The Oracle of Stamboul Read online

  Her father’s stories told of wise men, travelers, merchants, and fools. They were stories of Bucharest, Paris, Vienna, and all the other faraway cities he had visited as a young man. Cities with names like Lanzhou, Andizhan, Persepolis, and Samarkand; cities with hanging gardens, towers as tall as the sky, and more people than you could ever imagine; cities with tigers lurking in the shadows and elephants tromping down the middle of the street; cities as old as the mountains, teeming with magic both good and evil. He had been all over the world, her father had, and seen more places than he could count, but his favorite city of all was that ancient hinge of continents, home of Io and Justinian, envy of Constantine and Selim, the pearl of the Bosporus, that dazzling jewel at the center of the Ottoman Empire. His favorite city was Stamboul and all his best stories took place there.

  Apart from her father’s stories, Eleonora’s first memory was of an incident that took place just after her fourth birthday. It was on that halcyon blue afternoon in early fall that she first realized the power of her concentration. Barefoot and dressed in a simple red cotton smock, Eleonora sat cross-legged under the tomato vines, digging a hole in the wet, clumpy earth with her fingers. There was a warm breeze blowing up the hill, the hoopoes were chattering among themselves, and from the back steps one could see all the way to Navodari. She had just scooped up a shiny gray pill bug and was watching it unfurl itself in her palm when she heard a rustling at the edge of the garden. It was a deer, tentatively poking its head out from the forest. She watched it take a step forward into the onion patch, then half a step back. To see a deer in the garden was not unusual, but there was something about this particular young buck that caught her attention. After observing the animal through the tomato vines for a few moments, she decided to investigate.

  Brushing the pill bug back into its hole, Eleonora stood and crossed the garden. The deer did not move, though it seemed anxious being in such close proximity to a human. Standing at the edge of the onion patch, less than an arm’s length away from it, she could feel its warm, sour breath on her forehead. She looked up into the polished granite of its eyes and brought her hand, slowly, to rest at the base of its neck. Still it did not move. Beyond the quivering of its nostrils and the soft rise of her own breath, both stood completely still.

  Then, in one motion, the buck stepped back and lowered its antlers, lifting its left leg like a soldier presenting his weapon for inspection. Eleonora immediately saw the cause of the animal’s distress and she knew what she would need to do. Just above the hoof lay a barb, a twisted piece of metal buried deep in the flesh. It looked as if it had snapped off of a fence, or perhaps some hunting implement. Brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes, Eleonora took the injured limb in her hand and inspected the wound. The veins around it were pulsing frantically, and a white froth bubbled up against the metal. The deer’s leg hair bristled as she brought her free hand toward it. She blinked and, with one swift tug, removed the barb.

  Watching the deer bound off through the forest, Eleonora quivered at the thought of what she had just done. The hoopoes above her broke into a chorus of throaty chirps, and the very crunch of the underbrush sounded like subtle applause. Her ovation, however, was not long to last. A moment later, she was caught up by her armpits and carried to the bathroom.

  “You must never,” Ruxandra said, pulling her frock up over her head, “ever do that again. If this gets out—”

  She stood hunched over herself, shivering in the middle of the bathroom while Ruxandra prepared a washcloth. Eleonora had never seen her aunt like this. She seemed shaken, scared almost.

  “What do you mean, Ruxandra? What did I do?”

  In lieu of a reply, Ruxandra began scrubbing vigorously with a soapy washcloth, first the arms then the hands, especially between the fingers.

  “Please,” Eleonora whined. “Tell me what I did wrong. I can’t be better if I don’t know what I did.”

  Ruxandra stopped scrubbing.

  “It’s not normal to cavort with animals. We have enough trouble as it is, being Jews and your father constantly shipping carpets to Stamboul. The last thing we need is to attract more attention.”

  “But it was hurt,” Eleonora said. “There was a piece of metal in its leg. It wanted me to help.”

  Ruxandra dunked the washcloth in cold water and began scrubbing again.

