The Revolt of Aphrodite (15 page)

In those disproportionately huge hands he held a piece of string with which he had constructed a cat’s cradle. As we looked seriously at each other I received a sudden flock of different impressions—almost like a shower of arrows. I felt at once a feeling of being in the presence of someone of great virtue, of psychic goodness, if you like; simultaneously, like an electric current passing in me, I felt as if the contents of my mind had been examined and sifted, and as if all my pockets had been turned out. It is a disquieting effect that one
sometimes
runs into with a medium. Side by side with this however I had an impression of a naive and almost foolish man, half crippled by nervousness. He was wearing, goodness only knows why, the
traditional
three-quarter frock coat and the Angora bonnet of wool—articles of attire which, on such a night, must have been a torture to support. Perhaps it was his desire to show some little formality
towards
a stranger? I don’t know. I stared at that strange face with its
swirling peruke of hair, and the tiny piratical rings in the ear lobes, and felt unaccountably reassured. When he stood up one saw that, though thick set, he was on the short side; but he had extremely long arms and huge hands. The hand that grasped mine was moist with anxiety—or perhaps just heat generated by the absurd clothes? He wore a couple of ribbons—a Légion d’Honneur and something else I could not identify. He said nothing; we just shook hands. He motioned me to an empty chair. Then he threw back his head and gave a laugh which might have seemed sinister had I not already taken such a liking to him. His canines were tipped with gold points which gave his smile a somewhat bloodthirsty effect. But his teeth were beautiful and regular and his lips were red. He was of a swarthy cast of countenance—a “smoked” complexion: and while he seemed a hale middle-aged man there was quite a touch of grey in his hair. “Well” he said. “So at last you have come to us.” I excused myself for my dilatory habits and the delay I had caused. “I know, but you have other things to do, and are not interested in making money.” I assured him that he was in error. “So Graphos says” he said,
dropping
the string into the wastepaper basket and moodily cracking a knuckle. He seemed plunged in thought for a moment; then his face changed expression. He became benign. “You see he was right, Charlock; there was no time to be lost, there never is in matters of this kind. You were distributing these things free, were you not? Well, I had one copied, and took our drawings and articles on it for a patent. In your name, of course. That means that whatever happens —you may not want to let us handle it—the invention is yours and can’t be stolen.” He waited a long time, staring sorrowfully at me. “My brother Chewlian did it for you. He runs the European side of the firm in London. He is an Oxford man, Chewlian.” A haunted, wistful look came into his eye. “I have never been further than Smyrna, you see. Though one day….” I thanked him most warmly for this kindly intervention on my behalf; he knew full well that I would not know how to go about patenting such an object. He got up to adjust a wavering gas-jet, saying as he did so: “I am very glad you are pleased. Now at the same time Chewlian drew up a contract offer for you to study. Benedicta brought it with her, you will have it tonight. Myself I think it errs on the side of over-generosity, but
that is Chewlian all over!” He sighed in admiration at his brother. An expression almost maudlin in its affection crossed his face. “He behaves like a Prince not a businessman.” Then all at once he grew tense and serious and said: “That remark has made you suspicious. Why?” It was perfectly true; and he had read my mind most accurately. I said lamely: “I was thinking how incompetent I am to understand business documents, and hoping you would give me time to think them out.” He laughed again and slapped his knee as if at an excellent joke. “But of course you shall. Anyway you have already taken your precautions haven’t you?” I saw from this that he knew I had decided to take Vibart’s advice before signing
anything
.

I nodded. “Come, we will have a drink on it” he said cheerfully, going to the corner of the room where decanters and plates
glimmered
. He poured me a glass of fiery mastika and placed a cheese pie beside me on the arm of the chair. “But there is something much bigger than this one small thing. Chewlian says we should try and enter into association with you to handle all your inventions. You have others in mind, have you not?” He got up impatiently and strode up and down the room again, this time in a fit of vexation,
saying
: “There! once again I have made you suspicious. I am going too fast as always.” He spoke a curious English with a strong Smyrna intonation, slurring the words as if he had picked them up by ear and had never seen them written. “No” I said. “It is just that the idea is completely novel to me.”

