She spent the day wandering alone in and out of the narrow passages of Beyoğlu. She loved this old part of town: the dim alleyways where vegetables, tomatoes, aubergines, fat bunches of parsley were laid out as lovingly as flowers, the butchers’ shops with sheep’s heads in the window, their entrails neatly plaited beside them, the shop where preserved fruits lay like fat shining jewels in big glass jars.
She lingered for a while watching two old ladies prod potatoes and glare at apples with the same severe and forensic attention that Tan gave hers in the Cardiff market, and then moved on to Istiklal Caddesi, a wide thoroughfare filled with fashionably dressed people, where she hopped on to a tram. She got off at the wrong stop, walked for half a mile, then found it: Cleeve’s temporary house – a narrow, ramshackle old Ottoman building with stained-glass windows between a shoe shop and an elegant French patisserie. She had no idea what she would tell him tomorrow, or what he wanted from her; this part of her life seemed precarious, unreal. I don’t like being whatever it is I am to Cleeve, she thought suddenly. It doesn’t suit me – I don’t like shades of grey.
She ate lunch at one of the more modest establishments on the street, which served only börek – soft envelopes of pastry stuffed with either meat or cheese or vegetables – her father’s favourite meal. She often saw faces like his now, in the streets, on trams – darkly handsome features with heavy beards that needed to be shaved twice a day. Yesterday she’d watched one man chasing his little boy in the street, and felt a sharp pang of regret. She and Baba had had good times once; the sing-songs, the secret trips to buy ice creams on Angelina Street, all ending with that groaning shameful tussle in the bedroom. Her slap – she’d hit him! – when he’d torn the ENSA letter, still so shocking even when she thought of it now, would not be forgiven, not in this lifetime, and not by her now. She was fed up to the back teeth of waiting for his approval, for letters from him that would not come. Sometimes it seemed you just had to stop yourself going down an old mousehole where there was no cheese.
Istanbul, whether she liked it or not, had brought him into sharp focus again, raising questions. Why had he left this beautiful place with its mosques and scented bazaars, its bright glimpses of blue seas and distant shores, for the cold grey streets of Cardiff, where once, no one spoke his language? Why had he never come back? What was the source of the simmering anger she’d felt in him that had driven her away?
Later, back in her hotel room, alone, a singer again, her father was banished. She stood in front of a mirror in the blue dress Ellie had loaned her, shaking with nerves at the thought of Ozan’s party a matter of hours away now. This is horrible! she thought. Why put myself through this?
A kaleidoscope of thoughts flashed through her mind as she spread panstick over her cheeks and stretched her mouth for lipstick. Tonight would be a humiliating failure, she was sure of it now, under-rehearsed, embarrassing, a jumble of mismatched songs that would bewilder an audience whose tastes she had no clear idea of. Tonight would be a triumph, Ozan would love her, Paris and New York would follow. Dom would surprise her – he’d suddenly show up.
Later, in the back of the chauffeur-driven car Mr Ozan sent for her, her eyes were closed and she was entirely oblivious to the moon rising over the Golden Horn or the fishermen dropping their lines over shadowy bridges, to men going to the mosque to pray, the shoe cleaner outside the gates of the British Consulate packing his things to go home. She was tuned to her songs.
At Taksim Square, Felipe and the rest of the band got in. Smart dinner suits, fresh white shirts and lashings of brilliantine. Felipe kissed her hand and said she looked sensational. The car headed down the steep hill and then turned again, following the sea and the dying day. On the left-hand side of them were the dark shadowed woods, where Felipe told her there were wolves; on their right the gleam of the sea metallic as beaten copper in the dusk, the lights of ferry boats cutting through the waves.
Ozan’s house at dusk was a marvellous sight; with light pouring out from every window, it seemed to float in the moonlit waters of the Bosphorus, ethereal and glittering like some outlandish ocean liner. Walking towards it, Saba heard the steady pump of tango music coming from inside.
Leyla – ravishing tonight in emeralds and pale green silk – stood at the door to greet them. Ozan, she said, had been roaring around the house all day overseeing everything, the food, the stage, the guest list. She rolled her big black eyes behind her husband’s back – what a man! A monster!
