“What medium?” She took a seat by Kamil’s side, crossing her legs, her bare foot arched like a Roman bridge.
Kamil could see her leg pulsing with each heartbeat.
Huseyin was in the chair opposite him, cigar clamped between his lips, engrossed in a newspaper.
“Pardon?” Kamil asked Elif.
“Watercolor? Paint? Charcoal?”
“Watercolor mostly. I like watercolor because the delicacy of tone and transparency of the color allows me to capture those qualities in the flower.”
They talked in this way for a few minutes before Feride returned and laid a battered binder on the side table.
They gathered around the table, watching as Elif paged through the drawings and watercolors one by one. “This is all I managed to save,” she explained.
Rather than the usual facsimiles of life through detail, the landscapes pulsed with shape and motion brought alive by color. They reminded Kamil of the French Impressionists. He had seen several of Monsieur Monet’s feverish and intensely colored paintings in the London drawing room of a wealthy Ottoman collector. These were easily as good. There were also studies of a young boy’s head, some quick sketches, others more detailed, showing his delicate lashes and the seashell of his ear.
“Who’s this?” Kamil asked.
“My son,” she responded in a barely audible voice.
As she turned a page, Kamil saw on the back a charcoal sketch of the boy with his eyes closed, mouth slightly ajar, a brown smudge at the corner of his lips that looked more like dried blood than paint. Elif quickly hid it under another drawing. Huseyin caught Kamil’s eye and nodded slightly. Kamil understood. It was the boy’s death mask.
“These are brilliant,” he said honestly. “Are they in the Impressionist style?”
“Yes,” Elif seemed pleased that Kamil recognized it.
“They should be in a museum,” he insisted, sweeping his hand toward the drawings.
“They’re good, but not good enough,” she said, her mood darkening again. “I wasn’t able to finish my training.”
“Why not?”
She said nothing for so long that Kamil thought she wouldn’t answer. “I married a fellow artist,” she said finally. “A painter. When I had a child, he insisted I stop working and return with him to Macedonia. But it’s not work,” she said, her anguish breaking through. “He of all people should have understood that.”
Elif gathered up her drawings and put them back in the binder, carefully tying it shut with string. “I knew an American painter in Paris, Mary Cassatt. I studied at the Académie Julian, but it was Mary who helped me develop my own style.”
“I saw one of her paintings in London,” Kamil said. Painting was a subject Elif felt comfortable talking about and he wanted to draw her out. “It was of a woman holding a baby. Remarkable. The brush-strokes were loose, as if it were a sketch, but somehow it looked more real than if she had painted in every detail.”
“During my last summer there, Mary took me and my son to her summer house at Marly. It had a beautiful garden. Mary’s mother was there, and her nieces. We did nothing but paint all summer.”
“We don’t have much of a tradition of painting or drawing of this kind,” Kamil said. “Except for Hamdi Bey. He paints in the European style.”
A servant brought coffee and a platter of fruit, which no one touched. Elif picked up her coffee and took a sip. Her eyes seemed focused on something beyond the room.
“Hamdi is a remarkable fellow,” Huseyin agreed. “He’s painting a portrait of himself with turtles.”
“Oh really,” Feride scoffed.
“It’s true. I saw the painting in his studio. It’s of a man with a pointy beard feeding his turtles. Looks just like him. He denies it, of course. Claims it isn’t finished. Maybe if I irritate him enough, he’ll put my face on it.”
“On the turtle, you mean,” Feride sniped.
Kamil was glad to see his sister showing some spirit. She hadn’t always been this assertive. Their father’s death had changed her, made her less willing to bend. There was a brittleness about her now, but also a new strength.
“I don’t know where he finds the time. He’s head of the Imperial Museum now and he’s also heading up our first archaeological expedition.”
“Soon we’ll be able to kick those thieves masquerading as archaeologists right back to Europe, eh, Kamil? Dig the stuff up ourselves,” Huseyin said, showing his fist. “I wish we could throw the Franks out of our treasury too. People think the Franks shit gold. What they don’t realize is, it’s our gold.”
“Huseyin,” Feride scolded. “You’re a beast.”
“Don’t I know it.” He winked at her.
Kamil saw Feride suppress a smile and wondered at the complex and, to him, utterly mysterious bond between husband and wife.
Elif had gathered up her binder and was hesitating by the door.
Kamil got to his feet. “It was a great pleasure to meet you, Elif Hanoum,” he said with feeling.
“Also my pleasure, Kamil Pasha.”
Feride kissed him on both cheeks. “I’ll leave you to Huseyin now, brother dear, but do come again soon. Elif and I would love to see you. And,” she whispered, “don’t worry about the boy.”
Elif overheard. “What boy?”
Huseyin echoed her.
“A young apprentice named Avi.” Kamil explained what had happened. “I had hoped he might stay here for a few days until he’s better.”
“Of course,” Huseyin boomed amiably. “What have we got all this space for if it isn’t to take in strays.”
“Can we see him?” Elif asked Feride.
“Yes, let’s see how he’s getting on with Alev and Yasemin.”
Huseyin rolled his eyes. “More of those family roses, Kamil.” He raised an index finger and braced it with the fingers of his other hand. “They’ve already got thorns as long as your finger.”
When the women had gone, Kamil remarked, “So you know Hamdi Bey quite well.”
“Yes. Why?”
“I thought as director of the museum, he might know some of the antiquities dealers in Europe. I want to see what I can find out about the buyers.”
“I suppose you want me to set up a meeting.”
Kamil swallowed his distaste at asking his brother-in-law for a favor. “If you could.” He suspected Huseyin took pleasure in his discomfiture.
Huseyin reached for an enormous red peach, peeled it, cut it up, and divided the quarters between their plates. “I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
AS KAMIL RODE through Nishantashou on his way back to his office, he thought about Elif. What happened to people who had lost everything and had no family to take them in? The scent of roses and jasmine defied the rusts and reds of autumn creeping over the gardens beside the road, but Kamil’s eyes were on an inner scene of savagery, of neighbor slitting the throat of neighbor or turning away when a friend was threatened. He wondered what Elif had lived through and found himself wanting to cradle her small golden head. He worried that she would break in Huseyin’s well-meaning but compassionless hands.
He passed the city’s water-pumping station and the artillery barracks looming over Taksim Square. Prayer services in the mosques were over and groups of men were walking back to work or meandering to coffeehouses or home. Behind the French Hospital, the streets of Tarla Bashou were crowded with shabby two-and three-story houses, now deep in shadow. The Grande Rue de Pera, in contrast, was a broad boulevard lined with shops, cafés, and brasseries. A woman sat huddled at the corner of an alley next to a French café, an infant in her arms.
Kamil dismounted and put a gold lira in her lap, enough to rent a room.
“May it bring you blessings,” he muttered, embarrassed.
Surprised, the woman looked up for a moment, and Kamil saw that she was no more than twenty, her face ravaged by sorrow. She attempted a smile. Then, as tears flooded her eyes, she hid her face and, clutching the child, began to rock back and forth.