“Because I am a man who practices honesty. Maybe I am just number two of the six people the woman talked about. Maybe destiny decided our paths to cross.”
Can turned and left. Daldry watched him cross the street and board a tram. He thought about what Can had said before pushing away his plate and paying the bill.
Daldry decided to return to the hotel on foot. When he arrived, Alice was waiting for him in the bar, reading a magazine.
“Where have you been?” she asked when she looked up and saw him. “I called your room and you didn’t pick up. The man at the front desk finally told me you had gone out. You might have left me a note. I was beginning to worry.”
“That’s touching—I just went for a walk. I felt like getting some fresh air and I didn’t want to wake you.”
“I hardly slept at all last night. Go on and order something. I want to talk to you.”
“Perfect. I’m thirsty and I also have something I want to tell you.”
“You first,” said Alice.
“No. You first. Oh, very well; me first. I thought about what you said last night, and I decided to go ahead and hire the guide, as you suggested.”
“I suggested the exact opposite,” said Alice.
“That’s strange, I must have misunderstood. Well, it doesn’t matter now. The main thing is that we’ll save a lot of time with his help. There isn’t much point in going out into the countryside to search for flowers now because it isn’t the right season. But a guide could take you to meet the best perfume makers in the city. Perhaps discovering the work of others will help inspire you.”
Alice suddenly felt indebted to Daldry for having gone to so much trouble on her behalf.
“Well, since you put it that way, yes, I suppose hiring a guide is a good idea.”
“I’m thrilled to hear you say so. I’ll ask the concierge to set up an appointment with him for early this afternoon. And you? You wanted to tell me something?”
“Oh, nothing important, now that I think about it,” said Alice.
“Is it your bed? My mattress is much too soft. It makes me feel like I’m sinking into a slab of warm butter. We can ask to change rooms.”
“No, the bed is fine.”
“The nightmares again?”
Alice decided to lie. “No, it’s not that either, luckily. I think it’s just the disorientation of being in a foreign country. I’m sure I’ll get used to it soon.”
“You ought to try to get some rest if you didn’t sleep. If all goes well, we’ll begin our search this afternoon, and you’ll need your energy.”
Alice had another idea in mind. She asked Daldry if, in the time before their guide came to the hotel, they might return to the street into which they had wandered the previous night.
“I don’t know if we’ll be able to find it, but we can always try.”
Alice, however, remembered the route perfectly. Once they had left the hotel, she led the way without a moment’s hesitation.
“Here we are,” she said, pointing at the imposing konak that marked the end of the side street. Its second floor jutted out precariously overhead.
Something about the place spurred Daldry to tell Alice a story. “When I was a child,” he said, “I used to look up at houses and dream about what was going on behind their walls. I don’t know why, but the lives of other people fascinated me much more back then. I used to wonder if they were like mine, and I would try to imagine what the other children my age did every day, playing and living in the houses that were the center of their lives. If I looked up at the same houses at night, I’d see the windows lit from inside and imagine dinners, parties . . . I can’t help but wonder why this old house is in such a sorry state today. I wonder who lived here and why they deserted it.”
“I did the same thing when I was young,” said Alice. “There was a couple in the building across the street from where we lived that I used to watch from my bedroom window. The husband always got home around six in the evening, when I was supposed to be doing my homework. He would walk into the living room, take off his coat and hat, and collapse into an armchair. His wife would bring him a drink and take his coat and his hat. He would open his newspaper, and usually he was still reading it when I was called for supper. When I returned to my room after dinner, the curtains across the street were always drawn. I remember hating the man for taking the drink from his wife without saying anything.
“One day, when I was walking in the street with my mother, I saw him walking toward us. The closer he got, the harder my heart pounded. He even slowed down and greeted us as he passed. He smiled at me, and I was sure he was thinking, ‘So you’re the cheeky little girl that spies on me from her bedroom window every evening. Don’t think I’m not onto you!’ I was sure he was about to say something in front of my mother, so I pretended not to see him and pulled my mother’s hand to hurry her along. She lectured me for being impolite. I asked her if she knew the man, and she pointed out that he ran the grocer’s shop on the corner, a shop I walked past every day. The girl behind the counter was his daughter, said my mother, and she had taken care of him ever since his wife had died. You can imagine how confusing it was. And I thought I was the queen of the spies!”
“Imagination and reality are often incompatible,” observed Daldry as they continued down the narrow street. “For a long time, I was convinced that the parlor maid that worked for our family had a soft spot for me. You can imagine my surprise when I found out she was in love with my older sister. My sister wrote poems to her. They were madly in love, it turns out, and they managed to hide it for a long time. The maid only pretended to dote on me to distract my mother from the truth.”
“Your sister loves other women?”
“Yes, and although most people aren’t comfortable with the idea, I long ago decided that it was better than loving nobody at all. But enough storytelling. Shall we see if we can find your steps?”
Alice led the way. The old wooden houses loomed threateningly, like sentinels guarding against intruders. They reached the end of the street, but found no flight of steps. Alice said that none of it reminded her of her nightmare anymore.
“I’m sorry. This was a waste of time.”
“Not at all. This little stroll has put me in a good mood and worked up my appetite. I noticed a little café along the way that seemed much more authentic than the hotel dining room. You don’t have anything against branching out and eating in more local sorts of places, do you?”
“Quite the contrary.” Alice took Daldry’s arm and they turned back.
The café was thronged with customers, and a thick haze of cigarette smoke made it almost impossible to see the back of the room. Daldry and Alice wove through the crowd of regulars, and he managed to find them a little table. Over the course of their meal they told each other more stories about their childhoods. Daldry had grown up the middle child between his brother and sister, and his family had always been well-off, whereas Alice was an only child and came from a more modest background. Both of them remembered their childhood as a lonely time, but they saw their past solitude as having nothing to do with the love they had received, and more to do with their natural state of mind. They both loved rainy days but hated the winter. They had both daydreamed in school, met their first loves in summertime, and suffered their first heartbreaks at the beginning of autumn. Daldry had always more or less hated his father, whereas Alice had idolized hers. Now, in January 1951, Alice encouraged Daldry to try his first Turkish coffee, and Daldry was inspecting the bottom of his cup.
“It’s a custom here to read the future in coffee grounds. I wonder what yours would tell us,” he said.
“We could consult an expert and see if their predictions correspond with those of the woman in Brighton.” Alice was in a pensive mood.
Daldry glanced at his watch. “Perhaps another time. We had better get back to the hotel if we don’t want to be late for our meeting with the guide.”