An Evil Eye: A Novel

by Jason Goodwin

  He spent some time examining the welts on her belly. He examined her hands. There were faint traces of blood on her thighs, and her skin had already begun to cool when he turned her carefully onto her side. There was a deep pool of blood on the sheet beneath her.

  He plucked at the sheet. When it did not give way he looked and saw that it was the thin mattress, and the sheet had gone.

  He found the sheet easily, under the bed. It was screwed into a loose ball and it was soaked in blood.

  75

  MELDA collapsed onto the divan, weeping.

  She was dressed in the usual harem motley, a jumble of tailored and traditional costume bought in Paris and the Grand Bazaar, Turkish slippers peeping out from beneath French petticoats, a slashed and striped velvet jacket over a bodice of ruched silk, a corded girdle and a muslin shawl.

  Yashim drew up a stool and perched on it, one leg drawn up, wrists dangling.

  “Melda, my name is Yashim. I want to talk about what happened to Elif.”

  The girl covered her face with her hands.

  “She was ill, Melda, wasn’t she? Something inside, that was hurting her very badly. She should have seen a doctor.” He frowned. “You know what a doctor is, Melda?”

  Melda’s shoulders heaved. Very gently, Yashim took her wrists and lowered her hands.

  “Melda?”

  She turned her face away.

  “Tell me,” Yashim urged. “Tell me what happened to Elif.”

  She shook her head convulsively.

  “I—have—seen—the engine,” she gasped.

  “The engine?”

  She dragged her hands free and clapped them over her ears, rocking to and fro.

  “I don’t understand, Melda.”

  Her eyes grew very wide, and she moved her hands to cover her mouth. Outside, the muezzin was calling the faithful to Friday prayers.

  “How could you understand?” she burst out. “You—did you step out from a rock, or drop from a stork’s beak? Did I grow like an apple on a tree? No!” Bright spots had appeared on her cheeks, and her hands were clenched. Gone was the court lisp, the fluting voice, the trembling eyelash. Melda spoke in the stony voice of the mountains where she was raised; and she evoked an ancient bitterness, as old as the pagan gods of Circassia. “Men plant children in our bellies, and we bear them until we die.”

  Yashim rocked slowly back.

  Melda turned her eyes on him and then, like a snake, she drew back her head and spat.

  “Elif was pregnant.”

  Yashim remained motionless, gazing at the girl’s face. “The sultan chose her?”

  The Kislar aga had said nothing about that, Yashim thought. Everything about a girl was carefully considered before she was promoted to gözde: her looks, her bearing, her conduct. To be selected to share the sultan’s bed was a very high honor: from it, with ordinary luck, flowed all the rewards the sultan could bestow upon a woman—rank, and fortune, and power within these four walls.

  “The sultan?” Her lips trembled. “How? How, efendi, could that be?”

  She covered her face with her hands and began to sob.

  Yashim murmured a few words: he hardly knew what to say. He stood up and went to find the Kislar aga.

  76

  “TELL me—” He hesitated. “Was Elif a gözde?”

  The aga looked puzzled. “A gözde? Certainly not. Elif was a musician, Yashim. She played in the ladies’ orchestra, and she and Melda were also kalfas. They look after a little girl.”

  “And before she came here? Three, four months ago, when Abdülmecid was still a prince?”

  Ibou shrugged. “I don’t understand your questions, Yashim.”

  “I want to know when Elif met the sultan. Perhaps while he was still crown prince?”

  “She didn’t meet him. Not face-to-face, not to be introduced. The only time she’s seen Abdülmecid is at our concerts. We do not have the sultan roaming the corridors, meeting ladies.”

  “Ibou,” Yashim said gently. “It seems that Elif was pregnant.”

  The silence between them prickled like toasted spice.

  “Do you know what you are saying?” Ibou whispered. His face was waxy with—what? Astonishment? Fear?

  “Elif died from bleeding,” Yashim said. “What you saw, those marks, were made by her own nails. She was clawing at her own flesh.” He paused. “What you haven’t seen is the sheet under the bed. It’s soaked in blood. If Melda is right, I would guess that Elif miscarried.”