He snorted and said, “My brother would have put it to you much more … gentlemanly I suppose. He says I am always like a carpet seller.” He looked rueful and absurd in his black curate’s tail coat. “Anyway he has sent us a draft paper—articles of association—for you to look at.” He fingered the dimple in his chin for a moment and stared at me narrowly. “No” he said at last. “It is not suspicion so much. You are slow. To understand.”

“I admit it.”

“Never mind. When you understand you can see if you want to join us or not. The terms are generous, and nobody yet has been dissatisfied with the firm.”

I tried my hardest not to think of Caradoc and his strictures lest
my thoughts be read by this disarming yet determined little man. I nodded, attempting an air of sageness. He crossed to the door and called “Benedicta” once, on a sharp hawk-like note which was at once humble and imperious. Then he came back and stood in the centre of the room staring down at his own shoes. I looked about me studying the jumble of furniture and decoration which gave it the air of a store-room. An expensive chronometer on one wall. A case of chased silver duelling pistols. Then I identified the slightly sickly smell of rotting meat. In one corner on a tall perch slept a falcon in its soft velvet snood. From time to time it stirred and very faintly tinkled the small bells it wore. While we were waiting thus the door opened and a dark girl appeared, holding a briefcase which she placed in an armchair. I thought she bore a resemblance to the girl who had watched the launch come in to shore from the grove of trees up the hill. She stopped just outside the radius of the lamplight and said, in somewhat insolent fashion: “Why are you dressed up like that?” The note of icy contempt withered Jocas Pehlevi;
he shrivelled to almost half his size, ducking and joining his hands almost in a gesture of supplication. “For him” he said. “For Mr. Charlock.” She turned a glance of indifferent appraisal upon me, echoing my bow with a curt nod. It was a cold, handsome face, framed in a sheeny mass of dark hair twisted up loosely into a chignon. A high white forehead conferred a sort of serenity upon it; but when she closed her eyes, which she did in turning her head from one person to another, one could see at once how her death-mask would look. The lips were full and fine, but most of their expressions hovered between disdain and contempt. She was, then, as imperious as only a rich man’s daughter dares to be: and noting this I conceived a sort of instant dislike for her which rendered her interesting.

Her entry had reduced Jocas to the dimensions of a small medieval playing-card figure; he scratched his head through the woollen bonnet. “Go and change at once” she said sternly reducing his
self-esteem
still further; he slipped away with an ingratiating bow in my direction, leaving us face to face. If she had moved forward a pace I would have been able to identify the peculiar blue of her eyes. But half in shadow like this they glowed with a sullen blue magnetism. She looked at me as if she had the greatest difficulty in mustering any
interest in me or my doings. Then in a low voice she excused herself and turned aside to the dark corner of the room where the great falcon sat in the manner of a lectern-eagle. She was wearing a long, stained garment of some sort of leather or velveteen. Now she pulled on an extra sleeve and worked her hand into a gauntlet. Somewhere in the shadows there came the dying fluttering of some small bird, a quail perhaps, and I saw with disgust that she was busy breaking up the body with her fingers into small tid-bits. She suddenly began uttering a curious bubbling, crooning sound, uttering it over and over again as she drew a long plume softly over the legs of the
peregrine
; then the gloved hand teased the great scissor beak with the bleeding meat and the bird snapped and gorged. As it ate she
reiterated
the single word in the same crooning bubbling fashion. Slowly, with the greatest circumspection, she coaxed the falcon on to her wrist and turned to face me, smiling now. “He is the latest to be taken” she said. “I don’t know as yet whether I shall succeed in bringing him to the lure. We shall see. Do you hunt? My father was a great falconer. But it takes an age to break them in.”

