The Garden-House of Suliman the Red
We reached Rustchuk on January 10th, but by no means landed on that
day. Something had gone wrong with the unloading arrangements, or more
likely with the railway behind them, and we were kept swinging all day
well out in the turbid river. On the top of this Captain Schenk got an
ague, and by that evening was a blue and shivering wreck. He had done
me well, and I reckoned I would stand by him. So I got his ship’s
papers, and the manifests of cargo, and undertook to see to the
trans-shipment. It wasn’t the first time I had tackled that kind of
business, and I hadn’t much to learn about steam cranes. I told him I
was going on to Constantinople and would take Peter with me, and he was
agreeable. He would have to wait at Rustchuk to get his return cargo,
and could easily inspan a fresh engineer.
I worked about the hardest twenty-four hours of my life getting the
stuff ashore. The landing officer was a Bulgarian, quite a competent
man if he could have made the railways give him the trucks he needed.
There was a collection of hungry German transport officers always
putting in their oars, and being infernally insolent to everybody. I
took the high and mighty line with them; and, as I had the Bulgarian
commandant on my side, after about two hours’ blasphemy got them
quieted.
But the big trouble came the next morning when I had got nearly all the
stuff aboard the trucks.
A young officer in what I took to be a Turkish uniform rode up with an
aide-de-camp. I noticed the German guards saluting him, so I judged he
was rather a swell. He came up to me and asked me very civilly in
German for the way-bills. I gave him them and he looked carefully
through them, marking certain items with a blue pencil. Then he coolly
handed them to his aide-de-camp and spoke to him in Turkish.
“Look here, I want these back,” I said. “I can’t do without them, and
we’ve no time to waste.”
“Presently,” he said, smiling, and went off.
I said nothing, reflecting that the stuff was for the Turks and they
naturally had to have some say in its handling. The loading was
practically finished when my gentleman returned. He handed me a neatly
typed new set of way-bills. One glance at them showed that some of the
big items had been left out.
“Here, this won’t do,” I cried. “Give me back the right set. This
thing’s no good to me.”
For answer he winked gently, smiled like a dusky seraph, and held out
his hand. In it I saw a roll of money.
“For yourself,” he said. “It is the usual custom.”
It was the first time anyone had ever tried to bribe me, and it made me
boil up like a geyser. I saw his game clearly enough. Turkey would pay
for the lot to Germany: probably had already paid the bill: but she
would pay double for the things not on the way-bills, and pay to this
fellow and his friends. This struck me as rather steep even for
Oriental methods of doing business.
“Now look here, Sir,” I said, “I don’t stir from this place till I get
the correct way-bills. If you won’t give me them, I will have every
item out of the trucks and make a new list. But a correct list I have,
or the stuff stays here till Doomsday.”
He was a slim, foppish fellow, and he looked more puzzled than angry.
“I offer you enough,” he said, again stretching out his hand.
At that I fairly roared. “If you try to bribe me, you infernal little
haberdasher, I’ll have you off that horse and chuck you in the river.”
He no longer misunderstood me. He began to curse and threaten, but I
cut him short.
“Come along to the commandant, my boy,” I said, and I marched away,
tearing up his typewritten sheets as I went and strewing them behind me
like a paper chase.
We had a fine old racket in the commandant’s office. I said it was my
business, as representing the German Government, to see the stuff
delivered to the consignee at Constantinople ship-shape and
Bristol-fashion. I told him it wasn’t my habit to proceed with cooked
documents. He couldn’t but agree with me, but there was that wrathful
Oriental with his face as fixed as a Buddha.
“I am sorry, Rasta Bey,” he said; “but this man is in the right.”
“I have authority from the Committee to receive the stores,” he said
sullenly.
“Those are not my instructions,” was the answer. “They are consigned to
the Artillery commandant at Chataldja, General von Oesterzee.”
The man shrugged his shoulders. “Very well. I will have a word to say
to General von Oesterzee, and many to this fellow who flouts the
Committee.” And he strode away like an impudent boy.