She led them to a small room on the first floor where they could store their instruments, then down to a kitchen where five extra cooks and fourteen waiters had been drafted in to pluck quail and chop coriander and dill and pound walnuts and make up the dozens of delicious little mezes for the guests to nibble at.
The cooks made a big fuss of Saba as she poked her head around the door. They smiled and bowed and offered her little bits to taste, but she ate only a tiny bowl of rice and some kind of divine-tasting chicken stew. She was nervous again and very rarely ate before singing.
‘Come! Come.’ Leyla was excited too. She led Saba by the hand upstairs where they peeped around the door and saw a large handsome panelled room crammed with people talking and laughing. The light from dozens of small candles poured down like golden honey on silks and satins and long-necked women with diamonds around their throats. Through open windows a full moon shone over the dark sea.
Inside, food and much male laughter, the clink of glasses and piles of pink Sobranie cigarettes lying in crystal bowls for anyone to smoke. It was, thought Saba, the kind of party you dreamed about when you were young. Mum would have fainted at it.
‘Who are they?’ she whispered to Felipe.
‘All kinds,’ he whispered back, his moustache tickling her ear. ‘Ozan’s business friends, film people, writers and traders, embassy staff, journalists – nearly a hundred and fifty of them, or so Leyla says.’
Mr Ozan hove into view, portly and suave in a ruby-coloured velvet dinner jacket with braid around the cuffs, moving like a giant whale through the glowing room, eyes skimming the crowd, smiling, kissing, patting arms, pinching cheeks, accepting many compliments with a dignified and neutral dip of his head, as if to say what did you expect?
He’d given them strict instructions not to start to play until the guests had settled in and had time to chat and have a couple of drinks. And then, at nine o’clock precisely, he looked significantly in their direction, tapped his watch and the roar of the partygoers fell to an expectant hush. The curtain opened, a spotlight fell on the stage. ‘Ready,’ Felipe said quietly, checking them all. He raised his beautifully plucked eyebrows at Saba.
Deep breath, shoulders back. Crepi il lupo!
And they were off. Their first song, ‘Zu Zu Gazoo’, was a nonsense thing composed by Felipe as an icebreaker. Carlos set its rapid pulse, Felipe’s hands raced over his guitar, Saba leapt in singing, scatting, dancing, losing herself in a feeling of almost ecstasy that didn’t feel conscious until the song ended and she heard the audience roar and clap. Felipe’s smile said it’s working. All the small incremental moments of practice, of building technique, of making mistakes, of learning when to hold and when to let go had made the song feel effortless and the night magical, and Saba knew that if she was a billionaire, she could never, ever replace this feeling of satisfaction and delight.
Next, ‘That Old Black Magic’, with Felipe furling his lip now and doing his Satchmo imitation and doowapbababbing on the chorus. Then a beautiful Turkish song, ‘Veda Bûsesi’, ‘the parting kiss’, and finally ‘J’ai Deux Amours’. It was pure fun and she loved it.
The candles burned down, leaving a hazy glow in the room; outside, the moon sank like a giant ripe peach in the sea, and the fishermen who had lingered in their boats outside to enjoy the music went home. Sounds of muffled laughter came from an upstairs room where Felipe had told her the narghiles and the lines of cocaine were laid out. He’d gone up there once or twice himself during their bre
aks. After midnight, the band, purring along now like some well-oiled engine, began to play all the schmoozy old favourites: ‘Blue Moon’, ‘The Way You Look Tonight’.
And Saba, watching the dancers drawing closer, and stealing kisses, felt her moment of happiness change in a heartbeat to one of shocking anxiety. Every cell in her body longed to dance with him, to feel his soft shining hair, his cheek on hers.
Please God, keep him safe. Don’t let him die.
‘ “These Foolish Things”,’ Felipe whispered. She loved this song. In an earlier rehearsal he’d shown her a way of holding back some of the notes by half a beat. ‘Sometimes in order to make them cry you need to make them wait,’ he’d said.
When the song ended, one or two of the dancers turned towards her entranced. They clapped their hands softly. She blew a kiss towards them from the palm of her hand.