  The aga collected himself. “No. Pembe was the sultan’s gözde before he became sultan—with the unfortunate results you know about. Since then, he has taken only two other women. Leyla and Demet, both of them selected by—b-b-by me, and B-Bezmialem. To suggest that the sultan would take another woman into his bed, without protocol, is absurd. He is ruled by the traditions of the house of Osman. And Demet and Leyla would prevent it, anyway.”

  “To the death?”

  Ibou frowned. “They would only have to speak to me, Yashim. There would be no need to talk of death.”

  Yashim sighed. The legitimate gözde would hardly stand idly by while the sultan dallied with another girl.

  “This is not a house in the city, Yashim. The sultan never goes alone. Every minute of the day, every hour of the night, he is watched and cared for.”

  “Was Elif watched every minute of the day? At night?”

  “She is with the others, Yashim. You now how it is.”

  “But if Elif was pregnant, and she did not sleep with the sultan …”

  Ibou’s face clouded. “Impossible.”

  If what Yashim implied was true, it was not just about one girl, or the lapse of a single aga. This was a taint that would spread like the blood across the quilt, but more fatal, more insidious, than either of them could imagine.

  “Could she—have slept with another man?”

  The aga slowly turned his head. His lips peeled back. “Is this what the girl Melda says? What to do, Yashim efendi? I cannot let her say such a thing.”

  Yashim had known agas who would have strangled a girl with their bare hands without hesitation or remorse; but not Ibou.

  “We need to get Melda away,” he said. “Somewhere she can feel safe.”

  77

  MELDA startled at the water. Through the black gauze of her burka the Bosphorus looked dull and menacing, speckled with white.

  Perhaps the water was to be her grave.

  She entertained few illusions. The lala who had asked her questions had said they were going somewhere safe. She had read the expression in his eyes and thought that it could have been reassurance: but then she was not sure what reassurance looked like anymore, or how to tell the real from the false.

  What had happened to Elif was real. Evidently so: the blood was real blood, the agony unfeigned. And then Elif was dead.

  Her secret killed her.

  And she, Melda, shared the secret.

  The lala gestured for her to seat herself. When he smiled, did he smile with his eyes, or only move the muscles around his mouth? It was hard to tell from behind the mask she wore.

  The engine was terrible enough. Perhaps there were other engines that he had prepared. Other systems.

  The caïque shot forward, over the gray water.

  78

  HYACINTH padded softly across the polished stones, jangling his keys. Today he had started to wear his woolen slippers; he felt the cold. The valide had ordered the fires made up, and when he was called from his own snug cubicle he startled at the wind that blew down the Golden Road.

  “Evet, evet,” Hyacinth grumbled as he approached the little door.

  Yashim, with a woman.

  “Well, well,” he said, blinking up at them both. “Another mouth to feed?”

  Yashim said quietly: “Another mouth, Hyacinth, if you want to put it like that.”

  The woman stepped into the vestibule. The wind caught at her veil and she raised it with gloved hands, revealing a face
Hyacinth could not recall.

  The corners of his mouth turned down. “Coming, going, there’s nothing regular anymore, is there?” He peered at Melda more closely. “I don’t know you.”

  She said nothing, so he added: “You don’t look well. Pretty and young, not like the rest of them here, perhaps. But not very well.”

  “Melda needs rest, Hyacinth.”

  “What does the valide say, Yashim efendi?”

  “You needn’t trouble the valide, Hyacinth,” Yashim said firmly. “I’ll look in on her now. Anyway, it’s just for a short while.”

  “I’ll put her in the old dormitory. Light the fire.” He took the girl by the arm. She flinched, but either he didn’t notice or he chose to ignore it. “Melda, is it? You’ll be all right. Old Hyacinth will see to that.”

  He hefted the keys in his other hand. Yashim put his hand to his chest, and bowed.

  79

  DOGS barked and pulled on their chains as the man approached the farm.

  He fingered the knife in his satchel. He was very tired and had gone two days without food.

  “I am very strong,” he said. “I can work.”

