by Ann Bridge
“You are going away?” the Pasha asked, surprised.
“Oh, only to Trebizond, to see those Fuzuli originals—if they are originals. I telegraphed to Mirza Ali Temel at Erzerum, and he has agreed to bring them down to the coast for me to see, to save time. I ought to be back in ten days. But that is why I had to deal with the things from Broussa immediately.”
“Is there much of interest?” his host enquired.
“More so to me than to you!” Dr. Pierce said, smiling at his friend. “You are very polite about my folk-lore researches, Pasha, but I know you think them hardly worthy of serious attention.”
“No, on the contrary, I think them certainly of interest, but I am a little surprised that a scholar of your eminence should give so much time to something that is—well, purely popular.”
“Well, I’ll let you into a secret,” said Dr. Pierce. “Up till this year they have been just a side-line; in England, you know, folk-lore and folk-songs have been a matter of interest for a long time, so it was natural that I should be interested in such examples as I came across here. And then I became fascinated, I admit—surely I’ve told you this—by their relationship to classical poetry: the same allusiveness, the same symbolism, the same nostalgic element, in both. So I collected what I could, for my own amusement. But last winter, at home, I met a very intelligent publisher at one of our College dinners; we got onto the subject of folk-lore, and I mentioned that Turkish folk-lore was peculiarly fascinating—he was interested, and asked if I could let him see some examples in translation. So in the Christmas holidays Fanny and I set to work—I was too busy to tackle it in term time, and alone—and ran off quite a bunch of translations.”
“Your Niece made translations?”
“Oh yes—Fanny’s quite up to that, with simple stuff,” said Dr. Pierce breezily. “I check them over, of course.”
“What a remarkable girl that is!” said the Pasha. “Making translations for publishers—extraordinary!”
“Oh, they weren’t difficult,” said Dr. Pierce—to his scholar’s mind there was nothing odd about a fourteen-year-old girl translating simple folk-tales from the Turkish. “But when we’d got them typed I sent them to this man, and he was delighted; he wants a lot more, and then he will publish a book of them.”
“Now what about that Izzet piece?” Dr. Pierce went on. “I should so much like to see that.”
“Ah yes—it is in my study. Will you come and look at it?”
They rose—the man-servant who stood all the time in attendance at the far side of the room opened one of two doors at the further end, and bowed as they went out. They passed through several smaller rooms, all opening out of one another, and entered the study. This was under the salon, in the bow, and was built right out over the water, but it was a much more oriental room than the one above. The low ceiling, rather heavily panelled in an elaborate diaper pattern, was painted all over in geometric designs’ in bright reds and blues and umbers; divans covered in thick woollen stuffs, equally brilliant, and vivid with small sharp designs, ran round the wall. But the chief ornaments were a large number of framed specimens of calligraphy, square or oblong; their curious sweeps and curves, combined with the profusion of patterns on the divans and ceiling made the whole room almost prick the eye with shapes and colours. The only modern—or European—things in it were the Pasha’s writing-desk and chair, a chaise-longue by one window, and a large table standing near another. Telling the man-servant to open the shutters, the Pasha opened a drawer in his desk, and drew forth his treasure. Dr. Pierce took it and held it to the light; held it near him, held it away, with all the motions of expertise.
“Beautiful! I’ve never seen a better specimen of his.”
While the two men stood together, examining and pointing out special merits and perfections to one another, perfectly content, Fanny and Féridé, upstairs, tucked up on a divan under the window of a smaller room beyond the salon were chattering away to their hearts’ content.
“But what was this work that took you so long?”
“Oh, a great many pieces that came in from Broussa, from a friend of Uncle’s, who collects for him.”
“Folk-lore pieces? Are they good?” There was no politeness about Féridé’s interest in folk-lore—her little friend had thoroughly infected her with her own enthusiasm.
“Some were—two were delicious. But you see,” Fanny went on, “the man wanted them back, and as Uncle is going away, he had to finish them first.”
