Jason Goodwin

by The Janissary Tree

  "No, no, you're perfectly right. I'd be grateful, really. But you've done so much for me this evening, I don't want to take you out of your way"

  Eslek shook his head. "Almost there," he said.

  At the door of the hammam they parted with a handshake. Yashim had murmured--and Eslek had protested.

  "Drop it, efendi. You came out all right for us on the night of the fire. I've got a wife and kiddies up the street what know as you did a grand job for them. I was going to swing round and see you--Sign of the Stag, you said, right?--and thank you proper. My advice is, don't go messing with them tanners anymore. They're dirty, efendi, and it ain't just the fat."

  Yashim was grateful for the baths. Eslek was right: they were clean. The proprietor, a sallow old Armenian with a weary and intelligent face, even agreed to send a boy to fetch clean clothes from Yashim's landlady while Yashim sluiced away the colored grease that had sunk between his toes and the miasma of shit that clung to his skin. All the time he fought not to remember what he knew.

  Yashim unwound his turban and scooped water over his hair. Preen was dead. He concentrated on his surroundings. When the attendant offered him a bar of soap, it smelled, he noticed, of Murad Eslek. He touched his left cheek: tomorrow he'd have a black eye. He continued to use the scoop, rhythmically ladling the hot water over his head, massaging the soap into his scalp, behind his ears, over his aching neck. His ribs were bruised where the assassin had plunged against him on Preen's corridor. And Preen was dead. Yashim jerked his head up, to watch the attendant bringing him a basin of cold water for his scalded foot. There was nothing he could do about his knee. It looked red and felt sore. It would heal.

  He forced himself to remember the chase throwgh the alleys. Palewski had told him once how Napoleon had entered Italy, winning battle after battle with the Austrians, until he had felt that the earth itself was flying under his feet. He had felt the same, pursuing the man who had killed the hunchback, through the inclined alleys of Istanbul. Pursuing the man who killed Preen.

  He had not been able to save the assassin, that was true. Otherwise he could have made him talk. To have learned--what? Details, names, locations.

  Even now, he could not decide whether the killer had been aware of what was happening when he had struggled to cut the rope that bound him to the derrick. Yashim had been hoping to inch him back, away from the boiling vat. Had the killer known where he was? Was it suicide? Yashim was pious enough to hope it was not.

  Yet he could not rid himself of the idea that the killer, like himself, understood that they were both at an end of the same rope: bound for minutes in perfect mutual understanding. He wanted us both to go together, Yashim suspected.

  All he had really learned, instead, was how the third cadet to die had been boiled so that all his bones were clean. And that, he reasoned, was something he could have guessed. After all, the soup master had already told him how the Janissaries had come back to Istanbul, taking jobs that were out of the way. Watchmen. Stokers. Tanners. He remembered the scarred and blackened face of the man who knocked him down.

  Was it for this that Preen had died?

  Yashim squeezed his hair.

  Preen was dead.

  And why was the assassin so determined to die?

  What was there, apart from the threat of justice, that made a man decide to die rather than talk?

  Yashim could think of only two things.

  One was fear.

  The other was faith: the martyr's death.

  He pulled back suddenly, gasping for breath, his eyes stinging.

  Preen had died alone, for nothing, in the dark.

  Wise and wayward, loving and forever doomed, she died because of him.

  He had asked her to help.

  It wasn't that. Yashim whined, teeth bared, his eyes screwed up tight, knocking his head against the tiled wall.

  He had never properly taught her to read.

  68

  ***********

  The morning dawned bright. On the street, Stambouliots congratulated one another on the reappearance of good weather and expressed the hope that the gloom that had settled over the city in the last week might finally be lifted. Optimists declared that the spate of murders seemed to have come to an end, proving that the message from the imams had worked.

  Pessimists predicted more fog ahead. Only the fatalists, who in Istanbul number hundreds of thousands, merely shrugged their shoulders and said that, like fire and earthquake, God's will would be done.

  Yashim made his way down early to the cafe on the Kara Davut. The proprietor noticed that he was limping, and without a word offered him a cushioned divan off the pavement where he could still enjoy watching the doings on the street.

