Chapter 31: Building Capital

Chapter 31: Chapter 31: Building Capital

I

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 3 May 1909

The books for April were due to be closed on the first Monday of May, and Zeynep did not open them at once.

She set the green ledger upon the back table, and beside it she placed the iron cash chest.

"There is a line in this ledger that I find displeasing," she said.

Ayaan came and sat across from her. The back room had no window, and the lamp was lit though it was still afternoon.

"The flour," she said.

"We agreed that the house would carry the difference for the bakers."

"We did, and I was glad to agree." She turned the ledger toward him and laid a finger upon an entry. "Eleven liras and forty kuru? were taken from the chest on the fourteenth, and I wrote them under Expenses of the shop."

"That is where they belong."

"They were paid from the same coins that pay the rent of the rooms upstairs and the market money for the week." She lifted the lid of the chest. "We have one chest and one key, Ayaan, and I cannot tell you what the goodwill of the lane has cost us and what our own bread has cost us."

He looked at the entry, and then at the tray of coins.

"I did not think of it," he said. "I treated the house and the shop as one body, because for eight years they have been one."

"They were one when the shop was a table and a box of pencils." She closed the lid gently. "A single failure in the shop would now take the roof from over us, and a single illness in the house would take the stock from the shelves."

A firm that cannot lose without ruining its owner is not yet a firm.

He had heard that sentence in a lecture hall at Ko?, from a professor who had never kept a shop in his life. He had written it in his notes and thought it a theory, and he saw now that it was only a description of his own back room.

"What do you propose?" he asked.

"A reckoning, and then a division." She drew a clean sheet toward her. "We shall count everything that we own, down to the last kuru?, and then we shall decide once, in writing, what each coin is for."

"Tonight?"

"Tonight, while the month is still fresh in the ledger and before another customer asks for credit."

They began with the shelves, because the shelves were the simplest. Ayaan walked the length of the shop with the stock book and called the quantities, and Zeynep priced each line at what it had cost and not at what it would sell for.

Paper, ink, pens, slates, registers, wax and string came to three hundred and forty liras.

The notes owed to them by offices, schools and two merchants came to a hundred and twenty. Zeynep wrote that figure in a separate column, and beneath it she wrote to be collected, not to be counted upon.

Last they opened the chest, and the cloth bags beneath the floorboard of the upstairs room, and the small account that Ayaan kept with a money changer near the Spice Bazaar.

It was past midnight when she drew the line.

"One thousand and sixty liras," she said. "Of which six hundred are in coin."

"It is more than I expected."

"It is less than we should like, and a good deal more than we have protected." She laid down the pen. "Tomorrow I shall go to my father."

II

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 5 May 1909

Mustafa Efendi received them in the cold office at the back of his warehouse, among sacks of imported tea and bales that smelled of tar.

He heard the whole account without interrupting, and when Zeynep had finished he sat for a time with his fingers joined.

"You did not come to ask my permission," he said.

"We came to ask whether we have missed something," said Ayaan.

"You have missed nothing that a prudent merchant would not also have missed at your age." Mustafa leaned back. "I will tell you about Receb Efendi, and you will remember it, because I have not told it to anyone since the year that it happened."

"Receb Efendi who dealt in Trabzon tobacco?" asked Zeynep.

"The same. He had a fine shop in the Mahmutpa?a quarter and a house with a garden, and in the autumn of 1894 he sent his whole season’s purchase across the Black Sea in a single lighter."

He paused, and the silence in the office lengthened.

"The lighter was lost in a storm off Sinop. Receb Efendi had paid for the cargo with money that he had borrowed against his shop, and he had borrowed against his house to pay for the shop’s rent."

"And his creditors took both," said Ayaan.

"They took both, and his wife’s jewels, which she had never been asked to put at risk. By the spring he was a clerk in another man’s office." Mustafa spread his hands upon the desk. "He was not a fool, and he was not a gambler. He had only never drawn a line between the money that fed his family and the money that he used to trade."

"We intend to draw it," said Zeynep.

"Then draw it deep." He looked at his daughter. "A man’s family should owe nothing to his ambition, and his ambition should be free to fail without asking his family’s leave."

"I have thought of holding the reserve in my own name, beside Ayaan’s," she said.

"Under the law of the Hanafi school, a wife’s property is her own and is not reached by her husband’s debts." Mustafa nodded slowly. "I would have advised it, if you had not already said it."

"I would have asked her to," said Ayaan, and he meant it.

