The Strange Journey of Alice Pendelbury

by Marc Levy

  She followed the vine-covered walls of a ruined fortress, or perhaps a former palace.

  The scent of cedar mingled with that of the wild broom, and a fainter trace of jasmine. Alice wanted to remember this succession of odors. The light in the distance grew closer and brighter. It was an oil lamp hanging from a chain. It lit a wooden door that opened to reveal a garden planted with linden and fig trees. Alice was hungry and felt tempted to steal one of the ripe fruits. She wanted to taste its red, pulpy flesh. She reached out, plucked two figs from the branches, and hid them in her pocket.

  She entered the courtyard of a house. The gentle voice of a stranger told her not to be afraid, that there was nothing more to fear. She would be able to take a bath, eat, drink, and sleep.

  Fragile wooden stairs creaked under Alice’s feet as she climbed them. She gripped the banister and tried to tread as lightly as possible.

  She entered a small room that smelled of beeswax. She took off her clothes, carefully folding them and piling them on a chair, and stepped naked into an iron bath. She looked at her face on the water’s surface before the ripples erased it from sight.

  She wanted to drink the bathwater. Her throat was dry and the room felt airless. Her cheeks burned. Her head felt as though it were gripped in a vise.

  “Go back, Alice. You shouldn’t have come. Go home, it’s not too late.”

  Alice opened her eyes and sat up in bed. She was burning with fever, her body felt numb, and her legs were weak. A wave of nausea sent her running to the bathroom.

  Back in bed, shivering, she called reception and asked them to fetch a doctor and to let Mr. Daldry know she was sick.

  The doctor arrived, quickly made his diagnosis, and wrote a prescription that Daldry hurried off to buy in a pharmacy. Alice recovered quickly. Apparently such “digestive problems” were common among tourists, and there was no reason to be concerned.

  The telephone in Alice’s room rang early in the evening. It was Daldry.

  “I never should have let you eat shellfish at lunch, I feel terribly guilty,” he said.

  “Oh, it’s not your fault,” said Alice. “You certainly didn’t force me, but I hope you won’t mind if I stay in my room tonight—the very thought of food turns my stomach.”

  “Then don’t talk about it! I’ll fast out of solidarity, it will do me good. A stiff bourbon and off to bed.”

  “You drink too much, Daldry.”

  “Considering your current state, you’re not in much of a place to give me advice concerning my health. I don’t mean to be cruel, but I’m in better shape than you are.”

  “Tonight perhaps, but on the average day it’s quite the opposite.”

  “Why don’t you get some rest and stop worrying about me. Take your medicine, sleep well, and if the doctor was right, you’ll be fine in the morning.”

  “Have you heard anything from Can?”

  “Not for the time being,” said Daldry, “but I’m expecting his call. Speaking of which, I should probably free up the line and let you sleep.”

  “Good night, Ethan.”

  “Good night, Alice.”

  She hung up. When she reached out to turn off her bedside lamp, she was seized by an uneasy feeling, so she left it on and fell asleep shortly afterward. That night, for the first time in a long time, no nightmares troubled her sleep.

  There was a perfume maker who lived in Cihangir. His house was perched on a weedy plot of land at the top of one of the highest hills in the neighborhood. A clothesline hung with shirts, trousers, smocks, and even a uniform was strung across the space between it and the neighboring house. It had been difficult for the dolmu they had taken to scale the steep cobbled street in the rain. The Chevrolet had slipped backward, the overheating engine stinking of burning rubber, and the driver, who had never before questioned the state of his balding tires, grumbled that there was nothing for tourists to see in the depths of Cihangir anyway. Daldry finally joined him in the front seat and slipped him a banknote, and the driver calmed down and got them to their destination.

  Can guided Alice by the arm as they picked their way through the weedy plot, “so that she would not put her foot in a water-filled hole,” as he put it.

