An Evil Eye: A Novel

by Jason Goodwin

“She always has headache.”

  “Not like this.”

  “What do you think, kyrie?”

  “I think tomato is good to eat.” Yashim picked out a little mass of bones with his fingers, and cast them toward the sea. “But like an eggplant, it is dangerous raw.”

  The old man nodded. Palewski said, in his workmanlike Greek, “I have read that it is safe to eat it raw, but you should not eat the … the little seeds.”

  “The pips, that’s right. That’s where the trouble lies.”

  The younger man shrugged amiably. “I eat it, pips and all.” He touched the knuckle of his thumb to his belly. “I feel good.”

  “Why not? You’re young.”

  Yashim smiled and buried his head in his plate. Greeks always had some opinion, and they adored novelty. Their conversation never flagged.

  “You grow the tomatoes yourself?”

  The young man laughed. “It is better to have friends, kyrie. My cousin works in the pasha’s konak, his mansion on the island. As a gardener.”

  The old man frowned. “Enough. You talk too much.”

  “The pasha?”

  The young man scratched his chest. “He’s gone away,” he said vaguely. “It’s not a crime, when he’s away.”

  “Eh, time to mend.” The old man slapped his thighs. “Then a rest.”

  “You’ll go out again later?” Palewski was curious.

  “Best time for us, early evening. It’s the light,” the young man said.

  “I don’t know about that,” another man countered. “My old man always swore by the tide.”

  Later, as they walked back along the track to the quayside, Palewski gestured to the fishing boats.

  “The Greeks were painting eyes on their ships in Homer’s time,” he said. “I’ve read somewhere that the practice is universal. Even in China. I wonder what we should make of that?”

  Yashim did not reply.

  “Splendid fellows, those sailors,” Palewski remarked. “The wine wasn’t bad at all. Ship a barrel to the residency, maybe.” He yawned. “Good stew. I think we have time to take coffee, and then home.”

  But he was wrong: a ferry had already docked. They took seats along the port side, for the view returning to Istanbul. A sail went up and filled in the wind; the rope was cast off. Palewski went to find some coffee.

  Yashim was watching idly for dolphins.

  “May I?”

  Yashim glanced around to see a tiny man in foreign dress bending toward Palewski’s seat. He wore a wide-brimmed flat black hat and carried a cane.

  “I’m afraid it’s taken,” Yashim said.

  “Everybody wants to drink coffee at the same time,” the little man remarked, hopping onto the seat. “I will sit just for a moment, until your friend comes back.”

  He spoke with an accent Yashim could not quite place.

  “You may think of me, Yashim efendi, as a ferry,” the stranger continued, swinging his short legs and staring imperturbably out to sea. “Like this one, I go back and forth, picking up and setting down. One friendly shore to the next, you see.” The little man held up his cane and rested his chin on it, like a child peering over a railing. “Today it will be picking up. I am sure of it. I take something quite useless from where it is, and drop it off where it can do some good.”

  “And where would that be?”

  The man’s expression changed. “Just like the ferry, everyone must buy a ticket. Then there are no questions asked.” He made a movement, quite slight: “Just give me what doesn’t belong to you.”

  There was a gun in his right hand, intricate and tiny, like its owner. Its muzzle pointed at Yashim’s stomach.

  Yashim threw out his left hand. When the gun wavered he scooped up the little man’s hand with his right, and held it pointing out to sea.

  He felt the man’s fingers relax. Yashim slid the gun from his hand. It was not cocked. He wondered if it was even loaded.

  “Will you give me the little bit of skin?”

  “The next time you try to fire this gun,” Yashim said gently, peering into the chamber, “it will explode in your hand. The action is rusty and the bullet has rusted into the breach. But I suppose you do not mean to fire it.”

  “Will you give me the little bit of skin?”

  Yashim snapped the gun into place and handed it back. “No, I’m sorry. You see, I, too, have a destination for it in mind.” He glanced up. “Who are you working for?”

