Seven Houses by Alev Lytle Croutier

Author:Alev Lytle Croutier [Croutier, Alev Lytle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The days that followed are a blurred confusion since none of the İpekçis wanted to think about or remember what had happened, until the night the telegram arrived. They were all asleep and Camilla was the first to wake up at a persistent knock on the door. Soon, everyone hovered over her shoulder to read the telegram.

“RODRIGO. stop. ABANDON PLANTATION. stop. MONEY DISAPPEAR FROM ACCOUNT. stop. The Manager.”

Cadri immediately dressed and left again for the plantation.

“No doubt, Papatya returned to Rodrigo and together they’ve run off with the money to some exotic tropical place like Havana or Beirut,” Sibel projected. “Where else could she go?”

Others were silent.

“The General has good connections in the police department,” Aida reminded them. “We could . . . You know?”

But to set the authorities after the lovers would be too mean and scandalous. “Cadri would never allow that,” Camilla confirmed. “The most important thing is not to lose any more face than we already have.”

So, once again, grinding their teeth and restraining their feelings, the İpekçis stuck together in distress. But this one was to be their last before everything fell apart.

When an expert from the Department of Agriculture was brought to the plantation to analyze the crops, he informed Cadri that nothing was special about the coffee beans. Just ordinary Yemen. As for the crops, no chance of surviving the winter. Even if they did, it would take at least five years for them to yield any coffee cherries. The best thing to do would be to recultivate the soil, and plant more bananas and citrus instead.

The General’s connection in the Security Department revealed that Rodrigo was not really a Latin lover but an Egyptian crook named Rashid. He had left a few days earlier on a freighter to Cyprus. And he was traveling alone.

So where had Papatya gone? Silence hovered over every part of the household for days and days. The first Friday of the month, the women gathered in the courtyard, made a circle, and began ululating. They stuck out their tongues long like snakes and trilled. They stopped being women and became sirens, birdlike creatures flapping their wings, desperately wailing. The men were away, of course. They always seemed to be away at such times of women’s wildness. The older women sat in their velvet chairs, counting worry beads, whispering the usual incantations while the children leaned against parapets, watching unseen.

That evening while the little ones were shipped off to stay at Mihriban’s, the adults confined themselves to Cadri and Camilla’s flat and yelled at each other for hours. They pointed fingers that seemed to elongate with each accusation. They even spit on each other, their saliva turning into venom. Children and servants put their ears to the floor, hoping to hear something, but all had turned into a poisoned alphabet soup.

They stayed there for interminable hours, retreating at last into their private quarters only to shut out the rest. After that, they coexisted with the impersonality of neighbors as in any city.

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