Yashim knelt in front of the fireplace. A little white ash, mixed with fragments of charred wood. He stirred it with a poker.
He leaned the poker against the wall and stood up, brushing the ash from his thighs.
Everything seemed laced with expectancy. New toys, still in their boxes of shavings. Bolts of cloth, awaiting a woman’s shears. Towels, slippers, quilts, and divans, unused.
Not a house that had been abandoned by its women and its children.
A house that was waiting for them, instead.
He turned his head suddenly, as if someone had entered the room. There was nobody there.
He crossed the hall. The room beyond was the mirror image of the one he had just left, but it, too, contained no paperwork.
He returned to the hall and followed it to the kitchens at the back, poking his head into the understairs cupboard. He was about to close the door when he noticed something sparkling-a bright copper nail, driven up into one of the treads. He looked more closely. There was a small piece of stained linen fixed to the nail, which was wound with colored threads. He reached out; the nail came away easily in his hand.
In the kitchen a thick mortar, like his own, was mounted in a cradle. Against a wall stood a narrow table, heaped with jars and bowls-spices, saffron, dried mint, sumac, salt. He tried the jars, stirring their contents with his finger.
He touched the ashes in the stove: they were brittle under his fingers. Damped, perhaps, by summer rain. Then in the heat, they’d dried again. They had not been warmed for many weeks.
He looked at the copper pans that hung on the wall above the stove, twelve of them-but only two were blackened on the base.
For coffee, he thought. A pan for coffee and a pan for rice.
He ran his fingers along the rough oak boards. A kitchen furnished an account, like the impress of a man on a pallet bed.
When he imagined his own kitchen, he saw the jars and the mortar, the pans and the little stove. The kitchen of a man who lived alone, like this.
He pursed his lips, and reached into the crock of rice. The rice slithered between his fingers.
At the bottom he felt something else.
He gripped the packet and drew it out carefully, spilling rice across the board.
45
“ Take this!” Dmitri shoved the mattock into his hands. “You never said-Shhh! Here he comes.”
Yashim swung the mattock over his shoulder again and stooped slightly, shielding his face.
“All done?”
“Well enough.”
The gatekeeper shot the bolts and drew the door open. “Leave the tools,” he said shortly.
Yashim laid the mattock against the wall.
“I don’t know you,” the gatekeeper said.
“Petros couldn’t come this evening. His wife’s sick.”
“Oh? What with?”
Dmitri shrugged, and made a gesture. “Women’s things,” he said vaguely.
The gatekeeper gave a vulgar laugh. “Only one reason a man marries, I can think of. You married?”
He peered at Yashim, who shook his head and grinned stupidly.
“Simple, is he?” The gatekeeper, who had been so taciturn and uninterested, seemed to be in a mood to talk.
“It’s past his bedtime.” Dmitri took Yashim’s arm. “We’d best be off. He doesn’t like the dark.”
The gatekeeper scratched his head, disappointed. They heard him scrape the bolts behind them.
“You were good,” Yashim said. “For a moment I thought-”
Dmitri hissed angrily: “You never said you’d go inside.”
They walked on in silence until they reached the track.
“I’m going this way.” Dmitri held out a handful of tomatoes. “If you like…?”
Yashim shook his head. He watched Dmitri walk away, until he was lost in the dusk that gathered beneath the trees. Then he turned and walked in the direction of the quay.
He didn’t hear the sound of running feet until it was too late. A man, running barefoot toward him. The man was a shadow between the trees, and the last light had begun to fade.
Yashim stopped where he was: the man approaching flung back his head to look behind. Yashim heard his panting breath, and at the last moment he swiveled to one side.
He might have got clear had he jumped from one rut in the track to the other. Instead, the runner crashed blindly into Yashim, whose legs gave way: the runner pitched forward over him, hands outstretched, and the two of them rolled on the ground.
