Read Online The Summer Before the Dark by Doris Lessing - Free Book Online Page B

this one would be different. They conferred in this language or that. When a boy in braid and buttons came up to Ahmed, Kate heard Turkish in an order being given and taken. She had not heard that language spoken since she had arrived in the country. Sitting and talking with Ahmed, standing and talking, walking and talking, making plans for other people’s comfort, she heard Turkish, as it were, out of the corners of her ears—noises offstage, no more. All around her, outside this hotel, was a world where her ears, when they were actually and at last exposed to it, would be suddenly dulled and uncomprehending: the language she did not know was around her like panes of badly cleaned glass, opaque, painful; her ears, as if rebuked, would strain after the exchange of two maids in a corridor—they felt they ought to understand, and if they did not, it was their fault … without Ahmed, she would be like a bit of useless machinery.
    He had the necessary experience of night life, restaurants, dancing girls, mosques, churches, and suitable short trips out of Istanbul—useful in that order. The city, viewed from hundreds of feet in its air, but in brief glimpses, was all an enticing glitter of roofs and silvery water, and streets which were, like the Turkish language itself, far away, and energetic with a life she felt she ought to be reaching after, understanding … a bird flew past at eye level as she stood at a window. It was one she had not seen before. She felt that subtle approaches were being made to her from an unknown world and she watched the bird cross the water fed from the Black Sea to spires and domes on another shore, while Ahmed waited beside her for an answer to a questionabout eating preferences. By the time the last of the delegates had descended from the skies, entertainments, excursions, cultural delights of all kinds, not to mention the great dishes of a dozen nations, were waiting. And already being enjoyed, for these men and women seemed minimally fatigued, so experienced were they all in this business of crossing continents, arriving delightfully dressed and nonchalant, chattering together in a score of languages. It was clear that this was going to be a good-humored, well-tempered conference. They were liking each other. After all, they always did, these administrators, these so bland antagonists, these tactful interpreters of national interest. For no matter how much they expressed disagreement when sitting around vast tables, and how forcefully they pressed their own country’s claims, or even accused each other of double-dealing—
It was Nation X who put the beetle in that season’s crop to ruin our trade!—No, it is obvious to the whole world that your crop got the beetle because you weren’t growing it properly—You won’t allow anybody but your own country to benefit—you always hog everything!—On the contrary, we want to help our unfortunate brothers in the poor countries
—yes, exactly like so many quarrelling children; but no matter how much and how often all this went on, afterwards in the lounges and the bars and the coffee rooms and the restaurants, not to mention the beds, all was understanding and fraternity. Of course; for these people did the same job, spent their lives in exactly the same way—they had everything in common.
    That evening Kate joined a sightseeing group of these well-travelled people who, however, had been unfortunate enough not to have seen Istanbul before, and the moment she left the hotel found herself in a city of legend, mystery,and romance, exactly as the guidebooks described it in all the languages she spoke and many she did not. The group was Madame Phiri, a handsome and very French black lady from Sierra Leone, a Mr. Daniel from Brazil, and a Mr. Ferrugia from Italy. They had dinner in a Turkish restaurant, for this was the least that was expected of them, visited two night clubs where they saw belly dancers and sword swallowers, and agreed that