“As if the secular girls were dressed any better,” said Fanis. “Look at them in their rag-tag outfits, going about with mobile phones glued to their ears and speaking with the drawling accent that’s become fashionable lately. I hardly understand them.”
“Don’t say any more, brother. Have you seen the transvestites in Tarlabaşı?”
“At least their hair is nicely done. Remember when women used to go to the hairdresser twice a week and come out looking like movie stars? Just like our friend Aliki here.” Fanis patted Aliki’s arm. She blushed.
“Ach,” said Julien, “and the worst part is that even when a nice one comes along we’re too slow to catch her.”
“Don’t put so much stock in speed, friend,” said Fanis. “Skill has always been more important. We still have that. Apropos”—Fanis lowered his voice—“do you know a Greek-speaking woman who lives in the area, dark, attractive, full-figured, with black hair as curly as an Arab’s?”
“Can’t say I do. And I’d remember if she’s attractive.”
“Just my luck,” said Fanis.
Aliki fluttered her blue-powdered eyelids. “Don’t worry. There are plenty of other ladies who would—”
“Three days ago it was pouring chair legs,” said Fanis, fanning himself. “Now I’m sweating like a sausage.” Aliki and Julien looked perfectly comfortable, but he was burning up. Could this overheating be a sign of more trouble? Aliki offered him a handkerchief embroidered with a single violet. Fanis thanked her and dabbed his forehead. When Emine served their teas, he said, “Could you raise the awning, dear? It’s blocking the cool breezes coming up from the Bosporus.”
Emine side-nodded. “Of course.”
Fanis looked toward the street. Rea Xenidou, supporting herself on the arm of her son, Kosmas, was shuffling onto the patio. Rea’s ankles and knees were unnaturally swollen. She winced at each step and progressed at a turtle pace, but her middle-aged son Kosmas showed no sign of haste or annoyance.
“Almost there, Mother,” he said.
Fanis offered his canvas chair. He had always appreciated Rea’s elegant French twist, the barely there shade of her lipstick, and the fact that she still donned all her gold jewelry for teatime, just as everybody had done half a century ago. Ladies like her deserved special treatment.
Rea’s son, on the other hand, was a real piece of work. It was obvious that his mother still dressed him because he wore hideous, horizontally striped polo shirts in which Fanis would not have been caught dead. Kosmas had the brush-cut of a soldier, which, in combination with his tasteless outfits, led one to suppose that he was some sort of computer geek rather than an award-winning pastry chef.
“Ach, that feels good,” said Rea, as she eased herself into Fanis’s chair.
Aliki leaned against the low wall of the Ottoman cemetery and covered her mouth. “What are you talking about? These chairs are awful. They sag in the middle.”
“Don’t do that,” snapped Julien.
“What?” said Aliki.
“The cemetery shakes at night from the unrest of its souls. It’s bad luck to touch that wall. Unless you’re in a hurry to join its inhabitants, that is.”
“God forbid,” said Aliki.
“Come on,” said Fanis. “We aren’t superstitious. Stop trying to frighten poor Aliki.”
Just then, a seventyish woman wearing a gold necklace that disappeared beneath her blouse—an obvious sign, to the trained eye, that she was a Christian or Jew who preferred to keep her religion private—approached arm in arm with a young woman who walked with the rod-straight posture of a ballerina and the curious gaze of a foreigner.
“Good evening,” said Aliki in Greek.
Gavriela Theodorou, a remarried divorcée from the hilltop neighborhood of Tatavla, kissed her friends and said, “This is my niece. Just arrived from America.”
Fanis suddenly understood the workings of destiny: the curly-haired woman was not the one, but rather the rabbit who had led him down the hole to the wonderland in which Gavriela Theodorou’s niece was waiting for him. Then again, Gavriela had never made any mention of an American niece. That was rather strange. Suspicious, almost.
Julien stood and pulled out his chair with a gallant sweep, a bow, and a chivalric triple turn of the wrist that ended in an upturned palm pointed at the chair. Kosmas also stood and offered his seat, but without any embellishments. Fanis tried do the same, but the skinny gray cat, which had apparently resettled beneath his chair, screeched so loudly that it startled him, and he fell back down.
