A Receipe for Daphne

A Recipe Resurrected

Exhausted after carrying boxes up three ﬂights of stairs, Kosmas made himself a Nescafé and collapsed onto the padded bench of his oriel window. Boiling-hot coffee spilled onto his jeans. “Siktir,” he said, feeling the coffee burn his leg. Fuck it.

He set the mug on a box, took off his pants, and threw them onto the ﬂoor. Then he examined the pink mark on his thigh: after twenty years of assessing his own burns in the pâtisserie, he could tell it wasn’t serious. He settled back down on the oriel bench and took a sip of the remaining coffee.

“Ach,” he said aloud.

He hated instant coffee, but it was better than nothing. He had only moved into his apartment the day before, and he still didn’t have a proper coffee pot. He looked out the window, over the Bosporus. A fast boat on its way to Bostancı left a trail of white in the Sea of Marmara. Üsküdar, on the opposite shore, was lit up bronze and gold in the last strong rays of sunset. Its windows looked as if they were on ﬁre. Kosmas had chosen the apartment for Daphne, who loved oriels. The kitchen was narrow, the ﬂoorboards creaked, and the rent was ridiculous, but the building was a beautiful example of late Ottoman architecture. It had high ceilings, ﬂoral carton-pierre wall decoration, original ﬂooring and tiles, and richly carved woodwork. Kosmas could already imagine Daphne sitting on the window bench, drinking Turkish coffee with him, watching the Bosporus trafﬁc, or studying some history book—perhaps Edmondo de Amici’s Constantinople. They were going to be happy here . . . if he could convince her to give him another chance.

Kosmas picked up his phone to call her. He selected her number, but instead of pushing the button, he just stared at her name. According to Fanis and Selin, Daphne was due back in Istanbul in one week. But it would only be a ﬂash Holy Week and Easter visit—eight days in total. Kosmas wondered if her secrecy about the upcoming visit stemmed from her desire to surprise him or from second thoughts about their relationship. Perhaps he should call, tell her about the apartment, and convince her to stay with him. But begging probably wasn’t going to help anything. He decided to wait until she arrived to tell her about the apartment. He would walk her in—blindfolded—and present her with a fully furnished place, empty dresser drawers for her clothes, and bathroom shelves that awaited women’s creams and powders. He’d even buy a pair of slippers and place them by the door, ready for her bare feet. Size 37.

Kosmas dropped the phone back onto the oriel cushion, set the empty mug on the box beside him, and closed his eyes. His moving day had not gone well. He had expected that Rea would give him a few household things, cook and package a couple of days of food, perhaps even accompany him to the furniture store. But since Dimitris had moved in, Rea had been distracted. She had stopped making cheese pies for Kosmas’s afternoon snack, and she no longer cared whether he watched their favorite TV shows with her. She’d spent his moving morning at the hairdresser’s. Later she had called to apologize for her forgetfulness and offer to bring Kosmas dinner, but when she learned that the apartment was a sixth-ﬂoor walk-up, she sighed and said, “Why don’t you come here instead?”

Kosmas was too tired to descend the stairs at that point, but he couldn’t complain: one of the main reasons he’d chosen the ﬂat was that it was entirely inaccessible to his mother. He sat up, transferred his empty mug to the herringbone parquet, and picked up his pocketknife to open the small package beside him. It wasn’t one of the boxes from his mother’s house, but rather something that Uncle Mustafa had sent over with the delivery truck. Kosmas cut through the tape, opened the ﬂaps, and found Hamdi’s three volumes of recipes. It had to be some sort of mistake. Kosmas called Mustafa. “Uncle?” he said. “Your grandfather’s books were delivered to me.”

“Of course they were.”

“But shouldn’t they be kept in the Lily’s safe? Until you ﬁnd a better place than beneath your bed, at least?”

“They’re my housewarming gift,” said Uncle Mustafa.

Kosmas felt his throat constrict. “But these are family heirlooms . . .”