  When he had brought the coffees, Yashim asked, "Is there anyone who could take a message for me, and fetch an answer? I'd ask your son, but it's pretty far."

  He gave the address. The cafe proprietor frowned and turned down his mouth.

  "It is time," he said gruffly. "Mehmed can go. Eh, hey! Mehmed!"

  A little boy of about eight or nine bounced out of the back of the shop at his father's shout. He bowed solemnly and stood looking at Yashim with his big brown eyes, rubbing one foot against his other leg.

  Yashim gave him a purse and carefully explained where to go. He told him about the old lady behind the lattice. "You should knock. When she answers, present my compliments. Give her the money, and tell her these are--expenses--for the lady Preen, in room eight. Whatever she says, don't be frightened. Remember what you are told."

  The boy nodded and darted through the door, where a small crowd had gathered to watch a dervish perform his dance on the street. Yashim saw the boy dive unhesitatingly between the folds of their cloaks, and so away, down the street. A funeral errand, he thought; the father would not be pleased.

  "A good boy," he said guiltily. "You should be proud."

  The father gave a noncommittal wag of his head and started polishing glasses with a cloth.

  Yashim took a sip of coffee and turned to watch the performance in the street.

  The dervish danced in the space defined by a ring of bystanders, who every now and then had to stand aside to let someone in or out of the cafe, giving Yashim a glimpse of the performer. He wore a white tunic, white puttees, and a white cap, and he flexed his hands and legs in time to some inner melody, his eyes closed. But the dancer was not entranced: from what Yashim could see, it looked like one of the simpler dances of the seeker after truth, a stylized rendition of Ignorance searching for the Way.

  He put up a hand to rub his eyes and gave an involuntary yelp. He'd forgotten the bruising.

  A fire station. Another tower. His exploration of the files in the Imperial Archives had been inconclusive, to say the least. The references to fire towers had been too scanty to work on: they did not signify anything either way. All you could say was that fire towers existed; Galata, Beyazit. Everyone knew that. Perhaps he'd been reading in the wrong book.

  If only he could get hold of that helpful young Sudanese. Ibou.

  He'd gone looking for evidence of a fourth tower. He hadn't found any.

  Perhaps there wasn't one.

  What if the fourth location wasn't a tower at all?

  But if there wasn't a tower, what was he looking for?

  The second verse of the Karagozi poem came to his mind.

  Unknowing

  And knowing nothing of unknowing,

  They seek.

  Well, here he was. Unknowing, searching. And the refrain?

  Teach them.

  All well and good, he thought, but teach them what? Enlightenment? Of course, it would be that. But it meant nothing to him. As the poem said, he didn't even know what he didn't know. He could go around in circles like this forever.

  So who were these other people, the people who were supposed to teach? Teachers, simply. Imams, for example, dinning the Koran into their restless little charges with the cane. Ferenghi gunnery instructors, pe
rhaps, trying to explain the rules of mathematics to a fresh-faced batch of recruits. And at the madrassas, the schools attached to city mosques, clever boys learned the rudiments of logic, rhetoric, and Arabic.

  Outside on the pavement, the dervish had finished his dance. He pulled a cap from his belt and passed through the cafe, soliciting alms. To everyone who gave him something, he put out a hand and murmured a blessing.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Yashim saw the proprietor watching with folded arms. He had no doubt that had the man been a simple beggar he would have shooed him away, maybe with a coin, but a dervish--no, the babas had to be given respect because they showed people the way. The path to a higher truth.

  The dervishes were teachers of higher truths.

  The Karagozi, also, were teachers of their Way.

  Yashim hunched his shoulders, trying to concentrate.

  He'd had that verse in his head, recently. Unknowing they seek. Teach them. And he had said--or perhaps it was just a thought--that he must be a slow learner.

  Where was it? He had an impression that he had, after all, learned something then. He had thought of that verse, and heard something useful. But the time and place eluded him.

  He shut his eyes. In his mind he groped for an answer.