  The farmer did not understand his words, but the man showed his biceps and he nodded. He was not inhospitable.

  The man worked for him for two weeks. In return he received food and a place to rest.

  One morning, he was gone.

  80

  “SO my grandson needs me after all.” The valide plucked at an invisible thread on her shawl. “I blame myself.”

  “Valide?”

  “My son preferred fat girls, Yashim. Imagined they lacked energy. So I picked out Bezmialem. A foolish prejudice of mine.” Her silver bangles tinkled on her arm. “I thought Bezmialem was stronger than she turned out to be. More intelligent.”

  Yashim nodded in sympathy.

  “She is merely thin, au fond.” The valide gave an expressive little shrug, as if to dismiss the whole affair. “One learns, Yashim. The new palace at Besiktas was, of course, Mahmut’s mistake,” she added. “I told him so.”

  “You will find it—strange,” Yashim suggested.

  “I am aware of that. Perhaps I should have gone before, but I am a stubborn woman.”

  Yashim tried to imagine the valide at Besiktas, with its gauzy windows and chandeliers, its stiff upholstered chairs and yards and yards of open, empty space.

  “I shall rely on you,” the valide continued. “And Tülin knows Besiktas quite well. À cause de sa flute.”

  “You’re fond of her, valide.”

  “Fortunately for you, she can’t read French.” The valide wagged her finger. “Tülin plays the flute with the other girls. The sultan’s orchestra. Very pretty. And it keeps them occupied. Here at Topkapi she sees an old woman and some superstitious eunuchs. I am thinking of her interests, as it happens. I do not wish her to be too much alone,” she added. “Isolation is dangerous in the harem, Yashim. A girl must have friends.”

  Yashim smiled. “You told me once that a girl needs enemies.”

  The valide shrugged. “Better an enemy than no one at all. To be regarded, that’s something. But to be truly alone—in here, at least—it’s a kind of death.”

  “When you first came here, hanum, you must have been isolated.”

  “I, Yashim? What a ridiculous idea.” Unconsciously she raised a hand to her hair. “The place was positively crowded, and I was a French girl, was I not? Espèce de merveille! And on the way—well, I had learned more than most of the Circassians. More Turkish, certainly.

  “I shall leave in two weeks, inshallah. I will ask Tülin to find out which day would be propitious.” She caught his glance, and raised an eyebrow. “Not for my own sake, Yashim. I do it for the girls.”

  “It may be just as well, hanum. There have been—well, some disturbing incidents in the harem.”

  “Indeed. The Kislar aga has told me so.”

  Yashim looked surprised. “He has spoken to you—about Elif?”

  The valide put her fingers to her temples. “Elif, Fatima, Begum,” she intoned wearily. “Really, Yashim.”

  “But Elif—” Yashim looked doubtful. “Melda. He told you about Melda?”

  The valide frowned. “My son, the sultan, does what he likes.”

  “Hanum?” Yashim shifted uneasily on the edge of the divan: it seemed to him that the valide’s mind was drifting toward the past.

  “He does exactly what he likes.” The valide raised her chin and looked down her beautiful cheekbones. “He moves his court into that wretched palace of his. Everything French, he says.” Yashim nodded slowly, unable to halt the confusion in the valide’s words. She looked at him severely. “I don’t want people thinking I am to blame. His father never proposed such an absurd thing, wanted us to be comfortable. I had no intention of moving myself, naturellement. I am perfectly comfortable where I am.”

  She spoke in clipped tones, not moving her head. When she had finished, she held the pose for a few seconds longer, and blinked rapidly, as though she had something in her eye.

  “You have much to do, valide,” Yashim said quietly.

  The valide turned to Yashim with the smile that had ravished a sultan. “You are very thoughtful, Yashim. I count you among my oldest and dearest friends. Thank you so much for coming.”

  She held out her hand, tilted to one side, like a European.

  Yashim stooped, and took it in his: her hand was very small, and mottled, and he felt the fragile bones beneath her skin where he raised it to his lips.

  81

  AT the door he found Hyacinth. The old man looked gray.

  “Is it true?”

  “True?” Yashim echoed.

