Uncle Edgar, having done his duty by carving up the joint, signaled to the maid to pass along the fruits of his labor. “Do you allow this revolutionary Young Turk movement any credence? The Young Turks seem to turn up everywhere with their talk of restoring a constitutional government in Turkey. I don’t suppose the Foreign Office can be too happy with a lot of rebels like that whipping up nationalism among the Armenians and Greeks and Arabs?”
Father appeared reluctant to answer the question. He held up his wineglass. “An excellent claret,” he said.
At once my ears pricked up. You could tell as much from what Father didn’t or wouldn’t say as you could from what he did say. I suspected he was hiding something and was glad to guess that there might be secrets traveling with us.
Teddy also noticed Father’s evasiveness. “I suppose England’s Foreign Office has its own scheme for the Turkish Empire and is not anxious to deal with revolutionaries.”
Father, who was fond of Teddy, now gave him a cold stare. “Not that I am aware, Teddy, but I am sure the Foreign Office would be glad to take your advice on the matter.”
Teddy flushed and bent over his plate, stung by Father’s rebuke, for he meant to be amusing, not malicious.
Always uncomfortable with disagreements, Aunt Harriet broke in. “I’m more annoyed than I can say. I’ve gone to no end of trouble to give you a good dinner and I’ve not heard one word of appreciation, only nasty quarrels about countries that can’t possibly have anything to do with us.”
Father regretted his show of temper. “You must share part of the blame, Harriet,” he said, putting his hand over hers. “You spoil us by giving us such good dinners that we have learned to take them for granted, but you have outdone yourself this evening.”
No further reference was made to the trip until we were leaving, when Father said, “By the way, Edgar, thank you for arranging the letter of credit for the trip with your bank.”
“Pleased to do it. But doesn’t the Foreign Office usually take care of those things for you?”
“This is to be a pleasure trip. My Foreign Office business ends in Beirut.”
I said nothing. But if this was to be simply a pleasure trip, why had Father had to discuss with the Foreign Office my accompanying him? And when had Father ever done something for pleasure? I thought with a thrill that the trip was becoming more mysterious.
There were farewells with warm embraces all around. Teddy whispered in my ear, “I hope you learn belly dancing,” and Aunt Harriet took me aside and also whispered in my ear, “I envy you your great adventure, Julia. I only wish I had seen more of the world. Will you write and tell me all about it?”
At Durham Place, as I started for the stairway, anxious to do my last-minute packing, Father called me into his study. He took a cigar from a silver humidor and carefully clipped off the tip. Slowly he drew off the cigar’s red-and-gold paper ring. When I was a child, he saved the paper rings for me and I paraded about with them on all ten fingers. In those days, I remember, before Mother’s death, how jolly and amused Father had been by my childish whims.
After a careful lighting of his cigar Father said, “It is awkward to tell you this, Julia, for I know you will immediately jump to the most foolish conclusions, but for the purposes of the trip I am simply to be a solicitor on vacation. The Foreign Office is not to be mentioned. There is nothing deceitful in that. You know I read law before going into the government. I will be doing some looking and listening, and I can’t be effective if I am associated with Britain’s Foreign Office. What it comes down to is that, at the moment, the Turks don’t altogether trust the British. In fact, the sultan is a bit rabid in his suspicions.”
I caught my breath and felt my eyes grow large. Father must have noticed, for he quickly added, “None of that need concern you, Julia. This is to be regarded as a pleasure trip insofar as jogging about the desert can be called a pleasure. We are to present ourselves as looking at ruins—and we will see some quite impressive ones. Now, no questions. You will have plenty to do to get yourself in order.”
The sense of danger I felt was pleasant, as if I had been given an exciting book to read. That I would be living in the book made it all the more interesting. As I mounted the stairway, I told myself that after the adventure of the trip, I was sure to be a different person. But what kind of person?