“Correct,” said Uncle Mustafa. “You’re family, and they’re yours.”

Kosmas stared at the books, caressed the smooth leather binding. They had an entirely new charm now that they were his.

“But there’s a condition,” said Uncle Mustafa. “You’re not going to let them sit on a shelf like museum pieces. I want them to smell of cinnamon until your dying day.”

“Not just cinnamon,” said Kosmas, his voice wobbly with emotion, “but also nutmeg, chocolate, mahleb, vanilla, and every other sweet thing in my kitchen. I promise.”

The gift helped Kosmas to refocus. Despite the moving mess, he had to perfect the Balkanik for Palm Sunday, Daphne’s name day. Although he’d been experimenting since January, the variously ﬂavored creams still didn’t complement each other as they should. For that reason, he had hesitated to add orchid-root cream, even though Hamdi’s recipe contained it as a ﬂavor option. To Kosmas, the addition of orchid root would be a cacophonous overload. Furthermore, Orchis mascula and Orchis militaris roots, grown only in Turkey’s Kahramanmaraş region, were now so rare that their export had been banned. Even within Turkey, genuine, unadulterated Orchis tuber powder was a precious commodity. But it was the only thing that Kosmas hadn’t yet tried.

He remembered that Muharrem, the septuagenarian owner of the famous candy shop in the Balık Pazarı, sold a very expensive orchid-root drink called sahlep in the winter months. Muharrem was too much of a traditionalist to use anything but the purest ingredients in his sweet, warm, rosewater-ﬂavored sahlep. So Kosmas called the shop and explained that he was using a recipe that demanded pure Orchis tuber powder of the ﬁnest quality.

“Odd ﬂavoring for a wedding cake,” said Muharrem.

“It’s not for a wedding cake,” Kosmas replied. “It’s for something personal, an old recipe called the Balkanik.”

“Haaa,” said Muharrem. “It was divine. But not everybody used Orchis tuber, you know. The creams must have different ﬂavors, but it’s up to you to choose.”

“I’d greatly appreciate it if you could get me some. I need it for—”

“A lady. Understood. How much do you need?”

“A kilo.”

“I’ll give it to you at cost, Kosmas. But you know, it’s almost as expensive as gold . . . ”

“How much?”

“590 lira per kilo.”

A week’s rent, thought Kosmas. But he’d need at least a kilo for his experiments. “No problem.”

“I’ll send it over now.”

Half an hour later, a delivery boy brought a packet wrapped in white tissue paper with gold stars. Inside was a plastic bag of starchy white powder. Destiny was doing all it could to help.

On Monday evening, after completing his cake orders and regular tasks, Kosmas experimented with variations of the light choux pastry dough, different-ﬂavored creams, and fondant icings. By Wednesday, he had gone through so much butter, ﬂour, and chocolate, so many eggs and nuts, that Uncle Mustafa feared they would have to place special orders so that the bakery would have enough supplies to ﬁnish the month. On Thursday at teatime, Uncle Mustafa and his friends gathered to critique the day’s experiments: “Good, but not like it was,” they said. “Pretty, but not like it was. Almost, but not quite.” Kosmas repeated his mantra to himself: İdare. You can manage this.

He passed Thursday and Friday nights at work, struggling not only with Hamdi’s Ottoman script, but also with the challenge of achieving a taste that he had only heard about and never experienced. All the while, memories of Daphne—the smoothness of her skin on the inside of her thighs, the way her hands ﬁt completely inside his, and the lovemaking that had occurred atop the very table on which he worked—kept breaking his concentration and causing his hands to tremble. On the night before Daphne’s expected arrival, Kosmas was so tired that he could hardly stand up. He had to pull a stool to the counter in order to pipe the last creams. Sometime past ten, he stepped outside to calm his nerves with a shot of raki. As he sat in the alley, listening to the scratching of the crickets in the sidewalk weeds and the angry yakking of the seagulls that nested on the building’s roof, Uncle Mustafa opened his bedroom window and called, “Shall I come down?”

