The Baklava Club: A Novel (Investigator Yashim)

by Jason Goodwin

  “Stroganina?”

  “Frozen fish. It’s cut into long strips, and you eat it with salt and pepper. It’s a very strong taste. I like it.”

  “Brrr!”

  “I like these spices, too,” Natasha admitted. She put the flowers she had picked in a patterned glass and set them in front of Yashim. He smiled at her.

  “I’ll show you how to use them,” Yashim said.

  Birgit chuckled. “Yashim efendi’s School of Cookery—why not? I’m sure Natasha would enroll.”

  Seeing Natasha blush, Birgit changed the subject. She was reading a book by a young philosopher called Søren Kierkegaard, who would have liked it here, Birgit was sure. Yashim smiled. He liked her easy manner. She reminded him of those palace odalisques but she lacked their affectations—their lisps and piping insincerities.

  She talked about Kierkegaard, and the conversation turned to the love of nature. Natasha mentioned Aksakov.

  “Palewski was talking about him, too, just the other day,” Yashim said. “Aksakov and an Englishman called Gilbert White.”

  “Oh yes,” Natasha said. “Gilbert White of Selborne.” She proceeded to give them a digest of White’s nature writings. Yashim lay back and listened. She must make a very charming teacher in her father’s school, he thought, impressing the little Siberians with her low and serious voice. After a while Birgit started to get dressed.

  “White examined all the evidence,” Natasha went on, “and he says that the little birds, in winter, hibernate by burying themselves in the mud of ponds, like this one. Do you think that’s true?”

  “White was an Anglican clergyman,” Father Doherty murmured from under his hat, which had slipped sideways. “Very little he could say would be dependable. Aristotle, now, he’d tell you about the little birdies, so he would.”

  Natasha startled: she seemed to have forgotten Doherty’s presence.

  “What brings you to Istanbul, Father?”

  Doherty sat up and fanned himself with his hat.

  “Philology, theology, divinity, and prayer! What do you think of that? Which is, of course, only a way of saying that I am a humble ant who toils in the dust of ages past! Vellum, my dear girl, and papyrus—isn’t that the name for paper still, in Russian? Pappa-roos!”

  Natasha was about to correct him but Father Doherty swept on, patting his forehead with a handkerchief.

  “It’s a battle, dear lady. On the one hand, libraries, archives, the accumulated lore of the millennia—and on the other, mites, worms, and natural decay. So many books, so many testaments—and we are so few.”

  Poor Doherty, Yashim thought. Nobody much liked him, and he was lonely.

  Much later, when everyone had taken the slow caïques back down the Golden Horn, and said goodbye, Yashim took Natasha back to the palace.

  “Those boys—they aren’t really exiles,” Natasha said. “Not like my father.”

  “They aren’t prisoners, no.”

  Natasha shivered. “I didn’t feel easy with—what was his name?”

  “The priest? Doherty.”

  “No, the boy, the smaller one. Fabrizio. His eyes.”

  Yashim smiled. “Perhaps you were looking too beautiful.”

  “Don’t say that. Birgit’s the beautiful one. He looked at her in a funny way, all the time. And—well.”

  “Well?”

  “Just, well.”

  The caïque dipped as it turned toward the shore. Lights burned at the Eminönü stage. He helped Natasha out of the boat.

  “Do you feel safe here—at night?” she asked, breaking the silence as they walked slowly up the long street toward the palace.

  “Just here, as safe as anywhere. There are some districts—the port, at Tophane, for one; some places around Pera—graveyards. But it’s a safe city. Nobody goes out at night, except the watchmen.”

  “I had no idea it would be so big,” Natasha admitted. They turned at the palace wall and began climbing the narrow alley behind Ayasofya. “Perhaps that’s what frightens me, sometimes.”

  The slope leveled off, and they emerged at the Fountain of Ahmet III, whose enormous eaves puddled the ground in the shade of a waxing moon. Yashim took Natasha to the gate, where the guards saluted him, and walked her through to the little gate of the harem.

  One of the elderly black eunuchs opened the door, yawning.

  “It’s not a caravansary for travelers,” he said sniffily.

