Nights of Plague

by Orhan Pamuk

Genres: General Fiction; Cultural Heritage; Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

1901. Night draws in. With the stealth of a spy vessel, the royal ship Azizye approaches the famous vistas of Mingheria. 'An emerald build of pink stone'. The 29th state of the ailing Ottoman Empire. The ship carries Princess Pakize, the daughter of a deposed sultan, her doctor husband, and the Royal Chemist, Bonkowski Pasha. Each of them holds a separate mission. Not all of them will survive the weeks ahead. Because Mingheria is on the cusp of catastrophe. There are rumours of plague - rumours some in power will try to suppress. Plague is not the only killer. Soon, the eyes of the world will turn to this ancient island, where the future of a fragile empire is at stake, in a rich and epic mystery of passion, fear, scandal and murder, from one of history's master storytellers.

Release date: October 4, 2022

Publisher: Vintage

Print pages: 704

Sample

CHAPTER 1
I
n the year 1901, if a steamer with black coal-­smoke pouring from its chimney were to sail south from Istanbul for four days until it passed the island of Rhodes, then continue south through dangerous, stormy waters toward Alexandria for another half day, its passengers would eventually come to see in the distance the delicate towers of Arkaz Castle upon the island of Mingheria. Due to Mingheria’s location on the route between Istanbul and Alexandria, the Castle’s enigmatic shadow and silhouette were gazed upon in awe and fascination by many a passing traveler. As soon as this magnificent image—­which Homer described in the Iliad as “an emerald built of pink stone”—­appeared on the horizon, ship captains of a finer spiritual disposition would invite their passengers on deck so that they could savor the views, and artists on their way to the East would avidly paint the romantic vista, adding black storm clouds for effect.
But few of these ships would stop at Mingheria, for in those days there were only three ferries that made regular weekly trips to the island: the Messageries Maritimes Saghalien (whose high-­pitched whistle everyone in Arkaz recognized) and Equateur (with its deeper horn), and the Cretian company Pantaleon’s dainty vessel the Zeus (which only rarely sounded its horn, and always in brief bursts). So the fact that an unscheduled ferry was approaching the island of Mingheria two hours before midnight on the twenty-­second of April 1901—­the day our story begins—­signaled that something unusual was afoot.
The ship with pointed bow and slender white chimneys closing in on the island from the north, stealthy as a spy vessel, and bearing the Ottoman flag, was the Aziziye. It had been tasked by Sultan Abdul Hamid II with transporting a distinguished Ottoman delegation from Istanbul on a special mission to China. To this delegation of seventeen fez-­, turban-­, and hat-­clad religious scholars, army officers, translators, and bureaucrats, Abdul Hamid had added at the last moment his niece Princess Pakize, whose marriage he had recently arranged, and her husband, Prince Consort Doctor Nuri Bey. The joyous, eager, and slightly dazed newlyweds had not been able to fathom the reason for their inclusion in the delegation to China, and had puzzled over the matter at great length.
Princess Pakize—­who, like her older sisters, was not fond of her uncle the Sultan—­was sure that Abdul Hamid had meant her and her husband some kind of harm by putting them in the delegation, but she had not yet been able to work out what the reason might be. Some palace gossips had suggested that the Sultan’s intention must be to drive the newlyweds out of Istanbul and send them to die in yellow fever–­infested Asian lands and cholera-­ridden African deserts, while others pointed out that Abdul Hamid’s games tended to be revealed only once he had finished playing them. But Prince Consort Doctor Nuri Bey was more optimistic. An eminently successful and hardworking thirty-­eight-­year-­old quarantine doctor, he had represented the Ottoman Empire at international public health conferences. His achievements had caught the Sultan’s attention, and when they had been introduced, Doctor Nuri had discovered what many quarantine doctors already knew: that the Sultan’s fascination with murder mysteries was matched by his interest in European medical advances. The Sultan wanted to keep up with developments concerning microbes, laboratories, and vaccinations and introduce the latest medical findings to Istanbul and across Ottoman lands. He was also concerned about the new infectious diseases that were making their way toward the West from Asia and China.
