Chapter 46: Industrial Contacts

Chapter 46: Chapter 46: Industrial Contacts

I

Constantinople, Kas?mpa?a — 12 March 1912

The foundry had cast its first hundred brass balances in the winter, and they lay on ?smail Usta’s bench in three straight rows.

Halil R?fat stood over them with a steel rule and a lamp. He had measured every piece twice, and his face showed what the figures said.

"Eleven of the hundred are outside tolerance, Ayaan Efendi," he said. "The fault is not in the casting but in the lathe that finishes them, because the old bed shifts by the thickness of a hair when it grows warm."

?smail Usta wiped his hands on a cloth and said nothing for a while.

"I have worked that lathe for nineteen years," he said at last. "It has never deceived me before, but it was never asked to be so exact."

Ayaan lifted one of the rejected beams to the lamp. The error could not be seen, but the figures proved that it could be weighed.

"Then we need a better lathe," he said. "And we need a machine that tells us the strength of the metal before a customer discovers the weakness."

"Such machines are built in Zürich and in Winterthur," said Halil R?fat. "A good one costs more than the foundry earned this winter."

"Write down what you require, with every tolerance stated in figures," said Ayaan. "Zeynep Han?m will write the letters."

II

Constantinople, Galata — 21 March 1912

Agop Kalfayan read the Winterthur reply twice, with his spectacles pushed high upon his forehead.

"Keller and Son ask six hundred and forty liras for the lathe and the testing machine together," he said. "Delivery in five months, payment by letter of credit through the Ottoman Bank, and half of the sum upon shipment."

"The quarrel over Tripoli has made every insurer in Galata nervous," said Zeynep. "I would have the insurance paid by the seller and named in the contract."

Agop smiled over the paper. "You ask what I would have asked, Han?m, and you ask it before I can speak."

"Then I shall also ask that their engineer come with the machines," she said. "A testing machine in the hands of men who do not understand it is an expensive ornament."

Ayaan had been silent, and now he said what he had weighed for many days.

"The House will pay from the venture account and not from the reserve."

"Why not the reserve?" asked Agop.

"Because the reserve is kept for fear, Agop Efendi, and this purchase is made for hope." He paused. "The two must never be written in one ledger."

The old sarraf nodded slowly, and he wrote the sum upon the corner of the letter in his small neat hand.

Elias Benveniste, the clerk, entered the sum in the venture ledger that same afternoon.

He ruled a separate column for the insurance and another for the engineer’s passage, and he showed both to Zeynep before he closed the book.

III

Constantinople, Kas?mpa?a — 9 April 1912

The library of the House school had been open for six weeks, and Cevdet kept it as strictly as he had once kept the books of a retired pasha.

He waited until the last of the students had gone before he came to Ayaan’s table with a folded paper.

"A clerk of the Berlin machine firm has been asking in Galata which Swiss house received your inquiry," he said. "He has also offered the Ministry of War a lathe at a price below Keller’s, with a German foreman included."

"Included for what purpose?" asked Ayaan.

"That I cannot say, and I will not pretend to." Cevdet laid the paper flat. "But a foreman who comes with a machine is also a man who sees the workshop where it stands."

Ayaan read the paper through and gave it back.

"Let the clerk ask in Galata as long as he wishes. The order is no secret, and what the machine will make is mine to decide."

"I do not ask what it will make," said Cevdet. "I keep our agreement, and I ask nothing that I would be ashamed to ask before the Sultan."

"I know it, Cevdet Efendi, and that is why I tell you the order openly." Ayaan closed the ledger. "If Herr Brandt wishes to learn about the House, he may read the price board at the Rüstem Pa?a warehouse like every other buyer."

Cevdet inclined his head, and a rare, brief smile crossed his scarred face.

IV

Constantinople, Rüstem Pa?a — 2 May 1912

Nikolaos Efendi, the mill-master of ?zmit, climbed down from the wagon in the courtyard of the warehouse with a worn iron roller across his knees.

He set it upon the counter before Zeynep and did not begin with greetings.

"This is the third dryer roller that has cracked since January, Han?m," he said. "The foundry in Pera that cast it will not guarantee the next, and the mill cannot afford to stop its fine paper."

Zeynep turned the roller and ran her thumb along the crack. "Our foundry at Kas?mpa?a has cast only balances so far, Nikolaos Efendi."

"I know it, and I have heard that the House measures what it makes." The mill-master straightened. "I would rather trust a young foundry that measures than an old one that does not."

Ayaan, who had come in from the yard, took the roller and weighed it in his hands.

"Fourteen rollers would be a large order for a foundry that has never cast one," he said. "Let ?smail Usta cast two, and let Halil R?fat test them before the mill pays a single kuru?."

"And the price?"

"The price shall be written on the page, with the tolerance beside it," said Zeynep. "If the roller fails the test, the House bears the loss, and if it passes, the mill pays within sixty days as before."