"I know that you would, and that is why I give you my daughter’s money to manage without anxiety." Mustafa almost smiled. "I will give you one more thing, and you may refuse it."

He wrote a name upon a slip and pushed it across the desk.

"Agop Kalfayan, in the street of the bankers at Galata. He has kept the private accounts of three families that I know for twenty years, and none of the three has ever lost a lira to his carelessness."

"We shall not borrow from him, Baba," said Zeynep.

"I did not say that you should. I said that he keeps accounts." He rose. "A merchant is judged by the people to whom he entrusts his coin, and by the people to whom he refuses to."

III

Constantinople, Galata — 12 May 1909

The street of the bankers was narrow and loud, and the stone fronts of the great banks stood shoulder to shoulder with the doors of the money changers.

Agop Kalfayan kept a small room on the second floor of a building near the Austrian bank, with a window upon the street and two clerks bent over their desks.

He was a thin man of about sixty with silver spectacles, and he read Mustafa’s note twice before he looked at his visitors.

"A stationer of nineteen and his wife of nineteen," he said, "and a letter of introduction from a man whom I respect. Please sit."

"We wish to open three accounts," said Ayaan. "We wish to know the terms before we say anything more."

"Most young men begin by asking what interest I shall pay them."

"We expect to be paid very little, Efendi. We expect to be paid in safety."

Agop’s eyebrows rose a fraction, and he drew a sheet of paper toward him.

"Describe the three."

Zeynep answered, since the plan had been hers. "The first is a reserve of gold, which is to be held in sealed bags in your strongroom. It may not be opened without both our signatures, and it may not be lent, invested, or used as security by anyone, including yourself."

"A wife’s signature beside her husband’s is entirely lawful," said Agop, writing. "And the second?"

"A working account for the shop, from which the daily purchases are paid. It is to be kept in coin and small notes, and it is to be reconciled to our ledger on the last day of every month."

"And the third?"

"A venture account," said Ayaan. "It is to hold the sum that we are willing to lose entirely, and nothing more."

The banker laid down his pen and removed his spectacles, which he polished slowly upon his sleeve.

"In twenty years, Efendi, I have been asked to hide money from creditors, from wives, from husbands, from tax collectors, and from sons." He put the spectacles on again. "I have never before been asked to hide a small portion of it from the person who owned it."

"We do not wish to hide it. We wish to make it difficult to spend in a moment of enthusiasm."

"That is a very old wisdom, and a very rare one." Agop considered the two of them. "I must ask whether you will hold the reserve in gold coin, or whether you would prefer a part of it in banknotes or shares."

"Gold coin," said Ayaan.

Paper has been sound in this empire for as long as the treasury has been sound.

He thought of the years that were coming, and of what a crisis did to a currency, and he said nothing of it.

"Gold coin, and no shares," he repeated. "A share can be sold only when a buyer is willing, and a reserve must be available when no one is willing to buy."

"You reason with the caution of someone who has seen a panic," said Agop.

"I have read of several."

"Then you will understand why I charge a fee for the sealed bags, and why the fee is not small." The banker named it. "It is a fair price for a strongroom, and an excellent price for an uninterrupted sleep."

Zeynep smiled, for the first time since they had entered.

"We accept the fee," she said, "and we shall pay it on the first of every quarter, at the printed price."

IV

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 15 May 1909

By the middle of the month the rooms above the shop had become crowded with ledgers, receipts and sealed envelopes.

There were three small ledgers upon the table, bound in three colors, and between them lay a sheet of paper on which Zeynep had written six lines and left the seventh blank.

"I will read them aloud," she said, "and then you will tell me where they are wrong."

"I shall try to find a place."

The first. The reserve is for the household and is not for trade. It shall hold gold equal to three years of all that the family requires to live, and shall not fall below that sum.

The second. The reserve may not be drawn to pay a debt of the shop, to buy stock, to lease premises, or to fund any venture, however certain it appears.

The third. The shop shall pay its own rent, its own wages, and its own debts from its own account, and shall pay the household a fixed sum every month for the labor of its owners.

The fourth. The venture account shall hold only the sum that we are willing to lose without changing how we live.

The fifth. No venture shall be begun without a written contract, and no contract shall be signed by one of us alone.

The sixth. Any rule may be changed only by both of us, in writing, after the passing of one night.

Ayaan read the page over her shoulder when she had finished, and he went back to the second line.

"However certain it appears," he said.

"That is the one that you will dislike." She did not turn her head. "You have a memory that no other man possesses, and an idea of what is coming that no other man shares, and there will be a day when you are sure."