The harassed commandant grinned. “You’ve offended his Lordship, and he
is a bad enemy. All those damned Comitadjis are. You would be well
advised not to go on to Constantinople.”
“And have that blighter in the red hat loot the trucks on the road? No,
thank you. I am going to see them safe at Chataldja, or whatever they
call the artillery depot.”
I said a good deal more, but that is an abbreviated translation of my
remarks. My word for “blighter” was _trottel_, but I used some other
expressions which would have ravished my young Turk friend to hear.
Looking back, it seems pretty ridiculous to have made all this fuss
about guns which were going to be used against my own people. But I
didn’t see that at the time. My professional pride was up in arms, and
I couldn’t bear to have a hand in a crooked deal.
“Well, I advise you to go armed,” said the commandant. “You will have a
guard for the trucks, of course, and I will pick you good men. They may
hold you up all the same. I can’t help you once you are past the
frontier, but I’ll send a wire to Oesterzee and he’ll make trouble if
anything goes wrong. I still think you would have been wiser to humour
Rasta Bey.”
As I was leaving he gave me a telegram. “Here’s a wire for your Captain
Schenk.” I slipped the envelope in my pocket and went out.
Schenk was pretty sick, so I left a note for him. At one o’clock I got
the train started, with a couple of German Landwehr in each truck and
Peter and I in a horse-box. Presently I remembered Schenk’s telegram,
which still reposed in my pocket. I took it out and opened it, meaning
to wire it from the first station we stopped at. But I changed my mind
when I read it. It was from some official at Regensburg, asking him to
put under arrest and send back by the first boat a man called Brandt,
who was believed to have come aboard at Absthafen on the 30th of
December.
I whistled and showed it to Peter. The sooner we were at Constantinople
the better, and I prayed we would get there before the fellow who sent
this wire repeated it and got the commandant to send on the message and
have us held up at Chataldja. For my back had fairly got stiffened
about these munitions, and I was going to take any risk to see them
safely delivered to their proper owner. Peter couldn’t understand me at
all. He still hankered after a grand destruction of the lot somewhere
down the railway. But then, this wasn’t the line of Peter’s profession,
and his pride was not at stake. We had a mortally slow journey. It was
bad enough in Bulgaria, but when we crossed the frontier at a place
called Mustafa Pasha we struck the real supineness of the East. Happily
I found a German officer there who had some notion of hustling, and,
after all, it was his interest to get the stuff moved. It was the
morning of the 16th, after Peter and I had been living like pigs on
black bread and condemned tin stuff, that we came in sight of a blue
sea on our right hand and knew we couldn’t be very far from the end.
It was jolly near the end in another sense. We stopped at a station and
were stretching our legs on the platform when I saw a familiar figure
approaching. It was Rasta, with half a dozen Turkish gendarmes.
I called Peter, and we clambered into the truck next our horse-box. I
had been half expecting some move like this and had made a plan.
The Turk swaggered up and addressed us. “You can get back to Rustchuk,”
he said. “I take over from you here. Hand me the papers.”
“Is this Chataldja?” I asked innocently.
“It is the end of your affair,” he said haughtily. “Quick, or it will
be the worse for you.”
“Now, look here, my son,” I said; “you’re a kid and know nothing. I
hand over to General von Oesterzee and to no one else.”
“You are in Turkey,” he cried, “and will obey the Turkish Government.”
“I’ll obey the Government right enough,” I said; “but if you’re the
Government I could make a better one with a bib and a rattle.”
He said something to his men, who unslung their rifles.
“Please don’t begin shooting,” I said. “There are twelve armed guards
in this train who will take their orders from me. Besides, I and my
friend can shoot a bit.”
“Fool!” he cried, getting very angry. “I can order up a regiment in
five minutes.”
“Maybe you can,” I said; “but observe the situation. I am sitting on
enough toluol to blow up this countryside. If you dare to come aboard I
will shoot you. If you call in your regiment I will tell you what I’ll
do. I’ll fire this stuff, and I reckon they’ll be picking up the bits
of you and your regiment off the Gallipoli Peninsula.”