  Palewski was advancing uncertainly along the deck, bearing two small coffee cups and swaying against the motion of the boat.

  The little man caught his glance. He hopped off the seat and tipped his hat. “Goodbye. I wish you a pleasant crossing.”

  He walked away with pedantic dignity, tapping his cane along the deck.

  “Who,” Palewski said, “was that?”

  “Exactly what I mean to find out,” Yashim replied, getting up. “Come along.”

  The little man had crossed to the opposite rail, where he stood looking out over the sea. Yashim saw him raise an arm, as if he was loosening his sleeve.

  Palewski leaned past Yashim and placed the cups on the bench. When he straightened up, Yashim could see the man moving briskly down the companionway toward the stern of the ferry.

  “Go ’round the other way,” he said to Palewski. “Or we’ll be running in circles.”

  “Pincer movement? Jolly good.”

  Yashim crossed the deck.

  The little man vaulted with surprising agility over the stern rail, and the last thing Yashim saw was his head and hat disappearing over the side.

  Palewski had seen him, too. They both began to run.

  But before Yashim reached the rail, a slender black caïque shot away from the boat’s side and slipped into its wake. The gap between them was widening by the second.

  In the caïque, with his back to the ferry, the little man raised a hand in a farewell salute.

  “Good lord!” Palewski panted, as he joined Yashim. “The little rascal got away!”

  Yashim slapped his hand on the rail. “I thought he’d jumped. I should have guessed he had an escape.”

  “What did he want?”

  Yashim let out an exasperated sigh. “Do you still have your watercolor paints at the residency? He wanted that little piece of skin.”

  15

  “I’LL clear a space,” Palewski said.

  They were in his drawing room on the first floor of the residency. The windows were open, but no breeze stirred the wisteria outside. The grate had been swept clean and piled with logs, ready for the distant season when fogs and snows would return to Istanbul, but the rest of the room was in its usual state of comfortable disorder. Books lay on the armchairs, on the floor, and piled up on the sideboard. The escritoire was covered in papers. It looked as if a regiment of scholars had been surprised only moments before and forced to flee.

  “The translation,” Palewski said, sweeping the sheets up and dropping them in an irregular pile on the seat of his armchair. “The watercolors must be somewhere …”

  He found them in a shiny black tin box that had got lost under a large volume of maps.

  “I’d rather you didn’t use the sable brushes,” he explained, handing Yashim a number 2 hog bristle.

  “What’s this made of?”

  “Don’t ask,” Palewski said. He handed Yashim a small plate.

  Yashim selected a tube of cadmium red, squeezed a pea-sized bulb of paint onto the plate, and mixed it with the brush.

  He let the handkerchief drop onto Palewski’s desk, and teased it open. The skin had dried slightly, and was curling and shrinking at the corners.

  He took the skin between his thumb and forefinger and laid it on the desk, pressing it smooth. He dipped the brush in pigment, shook it, and began to stipple the ridged surface of the skin.

  Palewski laid a sheet of paper on the blotter. Yashim picked up the skin and flipped it over onto the paper, taking care not to let it slip around. He
took a second sheet of paper and laid it on top, then took a pile of books off the armchair and laid them on the paper.

  He pressed down.

  He and Palewski exchanged glances.

  Yashim lifted the pile of books. Palewski lifted the paper.

  And Marta came soundlessly into the room, bearing a tray.

  Palewski looked up with a start.

  “Ah, tea!” he enthused, letting the paper float back down. “Tea!”

  Marta dimpled. “You need it when you’ve been to sea,” she said, and approached the desk.

  Yashim sprang forward and seized the tray.

  “Just what I hoped for, Marta. I was afraid the ambassador might offer me something stronger.”

  Marta kept her grip on the tray. “When the kyrie has to work, Yashim efendi …”

  She took Palewski’s bookwork very seriously. Marta was always gravely courteous to Yashim, but he sensed that she sometimes considered him a distraction.

  He relinquished the tray obediently, and she set it down on the desk as Palewski whisked the papers away.

