A Receipe for Daphne

Teatime

It was friday afternoon, just before teatime and—Fanis hoped—a propitious meeting with Daphne. The sun poked through the acacia leaves and speckled the tables outside Ismail’s Home-cooked Food, the restaurant where Fanis was grabbing a late lunch of eggplant stuffed with suspicious-looking gray meat. Ismail’s was not the type of place to which Fanis would ever take a lady friend. It was a place for being alone. The tables rocked on the uneven sidewalk and the food was indifferent, but occasionally, when Fanis couldn’t be bothered to cook or walk far, he would go there and chat with the pleasant waitress, who always wore hippie-ish strings of beads and a pair of brightly colored pants.

A handsome thirty-something customer took a seat at the next table. He set his mobile phone, a pack of Winston cigarettes, and a Turkish copy of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman on the grubby bamboo placemat and ordered two plates of the day’s special: schnitzel and salad. When a beautiful girl in a revealing tank top approached, bent over to kiss the man, and sat down, Fanis growled, “Bastard.” He hated the envy that had been boiling in him for the past decade, and he hated his failing exterior even more.

Fanis heard a French conversation at a neighboring table. He was surprised he understood after not having used the language in years. A tour guide was telling a Parisian couple that most of the City’s residents had no awareness of Istanbul’s Hellenic past. Fanis knew that the guide was referring to Byzantium rather than to the history of his own lifetime, but he felt that his existence had been conﬁrmed. He stole a glance at the French woman: her backpack rested on her lap as if she were impatient to leave. Fanis wanted to say to her, “I am one of them. One of the last Byzantines.” As he practiced his French in silence, a van with an enormous picture of the prime minister drove by, blasting a campaign theme song—“One More Time”—on a loudspeaker. But Fanis wondered: would this be just one more term for the prime minister, or was he becoming a permanent ﬁxture? By the time he had recovered from the interruption, the French tourists and their guide were almost out of sight.

The waitress in red pants collected Fanis’s plates and delivered a tumbler of lemon juice and a tiny glass of tea. That was what Fanis liked about the place: they remembered that he always ﬁnished his meal with lemon juice for good digestion, and that he chased the lemon juice with tea. The brakes of cars and trucks coming down Sıraselviler Avenue squeaked as he stirred two sugar cubes into the tulip glass. He wasn’t bothered by the car noise: it was mitigated by his deteriorating sense of hearing. What he really hated was the exhaust. It was too bad one couldn’t choose which senses and abilities one lost. Had anyone bothered to ask Fanis, he would have chosen to forgo olfaction and retain erection.

After lunch Fanis went straight to Neighbor’s House, where he hoped to chance upon Julien reading a newspaper or perhaps chatting up some unfortunate young lady. After ﬁnding his friend people-watching at a street-side table, Fanis ordered tea for both and pulled up a chair. The ﬁrst oddball of the evening was a religious type with a black beard dyed red at the tips. He wore a long coat and a black hat wrapped in a green turban, the ends of which hung down his back as the symbol of a completed pilgrimage to Mecca. Was the great work of Atatürk, who had banned religious dress of any kind, unraveling? No. Fanis’s vision was going. Visual impairment was, after all, a classic symptom of cerebral arteriosclerosis. Then the young secularists sitting nearby shook their heads and made clucking sounds of disapproval with their tongues. Fanis felt a measure of relief. His eyes were just ﬁne.

When one of the handsome waiters delivered the teas and a complimentary plate of sesame rings made for the anniversary of the Prophet’s Ascent to Heaven, Julien asked the young man to keep an eye out for a dark beauty. “You’ll spot her immediately,” he said. “If I have to step away for a moment, send her to my table.”

Disregarding his friend’s little show, Fanis looked across the street toward one of the old Rum houses conﬁscated by the government in the sixties. It had since been painted an obnoxious mauve, and air-conditioners had been installed in its oriels. On the ﬁrst ﬂoor was a business sign that read, in edgy purple letters on a black background, “Coiffeur.” When the proprietress opened her windows and leaned out with a cigarette, Julien shouted, “When are you coming down, my pretty one?”

“Later, later!” she returned.

“She has nice tits,” Julien whispered.

“Not bad,” said Fanis, “but too much of a peasant for my taste.”

