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looked variously perplexed or fearful. Again all clicking stopped. The kitchen was hushed as his
grandmother spoke.
We haven't told any of the men in the family about this, not wanting to worry you, but we've been aware
of the situation for some time. Our information began coming in about twenty years ago. The first clues
we had were fragmentary and haphazard, yet even then we filed them away. You can't be too careful in
this business. You're not versed in the intricacies of banking and you wouldn't understand such financial
subtleties anyway, so I won't bother to go into detail. I'll just say there are definite ways of knowing when
a consortium or some other group is buying into an enterprise. Especially if the acquisition is a major one,
so large it can only be acquired piece by piece. Can you follow that?
Yes, Grandmother.
All right, that's what happened in this case. During the last twenty-odd years when we've been aware of
it, and obviously before that when we weren't, the enterprise in question has been cleverly bought piece
by piece. Bought right out from under our noses. And since our very foundations were long ago
established there, the effect on the House of Szondi could be catastrophic.
What enterprise was bought from under your noses?
The old woman glared through her spectacles. Her face darkened.
The Ottoman Empire, she hissed.
The what?
That's right, you heard me correctly. The evidence is there and there can no longer be any doubt about it.
A little over thirty years ago, as unreal as it seems, someone secretly began to buy up the Ottoman
Empire.
You mean the Russians have been intriguing with the French or the English again? They've formed a
secret alliance with the Germans?
No that isn't what I mean. Politics aren't involved. This is a straight business proposition and only one
man is involved. One man has bought the Ottoman Empire.
But that's impossible, Grandmother.
Of course it is. We've been telling ourselves nothing else for years. Haven't we, girls.
She looked sternly around the room and his mother and aunts and grandaunts and female cousins all
nodded vigorously. Then they all began talking at once to each other, loudly and rapidly, not listening to
what anyone else was saying.
That's enough, girls, shouted his grandmother. Instantly the room was silent.
So you see, young man, the situation before us is more than staggering. It's critical and perhaps even
fatal. The House of Szondi was founded on the basis of Levantine trade and now we find one man has
bought the entire Levant. Who is he and what does he want? Why did he buy it? What does he intend to
do with it?
You're sure it's a man? asked Munk.
His grandmother snorted contemptuously.
Of course it's a man, no woman would ever act so crudely. Perhaps some substantial and influential role
behind the scenes, but not a whole empire in one ruthless grab. That's the work of a man.
Munk clicked his heels.
Yes, Grandmother.
Please don't interrupt again.
No, Grandmother.
Now to continue. We've gone back to the beginning to try to reconstruct events and the best we can do,
the earliest scenes we can conjecture, are vague reports of an Egyptian emir and a Baghdad banker and
a Persian potentate holding shadowy interviews in Constantinople in 1880, sitting down. Remember that,
sitting down. The man seems to have been unnaturally tall, but it's impossible for our informants to say
how tall because he was always seated. I say man, rather than men, because it's obvious to us that this
emir and banker and potentate, forget the apparent nationalities and the way he paired them up with
status for alliterative affect, were one and the same man, a dissembler able to disguise himself cleverly.
And how did he disguise himself? Always as a Levantine, which to us means he was obviously a
European being clever again. So the available facts are these. A European of untold personal wealth, a
man so unusually tall he feared his height would betray his real identity, remained carefully seated while
buying all the wells in Mecca and all the wells on all the haj routes to Mecca, while becoming the secret
paymaster of the Turkish army and navy, while buying up all Turkish government bonds and issuing new
ones, while consulting with pashas and ministers and laying aside trust funds for their grandsons, while
firing and rehiring every religious leader in the Middle East so they would have to answer to him, while
consummating a hundred other such deals with the goal of making himself the sole owner of the Ottoman
Empire. Now only one European in the last century fits that description. Do you know who he is?
No, Grandmother.
Strongbow. First name, Plantagenet. An Englishman who was the twenty-ninth Duke of Dorset. Seven
feet, seven inches tall. He took a triple first at Cambridge in botany and was considered the greatest
swordsman and botanist of the Victorian era, but he abandoned plants to become an explorer. In 1840
he disappeared from Cairo after attending a diplomatic reception held in honor of Queen Victoria's
twenty-first birthday. And in order to outrage English decorum and sense of fair play, which he so dearly
loved to do, Strongbow appeared at that diplomatic reception stark naked, save for a portable sundial
strapped to his hip that hid nothing. About forty years later a publication of his appeared in Basle, which
is the next time we hear of him, just prior to his appearance in Constantinople in various disguises. But the
odd thing is, that publication had nothing to do with business or banking. If it had it might have warned us
about what was going to happen in Constantinople.
What did the publication have to do with?
His grandmother smiled faintly. She raised her chin.
Sex. It's a study of Levantine sex in thirty-three volumes.
The old woman paused. Around the room dozens of knitting needles erupted into a cacophony of clicks.
Munk stood at attention staring at his grandmother, who finally lowered her eyes and removed a lace
handkerchief from her sleeve. With slow, delicate motions she dabbed at the beads of perspiration that
had appeared around her mouth.
Tut tut, young Munk. Tut and ho. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the matter at hand but you
seem to want an explanation, and considering what you're going to do for us, I'll give you one. Well then.
Strongbow's study was published in Basle and quite naturally the House of Szondi acquired one. I mean
of course we did. Everything having to do with the Levant must be our special concern. We can't afford
to ignore even the smallest item of scholarship, and Strongbow's study is hardly that. But since it's been
banned, and also because it's rather an explicit work, we felt it best to keep it under lock and key and
not advertise the fact that we own a copy.
Munk stared at his grandmother in awe.
You mean none of the men in the family has ever known about this?
That's right, and you aren't to tell them. Such matters could only be disruptive to a musician's work. A
musician must have discipline and concentration. He needs order in his life to be creative. And let me tell [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]