“Stay where you are, sir,” said the niece. “We only need two.”
Annoyed that he had been surpassed in gentlemanly conduct, Fanis waited until Julien and Kosmas had gone inside for more chairs. He took advantage of their absence to pull his seat over to the young lady’s and ask, “What’s your name, dear?”
“Daphne.” She gathered her loose hair, which undulated like the curls of a Minoan princess, and let it tumble down her back. Although Daphne was not as voluptuous as the curly-haired siren, Fanis was excited by the way her black shirt exposed one of her pale shoulders. It was as if she was only half dressed.
“The most beautiful name there is,” said Fanis. “Where are you from?”
“Miami.”
He held out his hand. “Fanis.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Daphne. Her voice was nasal and her accent in Greek strange: something between Istanbul and Athens, with a tinge of American.
He grasped her fingertips as gently as he would an old tapestry. “What beautiful, natural nails you have. It takes pluck not to hide behind polish. I suspect you have quite a lot of fire in you. What’s your sign?”
Daphne tried to pull away her hand, but Fanis held it firmly. “Scorpio,” she said.
“I knew it! Didn’t I say you were fiery?” He kissed her chapped knuckles.
“What’s your sign, Mr. Fanis?”
The ‘Mr.’ nettled Fanis, but he let it slide. “Guess,” he said.
“Leo.”
“Not far off. But I’m neither cruel nor bossy. Guess again.”
“Gemini,” said Daphne.
“That’s an air sign. Do you really think I have an air sign?”
“Aries, then.”
He released her hand. “I knew you’d get it. After all, it’s the sign of energy and ardor. I’m Aries through and through. Did you know that Aries men and Scorpio women can be a perfect match?”
Daphne clicked her tongue. “I don’t believe in that stuff.”
Fanis continued: “It’s because Scorpio women are so difficult to satisfy. Aries is the only sign that can handle it. His passion is raw, whereas Scorpio passion is—”
“Cut it out or you’ll scare her away,” said Julien, just returned with Kosmas and the extra chairs. “Now, tell me, Daphne, what brings you to the City?”
“A Turkish class.” She twisted a tendril of hair around her finger.
“Turkish?” said Rea.
“I’m thinking about a PhD. In oral history.”
“How interesting,” said Fanis. “Do you know, my dear Daphne, that you have the heavy eyelids of the last Ottoman sultans? But that’s not surprising because most of the sultans’ mothers were Rum.”
“For how long will you be in the City, Daphne?” asked Julien.
Gavriela removed her dark glasses and announced triumphantly, “Five weeks.”
Everyone hummed in satisfaction: it was long enough.
“How old are you, dear?” asked Aliki. Fanis could have kissed Aliki’s bristly cheeks. It was just what he wanted to know, but he made a point of never asking a man’s salary, or a woman’s age.
“Thirty-two,” said Daphne.
Slightly young for Fanis, but he was sure he could win her. Instead of taking part in the usual chitchat, he sat back in his chair and listened while each of his friends put forward what they considered the most important subjects.
“Do you work, sweetie?” asked Rea.
“I’
m a teacher.”
“Oh, that’s the very best profession for a woman,” said Aliki.
Rea smiled sweetly at her son, turned back to Daphne, and asked, “Do you love children?”
“Yes, but I don’t always love their parents.”
“Are you married?”
“Not yet.”
Fanis felt a secret tickle of delight, but he kept his hands folded across his belly, as if these details held no importance for him. He watched the flexing and curling of Daphne’s unpainted toes, and he suspected—despite her confident replies—that her fidgeting was an indication of a certain discomfort.
“Good for you,” said Julien. “Marriage destroys romance. Stay single if you want to have a good love life.”
“Still,” said Aliki, “one gets lonely.”
“Don’t worry, little mama,” said Gavriela to her niece. “We’ll find you a groom.”
“But you haven’t told us,” said Rea. “Whose child are you?”
“My aunt’s sister’s,” said Daphne. Everyone laughed.