A fat boy of twelve pedaled his bicycle in their direction. Julien bellowed, “Yusuf!” The boy waved and pedaled past them. Julien called again, “Yusuf! When are you going to bring me what I need? The ladies are asking!”

“Who’s he?” asked Fanis.

“The pharmacist’s son.”

“Is his father good? Accommodating, I mean. I need to get some medication—”

“I thought you were in perfect health.”

“I am. That’s why I asked the doctor for Viagra.”

“I thought they were too good for that at the German Hospital. He gave it to you?”

“Well, no. Which leads me to my next question. Do you know a pharmacist who will sell it without a prescription?”

Julien grinned. “Plenty. But go to Serkan Sözbir on Yeni Yuva Street. Yusuf’s father. Tell him you’re a friend of mine and he’ll set you up.”

“Do you . . . ?”

Julien folded his hands behind his head and leaned back in the canvas chair. “Never needed it, friend.”

Fanis took a miniature pen and pad from his breast pocket and noted the name. “Thanks for the tip. Not that I need it either, but just for the odd occasion when one is feeling out of sorts.”

Ten minutes later Yusuf walked into the tea garden smirking like a fellow twice his age. He tossed a box of condoms into Julien’s lap and strutted back up the street.

“Dirty old man,” said Fanis. “Look at you, corrupting children.”

“Educating children, sir! At least Yusuf won’t knock up his girlfriend at ﬁfteen, all because I set a good example.” Julien shouted his thanks and stuffed the package into one of his Velcro pockets. “I’ll have to buy him some candy.”

“I suppose,” said Fanis, “that you take your diabetes meds regularly, just as the doctor prescribed?”

“Of course,” said Julien. “At our age, you’ve got to do what the doctors say. Otherwise you’re in big trouble.”

Presently Fanis heard the characteristic tic-tac of stilettos on cement. By instinct he knew that an exciting woman was approaching. He looked up. A pair of black eyes were ﬁxed directly on him. Black curls bounced around the woman’s head, like the rubber Afros on the dolls in the nearby toy shop. Hips, breasts, and just the right amount of belly fat jiggled beneath an A-line dress.

Hermes, help me.

The woman quickly transferred her gaze to Julien, kissed him on the cheek, and said in Turkish peppered with French, “If you’d told me that parking was so difﬁcult around here, Professeur, I’d have come by metro instead of borrowing my mom’s car. Mais vraiment, you know I’m not supposed to tire myself.”

“Ma pauvre,” said Julien, offering his chair. He switched to Turkish: “Don’t worry. I’m here now.”

The woman looked remarkably like the siren who had spoken a few words to Fanis outside the Çukurcuma Pharmacy. But, Fanis reasoned, if she knew Greek, Julien would surely have addressed her in that language: speaking Greek was a point of pride with the professeur de musique. Moreover, Fanis had guessed that the woman in the street was in her late thirties. This one seemed more like early forties.

Julien ordered tea and made introductions: “Selin, this is my old friend Fanis. Fanis, the lovely Selin, a former pupil from Saint-Benoit, a graduate of the Conservatoire de Paris, and now a professional violinist. She recently gave up her job at the Vienna Philharmonic to play with the Borusan.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Fanis, shaking Selin’s hand. “I knew that the Borusan Corporation imported BMWs, but I didn’t know that they also imported beautiful violinists.”

Selin smiled. “A pleasure. So you’ve heard of the Borusan Orchestra?”

“I go at least once or twice per season,” said Fanis. “I’ve always loved music. I’m a church cantor.”

Selin took a paper handkerchief from her oversized handbag and wiped the perspiration from her forehead, neck, and chest. On the left side of her neck, just beneath her jaw line, was a purplish discoloration—a hickey, perhaps? Fanis’s eyes wandered downward. On her left breast there was some sort of ﬂoral tattoo. Fanis felt his temperature rise: this one was deﬁnitely a ﬁre sign. He realized he was staring, yet he couldn’t look away. So he said, “What an interesting design.”

“Oh, that. A lotus ﬂower. I had it done when I was in college. I wish I could have it removed, but I’m afraid of the pain.”

The skinny tea-garden cat, as if on cue, rubbed itself against Fanis’s legs. He stood, pretended to shoo it away, and moved his chair a few inches closer to Selin’s. “What does it represent?” he asked.