Yashim was winded. He threw up a hand to grab the man’s wrist but his fingers closed instead on something round and hard. The runner was already somersaulting over him, and he broke free with a tug that seemed to drag Yashim’s fingers out of their sockets. Before Yashim could stagger to his feet the man was up and off, pelting down the track.
“Hey! Hey!”
Someone else was lumbering heavily up the track. Yashim held his side: the collision had bruised him, and he needed to suck the air into his lungs. His hand hurt.
“You there! Hey! Stop, thief!”
Yashim shook his head and straightened up.
“Not your thief,” he gasped. And then it struck him: the word was kleftis. The man lumbering up the track had shouted “ klepta,” which was Greek, but ancient Greek.
“What the devil-?”
The last remark was made, not in ancient Greek, but in a language Yashim, who had every language he was likely to meet on the islands, and four more, knew most imperfectly. The tone, and the voice, seemed unmistakable.
“Compston!”
The dark bulk of George Compston, second secretary at the British embassy to the Sublime Porte, coalesced at Yashim’s elbow.
“The deuce! Jer voo connais, monsieur. Ce klepta — I mean, ce voleur, monsieur — ” He panted, and wiped his brow: “My God! Yashim efendi! I mean to say!”
“Mais oui-c’est moi,” Yashim replied, half smiling in the dark. He took the Englishman’s arm and felt for his hand. “Your watch, I think.”
He pressed the watch into Compston’s hand. The young man gurgled with surprise.
“B-by all that’s holy, Yashim efendi! Pater’s Hunter! Well, well… The blighter had it off me by the quayside, when I was taking a walk with a girl… snatched it out of my weskit. I’ve been running ever since. And a pretty girl, too.”
He held the watch up to his ear. “Still ticks! We can iron out the creases, Yashim efendi. Good work! Chain’s gone, though.” He paused. “You didn’t happen to get the chain?”
“I’m afraid the chain broke off,” Yashim replied drily.
“Too bad. Little cutpurse, good day’s haul. But not the Hunter, eh?”
“It was only chance-”
“Bloody miracle. Pater’s Hunter,” Compston murmured. “Can’t thank you enough, Yashim efendi. Pretty much the old man’s parting shot. Go forth, young man, and all that. Solid gold. Not that it’s what matters. I mean to say.”
“It was nothing.”
“Look, if you’re heading for the city I could send you on.” He linked his arm in Yashim’s, and they strolled down the track together. “I brought the embassy yawl.”
They reached the quayside a few minutes later, Compston still extolling the virtues of his father’s watch, eager to examine it under the light.
“No, not a scratch I can see. Tick-tock, good as new. Pity about the chain, but it’s the watch that matters. Hi! Caiquejee!”
He gestured cheerfully to the boatman. “New passenger! Alexander the Great. Hop in, Yashim efendi. Stavros gets you back to Istanbul in under an hour, or I’m a Dutchman.”
“You aren’t coming?”
“Back to strolling, efendi.” Compston raised a hand. “Take the yawl. Least I can do for you.” He glanced about the quay. “Now, where’s that dashed girl?”
46
One by one, along the edge of the Golden Horn, the fishing boats drawn up on the strand lit their lamps as dusk descended over t
he Bosphorus. Dark figures crouched beneath their prows, tending the braziers where they cooked their fish: mackerel, mostly, headed, gutted, and then split apart to sizzle for a few minutes over the glowing charcoal. The warm air reeked of fish oil dripping into the fires.
A Nubian sailor slapped his hams and squatted down by one of the braziers. The fisherman took his coin, and tipped a hot mackerel fillet into a flat roll.
Overhead, in the branches of a plane tree, Kadri licked his lips, and waited.
47
The embassy caique swept over a glassy sea. Yashim lay back, reveling in the wind, pondering his discovery.
