Chapter 18: A Network of Talent

Chapter 18: Chapter 18: A Network of Talent

I

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 3 December 1903

Zeynep laid a fresh sheet of paper on the crate and wrote a single word across the top. Hands.

"You said that the Empire needs them," she said. "Then we must know whose they are."

Ayaan sat across from her with the blue book closed on his knee. The shop was shut for the evening, and the lamp threw a small circle of light over the paper and the two of them.

"I have thought about it for three weeks," he said. "I have no list. I have only a rule."

"Say the rule."

"That I will look for skill, honesty, and a need that no one has answered." He paused. "I will not ask where a man was born, or which house he prays in, or whether his mother tongue is Turkish."

Zeynep did not write it down at once. She tapped the pencil against her teeth, which she did when she was deciding how much to say.

"My father would agree with you," she said at last. "He buys from Greeks and sells to Armenians and borrows from a Jewish banker in Galata, and he says that the only color in commerce is silver."

"It is a sound principle."

"It is also an unpopular one in a city where every quarter watches its neighbors." She looked up. "Ayaan, a Turkish boy of thirteen who gathers able men from every community will be noticed. The man with the scar will see a list of Greeks, Armenians, and Jews and wonder what they are meant to become."

"He will see a shop."

"Explain."

"I will never ask them to meet." Ayaan leaned forward. "Each of them will deal with me alone, in the ordinary way of trade. One will mend a scale, one will print a form, one will teach a child, and each will be paid fairly for it."

"And in the end?"

"In the end, they will have made something together without ever being gathered. No one can call it a conspiracy when it is only a counter that sells a good ledger."

Zeynep considered this.

"Then who is first?" she asked.

He opened the book and read from the page headed People. It was a short page, and under the name of the scarred man he had written not yet an enemy, which he did not read aloud.

"Hovsep Agopian, who has supplied us honestly for two years and who tells me the truth about customs. Kemal Efendi, who teaches arithmetic and has not been paid in five months. Bekir, his pupil, who adds columns faster than a clerk. Sabri Usta, who understands what an army needs."

"And?"

"And two men I have not yet met." He turned the page. "A Greek mechanic in Galata, whom Hovsep’s carter says can repair anything with a spring in it. A Jewish printer in Balat, who is said to set type in four alphabets."

"Why those two?"

"Because this shop needs a better scale and a better ledger." Ayaan smiled slightly. "And because every great thing begins as a small problem that someone solves well."

Zeynep wrote at last, in her neat hand, beneath the word at the top.

Ask what they need. Pay what is fair. Take nothing that is not freely given.

She turned the paper toward him.

"That is three rules," she said. "You said that you had only one."

"Then I have learned something tonight."

II

Constantinople, Galata — 10 December 1903

The workshop of Stavros Kyriakidis stood in a crooked lane behind the Galata docks, between a chandler’s shop and a tavern that served only sailors. A sign above the door showed a painted pair of scales, faded almost to white.

Ayaan carried the counter scale from the shop wrapped in a cloth. It had drifted for a month, and it now weighed a kilo of lentils at nine hundred grams.

The man at the bench did not look up when he entered. He was lean and gray at the temples, with a jeweler’s glass fixed to one eye and a screwdriver in each hand, and he was taking apart a clock that was not much larger than a walnut.

"Whatever you want, I am closed," he said in Turkish, without heat.

"The door was open, Efendi."

"The door is always open. That is not the same as being open." The glass swung toward him, and the eye behind it was sharp and unfriendly. "You are a child."

"I am thirteen. I am also a customer, and I have brought a scale."

Stavros grunted. He put down the screwdrivers, took the bundle, and unwrapped it on the bench. He pressed one palm to the pan, tilted the beam, and flicked the pivot with a fingernail.

"Knife edge is worn," he said. "Whoever built this used soft steel, and whoever has used it has been careless. Come back on Tuesday."

"Could you show me what is wrong?"

The mechanic looked at him for a moment longer. Then he shrugged, took up a file the length of a finger, and in ten minutes he had dressed the worn edge and reseated the beam.

He set a small brass weight on one pan and a matching weight on the other. The beam swung once and rested level.

"There," he said. "A true scale. How much do I charge a child who asks to be shown?"

"What would you charge a merchant?"

"Fifteen kuru?."

"Then fifteen." Ayaan counted the coins onto the bench. "And five more, because you showed me."

Stavros stared at the coins and made no move to take them.

"You are a Turk’s boy, in a Turk’s coat," he said slowly. "Why do you pay a Greek a fair price?"

"Because the scale is true, and I value a true scale."

"That is not an answer."

"It is the whole of the answer, Efendi." Ayaan folded the cloth. "My father weighs lentils for a living. A scale that lies is a scale that robs someone, and it makes no difference who mended it."