“The lotus has its roots in the mud of the world and rises through the waters of experience to bloom in enlightenment. Kids’ stuff. My mother cried for days.”

“So you ran out and got another?”

“Two more,” said Selin, with a characteristic Turkish side-nod.

Fanis searched the exposed portion of her right breast, her supple arms, and the ankles around which dangled thin silver anklets. All bare. “Where are they?” he asked.

“Private,” said Selin.

Aman. Mercy. This one’s going to eat me, ﬁnish me off.

The bells of Saint Anthony of Padua began ringing for vespers. Aliki limped into the tea garden, piled her shopping bags on the table, and said in Greek, “At least there are still trees here, even if they aren’t cypresses.”

“You remember my pupil Selin, don’t you, Aliki?” said Julien in Turkish. “She’s looking for a place in the neighborhood. Is there anything for rent on your street?”

“Not that I know of,” said Aliki, smiling to show off her new dental implants. “Where do you live now?”

“With my parents,” said Selin. “In Levent.”

Single, thought Fanis. But that hickey probably means she has a boyfriend. He said, “I’ve always considered attention to one’s aging parents a great virtue. I lived with my mother and took care of her until she died.”

Selin brushed from her lap a fuzzy linden ﬂower just fallen from the tree. “That’s admirable, Mr. Fanis, but I need my independence.”

“You know,” said Fanis, suddenly remembering having seen a For Rent sign in the building opposite his, “I think there’s a garret available in Faik Paşa Street. Number thirty-two. You might want to check it out.”

Selin noted the address on napkin. “Thanks for the tip.”

“In my opinion,” said Aliki, “you should stay with your parents until you marry. So men don’t take advantage of you.”

“I’ve already been married,” said Selin. “That’s the surest way to get a man to take advantage of you.”

Aliki chuckled.

Fanis nodded toward a yellow house that a building crew had been renovating for the past few months. It had rounded oriels, sculpted white molding, a black iron door, and bars on the ground-ﬂoor window. “What about that one?” he said. “If you lived there, you could drink tea with us every day.”

Julien clicked his tongue. “No way. The moans from the cemetery are terrible.”

“There he goes again,” said Fanis. “Those ghosts are a ﬁgment of your imagination, Professeur, stuff for superstitious old people. Nobody would even notice that tiny cemetery if you didn’t keep bringing it up.”

Once again Fanis heard tic-tacking on cement, but this time there was no emotional surge. He raised his gaze and beheld Rea trying out her sparkly new cane. Kosmas, wearing one of the low-end black Armanis they had seen during their shopping trip, was inching along beside her, like a faithful dog. At Rea’s other side was Dimitris Pavlidis, the old politics reporter from the Tribune and one of Fanis’s former schoolmates.

“That’s it, Ritsa,” Dimitris cooed in Greek. “Take it slowly.”

“Were you hoping she’d be here to notice?” said Fanis to Kosmas, as soon as the boy was close enough to hear.

Rea turned sharply to her son and examined him for an instant. Then she took the seat offered by Julien and said, “So that’s why you were so obsessed with the crease in your pants.”

Kosmas dumped the slumbering gray cat from a chair and settled down beside his mother. “Nothing escapes you, Mama.”

Rea switched to Turkish: “Ben malımı bilirim.” I know my goods.

“Don’t worry, son,” said Aliki, scrunching both eyes at Kosmas. “Her aunt told me she’s coming today.”

“Are you dating her?” asked Rea.

“No.” Kosmas held up two ﬁngers and mouthed the word tea, but Emine, the waitress, ignored him.

“Well,” said Rea, recovering a little, “at least Daphne’s one of ours.”

“I probably don’t have a chance, Mama, ours or not,” said Kosmas.

Aliki leaned back in her chair and swung her legs, like a child. “How could any girl not fancy a strong, handsome gentleman like you?”

Rea folded her freshly manicured hands on top of the table. “She’d have to be out of her mind.”

