Chapter 33: A Wider Horizon

Chapter 33: Chapter 33: A Wider Horizon

I

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 15 September 1909

Halil R?fat’s first report from the yard at Kas?mpa?a ran to eleven pages, and the last of them ended with a request.

To learn what is in the iron, I must break it under a measured load, and the machine that does so is made in Zürich.

Ayaan read the page at the back table while the shop closed around him. He read it a second time, more slowly, and then he opened the notebook that held his list of men.

The list had grown in a month. Beside the names of ?smail Usta and Halil there were now six others, each with a question written under it, and the question under Halil’s name was the oldest.

How does a nation learn what it does not yet know how to ask?

"You have the expression of a man who has found a door," said Zeynep, from the stair.

"I have found that the door is in another country."

She came down and read the report standing, with her lips pressed together, and when she reached the last page she laid it flat upon the table.

"The machine is made in Zürich, and the steel nibs in Birmingham, and the press in Leipzig." She counted them on her fingers. "Everything that you wish to learn is held by someone beyond the frontier."

"For the present, yes."

"Then you will have to deal with people who do not speak our language, who live under laws that we do not know, and who are paid in money that we cannot print." She said it without alarm. "I have no objection to it, Ayaan, but I should like to say three things before you write your first letter."

"Say them."

She took a clean sheet and wrote as she spoke, in her small upright hand.

"The first is that no coin leaves this house for a foreign firm until a written contract states what is bought, when it is delivered, who bears the risk upon the road, and where a dispute shall be judged."

"Agreed."

"The second is that nothing in any letter shall say what we intend to do with what we buy." She looked up. "A manufacturer may know that a stationer in Constantinople wishes to test iron. He need not know that the stationer intends to build a foundry."

"Agreed again."

"The third is that every foreign sum shall be reckoned in the venture account before it is promised, with an allowance for the exchange and the freight and the delay, because there will be delay." She set down the pen. "I will not have us pledge a sum on the day we write, and discover on the day we pay that a franc has become dearer."

Contracts, security, finance.

He thought that it was a better charter for foreign trade than any that he had read in his previous life, and that it had been written upon the back of a report in less than a minute.

"May I add a fourth?" he asked.

"If it is wise."

"No letter leaves the shop until someone who reads the language has read it twice."

"That is wise," said Zeynep. "Who will read it?"

"I do not yet know," he said, and he found that he was smiling. "That is the first question that I must answer."

II

Constantinople, Galata — 21 September 1909

Agop Kalfayan listened to the account of the three conditions with his spectacles pushed up upon his forehead, and when it was done he drew a sheet of ruled paper toward him.

"I have advised on foreign trade for thirty years," he said. "I shall give you an hour, and I shall begin with the part that no young merchant wishes to hear."

"We wish to hear all of it," said Zeynep.

"Very well." He wrote a single word at the head of the sheet, in Armenian script and then in Latin letters. "Capitulations."

"The foreign treaties," said Ayaan.

"The foreign treaties, which give the subjects of the great powers the right to be judged by their own consuls and not by our courts." The banker laid down the pen. "If you sign a contract with a firm in Zürich and the firm breaks it, you may bring the matter to a court of this Empire, but the firm will not be bound by it."

"Then the contract must name another court," said Zeynep.

"It must name a place of judgment that both parties accept. A chamber of commerce in a neutral city is best, and a written clause of arbitration is better than any promise."

"I should not have thought of it," said Ayaan.

"No one thinks of it until the first dispute. That is why I charge for the hour." Agop’s mouth moved dryly. "Now we shall speak of money."

He drew a second sheet, and upon it he wrote the figures of the day.

"The lira of this Empire is gold, and it buys about twenty-three francs of Switzerland and rather less than a pound of England. The rate moves a little every week, and it moves a great deal in a season of alarm."

"Then a price quoted in francs is not a fixed price," said Zeynep.

"It is fixed in francs and loose in liras, Han?m. You may protect yourself by purchasing a bill upon a Swiss bank at the time that you sign, so that the franc is already in your hand when the machine is dispatched."

"That requires the whole sum in advance."

"It requires the sum to be committed in advance, and not paid out. A bill of exchange held by me is a promise that I keep." He tapped the sheet. "For this service I shall charge a small percentage, and it will be less than a single bad exchange would cost you."

Ayaan listened with something close to relief.

He had known that the world had instruments for these matters, because he had read of them, but he had not known how plainly an old man could explain them across a desk. Every principle that Agop named, Zeynep wrote down in a separate column.