“Going away? When? Where to? You go also?”
“No, I don’t! Oh and dji-djim, I did so want to! You mustn’t mind that I did—it is only for about ten days. But he is going to Trebizond, and perhaps even to Erzerum, if this Mirza Something doesn’t come down to Trebizond with the things. And I’ve never been on the Black Sea, and I’ve always wanted to see Trebizond, and above all Erzerum.”
This was an enthusiasm that Féridé did not share. To Turks under the Ottoman Empire there was Istanbul, where all life, culture, and interest were centred; there were the yalis up the Bosphorus for summer, and perhaps the vineyard houses out in the hills behind Chamlidja; there were picnics and excursions to beauty-spots, or to springs where the water was of a special deliciousness. But exploration of remote parts of the country as such had little or no appeal.
“Well, my sweet-meat, I am sorry for you, if you wanted to go. But what shall you do while your Uncle is away?”
“Oh, I shall stay at the pension.”
Féridé was shocked.
“Stay there alone? But you have no maid, no dadi! No, Fanny, this you cannot do.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. I’m alone a lot of the time anyhow. Only I shan’t be able to come here—that’s the pity.”
Féridé’s small face took on an expression of concentrated resolution; she spoke with decision.
“Come here is exactly what you will do! You will stay here with us. No, you need not argue—you would like it, I should love it, Niné would wish it. I shall settle it with her now, this instant.” She sprang off the divan. “I shall have you here, with me, for ten whole days!” And she ran off into the salon.
“Nine,” she exclaimed, pouring out her words in a rush, “here is a plan! Fanny’s Uncle has to go away to Trebizond, for ten days or more, and he cannot take this poor Fanny. But how can she stay alone at the pension? I want her to come here—I should be so very happy to have her. May she come? Oh, I am sure you will say yes, Niné-djim,” she said coaxingly.
“When does Dr. Pierce go?” Réfiyé Hanim asked.
“Tomorrow! So we must settle it now.”
“And does he agree?”
“He does not know—I have only just heard of it. But if you say yes he will agree, and so will Baba.”
This was indisputably true; Réfiyé Hanim fondled the child’s head.
“Very well, my child; it shall be so, if her Uncle agrees. It will be pleasant for you.”
“Niné, thank you very much.” She gave her a hug. “I shall tell her!” —and she flew into the next room.
“There! I said so! It is all arranged. Oh, how glad I am!”
“We shall just have to ask Uncle, though I’m sure he’ll be pleased,” said Fanny.
“Nine will arrange that,” said Féridé. And in fact Réfiyé Hanim had already left the salon and gone to her boudoir to write a note.
A moment later the door opened, and a tall young man in uniform put his head round it. Féridé flung herself at him.
“Ahmet, oh Ahmet! How nice.”
“Where is everyone, small mouse? There is nobody in the salon,” Ahmet said, kissing his little sister affectionately.
“Nine was there a moment ago. My Father is …”
“In his study, looking at pieces of calligraphy with the Doctor—this I saw as I came, and left the savants to their learning!” Ahmet said.
Then he caught sight of Fanny, and greeted her rather politely and formally. He was a good-looking creature of about 23,
with Féridé’s grey eyes, but with a good deal less character and decision in his face.
“But I have brought Fuad with me,” he went on.
“Oh, how nice. Where is he?” Fuad was a very favourite cousin, a little younger than Ahmet—as children they had been more or less brought up together, he, Ahmet, and Etamine.
“Here I am! May I come in?” called a merry voice, and Fuad too stepped through from the salon. He was a short, round-faced, cheerful creature, very dark.
“You know Fanny, don’t you?” said Féridé.
“Of course I know Mdlle Fanny! How-do-you doh?” he said in English.
“Oh, and now, Ahmet, you can sing Fanny the new song! She wants so much to hear it!”
“It is not a new song—it is one of the very old ones, I believe. But of course I will sing it for Fanny. Let us go into the other room—a friend of mine called Orhan has made an accompaniment for the piano for it.”