  “Good night, Yashim.”

  Yashim touched her hand, and bowed. “Good night, Natasha. Thank you for coming.”

  22

  PALEWSKI laid the letter on the desk and poured himself a brandy. He took the glass to the window and knelt on the seat, looking into the night through his own dim reflection in the glass. Somewhere a dog barked, hoarse and deep.

  It was many years since he had undertaken a mission that could be compared with this, he thought. Commanding a troop, or riding to Moscow alone through the winter snows, he had felt the weight of empires on his shoulders.

  His reflection shrugged back at him. It was a long time ago. Some of the empires had fallen, some of the hopes had died. Everyone had changed.

  He closed his eyes. Palewski pictured Europe as a map tilted against the light, on which mountains rose and rivers flowed, and the names of countries were stamped out like the letters of a patent medicine. France was lit; England lit; Spain—it was too far away. But at the center of the map the light was dimmest, the borders bleeding into gray at the junction of three empires, obscuring the shadow lines of his own, dejected country.

  Once an Austrian, drunk, had shouted at him: “Your Poland is nothing to the Committee!” Palewski had seen the sudden look of regret on his face, an almost comical shift from sneer to fear, and then the gray-clad officers had crowded around; it was hard, a few moments later, to be sure what the man had said. The Committee, yes, it existed: men with hands on the levers of power, their ears straining at every door, sustaining despots and emperors.

  What if now, beneath his hand, the spirit of change could be awakened? Palewski saw the borders breaking up like ice floes on the Vistula or the Don. Light crept across the surface of his mental map—with Istanbul pulsing, like a lighthouse.

  Of course the Porte was afraid. The Porte—the Ottoman government—took its name from the High Gate, leading to the offices of the grand vizier: it was a good name for it, a gateway. Each door opened to an opportunity. He would help to push that door, open it a crack to allow a beam of light to fly out across the enclosed and darkened lands of eastern Europe.

  He felt a flutter of excitement. He was the only Polish diplomat in the world, the only ambassador accredited to a government that had as much to gain from change as Poland herself. The Ottomans were battered and uncertain but still a power. Perhaps it was for this he had waited all these years, maintaining the dignity of Poland as a name, carrying the idea, year in, year out, in the teeth of scheming and envious enemies.

  Palewski squared his shoulders, unconsciously: he, at least, was not afraid.

  He turned back to the desk and folded Midhat Pasha’s letter. We cannot send to the ship … communication must remain secret … note to the residency …

  Midhat had to be cautious. By agreeing to a secret meeting between the sultan and the Polish statesman, Prince Czartoryski, the Porte had put itself in Palewski’s hands. If word were to escape! News of the meeting might bolster the Polish cause, but it could do the Porte unforeseeable harm. The autocrats of Europe would protest in the most vigorous terms. They would unleash threats, at the very least.

  Palewski had given the pasha his word of honor.

  He opened the drawer and took out the packet of correspondence, intending to slip this last communication in above the rest. For a moment he frowned—the letters were spilling from the packet. He must have jogged them as he drew them out of the drawer. Why couldn’t he remember? His hands were trembling. Excitement again—or too much brandy!

  Czartoryski, the old w
arhorse, the noble senator, was coming to Istanbul! They hadn’t met in a quarter century, but he supposed he’d recognize him still. Connections of sympathy, affection, and even family: Czartoryski was a cousin on his mother’s side. Exiled in Paris since the early thirties. Prince Czartoryski had money. The Palewskis had fared worse.

  Istanbul. Paris. London. Polish émigrés were everywhere: all they needed was another lead, a sign, a powerful protector.

  If Stanislaw Palewski had anything to do with it, a protector would be found, and very soon.

  Funny, that Russian girl Yashim had spoken of, coming here on a similar errand. Odd chance they should coincide. He hoped her petition would not interfere with his. Poor old Borisov, driven out to Siberia and the mines.

  He slipped the newest letter into the packet and sealed it carefully. Death to tyrants! He put the packet into the drawer and slid it shut.

  Instead of flinging himself into a chair and taking up a book, as he was used to doing, the ambassador bent forward and almost tenderly blew out the candle.

