20

The Test of the Package

Kosmas spent all his non-working hours that autumn at his office desk. Not only was he determined to find the Balkanik, but he also wanted to translate the recipes for use at the Lily and perhaps even publish them. For, Kosmas reasoned, even if Hamdi hadn’t recorded the Balkanik, his other culinary treasures had to be preserved for posterity.

Finally, on a cold night in early January—when Kosmas was about three-quarters through the last volume—he came upon something that resembled the famed pastry. The handwriting was minuscule but clear, running right to left in boxy little figures, but the page was not in good shape. There was a brown stain in the lower right-hand corner. The ingredient measurements had been hastily crossed out and annotated more than once, and wormholes pierced the assembly directions. Kosmas stuck his nose to the brown stain and inhaled: the mold overlay was strong, but he was sure that beneath it he smelled chocolate. And then he saw a scribble in the margin: Balkanik. Kosmas felt the sudden joy of discovery, the sensation that everything would fall into place.

He rubbed his stinging eyes, stuck a marker between the pages, returned the book to the safe, and walked home, hardly feeling the chill. It was three days before he was to leave for Miami: just enough time to transform the recipe into something functional so that he could continue his experiments in Daphne’s kitchen.

He opened the apartment door and found his mother seated in her favorite armchair. An unopened package rested in her lap. She was unusually calm. That worried Kosmas.

“I went to the bank today,” said Rea.

The previous evening, during a commercial break in Magnificent Century, Kosmas had announced his intention to propose to Daphne. Rea had stared at the television screen without comment. Perhaps her hearing was going. Kosmas had raised his voice: “Would you mind going with Mr. Dimitris tomorrow to get Grandma and Grandpa’s rings from the safe-deposit box?” Instead of replying to his request, Rea had complained about Hürrem Sultan’s bad makeup job. “I guess I’ll have to do it myself,” Kosmas had said.

Now, however, Kosmas was surprised to see that his mother had actually done what he had asked. “Thanks, Mama,” he said. “It means a lot to me.” He kissed her wrinkly, baby-powder-scented forehead.

Usually she grinned like a little girl when he did that, but this time her expression remained blank. “The whole time I was in the bank,” she said, “I was thinking it’s far too early for you to propose. Has Daphne said she wants to get married?”

Just the week before Daphne had said “I don’t want a city that was built for me. I want one that was born for me. You are my city.” Kosmas had therefore supposed that she would say yes to his proposal.

And yet, now that his mother had asked . . . Daphne did always shy away from the topic of marriage. “No,” Kosmas said to Rea. He peeled off his damp Puffa jacket. “I want it to be a surprise.”

“But it’s too soon. You could scare—”

“Where are they?”

“There.”

Kosmas looked around the living room. In October, his mother had brought in a painter. Not Mr. Ahmet the mold specialist, but a cheap laborer recommended by Aliki. The man had repainted the wall behind the television, but the mold had returned, just as Kosmas had said it would, and now it was blossoming in gardens of pinkish-orange circles. Kosmas would have to call Mr. Ahmet.

“Where?” said Kosmas.

“On the sideboard. Near the Christmas tree.”

The arrangement that Rea called a “tree” was a vase filled with holly branches and Christmas ornaments. Beside the vase was a small silver tray lined with one of Kosmas’s grandmother’s crocheted doilies and crowned by a thick silver wedding band and a thinner gold one. His grandparents had maintained the old Byzantine ring tradition: women wore gold because it represented purity, beauty, elegance, and rarity; men wore silver, the symbol of strength. He picked up his grandfather’s silver ring and slipped it onto his left ring finger, where it would be worn during the engagement. Then he tried it on the right, to which it would be transferred after marriage. The fit was slightly big.

“It needs to be resized,” he said. “I know an Armenian goldsmith in the Grand Bazaar, a friend from the army. I’ll take it to him tomorrow.” He looked up at his mother. She was staring at him with both hands flat on the package. “What’s that?”

“Something from Daphne. Addressed to me.”

“Why don’t you open it?”

