Chapter 29: The Scarred Man’s Report

Chapter 29: Chapter 29: The Scarred Man’s Report

I

Constantinople, üsküdar — 8 March 1909

The library of the retired pasha was cold in the early mornings, and Cevdet Efendi, who kept it, had learned long ago to read in his coat.

He had dusted the shelves at seven and answered the pasha’s steward at eight. By nine he was alone at the long table with a folder that did not belong to the library.

It bore a single word upon the cover, in a hand that was not his own. Hassan.

Inside lay three years of paper: notes from the quarter of Emin?nü, copies of ledgers, lists of customers, letters to Salonica, and a page upon the sealing of Austrian ink.

Cevdet laid four clean sheets before him, and upon each he wrote a question.

Who pays him? Who instructs him?

What does he want? What does he know that he should not?

He had been taught that the first two questions concerned the world and the last two concerned the man. Most inquiries ended with the first two, because the world was easier to examine.

Beneath the first question he wrote: No one. The profits of a shop, the reserve of a house, and the capital of a bride who had invested her marriage portion in her husband’s trade.

He found the line very nearly amusing.

There was a fifth sheet, begun in February, and it bore no question but a single name.

Zeynep.

She had appeared in no report for the first two years, and Cevdet now considered that an error of his own method.

She read every contract before her husband signed it, she kept the reserve, and she had written with her own hand the letter that returned a silver tea service to Unkapan?.

A man who was watched was a puzzle, but a man who was watched, and who had such a wife, was beginning to be a firm.

Beneath the second he wrote: No one that I can find. The officer at Monastir asked for figures, and the deputy director of the Court asked for forms, and neither of them commanded.

Beneath the third he wrote slowly, and in pencil, because he had once written it in ink and been obliged to correct it.

To make the state count correctly. An ambition for institutions, and not for office.

The fourth sheet remained empty for a long time.

Prices explained the reserve of 1906, and the arrears of the Third Army explained the bakers’ contracts. No price had warned the young man of a decree, and yet he had sealed his Austrian ink upon the very day that it was announced.

Unexplained. Possibly fortune; possibly an informant in the Ministry, though I have found none.

Cevdet closed the folder. He had written upon this young man every quarter for three years, and each report had ended with the same sentence: Further observation is required.

The Palace had begun to ask for more than observation, and it now asked for a conclusion.

This time, he wished to be able to write another sentence.

II

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 15 March 1909

The gentleman who entered the shop at ten in the morning wore a gray overcoat of excellent cut and spoke Turkish with a careful Viennese accent.

"Herr Anton Weiss, of the house of Brandl and Sons," he said, and laid a card upon the counter. "I believe that you hold some of our goods, Hassan Efendi."

"Sixty cases of ink, Herr Weiss. They are sealed in my storeroom, and the seals have been inspected by the committee of the quarter."

"So I have heard, and I have come to relieve you of them." Weiss smiled pleasantly. "My house will repurchase the whole consignment at the invoice price, with ten in the hundred added, in gold, today."

Zeynep, at the end of the counter, did not look up from the ledger. Her pen continued to move.

"It is a generous offer," said Ayaan.

"It is a fair one. Goods that lie sealed in a storeroom earn nothing, and I understand that you have carried the loss for five months."

"I have carried it, and I shall carry it until the committee permits otherwise. I gave my word to the quarter that the ink would be neither sold nor burned."

"A word given in a time of excitement." Weiss turned his hat in his hands. "I shall not press it. I have a second proposal, which concerns something quite different."

"I am listening."

"My house is establishing friends in the capital. It requires an agent in Emin?nü, a man of standing, to write to us once a month upon commercial conditions." Weiss spoke easily. "The mood of the quarter, the intentions of the Treasury, the temper of the Chamber. Nothing secret, you understand, only what a merchant hears in the course of an ordinary week. The payment would be thirty liras a month."

Ayaan did not answer at once.

Thirty liras was more than the shop cleared in a good month, and the man across the counter knew it.

"Herr Weiss, I sell paper and ink at the printed price to anyone who walks through that door, and I sell nothing besides." He kept his voice quiet. "The mood of the quarter belongs to the quarter, and the intentions of the Treasury belong to the Treasury."

"You are very young, Efendi, and you have been very successful. In Vienna there is a view that the house of Hassan would prosper under the friendship of Austria."

"I am grateful for the view."

"The Empire has fewer friends than it supposes."

"Then it should count them, Herr Weiss, as I count my customers." Ayaan pushed the card back across the counter. "I wish you a good journey home."

The Austrian bowed, without any sign of offense, and went out into the lane. The bell rang behind him.