  A slow learner. Where had he thought that before?

  His mind was blank. Try again.

  He had guessed that there were four towers. Old Palmuk, the fire watcher, had denied it.

  Then he remembered. It wasn't the old man; it was the other one, Orhan. It was Orhan who had told him about the towers as they stood on the parapet of the Galata Tower, in the fog. He'd described the tower that was lost and how they raised the Beyazit tower to compensate. The old tower had burned, he'd said: along with the tekke. A tekke, like the one downstairs.

  So both towers had been furnished with a Karagozi tekke. He couldn't yet be sure about the fire tower at Beyazit, but a tekke was certainly where the truth was taught, as the Karagozi perceived it. Unknowing they seek. Teach them. And the tekkes in the fire towers were, coincidentally, the earliest tekkes in the city.

  "I've had the whole thing back to front," Yashim announced. He stood up abruptly and saw a dervish blinking, smiling, putting out his cap for alms. The dervish's cap swam under his nose.

  Yashim walked out.

  The dervish stretched out both his arms in blessing. In his cap he had seen a whole silver sequin.

  69

  ***********

  "CHARMANTE! Tout a fait charmante! If I were younger, my dear, I would be positively jealous."

  Eugenia blushed slightly and curtseyed. There was no doubt in her own mind that the valide, who was reclining against cushions scattered around a window seat, must have been ravishing herself. With the soft light at her back, she had the easy poise of a beautiful woman. And the cheekbones to go with it.

  "I am so glad we were able to persuade you to come," the valide continued, without a hint of irony. She raised her lorgnette and peered at Eugenia's dress. "The girls will think you quite a la mode" she pronounced. "I want you to sit here by me, before they come to devour you. We can talk a little."

  Eugenia smiled and took a seat at the edge of the divan.

  "It was so kind of you to invite me," she said.

  "Men don't think it, but there is so much we women can arrange, n'est-ce pas? Even from here. Tu ne me crois pas?"

  "Of course I believe you, Valide."

  "And you Russians are very much in the ascendant these days. Count Orloff, your husband's predecessor, was a good friend to the empire during the Egyptian crisis. He had a very plain wife, I understand. But no doubt they were very happy together."

  Eugenia's eyes narrowed a fraction. "She was a Voronsky," she replied.

  "Believe it or not," the valide said, "I have never been impressed by the claims of old family. Neither I nor my dear childhood friend Rose were precisely Almanach de Gotha. We were clever, and that counts for much more. She became empress. Her husband Napoleon, of course, came from nowhere at all. The Ottomans, I'm delighted to say, have no snobberies of that kind."

  Eugenia blinked lazily and smiled.

  "Surely," she said carelessly, "there's one old family in the empire whose claims have to be respected?"

  The valide put out a hand and rested it on Eugenia's arm. "Perfectly right, my dear. But my son was brought up to defend those claims, rather than rely on them. It doesn't matter if you're the fifth or the twenty-fifth or--in Mahmut's case--the thirty-third sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and in direct descent from Osman Bey himself, if you can't prove that the empire needs you. Mahmut has exceeded my expectations.

  "I'd like you to meet him. He would be delighted by you, of course." The valide saw the surprise in Eugenia's expression and laughed softly. "Oh, don't be alarmed. My son is no Suleiman."

  Eugenia found herself laughing. Suleiman the Magnificent, the great Renaissance sultan, had fallen head over heels for a Russian courtesan, Roxelana. He wound up marrying her--the last time any sultan had married at all.

  The valide gave her arm a squeeze. "And entre nous, he prefers them rather more upholstered. You'll see."

  She raised her hand. As if by magic, two girls entered and bowed. One of them held a tray containing coffee in tiny cups. The other, a narghile.

  "Do you smoke?"

  Eugenia gave the valide a startled look. The valide shrugged.

  "One forgets. It is a harem vice, I'm afraid. One of several. Parisian fashions are another."

  She gestured to the girls, who set down the tray and the pipe. One of them knelt prettily at Eugenia's feet and presented her with a coffee cup.