“Selin,” said Fanis, “let me introduce you to Rea, Dimitris, and Kosmas. Friends, I’d like you to meet our star violinist, Selin, who speaks French like a native. She is also an expert in the lotus.” He looked Selin in the eye for a second, wondering if she would realize that he was referring neither to the ﬂower nor to the tattoo, but to one of his favorite Kama Sutra positions. Alas, there was no sign of recognition. Fanis quickly changed tack: “Excuse me, Madame Emine! A second round of tea, please.” Then to Selin, “Yours must be cold by now. A hot tea will cool you off. That’s what the Arabs say, anyway.”

Selin put her hand on Fanis’s forearm for a split second, provoking a tingling sensation that shot all the way to Fanis’s groin. “Thanks, Mr. Fanis,” she said, “but my doctor said only one per day.”

Julien explained, “She recently had an operation to close a hole in her heart.”

“Now that’s the operation I need,” whispered Fanis.

Selin leaned sideways. He could smell a sweet, spicy perfume whose name he could not recall. Her curls brushed the tip of his ear. “I’m warning you,” she said, in a seductive tone, “I’m dangerous. Before men came and went through the hole, but the next one will have to stay.”

For a second Fanis wondered if he should leave Daphne to Kosmas and pursue this feisty one instead. In an attempt to determine her religion, he asked whether her name was the Turkish Selin or the French Céline, which were almost identical in pronunciation, and he received an answer he had not expected: she was not French at all, but a Turkish Jew. Fanis felt a sudden thrill, as if he were standing on the edge of a precipice, looking downward. He had always wanted to have an affair with a Jewish woman. He’d had plenty of Rums, a few Levantines and Armenians, one Turkish widow, and even a Sri Lankan waitress, but not one Jew. At last.

“How nice,” he said. “I go to Neve Shalom Synagogue occasionally. I love the chant, so much like ours, but more refreshing.”

“That’s rather unusual, isn’t it?” said Selin. “I mean, a Rum going to synagogue?”

“Certainly it is. But I passed by one Friday evening years ago and was enchanted by the melody. I’ve been hooked ever since.”

“I’d like to hear you chant sometime,” she said.

“Perhaps you will. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but the roots of our ecclesiastical chant are Jewish. In the depth of history, our traditions meet. So why shouldn’t they meet again in the present?”

“True,” said Selin, looking into his eyes as if no one else were present. “I bet I’ll even understand a little.”

“You speak Greek?” said Fanis, unable to believe his luck.

“I learned from a Rum boyfriend.”

“Are you still together?”

Selin giggled, like a mischievous jinn. “No, Mr. Fanis. I haven’t seen him since I was eight. Our summer houses were next to each other on Prinkipos Island. He also taught me how to pee like a boy into a laundry drain so that I didn’t have to go home to use the restroom.”

“How naughty,” said Fanis. The childhood boyfriend had been an unconventional type: just like Fanis.

“We got in trouble for rusting the drain, and I had to relearn how to pee like a girl, but I can still understand Greek.”

“Could we have met in Turnacıbaşı Street recently? I thought it might have been you, but when you started speaking Turkish with the professeur I wasn’t sure.”

Before Selin had a chance to reply, Dimitris interposed, “Do you speak Ladino?”

“Yes,” said Selin. “But none of my nieces and nephews can. They’re all learning English instead. My generation is probably the last of the Spanish speakers.”

“What a pity,” said Aliki, covering her mouth. “It’s the same for all of us. My daughter married a Muslim. Her children understand Greek, but they’re too lazy to speak it. If you want my advice, marry one of your own. Otherwise, your traditions and identity will be lost.”

The conversation about marriage and continuity dragged on, but Fanis found himself unable to concentrate on what Selin was saying. Her voice washed over him, pulling him inside its current, spinning him around, ﬂoating him on its crest. Was this the beginning of a second infatuation? Or was it a “declining ability to pay attention,” yet another symptom of vascular dementia? Sometimes it was so difﬁcult to know the difference between love and degeneration.

“Good evening, everyone!” said Gavriela, breaking the trance.

Daphne was standing beside her aunt in a straight day dress just like the ones that Fanis remembered from the sixties, when he was a comfort to women whose husbands had gone to Greece to ﬁnd a job and a small apartment before sending for the family. My God. How could he have allowed himself to be distracted by the violinist? A woman like Daphne could raise the dead. Marriage with her would be a renaissance not only for him, but for their community as well.