  “I don’t care what you think that deer wanted. I don’t ever want to see you doing anything like that again. And I don’t want you to tell anyone about this, not even your father. Do you understand me?”

  Eleonora knew better than to protest. When the bath was over, she told Ruxandra she was very sorry for what she had done and would never cavort with animals again. That, she supposed, was the end of that. And, in a way, she was right. Her aunt never mentioned the incident again. Even so, Eleonora couldn’t help but think there was a connection between the deer and Ruxandra’s announcement the next morning at breakfast. It was high time, she declared, that Eleonora begin to learn the art of housekeeping. These skills would serve her well for the rest of her life. They would help her attract a good husband. And, what was more, empty hands invite the devil. Although Yakob expressed some reservations about the plan, he deferred his authority on the matter to Ruxandra, who assured him that Eleonora was more than up to the task. With that, it was decided.

  “The first lesson,” Ruxandra proclaimed, “will be sewing.”

  She reached into the front pocket of her apron and produced one of Yakob’s old handkerchiefs, along with a needle and a spool of thread.

  “Do you see this?”

  She leaned over Eleonora’s shoulder and pointed at the blue fishbone stitching along the outside edge of the fabric. Eleonora nodded. She propped her elbows on the table and let her chin rest in the cradle of her palms.

  “Repeat the same pattern along the inside. If you have any questions, I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  Eleonora looked down at the needle and thread, coiled like a snake in the middle of the fabric. This was not going to be fun at all, but there wasn’t much she could do to protest. Taking the needle between her thumb and forefinger, she stared through its eye. Squinting slightly, she pinched the end of the thread between the thumb and forefinger of her other hand. With a fierce concentration, she slipped it through. Once the needle was threaded, sewing was easy. Careful to avoid poking herself, she made her first stitch and pulled the thread tight. Then she made another, and another, and another. The pattern wasn’t particularly difficult, just the same two lines over and over, repeating around the edge of the fabric. It was boring work, but not especially difficult.

  Such was Eleonora’s life in the months following the incident with the deer: boring, but not especially difficult. She helped Ruxandra around the house, sewing and peeling vegetables, dusting and cleaning the front walk. On Wednesdays they scrubbed the floors, Sundays they did the wash, and every Monday they walked down the hill to market, where Ruxandra initiated her into the fine art of bargaining. Housekeeping was not quite as bad as Eleonora had expected and, no matter what she had to do during the morning and afternoon, she could always look forward to six o’clock, that delightful hour when, without fail, she heard the clank of the door handle and the squeak of her father stepping over the threshold. Running to him, she would bury her face in his jacket and inhale the dusty smell of wool mixed with hibiscus tea. In these moments, she knew everything would be fine.

  It was in the spring before Eleonora’s sixth birthday, by which time she had learned the basics of housekeeping tolerably well, that Ruxandra suggested they might proceed with her academic education. Men these days wanted a woman who could read and write and figure, a woman who could do the books and order from catalogs. Yakob saw nothing wrong in expanding the scope of his daughter’s instruction, and so it was decided. They began that very morning with the first reader of Ruxandra’s youth, a small green book in surprisingly good condition. By lunch, Eleonora had mastered the alphabet, the special shape of each
letter and the various sounds it could make in different situations. By dinner, she was piecing together sentences. And that evening, she memorized her first lesson, a discourse on the habits of crocodiles. With her back to the fireplace and her hands clasped in front of her, Eleonora repeated the lesson in its entirety for her father and Ruxandra.

  “Was that correct?”

  She looked to her aunt, who had been following along in the reader.

  “Yes,” she said, her face the pale color of astonishment. “Precisely.”

  Yakob removed the pipe from his mouth and examined his daughter curiously, as if he had met her somewhere a long time ago and was trying to remember her name.

  “When did you learn that lesson, Ellie?”

  “Just today, Tata, after dinner.”

  “And you learned that entire passage just now?”

  She looked from her father to Ruxandra and back again.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  The fire felt warm on the backs of her legs as she waited for a response.