He had put up a bluff—a poor one—and I had called it. He saw I meant
what I said, and became silken.
“Good-bye, sir,” he said. “You have had a fair chance and rejected it.
We shall meet again soon, and you will be sorry for your insolence.”
He strutted away and it was all I could do to keep from running after
him. I wanted to lay him over my knee and spank him.
We got safely to Chataldja, and were received by von Oesterzee like
long-lost brothers. He was the regular gunner-officer, not thinking
about anything except his guns and shells. I had to wait about three
hours while he was checking the stuff with the invoices, and then he
gave me a receipt which I still possess. I told him about Rasta, and he
agreed that I had done right. It didn’t make him as mad as I expected,
because, you see, he got his stuff safe in any case. It was only that
the wretched Turks had to pay twice for the lot of it.
He gave Peter and me luncheon, and was altogether very civil and
inclined to talk about the war. I would have liked to hear what he had
to say, for it would have been something to get the inside view of
Germany’s Eastern campaign, but I did not dare to wait. Any moment
there might arrive an incriminating wire from Rustchuk. Finally he lent
us a car to take us the few miles to the city.
So it came about that at five past three on the 16th day of January,
with only the clothes we stood up in, Peter and I entered
Constantinople.
I was in considerable spirits, for I had got the final lap successfully
over, and I was looking forward madly to meeting my friends; but, all
the same, the first sight was a mighty disappointment. I don’t quite
know what I had expected—a sort of fairyland Eastern city, all white
marble and blue water, and stately Turks in surplices, and veiled
houris, and roses and nightingales, and some sort of string band
discoursing sweet music. I had forgotten that winter is pretty much the
same everywhere. It was a drizzling day, with a south-east wind
blowing, and the streets were long troughs of mud. The first part I
struck looked like a dingy colonial suburb—wooden houses and corrugated
iron roofs, and endless dirty, sallow children. There was a cemetery, I
remember, with Turks’ caps stuck at the head of each grave. Then we got
into narrow steep streets which descended to a kind of big canal. I saw
what I took to be mosques and minarets, and they were about as
impressive as factory chimneys. By and by we crossed a bridge, and paid
a penny for the privilege. If I had known it was the famous Golden Horn
I would have looked at it with more interest, but I saw nothing save a
lot of moth-eaten barges and some queer little boats like gondolas.
Then we came into busier streets, where ramshackle cabs drawn by lean
horses spluttered through the mud. I saw one old fellow who looked like
my notion of a Turk, but most of the population had the appearance of
London old-clothes men. All but the soldiers, Turk and German, who
seemed well-set-up fellows.
Peter had paddled along at my side like a faithful dog, not saying a
word, but clearly not approving of this wet and dirty metropolis.
“Do you know that we are being followed, Cornelis?” he said suddenly,
“ever since we came into this evil-smelling dorp.”
Peter was infallible in a thing like that. The news scared me badly,
for I feared that the telegram had come to Chataldja. Then I thought it
couldn’t be that, for if von Oesterzee had wanted me he wouldn’t have
taken the trouble to stalk me. It was more likely my friend Rasta.
I found the ferry of Ratchik by asking a soldier and a German sailor
there told me where the Kurdish Bazaar was. He pointed up a steep
street which ran past a high block of warehouses with every window
broken. Sandy had said the left-hand side coming down, so it must be
the right-hand side going up. We plunged into it, and it was the
filthiest place of all. The wind whistled up it and stirred the
garbage. It seemed densely inhabited, for at all the doors there were
groups of people squatting, with their heads covered, though scarcely a
window showed in the blank walls.
The street corkscrewed endlessly. Sometimes it seemed to stop; then it
found a hole in the opposing masonry and edged its way in. Often it was
almost pitch dark; then would come a greyish twilight where it opened
out to the width of a decent lane. To find a house in that murk was no
easy job, and by the time we had gone a quarter of a mile I began to
fear we had missed it. It was no good asking any of the crowd we met.
