A Twist of Orchids (6 page)

“Find him, talk to him, persuade him to come home. He might listen to you.”

“But why would Kazim listen to me? He doesn’t even know me. Surely there’s someone else you can ask? A relative? Someone he respects in the Turkish community?”

Osman shook his head. “Is no community. Not here. In Istanbul is plenty uncles, cousins. But Istanbul is Istanbul. Besides, Kazim does not respect Turkish things. Like Betul says, he want forget he is Turkish. He want,” concluded Osman disdainfully, “to be like French riff-raff.”

“I’m sorry,” Julian continued to resist. “I’d like to help, believe me, but I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

Betul had a ready answer. “Begin with Nadia Beaubois. She works at the Intermarché in Périgueux. For a girl like her, we’re nothing but immigrants. Turks. But you, she might talk to you. If Kazim isn’t with her, maybe she will tell you where he is.” The mother’s plea settled on Julian, heavy as a hairshirt.

Julian pondered, took a gulp of cooling coffee. He fiddled with his cup. He liked the Ismets. He supposed he could give it a try. And maybe … His initial dismay now gave way to an idea.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll do what I can. But I want something from you in return.”

“Anything, anything!” cried Osman expansively. “What?”

“Your Aphrodisiac of Sultans. Elan, or whatever you call it. Does it contain salep?”

“Of course,” said Osman proudly. “You know what salep
means? Is ‘testicle of fox.’ Is miracle ingredient. Is first-class product.”

“Is illeg—” Julian stopped himself; Osman’s speech pattern was catching. “It’s illegal.” He went on to talk about the ban on Turkish exports of orchid products and the ecological reasons behind it.

“That’s crazy.” Osman waved aside Julian’s explanations. “Is plenty orchids in Turkey. Salep you can buy on Internet. I have supplier in Istanbul. Every month he send one, two kilos. No problem.”

“What does he ship it out as?” Julian challenged. “Chickpea flour?”

“Arrowroot,” Osman said with apparent ingenuousness. Either he had not thought through the implications of his supplier’s mislabeling or he was cannier than he looked. “But is best salep, made from Males Orchid.” A variety of
Orchis mascula
, Julian assumed. “Good for man. I mix Elan myself from secret recipe.” Osman reached across to poke Julian in the chest. “You drink. Make strong like Turk.”

“Regardless, I want you to stop using it.”

“But”—Osman looked scandalized—“without salep, Elan is not Elan. You want I cheat customer? Besides, is start to sell good.”

Betul rounded on her husband. “Elan is more important than your son? Illegal means nothing?” And she swept on in a torrent of Turkish, the meaning of which Julian easily guessed from the emphatic rise of her voice.

Osman pounded the table, jumped to his feet, put his hand to his breast, and declaimed something, also in Turkish.

“Stop it!” Betul cried out in exasperation. She explained to Julian, “He is saying, ‘I am a Turk. I am correct and hard working. I am ready to sacrifice my existence for the existence of Turkey.’ It is the pledge of allegiance that we all had to say as schoolchildren. But I ask you, what good is Turkey to us here?”

Osman looked sadly from his wife to Julian. His shoulders drooped. “Okay,” he gave in. “Okay. But problem is not me. Problem is Kazim. Elan is first time he is interested in business, in anything Turkish. Why? Because he is smart, like father”—the big man tapped his head—“he knows product got good future. He say, ‘Okay,
baba
, now I take more responsibility, handle deliveries, do inventory.’ And like I tell you, Elan is success. In market we sell as hot drink for promotion. Also as powder with paper explain how you make at home. People try, they like. They think is good for make love. They like that Kazim dress up like
salepar
, walk around with
gügüm
, salep urn, on his back.”

“No,” said Betul sharply. “That was your idea. You made him do it. He hated it. He said it made him feel stupid. Maybe it’s one of the reasons why he ran away.”

“How?” cried Osman, hurt to the core. “Is good publicity. What’s wrong with Turkish
salepar?
Is traditional character, is attract attention, show people a little of Turkish culture. But if we stop”—dolefully, Osman returned to his reason for objecting to Julian’s proposal—“if Kazim come back, find no more Elan, what will he say? He will be more unhappy.”

“Never mind,” Betul snapped, losing all patience with her husband. Life had returned to her sad eyes. “Don’t worry about Elan, Monsieur Wood. Just find Kazim, make him come home. We’ll explain everything. He’ll understand.”