“I’d like you to read the return address label first.”

Kosmas looked at the sticker. In the left-hand corner was a picture of a dog with three legs. Probably from one of those animal-protection organizations to which Daphne belonged. “It says Humane Society, Mama. Maybe that’s a dog she helped save.”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Rea. “I mean her name. Daphne Zeynep Badem. Would you explain that, please?”

Kosmas sat down on the sofa and wiped his hand over his tired eyes. “Her father is Ottoman.”

Rea leaned forward. The package slipped from her knees and landed with a crackly thud on the floor. “How could you have kept this from me?”

“I didn’t keep it from you. I just don’t see why it matters.”

“Why it matters? I’ve been called an infidel my whole life. Even the most modern and cultured among them always have the word infidel on their lips. The second they think we’re not listening, that’s what they call us.”

“What about Uncle Mustafa?” said Kosmas. “He took care of us after Father died. You never lacked anything while I was in Vienna. Did he ever call you an infidel? And what about your friend the cobbler, or Madame Vildan, who brings you the newspaper every morning?”

“I’m not saying they aren’t good people. Just that they never forget we’re different. And neither should we.” Rea slipped her hand inside her blouse, over her heart, and looked furtively around the room, as if she were worried that they weren’t alone.

“Mama, are you okay?”

She kneaded her chest beneath the collar bone. “My aunt used to pretend we were all the same. Her door was always open to Ottoman women. But in fifty-five, when the rioters broke into her house, destroyed everything in sight, and smashed her pearls with a hammer, one by one, neither those women nor their husbands made any attempt to intervene. My aunt never invited anyone into her home ever again. She had learned her lesson.”

Kosmas knelt at his mother’s side and put his hand on her knee. “But Daphne’s mother is Rum, and so is Daphne.”

“That’s not what her identity card will say. They’ll register her as Muslim. You’ll see.”

“And even if they do, so what?”

“If you have children—”

“They’ll be Christian, Mama.”

“And if she divorces you and marries a Muslim? Have you thought of that? Have you thought of how your children will be raised?”

“I’m not even engaged and you want me to think about divorce?”

“You have to think about everything before you marry!”

“Mama, she’s an Orthodox Christian, period.” Kosmas scratched his head with the aggression of a flea-bitten dog. “Even if her identity card says otherwise, that’s what she is. Who cares about the government’s stupid categories?”

Rea fumbled for her cane and inadvertently knocked it onto the parquet floor. Kosmas snatched it up and handed it to her. “Please, Mama.”

Their eyes locked. It seemed to Kosmas that the fine lines running down and outward from beneath Rea’s lower lids had both increased and deepened. Her upper lids drooped like elephant skin. Behind her clear brown pupils, however, Kosmas saw a scared little girl. “Mama?”

Rea lifted her chin in silent reply: No.

Kosmas slid the ring off his finger, returned it to the tray on the sideboard, and locked himself into the bathroom. He turned on the shower to its hottest setting and vented his frustration—with Rea’s doubts and his own—by scrubbing himself raw with an exfoliation mitt and a bar of carrot-smelling soap. It was three days before he was to leave for Miami. As soon as he got back, he would find an apartment and move out.

When he had worked out the details of his plan, he got out of the shower and threw on a robe. Steam poured out of the bathroom as he opened the door. “Mother!” he shouted. She didn’t reply. “Where are you?”

He went into the living room. The package, still unopened, rested at the foot of the armchair. He went to the kitchen. First he saw the soil spilled all over the floor, then the African violet, and then his mother crumpled beside it. Her eyes were open.

“Mama! Mama, are you okay?”

She tried to pull her housedress down over her swollen legs, as if she were embarrassed to be showing so much skin. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

The hospital doctors said she’d fainted from hypotension caused by mild bradycardia, which was common in older patients. Fortunately, she hadn’t suffered any fractures or head injuries: just a few nasty bruises. The emergency-room intern hung a Holter monitor around her neck, stuck its five sky-blue electrodes to her chest, and explained to Kosmas that his mother had to be monitored to determine if she needed a pacemaker.