III
THE ORIENT EXPRESS
AN ESCORT OF SEAGULLS accompanied the boat train that carried us from England to the port of Calais in France. It seemed odd to be traveling over the water on a train, and even odder to look out the window in Calais and find all the signs in French. At the train station, when I saw the Simplon Orient Express with its sign, CALAIS–ISTANBUL, my excitement grew, for I would soon be on the train, and the name “Istanbul” reached farther than my imagination.
Father and I each had our own compartment on the Orient Express. I looked about at the comfortable couch that would be my bed, the shiny metal sink that neatly folded away, and most of all the window, where every second I was being carried farther and farther from home. At last, trying to be sociable, I tore myself from my little room to visit Father, who briefly looked up from his papers and said, “Don’t feel you have to keep me company.” I slunk back to my room a bit less pleased.
Later, when Father called for me on the way to the dining car, he was apologetic. “I didn’t mean to send you off like that, but the trip is becoming something of a nuisance. The Foreign Office is rather unrealistic in what they expect.”
So our mysterious trip was an official one. “What are they asking of you?” I thought the question was appropriate, and I longed to be taken into the place my father inhabited, a place of important affairs. Perhaps such knowledge would open a door for me into the real world.
Father’s response was brisk. “Fortunately, that need not concern you.” The door slammed shut.
Away from home, with no rules to fall back on, I felt uncertain and out of place beside my father, who appeared perfectly sure of himself, ordering in French and choosing a wine with conviction. I watched the waiter become respectful and helpful in proportion to the number of my father’s demands. I, too, would have liked to occasionally make demands, but it wasn’t in me. My instincts were to give the least trouble I could.
We had our dinner at the dining car’s second sitting, so it was already dark. From the windows I watched the lights of the small French villages rush by like distant meteors. A couple at the table across the aisle from us leaned toward each other, their faces flushed from the rosy light of the pink-shaded lamps. Their food meant nothing to them; it was a distraction. I wondered if I would ever find someone to look at me the way that man looked at that woman. If this journey was taking me to a faraway place, would it take me that far?
Father followed my covert glance. “That kind of attachment may look very pretty, but it’s not the kind of thing you build a life on. I wonder at their putting on that show in public.” Father’s voice was bitter. I supposed it was because with Mother gone, that part of his life was over, and I felt sorry for him.
The dining car was filled, and halfway through dinner the maître d’hôtel asked if we minded sharing our table. Not waiting for an answer, he seated a gentleman next to Father. The man looked to be in his fifties. He was large and pudgy, with white curls that twisted about his plump face like whipped cream decorating a pudding. A pince-nez, dangling from a cord affixed to his shirt, had left a red mark on the bridge of his nose. I noticed an odd gold ring on one finger and remembered my father once saying a gentleman should wear no jewelry.
“I apologize for intruding,” the man said. “I know it can be a great nuisance to have a stranger watch you consume every bite of food and listen to every word you say. It either paralyzes one or makes one say something insensé.”
From my small store of French I remembered that insensé means “senseless.”
“I’m Paul Louvois, but you need pay me no attention.” His English had
a strong French inflection, and he had dropped the French word into his English sentence like a man selecting a delectable bonbon from a box of stale English toffees.
Father gave Monsieur Louvois a tight smile and, after introducing us in the briefest of ways, went back to eating his fish.
Louvois appeared challenged by Father’s reserve. Rather like an impudent child who longs for attention, he said, “That salmon looks très savoureux. I mean to eat well, for there will be nothing like this offered in the middle of the Syrian desert, where I am headed.”
I could not suppress my excitement. “The Syrian desert! We’re going there too.”
Father looked at me. Only someone as attuned to his displeasure as I was would have noticed his irritation. I fell into an embarrassed silence.
It was too late. Monsieur Louvois’s interest in us had been piqued. He had seen Father’s reluctance to discuss our destination. Mischievously, he asked, “Whatever will you do there?” His voice but not his eyes were innocent.
Father said rather dryly, “Surely you can’t be surprised that, should a trip through the Syrian desert recommend itself to you, it might also appear attractive to someone else?”