"One more matter," said the banker, when the hour was nearly done. "Freight and insurance."

"Insurance upon the cargo?"

"Insurance upon the road from the factory to this quay. A machine that is dropped in Trieste is not your loss if you have insured it, and it is entirely your loss if you have not." He raised his brows. "Most young men consider insurance to be a tax upon good fortune."

"I consider it a tax upon the fear of bad fortune," said Zeynep, "and I am willing to pay it."

Agop looked at her with open approval.

"If I had a daughter with your mind, Han?m, I should be a poorer man in patience and a richer one in everything else."

III

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 30 September 1909

The man who came to the shop in answer to the notice was thirty years old, thin and careful, and he carried a satchel that contained three letters of reference and a worn dictionary.

His name was Elias Benveniste, and he had been a clerk in a Galata shipping office for nine years.

"I am told that you require someone who reads English, French and German," he said. "I read them all, and I write two of them correctly."

"Which two?" asked Zeynep, who had taken the chair beside the counter and had not yet sat back.

"French and English, Han?m. My German is understood in Vienna, but I will not claim that it is admired."

"A candid answer is a good beginning."

She handed him a sheet. It was a short letter to a hypothetical firm in Birmingham, written in Turkish, asking the price and delivery terms of a gross of steel pens.

"Please put it into English," she said, "and then into French."

He sat at the end of the counter and wrote steadily, without hurry, and when he had finished he pushed the two sheets across.

Ayaan read the English, which he knew, and found it correct. He glanced at the French and could follow enough of it to see that the phrases were courteous and precise.

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

"Please."

"The letter asks the price of a gross of pens, but it does not ask who will bear the loss if they are damaged upon the road. In English commerce this is usually written plainly, and a firm that sees the omission will assume that the buyer is inexperienced."

Zeynep and Ayaan looked at one another.

"That is the third thing that I would have added," said Zeynep, "had I thought to do so."

"It was in the notice that you require a man who can read a letter twice," said Elias, with a quiet dignity. "I should not wish to be engaged under a misapprehension about what that means."

"What do you ask?" said Ayaan.

"Five liras a month, and the Sabbath free, and the right to refuse to write a letter that I believe to be dishonest."

"The right to refuse?"

"I have worked in an office where I was not permitted to refuse, and I would sooner be poor than do so again."

Ayaan did not need to look at his wife. He had learned to know her opinion before she spoke it.

"The Sabbath is yours," he said. "The five liras are agreed, and the right to refuse is written into your engagement paper."

"Then I begin on Sunday," said Elias, and his shoulders, which had been stiff, lowered a little.

When he had gone, Zeynep turned the French letter over in her hand.

"He is better than I hoped," she said. "He is also the first of the people whom you will not be able to command, Ayaan, and it is as well that you begin with someone who has said so aloud."

"I do not wish to command him."

"You will find, in time, that you do not wish to command any of them." She smiled. "That is the whole of the difficulty."

IV

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 8 October 1909

Mustafa Efendi arrived at the shop before the lamps were lit, with a roll of papers under his arm and the manner of a man who has come to prevent a quarrel that has not begun.

He took the chair that Zeynep set for him, and he read the three conditions that she had written without a change of expression.

"They are sound," he said. "They are more cautious than I was at your age, and I regret that I was not more cautious."

"We have also engaged a clerk," said Ayaan.

"So I hear. Benveniste has a good name in Galata, and an honest one, which is not always the same." Mustafa unrolled the papers. "I have brought you the names of three agents in Trieste who deal in machine parts. Only the second is to be trusted without a visit."

"We shall write to the second."

"You will write to all three, and you will compare their answers, and you will say nothing in any letter that you would not wish to see printed in a newspaper." He raised one finger. "That is the whole art of foreign correspondence."

"And the rest?"

"The rest is patience." Mustafa folded his hands. "You have said, Zeynep tells me, that you wish one day to bring foreign engineers to this city."

"I wish to do so when the House has something to offer them."

"That is the correct reservation." The old merchant leaned forward. "Do you know why most foreign engineers who come to Constantinople leave within two years?"

"I should like to hear it."

"They come because a railway company or a ministry has promised them a wage, and they leave because the promise is not kept. The wage is paid late, or paid in notes that have lost their value, or paid to a clerk who has kept a part of it." He spoke without bitterness. "A man who has a profession can find employment in Manchester or Hamburg, and he will not remain where he is cheated."

