“I’ll only accept that if you swear you’ll come to the States, so I can reciprocate and teach you American customs.”
“And how do Americans honor a guest?”
“Well,” says Bernie, rolling the words on his tongue in a thick American brogue, “I reckon we give ’em the last swig outta tha whiskey bottle. We sure as hell don’t strip ’em naked, pour hot water on their heads, and beat the crap out of ’em.”
Kamil laughs. “You survived just fine. That makes you an honorary Ottoman.” Bernie takes out a cigarette and offers one to Kamil, who tamps it into the end of his ebony and silver cigarette holder. He lights Bernie’s cigarette, then his own.
“Any luck on your case?”
“Eleven days, and all we have is a fisherman who heard noises from shore that night, a dog barking, and something being dropped into the water. My associate Michel Sevy and I went up there and looked around. There’s a sea bath, a kind of enclosed bathing pool. We found a dead dog nearby, with its head smashed in. But nothing else.”
“Your associate’s name is Michel Sevy?”
“Yes, why? He’s the police surgeon.”
“Nothing. Just curious. Where was this?”
“Between Chamyeri and Emirgan. There’s a fairly large village there. The body was found halfway down the Bosphorus, but the things I’ve learned all point north to Chamyeri. That’s the place where another British governess, Hannah Simmons, was found murdered eight years ago. Her name keeps coming up. I can’t help but wonder whether the two deaths are related somehow.”
“Chamyeri. It means ‘Place of the Pines,’ doesn’t it?” Bernie asks pensively.
“Yes. I didn’t realize you speak Turkish so well.”
“I need to read some Ottoman for my work, but can’t speak it to shake a stick at.”
Kamil repeats slowly, “Shake a stick at.”
Bernie laughs. “Don’t bother learning that one, old buddy. I can’t explain how to use it. You’ll be shooting blanks.”
“Shooting blanks. Now, that makes more sense.”
Kamil suddenly remembers Sybil mentioning that she had just missed Bernie when she first arrived in Istanbul. Thinking Bernie might have crossed paths with the murdered woman at the embassy, he asks, “Did you know her?”
Bernie looks startled. “Who?”
“Hannah Simmons.”
Bernie looks at the raki glass between his fingers as if he hopes to find an answer there. His boyish face looks older when he frowns, Kamil observes. His skin is thick, like that of an animal. It bends rather than creases. His face will have few wrinkles in old age, he thinks, but deep lines.
“No.” Bernie says finally, avoiding Kamil’s eyes.
Kamil lifts the cigarette holder to his lips, draws deeply, and waits.
After a moment, Bernie asks with what Kamil judges a shade too much enthusiasm, “So what do you make of it?”
Kamil ponders how much to reveal. “I don’t know. The dead woman, Mary Dixon, apparently was friendly with a Muslim girl that lives in the same house at Chamyeri where the other body was found eight years ago. The house belongs to a well-known scholar. The girl is his niece. Odd, isn’t it? Both murdered women were English governesses in the imperial harem.” He shrugs. “It’s probably a coincidence.”
Kamil frowns at his own admission. He doesn’t believe in coincidences.
“The girl, Jaanan Hanoum,” he adds, “was a child at the time of the first murder. She’s in France now.”
“What about the scholar?”
“It’s impossible. He’s one of the most respected religious men in the empire. I simply can’t imagine him having anything to do with an Englishwoman, much less with killing her. He has no connection with the foreign community and he’s not involved with any particular faction in the palace. He keeps his distance from the power struggles. He doesn’t have anything to gain by them. He is head of a powerful Sufi order. His position is unassailable because it’s based on his reputation and on an influential circle of relations and friends. His family consists of famous poets, jurists, philosophers, and teachers. He’s also independently wealthy. Why would he kill young Englishwomen? No, my friend, I think we must look elsewhere.”
Bernie takes another sip of raki followed by a water chaser, then leans back and folds his hands across his stomach.
“I brought the pendant along,” Kamil says. He takes the handkerchief with the jewelry from his jacket pocket and spreads it out on the table. “I thought since you know so many languages, you might have have some idea what these lines mean.” He opens the pendant and holds it out to Bernie. “Is it some kind of writing?”
Bernie takes the small silver globe. It rests on his palm, lobes open, like a fat insect.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he exclaims under his breath. Freckles stand out on his blanched face like liver spots.
“What is it?” Kamil’s senses become alert for nuance.
Bernie doesn’t answer. He tilts the open silver shell toward the light and peers into it with great concentration. Kamil becomes aware of the clink of glasses and low murmur of male voices around them, the musk of tobacco smoke. The cigarettes burn down in the ashtray. Finally, Bernie closes the pendant and strokes it with his finger gently as a lover. When he looks up, he seems startled to see Kamil sitting opposite him. The surprise in his eyes is replaced by a look of consternation. He seems to be struggling with something.
He turns the pendant, examining the surface, then holds it to the light and squints to see inside again. Finally, he places it gently on the table between them. He takes a deep breath.
“It’s Chinese.”
“Chinese?” Kamil is taken aback. “Are you certain?”
“Of course. I read it fluently.”
Kamil looks at him curiously. “It’s an amazing coincidence that you should be here to decipher it for me.”
He studies the markings for a moment as if he can decipher them himself. He is thinking, however, about Bernie’s reaction.
“What does it say?”
“The two characters on the pendant stand for ‘brush’ and ‘bowstring.’”
“What?” Kamil is flabbergasted. “What does it mean? Does it mean anything at all?”
“It refers to a Chinese poem, ‘On Seeing an Early Frost.’” He recites:
In autumn wind the road is hard,
Streams fill with red leaves.
For crows what is left but stony soil and barren hills?
I can endure, a withered pine
clinging to a cliff edge,
Or set out on the road brocaded by frost.
Your brush is the bowstring that brings the wild goose down.
“You know it by heart.”
Bernie attempts to look modest. “I know a few of them. This is a poem by Chao-lin Ch’un, a concubine to a Manchu prince about a hundred years ago. Apparently, she and the prince shared a love of poetry and calligraphy. It’s said she was his political advisor, which didn’t endear her to the rest of the family. She collected art objects too, a fantastic collection, apparently. Some European travelers wrote about it. She must have been some lady.”
“What happened to her?”
“When the prince died, his son by an earlier marriage inherited his title and he kicked her out.”
“Would she have returned to her family?”
“No, women like that usually choose to become nuns-Buddhist or Taoist nuns. It gives them a lot more freedom and respect than chasing back to their parents, assuming they’d even take them back. It’s a life of contemplation, not very comfortable, but a lot of people find it rewarding. I sometimes wonder whether I wouldn’t like to try it myself.”
“I can see why it would be attractive.”
“You? Really?” He regards Kamil curiously. “I never figured you for the introspective sort. Somehow I can’t see you spending hours reflecting on the transience of plum blossoms.”
Kamil laughs. “You’d be surprised.”