Meanwhile, like any expert hunter, Fanis was completing the essential task of reconnaissance: the girl prickled at their questions, and her replies, although proper, were evasive. How he loved a mysterious woman. More than that, however, he admired her trim dancer’s torso, the round posterior that he had glimpsed just before she sat down, and the child-thin wrists on which she wore silver cuff bracelets. Fanis knew, just as he could estimate the quality of an antique ring or some other fine thing, that Daphne was a find.
Of course, sitting as they were in a group, he couldn’t use the infallible strategy he had developed and refined throughout his decades of amorous adventures. That would require him to gaze directly into the eyes of his intended and say, “I find you incredibly beautiful.” So he thought for a moment and, with his instinctive acumen, adjusted the line both to his age and to the current situation by looking into Daphne’s eyes and saying, “Every young man in our City must find you incredibly beautiful.”
“Why don’t you ask them?” said Daphne.
Delighted by her riposte, Fanis said, “What an original idea. Kosmas, don’t you agree, as a young man, that Daphne is incredibly beautiful?”
Everyone fell silent. Kosmas scratched his brush-cut hair, stood, and asked, “Would anyone like more tea?”
“You haven’t answered the question,” said Fanis.
“Of course she is,” Kosmas mumbled.
2
A Baker’s Son Awakens
As a result of fanis’s puckishness, Kosmas found himself inside the narrow shop, standing at the unattended counter and waiting to order tea that no one wanted. He looked through the windows and beheld his mother’s friends laughing and chatting, and then his eyes settled on her, the American who resembled the actress Semra Sar in the 1960s films of which Rea was so fond. She had the same ribbon brows, the same downcast glance, and the same tentative smile as that heartbreaking Turkish actress. Wearing only a plain dress and orthopedic sandals, without any makeup as far as he could tell, the American was indeed incredibly beautiful.
Kosmas leaned on the high counter with folded arms, lowered his forehead onto them, and sighed. All he had ever wanted was to become a pâtissier, restore his family business to its former glory, marry a lovely Rum girl, and live a normal life. The first dream he had realized by completing pastry school in Vienna. Since then his mille-feuille had become so famous that he had been asked to give lectures on its preparation at the Istanbul Culinary Institute. Moreover, he was well on the way to doubling the original size of his father’s pastry shop. But he still had not found a bride, and now that a diaspora Rum had appeared in his life, like a golden coin in a Saint Basil’s cake, he didn’t even have the mettle to pay her a compliment.
A Greek voice recalled him from his sulk: “Those look tasty.”
Kosmas raised his head from the counter and saw the American peering into the cookie case. “You’ve got to be joking,” he said.
She cocked her head to one side.
Instinctively switching into culinary-professor mode, he explained: “It’s just pre-prepared frozen stuff that they bring in and bake here. The City has much better to offer. Come by the Lily sometime and you’ll see.” He presented his card.
She stuffed it into the pocket of her cross-body bag. “Is that where you work? At the Lily?”
“It’s our family business.”
“I guess that explains the flour on your pants.”
He looked down and saw the white dusting on his left thigh. Damn it. “Confectioner’s sugar,” he said, brushing it off. “From the mille-feuille.”
She pulled her hair to the nape of her neck, twisted it, and let it fall over her chest in a long coil. “If you’ve got a bakery,” she said, “then why are we here?”
Kosmas straightened his shoulders. “The Lily is a serious pâtisserie. Not a bakery, and definitely not a tea garden.”
“I see. Anyway, I just came in for some napkins. My aunt spilled her tea.”
Kosmas grabbed a stack from the counter and gave them to her. “I’ll have somebody come out and wipe it up.”
“It’s not necessary.” She smiled and held up the wad of napkins. “These are enough.”
He watched her long dress sway as she crossed the patio. When she bent over to clean the table, her buttocks separated. The soft fabric of her skirt draped between. From behind she was almost obscenely beautiful.