They didn’t look as if they understood any civilized tongue.
At last we stumbled on it—a tumble-down coffee house, with A. Kuprasso
above the door in queer amateur lettering. There was a lamp burning
inside, and two or three men smoking at small wooden tables.
We ordered coffee, thick black stuff like treacle, which Peter
anathematized. A negro brought it, and I told him in German I wanted to
speak to Mr Kuprasso. He paid no attention, so I shouted louder at him,
and the noise brought a man out of the back parts.
He was a fat, oldish fellow with a long nose, very like the Greek
traders you see on the Zanzibar coast. I beckoned to him and he waddled
forward, smiling oilily. Then I asked him what he would take, and he
replied, in very halting German, that he would have a sirop.
“You are Mr Kuprasso,” I said. “I wanted to show this place to my
friend. He has heard of your garden-house and the fun there.”
“The Signor is mistaken. I have no garden-house.”
“Rot,” I said; “I’ve been here before, my boy. I recall your shanty at
the back and many merry nights there. What was it you called it? Oh, I
remember—the Garden-House of Suliman the Red.”
He put his finger to his lip and looked incredibly sly. “The Signor
remembers that. But that was in the old happy days before war came. The
place is long since shut. The people here are too poor to dance and
sing.”
“All the same I would like to have another look at it,” I said, and I
slipped an English sovereign into his hand.
He glanced at it in surprise and his manner changed. “The Signor is a
Prince, and I will do his will.” He clapped his hands and the negro
appeared, and at his nod took his place behind a little side-counter.
“Follow me,” he said, and led us through a long, noisome passage, which
was pitch dark and very unevenly paved. Then he unlocked a door and
with a swirl the wind caught it and blew it back on us.
We were looking into a mean little yard, with on one side a high
curving wall, evidently of great age, with bushes growing in the cracks
of it. Some scraggy myrtles stood in broken pots, and nettles
flourished in a corner. At one end was a wooden building like a
dissenting chapel, but painted a dingy scarlet. Its windows and
skylights were black with dirt, and its door, tied up with rope,
flapped in the wind.
“Behold the Pavilion,” Kuprasso said proudly.
“That is the old place,” I observed with feeling. “What times I’ve seen
there! Tell me, Mr Kuprasso, do you ever open it now?”
He put his thick lips to my ear.
“If the Signor will be silent I will tell him. It is sometimes open—not
often. Men must amuse themselves even in war. Some of the German
officers come here for their pleasure, and but last week we had the
ballet of Mademoiselle Cici. The police approve—but not often, for this
is no time for too much gaiety. I will tell you a secret. Tomorrow
afternoon there will be dancing—wonderful dancing! Only a few of my
patrons know. Who, think you, will be here?”
He bent his head closer and said in a whisper—
“The Compagnie des Heures Roses.”
“Oh, indeed,” I said with a proper tone of respect, though I hadn’t a
notion what he meant.
“Will the Signor wish to come?”
“Sure,” I said. “Both of us. We’re all for the rosy hours.”
“Then the fourth hour after midday. Walk straight through the cafe and
one will be there to unlock the door. You are new-comers here? Take the
advice of Angelo Kuprasso and avoid the streets after nightfall.
Stamboul is no safe place nowadays for quiet men.” I asked him to name
a hotel, and he rattled off a list from which I chose one that sounded
modest and in keeping with our get-up. It was not far off, only a
hundred yards to the right at the top of the hill.
When we left his door the night had begun to drop. We hadn’t gone
twenty yards before Peter drew very near to me and kept turning his
head like a hunted stag.
“We are being followed close, Cornelis,” he said calmly.
Another ten yards and we were at a cross-roads, where a little _place_
faced a biggish mosque. I could see in the waning light a crowd of
people who seemed to be moving towards us. I heard a high-pitched voice
cry out a jabber of excited words, and it seemed to me that I had heard
the voice before.