  “I’ll pour,” Palewski said.

  Marta’s lively black eyes darted from him to Yashim, and back. “As you wish,” she said lightly. She turned and left the room, her skirts whispering against the rug.

  “So,” Palewski said.

  Yashim carefully lifted the skin off the paper and they both craned over it.

  “It’s a face?”

  Palewski straightened up. “Not a face,” he murmured. “Rather the opposite, a Totenkopf. A death’s-head.”

  Yashim looked baffled.

  “It’s a skull, branded on the man’s arm.”

  “But what—what could that possibly mean?”

  Palewski placed his forefingers to his lips and frowned. “The reality of death, Yashim. Worms, bones, the grinning skull. Death conquers all, in effect.” The Islamic world had none of the imagery of faith or death that Catholics took for granted. No Madonnas, no cross. No danse macabre. “Here, I suspect, it’s a regimental brand.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “The soldier adopts the symbol because it represents what he wields. He deals in death, with all that implies. Also to demonstrate that he knows the worst that can happen to him. You conquer—and you heap up those skulls, the skulls of your enemies, as a warning and a recognition.”

  “Like Tamerlane,” Yashim said.

  “Tamerlane was a puritan. He stood against luxury and citified ease. To him, and to others like him, we are simply bones robed in flesh. In death, the reality is revealed. The soul, on the other hand, has nothing to do with all that. The skull reveals itself for what it is—an earthly prison. In Europe, the image became associated with the reformed church. Lutherans and Calvinists. Protestants in general. Most especially, among the Germans.”

  Yashim took a deep breath. “The Germans. He was a German?”

  Palewski shook his head. “Yes and no. I think we’re looking at a Russian brand. A Russian regimental badge.”

  Yashim looked puzzled.

  “Medieval Germans,” Palewski began. “Drang nach Osten—the eastward push. Teutonic knights settling the pagan lands of the Baltic, pushing into East Prussia, Estonia and Latvia, up the coast. Later on, the Russians moved in, and the Baltic Germans had no choice but to accept the tsar as their overlord. They gave up their independence for jobs in the Russian army. The Baltic Germans take to the military life.”

  Yashim nodded. “Like the Albanians, in our armies.”

  “Very like. In Russia, the foot soldiers are Russians, pig-thick and loyal. The generals are Russians, too—loyal, but not necessarily so thick. But the officer corps is stuffed with vons—minor Baltic German aristocracy.”

  “I see. And the Baltic Germans—how loyal are they?”

  “Good question, Yashim. Obviously not considered quite as loyal as the generals—nor quite as dumb as the foot soldiers.”

  “And the death’s-head? This brand?”

  “Belongs, as far as I know, to a regiment that doesn’t officially exist.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Palewski shrugged. “It isn’t listed in the army book. You hear rumors. Stories about men with that insignia snatching a Tatar warlord, for instance. A platoon spotted in Afghanistan, to discomfit the British in India. It may be that the men who carry the death’s-head badge belong to other regiments but take orders through another channel, which remains secret. That’s what I think.”

  Yashim backed away from the desk and slumped into an armchair.

  “A secret service?”

  “A military secret service, yes. Not the same as the tsar’s spies, quite—the ones I have to deal with,” he added, a little grimly. “My position may offend the tsar—but it’s a tactical detail. It doesn’t affect Russian strategy.”

  Yashim blinked. The sun still shone, but the shadows had lengthened on the floor.

  He glanced at the desk. The skin was curling up: as he watched, it gave a tiny start and rolled back and forth.

  Yashim shuddered. “I think I need to take some advice.”

  Palewski nodded. “Don’t forget to take the skin. I don’t think Marta would like it at all.”

  16

  IN the far-off mountains, a shepherd prepared himself for death. He had lived many summers, but now he felt no warmth from the sun and he knew his time had come.

  The shepherd explained everything to his son about the sheep, and the new lambs, and the standing corn.

  He said nothing, however, about the feud. Of the dishonor that could only be cleansed with blood.

