The Property of a Lady (14 page)

Their son, Ahmet, was born “nine months later to the day,” as Tariq would always explain with a proud roar of laughter just in case any Turk doubted the masculinity of the Tartar Kazahns. And three little girls soon followed.

Ahmet was a small, quiet boy, completely unlike his bold, brash father and grandfather. He looked like Han-Su, with her smooth black hair and dark almond eyes, though he had his mother’s fair skin. Recognizing his intelligence, Refika and Han-Su insisted that he have the best education in spite of Tariq’s protests at what he thought was his grandson’s lack of proper masculine occupations such as riding, shooting, drinking, and women. He asked himself many times how such a child could have been born of two such strong, passionate people. Yet he was the proudest grandfather of all at Ahmet’s graduation from the Harvard class of ’54.

After two years at business school, Ahmet returned to Istanbul and the family business. Tariq watched him like a hawk, firing questions at him when he suggested changes or “improvements.” But despite his misgivings, Ahmet’s cool, calm confidence impressed him. “That boy’s balls are in his brains,” he told Han-Su, half mocking, half proud, as he gave Ahmet permission to build his first big oil tanker.

Tariq was seventy-three years old when Han-Su died in 1960, so peacefully in her sleep that he wasn’t aware at first that she had gone. “She had no illness, no pain,” he cried, bewildered, as his children and many grandchildren gathered around him, and he was not ashamed of the tears in his eyes, for true love has no pride.

With Han-Su gone, Refika and Michael became the official heads of the family. Michael was running the
freighter line as successfully as his father had done, with his own headstrong flair and his wife’s common sense. Meanwhile, Tariq filled in his days with long hours at the office, his only companion Ahmet, who was devoted to his work. Together, the old man and the young one plotted the rise of the Kazahn Shipping Line into a new empire of supertankers, fighting the Greeks for the lucrative oil business. Tariq would chuckle with delight as his grandson outwitted their rivals time and time again, displaying a coolness and nerve that Tariq said proved him a true Tartar Kazahn.

Ahmet was thirty-two when he met and married a pretty Swedish blonde and took her back to live with him and his grandfather at “the big
yali
on the Bosphorus. Their daughter Leyla was born in 1966. She was a beautiful child with almond-shaped eyes in the true blazing Kazahn blue and heavy, silken dark hair; and of all his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Tariq loved her the best.

Despite his age he was as upright and alert as a man twenty years younger, and, after a lifetime devoted to sons, this new girl-child enchanted him. As soon as Leyla was old enough, he began to take her everywhere. He took her to his huge office overlooking the Sea of Marmara, where she could play with the models of his ships and scribble on his desk pad, and to the stables where he kept his string of racehorses, and on trips on his yacht to the sunny Mediterranean ports. On her second birthday he had asked her where she would like to go to celebrate.

“With you, Grandfather Pasha,” she had said, fixing him with a gaze he recognized as his own. “I want to go where you go when you are not with me.” So he took her to lunch at the Yacht Club, where she was treated with all the proper respect of a grown-up lady, and where she ordered her favorite lamb kebabs and ice cream. And Tariq knew he was prouder of his little great-granddaughter than of all his business successes and his fortune.

When Leyla was four years old, Ahmet and his wife decided to take her with them on a trip to Paris. When he heard the news Tariq said sternly, “You cannot take my granddaughter away from me. If she goes, I go.”

Ahmet had glanced at his wife, shrugging his shoulders, and she had sighed resignedly. She had learned long ago that no one ever said no to her grandfather-in-law.

He was sitting on a bench in the Luxembourg Gardens watching little Leyla chase a ball across the grass when a woman spoke to him.

“Tariq Kazahn?” she said wonderingly. “Can it really be you?”

He glanced up, frowning. It was a face he remembered from the past … but then it had been a younger face, and the violet eyes had been frightened, terrified of the shooting … she had been clutching a small child to her, and there was a great amber-colored dog….

“Missie?” His voice trembled as he rose to his feet, “Missie? Is it really you?” And then his arms were around her and they were laughing and crying together.

“I’ve never forgotten you, never,” she was saying. “How could I when you saved our lives, and at such risk to yourself?”