  “Do you, too, think I am some kind of fool?” Hyacinth whispered with sudden fierceness. “That I sleep and eat and smile like a child?”

  His long fingers clamped around Yashim’s arm. His hold was strong, and Yashim checked himself.

  “It’s a suggestion, that she should go to Besiktas. I’m sorry,” he added. He had not thought of Hyacinth.

  The old eunuch nodded, turning his head from side to side; his nostrils flared. “It was in the air, Yashim efendi.” He spread the fingers of one hand in Yashim’s face. “I felt it, here. The harem, I breathe. You understand? I watch its breath like a mother watches her child. Every breath. Every word. Each tiny glance. When they took the women—” His fingers tightened into a ball. “And now she goes.”

  His eyes glittered, and his grip tightened on Yashim’s arm. “And will I go, or stay?”

  Yashim bit his lip. The valide had spoken of her body slave, the girl—Tülin. “I don’t know, Hyacinth. I’m sorry. I wish I knew.”

  “Ah.” Hyacinth let out a ragged sigh and closed his eyes. Without another word he released Yashim’s arm and turned, shaking his head. Yashim watched him shuffle away along the corridor, his slippers slapping on the polished cobbles.

  82

  YASHIM followed the street that dropped from Ayasofya mosque to the shore of the Golden Horn. Beyond the mosque of the valide, past the entrance to the spice bazaar, the ancient walls disappeared into a warren of haphazard wharves and boatyards that had grown up around them after many centuries of peace. Here and there one could still glimpse a section of banded brick and stone, or crenellations that crumbled above a riot of roofs and makeshift staircases, as the old defenses were gradually absorbed into the fabric of the city. Beyond the walls, the water stirred listlessly against the muddy banks.

  At the Prison Gate Yashim found a caïque and crossed the Horn. The new bridge was almost complete. In summer they had cut down the great plane tree that had given the people shade, because it stood in the way of the bridge.

  Without its spreading branches to protect him, the wind was keener; the crossing chilled him. At the foot of the Galata steps he stopped for coffee, and sat cross-legged with his back to the brazier, looking out across the water. The weather had finally turned. A late Indian summer had ebbed away; the
storks had flown south and already white crests ruffled the Bosphorus, whipped up by a wind that blew across the Black Sea from the steppes of Central Asia.

  The Turks had come from the same place, centuries ago. Nomads, shepherds, horsemen: tent-dwelling tribesmen who worshipped stones and rivers, and met beneath the spreading branches of a tree to administer justice and settle their affairs. It would have been a tree, Yashim thought, much like the great plane that had drooped its branches over the Golden Horn, festooned with rags and prayers.

  He half closed his eyes. That, of course, had been the purpose of the tree: in the minds of the people it was a link between heaven and earth, a conduit between earthly troubles and heavenly justice. It was not so much a belief as an instinct: justice belonged to the sky and the open air. Justice and fairness flourished in the open, from the kadi, who gave his verdict in an open court, to the Turkish tribal chief, who spoke to his people sitting around the trunk of a tree.

  He stared, frowning, into his coffee. How times had changed! The spreading tree had been exchanged for the palace, and its harem, where everything was effectively invisible. Nobody knew, and nobody cared, who lived there, or how they lived—or died. In a world closed and enveloped in secrecy, justice withered like a pale shoot deprived of the sun.

  Yashim slapped some silver on the table and strode from the café, his cloak billowing behind him; outside he turned his back on the water and began to mount the steps two by two, dodging the porters bent double under their enormous loads, the musical instrument sellers, the sherbet vendors, and the little Jewish boys who sold paper on every landing. All Pera seemed to teem on the steps, veiled women, priests in black, foreign sailors, businessmen in frock coats and fezzes, builders in turbans. Yashim kept his head down and moved fast, not drawing breath until he reached the rusted iron gates of the Polish residency.

  Dry leaves swirled around his feet as he crossed the yard. He climbed the steps and let himself into the dim hall. From overhead he heard the distant sound of a fiddle. Picking his way carefully through the gloom he reached the stairs, where the treads creaked as he mounted toward the light that streamed through the landing window.