“A pacemaker?” whispered Kosmas. He and the intern were standing in the stark hallway. Rea was still hooked up to a saline IV in the examination room, but the door was open. “Is this serious?”

“It doesn’t look so at the moment,” the intern said. “The ECG was fine. She doesn’t have a temperature. But at her age, it’s best to be careful. Put a bit more salt in her food, keep her well hydrated, increase her intake of red meat. Her blood tests showed low iron levels. Anemia, that is. She could lose a little weight. She’s not diabetic yet, but she’s headed in that direction. You have to keep a good eye on her.”

“For how long?”

“Until we can determine what’s going on. We may need to keep her on the Holter for a couple of weeks.”

“I’m supposed to go to America in three days.” Kosmas glanced at the wall clock. It was past midnight. He corrected himself: “Two days.”

“Is there anyone else who can take care of her? Your father? A sibling?”

Kosmas thought of Mr. Dimitris. He wouldn’t refuse, but the situation would be awkward for Rea. And Kosmas would also be guilty of encouraging Mr. Dimitris in a hopeless suit. Better not to involve him.

“No one,” said Kosmas.

The intern stuck his ballpoint pen into his shirt pocket. “Perhaps you could postpone.”

Kosmas felt like a child whose ice cream had fallen off its cone onto the dirty pavement.

After taking his mother home and putting her to bed with a cup of chamomile tea, he took his airplane ticket from his dresser drawer, sat down at the narrow kitchen table, and stared at the mess left in the wake of his mother’s fainting episode: the black soil spilled on the floor, the hot red pepper flakes scattered across the table. Then he read every word and abbreviation on his red and white Turkish Airlines ticket. His chest tightened. He had to talk to Daphne right away.

She answered his call immediately, but instead of greeting him, she said, “Only three days left until we’re together again!”

Kosmas heard traffic noise and happy Latin music that seemed entirely out of place as he stared at his mother’s jumbled bottles of olive oil and vinegar. “About that,” he said, trying to remember what day and time it was for Daphne. “Where are you?”

“At dinner with a friend. Is something wrong?”

“It’s Mother. She fainted and had to be taken to the hospital. They have to monitor her heart for a couple of weeks. She might need a pacemaker.”

“Is she still there? In the hospital?”

With his ticket, he swept the table of hot pepper flakes—called acı in Turkish, the same word for pain. “No,” he said. “She’s here, napping.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

“Hopefully, it’s just . . .”

Again Kosmas heard electric steel strings. The Spanish lyrics that accompanied the music, although unintelligible, seemed to express his longing and disappointment.

“You’re not coming,” said Daphne.

Kosmas felt a rush of relief. The tightness in his chest eased: she’d made the decision for him. “I’m just not sure if it’s the right thing to do,” he said.

Daphne was silent.

For a moment Kosmas heard nothing but the ripping of wind. Daphne had moved away from the music.

“Did she receive my birthday gift?”

“Today—no, yesterday. But she hasn’t opened it yet.”

“I guess she didn’t have a chance. Why don’t you give it to her now, to cheer her up? It’s a Pantone coffee maker from the Pérez Art Museum. Pink, her favorite color. ”

Kosmas was too tired for concealment. “Before she fainted, we had our talk. I told her your father is Muslim.”

“I thought you already did that.”

Kosmas lowered his foot over the potless violet and squashed it into the floor tile. Now he had a second crisis on his hands: Daphne had learned that he’d lied to her a month ago about the talk with his mother.

“And?” said Daphne, her voice frighteningly quiet. “Does this change things for us?”

Kosmas thought of calling Mr. Dimitris whether Rea liked it or not. He could get on that airplane after all. He could talk this out with Daphne, face to face. But that wouldn’t be right. It was his filial duty to stay. He ripped his ticket in half and threw it onto the soil and acı pepper at his feet. “Nothing’s changed,” he said. “I love you just as much as ever. But I have to look after her now. I’m all she has.”