“The Princess Sofia?” he asked eagerly. “And Xenia?”

Missie shook her head, “The princess spoke of you often before she died,” she told him gently. “She said you were one of the bravest and most loyal men she had ever met, and that you were her son’s good friend.” She hesitated. “Like all of us, Xenia has a new identity. I doubt she even thinks about the Ivanoffs anymore.” He looked down in surprise as she drew forward the small girl standing beside her and said, “This is her daughter, Anna. She is ten years old.”

Tariq’s eyes filled with tears as he looked at the fair, slender child, the last of centuries of the great Ivanoff dynasty. After taking her small hand in his, he kissed it.
“My humble greetings, Princess,” he said as she stared back at him, puzzled.

Calling to Leyla, he introduced his granddaughter proudly. “And now go play together,” he told them. “We grown-ups wish to talk.”

They watched as the two little girls hurried eagerly across the grass, and then he turned to look at Missie. There was no sign of gray in her smooth, seal-brown hair. She wore it fashionably shorter now, curling softly into her neck, and apart from a few lines of laughter—or tension—around her eyes, her skin was smooth. She was almost as tall as he and slender as a reed in her chic, cream-colored suit, and he thought admiringly that her long legs looked as perfect as those of a woman thirty years younger.

“Tell me,” he asked. “What happened?”

He listened in silence as she told him the story of a life that had left them struggling between poverty and success, and always, like a pall over everything, the fear.

“You need money?” he asked, concerned.

Missie shook her head, “It’s Anna I’m worried about. Her mother”—she shrugged—“is just like Anouska.”

Tariq nodded. He knew what she meant.

“Anna needs family,” Missie said, “and that’s something I can’t give her. I’m no companion for a child. I brought her to Paris for a change, a little holiday, but I know she’s lonely. Just look how happy she is playing with Leyla. But you, Tariq,” she said, turning to him with a smile, “you are as handsome as ever.”

“I am a successful man,” he said proudly. “The Princess Sofia’s diamond necklace was the foundation of my good fortune. Without her generosity, I would have been nothing. I have never let my family forget this, and now at last we are able to repay some of our debt. Anna Ivanoff has a family. The Kazahns will treat her as their own daughter. Send her to us, Missie, and she will be a princess again.”

Missie laughed and said, “Her name is not Ivanoff,
Tariq, and she would not know what you meant if you called her that. She is not a Russian princess, she is just another little American girl. But thank you for your kindness.”

“My yacht is at Monte Carlo. At least come and spend some time with us there,” he said impulsively. “Think how the children will enjoy it.” He waited eagerly for Missie’s response, loath to let go of her. She was his one contact after all these years with the family he had adored and respected. He saw the hesitation in her face and bellowed suddenly, “No one says no to Tariq Kazahn.”

Missie laughed as people turned to stare. “Oh, very well then,” she agreed. “It will be good for Anna.”

For Tariq the two weeks with Prince Misha Ivanoff’s granddaughter as a guest on his yacht was the highlight of his life. Nothing could ever match this, he told himself as he watched his own granddaughter play with young Anna, just the way he and Misha had played together as children. The only trouble was, he didn’t want to let her go.

“You say her own mother doesn’t have time for Anna. Then why not let her come and live with me?” he begged Missie each night when the children had gone to bed and they were sitting on deck under the balmy Mediterranean night sky. “She will be as my own grandchild, my own blood. Just look how she blossoms here with us, she sparkles, she laughs. She and Leyla are like sisters. What have you got to lose, Missie? And you too are welcome; my house is big enough for everyone. I am a rich man, Anna will want for nothing. When I die, she will share my fortune. Just say she can come live with us, where she will be happy.” He looked at her and added craftily, “Just ask yourself what Misha would have thought best.”

His strong dark profile was etched against the midnight blue of the sky and Missie thought that in the half-light, he looked like a young man. But Tariq was old. Who
knew how much longer he had for this world? And after he was gone, would his son and grandson still want Anna, the way Tariq did? She imagined the family outcry when it was known that Tariq had left part of his fortune to Anna and knew it would not be fair to put such a burden on them. No, Anna was her responsibility and hers alone. She must provide for her as she had always done and she must watch out for her safety as she always had done. But what about after she was gone? She sighed. She could only hope that God would be good to her and allow her time until Anna was old enough to take care of herself.

