Jenny White - The Sultan's seal

He removes his clothing and opens the armoire. Suddenly he hears the door behind him open. He swings around and grabs the peshtemal to cover himself. Bernie is standing in the doorway, the thatch of hair around his organ glowing brilliant red against his lean white thighs. Kamil grabs him and pulls him into the cubicle, his face pulsing with shame at what the men outside must be thinking. He snatches the peshtemal from Bernie’s hands and orders him roughly, “Put this on.” In that first moment of looking against his will, Kamil has seen something even worse-Bernie is uncircumcised.

Bernie wraps the peshtemal awkwardly around his waist so that it trails on the floor.

“Like this.” Kamil indicates his own neatly tucked towel.

“Right.” Bernie reties his. “You looked like you’d seen a ghost when I walked in.” He flushes slightly. “You know, I’ve never been to one of these shindigs before. It’s a bath, right? So, people do take their clothes off.”

“It isn’t proper to show oneself between the waist and knees.”

“Oh.” Bernie looks puzzled. “You know, there are all these engravings and paintings of the Turkish bath that show women in their birthday suits lounging around.”

“Birthday suits?”

“Naked as the day is long.”

“Men have different responsibilities.” Kamil is displeased with his answer. He really doesn’t know why the rules differ for men. He finds the usual answers unscientific: that it’s traditional; that women are like children, irresponsible. He decides for honesty. “I simply don’t know, Bernie. That’s the way it is in the men’s baths. Keep your towel on at all times.”

“Will do, partner.”

Kamil braces himself to leave the cubicle. He imagines what the audience in the cooling-off room will think when two men emerge from the same cubicle. Such a thing isn’t uncommon, nor is it frowned upon, but Kamil doesn’t want it associated with him. Not because of any principle against male intimacy, but because it rends Kamil’s precious privacy. He prefers to be the watcher, not the watched.

Sitting in the bar of the Hotel Luxembourg, Kamil wonders at the rapidity with which one’s attitude toward life can alter. Instead of poring over his books and orchids, here he is meeting a friend. After their inauspicious beginning in the hamam, Bernie had followed Kamil’s lead assiduously. The giavour’s red hair occasioned curious, if veiled looks, but nothing else had gone awry. Bernie quailed under the forceful blows of Niko’s massive palms and bone-cracking massage. After only an hour in the steam-filled inner room, ladling hot water over his head with his hamam bowl, Bernie complained of shortness of breath and they retired, each to his own cubicle, in the cooling-off room. Refreshed by cool sherbet and a nap, they parted amicably at the door and summoned separate carriages to take them home. A few days later, Bernie sent a message challenging Kamil to a game of billiards.

Bernie is lifting his raki glass to him.

“Lousy game, friend. To your health, though.”

Kamil lowers the lip of his glass so that it meets Bernie’s below the rim. Bernie counters by lowering his. Laughing, they finally clink their glasses near the carpet, with Bernie winning the contest of showing respect.

“I should never teach you our customs. You then use your knowledge to shame me. You are the guest here and should be honored more.”

“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.