"Then we must not cheat him."

"It is not so simple as that, my son. A foreigner here has no family to speak for him, and no court that will hear him, and he does not know whom to trust." Mustafa tapped the desk. "He must be given a house, a physician, a lawyer, a wage in gold, and a written assurance of the day upon which he may leave."

Ayaan took out the notebook and began to write the list.

"You are writing it as I speak."

"I should like to remember all of it."

"You will not have to remember all of it. You have a wife who will do so." Mustafa glanced at Zeynep and then back. "I will give you one more piece of counsel, and then I shall go home to my supper."

"Please."

"Do not bring a foreign engineer until you have a Turkish one whom he can teach." The old merchant rose and gathered his papers. "A foreigner who works alone is a visitor. A foreigner who works with a young man who will carry on his work is the beginning of a school."

Ayaan thought of Halil R?fat, bent over a bench in a charcoal store, and he wrote the sentence beneath the list in capital letters.

TEACH THE ONE WHO WILL STAY.

V

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 19 October 1909

The reply from Zürich came in a thick envelope with a Swiss stamp, and Elias Benveniste read it at the counter before he brought it upstairs.

"The price of the testing machine, Efendi, is one thousand nine hundred francs, delivered to Trieste," he said. "Freight and insurance to Constantinople will add about two hundred."

Ayaan did the sum, and Zeynep did it faster.

"Ninety-one liras and some kuru?." She laid the letter on the table. "The venture account now holds seventy-four."

"Then we cannot buy it."

"We cannot buy it this year, and I would not buy it with the reserve under any condition." She did not raise her voice. "You wrote the second rule of the reserve yourself, and I have not forgotten that you did."

"I have not forgotten either." He put his hand on the letter. "But Halil cannot learn what is in the iron without it."

"He cannot learn it with a Swiss machine, that is true. He may learn a good deal with a balance, a set of acids, and a bench, which cost a tenth of the sum."

"A chemical balance would give him the weight of the carbon, but not the strength of the bar."

"It would give him half of what he needs, at a tenth of the price, and the other half can wait until the warehouse has earned it." She turned to Elias. "Write to Zürich and thank them. Say that we wish to be placed on their list, and that we shall inform them of our decision by the spring."

"And the price, Han?m?"

"Ask whether they will hold it until April, and whether the freight can be reduced if the machine is sent by the Austrian Lloyd steamer."

Elias wrote it down, and Ayaan watched his wife with an admiration that was not diminished by being familiar.

"I wished to buy it today," he said.

"I know that you did. A man who sees the horizon clearly wishes to cross it in a single day." She softened her tone. "The horizon will remain where it is. It is only the boat that is not yet built."

"Then we shall build the boat first."

"We shall build it from the profit of the warehouse, and not from the part of our money that holds up the house." She took the Swiss letter and laid it in a new folder, upon which she wrote a title in neat letters. "This is the beginning of a file, Ayaan. In a year it will be a thick one."

He looked at the title.

Foreign correspondence, Year One.

"Zeynep," he said, "I have not told you often enough how much I depend upon your sense."

"You tell me every time that you take my advice, which is not a great many times, and every time that you do not, which is more." She smiled. "I have decided that I am content with that proportion."

VI

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 4 November 1909

Halil R?fat arrived at the shop at dusk with his sleeves stained by acid, and he did not take the chair that Zeynep offered.

"I have been told that you are preparing a paper for foreign engineers," he said. "I am here to read it."

"It is a draft," said Ayaan. "I should like your opinion upon it before it is finished."

The engineer took the pages and read them standing, and Ayaan watched his face and saw it grow rigid.

Each engineer shall receive a wage in gold, paid quarterly into an account at Galata, a house within walking distance of the workshop, a contract of three years with the right to leave upon six months’ notice, a physician and a lawyer, and the right to practise his faith in his own household.

"This is generous," said Halil, in a flat voice. "It is more generous than anything that I have been offered."

"It is the standard that we should like to set for any man who comes to us from beyond the frontier."

"And what shall the foreigner be paid?"

"That is not yet decided."

"It will be decided as more than I am paid." Halil laid the paper down. "I do not say that he does not deserve it. I say that I was born within a mile of this shop, and I have been a loyal servant of the Empire all my life, and I shall be the junior of a man who arrives from Sheffield with a trunk."

Zeynep put down her pen.

"Halil Bey, will you permit me to answer?"

"I should be glad to hear it, Han?m."

