The Baklava Club: A Novel (Investigator Yashim)

by Jason Goodwin

The pasha had moved and the punt rocked slightly.

  “Not unless it’s accompanied by a more active foreign policy. You can’t just sit and wait.”

  Three black spots appeared against the dark sky: they curved around the edge of the lake and then began to descend. Palewski’s gun cracked, and a bird spun down into the water.

  “Good shot!” Midhat whispered. “Go, Aslan.”

  The dog was already in the water, making a V on the surface with its nose. It took the duck gently between its jaws.

  A drake. Midhat took the feathered corpse and laid it in the bottom of the punt. Palewski reloaded.

  “It’s a mistake to leave the balance of power in Europe in the hands of others, my pasha.”

  “The Committee again?”

  “The Committee. But also the English and the French. When the Powers talk, the Ottomans must be there to talk, too. Conferences and congresses are all the rage—but you do need something to say.”

  “I hope our visitor will give us some ideas,” the pasha said dubiously.

  “He will,” Palewski replied, ruffling the feathers of the dead bird. It was, he had to admit, a good clean shot. “Certainly he will.”

  9

  YASHIM went up slowly to his apartment. It was a top-floor flat in a tenement in Balat, reached through a doorway that had sunk lower and lower below the street as the centuries slipped by: Palewski had conjectured that the ground floor, at least, was a relic of Byzantine times—stone-built, with a vaulted hall, and the faint impress of a decorative frieze around the doorway. The Greek key, Palewski called the motif, turning in and out like the winding of a river, or the master key to a labyrinth.

  “Highly suitable for your line of work, Yashim,” he had suggested once. “Complexities made plain: inquire within.”

  The stairs creaked as Yashim climbed: the wooden upper stories swelled and contracted with the seasons, dry as tinder after a long summer. Lately there had been fewer fires, Alhamdulillah. Maybe the firemen no longer started them, as they did in the bad old days.

  Yashim did not climb the stairs alone; not quite. Once he stopped and looked back down the dark stairwell, the hairs prickling on the back of his neck, an odd taste in his mouth—but whatever he was looking for had no shape and made no sound as it rose stealthily from floor to floor. Brave as he was, Yashim felt himself break into a sweat. It took him an effort to turn, and climb; to push the door at the top, and go inside; and though he shut the door carefully behind him, his dark follower slipped in, too.

  He made for the window like a bird, leaning his head against the glass and looking down into the street.

  Laundry fluttered on a line between two houses. Below him the lattices were up. A man with a bundle over his shoulder was trudging toward Kara Davut, maybe hoping for a sale, and the yellow bitch who had pupped in August followed him with her eyes as her puppies sneezed and pawed one another on the dusty road. The broken pavement was full of holes; they would grow in the rain and fill with icy water, until a gang came with a cart of rubble to fill them in, the way they had filled them in before. As if nothing changed, or might ever change for another hundred years: the lattice or the laundry, or the whelping pups, or the holes in the street, filling and draining across the years.

  Yashim pressed his hands against the jamb and then, with a look of amazement, whirled around: there was no one there, but something had changed in the atmosphere of the room.

  He touched his head to the glass again. There had always been schemers in Istanbul; that was the nature of an imperial capital to which petitioners, delegations, zealots, and hustlers were all drawn, involved in the endless negotiation that maintained Ottoman imperial power across many lands and many faiths. But Palewski’s Italians weren’t interested in the Ottomans, or in making the Grand Tour. They meant to overthrow the Pope! Running here, as if Istanbul with its cliques and concealed zones and careful compartments diligently maintained were a city like London, or Paris. As if it were just another port, another place to drop bales, unload grain, pick up tobacco.

  Even the valide seemed to have caught the new mood, entertaining a houseguest as if Topkapi were a château on the Loire. Writing to the tsar at that box of hers, suggesting he pardon an errant subject: one ruler to another, fiddling with each other’s affairs.

  She had summoned Yashim to keep the visitor safe while they toured the sights. To be a—what? A cicerone—like a man in Venice he’d once met, batting off beggars and organizing shawls and sherbet.