“Don’t trouble yourself,” said Kosmas. “I probably didn’t get it this time either.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Uncle Mustafa descended in black loafers and pajamas, cut the pastry with the care of a contest judge, and inhaled. “A delicate balance of discreet ﬂavors,” he said. “Firm but thin pastry. From the scent I’d say you used the organic ﬂour, didn’t you?” He took a small bite, closed his eyes, moved it around his mouth, and pronounced his verdict with a blind smile: “This takes me back in time.”

Kosmas grabbed Uncle Mustafa’s shoulders, kissed his waxy forehead, and stepped out into the alleyway. He stretched his hands up to the navy blue sky. “Thank you,” he whispered, turning in circles.

Uncle Mustafa called Muharrem the candy-maker. He also rang the doorbells at the nearby apartment blocks where his brother and backgammon partner lived. Then he put the teapot on the stove for their expected visitors and made a strong double coffee for Kosmas, whose hands were shaking from fatigue and over-excitement. Only with an immense effort did Kosmas manage to sip the coffee without spilling too much of it into the saucer.

Ten minutes later, Muharrem arrived, wearing his white lab coat. His expression was inquisitive and serious, like that of a doctor making a bedside visit to an ailing patient.

“Thanks so much for coming,” said Kosmas. “I’m so sorry for the late—”

Muharrem held up his hand to quiet Kosmas and said in French, “Que’est-ce qu’il y a?” What’s the matter?

Uncle Mustafa served him a slice of the pastry. “Your opinion, Master,” he said.

Muharrem’s white mustache prevented Kosmas from seeing whether he smiled or not, but his eyes brightened. He washed his hands, like a surgeon preparing for a procedure, carefully picked up a clean fork from the steel counter, and swirled it in the creams. “Excellent consistency.” He took a bite. “And it seems to me—from the cardamom, which adds a hint of supplication—that you’re not just trying to win the lady, but to win her back?”

“Yes,” said Kosmas. “But I was only following the recipe, so I can’t claim that I actually intended—”

“Even following is a creative process,” said Muharrem, decisively.

“Did I get it right?

Muharrem took another bite. “From a historical standpoint, yes. This is a very nice version. From a romantic standpoint . . . why don’t you ask these fellows?”

Two pajama-clad old men ﬁled inside. They rubbed their eyes and gratefully took the teas that Uncle Mustafa passed out. A few minutes later, after the caffeine and ﬂuorescent lights had awakened them from their television-watching stupor, they tasted the Balkanik.

Uncle Mustafa’s backgammon partner—a withered man in a white prayer cap—leaned dreamily back against the refrigerator and said, “This reminds me of Eleni, my ﬁrst love. We kissed in the boiler room while playing hide-and-seek.”

Uncle Mustafa’s fat brother sat down on a box of almond ﬂour, causing Kosmas and Uncle Mustafa to exchange fearful glances about the fate of the box’s contents. He said, “It reminds me of my neighbor, Janet Benchimol. She broke my heart when she packed off to Israel.”

Uncle Mustafa said, “It’s everything we lost.”

Κοsmas slid his hands into his hair, pulling at its roots until it hurt. The pain meant that this was real, that he hadn’t fallen asleep and dreamed his success.

“The most important opinion, however,” said Muharrem, “will be hers.”

Eleven hours later, only four and a half of which were spent in ﬁtful sleep, Kosmas stepped into Neighbor’s House, said good morning to the young employees setting up behind the counter, and proceeded to the patio, where Julien sat at the only table ready for customers. Kosmas carefully set a fresh, boxed-up Balkanik on the table and collapsed into one of the canvas patio chairs.

“What’s that?” asked Julien.

“A treat I made this morning,” said Kosmas. “For Daphne’s name day.”

