“Chabook! Gel! Commandant! Commandant!” repeated the sentry.
“It—aw—seems the Commandant wants you,” the voice of the Sage explained from the next table.
The Sage was wrong, as usual. It was I who wanted the Commandant. But I let it pass and went off with the anxious sentry.
In the office Kiazim Bey returned my salute with dignity and politeness. Then he shook hands with me and placed me in a seat on one side of the table. He sat opposite. The Interpreter stood at attention by his side.
This was my first introduction to the Commandant. During my nineteen months of prison life in Yozgad I had seen him only rarely, and never spoken to him. Small fry like Second Lieutenants had small chance of getting to know the man who refused interviews with our most senior Colonels and consistently kept aloof from us all. As he spoke to the Interpreter I studied him with interest. He was a man of about fifty years of age, a little above middle height, well dressed in a uniform surtout of pearly grey. Except for a slight forward stoop of the head when he walked, he carried himself well. His movements were slow and deliberately dignified; his voice low, soft, and not unpleasing. The kalpak which he wore indoors and out alike covered a well-shaped head. His hair, at the temples, was silver-white, and an iron-grey moustache hid a weak but cruel mouth. His features were well-formed, but curiously expressionless. I believe that no prisoner in Yozgad, except Hill and myself, ever saw him laugh. His complexion was of an extraordinary pallor, due partly to much illness, and partly to his hothouse existence indoors; for like most well-to-do Turks, he rarely took any exercise. And he had the most astonishing pair of eyes it has ever been my fortune to look into; deep-set, wonderfully large and lustrous, and of a strange deep brown colour that merged imperceptibly into the black of the pupil. They were the eyes of a mystic or of a beautiful woman, as his hands with their delicate taper fingers were those of an artist. He played nervously with a pencil while he spoke to me through the Interpreter, but never took his eyes from my face throughout the interview. He began with Western abruptness, and plunged in medias res.
“Before we go into any details,” he said, “I want your word of honour not to communicate to anyone what I am now going to tell you.”
“I will give it with pleasure, Commandant, on two conditions.”
“What are they?”
“First, that your proposals are in no way detrimental to my friends or to my country.”
“They are not,” said the Commandant. “I promise you that. What is your second condition?”