Chapter 36: The First Real Political Test

Chapter 36: Chapter 36: The First Real Political Test

I

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 18 April 1910

The letter came on a Monday morning, in a long envelope with the seal of the Ministry of Public Instruction pressed into grey wax.

Elias Benveniste carried it up from the counter with both hands.

Ayaan read it standing at the window, and then he gave it to Zeynep without a word.

The Ministry invited the stationers of the capital to submit prices for forty thousand registers and school forms, to be delivered to the provincial schools before the autumn term. Sealed offers would be received until 19 May.

"Forty thousand," said Zeynep. She sat with one hand resting at her side, as the midwife had advised, and she read the figure twice. "R?za Bey told us to expect an order larger than any we had filled."

"He did not tell us that it would be ten times larger."

"Who supplies the Ministry now?" asked Elias.

"That is the first thing I must learn." Ayaan turned from the window. "A letter of this kind does not go to every shop in the quarter unless someone has decided that the old arrangement is no longer comfortable."

"Or unless someone wishes it to look as though the old arrangement is being tested," said Zeynep.

Elias coughed gently.

"Efendi, I know the answer to your question. The Ministry’s forms have been supplied for eleven years by the press of Sadullah Bey, near the Sirkeci road."

"You know him?"

"I know his accounts. His paper comes from Vienna, through a Galata house, and the price is not a kind one." The clerk opened his notebook. "The Ministry pays him nine kuru? for each register."

Ayaan took a pencil and wrote a figure upon the margin of the letter. "My cost with the machine is under five kuru?, and I could sell at six and keep a fair profit."

"Three kuru? upon forty thousand registers," said Zeynep quietly.

"One thousand two hundred liras."

Nobody spoke for a moment, because each of them understood what the sum meant, and what it would cost to take it.

A saving for the Treasury is a loss for a man who has lived upon it for eleven years. He will not be grateful to me for being right.

"We shall submit an offer," said Ayaan. "But before we do, I wish to know every person whom this offer will touch."

"That is a long list, I think," said Zeynep.

"Then we shall write it tonight."

II

Constantinople, Bab-? ?li — 25 April 1910

The Under-Secretary of the Ministry, Re?id Bey, received him in a high room that smelled of old paper and cold coffee.

He was a lean man of fifty-five with a trimmed grey beard, and he did not rise, though he gestured courteously to a chair.

"You are younger than your ledgers, Hassan Efendi," he said. "R?za Bey described a man of forty."

"He was kind to mistake it, Efendi."

"He was accurate, as he always is. It was I who did not believe him." Re?id Bey folded his hands. "Why have you asked for an audience before the offers are opened? It is not the custom."

"Because I wish to ask a question that should not be asked in public."

"Ask it."

"Is the Ministry seeking a lower price, Efendi, or is it seeking a reason to say that it looked for one?"

The older man’s gaze sharpened, and for the first time he smiled.

"That is either very foolish or very clever."

"I hope that it is neither, Efendi. I hope that it is only honest."

Re?id Bey rose and went to the window, where a clerk’s pale face could be seen in the court below. He stood there a long moment.

"The Minister has asked me to reduce expenditure upon forms," he said. "It is not an order, and I think he has not considered that the old contract runs to the end of next year."

"And that the old contractor has friends."

"Sadullah Bey has served the Ministry faithfully, and he has been very careful to be thanked in the right places." Re?id Bey turned. "I will tell you plainly, Hassan Efendi, that a saving which makes enemies is more expensive than it appears."

"I understand, Efendi."

"Do you? You are a stationer, and you have found a way to rule paper cheaply. The men who will oppose you are not stationers." He spoke without raising his voice. "They sit in the accounts office, and they dine with the sarrafs of Galata, and a number of them have never been wrong in a meeting in their lives."

"Then I shall not argue with them in a meeting."

"How will you proceed?"

"By trial, Efendi, with measurements that any clerk may check." Ayaan leaned forward. "Give me two thousand registers to supply to two schools in the city, at my own cost, and let the Ministry’s own officers weigh, count, and test them against the old supply."

"At your own cost."

"If the registers are worse than the old ones, I shall have lost a small sum, and the Ministry will have lost nothing." He kept his voice even. "If they are better, the Ministry will hold the proof in its own hand and not in mine."

Re?id Bey was silent for a while.

"I will not promise you the contract," he said at last. "I will promise you that the trial will be fairly measured, and that no one will interfere with it in my hearing."

"That is all that I ask."

"It is not all that you will need." The Under-Secretary returned to his desk. "Go and see Sadullah Bey before he sees you. A man who learns of his ruin from the Ministry is a dangerous man, and a man who learns it from his rival is only an angry one."

He has told me where the door is. He has not told me whether it is wise to open it.

