19

The Nightingale and the Seagulls

The second week in september, Selin finally said that she was coming to the Panagia to hear Fanis chant. She promised to arrive shortly after the start of vespers. Twenty minutes into the service, however, she was nowhere to be seen. Fanis gave up hope: Selin had to have been delayed at rehearsal. But then, just after the bishop descended from his throne in a tizzy because no one was helping him with his robes, Fanis turned to his left and saw the top of Selin’s curly head. She might even have been standing there the whole time, shielded by the throne.

After the service, Selin waited in her place until the parishioners had withdrawn for tea. Then she picked up her violin case and approached the cantor’s stand. “Outside we have the nightingales,” she said to Fanis. “Inside we have you.”

Fanis felt his cheeks flush. “So you liked it?” he said, fishing for more.

“Your voice exudes optimism.”

Her glassy-eyed wonder made him feel like a sultan. He stepped down from the cantor’s stand.

“Really,” she said. “It’s sexy.”

Now that was the best compliment anyone had ever paid him. Even better than the nightingales and optimism. But Fanis didn’t allow his imagination to scamper about like a five-year-old on a sugar buzz: just because she found his voice sexy didn’t mean that she actually found him sexy.

“And that hat,” she whispered, shaking her hand playfully, as if she had burned it. “Wow. Slightly fez-like, but black velvet. Orhan would love it.”

She always had to spoil things by mentioning Orhan. Never mind. It helped keep Fanis grounded. He would have liked to introduce her to everyone in the church tea room, but he decided that he ought to protect her reputation. So he said, “Hungry?”

“I made leek fritters last night,” she said. “Why don’t you come by my place and try them?”

“Perfect,” said Fanis. “I made stuffed grape leaves this morning. I’ll bring them over.”

He hung up his robe and stuck his cantor’s hat into a boutique bag to take home for some spot cleaning. They hurried out, around the far side of the church so that they wouldn’t be seen and called back. Just before they reached the gate, Fanis reached for her violin case. “Let me take that,” he said.

“Please. I carry it all the time. It’s very light.”

“You shouldn’t,” said Fanis, taking the handle.

“Thanks,” she said. “I guess I was getting a little tired.”

“I know what I’m talking about,” said Fanis. “A famous soloist like you shouldn’t have to serve as a hamal.”

They plodded through the tunnel of towering houses whose edges were made smooth by the coal smoke coming from the poorer apartments. The cold had set in early that autumn, making heating necessary in the evenings. The damp, soot-stained pavement outside the greengrocer’s shop was littered with scallions and lettuce. Fanis and Selin rounded the bend to their part of the street and found it completely dark: the electricity had gone out.

Fanis climbed his stairs with the aid of his key-chain flashlight and grabbed the stuffed grape leaves, a paper-wrapped package of garlicky beef pastırma, and a jar of his favorite pickles. Once over at Selin’s place, he insisted that she sit down at the kitchen table and relax with a glass of Cappadocian Chardonnay while he, by the light of Selin’s super-bright kitchen flashlight, made a lettuce, mint, carrot, and walnut salad, drizzled it with pomegranate concentrate and olive oil, and warmed the fritters on the gas stove.

“Ach,” said Selin, putting her feet up on a stool. “This is just what I needed.”

You’re just what I needed, thought Fanis. But then he remembered his resolution: friends. He tasted a leek fritter and said, “Magnificent . . . the dill, the subtle white cheese, so well combined with the egg—” Just then there was an angry outburst of seagull screeching. “Poor things,” he said. “When I was young, they feasted on fish in the Bosporus and squawked peacefully. Now they have to pick at garbage dumps. They’re as angry as the rest of us.”

“There must be a new nest up there,” said Selin. “Things were quiet when I moved in, but now I hear them going at it morning and night.”

Fanis stuck wooden spoons in the salad and transferred the fritters to a serving plate. “I bet they’re saying, ‘This isn’t the Istanbul of our ancestors. The City is ruined, polluted. We used to live the dolce vita here. Now everything has gone to the devil.’”