"I am less sure than I was a month ago."

"Today you are less sure. In a year you will have forgotten the humility of April, and you will come to me and say that the thing is beyond doubt." She turned and met his eyes. "On that day I want the rule to be older than the argument."

He looked at the line for a moment, and he did not smile.

She has understood the dangerous part of my knowledge before I understood it myself.

"Even if I am right," he said, "the reserve stays where it is."

"If you are right, the venture account will make the profit, and the reserve will be none the poorer." She tapped the paper. "If you are wrong, the venture account will bear the loss, and the roof will remain."

"And the fixed sum for our labor?"

"Eight liras a month, from the shop to the house. It is what a clerk of good standing earns, and it is enough for our rooms, our food, and what we send to your mother."

"It is more than a clerk of good standing earns."

"Then we shall be generous with ourselves in a year when the shop has been generous with us." She dipped the pen. "Is the seventh line to be blank?"

"Leave it blank," said Ayaan. "There will be a rule that we have not yet understood the need for."

She smiled and wrote the date at the foot of the page, and then she signed it in her small upright hand and passed him the pen.

He signed beneath her, and they allowed the ink to dry between them.

V

Constantinople, Rüstem Pa?a — 21 May 1909

The grocery of Mehmet Hassan smelled of rice and cheese and soap, as it had smelled on every morning of Ayaan’s childhood.

His father stood behind the counter in his brown apron, weighing lentils for a woman from the lane, and he did not look up until she had gone.

"Your wife came to see your mother on Tuesday," said Mehmet.

"I know, Baba."

"They sat for two hours in the kitchen, and your mother has not stopped speaking of it." He wiped his hands slowly. "She says that you have made a rule that the family’s bread shall never depend on the shop."

"We have made several rules. That is the first."

"And she says that you wish to do the same for us."

Ayaan did not answer at once. He looked at the shelves, at the sacks that his father had stacked with such care, and at the small tin box beneath the counter where Mehmet kept his takings.

"I would like you to keep two boxes, Baba," he said. "One for what the grocery earns and spends, and one for the cellar, which is never to be opened except for sickness, a death, or a failed season."

"I have a cellar. I have forty years of worry stored in it."

"It is a good cellar, and it is a store of rice and flour. It is not a store of coin."

"Coin is for men who have it to spare." Mehmet’s voice was not unkind, but it had grown stiff. "I will not be a line in my son’s ledger."

"You will be a line in your own," said Ayaan. "I shall not touch it, I shall not hold it, and I shall not know what is in it unless you tell me."

His father said nothing, and the only sound in the shop was the scale swaying on its chain.

"Baba, when the lane was frightened in April, you kept the price of rice where it was, and the lane trusted you for it." Ayaan spoke quietly. "A man who can hold a price in a bad week is a man who has his own reserve, and I should like you to have a larger one."

Mehmet looked at him for a long time.

"Your grandfather lost the house in Fatih in the year of the great fire," he said at last. "He had no cellar and no box, only a good name, and a good name does not buy bread on the morning after."

"I know."

"I never told you that." Mehmet’s eyes narrowed a little, and then they softened. "You have always known more than I have told you, my son."

"I have only been listening."

"Then listen to this." His father took the tin box from beneath the counter and set it on the scale. "I shall keep two boxes, and the second shall be my own, and it shall be my own business how it is filled."

"That is all that I ask."

"It is not all that you ask. It is all that I will give." Mehmet’s mouth moved at one corner. "Take a measure of lentils to your wife. She has been looking thin."

"She has not been looking thin, Baba."

"Then take it to her anyway, and say that it is from the grocery."

His mother was waiting at the back door with a cloth bundle in her hands, and she had plainly been listening.

"Your father has spoken more words to you this morning than he spoke to me in the whole of our first year," said Fatma.

"He agreed to the second box."

"He agreed on the day that Zeynep came, Ayaan, and he has spent three weeks deciding how to say so." She pressed the bundle into his arms. "Eat something before you go back, and tell your wife that she is welcome in my kitchen on any morning that she has an idea."

VI

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 4 June 1909

The warehouse stood on the upper floor of an old han not two hundred paces from the shop, behind a gate that had not been painted since the reign of Sultan Abdülaziz.

The administrator of the foundation that owned it, Hac? Nuri Efendi, led them through a vaulted room with a wooden floor and four tall windows.

"It was used for tobacco until last year," he said, "and the damp has been treated. It would hold, in my judgment, three hundred reams of paper upon the shelves, and as many again upon the floor."