In an expert hustle and bustle, Fanis grabbed a chair from a nearby table, offered it to Daphne, and squeezed himself between the two young women. Adjusting the silk scarf around his neck, he said, “Daphne, dear, with all that studying, I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to see our City. I’d love to show you around. Would you like to join us, Selin? If you have some free time on Saturday, perhaps the three of us could meet at the Pearl for proﬁteroles and go from there. I can show you parts of the City that nobody knows.”

“Why not start at the Lily?” said Rea.

“The Lily,” repeated Fanis. “Well, yes, the Lily has quite a reputation, and I’m sure Kosmas does a superb job, but I was thinking of the Pearl more for the atmosphere.” To show that he was au courant with current issues, Fanis added, “Besides, I don’t know if anyone can make anything decent out of the genetically modiﬁed wheat we have now. What you do think, Kosmaki? Share your thoughts.”

Kosmas set his elbows on the wooden armrests of the patio chair, folded his hands in the air, and said, “I’m not old enough to remember what wheat was like when you were young, Mr. Fanis.”

Was the little brat trying to stick it to him? Well, it wasn’t going to work. Because Fanis was not the least bit ashamed of the number on his identity card. “Such a pity!” he said. “I remember the Lily when it used to make a fabulous pastry called the Balkanik. Back in your grandfather’s time. I bet you’ve never even heard of the Balkanik.”

“I have, in fact,” said Kosmas, “but it’s not something I’ve ever made. Or tasted.”

Fanis turned to Daphne. “The Balkanik, my dear, was a coiled éclair ﬁlled with strips of different ﬂavored creams. One for each of the Balkan peoples. Despite recent conﬂicts, we lived in harmony for centuries.”

“Do you know its origins?” said Daphne.

“No, but I do remember my mother saying that it was a very, very old recipe. Unfortunately, everybody stopped making it after the pogrom of ’ﬁfty-ﬁve and the deportations of ’sixty-four. Harmony became a doubtful word back then. It’s too bad because it was the most divine pastry ever created.”

“The Balkanik was the reason I became a journalist,” said Dimitris, with his characteristic stutter. “Fanis, do you remember Miss Evyenidou?”

Fanis served Daphne a few butter cookies despite her protests. “Of course,” he said. “I used to try to touch her long hair when she wasn’t looking.”

Dimitris waved both of his shaking hands in excitement. “Miss Evyenidou failed me in ﬁrst grade because I didn’t pay any attention. The second time around she made sure I learned to write better than anyone. My mother felt sorry for her because she had to deal with me twice, so she sent me to school with a Balkanik as a gift, and Miss Evyenidou shared it with the class.”

“Do you know its origins, Mr. Dimitris?” asked Daphne.

“Of course. Miss Evyenidou gave me a prize for an essay I wrote about it. The Balkanik was invented by the great Rum pâtissier Christakis Usta in the sixteenth century. He went to Florence to study with Pantarelli, the chef of Catherine de’ Medici, but he missed Istanbul so much that he decided to invent a pastry to honor it. Christakis Usta mastered Pantarelli’s pastry technique, then designed ﬂavored creams that would represent the diversity of his homeland.” Dimitris gazed dreamily upward at the linden tree, rufﬂing in the evening breeze. “Rose, cardamom, chocolate, vanilla, pistachio, and others that I don’t remember—all distinct yet complementary. You could pick the pastry apart and try to eat them one by one, or you could be lazy and stick your spoon in with your eyes closed and taste them all together.”

“I’ll ask Uncle Mustafa,” said Kosmas.

Daphne took a sudden interest in Kosmas. “You have a Muslim uncle?”

“He was my late father’s business partner. And now mine. But I’ve called him ‘Uncle’ for as long as I can remember.”

Daphne leaned her elbows on the table and cradled her chin in ringless hands. “I love the symbolism of that pastry.”

“Uncle Mustafa has an old Ottoman recipe book,” said Kosmas. “The Balkanik has to be in it.”

“You can read Ottoman script?”

“A little. I studied it a few years ago.”

Daphne faced Kosmas squarely, turning her back to Fanis. “Really? Why?”

“I found it frustrating not to be able to read the inscriptions on mosques, fountains, and other monuments. Once I got past the Arabic script, I found it wasn’t as difﬁcult as I thought it would be.”