There was no wind in the Levant that night, so the Sultan’s Aziziye cruise ship was making swifter progress than expected. Earlier it had made a stop at the port of Smyrna, though no such stop had been declared in the official itinerary. As the ship had neared the misty Smyrna docks, one by one the committee’s delegates had climbed up the narrow stairwell that led to the captain’s quarters to request an explanation and had learned that a mysterious new passenger was to come on board. Even the captain (who was Russian) had claimed not to know who this passenger was.
The Aziziye’s mysterious passenger was the Ottoman Empire’s Chief Inspector of Public Health and Sanitation, the renowned chemist and pharmacist Bonkowski Pasha. Tired but still sprightly at the age of sixty, Bonkowski Pasha was the Sultan’s Royal Chemist and the founder of modern Ottoman pharmacology. He was also a semisuccessful businessman who had once owned a number of different companies producing rosewater and perfumes, bottled mineral water, and pharmaceuticals. But for the past ten years he had worked exclusively as the Ottoman Empire’s Chief Inspector of Public Health, sending the Sultan reports on cholera and plague outbreaks, as well as rushing from one outbreak to the next, from port to port and city to city, to oversee quarantine and public health provisions on behalf of the Sultan.
Chemist and pharmacist Bonkowski Pasha had often represented the Ottoman Empire at international quarantine conventions, and had written Sultan Abdul Hamid a treatise four years ago on the precautions that the Ottoman Empire should take against the plague pandemic that had begun in the East. He had also been specially appointed to combat the outbreak of plague in the Greek neighborhoods of Smyrna. After several cholera epidemics over the years, the new plague microbe from the East—­whose infectivity (what medical experts termed “virulence”) had waxed and waned in time—­had, alas, finally entered the Ottoman Empire too.
Bonkowski Pasha had taken six weeks to halt the outbreak of plague in Smyrna, the largest Ottoman port in the Levant. The local population had obeyed orders to stay indoors, respected sanitary cordons, and acquiesced to the various restrictions that had been introduced. They had also joined forces with the municipal authorities and the police to hunt down rats. Disinfection crews—­composed mostly of firemen—­had been deployed, the whole city soon reeking of the solution that issued from their spray pumps. The success of the Ottoman Quarantine Authority in Smyrna had been reported not just in the columns of local newspapers like the Harmony and the Amalthea, and in Istanbul dailies like the Voice of Truth and the Endeavor, but also in various French and British newspapers that had already been tracking this plague from the East from port to port; and so to the average European too, Bonkowski Pasha, born in Istanbul of Polish parentage, was an esteemed and well-­known figure. The plague in Smyrna had been successfully curbed after just seventeen deaths; the port, the docks, the customhouses, the shops, and the markets had opened again, and in all the schools, classes had resumed once more.
The distinguished passengers of the Aziziye who watched through their cabin portholes and from the deck as the chemist pasha and his assistant boarded the ship were aware of this recent triumph in quarantine and public health policy. Five years ago, the former Royal Chemist had been conferred the honorific title of Pasha by Abdul Hamid himself. Today Stanislaw Bonkowski was wearing a raincoat whose color could not be discerned in the dark, and a jacket which accentuated his long neck and the light stoop of his shoulders, and he was carrying his ever-­present gunpowder-­gray briefcase that even his students from thirty years ago would have instantly recognized. His assistant, Doctor Ilias, was hauling the portable laboratory which enabled the chemist pasha to isolate cholera or plague bacteria and tell contaminated and potable water apart, which was also an excuse for him to taste and test every source of water in the Empire. Once on board, Bonkowski and his assistant immediately retired to their cabins without greeting any of the Aziziye’s curious passengers.
