The Dark Moment Read online

  The Dark Moment

  by Ann Bridge

  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Part Two

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part Three

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part Four

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Part One

  Chapter One

  “Fanny! Fanneee! Where are you?”

  No answer. The small dark girl, whose print frock was both torn and dirty, pushed her dusty hair back from her hot forehead with a narrow dirty little hand, and stood listening.

  “Fanny!” she called again, with a sharp note of impatience in her voice.

  “Come and find me!” another voice called, from far away.

  “No. I’m tired. It is too hot for cache-cache. I shall sit down”—and she did so.

  “Oh, you are slack!”

  “I desire to be slack. In hot weather it is nice to be slack. Come out, dji-djim!”—this in a rather coaxing tone.

  “Oh very well, lazy!” There was a rather prolonged pause. At last— “I can’t get down,” the voice called.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m stuck. Come and help.”

  Reluctantly, Féridé rose. “Where are you?”

  “In the big cedar.”

  The small girl climbed uphill for some distance till she reached a large cedar, some of whose branches grew out almost from the root. Fanny had scrambled up one of these to where, about twelve feet above the ground, some disease had caused a sort of bush of short dense growth— from this her yellow head and fair flushed pink face stuck out like a big flower. Féridé burst out laughing.

  “Oh, la Canaria in its nest! You look so funny.”

  “It isn’t funny—I can’t get down.”

  “But you got up.”

  “I know—but I can’t get down alone.”

  “What can I do, then?”

  “You might fetch Zeynel.”

  “Oh, it’s so far to go down. And he will be so cross to come right up here.”

  “Then fetch Uncle.”

  “Your Uncle is with Baba—I can’t go to him; you know that.”

  After some argument Fanny forced the reluctant Féridé to climb a few feet up the sloping branch and lie along it, clasping it tightly; Fanny then lowered herself till she could get her feet on her companion’s head, and then on her shoulder—scrabbling and sliding, they came to the ground together in a heap.

  “Well, that was a silly place to hide,” Féridé observed frankly, as they picked themselves up. “I couldn’t have found you, ever. And oh, how you have torn your frock!”

  “So I have. I am a sight!”

  She was. Her face was flushed and dirty, her yellow hair full of dust and pine-needles, her frock quite as dirty as Féridé’s, and more torn.

  The two little girls were playing up in the koru, the rough wild sort of park, on a steep tilt, which extends uphill behind so many yalis, its big conifers rising out of a tangle of bushes and shrubby aromatic herbs. Paths, considerably overgrown, wound through it—Zeynel, the gardener, didn’t bother much about the koru; here and there stone seats stood beside them, or rocks jutted out, on which small green or brown lizards warmed themselves in the hot June sun. Fanny and Féridé moved out from under the cedar to an open slope, where they could see the waters of the Bosphorus gleaming blue below them between the dark shapes of the trees, with a low line of hills opposite; away to their right they could just catch sight of Scutari, the minarets of its fragile beautiful mosque standing up like ivory needles, faintly stained with grey; more in front the white mass of the Palace of Beylerbey, half-hidden in trees, and then the blue sweep of the Bosphorus curving away north-eastward. The scent of thyme—from bushy plants far larger than the creeping thyme of England—was strong in their nostrils, in the hot afternoon sun. Fanny pulled a grass, and chewed it reflectively.

  “I do like it here,” she said. “It is much nicer than at Madame Kaftanoglou’s. Féridé, I think you are a very lucky person.”

  “Do you? Tell me why.”

  “Because you live in such a lovely place, and because your Grandmother is so frightfully nice—I think she’s one of the nicest, most distinguée people in the world.” (Fanny was, as usual, speaking Turkish, but she used the French word for distinguished.) “And I think the Pasha is wonderful, though I am a little afraid of him.”

  “I see no reason for being afraid of Baba,” said Féridé—“though I agree with you about Niné. But Fanny, before you envy me too much, remember Mademoiselle Marthe! She is not so amusing. And Dil Feripé!”

  Fanny laughed.

  “Poor old dears! They aren’t too bad!” She glanced at her watch. “Oh Féridé, it’s getting late! Uncle Henry may be ready. Come on down.”

  The two children sprang up and scrambled downhill till they came to one of the paved paths, and ran down it; it ended at a narrow iron footbridge, spanning a cutting through which the road from Péra passed up towards Therapia; by means of the footbridge the inhabitants of the yali could reach the koru in privacy, without setting foot on the road itself. As they reached it, Féridé checked with a dismal cry—“My çarşaf! Oh, where did I leave it?”

  “You had it on as we went up,” said Fanny.

  “Yes, but I took it off when we began to play. Oh, where have I left it, horrible thing?—I tore it, anyhow,” she added, with a comical half-vindictive expression on her small face. “But I must find it”—and she began to retrace her steps up the stone-paved path.

  “Oh, Féridé, need you go back? Can’t you send Zeynel to look for it?”

  “Chérie, really you are stupid! That would never do. And I can’t go in without it—I am over thirteen now, you know.” There was a slight note of importance about the last words.

