Topkapi (17 page)

I was sweating so much by this time that my fingers kept slipping on the screwdriver. In fact, I did what I had been trying hard to avoid doing and scratched the leather; but it couldn’t be helped. I rubbed some spit on the place and hoped for the best. The Opel was parked about a dozen yards away and I could see the men in it watching me. They probably thought I’d gone mad.

When the last screw was in place, I put the screw-driver back in my bag and went inside again to the Air France counter. The plane was just landing. I found a porter, gave him five lira, and told him about Mr. Miller. Then I went to the men’s room and tried to stop myself from sweating by running cold water over my wrists. It helped a little. I cleaned myself up and went back to the café.

“The passengers are beginning to come through now, Miss Lipp.”

She picked up her bag. “Take care of the check, will you, Arthur?”

It took me a minute or two to get the waiter’s attention, so I missed the meeting between Miss Lipp and Mr. Miller. They were already on the way out to the car when I saw them. The porter was carrying two pieces of luggage, one suitcase and one smaller bag. I went ahead and got the luggage compartment open.

Mr. Miller was about sixty with a long neck and nose, lined grey cheeks, and a bald head with brown blotches on the skin. The backs of his hands had blotches, too. He was very thin and his light tussore suit flapped as he walked as if it had been made for someone with more flesh to cover. He had rimless glasses, pale lips, a toothy smile, and that fixed stare ahead which says: “You’ll have to get out of my way, I’m afraid, because I haven’t the time to get out of yours.”

As they came up to the car Miss Lipp said: “This is Arthur Simpson, who’s driving for us, Leo.”

Before I could even say “good afternoon” he had handed me the raincoat he had been carrying over his arm. “Good, good,” he said, and climbed into the back seat. She smiled slightly as she got in after him, though not at me, to herself.

The coat smelled of lavender water. I put it with the luggage, tipped the porter again, and got into the driver’s seat.

“To the villa, Miss Lipp?” I asked.

“Yes, Arthur.”

“Wait a minute.” It was Miller. “Where is my coat?”

“With your luggage, sir.”

“It will get dirty in there. It should be on a seat in here.”

“Yes, sir.”

I got out again and retrieved the coat.

“What a fuss you make, Leo,” I heard her say. “The car’s quite clean.”

“The baggage in there is not clean. It has been in the belly of a plane with other baggage. It has been on the floor and table of the customs place. It has been handled by the man who searched it, handled again by the porter. Nothing is clean.” His accent had no American inflections, and he couldn’t pronounce his
th’s
. I thought he might be French.

I draped the coat over the back of the seat in front of him. “Will that be all right, sir?”

“Yes, of course,” he said impatiently.

That type is always the same.
They
make the difficulties and then behave as if
you’re
the one who’s being the nuisance.

“Let’s go, Arthur,” said Miss Lipp. Her tone was noncommittal. I couldn’t tell whether she found him tiresome or not. I watched them in the driving mirror.

As soon as we were clear of the airport, he settled back and looked her over in a fatherly way.

“Well, my dear, you’re looking healthy. How are Karl and Giulio?”

“Karl’s fine. Giulio we haven’t seen yet. He’s with the boat. Karl was thinking of going over there tomorrow.”

“Have you anything planned for then?”

“We thought you might like to do a little sightseeing. That is unless you’re tired.”

“You are more considerate than a daughter, my dear.” The teeth leered at her and the pale eyes behind the rimless glasses flickered towards my back.

I had already realized that this was a conversation conducted solely for my benefit, but now I saw her face stiffen. She knew that I was listening hard and was afraid that he was overdoing it.

“You must persuade Arthur to show you around the Seraglio Palace,” she said. “He is quite an authority on it. Isn’t that right, Arthur?”

That was as good as telling me that the old fool would believe any cock-and-bull story I cared to tell him. On the other hand, it must be telling him something, too; perhaps warning him that the driver wasn’t such a fool as he looked. I had to be careful.

“I would be happy to show Mr. Miller what there is to see,” I said.

“Well, we must certainly think about that,” he replied; “certainly, we must think about it.”

