Caught by the Turks

by Francis Yeats-Brown

It was then that I noticed his method of combating the household pets.

Previously I had observed that the ends of his pyjamas (we always talked at night) were provided with strong tapes, which were tied close to his ankles; but the object of this fastening only became apparent when I noticed the excited throngs of insects on his elastic-sided boots. They could not get higher. They were balked of their blood. If he ever felt any discomfort, he merely tightened the tapes.

After a careful study of Thémistoclé's psychology (which was so full of outlooks new to me that I never achieved more than a glimpse into the pages of his past) I came to the conclusion that he was implicitly to be trusted. In his frail frame there burned a spirit of adventure and a courage that might "step from star to star." His soul had been born to live in a great man, only somehow it had made a mistake and taken a tenement instead of a manor-house to live in. . . .

I think sunset and sunrise were the pleasantest hours in our new abode. It was possible then to draw back the blinds without any danger of being seen, and enjoy the cool of the evening and the magnificent view which our situation afforded. Our house, although it stood in a side street, commanded a prospect of the upper end of the Golden Horn, as well as a view of one of the most populous thoroughfares of the town.

We used to sit and gaze at the twilit city, until the creeping darkness overtook us.

If circulation be a test of a city's vitality, then Constantinople was certainly at a low ebb. The pedestrians seemed to get nowhere. They were hanging about, waiting for something to happen. The whole town was dead-tired, unspeakably bored of life as it had to be lived under the Young Turks. Constantinople was getting cross. . . . Cross, like someone who was tired of adulation from the wrong person. Some trick of sea and sun give her this human quality of sex. Anyone who has lived for long in her houses must feel her personality. She is the courtesan of conquerors, but inherent in her is some witchcraft, by which she weakens those who hold her, so that they die and are utterly exterminated, while she remains with her fadeless and fatal beauty, an Eastern Lorelei beside the Bosphorus. . . . She sapped the strength of the Roman Empire, she overthrew the dominion of the Greeks, and now, after a period of fretful wedlock, she was shaking herself free from the Turk.

Something was going to happen soon. One felt it in the air.

What happened to us, was that it became necessary to draw the blinds and light our candle, and search for the pestilence that crept by night. Presently our meal arrived, which was always a cheerful interlude, but it was as short as it was sweet, for courses were few, with famine prices prevailing. Afterwards we continued our hunting till dawn.

At dawn, when the chill of morning had sent our sated enemies to sleep, there was another truce from trouble. We used to draw back the blinds again and sit at the window.

I used to watch the pale sun on the horizon, fighting the mist-forms that clung heavily to earth and sea, and I felt that in the world-consciousness a similar contest swayed. The old ideas of government were being caught by a light that was pale now, but soon to grow luminous—a radiance that would dispel the night of war, and show us a new world, intangible yet, but dimly sensed.