He is the first foreign hand, and he will not be the last.

Zeynep set down her pen.

She had written two lines of the ledger while the Austrian spoke, and she turned the page to show them. They were the sums that he had named, with the date.

"He did not speak of the ink first," she said. "He spoke of it, and he waited for you to refuse, and then he showed his purpose."

"He came for the commission."

"Of course." She turned the ledger toward him. "Write down what he said, in order, while you remember it. We shall need the date, and the words, and the sum."

"And afterward?"

"Afterward, you will send a copy to the secretariat." She looked at him steadily. "A man who is watched should be seen to do right, and he should be the first to say so."

"I have seen a clerk across the lane reading the same newspaper for two weeks."

"I know. I have been counting the pages." Her mouth moved. "Write it, Ayaan, and write it plainly."

He wrote the note at the back table, and he showed it to her before he sealed it.

She struck out a single word, which was courteous, and handed it back.

"He was courteous," said Ayaan.

"He was, and it does not belong in a report. A report states what was done, and leaves the judgment to the reader."

The note went to the Court of Accounts that afternoon, by the boy who carried the forms, with a request that Naz?m Efendi should forward it to the secretariat.

III

Constantinople, üsküdar — 17 March 1909

A clerk named Fehmi brought two papers to the library on the seventeenth. He was a quiet, colorless young man, and he stood at the door until he was told to enter.

The first was a page of his own notes, in a small hand.

Weiss, Anton, of the Vienna house. Entered the shop at ten and left at a quarter past.

The stationer did not look after him, and he wrote for an hour at the back table.

"The second, Efendi?"

"It came from the secretariat, by the usual hand."

Cevdet unfolded it.

To the secretariat of the Palace. On the fifteenth of March, a gentleman who gave his name as Anton Weiss, of the house of Brandl and Sons of Vienna, called at my shop.

He offered to repurchase the sealed Austrian goods, which I declined. He also offered thirty liras monthly for reports upon the mood of the quarter and the intentions of the Treasury, which I likewise declined.

I record the approach in case it may be of use, and I will report any further one. — Ayaan Hassan, stationer.

He read it twice, and the second time he looked for what was absent.

There was no appeal, and no explanation of motive. The young man had not asked whether the report was wanted, and he had not claimed credit for the refusal.

"Do you know the gentleman, Fehmi?"

"The Austrian military attaché employs him as a commercial agent, Efendi. He has approached nine merchants of the quarter since January."

"And how many accepted?"

"Six."

Cevdet laid the note beside the page of Fehmi’s observations.

A guilty man reports nothing, and a clever man reports everything.

An honest man reports only what he was offered.

He did not know into which of the three the stationer should be placed, and that was a matter that no desk could decide.

"Efendi?" said Fehmi.

"I shall look at those who have known him longest," said Cevdet. "Begin with the father."

"And the wife, Efendi?"

"I shall look at her last. She is the one whom I have been slowest to understand." Cevdet lifted the page. "The young man reads arithmetic more patiently than his neighbors, and I begin to think that he has a partner who reads it more patiently still."

IV

Constantinople, Rüstem Pa?a — 24 March 1909

The grocery smelled of olives and cold cheese, and the man behind the counter was weighing a pound of rice with great care upon a set of worn brass weights.

"Two pounds of the white olives, Efendi, and the cheese from the second barrel," said Cevdet, in the manner of a steward who had been sent upon an errand. "My master is particular."

"Then he has sent you to the right shop." Mehmet Hassan wrapped the cheese in paper. "I do not sell what I would not give to my own table."

It was said without boasting, as a man states the day of the week.

A woman appeared at the curtain of the back room with a basket upon her arm. She regarded the visitor with attention for some seconds, and then she went out again without a word.

Cevdet had the clear impression that he had been measured exactly.

Cevdet asked after the price of flour, and the grocer answered at length. He asked after the quarter, and heard that the lane was quiet, and that the new Parliament was a great novelty for the old men at the coffee house.

"You have a son in business, I believe," said Cevdet. "The stationer. I have bought paper from him."

"My Ayaan." The grocer’s face altered, and he set the weights down. "You have seen his accounts upon the door of the shop? He has fastened them there for the whole lane to read."

"I have seen them."

"A father may say it, Efendi, since no one else will believe it. He was never a boy who kept a secret." Mehmet shook his head. "At six years old he found a gold coin in the street, and he carried it to the mosque and asked the imam to find the owner."

"It was returned?"

"After a month. He asked each Friday whether it had been." The grocer smiled at the memory. "I have never understood where he got his head. I have stopped asking, because I have seen what he does with it."