“And you’ll stop importing salep?” Julian pressed.

Reluctantly, Osman nodded.

“Then it’s a deal,” said Julian. “Although there’s just one thing.” A critical point of information. “I don’t know what your son looks like.”

“Like me,” said Osman proudly. “But younger. Is nineteen.”

“Not like you,” Betul cut in bluntly. “Kazim is skinny, not fat like Osman, and without walrus mustache.”

“What walrus?” Osman objected.

“A photo would help.”

Betul got up and left the room. She returned minutes later with a school photo, taken when Kazim was perhaps fifteen. A round face with dark curly hair, his mother’s long nose and large eyes.

“Nothing more recent?”

She shook her head.

“Well, what kind of motorbike does he have?”

“Honda,” said the father. “Big shiny red.”

“A Bol d’Or,” said the mother, ever more practical. “New. He just bought it this year.”

“And what was he wearing when he left?”

“Ha!” Osman slapped the table with the flat of his hand. “White robe—what we call
önluk
—long to ground, yellow vest, red shoes, red hat.” The man’s natural buoyancy came bubbling up as he tried to make a joke. “You cannot mistake. When he left, Kazim is dress like Turkish
salepar!
”

“Don’t be foolish,” Betul scolded. “Monsieur Wood, when Kazim came for his
moto
, he took some clothes and his leather jacket. He left the
salepar
outfit. I put it away where my husband would not see it. I knew it would only upset him.”

Osman’s face fell. “You see?” he said miserably to Julian. “You see what I say? Our son is try take off his Turkish skin. But—” The father sat up straight, his head lifted with pride, and he said with conviction, “He cannot. Once you are Turk, you cannot change what is inside.”

The Brieuxs’ commercial empire in Grissac occupied the ground floor of a large house built of honey-colored Périgord limestone. A small, thriving conglomerate, it consisted of a general store, a
dépot de pain
, a
tabac
, and a
marchand de journaux
—that is, it supplied not only groceries, mousetraps, and dish detergent, but daily deliveries of fresh bread, cigarettes, and newspapers as well. It also served as the informal hub of activity and gossip for the surrounding villages and farming population. Most important, it was the site of the Chez Nous Bistro, which offered some of the best cooking in the region. Julian knew the owners, Paul and Mado Brieux, from his bachelor days when he had lived full-time at his cottage, a twenty-minute walk away.

On that Friday night, the bistro was full as usual. Julian, Mara, and another friend, Loulou La Pouge, a retired policeman, sat at their customary table at the front. Bismuth slept at Julian’s feet, Jazz near the bar. Friday was their weekly dinner get-together. Loulou did not know it, but Fridays were also becoming the occasion of Julian and Mara’s weekly fight: Madame Audebert cleaned on Fridays.

The fight had begun earlier over a little thing. Or, from Julian’s viewpoint, not little at all. He had left his English newspapers scattered about. She (la Audebert) had thrown them out. When he had asked her about them, she had retorted that they were old papers. She could read the dates, that much she could do. And she was right, except that they were last
Sunday’s editions of
The Independent
and
The Observer.
Although he spoke and read French like a native, these papers were Julian’s weekly treat to himself. He liked to stretch the enjoyment of them—the sports, politics, news of home—over the whole week and, well, yes, over the whole house as well. He had retrieved the crumpled pages from the garbage only to find that they were soggy with coffee grounds and vegetable peelings.

Understandably irritated, Julian had pointed out that the newspapers were now unreadable. To which the cleaning woman had declared, “
Pah! C’est la montagne qui accouche d’une souris
,” equating his complaint to a mountain giving birth to a mouse, her way of saying “a tempest in a teapot.” At that point, he had lost his temper and told her in future not to touch anything that was his. She had snapped back, in that case she might as well not come at all, since his things were everywhere, and slammed out of the house. Mara, instead of taking his side, had asked him quite testily if he couldn’t pick up a bit, as she did, before the woman’s weekly visit. He, aggrieved, had replied: “I thought picking up was the whole point of having a
femme de ménage.
”

Then he had made the mistake of adding that he was surprised that Mara, who was afraid of nothing, could be so easily intimidated by a cleaning woman.

That was the spark that had ignited a gunpowder mood that lasted all the way to the bistro and now into dinner.

“
I
ordered the escargots,” Mara snapped at Bernard, the weekend waiter, when he mistakenly put a plate of snails sizzling in garlic butter before Julian. She made it sound like an accusation.