Daphne nodded in respect. Fanis, however, was not so gullible. He would put the boy to the test. Pointing at a cemetery obelisk with ornate ﬂoral motifs, he said, “Can you read that tombstone over there, Kosmaki?”

Kosmas examined the obelisk. “It’s the grave of a nineteen-year-old girl named Şükran, daughter of Ömer Efendi. She died in the Islamic year 1313, at the end of the nineteenth century, that is. The poem reads: ‘I came into this world to become a blossoming vine, but I did not have the joy of raising a child, nor did I ﬁnd medicine for my sorrow.’”

Bastard. It seemed that he really could read Ottoman, unless he was clever enough to fake it, which was doubtful. Fanis returned his attention to Daphne. He loved her smile, but not when it was directed at Kosmas. Feigning annoyance with some fallen leaves, he pulled his chair closer to hers. The tea-garden cat, which had apparently been lying beneath it, startled and yowled.

“There you are!” said Julien. He unwrapped a packet of raw minced meat and set it beneath a bush. “I’ve been waiting for this one. What can I do? I feel sorry for the poor things.”

“And the pellet riﬂe you keep on your back balcony,” blurted Aliki, “for the ones who do their business—”

“Sus!” he said. “That’s for rats.”

Selin stood. My, she was lovely. The kind that others might call plump, but to Fanis she was as voluptuous as Titian’s Sleeping Venus. “It was a pleasure meeting you all,” she said, “but I have to be going.”

“It’s so early,” whined Julien. “Stay a bit longer.”

“Do you have a rehearsal?” Fanis asked.

“No,” said Selin. “My family always eats dinner together on Friday nights.”

“Of course,” said Fanis. “Shabbat. From my visits to the synagogue, I know exactly how important it is.”

“We aren’t religious. It’s just a family tradition.” Selin took a business card from her wallet. Unable to believe his good fortune, Fanis raised his hand to take it, but Selin reached straight past him and gave the card to Daphne. “In case you’d like to have coffee sometime,” she said.

Fanis stood, grasped Selin’s ﬁngertips, and kissed her knuckle beneath the daisy-shaped bijou ring on her middle ﬁnger. He sighed as she hurried off. If only he’d met her twenty years before, but now he couldn’t afford to be distracted. By the time he sat down again, Rea was already on to her favorite subject: the retirement stipends distributed to the Rums by the Greek Consulate in order to maintain the community and ensure the survival of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Fanis couldn’t imagine a more boring subject.

“Plenty of people take advantage,” Rea said softly, in Greek. “Like the Bulgarians who immigrate to Turkey and obtain certiﬁcates from the Patriarchate saying that they’re Rum Orthodox so they can get a stipend—”

“I don’t get it,” said Daphne.

“Well,” said Rea, speaking more slowly, “the money should only go to real Rums—”

“What’s a real Rum?” said Daphne.

“Whatever do you mean?” said Rea. Her spit landed on Fanis’s hand.

Daphne pushed her movie-star sunglasses onto the top of her head, like a hairband. “I mean that in Byzantine and Ottoman times, the term was religious, not ethnic. So how can we make it the exclusive property of Greek speakers?”

“Because it is,” said Rea. “If you don’t speak Greek, you’re not Rum. Somebody enlighten her!”

“Mama,” said Kosmas quietly. “She’s right about Byzantium.”

Daphne sat tall in the sloping canvas chair. “Are Rums thoroughbred dogs? Do they have papers to prove it? Any Orthodox Christian is Rum, Madame Rea, regardless of his ethnicity.”

“Amen,” said Fanis, already fed up with the conversation. “Now let’s talk about Saturday—”

“Are you saying, Daphne,” Rea continued, “that the Antiochians and Bulgarians are Rums? If you are, you’re misinformed. They’re not part of the homogeneia.”

“I despise that word,” said Daphne. “Homogeneia—the same race. Which means it’s a racist word.”

“What’s she talking about?” said Rea, looking from one friend to the next. “Everybody says homogeneia.”

“I’ve always thought it was a dumb word,” grumbled Julien.

“You’re missing Rea’s point,” said Aliki. She planted both feet ﬁrmly on the ground.

“Madame Rea,” said Daphne. “The ancestors of the Antiochians were Byzantines. That’s what Rum means—Eastern Roman, Byzantine. And you’re saying that they’re not Rum because they speak Arabic instead of Greek. That’s racist.”