The mechanic was silent. He glanced toward the back of the shop, where a canvas hung over a shape on a long table, and then he looked away too quickly.

"What is under the cloth?" asked Ayaan.

"Nothing that concerns you."

"Is it a pump?"

Stavros’s hand closed on the screwdriver. It was a very small movement, and Ayaan saw it, and he stood perfectly still.

"How did you know that?"

"There is a brass fitting on the floor by the leg of the table." Ayaan kept his voice mild. "It is the shape of a valve, and it is too large for a clock."

For a long time, the only sound was the ticking of the dozen clocks on the wall, each a little out of step with the others. Then Stavros went to the table and drew back the cloth.

Beneath it lay a hand pump of polished brass, mounted on an oak frame. Beside it, a notebook lay open to a page of pencil drawings, crowded with figures and tiny, exact script in Greek.

"I have been making it for three years," he said. "A fire pump. The valves seat better than the German ones, and it can be worked by two men instead of four."

"Has anyone seen it?"

"The fire brigade at Pera said it was very ingenious. They said that they would order from Vienna." The mechanic’s mouth twisted. "I have no capital for steel, no license to manufacture, and no friend at the Porte. I am a Greek mechanic in Galata, Efendi. There are a thousand of me."

"There is only one of you who has drawn that valve."

Stavros looked at him sharply.

"I cannot buy your pump," said Ayaan. "I have no money for it, and I will not pretend that I do. But I can bring you the shop’s scales every month to keep true, and I can pay you for that work, and I can tell you when I find someone who needs what you make."

"That is charity."

"It is trade. I pay you because I need what you do." Ayaan met his eye. "I will also ask one thing, and you may refuse it. May I come again, and watch?"

The mechanic stared at him for a long, silent minute.

"Come on Tuesdays," he said finally. "Not before the second hour. And do not touch the valve."

Ayaan thanked him, bound the scale in its cloth, and went out into the lane. The sailors’ tavern had begun to fill, and a harmonica was playing a slow Greek song somewhere above.

He walked all the way to the ferry before he allowed himself to smile.

III

Constantinople, Balat — 17 December 1903

The printing house of Yitzhak Behar occupied the ground floor of a narrow building above the Golden Horn. The air inside smelled of lamp oil, warm lead, and wet paper.

Three presses stood in a row, and two young men were setting type at long slanted cases. One worked in Hebrew letters, and the other in Latin, and the page in front of each was a puzzle of small, bright metal.

"Four alphabets," said Behar, as he came forward wiping his hands on a leather apron. He was a stout, bearded man of sixty with spectacles pushed up on his forehead. "Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and the Arabic letters for Turkish. I do not print Armenian. My cousin does, in Galata, and we do not speak."

"Why not?"

"A disagreement over a font that occurred before you were born." He shrugged. "Sit, young Hassan. Hovsep Agopian wrote that you wished to see me about forms."

Ayaan sat on a stool beside the nearest press and laid a sheet of paper on his knee. It was ruled in plain columns, and he had drawn it himself.

"A ledger," said Behar.

"A ledger for small traders, Efendi. The shopkeeper, the porter with a cart, the woman who sells thread." Ayaan held out the sheet. "At the moment they keep accounts on scraps, or in their heads, or not at all."

Behar took the sheet and held it to the window.

"Receipts on the left, expenses on the right, and a running balance down the center." He nodded slowly. "It is a clean system. Who devised it?"

"A teacher in Fatih, Kemal Efendi. I have only asked him to simplify it for people who cannot read well."

"And you wish to print it."

"I wish to print it with the lines already ruled, bound in stiff paper, and sold for a price that a porter can pay." Ayaan paused. "I cannot pay you tonight, Efendi. I can pay you for the first hundred when they sell, and I can pay a little more on each hundred after."

The printer lowered the sheet and studied him over the spectacles.

"You come to me with a proposal that has no risk for yourself," he observed.

"It has risk for me. If they do not sell, I have bound paper I cannot use." Ayaan did not look away. "But the risk to you is not nothing, and I would be dishonest to say so. If you refuse, I will understand."

"Hm." Behar gazed at the nearest press for a time. "Do you know how many printers in this city must submit every line to the censor?"

"All of them, Efendi."

"All of them. Every page, every pamphlet, every almanac. A single wrong word may close a house for a year." The old man tapped the paper with one thick finger. "But there are no sentences on a ruled ledger. The censor has nothing to fear from a column of lines."

"That is partly why I came to you."

"Then you are cleverer than you look, and you look rather clever." Behar laughed, deeply and without malice. "I will do it. The first hundred on credit, and a share of each hundred after. I will set the headings in Turkish and in French, because the French is fashionable and the merchants like to see it."

"Thank you, Efendi."

"Do not thank me. I have printed bills of lading for forty years, and I am grateful to be asked for something useful."