“Um, yes,” said Julian, with a slight shrug of apology to the young man. Bernard, when he was not waiting tables, served as Julian’s heavy labor during the gardening season. “The—er—crayfish in tomato sauce is mine.”

“Eat. Be happy,” urged Loulou, digging into his platter of aubergine fritters. Fat and cheerful, he looked more like an elderly cherub than an ex-
flic.

Conversation was strained during the main course. Loulou tried to keep his end up, but eventually fell to mopping up Mado’s rich cream and morel sauce with bits of bread. Over dessert, Julian tried to jolly Mara out of her sulk by referring to their lovers’ quarrel in a lighthearted way. It was, after all, he told Loulou, a case of the mountain and the mouse.

Loulou chuckled as he cracked open the crust of his crème brûlée with the back of a spoon. “
Eh bien
, which of you is the mouse?”

Mara glared. Julian was reduced to picking his teeth.

Later, they lingered over coffee, staying on as they always did until Paul and Mado could join them. By then, they and the dogs had the restaurant to themselves.

When Paul came out from the kitchen, he, too, looked out of sorts. He shook hands perfunctorily with Julian and Loulou, poked his head at Mara’s face in a simulation of the double-sided kiss, hooked a chair over with his foot, and dropped his large frame into it. Bismuth, who had been lying under the chair, shot away. Jazz looked up from his spot by the bar.

“
Bigre!
” uttered Paul. “Some people are never satisfied. There was a
crétin
actually had the nerve to tell me our menu needs variety. ‘Variety?’ I said. ‘I’ll give you variety. How would you like a face full of pudding?’”

“You didn’t,” marveled Loulou, highly entertained.

“I did.”

The bead curtain separating the bistro from the other parts of the Brieuxs’ enterprise parted noisily. Mado, statuesque and beautiful, came through. She had just been up to check on their young son, Eddie, asleep in the couple’s apartment upstairs.
Wearily, she embraced everyone around the table, pulled up another chair and sat down next to her husband.

“
C’est trop
,” she sighed. It’s too much.

“Are you all right?” Mara asked, peering at her anxiously.

In fact, Mado looked exhausted. She had miscarried a month ago. Although the couple pointedly refused to talk about it, the loss of the baby had knocked the spirit out of the normally vibrant redhead. Out of Paul, too.

The addition of the Brieuxs did not improve the company. Julian unwittingly started an unpleasant exchange of words by mentioning that he had run into Loulou’s grandnephew, Laurent. The conversation began calmly enough.

“Someone broke into the Turkish store in Brames on Sunday night,” he said. “Laurent and Albert were there investigating.”

“Are you talking about Lokum?” asked Mado. She knew the Ismets slightly, since they were also in the food business. Her golden eyes widened, accentuating the shadows lurking beneath them. “Robbery?”

“No, the money wasn’t touched. It was a trash job, and they made a right mess. The Ismets think it was an anti-Muslim statement. Osman and his son were involved in a dust-up at the market in Beaumont last Tuesday. Name-calling ending in bodily contact. Osman thinks it was the same group of
voyous.
And to make matters worse, the son, Kazim, has left home. I’m supposed to get him back. You know about people who go missing, Loulou. This ought to be right up your street.”

It was. Loulou had spent part of his career in Missing Persons with the
Police nationale
in Périgueux. In fact, it was with respect to Mara’s missing sister Bedie that Julian and Mara had come to know him. Loulou’s eyes lit up, and he embarked on what threatened to be a lengthy lecture. He told them that in cases where a person vanished willingly, the key was to understand the background, the
psychology behind the subject’s wish to vanish. “However,” he went on, warming to his subject, “in the case of someone who disappears involuntarily—
ah ça!
—that is another matter. There you have to look at misadventure, kidnap, murder, human trafficking, and all too often”—he hunched forward—“a body.”

“I doubt it’s anything like that,” Julian cut in, stemming the flow. “His parents think he’s trying to shake his Muslim roots. Apparently he’s fed up with being hassled for being Turkish.”

“
Les arabes
,” Paul muttered. Whether he was referring specifically to Turks or to France’s six million Muslims jumbled together regardless of national origin was unclear. Then he added, leaving no doubt as to the even broader inclusiveness of his meaning, “Too many damned immigrants in France. They come here, live off the system, drag everything down.”