  He knocked his head gently against the window, where his dark shadow met him—knowing all Yashim’s holds in advance, infiltrating his defenses, turning his strengths. For months he had eluded him, never quite daring to stop, lest the pity settle around him like a cloak.

  He put out a hand to touch the glass, pushing it with his fingertips until they whitened. The glass surrounded him. Beyond the glass the faintly stirring laundry on the line, the dog with her pups, the man walking down the road, the valide, those boys, Palewski: they were all outside, moving and alive in the easy air.

  It wasn’t the way things changed that he resented: change was the only constant. Chemin d’enfer, indeed! The unease he felt was more personal. The boys with their girl, perhaps; and the valide’s assumption that he had nothing better to do than wait on her Russian guest. Or was it Palewski, retracing his boyhood with an ease Yashim could only dream of?

  I hope you don’t have a murder, the valide had said. Attend to the living, Yashim: the dead can wait.

  He took a lungful of air and turned away from the window.

  The dead, in Yashim’s experience, could never wait. The shock of murder penetrated glass, and betrayal shattered stone. And death brought Yashim across the border of men’s lives.

  Right now, he thought savagely, a murder would suit him very well.

  10

  MARTA nudged the door with a hip and backed into Palewski’s bedroom, carrying a tray with a pot of tea.

  She laid the tray on the side table and drew the curtains. Sunlight spilled into the room and the white counterpane convulsed, screwing itself tighter around Palewski’s head.

  “Nine o’clock, kyrie,” Marta suggested, gently. “It is Sunday.”

  When Palewski drank, or overslept, or fell asleep in his clothes, or rang for her in the middle of the night, Marta bore it with loving patience, for these, she understood, were the ways of a scholar. The kyrie served his books, she felt, as she served the kyrie, with steadfast devotion.

  When the bedclothes did not move, she called out. “Kyrie? The tea is hot, and it is nine o’clock.”

  A reluctant head appeared above the sheets.

  Marta’s concern for her lord extended to his immortal soul. Marta herself was going to church. It had never occurred to her not to go to church, any more than it occurred to her to wear pantaloons; church, for the Greeks of Istanbul, was as inevitable as pleated skirts or a knowledge of the sea.

  The lord had his church, of course, which was sadly different from hers: probably ineffective, possibly dangerous, she bore it for him all the same as a misfortune of his birth. It never occurred to her that Palewski might not want to attend mass. He was a Frank, and on Sunday the Franks heard mass.

  So she waited, patiently, until Palewski put out a bare arm and took the tea.

  Two hours later, Palewski stood in his pew at the French embassy chapel, listening to the priest intone the introit. The French ambassador and his family occupied the pews in front, with various secretaries and attachés, and beside Palewski stood the Sardinian consul, breathing out a pungent whiff of onions. To his left, one of the nuns who had recently arrived in Istanbul to run a sailors’ hospital listened with her eyes closed. Palewski examined her face covertly: she was very young, and quite pretty.

  “Eructavit cor meum verbum bonum: dico ego opera mea Regi.”

  Palewski’s eyes wandered over the blue vaulted ceiling, spangled with silver stars, and down the fluted stone columns, past the Virgin Mary ho
lding her baby with an expression of tender idiocy, past the plain oak confessionals, and over the congregation of nuns who filled the pews across the aisle. A priest stood with them, a small, round fellow with tidy black hair turning white and a pair of very blue eyes. Palewski wondered who he was, and as he did so the priest turned slightly. Their eyes met, and the priest winked.

  Surprised, even a little shocked, Palewski returned his attention to the altar. He thought perhaps he had been mistaken: the wink had been a trick of the light, streaming through the stained-glass windows.

  “Audi, filia, et vide, et inclina aurem tuam: quia concupivit Rex speciem tuam.”

  At the end of the service, Palewski found himself leaving the chapel with the unfamiliar priest, whose blue eyes twinkled with amusement.

  “The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary!” With a happy smile the priest patted Palewski’s shoulder. “Known in centuries past as Our Lady of the Victory. I take it as an augury, sir. Wouldn’t you say so?”

  Palewski hesitated. The phrase echoed in his mind, but he could not quite recall its significance.