III

Constantinople, Sirkeci — 7 May 1910

The press of Sadullah Bey occupied a stone house of three floors, and the smell of ink reached the street before the door did.

Ayaan went alone, in his plain coat, and sent in his card by a boy with black fingers.

Sadullah Bey received him in an office upstairs, a heavy man with a gold chain across his waistcoat and a face that had been genial for a long time and was now making an effort to remain so.

"So this is the stationer," he said. "I have heard your name at three tables this month."

"I hope that it was said without anger, Efendi."

"It was said with a good deal of interest." The big man did not offer his hand. "I know why you have come. You wish to buy my contract, or to frighten me out of it, and I will tell you at once that you are not able to do either."

"I have come to do neither."

"Then sit, and tell me what you want."

Ayaan sat. He had thought about the first sentence for three nights, and he found that he did not need it.

"Efendi, I know what you pay for paper in Vienna, and I know that your Galata house has asked for the account to be settled before the autumn. I am sorry to have learned it, but I could not make a fair offer without learning it."

Sadullah Bey’s face changed, and the effort of geniality went out of it.

"Who has told you my accounts?"

"No one has told me. Your paper house has agents in the quarter, and a clerk may count the bales that arrive." Ayaan met his eyes. "I have not used the knowledge against you, and I shall not."

"Then why speak of it?"

"Because I do not think that you are a dishonest man, Efendi. I think that you are a man who has been paid nine kuru? for a register that costs him seven, and who has been paying a part of the difference to people who did not earn it."

The silence that followed was long, and the printer’s hand moved slowly to his chain.

"You are very young," he said, "to speak so."

"I am. That is why I have brought a proposal and not an accusation."

"Say it."

"The Ministry’s order will be divided into two lots, if the Ministry agrees." Ayaan set a folded sheet upon the desk. "The ruled registers, which my machine makes, will be mine. The printed forms, the covers, the headings, and the certificates, which need type and a good press, will remain with you at your present price."

Sadullah Bey did not touch the sheet.

"And my paper?"

"I shall buy the whole of your Vienna stock for the fine certificates at the price that you paid for it, so that your Galata house is satisfied before autumn." Ayaan paused. "You will have your debt cleared, and you will keep the work that your press does best."

"You offer to buy my paper at cost. What do you gain by it?"

"I gain a printer who is not my enemy, Efendi, and who will tell the Ministry that my registers are good, if they are." He said it simply. "I should prefer to have your testimony than to have your silence, and I should prefer to have your silence than to have your opposition."

The big man laughed once, shortly, without humour.

"A man could call that a bribe."

"A man could, and he would be wrong. A bribe is paid in secret to do a thing that the payer’s interest forbids." Ayaan did not look away. "This will be written in a contract, signed by us both, and shown to the Under-Secretary."

Sadullah Bey picked up the sheet at last and read it twice, and then a third time, with his lips moving.

"There is a gentleman at the Ministry," he said slowly, "who will not like this."

"I think that I know his name."

"Then you know that he will say that you have cheated me."

"Efendi, I have given you more than the contract was worth to you, and I would ask that you tell him so."

The printer put down the sheet.

"I will think about it," he said. "Come back on Tuesday."

IV

Constantinople, üsküdar — 10 May 1910

Fehmi laid a thin folder upon the desk and waited, as he always did, to be told that he might speak.

Cevdet had been annotating a Persian treatise upon coinage, and he set down his pen with a small reluctance.

"Well?"

"The stationer has visited the Under-Secretary, Efendi, and on the seventh he visited the printer Sadullah Bey in Sirkeci, alone." The clerk consulted a slip. "He remained for forty minutes, and this morning the printer signed the memorandum that he left."

"A memorandum." Cevdet raised his eyebrows. "He has made a bargain with the very man who stood to lose by him."

"It appears so."

"Then he is either very naive or very careful, and I have not found him to be naive." Cevdet drew the folder toward him. "What else?"

Fehmi hesitated, which was unusual.

"There is something in the report that I do not know how to interpret, Efendi. The clerk Elias Benveniste found, in the course of preparing the offer, that the printer’s invoices to the Ministry contain a repeated charge for carriage that was never incurred."

"A false charge."

"One kuru? upon each register, for eleven years, and it was apparently shared with a deputy in the Ministry’s accounts office, a man named Server Bey."

Cevdet was silent for some time.

"A man who holds that, Fehmi, holds a sword. A single letter to the right desk, and Sadullah Bey is in prison and Server Bey in disgrace, and the stationer has the whole order without a contest."

"He has not sent the letter."

"No."

"Efendi, the clerk Benveniste asked him whether he intended to use it. I have the answer from a person who was present." The clerk looked at his slip. "The stationer said that a man cannot be shamed into becoming useful, and that he would rather remove the reason for the false charge than punish the man who made it."

