“Are they your relations?”
“No, they’re local women who cook for the household. Fatma lived in the cook’s quarters that were behind the house then, at the back of the yard. She never married. Her sister Karanfil came in the morning and then returned to her own home. Her husband was a water carrier.”
He remembers them as they appeared in his childhood, two short, round women, their baggy, brightly flowered shalwar trousers expanding upward to meet layers of brightly patterned sweaters and cardigans. Their faces are full moons, but set with disconcertingly delicate features, as if the women have different, slender selves that somehow have been mistakenly absorbed by their heavy bodies.
A powerful, sensual memory of the kitchen of his childhood floods him as he waits for Sybil to refill his water glass. He toys with the fried mullet on his plate.
The women were in continual motion, cooking and cleaning. In summer they brought their work into the yard. He has an image of Fatma, squatting beside a basin of soapy water, her powerful arms twisting a rope of wet laundry. In winter the blue-washed kitchen walls were festooned with ears of corn and strings of red peppers, pulsating with color. A ceramic water urn stood just inside the door, a tinned copper plate across the top to keep out dust. A copper mug rested on the plate. Kamil remembers lifting the plate and looking into the urn, which stood almost to his chest, the hollow quality of the air and the loamy smell of wet clay, the resistance of metal against the skin of water and the satisfying whirlpool entering his mug. Water directly from this urn always tasted like an entirely different substance than water drunk from a glass. To this day, he keeps a clay jar of water and a tinned mug on the dressing table in his bedroom. He drinks from it to clear his mind and calm his senses.
He sips from his glass. Sybil waits expectantly for him to continue, unwilling to break his reverie by prompting him.
He tries to describe the garden, the kitchen, the fresh, lightly spiced cuisine: roasted aubergines, chicken pounded with walnuts and sesame oil, tart grape leaves stuffed with savory rice mixed with currants. Fatma and Karanfil called him their little lamb and plied him with flaky cheese-filled pastries and sweet cakes, washed down with glasses of diluted sugary black tea. Through the crackle of fire and the slap of dough against wood, Fatma’s husky voice wove Turkish fables and legends and cautionary tales of djinns and demons.
“What happened to them?”
“Karanfil’s husband died in a fire and now she, her son Yakup, and Fatma live in an extension I had built onto the kitchen house after my mother died. With the help of a few other servants, they keep house. They cook for me and tend the garden and my plants.”
“You live there alone, then, with your servants.” A statement.
“Yes.”
This time, the silence is awkward. One word carries an insupportable burden, where an hour-long conversation has flown by with unguarded wings.
Sybil’s face and neck flush red. She motions brusquely to the servant waiting by the door and asks for tea to be served in the garden. She stands and leads Kamil to a table set beneath an incongruous palm tree.
“Tell me about your plants,” Sybil suggests in a voice too charged with interest.
“I have a small winter garden, I believe you call it. I collect orchids.”
“Orchids? How delightful! But how do you get them here? Aren’t they from South America? I’ve heard they’re quite delicate.”
“Not just from South America, Sybil Hanoum. There are many varieties of orchids all around us.”
“Here? In Turkey?”
“There is a lovely orchid with sprays of violet blooms that grows in the forests around Istanbul, Cephalanthera rubra.” He smiles at her. “It is our connection to Europe, where this variety is also found.”
Sybil is flustered. “How lovely. Imagine my ignorance. But, but I would so like to see your collection,” she blurts out. She looks down to rearrange her skirts with exaggerated care. “I’m sorry. That would be inappropriate, of course.”
“It would be a great pleasure”-he pauses briefly-“but perhaps it would be better if your father accompanied you.” The sight of her crestfallen face dismays him, but he is unwilling to risk her reputation-or, he admits to himself, his privacy. Still, the image of Sybil bending appreciatively over his scented orchids has taken root in his mind.
Regarding Sybil over the rim of his cup, Kamil lets the warm, eggshell-thin china rest for a moment against his lower lip before he sips from it.
That evening, Kamil blots the ink on the letter he is trying to write. The words he has written seem to have taken on too much color, lost the dry rustle of truth and factualness that makes them scientific and, thus, to be believed by the recipient, H. G. Reichenbach.
Since the garden party, his thoughts have slipped their accustomed tether and he finds himself dwelling on Sybil’s tapered fingers twined around the stem of the wineglass; the plump mound at the inside of her wrist; the hollow at the base of her neck. He thinks with disquiet, but also a little more sympathy, of his father, who, in his opium dreams, has surrendered to blissful communication with his dead wife. He takes up his pen and continues writing.
Dear Professor Reichenbach,
I write as an amateur botanist, but one with scientific observations that I hope to bring to your esteemed attention. I am in possession of a glorious and most unusual orchidae that to my knowledge has not been described elsewhere. It is a small plant with two roundish, semi-attached tubers and basal leaves with one spike culminating in a single showy flower. The flower is velvety black, with an arched labellum and densely hairy petals. The speculum is divided into two symmetrical halves and is a bright, shining blue, almost phosphorescent. I observed the plant in its habitat over several weeks. The arched labellum attracts male insects that cross-pollinate the flowers, perhaps lured by some volatile chemical compound released from its surface.
I collected this orchid in marshland at the edge of a forest in northwest Anatolia near the Black Sea. I have never seen another, nor does it fit the description of any of the orchidacae in your famous Glossary.
It is but one of many wondrous orchidacae in the Ottoman Empire, some of which I have described in previous letters to you. Many are found only here in Turkish lands; others join us to Europe in a continuous ecology. The tulip, the carnation, the lily, these are everywhere depicted, yet the true treasure of the empire, the orchid, is inexplicably absent.
I most respectfully await your response. If you desire it, I can arrange to have a sketch of the orchid sent to you so that you may inspect it further.
Yours most sincerely,
Kamil Pasha
Magistrate and Fellow Lover of Orchids
This is not his first letter to Professor Reichenbach, but he has not yet received a response.
10
Hamza had been my friend almost as long as I could remember. When Mama and I still lived with Papa on the hill in Nishantashou, he engaged Hamza, his sister’s son, as my tutor. Hamza had graduated from L’École Supérieure in Paris and, thanks to Papa’s influence, was awarded a position as translator at the Foreign Ministry in Istanbul. His family lived in Aleppo, where, Papa told me, his father had been a kadi. Since his father was retired and unable to set Hamza up in his own household, Hamza lived with us as part of our extended family. Every morning, he set off for work dressed in Frankish trousers and the long, slim stambouline jacket fashionable among modern Ottomans. Papa too had long since discarded the traditional long robe and turban for trousers and a dashing red fez.