If Monsieur Louvois was aware that his question had not been answered, he gave no indication and appeared, instead, forthcoming. “I do not like the desert,” he said. “It is hot and uncomfortable, but to find what I am looking for, that is where I must go. I deal in antiquities.”
“You say you ‘deal.’ For whom do you buy?” It was uncharacteristic of Father to ask so direct a question. He must have been uncertain of Monsieur Louvois, even suspicious—it was not only that the man was French, but he was also talkative. Father did not approve of talkative people. I had often heard him say, “The more words, the fewer thoughts.”
“I have clients all over the world.” Monsieur Louvois waved an expansive hand. “Galleries, museums, private collectors. People long to go backward in their imagination as well as forward. We don’t wish simply to exist forever in some future; we wish to have existed in some distant past. It is satisfying to have a small memento of that past, and so they buy from me. I want to get to Palmyra and Antioch—all ruins now, déplorable, of course, but they’re digging up some things of interest.”
Only a quick glance from my father kept me from saying that Monsieur Louvois had named the very places we were visiting. The Frenchman continued to talk about what he hoped to find. “One has to move quickly these days; the archaeologists are as common as sand flies.”
Father said, “I rather thought it was a good idea to leave discovery to the archaeologists. I believe there is a preferred way to go about excavating these things so that they are not damaged. At any rate, I understand the Turks don’t allow antiquities to be taken out of their country.”
I wondered at Father’s criticism and why he had taken such a dislike to Monsieur Louvois.
“I look upon the Ottoman Empire as a usurper,” the Frenchman said. “I suppose you British would not agree, but we French think of many of the countries under the Ottoman Empire as a part of France’s little family. With that point of view, what one finds belongs not to the Turks but to my country. The only problem, and it is not a small one, is that the Turks keep the traveler under their thumb. I have been told I cannot travel on my own. They want foreigners to follow about after one of their guides like a mother duck with a row of ducklings.”
The waiter appeared, and I chose chocolate cake for dessert while Father stopped at coffee. Monsieur Louvois ordered his salmon. I waited for my father to tell him that he had met with the same rule against traveling in Syria without a Turkish guide and that we had joined a tour going to the very places Monsieur Louvois had mentioned. Instead, Father turned quite decidedly back to his dinner, forcing an end to the conversation; and before I had finished my cake, Father was excusing us.
“Why didn’t you tell Monsieur Louvois about our tour?” I asked as we walked back to our compartments. The cake had been very good, and I was sorry to leave it.
“That man doesn’t need to be encouraged. He acts as though we were both sitting in his lap. With someone like that one needs to create a little breathing space.” Father appeared more than irritated. He seemed worried, and I wondered what there could possibly be about the amusing Frenchman that might trouble my father.
I awakened the next morning with delight, possessive of my little train compartment, which was all mine in a way no other room I could recall was. From its shelter I looked out my window and watched the snow-covered peaks of the Alps shift from blue to pink to gold with the rising sun. The train began its steep descent through a tunnel of green forests into Italy. I was distressed that all these wonders were sliding by so quickly. For a moment I thought of reaching for pencil and paper, but the idea of capturing in some clumsy sketch what I was seeing was as foolish as the thought of getting a lion by the tail. Besides, I was hungry.
When I stopped for my father on my way to breakfast, I found him in pajamas and robe. An empty cup and a plate of crusts stood on his nightstand. He explained, “I have some papers to read, so I’ve had my tea and toast brought to the compartment. You don’t mind breakfasting alone.” It was not a question.
I went on to the dining car both nervous and pleased at my independence. “What is that lake?” I asked my waiter. He was young with pale skin and feathery blond hair.
“We are passing through Stresa, mademoiselle,” he answered, very conscious of maintaining his dignity. “That is the Lago Maggiore.”
In a strange coincidence Monsieur Louvois entered the dining car moments after I did. He hovered beside my table. “Bonjour. May I join you?”
