I Am Pilgrim(165)

I had thought: at the back there was a cabinet full of restored turntables for those who still believed in needles and valves, a better range of modern guitars than most stores in New York and enough vinyl pressings from the seventies to have made Whisperer weep.

I indicated his collection of Turkish folk instruments and told him I had a piece of music played on a kaval that I was hoping he could identify.

‘A lot of other people have tried,’ I said, ‘but nobody seems to be able to nail it.’

‘I wish my father was alive,’ he said. ‘He was an expert on the traditional stuff, but I’ll give it a shot.’

I cued up the MP3 player and watched as he listened. He played it four, maybe five, times. Then he put the player into a docking station and played it through the store’s sound system. Three tourists who had wandered in listened.

‘Not exactly foot-tapping,’ one of them, a New Zealander, said. He was right – the music was haunting, more like a cry on the wind.

The owner played it again, his dreamy eyes focused. Then he shook his head, and I wasn’t surprised: it had always been a long shot. I started to thank him, but he interrupted.

‘It’s not a kaval,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘That’s why you’re having difficulty identifying the tune – it wasn’t written for a kaval. Almost anybody would have made the mistake, but I’m pretty sure it’s a far older instrument. Listen …’

He played it again. ‘A kaval has seven melody stops on top and one underneath. This is hard – you’ve really got to listen – but the instrument that’s playing here has only got six stops on top and one below. There’s no seventh stop.’

I listened one more time but, honestly, I couldn’t tell – I had no idea how many stops it had. ‘You’re sure?’ I asked.

‘Yeah,’ he replied.

‘What is it then?’

‘I can’t tell you anything about the tune,’ he said. ‘But I think we’re listening to a çigirtma. It’s virtually forgotten – I only know about it because my father loved the old stuff. I heard the instrument once when I was a kid.’

‘Why are they forgotten, though – they died out?’

‘Not exactly – the birds did. For a kaval you need the wood of a plum tree, but a çigirtma is made from the wing bone of a mountain eagle. The birds have been endangered for years, so the instrument faded away – and so did the music written for it. That’s why you can’t find the tune.’

He removed the MP3 player from the docking station and handed it to me. ‘You know the Hotel Ducasse?’ he asked. ‘You might get some help there.’





Chapter Thirty-nine


THE HOTEL DUCASSE was one of the places I mentioned earlier – SO fashionable, people were drilling holes in the wall to get inside. It was on the waterfront, with a private beach, cabanas you could rent for the summer for a small fortune and a dozen flat-bottomed boats that ferried waiters, food and drinks out to moored cruisers. That was the low end of the establishment.

The exclusive section, up on the roof, was called the Skybar. I had come straight from the music store, and I passed through the hotel’s art deco front doors, crossed several acres of Cuban mahogany flooring and skirted extravagant settings of Philippe Starck furniture before I found the Skybar’s dedicated elevator. As I approached, I saw the guy operating it – dressed in designer black pyjamas – note my cheap FBI-style clothes and ready himself to say it was reservation only. But I have a pretty good death stare when I need it, so I set it to Defcon 1 and saw him decide that keeping me out wasn’t worth dying for.

He zoomed me to the top and I stepped into a zoo. The Skybar’s centrepiece was a pure white, vanishing-edge pool with a glass bottom and a huge view across the bay to the Crusader castle and – fittingly enough – the French House.

Facing the pool were a handful of ultra-luxurious cabanas which seemed to be occupied by several of Eastern Europe’s leading kleptocrats and their families. Slightly elevated, they commanded the best view of the pool and its huge expanse of flesh and silicon: scantily clad women of all ages with bee-stung lips and bolt-on boobs, and young, hard-bodied guys in swimsuits so brief they were generally called banana hammocks.

At the opposite end to the cabanas was the bar and a small stage for a five-piece band. One of the guitarists was my objective, but getting there wasn’t without its obstacles. The first of them was approaching me with a sympathetic smile and his hands spread wide in silent apology. It was the maître d’ and, unlike his clientele, he was class all the way: French was my guess, Berluti handmade shoes, lightweight Brioni suit, gold-rimmed eyeglasses.