The Dark Moment

by Ann Bridge

  “I haven’t heard it yet, Uncle—Féridé only told me that he’d got one just as I was leaving.”

  “I wonder where he got it,” Dr. Pierce speculated.

  “At the Military College, I expect—he said last time that there are some cadets there from the Eastern provinces now, and he hoped to get some new songs and tales from them.”

  “He’s a good boy, Ahmet,” said Dr. Pierce. “It seems a pity he should be a soldier, with his brains.”

  “Don’t soldiers need brains?”

  “Well, not so much as scholars, and a different sort,” said Dr. Pierce, with a faint grin. “I always wonder why the Pasha, who’s got so much taste for scholarship, should want to make a soldier of a boy like that.”

  “He didn’t—he wanted him to be a diplomat, only Ahmet insisted on being a soldier,” said Fanny promptly.

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Well, partly Féridé told me; partly I heard Réfiyé Hanim and Mdlle Marthe talking about it two years ago, when it was being settled; and partly, Ahmet said so himself.”

  “Well, that’s pretty categorical,” said the Doctor, again with that grin. He thought, not for the first time, how much more close and intimate Fanny’s knowledge of the Pasha’s family life was than his own. As men, they had been friends for years, freely discussing matters of scholarship, and sometimes of politics, but Fanny had twiddled her way, in all simplicity, into the very heart of this Turkish household.

  “Uncle, what did Murad Zadé Asaf Pasha mean when he asked you when ‘they’ would be ready?” Fanny asked presently.

  “When what?” Dr. Pierce said absently—he had been thinking about Ahmet and his father, and wasn’t paying attention.

  “He asked you when two things would be ready, that he said the poor people had subscribed for,” said Fanny, with her usual accuracy; “he said one had been promised for this month, and one for later on.”

  The Doctor’s brow darkened.

  “Oh, that,” he said, almost irritably. “That fellow Enver will ruin this nation before he’s done—he and his German ideas!”

  “But what are ‘they’?” Fanny persisted.

  “‘They’ are two battleships that we are building for the Turks,” said Dr. Pierce—Fanny thought that he said it rather grimly.

  Chapter Two

  When Fanny had gone, and tea was over at the yali, Réfiyé Hanim went down to walk in the big garden with the fountain, which was allocated to the haremlik, the “private” side of the house. Féridé accompanied her; it was an understood thing—well understood, that is to say, by Mdlle Marthe—that the reading of Racine or Mme de Sévigné which normally filled the time between the gouter and the evening meal should wait on the old lady’s pleasure in her grandchild’s company. They walked together along the sanded paths, the old woman and the very young girl, whose attentive eyebrows were so alike, Réfiyé Hanim noting the progress of the flowers bedded out by Zeynel, and of the shrubs which she herself had caused to be planted more than sixty years before, and commenting on them aloud.

  Presently—“Niné,” Féridé said, as they sat down on one of the marble seats close to the little lapping waves, “Javid Bey came to see Baba this afternoon—did you know?”

  “No, I did not. I thought Fanny’s Uncle was there. How do you know that?”

  “Because as we came down from the koru we could see Mahmud wearing his best scarf, so we went to look; and there was the car, and that big kavass of Javid Bey’s, Ibrahim-^I knew him at once.”

  “You did not go down into the garden of the selamlik, Féridé?”

  “Oh, certainly not, Nine—only to the top of the steps; one can see from there.”

  “So,” said the old lady, thoughtfully. Her thoughts were on the inevitability, in feminine life, of this gossiping curiosity about all contacts with the outside world; and also on the possible reasons for the Finance Minister’s call on her son. Féridé had told Fanny, airily, that Ministers often came to see her father, “to hear his views”—but Réfiyé Hanim knew that these visits usually coincided with happenings of some sort. After a while—“Let us go in,” she said; “you must have your reading with Mdlle Marthe.”

  They entered, crossed the hall, and started to mount the stairs, but after a couple of steps the old lady stopped, her hand against the wall. “Go up and ask Mdlle Marthe to come to me for a moment—here,” she said.

  Féridé sprang away; Réfiyé Hanim stood still, and pressed her other hand to her breast—then very slowly and carefully she turned round, went down the two steps again, and seated herself on an inlaid chair. She was sitting there, her hand still at her heart, when Mdlle Marthe came down.