Cevdet sat very still.

He had read a good many reports in thirty years of service, and he had learned to distrust any that praised a man’s virtue. Virtue, in his experience, was often the name that men gave to cowardice or to calculation.

Yet this is neither. He has taken the sword and put it in a drawer, and I think that he knows exactly what it is worth.

"Does the stationer know that I have the same information?" he said.

"I do not think so, Efendi."

"Good. Leave it so." Cevdet closed the folder. "I will not touch Server Bey, and I will not touch Sadullah Bey. I wish to see what the young man does when he has the sword in a drawer and nobody is looking at him."

"And if he uses it?"

"Then I shall have learned something, and so will he." Cevdet took up his pen again. "But I do not think that he will."

V

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 12 May 1910

On Thursday afternoon, Zeynep came down the stair for the first time in a week, and she sat at the back table with the ledgers spread before her.

"You have given Sadullah Bey a contract that pays him the price he asked," she said, "and you have bought paper that you do not need."

"I need the certificate paper, though not so much of it."

"You need a third of it." She turned a page. "The rest will sit in the warehouse for two years, and its cost will be carried in the venture ledger."

"It will cost four hundred liras."

"And you have not put it in the budget for the trial."

Ayaan took a breath.

"I did not think of it as a cost," he said. "I thought of it as the price of the man’s agreement."

"Then it is a cost, and it must be written as one." She said it without sharpness. "If you do not write down what the peace costs, you will tell yourself that it was free, and the next time you will pay more than you can afford."

She is right, and I had begun to enjoy the feeling of having solved the matter.

"Add the four hundred to the trial account," he said to Elias. "And write beside it that the Ministry’s savings must repay it within eighteen months, or I shall have made a poor bargain."

"I shall write it, Efendi."

"There is also the matter of Server Bey." Zeynep closed the ledger. "Elias has shown me the invoices."

"I have decided not to use them."

"I know. I should like to hear why, so that I may agree with you for the right reason."

Ayaan thought for a moment, because he wished to answer her exactly.

"If I send the letter, I shall win, and the whole Ministry will understand that a stationer who makes a good price can ruin a deputy and a printer in a single week." He spoke slowly. "Every clerk in the building will fear me, and every one of them will wait for the day when I make a mistake."

"And if you do not send it?"

"Then Server Bey has a reason to oppose me, and I shall have to remove the reason." He drew a sheet toward him. "The false charge is paid out of a fixed price. If the price is published openly, in a schedule that the Ministry’s own accounts office has helped to measure, the charge has no place to hide."

"You mean to give him the measuring."

"I mean to ask the accounts office to conduct the trial. A man who is trusted to measure a thing is not so eager to see it fail."

Zeynep regarded him for a long moment.

"It is a good plan," she said, "and it has one weakness, which is that it depends upon a man who has been dishonest for eleven years becoming honest because he is flattered."

"I did not say that I trusted him."

"Then what do you trust?"

"That the schedule will be public, that the figures will be checked twice, and that Re?id Bey will read the report." Ayaan looked at her. "I trust the evidence, Zeynep, and I trust the incentive. I do not need to trust the man."

"Good," she said, and he saw her smile. "That is the first time you have said it so plainly, and I think that it is the whole of what you have learned this spring."

VI

Constantinople, Bab-? ?li — 19 May 1910

The committee met in the long room, around a table of dark walnut, with a pitcher of water at either end and a clerk at the foot to record what was said.

Re?id Bey presided. At his right sat Server Bey, a soft-faced man of forty with a ring upon his smallest finger, and at his left sat a clerk named Nazif Efendi, who had examined the ruled sheets and who looked at Ayaan with unconcealed curiosity.

Sadullah Bey sat opposite, with his hands folded upon his stomach.

"We are met to receive the report upon the trial of two thousand registers," said Re?id Bey. "Hassan Efendi, you may begin."

Ayaan rose and laid a single sheet before each member.

"Efendiler, the trial was measured by the accounts office of the Ministry, and by no one of mine." He spoke without hurry. "The registers were delivered to the schools at Vefa and at Fatih on 2 May, and they were used for seventeen days."

"And the result?" said Server Bey.

"The sheets of the Ministry’s present supply showed a variation in the spacing of the lines of one part in forty, and an average of three sheets in a hundred that were spoiled by crooked ruling." Ayaan did not look at his own copy. "In the new supply, the variation was one part in two hundred, and there was one spoiled sheet in a hundred."

"Those are your figures," said Server Bey.

"They are the figures of Nazif Efendi, who counted the sheets, and they are signed by him and by the headmasters of both schools."

Nazif Efendi lowered his eyes, but he nodded.