"And is there anything that troubles you in him?"

Mehmet did not answer at once.

"Since the New Year, he has bought sacks of flour and rice, and he keeps them in the cellar of this shop and in the cellar of my house," he said. "I asked why, and he said that it was for the spring."

"What did you understand by it?"

"That my son is a careful man, and that I should do as he asks, since he has never yet been wrong about a season." Mehmet lowered his voice, as one speaking of a minor mystery. "My wife says that he sees the weather in the prices, and I do not argue with her."

"And his bride?"

"Zeynep? She keeps his books, and she corrects him before the customers, and he is never so content as when she does." Mehmet laughed. "They had an Austrian in the shop this month, who left within a quarter of an hour. Ayaan told it at supper, and my wife said that he ought to have charged the man for the card."

Cevdet paid for the olives, and thanked him, and went out into the lane with the parcel under his arm.

The father knows nothing, and fears nothing. It is a testimony of its own kind.

He carried the olives all the way to üsküdar, and when he sat down to write, he found that he had not eaten one.

V

Constantinople, Unkapan? — 30 March 1909

He had walked from the ferry, counting as he always counted the doors that stood open and the doors that did not.

The office of Rafet Bey was on the first floor above a warehouse, with a window upon the flour market, and its door stood open to receive a customer.

"Cevdet Efendi, of the household of the pasha," said the visitor, with a slight bow. "I am told that you are the broker for whom the quarter asks when it wants the best terms."

"You are told truly." Rafet rose from behind his desk, in a good coat, with the patient smile. "How may I serve the household of the pasha?"

"I came to speak of flour, and I find that I wish to speak of something else." Cevdet sat down without being invited. "A letter reached the secretariat of the Palace in January, unsigned, which named a young stationer of Emin?nü as the accountant of the Committee in Salonica."

The smile did not change, but the hand upon the desk grew still.

"I have heard nothing of it."

"I believe that you have not written it, since it was without a name." Cevdet drew a folded sheet from his coat and laid it on the desk. "I came to ask whether you might explain these."

Rafet read it. It was a list of three payments, in gold, from the agent of the house of Brandl and Sons, in the months of January, February, and March.

"They are commissions upon brokerage," said Rafet, after a time.

"They are. They were paid to a man who has friends in the local branch of the Committee, and who speaks in the coffee houses of loyalty to the constitution." Cevdet spoke without any sharpness. "I do not say that the two things are incompatible. I say only that they are interesting when they are found together."

"What is it that you wish?"

"First, that the Court of Accounts should not be asked to examine your brokerage books." Cevdet rested his hands upon his knees. "It would find them in excellent order, no doubt, and then it would ask the same of every flour broker in Unkapan?."

Rafet did not reply.

"Second, that the stationer of Emin?nü should cease to interest you."

"He has done me no injury."

"He has not, and I think that you know it." Cevdet rose. "A man who has ceased to be interesting is allowed to continue his business in peace. I would advise you to become uninteresting also."

"And the household of the pasha?"

"Has no complaint against you at present, and wishes none."

"You have no proof that I wrote anything."

"I do not require proof, Rafet Bey. I require that it should stop."

Rafet Bey looked at the folded sheet for some time. When Cevdet reached the door, he spoke in a voice that had lost its smoothness.

"He is a boy, Efendi."

"He is a young man of eighteen," said Cevdet, "and the Palace has begun to read his figures. I would not be surprised if you were the last person in the quarter to understand it."

On the stair, he reflected that a threatened man is also a careful one. He had left Rafet something to lose, which was the surest precaution of all.

VI

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 3 April 1909

The clerk across the lane had not come that week.

Rafet Bey had come in upon the Wednesday and bought a single quire of paper at the printed price. He had remarked that the weather was fine, and he had not smiled.

Ayaan noticed it on the Tuesday, and again on the Thursday, and by the Saturday he was certain. The doorway where the man had stood with his newspaper was empty, and a baker’s boy was using it to eat his bread.

"Two men who disliked me have altered their habits in the same week," he said. "I think that I have been judged."

"Favorably?" asked Zeynep.

"I do not know. Men are not withdrawn from a watch for good conduct alone."

"Then we shall assume that they have drawn a conclusion, and that it is neither the worst nor the best." She was counting coin into three leather bags at the back table. "Is the third place decided?"

"Your father has offered the cellar of his warehouse."

"It is dry, and the lock is good." She tied the bag and set it aside. "That makes three places for the gold, three places for the grain, and one set of books copied and held in each."

"You have been thorough."