The two new passengers’ silence and guardedness only heightened the Guidance Committee delegates’ curiosity. What could be the purpose of all this secrecy? Why would the Sultan send the Ottoman Empire’s two foremost plague and epidemic disease experts (the second being Prince Consort Doctor Nuri Effendi) to China on the same ship? When it became apparent that Bonkowski Pasha and his assistant were not bound for China at all, but were due to disembark on the island of Mingheria on the way to Alexandria, the committee delegates were able to turn their attention back to the task at hand. Ahead of them now were three weeks in which to debate how best to explain Islam to the Muslims of China.
Prince Consort Doctor Nuri—­the other quarantine expert on the Aziziye—­found out from his wife that Bonkowski Pasha had boarded the ship in Smyrna and was due to disembark on Mingheria. The newlyweds were pleased to discover they had both met the amiable chemist pasha before. The Doctor and Prince Consort had recently attended the International Sanitary Conference in Venice with the Royal Chemist, who was more than twenty years his senior. Bonkowski Pasha had also been his chemistry professor when young Nuri was still a student at the Imperial School of Medicine, attending classes at the Demirkapı garrison in Sirkeci. Like many of his fellow medical students, young Nuri had been captivated by the applied chemistry classes that Paris-­trained Bonkowski Bey had taught in his laboratory, and by his lectures on organic and inorganic chemistry. The students had been enthralled by the professor’s jokes, by his wide-­ranging Renaissance man’s curiosity, and by his easy command of the Turkish vernacular and of three other European languages which he spoke as fluently as his mother tongue. Stanislaw Bonkowski was the Istanbul-­born son of one of the many Polish army officers who had gone into exile following defeat in their nation’s war against Russia and ended up joining the Ottoman army.
The Doctor and Prince Consort’s wife, Princess Pakize, gaily recounted her memories of Bonkowski from her childhood and youth. One summer eleven years ago, when her mother and the other women of the harem in the palace where she and her family were kept confined had been infected with a disease which had left them in the throes of a terrible fever, Sultan Abdul Hamid had declared that the outbreak must have been caused by a microbe and had sent his own Royal Chemist to the palace to collect samples. Another time, her uncle Abdul Hamid had sent Bonkowski Pasha to the Çırağan Palace to test the water Princess Pakize and her family drank every day. Abdul Hamid may have been holding his older brother the former sultan Murad V captive in the Çırağan Palace, watching his every move, but whenever anyone fell ill, he would always send his best doctors. As a child, the Princess had often seen the black-­bearded Greek doctor Marko Pasha, who had been Royal Physician to her father’s uncle the assassinated sultan Abdülaziz, in the palace and inside the rooms of the harem, as well as Abdul Hamid’s own Royal Physician Mavroyeni Pasha.
“I saw Bonkowski Pasha again at the Yıldız Palace many years later,” said the Princess. “He was inspecting the palace’s water supplies and preparing a new report. But by then he could only smile at me and my sisters from a distance. It would not have been proper for him to play little jokes on us or tell us funny stories as he used to do when we were children.”
The Doctor and Prince Consort’s memories of the Sultan’s Royal Chemist were more official in nature. The diligence and experience he had displayed at the Venice Conference where they had jointly represented the Ottoman Empire had earned him the Royal Chemist’s respect. It might even have been Bonkowski Pasha himself, as the Doctor and Prince Consort excitedly told his wife, Princess Pakize, that first brought his abilities as quarantine doctor to Sultan Abdul Hamid’s attention, for his path had crossed the chemist and pharmacist pasha’s not just in medical school but also after he had graduated. Once, at the request of the Mayor of Beyoğlu, Eduard Blacque Bey, they had reviewed the sanitary conditions of Istanbul’s roadside abattoirs together. On another occasion, he and a few other students and doctors had gone to Lake Terkos where Bonkowski was preparing a report on the lake’s topographical and geological features and a microscopic analysis of its waters, and once again he had been impressed by Bonkowski’s intelligence, dedication, and discipline. Filled with the excitement and warmth of these recollections, the newlyweds were eager now to meet the chemist and Chief Inspector of Public Health again.