“Orhan? Who is Orhan?”
“As I say, a friend of mine, at the College. He is musical, and when I sang him the air, he composed this setting. Cest un beau type” Ahmet said.
“And you have brought it? Oh, come then!”
As they went into the salon by one door, Réfiyé Hanim entered by the other; Ahmet went up, bowed and kissed her hand, and enquired after her health. The business of greetings was always rather formal and protracted.
“And now,” Ahmet said when they were over, and Fuad had also kissed the old lady’s hand, “this little tyrant Féridé wishes me to sing a song for la Canaria to hear. You permit it?”
“But of course. I should like to hear it myself.”
Ahmet spun the music-stool down to a height suited to his tall figure, placed a sheet of music-paper on the rack, and began to play some long slow chords—then he lifted up his voice in the song:
I launched my falcon in flight
From the one fortress to the other fortress–
But waking alone in the night
I found the darkness full of tears,
Réfiyé Hanim listened with attention. Ahmet played a few bars of the accompaniment, and then repeated the song—his voice was a light baritone, very true and sweet; the air was hauntingly sad. “Ah,” the old woman murmured at the end, as if to herself—“That is so altogether true!”
Féridé pounced on this.
“Why, Niné?”
“The two fortresses must be the two here on the Bosphorus, Anadol Hissar and Rumeli Hissar, I suppose,” Fuad put in.
“Yes, certainly,” said Réfiyé Hanim; “the Anatolian fortress and the other, one in Asia and one in Europe.”
“Yes—yes, I see. But then why does he weep for the falcon? It is not far across the Bosphorus,” Féridé persisted. “Does it not come back?”
“No,” said Réfiyé Hanim with finality—“it does not come back.”
“Nine, you mean something, and I do not know what you mean! At least, I do not know what the song means, to you.”
“I have heard it before, long ago,” said the old lady, pensively. “Ah child, the falcon is the heart—the heart that flies out of its own country. The song is about the bitterness of love for the stranger—for the heart, like the falcon, does not come back.”
Fanny listened in silence. It is the greatest possible mistake to suppose that young girls of fourteen or fifteen are not susceptible to those emotions which move the human heart later in life. On the contrary, in a curious selfless, almost sexless, half-dreaming fashion they are perhaps more subtly and more acutely aware of them than they will ever be again, especially when they are expressed in poetry or music. Fanny Pierce, sitting in the mixed and uncertain beauty of that sea-green room at the yali, with its strange fusion of Europe and the Orient, was moved deeply by the song, and by Réfiyé Hanim’s interpretation of it. She, English as she was, knew and loved Turkey; Turkish literature and the wistful allusive Turkish forms of expression were beautiful and familiar to her; her Turkish friends, Réfiyé Hanim and Féridé particularly, were inexpressibly dear—with a quality of firmness and grace in their lives and personalities which she failed, often, to find among the little English friends whom she perforce acquired at her rather second-rate school. And at that moment a curious foreboding brushed her with its wing. Was her heart, in its love for the stranger, a bird that would not return? She glanced round the room—at Réfiyé Hanim in her corner, erect, calm; at Féridé with her delicate ardent face; at Ahmet still at the piano, so tall and slim and fine, his hands roving gently over the keys, still filling the room with the air of the song—and wondered: would she ever again, anywhere, find anything to equal this?
They went on then to other songs, more familiar: Féridé, in her clear little pipe, sang French children’s songs taught her by Mdlle Marthe; Ahmet sang the sad minor melodies of Debussy and Hahn; Fanny, who was never shy, sang some English folk-songs. Dr. Pierce and the Pasha, in the study below, heard them and smiled.
At length Dr. Pierce glanced at his watch.
“Pasha, I must go. I have to pack, and arrange everything. Could you send for Fanny?”
“Yes, of course.” The waiting servant was given a message.
“I must send a note to thank Réfiyé Hanim too—it is very good of her to have the child. It is really a weight off my mind.”