  “No, Ellie. Not at all. It’s just that we were surprised, or at least I was, by how quickly you were able to learn your lesson.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” said Ruxandra, flipping through the reader. “This should have taken at least a month, perhaps two weeks for a particularly bright child.”

  Yakob drew deeply on his pipe, then turned back to his daughter.

  “Tell us how you did it, Ellie.”

  She didn’t know what to say. How could she explain something so simple? She had learned the letters and, with a bit of concentration, there it was.

  “Once I learned the sound each letter makes,” she said, taking a small step away from the fire, which had become quite uncomfortably hot, “once I knew that, I looked at the words and heard them in my head. And once I could hear the words in my head, it was easy to memorize the lesson.”

  That night Eleonora overheard a quarrel between her father and her aunt. She couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying, but between the pounding of fists and slamming of doors, she understood that her father was in favor of continuing her education while Ruxandra was opposed. The next morning at breakfast, her father announced that he would be taking over her academic education while Ruxandra would remain in charge of the domestic instruction. Buttering a piece of bread, Ruxandra nodded tersely. From that morning forward, Eleonora’s days were split between these two spheres. Her mornings and afternoons continued to be occupied by needles and thread, feather dusters, and scrub brushes, while her evenings were kept solely for academic pursuits.

  For the first few weeks, Eleonora’s academic education consisted primarily of memorizing lessons from the reader, descriptions of famous capitals, discourses on the habits of various animals, and short stories about children tempted by mischief. However, it soon became clear that she was ready for more advanced reading materials. At that point, they moved on to the bookcase in the corner of the living room, an imposing elm structure ornamented on either side by Chinese ceramic cats. The shelves of the bookcase were stuffed with a cascading multiplicity of books, bound in red, blue, green, and black leather: tall, skinny, plump, short, and embossed with all manner of writing on the spine. Over the next six months, Eleonora read through much of the bottom shelf, sitting in her father’s lap while he smoked his pipe and occasionally ran a hand through her hair. She read Aesop’s Fables, Gulliver’s Travels, The Three Musketeers, Robinson Crusoe, and The Arabian Nights. In addition to her reading, Eleonora’s father also introduced her to writing, arithmetic, and the rudiments of Turkish, each of which subjects she mastered with astonishing ease.

  In deference to what her father called Ruxandra’s concerns, Eleonora was told repeatedly that she should not, under any circumstances, speak of her lessons outside the home. She did not understand the purpose of this rule, but she followed it nonetheless, having learned long ago that it was best to abide Ruxandra’s concerns, whether they made sense or not. In any case, it was not a particularly difficult rule to follow. Aside from holidays and the occasional picnic, Eleonora only left the house once a week, when Ruxandra brought her shopping at the Monday market.

  One such Monday, in the early spring of Eleonora’s seventh year, Eleonora and Ruxandra were finishing up their shopping at Mr. Seydamet’s dry goods store when it began to rain, a sudden and heavy storm that drove the entire market toward cover. The fruit vendors found refuge in a small arcade off the town square. The hoopoes that had followed Eleonora down the hill huddled under the awning of the Constanta Hotel. And a number of people crowded into Mr. Seydamet’s shop, pretending to consider this jar of beets or that tin of roe. The store smelled like a forest of wet pants, and the empty barrel next to the door brimmed with umbrellas.

  “Good afternoon,” Ruxandra announced, pulling Eleonora up to the counter. Craning her neck, Ruxandra caught the eye of a young clerk named Laurentiu.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Cohen,” he said and, bending over the counter, gave Eleonora a hard candy. “And a very good afternoon to you, Miss Cohen.”

  A stringy, mop-haired boy with an easy smile, Laurentiu had worked in Mr. Seydamet’s store for as long as Eleonora could remember. He was a kind soul, though somewhat slow. On more than one occasion, he had wrapped the wrong item into their package and they were forced to walk down the hill again to replace it.

  “We would like one kilogram of kidney beans, two bars of that green soap over there, a kilo of yellow lentils, and,” Ruxandra paused, glancing down at her list, “two spools of thread, a tin of sweetmeats, and a hundred grams of cumin.”

