The Black Tulip

The Strangers

As summer fades, the autumn rains arrive, and mushroom season begins. Mother always insists mushrooms come from another star, since they have such a curious way of hiding, then suddenly showing themselves. Laleena loves the hunt, the thrill of spotting a treasure and coaxing it carefully out of the sweet-smelling earth.

One crisp fall day, Cengiz and Laleena join the other village children to gather mushrooms, just as they do every year. That evening, there’s an auction in the square, and whoever brings the largest mushroom earns a prize. For a long time, Laleena and Cengiz search for a winning mushroom, but none are to be found. But Laleena doesn’t mind. She likes staying close to the ground, breathing in its rich smell of growth and decay. In better times, Mother would have ventured deeper into the woods with her children to look for mushrooms, but her unhappiness keeps her home now. So it’s Laleena and Cengiz alone who push further among the pines, searching the blankets of needles for the fat, round-stemmed mushrooms hiding beneath them, regardless of the auction.

Laleena spots a promising dome swelling under the pine needles and gently pushes them aside. Sure enough, a mushroom hides there, spongy white beneath a taut mahogany surface, enormous and larger than her own face. She twists it carefully from its stem and feels the weight settle into her palm. She knows at once it will win.

That evening, the village gathers for a bonfire to celebrate the harvest. Families bring mushroom soup, tarts, and mushroom wine, and children run about dressed as mushrooms in funny paper hats. Rows of specimens line the square, the edible ones beside the poisonous, so everyone remembers which to avoid.

Then three strangers appear among the crowd, and everyone can tell they’re foreigners by their fancy Ottoman dress, white turbans, and gleaming scimitars. Whispers spread that they’ve traveled from İstanbul, the Ottoman capital. Two of the men look like brothers, short and stubby, one with a harelip, while the third towers over them, his mustache pale blond. His eyes sweep the crowd as though hunting prey, and they land on Laleena. He leans toward his companions and murmurs something, and all three turn to stare at her. Laleena bolts into the crowd, her heart hammering.

Shaken, she overhears old Ilia praising her gift with plants to a neighbor, remarking it’s no surprise she’s won the mushroom prize again. The neighbor answers that it’s a shame about Father, that the family has fallen on hard times, and that someone really ought to find the girl a husband soon. Laleena hurries home before hearing more and presses the round of cheese she’s won into Mother’s hands, then slips back out into the dark.

The next day, while Laleena works in the garden, she hears voices along the path. Four men are walking toward the house, three of them the strangers from the night before, and the fourth the mayor. She darts inside before they notice her and creeps upstairs, pressing her ear to the floor to listen.

The mayor translates for Mother, who speaks no Turkish, clearly acting as the strangers’ agent. He explains that the men will take Laleena into a good household and find her a husband, and that the price they’re offering is generous enough to support the family for a long time, especially since Father disappeared. Mother would no longer need to worry about providing for her daughter. Laleena would be well cared for. She’d become a lady.

Mother refuses. Laleena is her daughter, still a child, and she won’t part with her.

The mayor’s voice sharpens with impatience. He insists she’s not a child anymore, and this is too good an offer to dismiss. Mother should think of her other children, too.

Mother stands firm, insisting again that she can’t let Laleena go.

The mayor warns that the gentlemen will remain in town only one more day, in case Mother reconsiders, then the door slams shut behind him.

Laleena understands the impossible spot Mother is in, torn between the money her family needs and the daughter she refuses to lose. She wishes Father would come home, wishes their family could return to the days before the war, gathered around the fire painting and studying while Mother strums the ud and the twins play with the kittens.

The twins begin to cry, and Laleena runs downstairs to gather them from Mother, whose face is streaked with tears. Mother declares fiercely, again and again, that she won’t do it.

That evening, Laleena carries her brothers outside to dig turnips and potatoes for dinner as the sun sets in a hazy, golden mist. In that quiet moment, an idea comes to her, a way she might help her family. But it’s so frightening that she pushes it out of her mind at once.