“It will be a pleasure for us all,” said the Pasha. “And what a strong clear voice she has, your Canary!”
The note was written, and given to the servant, who escorted them out through the rooms into the musical coolness of the stone-floored room, the “sofa”; they passed on into the garden—Fanny was already there.
“Well, la Canaria, so you are coming to be our cage-bird for a while,” said the Pasha.
“Yes, Excellency—I am glad. It is so very kind of you and of Réfiyé Hanim. And Uncle, it is all settled, and Mdlle Marthe will come to fetch me tomorrow afternoon.”
“Oh, how very kind!” said Dr. Pierce.
When they had gone, the Pasha went upstairs to the salon and greeted his mother, his son, and his nephew—then Féridé flew at him. “Oh, Baba-djim, how lovely that we shall have Fanny to stay! How glad I am that Dr. Pierce must go to Erzerum!”
“Erzerum! He is only going to Trebizond,” said the Pasha—he sounded somehow startled.
“Oh well, one or the other! If the man doesn’t bring the manuscripts down to Trebizond, he will go to Erzerum, Fanny says,” said Féridé airily.
“So.” He said no more, and presently carried the two young men of} to his study for a talk before the evening meal.
“My Father, the College is full of talk of war,” Ahmet said after a time. “Do you hear anything of it?”
“War of what nature?” the Pasha asked, non-committally.
“But with Russia! The on dit is that Germany and Russia will fight, and that we shall come in on Germany’s side, and have a smack at ces sales Russes,” said Ahmet, with considerable relish. His father said nothing. “But I hear,” the young man went on thoughtfully, “that Colonel Mustafa Kemal is against it.”
“And who is Colonel Mustafa Kemal, may I ask?” enquired the Pasha, who was in fact quite familiar with the name, and did not approve of that turbulent young officer.
“Oh, my Father, you must have heard of him! He is one of the most brilliant men in the Army. He is Military Attaché in Sofia now. He came to the College once—he is wonderful! If there is a war, I shall try to be on his staff!”
“And why is this paragon against going to war with Russia?” the Pasha asked.
“Because he says—this I was told in great confidence by a friend who is in contact with him—that if Turkey allows herself to be dragged into this war, whoever wins, the Ottoman Empire will be finished,” said Ahmet solemnly.
“You young men know a lot,” said the Pasha sarcastically. But he felt a little chill of discomfort, all the same.
Chapter Three
The days of Dr. Pierce’s absence sped happily for Fanny and Féridé. Th
ey were together all day long, from the moment of tiptoeing barefoot into one another’s rooms on waking in the morning, to chatter in bed, till they crept again along the passage to wish one another a last goodnight. In the big cool house, in the flower-bright, sun-splashed, shady garden, or up in the deserted wild beauty of the koru, they were together—together they read French, or wrote compositions in that tongue with Mdlle Marthe, together they sang at the piano. In the salon, before dinner, they watched with secret smiles of amusement the old kalfos come in and fuss about, chivvying the maid-servants to tidy up the room before the Pasha’s advent—having carefully changed themselves into more elegant evening versions of the lacy blouses and those long tunic-like coats, and richer veils for their heads, with an aged and pathetic coquetterie.
It was not to be expected that Fanny and Féridé, at their age, should fully recognise the pathos of the position of these so-called “aunts.” They represented a curious institution, now practically extinct; they were generally old maids, and vaguely related to the family; somehow or other they got taken into a rich household of distant connections, where they either fulfilled rather undefined functions, or acted definitely as Nannies to the children through one or more generations. Outside such a household their lives would have been of small compass—poor, without interest, despised and miserable; once installed in one, they enjoyed not only material comfort but a position in the world, and a passionate, life-giving interest in all the intimate concerns of the whole family. There were marriages to be arranged, all too often with their connivance; babies were born, and they then exercised a delicious tyranny (usually quite unwarranted by personal experience) over the daily destinies of mother and child.