Nikolaos Efendi looked from one to the other, and his shoulders eased.

"That is the first contract I have been offered in thirty years in which the maker takes the risk," he said. "I shall tell the mill that it is a strange foundry, and a safe one."

That evening the two of them wrote the order, and it was the first time the House had agreed to cast for another man’s machine.

"It is a small beginning," said Zeynep, as she blotted the page.

"All the large things we intend were once small orders with a tolerance written beside them," Ayaan answered.

V

Constantinople, Sirkeci — 27 May 1912

Herr Walter Imhof of Winterthur came by the Orient train, a tall, spare man of forty with a leather case and no patience for ceremony.

He asked to see the foundry before he drank his coffee, and Ayaan took him there himself.

"I was told that I would instruct engineers," said Imhof, looking about the yard. "I see a foundry master, an engineer, and two boys with soot upon their sleeves."

"Those boys are Yakup and Selim, and they have studied for seven months in the House school," said Ayaan. "They know the mathematics, and they lack only the machine."

Imhof walked the length of the shop floor and knelt to press his palm upon the old foundation.

"This floor moves," he said. "A lathe of this quality set upon it will be as inexact as the one you have now."

"How deep must the masonry go?" asked Halil R?fat, already drawing in his notebook.

"Two metres, with a bed of cut stone and a separate base for the testing machine, so that the hammers of the foundry do not trouble it."

?smail Usta, who had been listening with his arms folded, spoke for the first time.

"Herr Imhof, the stone shall be cut by my own men, and it shall be laid by the first of August."

"Then I shall stay until the machines are standing, Usta, and I shall teach whoever wishes to learn."

Imhof looked at the two boys, and for the first time he almost smiled.

"I would rather teach a boy who is eager than an engineer who is certain."

That evening Yakup and Selim stayed at the foundry long after the workmen had gone, with Imhof’s drawings spread across the bench.

Selim traced the line of the lathe bed with a pencil, and Yakup checked each figure against the page.

"He says the bed must be scraped by hand, and that no machine can do it," said Selim. "Is it possible that a man’s hand is more exact than a tool?"

"It is possible if the man has been taught to feel the error," said Halil R?fat, who had come in quietly behind them. "That is the whole of our trade, and it is why you will learn it slowly."

Ayaan, standing in the doorway, listened to the three of them and did not interrupt.

He had brought a great many things from his other life into this one, but he had not brought the patience that the boys now practised with their pencils.

VI

Constantinople, Kas?mpa?a — 6 June 1912

Professor Mazhar Bey of the Darülfünun came to the foundry on a hot afternoon, with a small wooden case of standard weights under his arm.

"You wrote that you wish to check a testing machine against a true standard," he said. "I have come to offer my weights, and I ask nothing for them except a place for my students at the first trials."

"They shall have the front bench," said Ayaan. "Halil R?fat will instruct them in how the machine is read."

The professor set the weights upon the bench, one after another, and they gleamed in the light of the open door.

"I would ask one thing more, Ayaan Efendi, and it is a question and not a bargain." He turned his thin face toward Ayaan. "Do you intend to build only balances and machines of measurement?"

"I intend to build what the Empire will need in ten years," said Ayaan. "And no one can build that without first being able to measure it."

The professor nodded, and he did not ask again.

Before he left he asked Halil R?fat to weigh a single brass balance against his standards, and the two men bent over the pans in silence.

The beam came to rest exactly level, and Halil R?fat let out a long breath.

"It is true to within a grain," said the professor. "Tell your men that this is the standard they must keep, and that Allah has not made it easy."

VII

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 20 June 1912

That evening Zeynep sat at the long table with the Winterthur contract spread before her, and she read it once more from the first article to the last.

"The insurance is named, the delivery is named, and the engineer’s wages are named," she said. "There is only one clause I would change."

"Which one?" asked Ayaan.

"The clause that forbids the House to resell the testing machine’s drawings." She tapped it with her pen. "It forbids us, but it does not forbid Keller to sell the same drawings to the Berlin firm."

Ayaan took the contract and read the clause, and he saw that she was right.

"Write to Winterthur tomorrow," he said. "If Keller wishes our custom, the clause must bind both houses equally."

"And if he refuses?"

"Then we shall have learned something about him before we have paid him a single lira."

Mehmed woke in the next room and called for his mother in his small clear voice. Zeynep rose, and she laid her hand for a moment on her husband’s shoulder before she went.

Ayaan remained alone with the lamp. He thought of the old lathe that had never deceived a man until it was asked to be exact, and he understood that the House had reached the same point.

It was no longer enough to be honest and diligent, because the next years would demand precision.

He opened the notebook and wrote the date, and beneath it a single line.

A workshop grows by what it can measure, and an Empire by what it dares to measure truly.