"There shall be a single scale of wages for every engineer of the House, and it shall be written upon one sheet and shown to all of them." She said it plainly. "It will be based upon what a man can do and what he has learned, and not upon the country where he was born."

The engineer was silent.

"I do not promise that a foreigner will never be paid more than you. I promise that you will be paid what the scale says, and that if the foreigner is paid more, he will be paid for a reason that you may read."

"And if I disagree with the reason?"

"Then you may say so, in writing, to us, and we shall answer in writing." She did not look away. "It is not much of a protection, and it is more than most employers will give."

Halil turned to Ayaan.

"Is this your word as well?"

"It is my word, and it is hers, and it is a rule of the House." Ayaan met his eyes. "You will teach the foreigner what the Empire’s iron is like, because he does not know. He will teach you what he knows of the world, because you do not know. When he leaves, you will remain."

Teach the one who will stay.

The engineer was a proud man, and for a long moment the pride struggled with something else that Ayaan could not name.

"I accept," said Halil at last, "provided that the scale is written before the first foreigner arrives."

"It shall be written within the month," said Zeynep.

"Then I shall hold you to it, Han?m."

"I should be disappointed if you did not."

Halil took up his hat, and at the door he turned back for a moment.

"When the foreigner comes, Efendi, I should like to be the one who meets him at the quay," he said. "I wish him to see first that the man who will carry on his work is already here."

"It shall be so," said Ayaan.

VII

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 20 November 1909

The scale of wages was written in the second week of November, on one sheet, in Zeynep’s hand, and Halil R?fat read it three times and signed beneath it.

Halil’s balance had been bought in October for six liras, and it had been in use for a month.

On the twelfth, he came to the shop with a single sheet of figures and laid it before Ayaan without a greeting.

"I have assayed three samples of the pig iron that ?smail Usta buys," he said. "Two are acceptable, and the third carries so much sulphur that any casting made from it must crack."

"Is that the fifth casting that fails?"

"It is the one in five, Efendi, and it has been the one in five for twenty years." The engineer’s voice shook a little. "He has been blamed for a fault in the metal that no one thought to measure."

"Will he know what to do with it?"

"He knew it already, in his hands. All that was lacking was the number."

Ayaan took the sheet and read the figures twice, and then he handed it to Zeynep, who entered it in the new file with the title written in her own hand.

One number has done what twenty years of complaint could not.

On the twentieth, a parcel came from a manufacturer of lathes in Saxony, with a catalogue printed in German and a letter of introduction to Elias Benveniste, whose name had somehow become known.

"They offer a small precision lathe at nine hundred marks," said Elias, turning the pages. "It is a toy by the standard of their factory, and a very serious machine by the standard of any workshop in this city."

"Is the price negotiable?"

"They do not say so, Efendi, and I should not expect it of the Germans."

"Then we shall wait," said Ayaan, "and we shall ask again in the spring."

He sat with the catalogue open upon the table and looked at the engravings of lathes, drills and planing machines.

They were drawn with great precision, and they stood in ordered rows across the pages.

Every one of these has an owner, and a workshop, and a man who knows what it is for.

He knew the names of the great factories of the century that was coming. He knew the dates of some of their inventions and the shapes of their products, and none of it had made a single lathe in Constantinople.

What I carry is a map, and a map does not bring a traveller anywhere. It only tells him that the road exists.

He closed the catalogue and laid his hand upon the cover.

Zeynep came in from the shop with the day’s ledger in her arms, and she saw the catalogue and the expression upon his face.

"You are looking at that catalogue with a very serious face."

"I have found that the world is wider than I supposed."

"Is that a sorrow?"

"It is a relief." He said it slowly, because it was true. "I was afraid that I should find the world small, and that I should have to carry it alone. It is vast, and it is full of people who know what I do not."

"Then you will need a great many contracts."

"I shall need a great many contracts, and a wife who reads the second page of each."

"You will need a clerk who reads the first." She set the ledger upon the table and opened it. "Shall I enter the catalogue under foreign correspondence, or under the cost of ambition?"

"Under foreign correspondence," said Ayaan. "The cost of ambition is a different book, and we have not yet opened it."

"We shall open it when the time comes, and I shall keep it myself."

She wrote the entry in neat letters, and he watched her write it.

The horizon is wider than I knew, and we shall cross it one sound contract at a time.

Outside, the first lamps of Emin?nü were lit along the quay, and beyond them the water of the Golden Horn carried the lights toward the open sea.