As if reading his thoughts, a woman said in Turkish, “Güzeller güzeli.” A beauty of beauties. Kosmas turned back toward the counter and saw his old flame Emine, a Muslim girl who had worked at Neighbor’s House a few years ago, quit, and—apparently—returned. Although civil marriage between Muslims, Jews, and Christians was perfectly legal in Turkey, Kosmas had no desire to marry without the blessing of the Church. Still, he had been unable to prevent himself from being seduced when, one evening after a particularly hard day at the Lily, Emine had insisted on making him Turkish coffee instead of tea. She had carried it with great care so that the foam wouldn’t break and set it gently on the table before him. As she retreated, with the subservience of an odalisque, her arm had brushed his shoulder. A good Turkish girl would never have let that happen by accident. Later that same evening, she’d left Neighbor’s House wearing, instead of her short-sleeved uniform top, a headscarf and raincoat: the creative compromise between secular and religious dress. Kosmas, who had always had a weakness for hijabi women, had been instantly hooked. Nevertheless, it had taken him three months to work up the courage to ask her out, and by that time she was already engaged. Julien had tried to assuage Kosmas’s disappointment. “Don’t worry, my boy,” he’d said. “When one woman leaves your life, ten arrive to take her place.” But the promised ten never came.
“What can I get for you?” said Emine. She had gained a few kilos.
“Nothing,” said Kosmas. “I mean, may I have seven teas, please?”
“Right away.” As Emine arranged the tulip-shaped glasses on a tray, Kosmas discreetly observed her from behind. He visually caressed the wisps of hair escaping the full bun at the nape of her neck; by ten o’clock that evening, they would all be covered with a titillating headscarf.
“Haven’t seen her before,” said Emine, still with her back to him.
“American,” said Kosmas.
Emine dropped two sugar cubes onto each saucer. Without looking up from her work, she said, “You’d better be quick. The men here are going to be all over her.”
“I gave her my card.”
“Did you get hers?”
Kosmas tapped his fingers on the counter. “No.”
Emine sighed. “You have to get hers. She won’t call you.”
“I’ve never been good at these things,” said Kosmas.
“I know.” Emine filled the bottoms of the tulip-shaped glasses with dark-brewed tea. Before topping them off with hot water, she paused. Something had caught her eye. “Are you sure you want seven?”<
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Kosmas looked out the window. The American lifted an arm as thin as a swan’s neck, waved him goodbye, and left the tea garden with her aunt.
“The extras are for you,” said Kosmas. “My treat.”
“Always such a gentleman,” said Emine, with a fond smile.
“Yeah, for all the good it does me.”
The next morning—Sunday—Kosmas rose early. A few days before, Madame Eva, his mother’s best friend, had offered to arrange a meeting with a Levantine Catholic girl named Rita Tereza. Since the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople allowed marriage with Catholics and Armenian Apostolics—provided they signed a triplicate affidavit saying they would baptize their children Rum Orthodox—Kosmas had agreed to the matchmaking.
As he showered, images of Daphne arranging her long hair flooded his still sleepy mind. So he turned the tap to cold, gave himself a good shock, and said out loud, “She’s a high-class salon type. She’ll never fancy you.”
He shaved with care, all the while fantasizing about Rita Tereza’s blue eyes, which Madame Eva had described as “very sweet.” He imagined that they would go for a walk along the Bosporus after church and stop for tea and sweet börek. The afternoon might end with a tender kiss at her doorstep, which meant that he had to eliminate every last bristle so that it wouldn’t scratch her rose-petal lips. After rinsing and drying, he reached for his Davidoff Cool Water, but it wasn’t in its place on the clothes washer. His mother had probably tossed it somewhere during one of the obsessive ceiling-to-floor bleach-downs she performed at least twice per week with the help of her cleaning lady. He rummaged through Rea’s bin of nail polish, her lipstick drawer, and her hairclip basket, where he finally found the blue–black bottle. He spritzed himself generously. As with pastries, scent was just as important as appearance.
Kosmas dressed in gray pants and a polite white shirt, with the sleeves turned up to the elbows. After pulling his socks as high as they would go—a fixation he had developed as the result of Rea’s distaste for socks pooling at ankles—he slipped on his brown bit loafers, took a quick glance at the cloudy morning sky, grabbed an umbrella, and was out the door.
A Recipe for Daphne Page 2