At length he saw the dim outline of the Topkapi Palace, lights in the tower of the Third Court, and the curve of the dome of Ayasofya. As the ferry wheeled into the Golden Horn, the great mosques of Bayezid and Suleyman seemed like curious configurations of the hilltops; beneath them, all along the Stamboul shore, a parade of tiny lights winked in the gathering darkness where the fishermen had set up their braziers. The quayside was empty. The fishermen had already gone, leaving their nets. The men who hung around the quays had retreated-some to the Greek bars that thronged the lower streets around the port, others to their wives and children.
A whiff of grilled fish wafted across the water.
The fishing boats drawn up on the strand were all alike, all selling mackerel fresh from the sea, and Yashim found it hard to choose one over another. He saw a sailor sitting on his hams and munching a sandwich with evident enjoyment: the firelight flickered on his black skin, and his teeth were very white in the darkness.
Yashim approached the boat and pointed to the flaming grill. “I’d like one nicely done,” he said.
The fisherman nodded, dropped a split mackerel into a round of bread, and held it up. And at that moment something odd happened.
The sandwich disappeared.
Yashim’s hand met the empty hand of the fisherman, and they both startled.
Overhead a branch creaked in the darkness.
48
Yashim took a step back and looked up. He saw the silhouette of the tree stark against the stars, and with it an impression of something moving along the branch above. He stepped back on his heels for a clearer view, and then darted under the tree. The lower branches were too high to reach, but they swooped out to almost touch the roof of a single-story godown.
He heard a twig snap. Yashim ran toward the godown, put one foot on the sill of its great barred window, and grabbed at the lowest branch.
Aware that his retreat was in danger of being blocked off, Kadri began to run along the branch, balancing with open arms and still holding the stolen sandwich. As he reached the end his body sank; he bunched his muscles and prepared to jump.
Under Yashim’s weight the branch dipped and swayed.
Kadri sprang. The angle was steeper than he had expected: the ground had moved beneath his toes.
He hit the parapet with his belly, and gasped as the wind was knocked out of him. A sharp pain shot up his knee.
Yashim sprang to the sill. The boy thrashed his legs; Yashim reached up with both hands, took hold of an ankle, and leaped back.
He landed hard on the ground. The boy was beside him on his hands and knees, head hanging, still gasping for breath.
Kadri turned to the stranger who had brought him down.
To his bewilderment, the stranger began to laugh.
“You’re Kadri,” he said, nudging something with his foot. “And that, I’m afraid, was my mackerel sandwich.”
49
Compston turned from the landing stage, casting about for the girl.
Unable to see her beneath the trees, he retraced his steps along the path, stooping to pick something off the ground. Such was popular reverence for the Koran that it was unusual to find scrap paper in the street-people tended to rescue it, in case it contained the Holy Word.
But here was a bundle of papers, riffling in the evening breeze. Compston grunted in surprise. It was too dark to see what was written on the paper, so he thrust the packet under his waistcoat and went on, thinking about the fair Armenian and wondering where the deuce she had got to.
50
High above the Golden Horn, on the first hill of the city of seven hills, small lights burned in the near-deserted harem of the Topkapi Palace.
The visit to Besiktas for the unfruitful Ceremony of the Birth had left the valide feeling fretful and tired. Returning to the Topkapi Palace, she had heard her own shuffling footsteps echoing on the cobbled passageway.
Now she lay on her divan, and sank her cheek onto her hand.
“I am bored, Tulin. For the first time in my life I am bored, and quite alone. I used to enjoy teasing my son, but now he is gone, and Abdulmecid is not the same. I think it is your fault.”
“My fault, hanum?” Tulin’s eyes filled with tears.
“Your fault. I’m sure of it.” The valide gave a nod. “Yes, before you came I was more content. I used to read my books. I even liked to watch the birds. And now? Now I feel I have been a widow for a long, long time.”
“If I make you feel like this, then you must send me away, valide.” Tulin’s lower lip trembled.
“And where would you go, ma cherie? What would become of you? Answer me that.”