  "The inspection has begun," said the valide drily. Eugenia took the cup and murmured a thank-you. The girl made no effort to move but touched her hand to her forehead and addressed a few words to the valide.

  "As I expected," the valide said. "The girls have been wondering whether you would like to join them in the bath."

  70

  ***********

  As Yashim climbed the spiral staircase, he was still elated by the news.

  The boy had found him on the pavement outside the cafe. He stood very stiffly to attention and blurted out the message he had memorized on the run back from Preen's landlady.

  "The lady says your friend is not going to die and I should not ask about such things. She says she has hurt her arm and needs a lot of rest. She says--she says--" He screwed up his face. "I cannot remember the other thing, but it was like the first bit. I think."

  Yashim had made him repeat the message. He stood stock-still for several moments, then he laughed. "You've done very well--and brought me the best news. Thank you."

  The boy took the coin with grave ceremony and ran back into the cafe to show it to his mother. Yashim turned up the street and limped away in the direction of the Golden Horn, humming.

  His mood didn't change when he put his head through the hatch and saw old Palmuk, the fire watcher, leaning on the parapet with his back turned toward him. On the contrary. With a smile, he moved quietly onto the roof. He stood behind Palmuk and made a sudden grab for his waistband. Before the fire watcher could react, he had hoisted him over the parapet.

  "Aaargh! Aaaargh! Don't do that! Orhan! Aaaargh! Let go! You bastard. Oh. Oh. Me heart. Orhan?"

  "It isn't Orhan," said Yashim levelly. "It's the man you lied to yesterday. The tower? Remember? I think you said, too, that you don't like heights. But what am I to believe?"

  "I don't like "em, efendi, I don't. And I swear I never lied."

  Old Palmuk's legs were thrashing about, but his arms were too far over the parapet to reach back. Yashim gave him a little shove.

  "No, please!" He was almost screaming now, the words coming in rigid little bursts. "What I said--I wanted the money. I'll give it back."

  "A tekke," Yashim shouted. "There's a fourth tekke, isn't there?"

  But the man had gone limp. Yashim's eyes narrowed. He wondered if it was a ruse. He'
d pull him back and then--wham! Old Palmuk would be at his throat.

  "Over you go, then," he said loudly.

  Either old Palmuk was in a faint or he was a very steely customer.

  Yashim thought of the assassin, plunging himself into the boiling dye. He pulled old Palmuk back onto the roof.

  The man's face was the color of putty. His eyes moved wildly to left and right, and he seemed to be having trouble breathing. He emitted a series of dry clicks.

  Yashim laid him on his back and tore at the neck of his shirt. He massaged his chest, pumping with his forearms. A little color returned to old Palmuk's cheeks, and the rapid movement of his eyes slowed. At last he drew a long, shuddering wheeze and closed his eyes.

  Yashim said nothing. Waited.

  The old man's eyes half opened and slid toward him.

  "You didn't ought to have done that," he mumbled. "You took advantage, efendi."

  Yashim, squatting, rocked back on his heels and breathed hard through his nose.

  "You lied to me," he said coldly.

  A sly grin spread over old Palmuk's face, and he hiccuped mirthlessly.

  "It's what you wanted, innit?" He spoke very quietly. "Old Palmuk, serve the customer. Hey, Palmuk, tell us a story." He closed his eyes again. "You didn't ought to have done that."

  Yashim bit his lip. Last night he'd as good as murdered a man. And today--

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  Palmuk put a hand to his chest and clawed at his shirt, crumpling the torn edges together.

  "It was a new shirt, efendi."

  Yashim sighed.

  "I'll get you another. I'll get you two. But first, tell me this. Did the Karagozi have a tekke at the Beyazit Fire Tower? Like the one here?"

  Old Palmuk stared. "Tekke? The Beyazit Tower?" He began to wheeze. It took Yashim a moment to realize that he was laughing.

  "What's the joke?"

  "A tekke at Beyazit, you said?" Old Palmuk rubbed his nose with the palm of his hand, sniggering. "There was a tekke there, all right. The whole tower was built on it."