  The ground seemed dry enough, in spite of the mist that had fallen for much of the day, but Can was doing his best to show foresight. Alice was feeling better, but she was still weak and appreciated the attention. Daldry held his tongue.

  They went into the house. The room where the perfume maker worked was spacious. Glowing embers smoldered beneath a large samovar, and the heat they gave off fogged up the windows of the dusty workshop.

  The perfume maker did not understand why two people had come all the way from London to see him, although he was honored by their visit. He offered them tea and little Turkish pastries drizzled with syrup.

  “My wife made them,” he told Can, who translated in turn that the perfumer’s wife was the most talented pastry maker in Cihangir.

  Alice followed the perfumer to his organ. He had her smell some of his creations. The notes he was working with were sustained, the accords harmonious. They were well-made Oriental-style perfumes, but nothing very original.

  At the end of the long table, Alice’s eye fell upon a wooden case that piqued her curiosity.

  “May I?” she asked, picking up a small bottle filled with a liquid of an odd green color she had never seen before.

  The perfumer took the bottle from her hands and put it back in its place before Can had the time to finish translating her request.

  “He says they aren’t very interesting, just experiments for his amusement. A pastime.”

  “I’d still be curious to smell one of them.”

  The perfume maker shrugged and signaled that it was fine with him if she wanted to waste her time. Alice pulled out the stopper and was astonished. She took a strip of paper, dipped it in the liquid, and waved it under her nose. She put the bottle back and repeated the operation with a second bottle, then a third.

  “So?” asked Daldry. He had been unusually silent up until then.

  “It’s incredible. He’s recreated an entire forest in this box. I would have never come up with such an idea. Smell for yourself,” she said, dipping a new strip of paper in another vial. “It’s like being stretched out on the ground at the base of an old cedar tree.”

  She put it down, dipped another, and waved it in the air before presenting it to Daldry.

  “This one is pine resin, and in the next bottle”—she opened it—“the smell of wet grass with a slight note of autumn crocus and bracken. And here’s another, hazelnuts . . .”

  “I’ve never met anyone who wanted to smell like a hazelnut,” said Daldry.

  “They’re not for skin. I’d call them ambiance aromas.”

  “Do you really think there’s a market for ambiance aromas? What the hell is an ambiance aroma anyway?”

  “Imagine how wonderful it would be to have the scents of the natural world in one’s home. We could fill our living spaces with the smells of the seasons.”

  “The smells of the seasons?”

  “You could make autumn last a little longer when winter comes too soon, or move forward the date of spring’s arrival when January seems like it will never end. A dining room that smelled ever so slightly like a lemon tree, or a bathroom scented with orange blossoms. Indoor perfumes that aren’t incense . . . I think it’s a wonderful idea.”

  “Well, if you say so. But first we need to make friends with this kind man, who seems rather astounded by your current state of excitement.”

  Alice turned to Can.

  “Could you ask him how he makes the cedar note last so long?” She picked up the dipper and smelled it again.

  “The note?”

  “Ask him what he does to make the smell last so long in the open air.”

  While Can did his best to translate the conversation between Alice and the Turkish perfumer, Daldry walked over to the window and looked out at
the Bosporus, blurred by the condensation on the windowpanes. This wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind when he organized their trip to Istanbul, he thought to himself. Alice might very well make a fortune in perfumes and, strangely enough, he couldn’t care less.

  Alice, Can, and Daldry thanked the perfumer for spending the morning with them. Alice promised to come back soon and told him she hoped they would be able to work together. The perfumer could never have imagined that his hobby of re-creating offbeat fragrances would interest another person so much. That evening he would be able to tell his wife that the late nights he spent in his workroom, and the Sundays he devoted to his walks through the hills to collect all sorts of flowers and vegetable matter in the woods and fields, were more than just an old fool’s pastime, as she so often said: it was serious work that had caught the attention of an English perfume maker.