“Ritsa, she has a point,” said Dimitris, gently. He took a Tribune from his briefcase and fanned himself with it.

“I’m not having this conversation,” Rea huffed.

Kosmas caressed the back of his mother’s head. “Mama, please.”

Rea slapped her hand onto the table. The tea-garden cat bolted toward the cemetery. “You’re not from here, Daphne,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The argument was a better gift than Fanis could ever have hoped for. Kosmas certainly would not pursue Daphne now, and Daphne, judging from the way she clenched her jaw, had already begun to hate Rea.

“Come, come, Rea,” said Gavriela, nervously twisting a used antibacterial wipe. “Let’s settle down.”

“Daphne,” said Kosmas, in a pathetic peacemaking effort, “don’t you think there can be some good in preserving one’s community? Don’t you think that there can be good in wanting to keep together so that it’s not all diluted and lost?”

“Of course there is. But cultural heritage and religion don’t depend upon race.”

“So well put,” said Fanis. He clapped his hands. “She’s right, you know.”

“But I thought, Mr. Fanis,” said Kosmas, “that you, too, wanted to marry a Rum. I thought our community was important to you.”

“It is. But a Rum, as our lovely Daphne just said, is an Orthodox Christian, not a thoroughbred dog. Anyway, let’s not give her a hard time. She has her views, and they happen to be quite intelligent, just like her.”

The call to prayer resounded from the loudspeaker of the nearby mosque.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Fanis. “One doesn’t need to understand the call to prayer’s words in order to experience their meaning. Islamic chant also has a strong historical relationship with ours. We’re all linked in some way.”

Daphne smiled. Realizing that he had found her spot, Fanis pursued his advantage. “Which reminds me, the bishop will be at the Panagia church on Sunday—it’s Pentecost, you know—and he always has good stories. Why don’t you come, my dear Daphne?”

Daphne looked to her aunt.

“We’ll see,” said Gavriela, standing. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Daphne and I have to be going. You know how my husband hates a late dinner.”

After the others had left, Fanis and Julien ordered their last tea. Fanis hated nothing more than solitude at the close of the day, yet there was nothing more certain than solitude for the last of the Levantine Christians and Rums.

“Selin’s a good one,” Fanis said. “Her hair is a bit—what’s the word? Outrageous? But she’s attractive nonetheless. Fetching, really. You’re a lucky man.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Julien. “Selin is way out of my league. We’re too old for women like that.”

“Apropos, how old is she?”

“Forty-three.”

“That’s well within your range, Prof,” said Fanis. “You’re only twenty-nine years older.”

“Please. I’d be lucky if I could get Aliki.”

“Aliki?” Fanis wrinkled his nose. “You’ve set your sights a little low, don’t you think?”

“I’m not a crazy old bastard like you. I’m practical. If you want somebody to share your loneliness, you’re going to have to start thinking about women your own age. Or at least closer to it.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Fanis, rising. “I’m off. Goodnight.”

“Sweet and naughty dreams,” said Julien.

Fanis plodded down the hill and stopped to peer through the open windows of the Çukurcuma mosque. The minarets and chandeliers were illuminated for the holiday of the Prophet’s Ascent to Heaven. Shoeless men kneeled on the rugs of its sunken ﬂoor. It looked inviting.

Upon arriving at his building—a late-nineteenth-century rust-colored mansion with old-style oriels on each of its ﬁve ﬂoors—Fanis looked over his shoulder. Having reassured himself that no one was following, he fumbled in his pocket for his keys, unlocked the heavy iron door, and stepped inside. He shut the door gently so that its dull clang would not disturb his neighbors and took a deep breath while observing the faded entryway wall paintings, which had been designed to look as if they were alcove statues. Within a burgundy-bordered panel of yellow ochre, the tall ﬁgure of the goddess Athena stood to his left. Directly across from her was a male counterpart, the god Hermes. Fanis had always attributed the sparing of his house from the mob to their guardianship, rather than to a God he visited every Sunday in church and in whom he did not entirely believe.

“Friends,” he said to the faceless paintings. “Lend a hand, will you? Daphne hasn’t bitten yet, and that bewitching Selin is more than I can handle.”