  “My good Marthe, bring me my drops.”

  Mdlle Marthe’s old face was full of concern.

  “It is the heart again, Madame?”

  “Yes—but nothing unusual. Only I will have my drops, I think, before I go upstairs.” “Do not mention it,” she added, as the Frenchwoman hastened away.

  In a few moments Mdlle Marthe was back again, with a small glass—Réfiyé Hanim drank the contents and sat quietly, while the other watched her with an anxious face. At last—“That is better,” the old lady said. “Thank you. Let us go up.”

  “Are you able? Shall I not fetch Dil Feripé?”

  “No, thank you—she would talk so much!” said Réfiyé Hanim, with a half-smile. “With your arm I can manage very well.”

  Slowly they ascended the stairs, and Mdlle Marthe steered her employer to her corner in the salon.

  “My good Marthe, be so kind as to half-close the shutters.”

  Marthe did so. She knew why the shutters were to be closed; the Pasha usually came up about this time, and if the light was dim, he would notice nothing.

  “It was very hot today,” she said.

  “Yes, it was. It is only the heat—that always affects me. Thank you, my friend. Go to Féridé now.”

  Soon after Mdlle Marthe had gone to join her pupil the Pasha came in, entering by the door from the dining-room, which served as a sort of neutral zone between the two parts of the house. He came up to his mother with a manner of great respect—bowed over her hand, kissed it, and asked, “How is your health, Ané?”

  “By the goodness of God, I am very well, my son,” the old lady replied. This was always his form of greeting, and her reply was invariably the same, even when, as now, she was not well at all. The Pasha drew up a chair and sat down near her; the room was becoming dim and shadowy, with the half-closed shutters; asking her permission, he lit a cigarette. They talked rather desultorily at first. Réfiyé Hanim wished to hear about Javid Bey’s visit, but was too discreet to ask a question directly—however when the Pasha presently mentioned the Izzet piece she saw her chance of referring to at least one of his visitors, and asked if Dr. Pierce had admired it.

  “He did not see it,” the Pasha replied.

  “No?”

  “No. We were going through some transcriptions that he has received recently of some poems of old Fuyuli of Baghdad—most interesting; one or two were new to him, and to me. He will have to see the originals, of course, to be sure that they are genuine.” He paused for some moments; she waited. “And then,” he went on, “we were interrupted.” He paused again, looking across the shadowy room.

  “A pleasant interruption, I hope?” she asked.

  He turned to her, and spoke in an altered tone.

  “Javid Bey came.”

  “Oh, indeed.” Now that the fact was admitted, discretion could be relaxed a little. “He had business to discuss? But what about Dr. Pierce?”

  “He knows Dr. Pierce. And I am not sure that he had any specific matter to discuss. But I could see that he was anxious—and Ané, I am anxious too.”

  “Why, my son?”

  The Pasha stretched his long thin legs out in front of him, and slowly lit a fresh cigarette. He seldom, from habit and tradition, talked politics with his mother; but when he did he could rely on
the two ideal qualities in a listener—perfect sympathy, and complete discretion.

  “This affair between Russia and Germany,” he began, thoughtfully— “that is always the preoccupation. It must come—but when?” He blew out smoke, and the pale blue cloud, in the darkened room, seemed itself a question-mark.

  “My son, you know my ignorance. But—should that concern us? My Father often said that it was England who always protected us from Russia. What have we to do with Germany’s quarrels?”

  The Pasha stirred in his chair.

  “Ah, there you have it!” he said. “Formerly, yes, it was so. But seven years ago England made a Convention with Russia, and now we no longer know where we are—except that we have a frontier, of land and of water, with Russia a thousand miles long! That always remains. And so whoever is Russia’s enemy is, potentially, our friend.”

  The old lady considered this. It agitated her a little; she put her hand up to her heart, automatically—and then put it down again.

  “But if Russia and Germany went to war, should we be involved? If we were, could Germany protect us? And would she?”

  The Pasha moved his hands.

  “I wish I knew! That is what Dr. Pierce said, that one cannot trust the Germans. But you know what Enver Pasha is—he was trained there, and he believes in them. And von Wangenheim is very clever.”

