POST January/February 2015

fiction
De Potter’s Grand Tour
He leaves early on the morning of June 10, descending the carpeted
stairs to the lobby of the Pera Palace Hotel. He rings the bell at the
front desk. He is about to ring again when a clerk appears from the
dark interior of a back office, looking freshly scrubbed, smelling of
soap. The bill is settled swiftly, and the clerk is most obliging, despite
his limited French, when Armand hands him two last letters addressed
to Madame de Potter, care of the Hotel Royal in Toblach. The letters
are to be held and posted, he specifies, on the twelfth. Does the clerk
understand the instructions? “Oui, monsieur,” the clerk says, setting
aside the letters and motioning to a porter. He hopes Monsieur de
Potter’s most recent stay has been pleasant. The coach, he adds, is
already in the drive.
Outside, Armand notices that the gas lamp above the entrance
to the public garden is still lit, though the sky is already beginning to
glow with dawn. He removes his spectacles and rubs the lenses with his
handkerchief. After the porter has returned with his trunk and hoisted
it onto the baggage rack, Armand tips him a handful of piastres and
climbs into his seat. The driver slaps the reins to rouse his horses, and
the carriage lurches forward.
Down they go from the summit of Pera, the wheels clattering
over the uneven paving stones, the chassis rising and plunging, the
horses moving so fast that a small dog doesn’t have time to get out
of their path. The yelp the dog lets out has a chillingly human ring,
and Armand thinks it must have been crushed, yet when he turns, he
is relieved to see it scramble out from between the rear wheels and
run off, disappearing around a corner. The horses trot briskly on,
undeterred.
He resists calling out to the driver to order him to slow down.
Pulling his hat on tighter, he sits back and observes the scenery,
contemplating the familiar landmarks as if from a great distance—the
banks and restaurants he knows so well, and the convent where, two
days earlier, the members of his party were delighted to come upon the
dervishes right when they were beginning to whirl.
As they pass one of the white mansions housing an embassy, he
is reminded of his father, who had been stationed abroad for nearly
a decade—first in Paris, then Dakar, and lastly Constantinople. He
supposedly worked as a manager for a Belgian trading company, but
Armand, who was stuck back in East Flanders with his brother and
stepmother, believed that his father was a spy, appointed by King
Leopold to pry into the secret affairs of foreign governments. He used
to tell himself that he, too, would be a spy someday and travel around
the world.
You could say that he did become a spy of sorts, on a selfappointed
mission to gather antiquities instead of secrets, with his
travel bureau providing an excuse to visit places that were out of
reach for other collectors. De Potter Tours is in the business of leading
wealthy tourists around the world, and the De Potter Collection is
on display at the University Museum in Philadelphia. It has been an
honorable arrangement, he believes. It worked for more than a quarter
of a century and would have gone on working if he hadn’t grown so
careless.
At least he managed to keep the Americans on his tour sufficiently
entertained. They never guessed that he had anything else on his mind
but their well-being as he shepherded them around the city. Even when
he put them on the train and sent them off to Broussa without him,
they were persuaded that he was sparing them a worse inconvenience.
As far as they could tell, Professor de Potter was his usual amiable
self, as reliable a guide as they’d been promised in the testimonials he
included in his advertisements.
From Mrs. P.A. Saunders of Cincinnati: “It was a trip I shall ever
remember with pleasure. Could I go abroad every year, my choice
would be to go under the care of Prof. de Potter and with his party.”
From the late Henry W. Bellows, D.D., of Albany: “I have great
pleasure in saying that I am acquainted with Prof. A. de Potter. I do not
doubt his trustworthiness and competency to conduct foreign tours in
the interest of education, and I can heartily recommend him.”
From HHW of Rome, New York: “There are various ways of
traveling, many, as we do, independently and at the mercy of sharks, or
on parties with a courier, or with a tourist agent. The only party that
we have envied was that of Prof. Armand de Potter of New York, an
unassuming gentleman, speaking nine different languages. To him we
shall commend any friends in the future who wish to make a tour of
the Old World.”
The friends of HHW would have to find another guide, since
Professor de Potter won’t be conducting any more parties. Never
again will he have to worry about making arrangements for packs of
inexperienced tourists, keeping track of their tickets and explaining the
sights. On this trip, he is traveling alone.
Down, down, down rolls the coach, past buildings fronted by
broken terraces and wilted gardens, to the boulevard skirting the inlet
of the Golden Horn. The low angle of the sun catches the top of a
minaret on the opposite hill and turns the white to rose. On the surface
of the water beside the road, the reflections of the plane trees look as
though they are frozen in ice.
They reach the lot beside the customhouse, where Armand pays the
driver and hires a handler for his trunk. The official greets him with a
yawn, waving him through without asking him to open his satchel. On
the quay, he takes out the gold-plated pocket watch his wife gave him
on his thirty-ninth birthday and checks the time. It will be an hour or
more until the ship is ready to receive passengers. There is nothing to
do but wait.
Excerpted from “De Potter’s Grand Tour,” by Joanna Scott
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Sept. 2014).
68 POST | Issue 9 January / February 2015