He ascended the staircase, pausing at each landing for a rest so that he wouldn’t suffer the stroke predicted by Dr. Aydemir. He felt just as ﬁt at seventy-six as he had at sixty, but his mouth was parched. He opened his water bottle and took a sip but had difﬁculty swallowing. Wasn’t that a symptom of arteriosclerosis? If Fanis were not so attached to his apartment, he would have moved to the ground ﬂoor and saved himself the daily torture of ascending four and a half ﬂights with a list of symptoms ﬂashing like warning lights on a car dashboard. Damn that Aydemir.

Once inside, he double-bolted the door, closed the velvet curtains, checked that he had indeed locked the balcony window before going out to tea, and peered inside closets and behind doors to make sure that no one had entered while he was out. When he was certain all was secure, he disconnected the telephone—lest he be bothered by his habitual prank caller—and arranged his cutlery, a plate of leftover meatballs and pilaf, and glass of lemon juice on a nineteenth-century Qajar table tray. Then he turned on the television to Magniﬁcent Century, a historical soap opera that was the subject of much current debate. The prime minister had criticized it for misrepresentation of the golden age of Ottoman history. He was right, of course. Women—and men—of that epoch did not wear so much makeup; neither did the sultan’s wives and concubines expose their augmented breasts in such a fashion. Furthermore, uncastrated men did not enter the harem, as they had to in the soap opera in order to create a spicier plot. Even so, Fanis cringed whenever he heard talk of prohibiting certain representations of history.

Sitting down to dinner, he chased the controversy from his mind and lost himself in the palace intrigues. Halfway through his meal, the electricity went out. His terror of intruders made him freeze with a mouth full of pilaf. Perhaps they had done it. Perhaps they were waiting in the street, like a ﬂow of molten evil, just as they had been on that September night, and perhaps this time they would succeed in breaking down his door. Or perhaps it was just another electricity outage like the one they’d had last Monday.

Fanis peeled back the curtains. The entire street was black. It was, after all, just a power cut. Swearing and stubbing his toes, he fumbled his way through the living room and located candles and matches in a sideboard drawer, beneath Dr. Aydemir’s crumpled scripts. He was sure that Aydemir was nothing but a pharmaceutical salesman, even if his diagnosis had been correct. So what was the use in keeping those hateful papers? Besides, Fanis was going to get his Viagra after all, and who knew if erectile aids could be taken with that poison?

He lit a candle, snatched up the prescriptions, and carried them to the kitchen sink. Then, one by one, he set them on ﬁre and watched the ﬂames eat half-moons into the paper. A few wispy embers wafted up from the sink and settled down again. When the ﬂames had gone out, Fanis surveyed the insigniﬁcant ashes, set the candle on the counter where his mother had rolled pastry, turned on the tap, and washed the death sentences down the drain.

He took the candle into the bedroom, put on his pajamas, and stretched out on the bed. Over the roofs of Pera, a ﬂock of screaming seagulls surged and receded like an ocean wave. A cat howled, like a woman having an orgasm. Now that’s a good sound, Fanis thought. He tried to picture Daphne’s face on the ceiling. Nothing. He tried Selin’s. Nothing. He tried again, and the result startled him, for he conjured his lost ﬁancée Kalypso instead. She was just as real as Daphne and Selin had been in the tea garden that afternoon, and she was not angry with him. He had always supposed that, if there was a heaven and if he met her in it, she would refuse to speak to him. Instead, smiling and laughing, she nibbled his ear. Then some idiot let the heavy iron building door slam shut, and she disappeared.

Fanis tried to bring her back but other sounds—motors, a catﬁght, and Anatolian music—kept breaking his concentration. The couple who lived beneath him began quarrelling. Fanis unlocked the balcony door and shouted, “Can’t you argue during the day?” The couple fell silent. He extinguished the candle and lay down to wait for sleep or death, whichever came ﬁrst. Not having gone to see Kalypso was the greatest regret of his life, the secret sorrow he had tried to numb with amorous adventures. He hadn’t expected her to die as she had, without warning. He’d thought they had all the time in the world—a lifetime—to heal the wounds of that night. Wouldn’t running to her bedside have made her feel dishonored twice over? Wait until she’s up and about again, his mother had advised him. Wait and then tell her that none of it makes any difference.