One of the young compositors had drawn closer, and he was reading the ruled sheet over the master’s shoulder. He was perhaps seventeen, with a thin, serious face and ink to the elbows.

"May I say something, Master?" he asked.

"If it is short."

"The balance column should be wider. A man with a large debt will run out of space in a month."

Behar turned to look at him, and then at Ayaan.

"This is my grandson Moiz," he said dryly. "He has opinions about everything, and unfortunately he is often correct."

"Then make the column wider," said Ayaan. He was already smiling. "And I will pay him a little extra for the idea, if his grandfather permits."

"I permit nothing." But the old man’s eyes were warm. "Come back in a month."

IV

Constantinople, Fatih — 7 January 1904

Kemal Efendi had written the instructions in a single evening, and he read them aloud in the empty classroom with the dignity of a man delivering a sermon.

"The merchant shall write the sum received in the first column, on the day received, and shall not trust his memory." He cleared his throat. "Is that too severe?"

"It is correct, Hoca Efendi." Ayaan sat in the front row with his hands folded. "I would only change the last four words."

"To what?"

"Because memory is unreliable. A man who is told not to trust himself will resent the book. A man who is told that memory fails everyone will accept it."

The teacher considered this and made the correction in the margin.

"You have the instinct of a schoolmaster," he said. "It is a pity that you have the ambition of a banker."

"They are not so different."

At the back of the room, a boy had been waiting in silence on a low bench. He was twelve, small for his age, with a patched jacket and an expression of careful attention, and he held a slate tightly in both hands.

"Bekir," said Kemal. "Come forward."

The boy stood and came to the front, and Ayaan noticed that his boots were mended with string.

"Do you know what this is for?" asked Ayaan.

"A book of accounts, Efendi." The voice was low and very steady. "The Hoca said that I might help to check the first copies."

"Will you do it?"

"I will be glad to."

"I will pay you five kuru? for each hundred pages that you check, after school." Ayaan said it plainly, as an employer speaks. "If you find a mistake in the ruling or the sums, I will pay a further kuru? for each. This is not a kindness, Bekir. It is work."

The boy’s face did not change, but his hands tightened on the slate.

"Is it permitted?" he asked. "My father said that I must not take money for what the Hoca taught me."

"Your father is right about that. This is not payment for what you learned. It is payment for what you do with it."

Kemal turned away to the window and spent some time rearranging the chalk on the sill.

"May I ask a question, Efendi?" said Bekir.

"Of course."

"Why do you want me? There are older boys who are quicker with a pen."

Ayaan thought for a moment, because the question deserved it.

"Because you do not guess," he said. "When you do not know a sum, you stop and you do it again. I have seen a great many people who are quick, and very few who are careful."

The boy absorbed this in silence. No one had spoken to him so before, and he would remember it for a long time.

Later, in the empty street, Kemal walked with him as far as the corner.

"You gave him a wage," said the teacher. "His father sells cabbages in the market of Unkapan?, and the family has not had a surplus in three generations."

"It is five kuru? a week, Hoca Efendi."

"It is a great deal more than five kuru? to that household." Kemal stopped and took off his spectacles to rub his eyes. "I wished to say that I will not forget this. When you are older and need someone you can trust, I will be there, and I will bring as many of my pupils as you require."

He put the spectacles back on and walked away into the winter dusk, and Ayaan watched until he turned the corner.

V

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 21 January 1904

The first hundred ledgers arrived from Balat on a handcart, tied in bundles with string and smelling of fresh ink.

Ayaan unpacked them on the counter. They were bound in gray paper over thin board, ruled in clear black lines, and headed in Turkish and French with the words Defter-i Esnaf — Livre du Petit Marchand. On the inside of the back cover, in small letters, a printed line read Ruled by M. Behar. Method by K. Efendi. Bound by S. Kyriakidis.

Stavros had insisted on it. He had said that a man who did honest work ought to see his name on it, and Ayaan had not argued.

They sold the first nine before noon. Hovsep’s carter bought two, the money-changer bought three, and the barber across the lane, who had never kept an account in his life, bought one and asked whether it came with instructions.

"Page two," said Ayaan.

"Is it difficult?"

"It was written by a schoolmaster who does not wish you to fail."

The barber laughed and took it away under his arm, and Ayaan watched him cross the lane and begin leafing through it in his own doorway.

Salih will tell them that I sell ledgers. It is true, and it is dull, and it is exactly what I wish them to hear.

The bell rang a little after the afternoon prayer. Ayaan did not need to look up to know who had come.

"Good afternoon, Efendi."

"Good afternoon, young Hassan." Cevdet closed the door behind him and laid a gloved hand on the nearest ledger. "I am told that you have begun to publish."

"I have begun to sell books with lines in them."

"Which is a kind of publishing." The scarred lip rose. "May I?"