Night after night Tariq talked about Anna, using everything he could think of to persuade her, and Missie listened and said nothing. But she was tempted. After all, she told herself, Anna’s mother scarcely cared whether she saw the child or not. But it was all so much more complicated than that. Though Anna didn’t know it, she was an Ivanoff, and if her identity was ever discovered, she would be in danger…. She knew it was impossible, yet she felt herself weakening.

“She will have a real family, a real home,” Tariq said proudly. “As a Kazahn she will be treated with respect.”

But it was seeing how happy Anna was with Leyla that almost made Missie change her mind. Although Anna was six years older, the two children had had an immediate understanding and liking for each other. After two weeks, they were inseparable.

“I will agree to this,” she told Tariq the night before they were to leave for Paris and home. “Anna may come to you for the summer holidays, three months every year.”

“A million blessings upon you,” he cried, his hawklike features split with a grin so wide that his big white teeth gleamed in the moonlight, though by now they owed more to porcelain than to nature.

Leyla hugged Anna tearfully when they left the next morning.

“I’ll see you in a few months,” Anna promised as she waved from Tariq’s big Lagonda motorcar that was to take them to the station. “Don’t forget me, Leyla.”

Every year after that a pair of first-class tickets were delivered to Missie in America to take them by train and boat to Monte Carlo, where Tariq and Leyla would meet them in the yacht and take them to Istanbul.

Tariq was right: The girls were like sisters, and there was no doubt he loved Anna as much as Leyla. The whole vast Kazahn family became her uncles, aunts, and cousins, and Missie knew that Anna was happier than she had ever been, because they had given her the stability and continuity of a family life she had never had.

Where Tariq had had one adored great-granddaughter, now he had two; where before he had taken Leyla everywhere with him, he now took Anna as well, and every morning when he said his prayers, he gave thanks for being able to repay his debt of gratitude, honor, and love to the Ivanoffs.

When Tariq was ninety years old, there was a grand birthday celebration. The luxurious
yali
on the Bosphorus was filled with flowers and long tables were spread with a lavish buffet. Musicians played on terraces strewn with scented rose petals amid trees strung with thousands of colored lights. The five hundred guests had been instructed to wear traditional Turkish dress, and Missie thought the
yali
must have looked the way it did when it was first built in the time of the Ottoman Empire, three hundred years before.

Tariq enjoyed his birthday party surrounded by his family and friends, remaining until the last guest left at four
A.M
. After a short rest he was up at six as usual to say his prayers and sip his first cup of the sweet, grainy coffee to which he was addicted. At six-thirty he dressed in his white naval officer’s uniform and gold-trimmed peaked cap, buckled on his sword, and strode out onto the terrace. To his surprise, seventeen-year-old Anna was already
out there, leaning on the marble balustrade, gazing dreamily across the Bosphorus, golden with new morning sunlight.

When she saw him she smiled and said, “Kazahn Pasha,” which is what she always called him. “Why are you up so early? You should still be sleeping.”

Tariq laughed, ruffling her fair hair affectionately. Anna was a lovely girl, not a great beauty like Leyla, but tall and slender, with the strong Ivanoff bone structure and wonderfully expressive blue eyes. Right now they were beaming with love for him, and he knew that Misha Ivanoff would have been pleased with the way he had found to repay him.

“Shouldn’t I be saying that to you?” he asked, leaning on the rail next to her. “After all, I am the great-grandfather and you are the child.”

She put her hand over his and said, “I couldn’t sleep. The party was the most wonderful experience of my life, Tariq Pasha. It was like a scene from a storybook. I shall never forget it.”

“Nor I, my little daughter,” he said quietly. “Look, here comes my ship, the
Han-Su
, named for my esteemed wife. You see, Anna, the men on my ships still expect to see their captain when they travel along the Bosphorus, even if he has been up late celebrating his ninetieth birthday.”

His jolly laugh bellowed across the water as, with her beside him, he saluted the long gray ship gliding majestically past, its sirens blasting and the flag of the mighty Kazahn Line fluttering proudly in the breeze. And then, without another word, he crumpled at her feet.