  “It’s not that I was bored,” said Daldry as they stepped out onto the street. “I just haven’t had anything to eat since yesterday at noon. I’m in need of a snack.”

  “Are you not joyous from this visit?” Can asked Alice, ignoring Daldry.

  “Yes, I’m simply overcome with joy. That perfume organ was a veritable Ali Baba’s cavern. You found exactly the sort of person I had been hoping to meet, Can.”

  “And I am enchanted that you are enchanted,” said Can, blushing deep magenta.

  “Hello? Did anybody hear what I just said?” Daldry was beginning to behave like an attention-starved child.

  “I should inform you, Miss Alice, that some words of your vocabulary are new to me and very difficult to translate. And I did not see any baba cavern organ in this man’s house.”

  “I’ll have to explain all the perfume jargon. The organ is that set of shelves with all of the little bottles on it. You’ll be the best perfumer’s translator in Istanbul when I’m done with you.”

  “That is a specialty I would like very much. I would be eternally grateful, Miss Alice.”

  “Has nobody heard a word of what I just said?” asked Daldry. “I’m hungry! Can, could you kindly take us to a place where Miss Alice won’t be poisoned?”

  Can turned and looked at Daldry.

  “I have the intention of driving you to a place that you will not be forgetting soon.”

  “Ah, just in time, you remembered I exist.”

  Alice leaned over to Daldry and whispered in his ear. “You’re not being very pleasant.”

  “You’ve just noticed too? You think he’s being pleasant to me? I’m hungry. I’d like to remind you that I fasted out of solidarity last night, but if you’re going to take sides with our guide you can kiss that solidarity goodbye.”

  Alice gave Daldry a disapproving frown and returned to Can.

  They picked their way down the steep and narrow streets to the lower part of Cihangir. Daldry hailed a taxi and asked Alice and Can if they were coming with him. He sat in the back seat and left Can no choice but to sit in front next to the driver.

  Can gave the driver directions in Turkish and kept his back to them for the duration of the ride.

  A flock of seagulls sat motionless on the railings along the waterfront.

  “We’re going over there,” said Can, gesturing to a wooden shack at the end of a wharf.

  “I don’t see any restaurants,” said Daldry, preparing to protest.

  “Because you don’t know how to look,” said Can, as politely as he could. “It’s not a place for tourists. The room is not resplendent with luxuries, but you will have an excellent meal.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know of a place as promising as that greasy spoon, but with a little more charm? Maybe something over there?” Daldry pointed to the yalis, the grand homes that lined the waters of the Bosporus.

  One of them caught Alice’s eye. Painted entirely white, it stood out from the others.

  “Something wrong?” said Daldry, teasing her. “You should see the look on your face.”

  “I lied,” stammered Alice. “The other night I had a nightmare that felt more real than any of the others, and in that nightmare I saw a house like that one.”

  Can didn’t understand what had come over Alice.

  “Those are yalis,” he said with the even voice of a tour guide. “Summer homes that are remains of the Ottoman Empire. They were very popular in the nineteenth century. Now they are less lucky. Their owners are mispossessed, and they are too expensive to heat in the winter. They need to be renovating.”

  Daldry took Alice by the shoulders and forced her to look away.

  “I can only think of two possibilities. Perhaps your parents really did travel farther than the French Riviera and you were too young to remember them telling you about it. Or perhaps they had a picture book about Istanbul that you’ve forgotten about. One doesn’t preclude the other.”

  Alice had no memory of her mother or father ever talking about Istanbul, and she could still remember every room in her childhood home . . . Her parents’ room with its big bed covered in a gray bedspread . . . her father’s bedside table, where he kept his reading glasses in a leather case and a small alarm clock . . . her mother’s bedside table, with a picture of Alice at the age of five . . . the trunk at the foot of the bed and the red-and-brown-striped rug. There was the dining room, with its mahogany table and six mismatched chairs. The china cabinet, where the best porcelain was kept for special occasions, but which they never remembered to use. In the living room there was the chesterfield, where they sat as a family to listen to the evening radio dramas, and the little bookcase with the books that her mother read. None of it had anything to do with Istanbul.

