"So you speak Turkish too?" she said.
"No," said Craig. "That was Greek. There are thousands of Greeks in Istanbul."
"You've—worked in Greece?" she asked.
"During the war," he said. "My war. You weren't even born then."
"You're still fighting," she said, and yawned. She couldn't help it. "Where are you taking me?" "This fellow knows a place," he said, and she remembered the laughter, and willed herself not to blush. "It's quiet and it's clean, and the food's good," he said. "I'll wake you when we get there."
But in fact she woke long before, as they drove into the racket of the new suburbs, and the even worse racket of the old city: old cars, even older buses, horse-drawn carts, mules, and people, once even a small, bunchy herd of sheep that threaded their way through streets that grew narrower and narrower, past tall, shuttered houses, with now and again a glimpse of the dome and minaret of a mosque, until at last they turned a corner, and in front of them was the Golden Horn, blue and gleaming, the ships bobbing on it like birds. She looked and cried out, "My God, it's marvelous."
"You should have brought your camera," said Craig. The driver abandoned his war with the radio and turned to grin at her, then flung out a hand as if offering the blue water, the purple-hazed hills beyond, white houses embedded in them like pearls. He spoke again, and again Craig laughed.
"He says it was a Greek city first," he said. "And in many ways it still is."
He settled back as the car just scraped through a narrow cobbled street, turned a corner, and stopped at last in a tiny square, one side of which was a long building of wood that seemed to have emerged at the whim of generations of owners. Parts of it seemed wholly isolated from others. There were three roofs and four entrances, and everywhere tiny, shuttered windows. It was painted a fading green, but the white of its balconies still dazzled. There was a charm about the place that she found hard to define. It certainly didn't lie in its design or proportions—only there was a Tightness about it; it belonged there, opposite the tiny Orthodox church and alongside the great warehouse that looked like a Sultan's palace. Their driver picked up the canvas bag and led them through an entrance, past a sign that said, in Turkish and Latin script, Hotel Akropolis.
They were in a cool room then, low, dim, marble-tiled, with a battered desk and a fat woman behind it who could only have been the driver's sister. Craig signed the register, and handed over his passport. Nobody asked for Miriam's and the fact annoyed her even as it consoled. Then an aged crone appeared, and led them through a maze of corridors, and flung open a door with a flourish. Inside was a huge room with an enormous canopied bed, more marble flooring, and a vast wooden fan like the paddle of a steamer that stirred the sluggish air when the crone pressed the switch. Off the bedroom was a bathroom with a copper bath built on the same scale as the bed, and a huge copper shower suspended above it. The crone looked at it in wonder that people should waste so much time in being clean, then went back to the bedroom again, prodded the mattress, and grinned. Here at least was luxury that made sense, and she said so to Craig. It cost him a quarter to get rid of her.
Miriam watched him take off his coat. The gun harness was still there, but the gun was in the waistband of his trousers. He took it out, checked it, laid it on the bedside table. The time was four thirty, and she was dizzy with fatigue.
"You want to bathe first?" he asked. She nodded. "Go ahead."
"Are we sleeping together?" she asked.
He looked at the bed. "Looks like it," he said. "Don't worry, Miss Loman. I'll control my bestial desires."
She flinched at that and went into the bathroom. When she came back, she wore a towel tied round her like a Hawaiian pareu, covering her from shoulder to thigh.
"Very pretty," he said.
"I've washed my dress."
"Tomorrow I'll buy you a new one. Which side of the bed d'you want?" She got in on the left. The gun was close to her hand. "I'll bet it isn't loaded," she said.
"You'd win," said Craig. "Little girls shouldn't play with loaded guns. They go off."
"Please," she said. "I'm not a child. Don't treat me like one. It's bad enough being here-■"
"You're on your honeymoon," he said. "That's what I told them downstairs. You're nervous and shy, and you might try to run away. Don't try it, Miss Loman. Nobody speaks any English for miles around. They'd just bring you back and embarrass you."
She began to cry then, and still crying, fell asleep.
When she woke it was daylight, and she was alone. She got up quickly, and the towel fell from her. She ran to the door—it was locked—and then to the bathroom. Her dress was dry, and she put on bra, panties, and dress with clumsy haste, then prowled the room. There was no sign of the gun, no sign that Craig had ever been there. She had no memory of him in the bed. The thought should have been a comfort to her. She wondered what Ida would say if she knew how her Miriam had spent the night, and the thought made her smile, until she remembered Marcus, and the look on his face when Craig had taken her away. She loved Marcus as he loved her, un-questioningly, without reservation. A fat, middle-aged milliner had no business to possess such a capacity for love. It was a wonderful thing, no doubt, but one day it would destroy him.
She went out on to the tiny balcony and looked down. The Bosphorus was below her, the ships tied up to the stone quays, the racket of the port unending: stevedores, lorry drivers, even policemen milling about, and not one she could talk to, not one who could understand a word she said, even if she could escape from the hotel. She picked up her handbag and looked in the change purse. A five-dollar bill, three dollar bills, two quarters, and seven pennies. And Craig must be carrying thousands of dollars. Suddenly there was the sound of music, American music, below her. She leaned over the balcony and looked down. A small, dark man was washing the windows of the floor below. There was a transistor radio hooked to his ladder, and it was playing "Stardust" very loud. It had to be loud to compete with the racket of the port, but the volume couldn't mar the clean drive of the trumpet. She began to feel better.
When he came back, his arms were filled with parcels. She lay on the bed, not sleeping, and he looked so like
Hollywood's version of the wholesome American husband at Christmas time that she smiled.
"There should be a sound track playing 'Jingle Bells,'" she said.
"I bought you some clothes," he said. She sat up then, angry.
"Did it ever occur to you I might like to choose my own?" she asked.
"Perhaps you'll like these, Miss Loman," he said. "It's possible."
She opened the parcels, adored everything he'd bought her, and hated him even more.
"I'm hungry," she said.
"Lunch is on its way up," he said.
The feeling of frustration grew inside her. She had never known anything as hateful as this massive and very British competence.
Lunch was moussaka, grilled swordfish, salad and cheese, and a white wine she decided she detested, then drank three glasses of. After it, she felt well and wide awake for the first time since she'd left the aircraft.
"You're looking well," said Craig, and again the intuitive competence enraged her. She watched in silence as the crone poured Turkish coffee from a battered brass pot and left them.
"This food will probably make me ill," she said. "You know what we Americans are like—if the food's not flown in from home we go down with a bug."
"Ah," he said. "I'm glad you reminded me. I bought you some pills for that."