He glanced at her to see if he had said the right thing. A sentence of my father’s came into my mind. “One moment they’re all full of piss and wind and the next moment...” At that point he would make a raspberry sound with his tongue. Vulgar, of course, but there was never any doubt about the kind of man he meant.

Mr. Miller kept quiet after that. Once or twice she pointed out places of interest, in the manner of a hostess with a newly arrived guest; but the only thing he asked about was the tap water at the villa. Was it safe to drink or was there bottled water available? There was bottled water, she told him. He nodded, as if that had confirmed his worst fears; and said that he had brought plenty of Entero Vioform for intestinal prophylaxis.

We reached the villa a little after five. Miss Lipp told me to sound the horn as I went up the drive.

The reception committee consisted of Harper and Fischer. Hovering in the background, ready to carry luggage, was an old man wearing an apron whom I took to be Hamul, the resident caretaker.

Tufan had said that Fischer was the lessee of the villa but there was no doubt who was the real host there. All Fischer received from the incoming guest was a nod of recognition. Harper got a smile and an “Ah, my dear Karl.” They shook hands with businesslike cordiality, and then Harper, Miller, and Miss Lipp went straight into the house. To Fischer were left the menial tasks of telling Hamul where Miller’s bags were to go, and of showing me where to put the car and where I was to sleep.

At the back of the villa there was a walled stable yard. Part of the stabling had been converted into a garage with room for two cars. It was empty except for a Lambretta motor scooter.

“The Lambretta belongs to the cook,” Fischer said; “see that he does not steal gasoline from the car.”

I followed him across the yard to the rear entrance of the house.

Inside, I had a brief glimpse of the polished wood flooring of a passage beyond the small tiled hallway, before he led the way up a narrow staircase to the top floor. All too obviously we were in the old servants’ quarters. There were six small attic cubicles with bare wood floors, bare wood partition walls, and a single skylight in the roof for all of them. The sanitary arrangements consisted of an earthenware sink with a water tap on the wall at the head of the stairs. It was stifling hot under the low roof and there were dust and cobwebs everywhere. Two of the cubicles showed signs of having been swept out recently. Each contained an iron bedstead with a mattress and grey blankets. In one, there was a battered composition-leather suitcase. Fischer showed me to the other.

“You will sleep here,” he said. “The chef has the next bed. You will eat your meals with him in the kitchen.”

“Where is the toilet?”

“There is a
pissoir
across the yard in the stables.”

“And the bathroom?”

He waved his hand towards the sink. He was watching my face and enjoying himself just a bit too obviously. I guessed that this had been his own wonderful idea of a punishment for the crime of calling him a servant, and that Harper probably did not know of it. In any case, I had to protest. Without some privacy, especially at night, I could neither use the radio nor write reports.

I had put my bag down on the floor to rest my arm. Now I picked it up and started to walk back the way we had come.

“Where are you going?”

“To tell Mr. Harper that I’m not sleeping here.”

“Why not? If it is good enough for the chef it is good enough for you, a driver.”

“It will not be good enough for Miss Lipp if I smell because I am unable to take a bath.”

“What did you expect - the royal apartment?”

“I can still find a hotel room in Sariyer. Or you can get another driver.”

I felt fairly safe in saying that. If he were to call my bluff I could always back down; but I thought it more likely that I had already called his. The very fact that he was arguing with me suggested weakness.

He glared at me for a moment, then walked to the stairs.

“Put the car away,” he said. “It will be decided later what is to be done with you.”

I followed him down the stairs. At the foot of them, he turned off left into the house. I went out to the yard, left my bag in the garage, and walked back to the car. When I had put it away, I went into the house and set about finding the kitchen. It wasn’t difficult. The passage which I had glimpsed from the back entrance ran along the whole length of the house, with a servants’ stairway leading to the bedroom floor, on the right, a series of doors which presumably gave the servants access to the various reception rooms in front. There was a smell of garlic-laden cooking. I followed the smell.