  “If your parents came to Turkey,” said Can, “maybe traces of their passage remain in the authorities’ archives. Tomorrow the British Consulate is organizing a ceremonious evening. The British Ambassador is coming especially from Ankara to welcome a long military delegation and many officers from my government.” He seemed proud of this.

  “And how do you know all that?” asked Daldry.

  “Because I am the best guide in Istanbul. And, all right, because I read about it in the morning newspaper. As I’m also the best translator in Istanbul, I was inquisitioned to work at the ceremony.”

  “Are you trying to tell us that you won’t be able to work for us tomorrow evening?” asked Daldry.

  “I was going to invite you to come to this party.”

  “Don’t show off. The consul surely won’t be inviting all of the English people who happen to be staying in Istanbul.”

  “I am not showing anything off. The secretary who makes the invitation list would be very happy to do me a service and add your names. She never refuses Can. I will bring the invitations to your hotel.”

  “You’re something else,” said Daldry, almost in admiration. “Maybe you’d be interested in going, Alice? I suppose we could get introduced to the ambassador and ask him to enlist the consular services on our behalf . . . After all, what good is all that bureaucracy if we can’t rope them into doing us a favor now and then?”

  “I want to understand,” said Alice. “I want to know why my nightmares seem so real.”

  “I promise we will do everything we can to get to the heart of this mystery. But first, I have to eat something and have a drink or I’ll pass out.”

  Can pointed to the fisherman’s restaurant at the end of the pier before going to sit on a piling.

  “Bon appétit,” he said, crossing his arms and gazing across the water.

  Alice glared at Daldry to invite Can along with them.

  “What are you doing? You can’t sit by yourself out here in the cold,” he said.

  “I don’t want to disconvenience,” said Can. “I know I can be a bother. Go feeding yourselves. I am used to winter in Istanbul. And rain.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. If it’s a local restaurant, I’ll never be able to communicate if you don’t come along. How do you expect me to survive without the best translator in town?”

  Can lit up in res
ponse to the compliment and immediately accepted Daldry’s invitation.

  The generous welcome and the meal that followed surpassed Daldry’s expectations. When they came to the coffee, he was suddenly overcome by a wave of sentimental melancholy that took Alice and Can by surprise. Aided by the alcohol, he finally admitted the guilt he felt at having so harshly judged the restaurant from a distance. Simple and excellent food could be served in even the most modest of establishments. He heaved a heavy sigh and finished his fourth glass of raki.

  “I’m just getting emotional,” he said. “When I think of the sauce that came with the fish and the delicacy of the dessert—do you think I could order a second?—it’s just overwhelming. Please, Can, present my compliments to the owner, and promise me you’ll take us to more places like this. Beginning this evening.” He raised his glass as the waiter passed, asking for a refill.

  “I think you’ve had enough to drink,” said Alice, forcing him to lower his glass.

  “I admit that the raki has gone to my head. But I came here on an empty stomach, and I was terribly thirsty when we arrived.”

  “You really ought to learn to quench your thirst with water,” said Alice.

  “Are you crazy? Do you want me to rust?”

  Alice made a sign to Can, and they both stood and flanked Daldry, helping him to the door. Can paid and thanked the owner, who was amused by the scene.

  The cool air made Daldry’s head spin. He sat on a piling while Can tried to hail a taxi. Alice stood over him to make sure he didn’t fall into the water.

  “I think a little nap would do me some good,” he slurred, gazing across the water.

  “And all this time I thought you were going to be chaperoning me.”

  “I’m dreadfully sorry. I promise you I won’t drink a drop tomorrow.”

  “You had best keep that promise.”

  Can managed to stop a dolmu. He came back to help Alice prop up Daldry in the back before taking a seat next to the driver.