Julien opened the ﬂap of his wool overcoat and revealed the jacket of a double-breasted suit. “I put on my Sunday best for the occasion, and I looked so good that I got nostalgic for a Catholic mass. But San Antonio smelled like a goddamn funeral, and the dull hymns almost put me to sleep. I didn’t feel any of the sanctity I remember from my childhood. So I came straight to Neighbor’s House to keep company with the bones.” Julien nodded toward the cemetery, where renegade tea-garden napkins waved like ﬂags on last year’s dead stems. Over the winter, discarded water bottles had collected in the cemetery’s corners. Kosmas remembered Daphne’s Facebook pictures of Miami’s spotless, manicured parks. He was embarrassed by Istanbul’s litter. Fortunately, red tulips were pushing up between the rubbish and crooked Ottoman obelisks. They were a small consolation, at least.

A cool wind blew into the tea garden, rufﬂing the branches budding over their heads. Julien shivered. “What’s that smell?” he said, snifﬁng.

“Do I stink?” said Kosmas.

“Not exactly. Kind of like mahleb bread baking in a wood oven.”

“You mean I smell like a pâtisserie.”

“It’s not bad. Really.”

“I showered and changed, but sometimes the Lily sticks to me.”

“Calm down. You’re dressed like a GQ fashion plate but still you’re a wreck. Why don’t you run down to the pharmacy for some eye drops?”

“I already tried some,” said Kosmas. “They didn’t help.”

“If I’d been in your place—” Julien began.

“But you weren’t,” said Kosmas. “So it doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t care whether it matters. You listen to me. It’s time to stop jerking off and get the girl, do you hear? Otherwise you’ll end up a sorry old man like me, drinking café-au-whiskey for breakfast.” Julien stood. His chair scraped across the ﬂagstones as he pushed it back. “Here they come,” he said.

Kosmas looked up the street. There was Daphne, walking arm-in-arm with her aunt Gavriela, who seemed to be lecturing her about something. Kosmas’s eyes traveled over the face he had seen only through a computer screen for the past nine months, the hair that had grown at least ten centimeters since he had last seen it, and the body he remembered better by touch than by sight. Daphne wore a red, unbuttoned gabardine coat and clean, pressed gray pants, the hems of which were “cleaning the pavement,” as his mother would say. She had clearly lost weight. Kosmas was struck by how small she was, how delicate. Inside the Skype screen, everything seemed so big.

Kosmas stood but remained rooted to the slate pavement. Julien crossed the patio and embraced Daphne. “I wish you many years, my girl! May you have all that you desire, and in your bed, ﬁre!”

Daphne laughed.

“Health and happiness!” said Kosmas.

Daphne approached him with a sleepy smile. She raised her hands to his shoulders, but as he embraced her, her arms somehow got in the way. He couldn’t tell if it had been an awkward move on the part of an exhausted woman, or if it was an effort to push him away. He kissed her cheeks, disappointed that she had shown more enthusiasm for Julien.

“Looks like we need tea,” said Gavriela. “Dark as rabbit’s blood.”

But Kosmas couldn’t wait for the tea. He said, “I need to show Daphne something.”

Gavriela pulled her dark glasses down her nose and glared at Kosmas over the top of the lenses. “I don’t think—”

Kosmas interrupted: “We won’t be long. I promise.”

He took Daphne’s hand in his. Skype could keep a relationship breathing, but it couldn’t give you touch. How he had missed her warm hand. As soon as they turned the corner onto Akarsu Yokuşu Street, he pulled her close. She turned her face slightly to the side, so that her chin dug into his chest. Her forehead smelled of jet fuel and cheap airplane soap.

“You came straight here, didn’t you?” He squeezed her, as if he were trying to push her body into his, to make it part of him so that she could never leave again.

She took a step backward, forcing him to loosen his embrace. He noticed a wrinkle between her ribbon-like brows. Her mouth was tightly closed. She caressed his cheek, but her expression remained troubled. “We need to talk,” she said.

“Let me show you something ﬁrst.”