  “Oh all right,” said Fanny, reluctantly. As they toiled up the path again—“I must say that’s a thing I don’t envy you, all this bother with çarşafs,” she pursued. “It was much nicer last year, when you didn’t have to wear one.”

  “Oh well, everyone has to do it,” said Féridé resignedly. “Now—it was about here we began.” Her grey eyes roved about.

  “There it is,” said Fanny—“under that bush.” She stooped in, and drew out the shapeless-looking piece of black veiling. “Goodness, you have torn it! What will Dil Feripé say?”

  They ran down to the bridge again. Some fifty yards beyond its further end a flight of stone steps led steeply down to the house and garden. This last was a long strip between the hill and the sea, shaded by huge magnolias with solid grey trunks and glossy leaves, and slighter Judas-trees; a marble balustrade extended along the water’s edge, with marble seats beside it; lawns and sanded path wound and spread between groups of shrubs and beds brilliant with flowers, and at the end furthest from the house water from a fountain with carved marble panels fell into a pool surrounded by a curb of damp-stained stone. This was the haremlik garden, belonging to the women’s or private portion of the house-harem merely means “private”; the steep stony cliff clothed with bushes and creepers, where the hill had been cut away to make space for house and garden alike, screened it completely from the
road running through the cutting below the footbridge, and a high wall behind the house on the landward side cut it off from the garden of the selamlik, or public portion, where men were received.

  The yali itself was vast, stretching along the water-front for over 150 yards; like all yalis of a respectable age it was built of wood which, unpainted, in the course of a hundred years had taken on the most delicate tones of silvery-grey—the graceful windows with their baroque pediments, the arched loggias and balconies, gained an unimaginable charm from the combination of this exquisite colour and fragile substance with the architectural forms usually associated with the white solidity of stone. For externally there was nothing oriental about the house, no pointed arches or Moorish doorways—it was pure European 18th century building, translated, so to speak, into wood; the one specifically Turkish thing about it was the brick-built hammam or bathhouse, topped with little domes, embedded in the great wooden structure. Within, however, the place was rather un-European: a big central hall, running right through the house from the embankment on the water in front (with steps to alight from a boat) to a door giving onto the garden at the back; rooms all round, and a broad graceful staircase rising from the hall to the next floor, where the same arrangement of rooms was repeated—a passage led from the hall to the adjoining selamlik.

  This, however, was so to speak the bare bones of a yali, the simplest single unit; in larger houses the unit of central hall, surrounding rooms, and staircase was often repeated once or even twice, with combinations and permutations—in the case of Féridé’s enormous family house it was repeated three times, with the variation that at the opposite end to the haremlik garden the great hall ran parallel with the water-front, instead of at right angles to it, and opened on a stone-paved space from which a short drive led up through the selamlik garden to a gate in a high wall, giving onto the main road, which here emerged from the cutting.

  From the top of the steps the two small girls could look down on all this. Up by the gate, overshadowed by one of a group of immense plane-trees which filled the end of the selamlik garden and overhung the water, stood a small gate-house with a stone seat beside the door—the abode of the door-keeper; the door-keeper himself, an oldish man, was busily engaged in doling out water, drop by drop, from a delicate copper jug with a long slender spout to some cactuses in pots which stood on the seat. He was, like most of his kind, an Albanian Moslem, magnificently dressed in baggy blue trousers over coarse white woollen stockings, a blue waistcoat or tunic with floating sleeves and richly embroidered in gold folded high across his chest, and bound in round the waist by a flamingly vivid scarf of striped Damascus silk. He wore the usual fez on his head.

  “Someone must be here,” said Féridé, observing him—“Mahmud Agha has his best scarf on.”

  “Uncle is here.”

  “Yes, but he doesn’t put on that scarf for your Uncle—he comes so often. Do let us see who it is.”

  They ran along a narrow path on the cliff edge above the house to where a second flight of steps led down into the selamlik garden: from the top of these they commanded a view of the front door. Sure enough, on the cobbled space in front of it a large shiny car was drawn up; by it stood a tall footman in a neat chauffeur’s uniform.

  “Oh, that’s Javid Bey’s car!” Féridé exclaimed. “I know that tall kavass—he’s called Ibrahim.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Mahmud Agha told me.”

  Fanny knew all about Javid Bey, pillar of the Committee of Union and Progress, and now, in the summer of 1914, Minister of Finance.

  “What do you suppose he’s come about?” she asked.

  “Oh, he often comes to see Baba,” said Féridé. “He likes to hear his views. Many people wish to hear his views.”

  Fanny realised quite well that Féridés father, Murad Zadé Asaf Pasha, was a person of some importance; he had governed a big vilayet, and even since his retirement occupied a certain position. But any speculations on the Finance Minister’s visit were cut short by a voice which they now heard, faint but imperative, raised from the other garden. “Féridé! Fanny!”

  “There she is!” Féridé exclaimed. “Come on—we must meet it!” She was still flapping the torn çarşaf in her hand, but as they ran back to the other steps she flung it carelessly and unskilfully over her small dark head and person.