Tulin could not find an answer. She touched her forehead to her mistress’s slippered foot. “I am your slave, valide hanum.”
“Hmmph. Don’t worry, little one, I will not let you down. You have been good to me, and you are patient.”
“But I make you unhappy? Oh, please say it isn’t true!”
“ Tiens, you are a lively girl, and you make me feel that I have wasted my life.”
A look of horror passed across the girl’s face. “You are the principal valide. You have brought a son and a grandson to the imperial throne. Is that not enough?”
The valide’s face lit up with a mischievous smile. “Little Rose should have wished for so much.”
“Rose?” Tulin echoed.
“Rose Tascher de La Pagerie.” The valide lifted her chin.
“A ferenghi? Like you, valide?”
“Like me? Not at all. She was always dreadfully unlucky.” She pursed her lips, and added: “Bismallah.”
“Will you tell me about Rose?”
“I am sure I have told you all this before, but why not?” And so the valide sultan, mother and grandmother of sultans, began to explain how two French girls, born and raised on the same remote Caribbean island, each became consort to two great emperors.
Aimee, the daughter of Monsieur Dubucq de Rivery, planter of Martinique, was sent first across the Atlantic, to complete her education in Paris-and find a husband. But when her ship was taken by pirates off the coast of Spain, Aimee found herself not in Paris, but in Algiers.
From where the dey, admiring her white skin, had her sent to his overlord, the sultan, in Istanbul.
“The rest you know-or may imagine,” the valide concluded.
“But I know-it was you!” Tulin’s eyes were shining. “You were under the protection of God, hanum efendi.”
“Hmmph.” The valide sounded unconvinced. “It felt somewhat different, at the time.”
“And Rose? You were going to tell me about her, too.”
The valide gave a little shrug. “Rose? She crossed to France the following year, but not-it would seem-under the protection of God. She reached Paris. Some time later, she married a Beauharnais. Rather minor nobility, Tulin, but I have no doubt her father was delighted. He was a great drunkard, and practically a bankrupt.”
“I understand.”
The valide went on to sketch the principal events in Rose’s life, including her meeting with Napoleon. The great French commander renamed her Josephine, and had her crowned as empress in Notre Dame.
“Eventually, my dear, he cast her off in favor of a stout Austrian princess. Quite a humiliation. Which goes to show, I believe, that we Ottomans manage these affairs with greater tact. More discreetly,
at least, within the harem. Poor Rose.”
“Did she never see the emperor again?”
“Never, I believe. She was pretty, in a rather common way. But she lacked something, I suppose.”
“What did she lack?”
“Rose lacked-address.” The valide took Tulin’s chin in her hand, and smiled. “You are very sweet, Tulin. You listen very well, and it’s not everyone who knows how to listen. But sometimes, do you know? I think there’s more going on in that head of yours than meets the eye. I don’t think you entirely lack address yourself.”
Tulin dimpled, and bowed her head. “The valide thinks too much of my modest abilities. I wish only to amuse you, and keep you from feeling… bored.”
“Well, Tulin, that is an excellent ambition.” The valide’s eyes narrowed. “And what, my dear, do you propose?”
51
“Never mind about the sandwich,” Yashim said. “I’ll buy another.”
He smiled as the boy got warily to his feet.
Yashim smiled. “You won’t run away when my back’s turned, will you?”
The fisherman eyed them both suspiciously as they returned to his boat.
“You owe me for the mackerel,” he said accusingly, as though it had been Yashim who had made it vanish.
“Here I am again; and we’ll have two more, if you please.”
Yashim paid for the sandwiches and led the way along the shore. After a hundred yards or so they found a small jetty and he invited Kadri to sit down.
“As good as any kiosk in the palace,” Yashim remarked comfortably, swinging his legs over the water. He liked the view over Pera, especially at night, when the streets were lit and the lights from the new apartment buildings sought their reflection in the still water. The outline of the old Genoese fire tower was distinct against the stars.
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