  “Regina sacratissimi rosarii,” the priest confided. “Battle of Lepanto! Tactless to mention it out of doors, as it were, but here we’re all friends together, am I right? Father Doherty, from County Cork—by way of Rome,” he added, lowering his voice a trifle.

  “Palewski.” He extended a hand. “Ambassador to the Porte.”

  The twinkling eyes creased with intelligence. “Delighted to make your acquaintance, Excellency. Delighted. Now, would you say it was Pius the Fifth who introduced the beautiful Feast of the Rosary to the missal? Or not exactly, you might say—I seem to recall that it was Clement, his successor, who named it so.”

  “You have the advantage of me, Father,” Palewski murmured.

  “Aha, aha,” Father Doherty returned complacently. “Saint Pius set the form for the Missal, to be sure. Not be deviated from under any circumstances!” he added genially, wagging a finger. “Bar a few minor confessions and congregations who were allowed their own variants. The Mozarabs of Toledo, now, they had exemption—but then they had a very different tradition, after all? He saw fit to add the Feast of our Lady of Victory to the mass, his own self, in celebration of a great Christian victory over the infidels. A saint’s prerogative, no doubt.”

  Palewski glanced about in desperation, and caught the French ambassador avoiding his eye. The Sardinian consul swam into view, and Palewski hailed him before he could sidle past.

  “Signor Ramberti, Father Doherty. We were just discussing the missal.”

  The consul shook hands, and shrugged. “The missal?”

  “People are apt to forget, signor, that today marks the anniversary of the Turks’ defeat at Lepanto, in 1571. Pius the Fifth ascribed that victory to Our Lady.”

  “In my country, Ambassador, we ascribe every victory to Our Lady,” the consul returned suavely.

  “But not every victory is commemorated in the mass,” Doherty pointed out. “It’s a remarkable thing. It’s just arrived that I am, and my first mass is a commemoration of Christian victory. I take it as an augury.”

  “You are here to convert the infidel?”

  Father Doherty spread his fingers. “And a wonderful thing it would be, to be sure. Sadly, martyrdom and glory are not my style. I’m merely a humble ecclesiastical pedant, and boring you both with my talk of rosaries and saints.” He bent forward and whispered confidentially: “D’ye think they’ll be serving champagne?”

  Palewski found himself smiling. “You’re going on to the residency?”

  “Are you not? What’s the form, Your Excellency? You’ll forgive me, I’m sure, I’m apt to forget the niceties in the wider world. In Clonakilty, now, a man could work up something of a thirst in church. But your diplomatic world’s a long way from my own. Of dust,” he added, “and palimpsests.”

  The word seemed to have an effect on the Sardinian consul, who promptly bowed and moved away. On Palewski the effect was different.

  “Palimpsests?” he echoed, considering whether he might invite the pedant for a light refreshment at his own, rather shabbier, residency.

  Father Doherty sighed, and beamed. “The saintly Pius is a little too modern for me, I’m afraid. I approve of the encyclical, of course, the content. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say the Latin is a little racy for my blood. Saint Anthony, now. The Vitae Patrum. Crude carpentry Latin, with all the vigor of the living tongue.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Father,” said Palewski, linking his arm through the cleric’s rather lower one, “I can’t offer you champagne, but—” He stopped, and checked himself. “Indeed, I can. By happy chance, I can.”

  “Chance has nothing to do with it,” Father Doherty replied. “I called it an augury, and I’ll be martyred and glorified if an augury is not exactly what it is. Lead on!”

  And arm in arm, to the stupefaction of the Sardinian consul, the ambassador and the Irish priest sallied out together into the street.

  11

  “EH bien, Yashim?” The valide was almost eager. “So you received her on the quay? And all went well?”

  “Perfectly well, hanum efendi. She took a caïque ashore. I had no trouble in recognizing her.”

  Mademoiselle Borisova had sat very stiff in the frail caïque, holding her skirts against the wind. Her trunk had traveled in a second boat.

  Yashim reached out to take her hand as she stepped out. The boat wobbled and she landed with a yelp, as Yashim caught her firmly around the waist. She sidestepped smartly, her head averted so that Yashim could not see her face behind her bonnet.