  Then, mirabile dictu, he went upstairs to bed.

  23

  NATASHA saw a light was burning in the valide’s hall, and she crept close and touched the door.

  Through the crack she could see the serving girl, asleep on a low divan. An oil lamp burned on the marble floor. She was about to tiptoe away when she looked again and noticed that the lamp was guttering, a juddering black smoke rising from the mantle.

  She slipped off her shoes and went in; the door creaked and the girl on the divan started up.

  “Who—what’s that?”

  Natasha crouched down beside the lamp and lowered the wick.

  “The flame,” she explained.

  The girl got up rather testily, Natasha thought, as she pointed to the soot in the mantle and tut-tutted, to show what had happened.

  “Mais qu’est-ce qui se passe?” The valide stood in the inner doorway, in a pair of loose pajamas.

  Natasha jumped to her feet, while the slave girl scrambled to the floor.

  “We were just checking the lamp,” Natasha explained. “It was smoking.”

  “Hmm.” The valide spoke rapidly to the girl, then turned with a gesture. “Come in, little one. I am not asleep.”

  Natasha followed her into the apartment. The valide climbed onto the divan and drew up her quilt.

  “Eh bien. Yashim’s party. Tell me about it.”

  “I helped him cook. I stuffed some peppers, Valide hanum.”

  The valide raised an elegant eyebrow. “A great honor, no doubt. Yashim is very particular about his cookery. Go on.”

  Natasha described Yashim’s flat, the view out the windows, the little kitchen in the corner, the bookshelves. “It’s quite high up, very light.”

  The valide drew up her knees under the quilt and closed her eyes. She was smiling faintly. “It’s his lair,” she murmured. “Who came?”

  “First there was a priest, a Catholic.”

  “Mon dieu! I remember the type. Did he put a hand on your knee? No? Go on.”

  “Then three Italians, with a girl called Birgit. She was beautiful—blond, Valide!”

  The valide’s eyes opened. “I don’t doubt it. Most of those girls are. A Circassian?”

  “No, Valide. I think she was Danish, in fact.”

  “Danish?” The valide turned her head. “And tell me, what did she wear?”

  Natasha had been very observant. Used to doing her own dressmaking, she was able to describe every article of Birgit’s costume, and the careless elegance of the three Italians, to the valide’s evident satisfaction.

  “And which was the lover?”

  “Giancarlo, the tall one. But the little one, Fabrizio, kept looking at Birgit in a strange way. Very intense.”

  “Hmm. It’s extraordinary, how these Europeans persist in creating danger for themselves. Can you imagine? In our empire, Natasha, it’s always about one man. One at a time, au moins.”

  She laughed, and Natasha found herself laughing, too.

  “Eh bien, you have cheered me up. I’m very glad. I’d like to sleep now.”

  She presented her cheek for a kiss.

  Natasha kissed her and retired; the girl in the hall even smiled: the Russian girl had not given her away.

  Natasha slept well, for the first time in Istanbul, dreaming of cooks and lovers and a priest wrapped in a quilt.

  24

  “REALLY, Benjamin might have warned me we’d be walking all morning. It’s very hot, Mr. Compston.” Eliza stopped to fan herself. “I suppose you do know where we’re going?”

  George Compston, who had lost all sense of direction ten minutes earlier, gave her a queasy smile. “Certainly, Miss Day. Know the old place pretty well, if I say so myself. Just a lot of infernal alleys—all look the same.”

  “It seems to me that this one is the same—I’m sure I remember those dogs.”

  “Ah, that’s because the dogs are everywhere, all the same, just like the alleys.” He looked around uneasily. “I’m afraid you can’t avoid this sort of maze, if you want to get anywhere in town. Here’s the street we want.”

  They descended the crooked street. Compston’s plan was to keep going downhill: they would eventually hit either the Galata Tower or at the very least the bridge below it, over the Golden Horn.