They started down a sloping street that led to the terrace overlooking Nusretiye Mosque. Because it was early, the tables of the tea garden at the edge of the terrace were still empty. A few faces could be seen in the windows of the apartment buildings above, but there were no passersby. Kosmas looked out to sea. A red ship trailing white foam was sailing between the mosque’s two baroque minarets. He leaned on the terrace railing, facing Daphne. “I’m really sorry. My mother’s troubles took me by surprise. I overreacted. And then there was just so much to do at the pâtisserie. . . . I should have come, even if it was only for a little while.”

The wind blew Daphne’s hair into her eyes. She peeled the strands from her face, twisted them, and stuffed the coil into the back of her loose coat. “I’m torn,” she said. “I like that you take such good care of your mother, but her prejudices are . . . strong, to say the least. She doesn’t want me anywhere near you.”

“She doesn’t want anybody near her son. She’s jealous. Your father is just an excuse. But she’ll come around, I promise.”

“Even if she does, I’d never be able to live in the same apartment with her.”

“Look up there,” said Kosmas. He spun Daphne around and pointed to a grand white apartment block with stacked oriels on every ﬂoor from the ﬁrst to the sixth.

“Built in 1897,” he said. “See the oriel on the sixth ﬂoor? That’s mine. I moved out of my mother’s place over a week ago. I wanted to surprise you with a furnished place, but I haven’t had time to buy anything but a bed. It’s still a mess.”

Daphne stared upward. The blue sky and a few wispy cirrus clouds reﬂected on the windowpanes. The wind whistled in the corbels of the ﬁrst ﬂoor. She said, “The oriel must have some view.”

“It’s yours.”

Daphne continued gazing at the building with an expression of wonder. “Your mother?”

“Busy with Dimitris. And you don’t have to worry about her visiting us. It’s a walk-up. You’ll see the whole City from up there without ever setting eyes on her.”

Daphne smiled. “It sounds perfect. But what does she think about me moving here?”

Kosmas reached for the railing. “You decided?”

“I got into Bilgi. On a full grant. They want more people working on oral minority history.”

Κοsmas’s heart beat more quickly. That piece of news opened the way to a life together—in the City. “You couldn’t do better,” he said. “Congratulations.”

He slipped his ﬁngers through the hair at the nape of her neck and kissed her. It was a long, energetic kiss, like those of their nights at the Lily: tongues, teeth, lips, all mixed up in a passionate struggle. Kosmas lost himself in her so completely that it took him a few moments to remember where they were—in public, where everyone could see. He pushed the baby hairs back from her forehead. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too. But you didn’t answer my question. What will your mother think about me moving here?”

“She knows you’ve come for a visit. She didn’t say anything negative.”

“Lack of negative isn’t necessarily positive, just an improvement.” Daphne drew her ﬁngertips over the scar on his forehead.

“I’m so sorry I upset you,” he said.

She placed her hands on his sides, where his love handles used to be. “Would you come to Miami if things didn’t work out here? After I’m done with the PhD?”

He looked past Daphne into the unofﬁcial park below, where a few poor migrants were cooking their Saturday lunches on grills forbidden by the municipality. A vendor was circulating with a round tray of fresh mussels and lemon wedges. Kosmas inhaled the scent of the park’s pine trees. He couldn’t bear the thought of leaving his city, but losing Daphne would be even more painful. “I know we can work things out here,” he said. “But if not, I’ll do whatever it takes.”

She nuzzled her face into his chest. “It’s good to be back.”

“There’s something else,” he said. “I’ve been learning to tango.”

“That’s sweet of you, but . . . tango caused a lot of problems in my last relationship.”

Kosmas felt as if he were sinking into the pavement. He had tried so hard to please her.

“If you get into tango,” she said, “you’ll want to dance with other women.”

“Never. I only want to dance with you. I only want to be good enough for you. Do you want to see what I’ve learned?” He stood tall and waited. As Daphne ﬁt her hand into his, he felt like laughing and weeping at the same time. He encircled her back. She wrapped her arm around his shoulder blade. Kosmas led Daphne in a simple tango, without any other music than that which he heard in his heart. She felt different in his arms now. It was as if their bodies were conversing, inviting and replying, giving and receiving, yet moving as one. And Daphne, instead of wearing a mask of patience, was now relaxed, smiling even, enjoying herself.