  The old lady sat thinking, and then spoke again.

  “But my son, are we committed in any way? And are they?”

  The Pasha once more blew out one of those questioning clouds of smoke.

  “Ané, this is entirely secret,” he said. “Naturally Javid Bey did not touch on it today, in the Doctor’s presence. But I have reason to believe that if Germany and Russia go to war, and Germany succeeds—which I think she undoubtedly would; there I agree with Enver Pasha—we have been promised a free hand in the Caucasus.”

  “And what would that involve?”

  “That we could march in and take the territory up to the Caspian. After all, it is our people who live there—by race, by language.”

  “But are we committed to do this?”

  “Ané, it would be right, I believe. After all, those lands are lived in by our own people—and you know what we have lost in this century already, of alien lands! So much in Europe—and Tripoli.”

  “And do you know when?” Réfiyé Hanim asked, slowly.

  “No. Nor can we control that, as I see it. That is what makes me anxious. For us it would be fatal to be involved in a war with Russia until we have command of the Black Sea, and we shall not have that till England delivers to us the Reshadieh and the other.”

  “What are they?” Réfiyé Hanim asked. (It was exactly the same question that Fanny had put, a little earlier, to Dr. Pierce.)

  “The two battleships, that are being built for us in England. The Reshadieh is promised for this month.”

  “This month! May Allah in his goodness preserve us! And can Enver Pasha persuade the Germans to wait till we have both these ships before they start their war?”

  “Ah, Ané—as usual you see the crux! This is just what I do not know.”

  At about the time that this conversation was taking place at the yali Dr. Pierce and Fanny arrived at their boarding-house; they had after all met a carriage on the road, and taken it. Madame Kaftanoglou’s establishment was a modest and inexpensive place of the pension type. It stood between the road and the sea, one of a row of tall structures of the same fragile wooden baroque as the Pasha’s house, but without a garden; Dr. Pierce and Fanny had rooms in front, looking out over the water; Fanny’s had a loggiaed balcony that was a miniature edition of the one at the yali, and it was here that she spent most of her time. From it she could watch the whole life of the Bosphorus going on: the ferries going up to Therapia or down towards Istanbul, the big steamers that came in from the Black Sea, out of sight round the bend beyond Büyükdere; the caïques with their curved prows and huge sails, painted in light blues and greens, shooting across to Beykos on the opposite shore, or loading and unloading on the embankment just above. And at all hours of the day, what she could never be tired of watching, the Levantine Shearwaters, the “Lost Souls,” skimming to and fro across the water, barely a foot above the surface—a black flock when their backs were towards you, a flock of gleaming silvery shapes when they turned in unison and showed their white under-sides.

  As always on returning to the pension, Fanny at once made her way to the balcony, to see what was going on among all these objects so familiar to her—remembering that it would soon be supper-time she went in again, changed her shoes, washed her hands, and still drying them on the towel went out to watch a caïque which was struggling up against the current towards Büyükdere. At that moment her uncle joined her, a bundle of papers in his hand.

  “Fanny, was it tomorrow the Pasha said we were to go again?”

  “No, the day after.”

  “Oh—well, we can’t go then, either,” Dr. Pierce said, sitting down on one of the two shabby wicker chairs with which the balcony was furnished.

  “Why not, Uncle?” Fanny asked, but without allowing any of her disappointment to creep into her voice.

  “I’ve had a whole heap of stuff come in, from Broussa—it will all have to be gone through, and I expect some of it must be copied. It’s at least three days’ work.”

  “I can copy some for you, can’t I?”

  “I expect you can—that will be a good thing.”

  “And you must write to the Pasha—and I can put in a note for Féridé.”

  “Yes. We’ll do that tonight, and send them first thing.” But he sat without moving, looking out at the quiet view—at Beykos opposite, a little town of dark weather-stained wooden houses with white staring windows, like eyes, lying in a glen among trees, its mosque a white pearl, with a white minaret pointing up among the black pointed shapes of cypresses.

  “There’s another thing, Fanny,” Dr. Pierce went on.

  “Yes, Uncle?”

  “You know those transcriptions that came the day before yesterday?”