‘Mashallah!’ Mr Ozan shouted as he clambered on to the stage. Felipe raised his thumbs and smiled at her.
‘Miss Saba Tarcan, my half-Turkish songbird,’ Mr Ozan said in a muffled voice in the microphone; the audience gave her a loud ovation, they whistled and clapped. For that moment, at least, she could do no wrong.
‘Well golly, golly, golly. Tremendous!’ Cleeve clapped his hands together softly when, on the following day, she told him about the party. ‘Safely over the first fence. The band like you, Ozan is besotted, the rest should be a piece of cake.’
They were sitting in his flat – an anonymous room, scruffy like the Alexandria one; his unpacked suitcase in the corner, a half-eaten kebab on a table whose wonky leg was propped up with a faded copy of Le Monde.
‘But I’ve interrupted you.’ He leaned forward eagerly. ‘Carry on. What happened next?’
They were drinking Turkish tea together out of mismatched glasses. Saba looked at her watch. Eleven o’clock.
‘I can’t stay long,’ she warned him. ‘As a treat, Mr Ozan wants to take Leyla and me for a drive. He’s going to try and find the place where my family once lived.’
‘Really.’ Cleeve’s smile was a quick grimace – he had no interest in this whatsoever. He pushed away the kebab wrapper. ‘This place is a dump, sorry, I’ve only hired it for a couple of days – it’s better we don’t meet in hotels.’
‘I wasn’t even born then,’ she said. ‘It feels like I took no interest in them before I came here.’
‘Isn’t that true of most people?’ He dropped two discarded pieces of meat into the wrapper, and threw it into the waste-paper basket. ‘Your parents only really exist for you as your parents.’ He lit a cigarette.
I know nothing about you either, Saba thought. Only the twinkly smile, the jokes, the matey conversations about music.
‘So,’ he said. ‘The party.’
‘It was the most glamorous party I’ve ever been to,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t believe it.’
‘Some of these people have made colossal profits from the war,’ Cleeve said. ‘Chiefly from sugar, salt, fuel. They’ve never had so much money, and they’re not shy about spending it. What happened?’
‘We played for about an hour,’ Saba continued, ‘and when we stopped, Mr Ozan asked me to dance with some of the men who had come. He seemed proud of the fact that I was Turkish, that I’d come home, kept telling them how much I loved Istanbul.’
‘And do you?’
‘Far more than I’d expected.’
‘And did you mind? The dancing, I mean.’
She hesitated.
‘I don’t like Ozan telling me who to dance with – it makes me feel cheap – but that’s hardly the point, is it?’
‘Did you say anything?’
‘No – in case I heard something.’
‘Good girl, oh they’ll give you a great big medal for this when you get back.’
Patronising prat.
‘And some dolly mixtures?’
‘Don’t get cross, Saba, and please go on, this is all tremendous. Who did you dance with?’
‘A man called Necdet, a Levantine tobacco trader; he speaks seven languages and he smelt of almonds. Yuri somebody or other, fat and jolly. He said that most of the ships going up and down the Bosphorus belong to him. A White Russian, Alexei something like Beloi was his surname – he’s here to write a book on economics. He made a pass at me.’
‘A serious one?’
‘No. He told me Istanbul was stuffed to the gills with spies, all waiting to see which way the Turks jump. He made it sound like a joke.’
‘Well, true up to a point. Anything else?’
‘Yes. There were four German officers there. I danced with two of them. That felt horrible but I didn’t show it.’ She looked at him anxiously. ‘I’m just used to thinking of them as people who drop bombs, who kill people . . . Anyway,’ seeing his neutral expression, ‘I wanted to spit in their eyes, but I smiled nicely, and they smiled nicely back. One was called Severin Mueller; he’s something in the embassy but didn’t say what. He only wanted to talk about the music.’
‘Ah.’ Cleeve’s head jerked up. ‘Now he is quite important to us – he’s a new attaché from the embassy in Ankara. Why did you leave the best bit till last? Did you say anything to him?’
‘Only a few words, but I was frightened – what if they realise I am English?’