  He blessed the boy, and turned his face to the wall.

  17

  “IT seems we have two options.” The grand vizier raised his heavy lids. “Instinctively I would prefer to do nothing.”

  Yashim coughed politely. “The Russians almost certainly know what happened.”

  The vizier blew through his nostrils. “Your little friend on the boat.”

  “If he was working for them—”

  The vizier waved a hand. “Yes, yes. You know the situation with Russia is delicate. We have certain treaties, certain … obligations.”

  Yashim knew how heavily the Russians pressed upon the empire. For decades they had advanced steadily south, dislodging the Ottomans from the northern coast of the Black Sea. Tartary was theirs, and the Crimea, too. Their navy now cruised in what had been an Ottoman lake, the Black Sea. That was humiliation enough; but then the Egyptians had attacked.

  In 1836 Mehmet Ali Pasha’s well-trained Egyptian army swept up the Mediterranean coast. Sidon, Acre, Beirut, had all fallen to the overmighty vassal of the sultan, who had appealed in desperation to the only power capable of protecting Istanbul.

  The tsar and his generals had been only too happy to assist. The Russians had moved closer to Istanbul—and politely withdrew when the danger was past.

  “Meanwhile,” the vizier added, “we have lost one sultan, and gained another.”

  He stared at Yashim as he might stare at a spot on the wall, thinking.

  The silence extended. One minute. Two minutes.

  “You will inform the Russians,” the vizier said finally. His eyes regained their focus and he gave Yashim a rare, and rueful, smile. “Perhaps that will be the last decision I make.”

  “I hope not, my pasha,” Yashim replied.

  18

  THE day promised to be hot.

  At the café Yashim folded his legs and sat on the divan, facing the street. The café owner nodded and slapped a brass jug on the coals.

  Yashim watched the street slide by.

  A few minutes later, the café boy brought Yashim his coffee, and a note. He drank the coffee.

  The note was in French. A cab is waiting at the end of the street. Take it.

  Yashim glanced up. His eyes met the eyes of the Sufi across the way. Close by, a man was sweeping the road with a long besom broom. A stout woman went past in the opposite direction, holding a huge turnip
like a lantern in her outstretched arm. The houses opposite were shuttered, but one was merely latticed on the upper floor. An Armenian peddler with a mule sauntered down the street and stopped at the café as if uncertain whether to ply his trade here or move on. His glance fell on Yashim and rested there a moment.

  Take it. No threat, no promise. No explanation, either.

  Yashim gestured to the boy. “Who brought the note?”

  “It was a ferenghi, efendi. We did not know him.”

  “A tiny man?”

  The boy looked surprised. “Bigger than me, efendi. Not small.”

  Yashim got to his feet. Whoever had sent the note would have had time to set up. It lay to him to restore the balance and surprise them.

  There would be a man on the street, maybe two. One to watch, one to follow. Keeping an eye on him—and on each other, too.

  Yashim glanced left before turning right down the street. He picked out the stop man immediately: he was outside the Libyan bakery ten yards down the lane, eating a pastry—and eating it very slowly, Yashim imagined.

  In Pera you could stand on the street for hours, window-shopping, watching the crowds, and no one would give you a second glance—but Kara Davut was a traditional mahalle. On Kara Davut, people tended to know one another by sight; strangers were uncommon. Strangers with nothing to do but watch the road were so rare as to be objects of curiosity.

  The stop man had found something to do. Now he would be finishing his corek and tailing Yashim. He would be ten, maybe fifteen yards behind. Unworried as yet, because Yashim had responded to the note according to plan, and was moving in the right direction.

  It was three hundred yards to the end of the road, where the cab was waiting. Like most streets in the district, Kara Davut was neither straight nor level: it rose toward the middle, then dropped steeply in a series of shallow steps that slanted around the hill. The steps were an impediment to wheeled traffic, but a boon to the porters, who plied their trade all over Istanbul.

  There were bound to be two men to ensure that Yashim was in view at all times.

  Yashim resisted the urge to glance around.