  “The Fuzuli ones from Erzerum?” Fanny was, as usual, completely au fait with her uncle’s work.

  “Yes, I showed them to the Pasha today. Two or three of them are quite new to him—so they are to me. If they’re genuine, they’re rather important. But it’s impossible to tell if they are genuine without seeing the originals.”

  Fanny flung her towel through the open door.

  “Oh, how lovely! So shall we go to Erzerum? I’ve always wanted to go to those Eastern vilayets. How do we go?—steamer to Trebizond, then on?”

  “Steady, steady!” Dr. Pierce said. “I don’t know if I can take you, Fanny. I shall have to telegraph to this man anyhow, and see if he will let me see the originals—and I must find out about steamers to Trebizond. And the travelling will be pretty rough. I think it might be best if you stayed here—it’s not a cheap journey, either,” he added. “Should you be all right here alone, for ten days or so, do you think? You’re over fourteen now.”

  Fanny swallowed a little.

  “Oh yes, of course I shall be quite all right,” she said. “Only it would be so lovely to see Trebizond and Erzerum—if it weren’t too expensive. I really wouldn’t be any trouble—at least I’d try not to be.”

  Dr. Pierce ruffled up his hair.

  “No, Fanny, I don t think you’d better come this time,” he said at length. “You’ll be a good girl about it, I know.”

  Down in the house a bell tinkled out, rather dismally.

  “That’ll be supper,” said Dr. Pierce. “You all ready? Come on, then.”

  At supper they learned that their landlady’s son was driving in to Péra that evening; accordingly they went upstairs the moment the meal was over, and wrote their notes quickly, for him to drop at the yali on his way. Fanny was sorry at this need for haste—she took a pride in writing to Féridé in Turkish, but she could not do that with any great speed as yet, so she scribbled
a few lines in French—“Not tomorrow, nor the day after, nor the day after that—what a long time! But on the fourth day, my joujou, I shall be with you.” And then, like the good child she was, she settled down under the lamp at the big table in her uncle’s room to do some copying for him, her yellow head bent over the work, her little beaky nose almost touching the paper—poking her tongue out, now and then, as she concentrated on a particularly difficult character.

  The replies to their notes came next day. The Pasha would be delighted to see Dr. Pierce on Thursday, and politely regretted the postponement. Féridé wrote in Turkish, and at greater length.

  “My two eyes! How sad is this! And Dil Feripé was making the maids hurry with washing and mending your frock, to have it ready for tomorrow. Anyhow it will await you when you do come. Come soon, dji-djim; I miss you very much. Let the hours hasten.

  “Excuse me—I must stop; Niné wants me. I embrace you every day!

  Féridé.”

  Meanwhile Dr. Pierce had ascertained by telephone that there was a boat for Trebizond on the Friday, and had sent a messenger to take his ticket. He and Fanny worked hard, at opposite ends of the big table which he had bought himself three or four years ago and installed in the pension, since the rather gim-crack furniture provided was useless for his purpose. He had an interview with the Greek woman, who willingly undertook to look after Fanny while he was away. “Ten days at most,” he told her. He had urged his correspondent in Erzerum by telegram to come down and meet him at Trebizond, to shorten his absence.

  At last, on Thursday, they arrived again at the Pashas. Fanny sped off to the haremlik, while Dr. Pierce was ushered into the selamlik proper. The main apartment in this was an enormous room with a stone pavement, on the ground floor, with a double staircase rising at the further end to a landing above with closed doors leading to other parts of the house; a small fountain played in the centre. Handsome but rather uncomfortable highbacked chairs stood formally round the walls; slightly more comfortable ones were grouped round tables which stood here and there about the room. Into one of these Dr. Pierce sank gratefully; it had been hot walking up from the ferry, and this great stonefloored room, with its tinkling fountain and the subdued light from the windows on either side of the entrance door, was deliciously cool. After a moment or two the Pasha entered from a door behind the staircase; coffee, that indispensable preliminary to conversation in Turkey, was at once brought. Dr. Pierce apologised for postponing his call, and explained the reason—“A whole batch of stuff came up from a friend of mine at Broussa, and I had to go through it all, and transcribe what I needed, as I am going away; I don’t like leaving that sort of thing about.”