  Ben Fizerley, Eliza’s cousin, was Compston’s superior at the British embassy. A couple of years Compston’s senior, he was an easygoing fellow whose family had decided to join him for a month after a successful tour of the Italian peninsula. Sir Garrard and Lady Fizerley were up at Therapia, where the embassy maintained its summer residence, and Compston had been called in to escort Eliza around the sights of Pera. He had been dismayed to find Eliza less easygoing than her cousin.

  “Really, Mr. Compston, I am afraid you are lost. I saw the tower most plain at least an hour ago.”

  “Almost there now, I think.” Compston mopped his forehead. If they came out, as he feared, on top of the bridge, he might pretend that he had brought her down to the water’s edge to get cool. He regretted claiming to know the city so very well indeed.

  “And that, Mr. Compston, is not the first time you have said so.” Eliza pressed herself to the wall to avoid a team of porters, straining upward with loads on their backs. “Why do they wear a band around their foreheads? They seem to be carrying everything on their heads.”

  “Tradition,” said Compston, who had no idea. “Everyone is in a guild here, you see, and they’re very fierce about keeping up the traditions. These chaps—hamal, the Turks call ’em—always carry stuff about on their heads and backs, just like their fathers, and their fathers before them. Mind the steps.”

  They were at the top of a particularly steep alleyway between two enormous buildings that Compston could not remember having ever seen before.

  “Steps? I don’t believe these are steps at all. It looks to me like a pile of collapsed masonry.” She began to advance cautiously, one hand to the wall, choosing her footing with care. A pretty girl, Compston thought, admiringly, as she hopped from one lump of stone to the next.

  “That’s the way here,” he explained. “Roads always in a shocking state. Mules vanish into holes, that sort of thing. Steps worse.”

  “I suppose that’s a tradition? Upheld by the worshipful company of Ottoman road menders?”

  Compston could think of no reply to this. He was engaged in keeping his own balance.

  Five minutes later, feeling sticky and irritable, they emerged onto flatter ground.

  Eliza pointed with her finger. “Is this the Golden Horn? It’s awfully wide.”

  Compston gazed, and frowned, and his mouth dropped open. He had no idea how it had happened, but they seemed to have emerged by the Bosphorus, instead.

  “I—I thought we should come down to the water, to get a bit of breeze,” he said.

  “What about the Galata Tower? Or the bridge you talked about?”

  “Better to cool d
own for a few moments, don’t you think?”

  “Where are we, exactly?”

  “Exactly? Ah—” He peered around, trying to get his bearings. “I’m afraid we may have missed the tower.”

  “Missed it? It’s unmissable, surely? I have read that the Galata Tower is over a hundred and fifty feet high. Do you mean to say we have to climb back there to reach it? I’m afraid you give a lady too much credit. I am not weak, but it is very hot, and I am certainly no Atalanta. What I should like now is a gelato and a cab. Or even a sedan chair.”

  Compston looked around wildly. Apart from the Grande Rue, on which most of the embassies stood, and some sections along the shore of the Bosphorus, the roads of Istanbul were mostly impassable for carriages.

  “A cab. A cab,” Compston muttered, looking up and down the road.

  “My kingdom for a cab,” concluded Eliza, pertly.

  “I’m afraid—”

  “What’s that?”

  And she pointed to a wan clump of trees close to the water’s edge, where an emaciated horse was enjoying a bag of oats. The horse was in harness, and behind the harness stood a black carriage.

  “That?”

  “Looks decidedly like a cab, Mr. Compston.”

  25

  THE matter of cabs had exercised Palewski, too. For several days he had been debating in his mind the best way to collect the prince from his ship. It would anchor at Tophane, and the prince could be alerted to come ashore at almost any time.

  The best time, Palewski initially thought, would be under cover of night, when few people would see a passenger come ashore. Those few, however, might be the wrong few: Palewski knew that the Russians and the Austrians had a system of spies and informers scattered all across the continent.

  He might ask the prince to travel in a sedan chair. Yet a sedan, even if it could be found at four a.m., would be noticeable at the dockside, obtrusive in town, and extraordinary at the gates of the residency, where news that a sedan chair had been brought up into Pera would spread like cholera. And a sedan chair had room for only a single traveler: Palewski would need either to secure a second or leave the prince to travel alone.