"As to price." Ayaan turned a page. "The Ministry pays nine kuru? for a register. The new supply can be delivered at six, and a saving of three kuru? upon forty thousand registers is one thousand two hundred liras in a year."

"A saving that you make by dismissing the poor boys of the quarter," said Server Bey, and his voice carried a note of satisfaction.

"Efendi, I have taken twelve of those boys into my warehouse since February, and they are paid what they earned before." Ayaan kept his tone level. "The guild elder, Hac? Arif Efendi, has written to say so, and his letter is in the folder."

A silence followed. Server Bey looked at the folder and did not open it.

"There is a second consideration." Ayaan laid down another sheet. "I have proposed that the order be divided. The ruled registers will come from my shop, and the printed forms, the covers, and the certificates will remain with the press of Sadullah Bey, at the price he now receives."

Server Bey looked up sharply.

"That is not a saving," he said.

"It is a saving of the greater part, Efendi, and it is a safeguard for the Ministry." Ayaan turned toward the printer. "The Ministry will not depend upon a single supplier for the whole of its paper, and the press that has served it for eleven years will continue to serve it."

All faces turned to Sadullah Bey.

The big man cleared his throat, and for a moment it seemed that he would say something rash.

"Efendiler," he said, "I have read this young man’s proposal, and I have signed it." He lifted his chin. "I have supplied the Ministry for eleven years, and I tell you that his registers are better than mine, and that I am glad to say so before the committee, because it is the truth."

Server Bey stared at him.

"I will add," said Sadullah Bey, "that my price for the printed forms shall be published in the Ministry’s schedule beside his, so that no one may say hereafter that either of us was paid more than he was worth."

Ayaan did not smile, and he did not move.

He saw Re?id Bey lower his eyes to the table, and he understood that the Under-Secretary was hiding an expression of satisfaction.

"I propose," said Re?id Bey, "that the Ministry accept the divided order for the school year beginning in September, and that the accounts office, under Server Bey’s direction, shall publish a schedule of prices and measure the result in March." He looked at the deputy. "Server Bey, will you undertake it?"

The soft-faced man hesitated for as long as a man can hesitate in front of his superior.

"I will undertake it, Efendi," he said.

"Then it is recorded." Re?id Bey nodded to the clerk. "The committee is closed."

VII

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 4 June 1910

The workroom at the warehouse had two long tables and a good light, and twelve boys were bent over them with their sleeves rolled to the elbow.

Hac? Arif Efendi stood in the doorway with his hat in his hands. He had come to see them at their work, and he watched in silence for some time.

"The oldest is Yakup," he said at last. "He was the best ruler in my guild, and he asked me last month whether it was shameful to work for a machine."

"What did you answer?"

"I told him that it is shameful to starve, and that a craft which can be learned by a machine is a craft that was never safe." The old man’s mouth moved, in something close to a smile. "He did not like it, but he is learning the care of the engine, and Halil Bey says that he has the best hands for it that he has seen. May Allah grant him patience."

"I am glad of it, Efendi."

"The shops of Sirkeci have asked me whether they may buy at the Ministry’s price." Hac? Arif put on his hat. "I said that I should ask you."

"They may buy at the Ministry’s price, and so may every member of your guild." Ayaan watched Yakup lean over a half-finished sheet and frown at it. "I do not wish to be a man who is thanked in the quarter and cursed in the Ministry, or the reverse."

"A man who is neither thanked nor cursed is a man who has no power."

"I know it, Efendi."

"Then you have begun to pay for yours." The old guildsman bowed his head and left.

That evening, in the upper room, Zeynep sat beside the walnut cradle with the venture ledger open on her knee, and she did not look up when he came in.

"The Ministry’s order is signed," she said.

"By the Under-Secretary, and by Server Bey, and by the printer. Re?id Bey sent a clerk with it at six o’clock."

"Then you have won."

"I think that I have not lost," said Ayaan. "It is not the same, and I wish to be careful not to confuse them."

She turned the ledger toward him and laid her finger upon a column.

"Then be careful about this." Her voice was quiet. "The Vienna paper that you have bought is carried at the price Sadullah Bey paid for it, but the price of Viennese paper to a buyer in his position is not the price that the Galata house quotes to a buyer in ours."

"I do not understand."

"Nor did I, until an hour ago." She did not smile. "I have asked Elias to bring me the Galata invoices tomorrow morning, because I think that there is a figure in your schedule that will not hold, and I should like to see it before the Ministry does."

Ayaan looked at the column for a long time.

I have been so occupied with the men that I did not look at the numbers.

"Bring the invoices to me as well," he said. "We shall read them together."

"We shall," said Zeynep, and she laid her hand upon his wrist. "That is what the ledger is for."