  “The little boat—” She made a gesture. She wore a dark woolen redingote over a brown dress, and when she raised her head Yashim glimpsed a face that was unmistakably Russian lurking in the depths of her bonnet, with pale lips, dark brows, and slanting eyes. She smoothed her dress and shrugged her shoulders, so that her shawl dropped a little.

  “Mademoiselle Borisova. My name is Yashim, and the valide has sent me to bring you to the palace.” He sensed her shiver. “The caïques take a little practice. I don’t think they were designed for European skirts.”

  “No.”

  “Please, this way.”

  He held out his arm toward the waiting fiacre, and she climbed aboard with a little cast of her hooped skirts, and settled herself on the seat. Yashim saw to her trunk, stepped up, and ordered the driver to Topkapi.

  Brought to her apartment, Natasha had unpinned her bonnet. Her straight black hair was neatly parted in the center and tied into a bun at the back. “It’s so strange,” she said, looking curiously around the room. She ran her hands over the tiled walls and plumped down on the divan, putting her eye to the lattice. “I was never in a palace before,” she added, unsmiling, leaning back on her hands.

  “It’s not like other palaces, perhaps,” Yashim explained. He told her something of its history, of how the harem quarters had been built up slowly, over the centuries, while kiosks and pavilions were added to the seraglio, the private quarters of the sultan. “He doesn’t live here anymore. He moved to a Frankish palace, along the Bosphorus.”

  “A Frankish palace! I like this one.”

  A maidservant had come in, bowing. Yashim introduced her, and explained that she knew a few words of Russian. She was a Circassian: Natasha’s eyes had narrowed slightly.

  “Well, she was the best I could find,” the valide commented when Yashim had finished telling her about her guest’s arrival. “I’ve forgotten her name, but she’s been here some years already. And what did you discuss?”

  “The weather, her journey.” Her replies had been brief; he had supposed, among other things, that she was tired. “And you a little, of course, hanum efendi.”

  “You thought she needed to be prévenu, hein?”

  “I sensed that she was interested, hanum efendi,” Yashim answered carefully.

  “And you said I was old and bored, and wanted company? That I was charming, but could
still bite?”

  Yashim had not, in fact, said quite as much. He laughed. “I brought her to the apartment, to settle in and rest.”

  The valide’s brows arched. “And the old women—did they crowd around?”

  “I told them that your guest needed to rest.” Even they had wilted slightly before Natasha’s stare.

  “I doubt that will put them off, Yashim. They will pull her bagages to pieces, and insist that she disrobe to show off her stays. I do not entirely blame them. In my day, even European fashions were more free. After the revolution in France, I understand, the girls wore white chemises. Charmante! You will bring her to me in the morning, and we shall discuss everything.”

  She dismissed Yashim by closing her eyes and leaning back into her cushions.

  Outside in the court, he wondered if he should look in on Natasha Borisova once more; but he remembered her cool expression and decided that Mademoiselle Borisova would have no need of his help this evening.

  There was time before dark to see Palewski, if he hurried.

  12

  “IT’S not a collection you have, Palewski. It’s a disease.”

  The priest patted one of Palewski’s bookcases.

  “I recognize the symptoms myself, by way of being a fellow sufferer, somewhat. I palliate the torment, Palewski, by a strict diet of incunabula and manuscript, the latter preferably illuminated. A regimen of perpetual Latin, classical where I can find it, but church Latin still does for me. I recommend the practice, sir.”

  Palewski chuckled. “Just the approach my own father took. Of course we lost it all after the Partition, and I didn’t have the heart to start afresh. You’d have appreciated the collection.”

  Doherty lowered his head. “Speaking as a friend, if I may, I sympathize with your loss—although to be perfectly honest nothing excites the collector in me more than the thought of a library being broken up.” He took a sip of champagne and licked his lips. “But that’s as may be. What have we here?”

  He took down a commentary on Juvenal. It had been written some seventy years ago, by a relative of Palewski’s, and before long they were discussing the value of commentaries, the merits of early Venetian typefaces, the translation work done in Toledo in the thirteenth century, and the influence of Arab thinkers on Thomas Aquinas. Since neither Palewski nor his guest saw any good reason to shy from considering how many angels might dance on the head of a pin, the hours flew by comfortably.