He took one from the stack and turned it over, and read the line at the foot of the back cover without any change of expression. Then he opened it, and ran his eye down the first page, and for a long moment he said nothing at all.

"A Jew prints it," he said. "A Greek binds it. A Turkish teacher devised it, and an Armenian supplied the paper."

"And a boy of twelve checks the sums, Efendi."

"Of course." He turned a page. "It is a pleasing arrangement. I have rarely seen so many different hands on so small a thing."

"Their work is good."

"I am sure that it is." Cevdet set the ledger down and regarded him steadily. "In this city, that is a rarer reason for choosing a man than it ought to be."

Ayaan felt a careful stillness come over him. The remark could be praise, or it could be a question, and the man’s voice gave no sign of which.

"Do they know one another?" asked Cevdet.

"They know the ledger."

"Not each other?"

"I have never brought them together, Efendi. It was not necessary."

"No." The scarred man nodded slowly. "It was not necessary. That is the thing that interests me."

He drew off one glove and flexed his fingers, a habit that Ayaan had noticed in September.

"I will tell you what I have observed, since I told you last time that I would not insult you. A man who gathers able people from every quarter of the city is doing one of two things. He is building a business, or he is building a party."

"Which do you think I am doing?"

"I do not yet know." There was no menace in it. "I ask you to tell me."

Ayaan did not look away. He had prepared for this question, and he had decided that the plain answer was the best.

"A business, Efendi. A party needs a cause, and I have none that I would put on a banner." He gestured at the shelf of ledgers. "A business needs customers, and customers do not ask where the paper came from. They ask only whether the sums are right."

"That is a good answer."

"It is the true one."

"Allah willing, it will remain true." Cevdet drew the glove back on. "I will take three of these. One for the pasha’s household accounts, which have not been kept in order for thirty years, and two for my own use."

"Your own use, Efendi?"

"A man in my position has a great deal to keep track of." The scar drew his lip up. "Even a collector of libraries must know where his money goes."

He paid in coin, counting each piece carefully. At the door, he paused.

"Your rule, I believe, is to ask what a man needs before you ask what he can do."

Ayaan went cold.

"I have heard it said in Galata," Cevdet continued mildly. "By a mechanic who has begun to speak well of a grocer’s son. It is an unusual rule for a trader, and a wise one."

The bell rang, and he was gone.

Zeynep came out of the storeroom with her face very white.

"He is in Galata," she said.

"He has been in Galata all along." Ayaan breathed out slowly. "He did not tell me that he had been there to frighten me. He told me because he wished me to know that he understood what I was doing."

"Is that better?"

"I do not know," said Ayaan. "But I think that it is true."

VI

Constantinople, Rüstem Pa?a — 30 January 1904

By the end of January, the hundred ledgers were sold and the second hundred had been ordered.

Zeynep brought the figures to the storeroom on Saturday evening and laid them on the crate with something close to ceremony.

"We have earned forty-one lira," she said. "After paying Behar, Stavros, and Bekir."

"That is more than I expected."

"It is less than we will need." She sat down and folded her hands. "You are about to want a great deal, and I would rather you counted first."

"What do you think that I want?"

"A laboratory, a workshop, and a school." She said it at once. "A place where Stavros could build his pump, and Bekir could learn to be an accountant, and Behar’s grandson could set type in four alphabets and not merely in two."

Ayaan did not answer. It was a precise description, and he had never said it aloud.

"You see too much," he said finally.

"I see what you do with your eyes when you think no one is looking." She smiled. "It is the one thing about you that you cannot hide. You look at people and see what they might become."

"They are."

"Then we need more than ledgers." She tilted her head. "We need capital, and we need a reason for it that does not make the man with the scar uneasy."

"Yes."

"Do you know how?"

"Not yet." He took up the blue book and opened it to the page headed People. "But I know where to begin."

He wrote the names in a column, one by one, in the small script that only he could read. Hovsep Agopian. Kemal Efendi. Bekir. Sabri Usta. Stavros Kyriakidis. Yitzhak Behar. Moiz.

Beneath the last name he added one more line.

Cevdet Efendi, who understands what I am doing, and whom I cannot yet read.

He considered the words for a long time, and then he left them where they stood.

A knock came at the door. It was Mehmet, with an expression that Ayaan could not read at first.

"There is a man in the lane," said his father. "He is dressed well, and he says that he is from the Guild of Stationers."

"At this hour?"

"He says that it concerns the ledgers." Mehmet’s brow was furrowed. "He did not give his name, but he asked whether the proprietor’s son was at home."

Zeynep rose quietly and drew the storeroom door half shut, so that the lamplight would not show in the lane.

Ayaan closed the blue book.

A business needs customers, he had told the scarred man.

It also acquires rivals, and I have been foolish enough to forget it.

"I will go and speak to him, Baba," he said. "Keep the door open, and stay where you can hear."