"I have followed you." She turned to look at him. "You have said the word spring to everyone, and you have not said it to me."

"I said that I would answer your questions."

"Within the terms that I set." Her voice was gentle. "I am not asking tonight. I am telling you that I see what you are doing, and that I have done my share, and that I will be beside you whatever it is."

He took her hand across the table.

"I would rather be a fool who prepared," he said, "than a wise man who did not."

"You will not be a fool." She withdrew her hand to tie the next bag. "But I think that I shall hear the rest of it one day, and I think that I shall not like it."

"I think so too."

"Then we shall do our arithmetic first, and our feelings afterward."

Ayaan watched her tie the last bag.

Ten days remain. Whatever April brings, it will find the lane fed and the gold in three places, and that is all that arithmetic can do.

VII

Constantinople, üsküdar — 6 April 1909

The report was written in three evenings, and Cevdet copied it out fair on the fourth, in the cold of the library, with the pasha’s lamp turned low.

To the one who reads. The subject is Ayaan Hassan, stationer of Emin?nü, aged eighteen, whom I have observed for three years.

First, as to foreign connection, he has none. He was approached in March by an agent of the Austrian attaché, and he refused two offers and reported the approach to the secretariat of his own accord.

Second, as to the Committee, he is neither its accountant nor its member. He corresponds with an officer of the Third Army upon arithmetic, and the letters contain nothing else.

Third, as to conduct, his accounts are open to any examiner, and he has caused them to be posted upon his door. He has refused a salary of the Palace, and he has paid for every service at the printed price.

Fourth, as to the enemy who accused him, the man has been spoken to. I believe that he will trouble the subject no further.

Fifth, as to his household, his father is a plain grocer and his father-in-law a respected importer, and neither has any connection with any faction that I could find. His wife is his partner in fact as well as in name, and I count her a second reason for confidence, since she reads every contract that he signs.

Sixth, as to ambition, it is considerable. It is directed, so far as I can see, toward institutions and not toward office, and he wishes the state to be competent with some passion.

Seventh, as to his weakness, he believes that honesty is a sufficient protection. It is not, and he has enemies whom honesty alone will not disarm.

Eighth, as to what I cannot explain, in 1906 he built a reserve before his quarter was frightened. In October he sealed his goods on the day of a decree, and since the New Year he has stored grain in three places, and he can give no reason beyond the word "spring."

I do not believe that any man knows the future. I record it as an unexplained competence, and I shall continue to watch it.

My conclusion is this. He is ambitious, but he is neither a foreign instrument nor a reckless revolutionary.

In conduct he has been loyal, and in thought he has been loyal to the idea of the state more than to any person of it.

I do not recommend that he be raised. I recommend that he be permitted to remain useful in matters of accounts, that he be guarded from his rivals, and that no Palace money be placed in his hands.

A man whom the Palace pays cannot tell the Palace the truth, and I believe that the truth is what he is for.

He read it twice, and he changed one word, and then he sealed it.

VIII

Constantinople, üsküdar — 12 April 1909

The answer came on the twelfth, by the usual hand, upon a single half sheet.

Read. His Majesty has asked that the arrangement continue as it is, and that the stationer not be told.

Cevdet burned the note in the stove, as he burned all such notes, and watched the paper curl and darken.

He had written that the truth was what the young man was for. He wondered, not for the first time, whether it was wise to keep that truth from the one who bore it.

Fehmi waited at the door with his hands folded.

"The watch, Efendi?"

"Withdraw the man from the lane, since the stationer has already seen him. Keep a boy at the end of the street, and ask nothing of him except whether the shop opens and closes at its hour."

"And if the stationer sends further reports?"

"Then they will be read, and they will not be answered." Cevdet looked at the closed folder. "It is better that he should believe himself unobserved, and go on doing right."

From the floor above, the old pasha’s voice asked whether the lamp had been trimmed, and Cevdet answered that it had, and that the pasha might sleep in peace.

When the clerk had gone, the library was quiet. In the garden of the pasha’s house a servant was closing the shutters, and across the water the lamps of the city were beginning to appear along the shore.

He opened the folder once more, though there was nothing in it that he did not know.

Spring.

The word stood in his own hand in the margin of the report, and it had troubled him for a week. A man might build a reserve out of arithmetic, but a man did not name a season in that voice unless the fear behind it had a shape.

He took up the pencil.

Beneath the closed report, in the space that he had left for his own notes, he wrote a line that did not belong to it.

He is afraid of April. I cannot say why, and I find that I have begun to share the fear.

He looked at the second sentence for some time, and then he erased it, and left the first.