Selin laughed. If Fanis were trying to seduce her that would have meant he’d reached a milestone. Fanis picked up the salad and the plate of fritters. “It’s ready. Just grab the stuffed vine leaves for me, dear, will you?”

Over a candlelit dinner, they talked about her work. The Mendelssohn concerto had been so well received that the orchestra’s conductor wanted Selin to prepare for a January performance of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D Major.

“Which is wonderful,” she said. “It’s sentimental, but very uncomfortable. Both Monsieur Julien and my boss say that it never gets easier, no matter how much you practice.”

Fanis looked up at the ceiling corner onto which Selin’s shadow was projected by the candlelight. He took a sip of wine, savoring its hints of honey, orange, and vanilla. “During my first years of cantoring,” he said, “I found that the most beautiful hymns really strained my voice. But with time, I began to feel the sound pass through me, like it didn’t even come from me. I was just a vessel, a channel. Perhaps that might happen with you as well.”

Selin looked into his eyes and smiled with admiration. “It’s so good to talk to someone who understands.”

Just then the windows across the street illuminated, the television clicked, and the refrigerator resumed its humming. Fanis reached for the light switch, but Selin said, “Leave it off. It’s nice like this.”

Fanis crossed the room and took a CD from the case, but in the dim light he couldn’t tell what it was. He turned on the player, inserted the CD, and tried to think of something banal to say: “I forgot to serve the pastırma and pickles! Let me go get them.”

“Just sit,” said Selin. “We don’t need anything else.”

Fanis returned to the table. The first piano notes of “The Delicate Rose Of My Thought,” a classical Turkish love song, sounded through the chilly September evening. The strings joined the piano, and Selin began singing along with Sema Moritz about the nightingale of her heart.

“I’m enchanted,” said Fanis, when it had finished.

“It’s always been one of my favorites. But my voice is nothing in comparison with yours.”

“Don’t be silly. You sing very nicely.”

“What we really need is a voice and violin duet,” she said. And then, as if she had remembered something, she took out her J.S. Phillips violin and played the first notes of a piece that Fanis recognized instantly: Özdemir Erdoğan’s “Teacher Love,” a bittersweet duet between a young violinist and her much older instructor. Fanis dutifully sang his part about counting the days until their lessons. Then, on a sudden impulse, he replaced the twenty years of the original lyrics with the number of his and Selin’s gap: thirty-three.

Selin’s eyes darted from her violin to his face as soon as he said it. She had definitely noticed. As soon as the song was over, he turned on the lights and said, “I’ll just do the dishes before I head home.”

Selin replaced her violin in its case, took a liqueur set from a cabinet beside the black leather sofa, and said, “Leave the dishes. Let’s have some of Mom’s strawberry brew.”

The friendship experiment was in jeopardy. If they went on like this, he would undoubtedly make a move, Orhan or no Orhan. So he said, “Another time, dear. I’ve got to get up early for . . . for . . . a doctor’s appointment.”

He hastily kissed Selin goodbye and tiptoed down the stairs. He had hoped to slip out of the building discreetly, but he met Madame Duygu, Selin’s landlady, on the raised ground-floor landing.

“Mr. Fanis,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” he returned. “Especially at this hour.”

“The people under the garret complained about the artiste. She was playing loud music and, apparently, she has an animal. A tomcat that makes all sorts of noise. I specifically said I don’t allow pets.”

“I don’t know what they heard, Madame Duygu,” Fanis said, “but I can assure you that the lady has no cat.”

“And the sounds?”

“It must have been the seagulls.”

“The seagulls?”

“They don’t just squawk, my dear Madame Duygu. They have a language all of their own. Sometimes it’s like a dog barking, sometimes a cat howling, and sometimes even like construction hammering or a monkey laughing. I study them in my spare time.”

“Are you all right, Mr. Fanis?” Duygu looked him over and sniffed the air. “You smell like . . . women’s perfume.”

“Please, Madame Duygu,” said Fanis, tickled that she might think him capable of seducing Selin. “I’m seventy-six.” He smiled, bowed, and skipped down the last few stairs.