The kitchen was a big stone-floored room on the left of the passage. It had an old charcoal range along the rear wall with three battered flues over it, and a heavy pinewood table with benches in the middle. The table was cluttered with cooking debris and bottles, and scarred from years of use as a chopping block. Empty butcher’s hooks hung from the beams. There was a barrel on a trestle, and beside it a sinister-looking zinc icebox. A doorway to one side gave on to what appeared to be a scullery. A short man in a dirty blue denim smock stood by the range stirring an iron pot. This was Geven, the cook. As I came in he looked up and stared.

He was a dark, moon-faced, middle-aged man with an upturned nose and large nostrils. The mouth was wide and full with a lower lip that quivered much of the time as if he were on the verge of tears. The thick, narrow chest merged into a high paunch. He had a three-day growth of beard, which was hardly surprising in view of the fact that he had nowhere to shave.

I remembered that he was a Cypriot and spoke to him in English. “Good evening. I am the chauffeur, Simpson. Mr. Geven?”

“Geven, yes.” He stopped stirring and we shook hands. His hands were filthy and it occurred to me that Mr. Miller was probably going to need his Entero Vioform. “A drink, eh?” he said.

“Thanks.”

He pulled a glass out of a bowl of dirty water by the sink, shook it once, and poured some
konyak
from an already opened bottle on the table. He also refilled his own half-empty glass, which was conveniently to hand.

“Here’s cheers!” he said, and swallowed thirstily. A sentence of Tufan’s came into my mind - ”He gets drunk and attacks people.” I had not thought to ask what sort of people he usually attacked, the person with whom he was drinking or some casual bystander.

“Are you British?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“How you know I speak English?”

An awkward question. “I didn’t know, but I don’t speak Turkish.”

He nodded, apparently satisfied. “You worked for these people before?”

“A little. I drove the car from Athens. Normally, I work there with my own car.”

“Driving tourists?”

“Yes.”

“Are these people tourists?” His tone was heavily ironical.

“I don’t know. They say so.”

“Ah!” He winked knowingly and went back to his stirring again. “Are you by the week?”

“Paid you mean? Yes.”

“You had some money from them?”

“For the trip from Athens.”

“Who paid? The Fischer man?”

“The Harper man. You don’t think they really are tourists?”

He made a face and rocked his head from side to side as if the question were too silly to need an answer.

“What are they, then?”

He shrugged. “Spies, Russia spies. Everyone know - Hamul and his wife, the fishermen down below, everyone. You want something to eat?”

“That smells good.”

“It
is
good. It is for us. Hamul’s wife cooks for him in their room before they come to wait table in the dining room. Then, I cook for the spies. Maybe, if I feel like it, I give them what is left after we eat, but the best is for us. Get two dishes, from the shelf there.”

It was a chicken and vegetable soup and was the first thing I had eaten with any pleasure for days. Of course, I knew that I would have trouble with the garlic later; but with my stomach knotted up by nerves the way it was, I would have had trouble with anything. Geven did not eat much. He went on drinking brandy; but he smiled approvingly when I took a second helping of the soup.

“Always I like the British,” he said. “Even when you are backing the Greeks in Cyprus against us, I like the British. It is good you are here. A man does not like drinking alone. We can take a bottle upstairs with us every night.” He smiled wetly at the prospect.

I returned the smile. It was not the moment, I felt, to tell him that I hoped not to be sharing the servants’ quarters with him.

And then Fischer had to come in.

He looked at the brandy bottle disapprovingly, and then at me. “I will show you your room,” he said.

Geven held up an unsteadily protesting hand. “
Effendi
, let him finish his dinner. I will show him where to sleep.”

It was Fischer’s opportunity. “Ah no, chef,” he said; “he thinks himself too good to sleep with you.” He nodded to me. “Come.”

Geven’s lower lip quivered so violently that I was sure he was about to burst into tears; but his hand also went to the bottle as if he were about to throw it at me. It was possible, I thought, that he might be going to do both things.

I whispered hurriedly:. “Harper’s orders, nothing to do with me,” and got out of the room as quickly as I could.

Fischer was already at the staircase in the passage.

“You will use these stairs,” he said; “not those in the front of the house.”