  At the bottom of the steps a curious figure awaited them among the flower-beds. Dil Feripé was a short, thin, angular woman, with a withered and rather yellow face; she had been nurse to Féridé’s mother, and was now getting old. She wore a long skirt down to her ankles and a sub-fuse alpaca jacket, so long and so loose as to be almost a tunic, over a blouse with a high neck—the whole producing a very old-fashioned and even Victorian effect; but—incongruously enough above the Victorian ensemble—a voile scarf draped her head, and across her face below the eyes hung a short piece of pale muslin, the peçe. As the little girls approached her, she let out a shrill torrent of dismay, in the tones of an agitated pea-hen.

  “But Féridé! Oh, what a shameless girl, showing your hair! You may burn in Hell for this!”

  “There is no one to see but you and Fanny, Dadi,” Féridé protested.

  “Torn, too!” Dil Feripé grumbled on, as she adjusted the çarşaf with a skilful hand. “Oh, what would your poor Mother say!”

  Since Féridé had never known her mother, who had died when she was born, she could hardly reply to this—purely rhetorical—question. They crossed the garden, the dadi still grumbling at their lateness and the state of their frocks, and passed round the end of the house and along a narrow marble terrace between the silver-grey façade and the sea. This was an approach which never failed to entrance Fanny; she had been coming along it for four summers, but it never lost its romantic charm. The central portion of the house was built right out over the water in an immense formal bow—another peculiarity of this particular yali; in the angle between the bow and the main frontage was a door by which they now entered the great cool central hall, with its panelled painted ceiling and painted doors all round. At the further end rose a broad graceful staircase, which in two right-angled bends reached the floor above; up this Féridé now bounded, followed by Fanny, regardless of the poor dadi’s shrill shrieks of protest at their dirty and disordered appearance. The staircase emerged at the top onto a hall—it was more than a landing—duplicating the one below, and faintly lit by a curtained window over the stairs; here chairs, and carved and inlaid tables with bulging legs, stood about between sofas against the walls covered in brilliant fabrics; doors led off it on three sides. Féridé flew to one at the end opposite the stairs—as she flung it open, light poured in from the room beyond.

  This room, the salon and principal sitting-room of the haremlik, filled the great bow which formed the centre of the yali’s façade; its three large windows gave onto the narrow blue of the Bosphorus and the wide blue sky above. Across the western window carved perforated wooden shutters were drawn together, excluding the sun, save for small brilliant paillettes of light which fell through the tiny lozenge-shaped openings onto the floor beneath—the other two were unshielded. By the eastern one an old lady sat on a low sofa, working at a piece of embroidery— on a small inlaid table beside her were silks, scissors, and a new French book. Féridé darted across to her, and flung her arms round her neck in an eager hug.

  “Niné, we are so late! I am very sorry. I apologise.”

  The old lady kissed the child gently, then held her away at arm’s length.

  “Dji-djim! But look at your dress!” Then, seeing Fanny, who had followed more soberly—“Et Fanny! Bonjour, my child.”

  Fanny had lived long enough in Turkey to know how to behave properly to elderly ladies. She took this one’s hand, kissed it, and then laid it lightly against her—rather dirty—forehead.

  “Bonjour, Réfiyé Hanim,” she said. “I ask your pardon that we are late. It was my fault.”

  Féridé, who had pulled of
f her çarşaf and flung it on a chair, began to pour out an explanation.

  “We were playing cache-cache, and Fanny was up a tree, and couldn’t come down—”

  “Ah,” Réfiyé Hanim interposed quietly, “that explains the state of your dresses—and your hair! But my children, it is time for tea—I think you had better go and make yourselves presentable.”

  At this point Dil Feripé, whom they had completely outdistanced on the stairs, appeared and lifted up her voice.

  “Hanim Effendi, what are we to do with this Féridé? Look at her dress!—her face! And worst of all, when I found them, she had her çarşaf half off, her hair plainly visible! Ah, what would her dear, her excellent Mother have said, to see a child of hers thus?”

  Réfiyé Hanim was a woman of great powers, and those powers expressed themselves largely in an immense calm, coupled with an immense benevolence. (She also possessed, but seldom showed, a strong sense of the amusing.) She now raised one hand a very little way—-it was the slightest of gestures, but it silenced Dil Feripé.

  “Where were you playing cache-cache?” she asked Féridé.

  “Up in the koru. And Fanny climbed a tree—and her head stuck out —and she looked like the canary she is, in a bush!”— Féridé bubbled out, in a burst of giggling. “But it took a long time to get her down, and then—”

  “Yes. Very well. Now, Dil Feripé, take them both to Féridé’s room, and change their dresses and make them clean, and then we will have tea.” There was an unmatched combination of benevolence and command in her tone. Féridé however lingered to kiss her grandmother once more—when another elderly woman, almost as Victorian in her dress as Dil Feripé, but with no veil of any sort on her iron-grey head, came in. At the sight of Fanny and Féridé, she in turn held up her hands, and burst into horrified exclamations in rapid French.

  “Oh, ces enfants! Oh, les petites étourdies!”

  “Dil Feripé will take them to get tidy,” said Réfiyé Hanim quietly, also in French. “Assez, assez, Féridé—run along with Fanny.” As they went off—“Come and sit down, Mademoiselle Marthe,” she said pleasantly.