace this evening.”
“It was important then?” she hazarded.
“Very.” His great egg-shaped face creased into a frown. “I wish that I had received it earlier.”
“I sent it to you immediately the bookstall closed,” Tania said hastily. “I did not dare to before in case Swithin Destime returned and asked for it back.”
“Yes, yes my child, b
ut I had special business to attend to this evening so I did not receive it until after midnight. By then our bird had flown.”
“This man is dangerous then after all?”
“He is inquisitive and has already learned too much. His letter was a report which shows him clearly to be acting as a secret agent, but for whom I have yet to find out. Do you not consider it strange that he should have lived in Istanbul for six weeks without anyone—particularly yourself—suspecting his activities?”
Tania quailed before those small beady eyes embedded in their rolls of fat. “No,” she managed to get out with an effort. “You know that I could not induce him to entertain me, and he never talked of any matter of importance. Once when he mentioned the Gazi I did the old trick of warning him to be careful because the hotel detective was standing near. I hoped that would give him confidence in me. I think it did or he would not have risked leaving this letter with me to-night.”
“Perhaps. Did you know that he only spent certain nights in the hotel?”
She shook her head. “How should I? My work there ends at eight o’clock. Surely it is for others to check up the movements of visitors who go out at night.”
“They do, but the fools believed this man to be harmless, and so many visitors spend their nights gambling or with women, that they never troubled to find out where he went.”
For a little time the Eunuch smoked in silence then his high-pitched child-like voice came again. “This woman to whom you were to give the letter to-morrow morning. Have you ever seen him with her?”
“I have never seen him with any woman—or man—except casual acquaintances whom he picked up from time to time among the other visitors to the hotel—people staying for a few days only—but all of them are now gone.”
The Eunuch of Stamboul Page 15