  “Is that all, Mrs. Cohen?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Repeating the list to himself, Laurentiu went about the store, gathering everything Ruxandra had requested, piling it into the cradle of his left arm while he bagged the bulk goods with his right. He returned a few moments later with their package, neatly wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string.

  “Two rubles even.”

  Ruxandra pulled her coin purse out and was counting the money into her hand when Eleonora reached up to tug at the sleeve of her dress.

  “It should be one and a half rubles, Aunt Ruxandra.”

  Pretending not to hear, Ruxandra handed over the coins.

  “Thank you, Laurentiu.”

  “But Aunt Ruxandra,” Eleonora persisted, pulling hard on the sleeve of her dress. “It should only be one and a half.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Ruxandra said, raising her voice. “You think you know the prices better than Laurentiu?”

  Conscious now of the other customers, Ruxandra grabbed hold of Eleonora by the scruff of her dress and began toward the door. They were stopped, however, by a voice from the other counter.

  “How much did you say it should be?”

  It was Mr. Seydamet, a cork-faced Dobrujan who occasionally visited their house to drink tea after dinner with Yakob.

  “How much did you say it should be?” he repeated, bowing graciously in their direction. “We wouldn’t want to charge you the wrong price, Mrs. Cohen.”

  Eleonora felt the grip on her collar relax.

  “Go on,” said Ruxandra, her lips pursed to a hyphen. “Tell him what you said.”

  Eleonora glanced up again at her aunt before she began.

  “It should only be one and a half rubles,” she said, straightening out her dress. “The kidney beans are forty kopek per kilogram, soap is ten a piece, yellow lentils are thirty-five, the thread is two for ten, sweetmeats are fifteen, and a hundred grams of cumin is thirty. That makes one-fifty.”

  Mr. Seydamet took a moment to check the math in his head.

  “She’s right,” he said, addressing the onlookers as much as those involved in the transaction. “It should be one-fifty. Laurentiu, please give Mrs. Cohen her money back.”

  With an apologetic shrug, Laurentiu dug into the register and held a half-ruble coin over the counter, but Ruxandra was already on her way out of the store.
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br />   “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling Eleonora through the crowd. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  It was still raining hard when they left Mr. Seydamet’s store, the sky dark with clouds and the road muddy up to their ankles, but Ruxandra was in no mood to notice the rain. She walked quickly with her head high and her packages tucked under her arm, paying as little heed to the puddles as she did to Eleonora. She didn’t look back once and she didn’t say a word until they arrived home.

  “This is precisely,” she said, slamming the door with such force that the ceramic cats shook in their pedestals, “this is precisely what I said would happen. This is exactly why I said these lessons should be clipped at the bud. Now the whole town will be talking about us. And the last thing we need is to draw more attention to ourselves. The widower and his barren sister-in-law, Jews, doing business with Turks. And now the girl, doing figures in her head, correcting shop boys.”

  “But Aunt Ruxandra, I just thought the money—”

  “The money,” Ruxandra said, snorting a laugh through her nose. “You and your father both with the money. I can tell you one thing, Miss Cohen. Your lessons are over. You broke the rule, the only rule there was and you broke it.”

  “But,” Eleonora objected, her voice straining, “I didn’t break the rule. I didn’t say anything about my lessons.”

  “You broke the rule in both spirit and in letter. Now go to your room and don’t come out until I say you can.”

  When she awoke—who knew how much later—Eleonora was lying on top of her quilt, the pillow pulled over her head and her thumb stuck to the roof of her mouth. It was cold, and the sky outside her window was a steely blue. She felt as if she were in a different world, or at least a different person in the same world. Pulling her head out from under the pillow, she removed her thumb from her mouth and smacked at the paste of dried saliva. She could smell fried potatoes and mince pie. She heard Ruxandra laugh and the sound of chairs scraping against the floor. They were talking, but she couldn’t quite understand what they were saying. In order to hear more clearly, she slid off her bed and put her ear to the door.