They danced the length of the sidewalk at the edge of the ridge, avoiding its potholes, the curb, and a stunted tree that pushed up from a little square of earth in the middle of it. Daphne added adornments: foot taps and circles, as well as tiny caresses of his shin with the tips of her shoes. They ended on one axis, leaning into each other, supporting each other. The tension of Kosmas’s lessons with Perihan had dissipated. Joy and ease had taken its place.

“Maşallah!” someone called. It was the Arabic expression of joy at events willed by God. Kosmas looked up. A kerchiefed old woman was leaning out of her window. “You dance beautifully!” she added.

Kosmas waved in appreciation, then looked into Daphne’s eyes. Her arms slid from the dance position into a true embrace. “There’s still something I don’t get,” she said.

“What?”

“You’ve done so much to please me. You moved out, you learned tango, you’re trying to ﬁnd that recipe. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to get on a plane and come to Florida?”

Kosmas sat on the cliff railing—perhaps an imprudent thing to do in Istanbul, where everything was always breaking—and said “Everything I told you is true. My mother’s health issues, work. And I would have come to Miami if it weren’t for those things. But if I’m really honest . . . when I was in Vienna . . . or any time I’ve been outside the City . . . I didn’t feel like myself anymore.”

She settled into his arms. “I know what you mean.”

More than anything Daphne wanted to see his new place—their place—but if they went up now, she was sure they wouldn’t come out until the following day. She inhaled the sweet, woody pâtisserie aroma of Kosmas’s skin, gave him a ﬁnal kiss, and said, “We’d better go. My aunt asked Selin and Fanis to meet us at Neighbor’s House. We shouldn’t keep them waiting.”

Warmed by the dance and Kosmas’s embrace, Daphne took off her coat.

“I’ll take that,” said Kosmas. “Ladies shouldn’t have to carry anything.”

How she had missed his chivalry. And how she had missed the City. On the airplane she’d worried whether she had made the wrong decision; whether her mother was right in her comparison of Turkey to Germany in ’thirty-nine; whether she had just thrown her life away for a man who hadn’t quite committed to her. But now that she was here, she knew that both Istanbul and Kosmas were home.

They reclimbed the street to Sıraselviler Avenue and approached the patio garden of Neighbor’s House, where their friends had gathered beneath the linden tree. Their table was strewn with boxwood branches, which, Aunt Gavriela had explained in the taxi from the airport, was the Istanbul substitute for palms and laurels. Evidently Fanis and the others had come directly from the Palm Sunday liturgy.

Rea, with her head cranked toward the street, spotted her son before anyone else and shouted, “Kosmaki, stay right there! I want to talk to the young lady.” She fumbled for her sparkly pink cane and pushed herself to her feet with Dimitris’s help.

“Mama, please,” said Kosmas.

“Stay right there!”

“Siktir,” whispered Kosmas, shaking his head.

Daphne giggled at his profanity. “You’re sexy when you curse.”

Rea’s cane made a tinny snapping noise each time it hit the slate pavement: a leitmotif of impending menace . . . tink . . . tink . . . tink . . . like the incessant dripping of Chinese water torture. Daphne’s mirth turned to fear. She inadvertently seized Kosmas’s forearm.

Rea’s brow contracted. Her fuchsia lips hardened, then curled into a smile. “We wish you many years, Daphne,” she said, in her most delicate salon voice, “and a very happy name day.”

Daphne leaned toward Rea to give her a hug, but the older woman responded with a perfunctory kiss and pulled away.