I would have preferred eating alone, for I did not want to miss a moment of the pictures that were speeding by the window. Unfortunately, I was not practiced enough to make a graceful escape. “Yes, of course,” I said, but I could put no warmth in my voice.
“Surely you aren’t going to be as réservé as your father. Perhaps you will tell me where you are going.”
I saw no reason to evade the simple truth; besides, I found a wicked pleasure in talking with this man when I was sure Father would not have approved. “My father has some business in Syria.”
So charming was Monsieur Louvois, and so flattered was I by his interest in me, that by the time breakfast was over, I had told him where I lived in London, how my mother had died, that my father was a solicitor (at least in that I was prudent), our entire itinerary, and the name of our travel agent.
“A solicitor in the middle of the Syrian desert,” Louvois said. “That is most interesting. Perhaps I should contact the representative of Watson and Sons in Beirut and see about joining your excursion; it appears to suit my needs exactly. Of course, your father will not be happy to see me. He has put me down as a bore. But tell me, what is your interest in the desert? Perhaps you have some obsession I haven’t guessed: a penchant for studying rare eagles or a desire to brush up on an obscure Arabic dialect?” He gave me a coy look across our now-empty plates.
“I sketch a little,” I said, at once on the defensive.
“I must warn you that in art, my standards are sévère. I don’t like clever amateurs. I prefer people with no ability at all to amateurs who require you to spend time deciding whether there is anything in their work to which you must pay attention.”
I was hurt. “You needn’t give my work a thought. It requires no notice.”
“The other thing with amateurs is their braggart’s modesty.” He laughed, and seeing that he was teasing me, I joined in the laughter.
Anxious for something to focus on besides myself, I said, “Tell me about your gold ring.”
“It is an Egyptian scarab seal inscribed with the name of Thutmose III. The scarab is the dung beetle, you know. It lays its egg in a ball of dung, which it pulls up hills so that the ball may tumble down to find a resting place. The Egyptians linked the scarab to the sun god and the ball of dung to the sun’s orb. I have always had
a great rapport with a people who can couple something so earthy with something so heavenly. Now I must send you back to your father to plead my cause, for I won’t have him deny me something as pleasurable as your company.”
Guiltily I made my way back to my compartment, sure that Monsieur Louvois had been quizzing me for some purpose of his own and that foolishly I had given too much away.
IV
ISTANBUL
AT THE VENICE STATION I pressed my nose against the train window, but I was disappointed to find I could see nothing of the fabled city built upon the water. As we passed into Serbia, it was growing dark.
At dinner Monsieur Louvois was sitting at the opposite end of the dining car. Apart from a pleasant nod to us, he made no effort to renew our acquaintance.
“Thank the Lord for small favors,” Father said.
I thought with a pang of guilt that if Paul Louvois had reason to be curious about us, I had already given him all he information he needed.
Father was in a talkative mood and chatted on about a trip he had taken to Arabia years before. It was a lively story involving camels and disguises, and I found myself laughing out loud at Father’s descriptions. I could not remember another time when my father had made so great an attempt to entertain me. His efforts made me feel quite grown-up.
Over coffee Father spoiled it all by asking, “Well, Julia, what do you hope to get out of this trip?” Immediately I was transported to those terrible hours when my nanny brought me down to have tea with my father. Father would quiz me. “What did you and Nanny do today, Julia?”
“We went to the zoo in Regent’s Park.”
“And what did you see?”
“We saw a tiger.”
“Do tigers have stripes or spots?”
A moment before, the tiger was vivid and alive in my mind; now I was uncertain. There followed questions about where tigers came from and what they ate, and little by little my tiger dwindled and faded and finally died altogether. Each time I went down for tea, I promised myself that I would not reveal what I had seen, so I might keep it for myself, but each afternoon I would be intimidated by my father into blurting out answers to his questions, so now when my father asked me what I hoped to get from the trip, I found myself answering the first thing that came into my mind. “I hoped it would be a chance to get to know you better, Father.” The answer surprised me as much as it appeared to alarm him.