At this moment the tall doors at the end of the room opened and I saw a long dinner table laid upon a wide balcony. Jocas had already arrived upon the scene after a change of clothes. He wore now a comfortable Russian shirt of some soft silky material. His mane of hair was brushed back above his ears. “Lights” called Benedicta sharply, and at once the servants diminished the amount of light by blowing out half the candles. This left a small lighted area at one end, with two places set. “Don’t move please.” Still softly crooning the girl advanced to the balcony and crossed it towards the shadowy end of the table where she was to sit throughout the meal, eating nothing herself, but from time to time feeding the falcon. Jocas and I sat at the other end of the table, served by the expressionless eunuch. Out of the corner of his eye the little man kept glancing at the girl with a professional curiosity. For her part she now removed the easy fitting rufter-hood for brief intervals, and then slipped it back into place. “It needs the patience of the devil” said Jocas. “But Benedicta is good. If you like we can take you for a day’s sport—francolin and woodcock. Eh Benedicta?” But the girl sat absorbed before her plateful of bleeding odds and ends and did not deign to look up or
answer. Presently she rose—it was part of the routine it seemed—and announced that she must “walk” the falcon; bidding us
goodnight
she walked softly down the marble staircase into the garden and disappeared. It seemed to me that Jocas addressed himself to his dinner with a sort of relief after this—and he also became more voluble.

“Merlin was a great one for peregrines” he said. “And we have all taken after him—even down to small things. By the way, have you got the papers? In that briefcase Benedicta brought.” He jumped up and fetched the article. “Here they are, you see, the two schemes set out separately. One is for the hearing device only; the other is a more detailed scheme—to manage all your work. You would become part of the firm, on a fixed retainer, with royalties etc.” He replaced the documents carefully in the briefcase and patted it. “At your leisure: the patent is safe—only your signature is needed. But first you must see your advisers. Tomorrow I will send you back to Polis for the day, yes?”

“Tell me about the firm” I said, and Jocas twinkled with pride and pleasure, in a manner which reminded me a little of Sacrapant. “Well,” he said “where to begin? Let me see.”

“Begin with Merlin.”

“Very well. Merlin was what you would call a merchant prince, a self-made prince. He arrived in Stamboul perhaps in the eighties of the last century on board a British yacht. He was a cabin boy. He deserted his ship, settled in the capital and began business. Much later when it had grown almost too big to handle he found myself and my brother and offered to let us become associates. How I bless the day.” He joined his huge hands together and, laughing out loud, squeezed them until the knuckle joints cracked. “He was really a genius—you know all through the period of Abdul Hamid he never failed in his negotiations, he always got his firmans through. You know of course that Abdul Hamid was mad—mad with a fear of assassination. He lived up in the Yildiz palace in absolute terror. Loaded pistols lay in every corner, on every table. If startled by a sudden move he would open fire. Once his little niece ran into the room while he was dozing and he shot her. Merlin used to take special precautions when he went to see this madman—to walk slowly, talk
slowly, sit quietly. He also worked out elaborate flatteries. Sent him a
life-size sculpture of himself in butter, in ice-cream. Sent him clocks of extraordinary workmanship specially designed in Zürich. It was he too who achieved other objectives for the firm by skilfully planted rumours. Abdul Hamid was very superstitious and had his horoscope made afresh each day. The firm suborned the court astrologer. In this way Merlin became in a sense the most important man in Turkey. But he was as wise as he was foreseeing. All the time he was giving money to the revolutionaries, to the Young Turks. And then the fleet—it was allowed to lie there and rot in harbour because Merlin told Hamid a pack of rumours about the use the allies would make of it—playing on his fear and credulity. Why, I have seen those battleships rusting there all my life. They grow flowers on the decks. So gradually, even during the bad period, the firm grew and grew. Now of course times have changed, it is easier for us. Then when Merlin … left us, we two brothers took over the responsibility for Benedicta. We became her uncles.” He laughed very heartily, wiping his eye in his sleeve. “And his wife?” I asked. All of a sudden Jocas looked nonplussed. His face grew serious. He thrust out his bearded chin and spread his hands in a gesture of
inadequacy
—as if he were powerless to answer the question
satisfactorily
. “There were many compromises made” he said, a trifle defensively. “There had to be. Merlin, for example, adopted the Muslim faith when he was in his fifties. Inevitably there were rumours of his wives and … ladies; but there was nothing very
concise
, very clear. This place was like a little walled city, and when you live
à
la
turque
the secrets of the harem are guarded from strangers. Benedicta was brought up in the harem, with foreign governesses first: then Switzerland for some years, that is why all her languages are so perfect.” “But she is English?” Jocas nodded his head rapidly. “Yes. Yes. But I have never discussed with her, nor has Chewlian. Merlin never spoke with us about his private things. He was a very secretive man. I know that Chewlian also knows nothing because once he asked me.”