Fanis brushed a crumb off the wedding shirt that Hüsnü Mirza had made for him last summer. He straightened the silk scarf that he had tied at his neck. “Maşallah,” he said tentatively. Fanis had said it to convince himself that he was happy for Kosmas, and he found, as he let the word settle, that he truly was. At least somebody was going to get married and perpetuate their race. He transferred his gaze to Aliki, who sat at the head of the table, nervously blinking her blue-powdered lids. It was the ﬁrst time he had seen her since their encounter outside the Greek Consulate, and he was eager to show that he harbored no resentment. “Aliki,” he whispered, “do you think that Rea’s really going to come round?”

Aliki stuck the knuckle of her index ﬁnger to the bottom of her nose and said, “The countryside is always beautiful before the storm.”

“Daha dur bakalım,” said Gavriela, in Turkish. Let’s wait and see.

“Yaaaa,” said Julien, with a doubtful eyebrow-raise.

Kosmas took off his leather jacket and held up his ﬁnger to Emine, who was passing by. “Would you mind bringing a knife and plates, please?” He peeled back the ﬂaps of the pastry box resting at the center of the table and revealed a large, glistening, snail-shell-like pastry. Fanis took a deep breath of baked butter: this was the real thing, just like the butter Kalypso’s mother had used in her homemade bâtons salés.

“Is that . . . ?” said Daphne.

From behind, Kosmas pulled her long hair over her shoulders to the nape of her neck. “The Balkanik,” he said.

Daphne grabbed his hands, brought them to her face, and kissed them. “You did it.”

Kosmas whispered something in her ear. She smiled and nuzzled her shoulders into his chest. That was it, thought Fanis. The boy had her. Even if he didn’t know it yet.

“Nobody remembers how to make the Balkanik,” said Gavriela.

“Uncle Mustafa had some old Ottoman books written by his grandfather, who had a Rum business partner. I found the recipe in one of them.”

Fanis looked down at the plate. If the Balkanik pastry could be resurrected, then perhaps there was hope for their community. “Bravo,” he said.

“I’m proud of you, son,” said Rea. She took the knife from Emine, symbolically crossed the pastry thrice, and cut it into slices. The inside was exactly as it always had been: ﬁlled with different-colored and -ﬂavored creams.

“Each cream represents one of the Ottoman Balkan peoples,” Kosmas explained. “Bulgarians, Romanians, Albanians, Greeks, Serbs, Croats, Jews, and Turks.”

Fanis stood and bustled around the table, serving each of the plates from the left, like a seasoned waiter. This little trick, he had learned long ago, made him appear caring and helpful in women’s eyes while simultaneously affording him peeks at their décolletage. Although the older ladies had nothing worth seeing and Daphne’s lemons were well covered by a conservative top, the lotus-ﬂower tattoo on Selin’s left breast showed clearly beneath the edge of her white cotton blouse. Fanis paused for a second, staring at the ﬂower. Purity that rose from the mud. Perhaps he should get a tattoo like that.

Julien clicked his tongue in disapproval and murmured, “Ayıp,” the Turkish word for “shame.” Selin made a half-hearted attempt to pull her blouse closer to her chest and shot Fanis a coy smile. Rea handed Fanis the last piece. He withdrew his eyes from Selin’s and lifted his plate to his nose. The aromas were delicate: vanilla, chocolate, cardamom, pistachio, and a few that he couldn’t distinguish. He sank his fork through the pastry and chewed deliberately while looking up at the bright new leaves of the linden tree. Strangely, no memories came to him. Not even of Kalypso. Instead of reliving his past experiences of the Balkanik, he was anchored to the present, to the ﬂittering sun and shade beneath the linden tree, to the sounds of pleasure his friends made, to the way the Bosporus breeze rufﬂed Selin’s curls, to the honking of horns in Sıraselviler Avenue, to the scent of the cemetery lilacs. He was just here. Now. At Neighbor’s House. With the hole in his heart ﬁnally ﬁlled.

Julien pronounced the standard wish: “And next year with health.”

“Forever health!” the friends replied in chorus.

“God willing,” said Fanis. “But this day, this moment, is more than enough.”