He gave her his sincere look. ‘There are lots of parties here, Saba, where the German big brass and the English are in the same room together. I’m not saying they’re making beautiful love to each other, but they talk, exchange the odd frigid smile, that sort of thing. And also, when you’re with Ozan you’re as safe as houses. Anything else?’
‘Nothing else. Some of the men got pretty drunk by the end of the evening. They asked me to sing “Lili Marleen”. I’d rehearsed it with Felipe in German. But Dermot,’ she was determined to tell him this and make him listen, ‘lovely as it is here, I don’t want to swan around indefinitely. When will I get back to North Africa?’ She heard her voice rising and made an effort to control herself. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying? If you have a definite job for me to do here I will do it as well as I can, but I’m not a spy, I’m a singer.’
He put his hands out and held her arms as though she had become briefly and unreasonably hysterical. ‘Darling sweets!’ he said. ‘Saba my love.’ He planted a paternal kiss on her forehead. ‘Of course you’re a singer. And of course we’ll have you back soon, but there is something very important for you to do first, which is why I’ve asked you here today – to bring everything, hopefully, to a happy conclusion.’
He drew close enough for her to smell the faint tang of cigarettes on his breath.
‘Right, ready. Now listen.’
Somewhere in the building the lift thunked and squealed.
He steepled his fingers together and looked at her.
‘Saba my love, you are part of an operation that has been going on for months in Turkey. Felipe is a key part of it. While you were dancing with the Germans, Felipe was doing a little exploring in the guest bedrooms of Ozan’s house.’
‘Felipe?’
‘Felipe is one of our key operatives here. Last night he was checking to see if Ozan’s guests had been careless about what they left on their bedside tables.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’
‘I’m telling you now. We had to see how well you worked first.’
She felt a kick of satisfaction and fear: so there was a reason for this.
‘Does anyone else in the band know?’
‘No one. Now,’ Cleeve drew closer, his voice dropped, ‘here’s the next part. Listen very carefully.
‘One year ago, a German fighter-pilot ace called Josef Jenke was shot down over the Black Sea. A pilot who happens to be on our payroll too. He was picked up by the Turkish police, brought to Istanbul for questioning, and in accordance with international law, he was not sent to prison but billeted in a small pension in Pera. He’s been treated pretty cushily there – allowed out for much of the day on parole, fed
nicely, even supplied with the odd girl.
‘Over the months and weeks of his arrest Josef has become part of the German clan. There aren’t all that many of them here and for obvious reasons they stick together. He is a charming fellow, handsome, brave, the ladies like him, and he often dines out discreetly on his fighter-pilot exploits – his longing to fly again and take another shot at Johnny Britisher, that sort of thing. The situation now is that he gets invited to most of the parties, and he has become very close to a man called Otto Engel, who is part of an organisation called the Ostministerium – the Ministry of the East. Their main activities as far as we can work out are black-marketeering and having a rollicking good time.
‘Now here is the point.’ Cleeve looked down, as if someone might be crouching under the scruffy table. ‘Because Istanbul is now the most important neutral city in the world, we need urgently to speak to Jenke – he’s done some brilliant work for us, but we think his days are numbered. We suspect that someone inside the Ostministerium has started to smell a rat. Certain enquiries have been made to his squadron; it’s possible that any day now they will discover that he was a deserter. We need to get him out fast.’
Cleeve anticipated her question.
‘Josef loves women and music. He’s a regular guest at house parties held at a private house that the Germans use in Tarabya, which is close to their summer embassy. One of Ozan’s cronies supplies music and alcohol and girls, but he very rarely goes there.
‘These evenings are very informal; it’s difficult to know exactly what night Jenke will be there, but he knows you are coming, he knows who you are. When you get there you will sing, and maybe dance with a few people, and at some point in the evening Jenke will ask if he can have his photo taken with you. If you pose with him it will seem like the most natural thing in the world, a fan photograph if you like, and then we can snip him off,’ Cleeve scissored his nicotined fingers and smiled briefly, ‘make him a false passport and get him out of the country as quickly as possible.’
Jasmine Nights Page 32