"It is dry," said Zeynep, pressing her palm against a wall.

"It is dry, Han?m, and it is cheap, because it is high and the porters grumble about the stair."

"What is the rent?" asked Ayaan.

"Ninety liras for the year, in two halves."

"We shall pay ninety liras for the year, in two halves, and the first half upon signing." Zeynep turned from the window. "We wish a clause that releases us at the end of six months, upon a month’s notice, if the trade does not answer."

Hac? Nuri’s brows drew together.

"The foundation does not usually grant such terms."

"The foundation does not usually find a tenant who pays in advance, and who will keep the stair swept." She said it without any sharpness. "I would rather leave honestly in December than remain dishonestly until June."

The old man considered that for a moment, and then he gave a short laugh.

"I shall put it to the board, Han?m. I think that it will be accepted."

They walked back down the stair together, into the noise of the lane.

"A wholesale trade in paper and school supplies," said Ayaan, when they were alone. "To the provincial offices, the new schools, the municipal councils that the Constitution has created."

"Which need registers, forms and ink in quantities that a single shop cannot supply."

"They are writing more than they have ever written, and they are buying from whoever answers their letters first." He looked up at the high windows of the han. "The venture account holds two hundred liras. The lease takes ninety, and the first stock will take a hundred and ten."

"Which is the whole of it."

"It is the whole of it, and it is a sum that we are willing to lose."

"Then it is a venture and not a gamble." She slipped her hand into his. "Write to my father’s friend in Izmir and to the Trabzon house, and ask for the names of the officials who order paper."

"I shall write tonight." He studied the stair that the porters disliked, and the worn treads, and the iron rail. "I should also like to hire a man to carry the reams, at a fair wage, so that the stair is not paid for by the backs of the boys."

"A porter’s wage comes from the shop’s account and not from the venture’s," said Zeynep.

"Then the shop must earn it first."

"The shop will earn it, and the porter will be the first name in the new wage book." She smiled. "I shall write it myself."

She added, at the foot of the stair, "In every letter, say that our price is on the door of the shop, and that it has not changed since April."

He laughed, and the sound carried across the lane.

VII

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 30 June 1909

On the last day of June, Zeynep closed the three ledgers in the order that they had agreed, and she did it herself.

The reserve ledger was the simplest. Agop Kalfayan’s receipt lay inside the cover, with the weight of the gold and the number of the bags, and nothing had been added or removed since the second week of May.

The working ledger showed that the shop had earned sixty-one liras in the month, and had paid forty-three of them to its own wages, its own rent, and its own suppliers. It had also paid eight liras to the household, in a plain envelope, on the first day of the month.

"I received it," said Zeynep, "and I wrote a receipt, and I signed my own name to it."

"It was a strange sensation to be paid by my own shop."

"It was a useful one." She turned to the third book. "The venture account has spent ninety liras upon the lease and fifty-two upon paper, which leaves ninety-eight, and I shall not pretend that I did not count it twice."

The first orders from the new warehouse lay in a pile beside the ledger, tied with string. A municipal office at Bursa had asked for forty reams and two hundred registers, and a school at Izmir for slates and chalk.

There was also a note on thick paper, folded small, which had arrived that morning by a boy who had been told to wait for no reply.

Forty reams of foolscap for a library in üsküdar, at the price upon your list. The keeper has noticed that the price has not moved since April. — C.

"He reads the door of the shop," said Ayaan.

"He reads everything, which is his profession." Zeynep took the note and laid it in the first ledger, under Reputation. "Shall we send the paper at the printed price?"

"We shall send it at the printed price, with the delivery paid."

"And the invoice?"

"Written in your hand."

She wrote it, and he watched her write, and he found that the thing which he had feared in April had changed its shape.

He had feared that what he knew of the future would be taken from him, or proved false, or turned against him. It had not occurred to him that the greater danger was to rest the whole of the present upon it.

Now there was a roof that no venture could remove, a shop that could earn or fail upon its own account, and a sum set apart for the risks that he chose.

Allah willing, it will be enough for what is coming.

He did not know what was coming, now, and he found that he could say so to himself without fear.

"You are very quiet," said Zeynep.

"I am counting."

"The gold?"

"The nights that we have been spared, and the ones that we are about to be." He took up the pen. "I should like to write the seventh rule."

"You said that it would be blank."

"I have understood what it must say."

She waited, and the lamp burned low between them.

The seventh. No sum shall be so large that it matters more than the two of us.

She read it once and did not argue, and she added her name beneath his.