An Evil Eye: A Novel

by Jason Goodwin

  Yashim went along the path to where he had once stood by the front door. The building was already returning to the soil. Weeds had sprouted and withered in the ash. He stirred the ashes with his foot and dislodged a sour, acrid smell.

  He took a step back. Mrs. Satzos had been right: there was always a thread to be unraveled in a man’s life; a question you could ask about this house whose answer would lead ten years down the line to a Kapudan pasha sailing his fleet into the harbor at Alexandria. A question about a pile of charred wood that would explain his treason.

  The day was cold and overcast. Yashim turned his back on the ruins and walked on to the next village. The fishermen had erected tiny platforms, like crows’ nests, between an arrangement of poles, and between the platforms hung nets of heartbreaking length, straining the current for fish.

  89

  TALFA advanced to the divan and performed a temmena, not quite brushing the floor.

  “I hope you are well, valide.”

  “As can be expected, Talfa.” The valide took a long breath. “And you, I hope, continue in good health?”

  “Inshallah, by the grace of God,” Talfa replied automatically. “I grow a little every day,” she added, with a giggle.

  “You were always too fond of sweetmeats,” the valide remarked. She glanced past Talfa, to the slender little girl who stood quietly to one side. “And who have we here?”

  Talfa half turned. “My daughter, valide,” she said in surprise. “Necla. I said I would bring her.”

  “Of course you did.” The valide held out her hand, and Necla stepped forward to kiss it.

  “Very pretty,” the valide said.

  Talfa frowned slightly. “Her skin will get lighter. Girls of her age are often a little dark.”

  Her eyes flickered about the valide’s chamber. The valide gestured to some inlaid stools, and patted the divan.

  “Please, be seated.”

  Conversation languished while the serving girl brought in coffee on a tray, and pipes.

  “You may smoke, Talfa. I find it disagrees with me, but I quite like the smell,” the valide remarked, truthfully. The whiff of tobacco reminded her of Martinique: of stinky carriages, and Creole weddings, and of her father talking business on the veranda, with a cigar. Sometimes she would creep onto his lap and fall asleep there, listening to the rumble of male conversation and laughter. In the still, dark air a lamp would be burning. The men drank rum and played bezique. Down in the lines, the African slaves were beating their drums softly. A tac-tac bird screamed in the trees beyond the garden.

  She started. She opened her eyes and was surprised to see a dumpy woman sitting beside her, puffing on an amber stem held between her teeth.

  “Who have we here?” she said; but perhaps she only imagined she had spoken, because the dumpy woman kept puffing away and darting her eyes about the room.

  “Aimée! Aimée!” She could hear them calling for her, a long way off, but she didn’t care. They would make her sit in a close, stuffy room to do needlepoint with Tante Merib. It was nicer in the soft grass, once she’d kicked off those little shoes with wooden soles. She pulled off her calico trousers and chucked them into a bush, and then her bonnet, and her ribbons.

  She felt the sun hot on her face and on the top of her head.

  She stepped into the brown water with her hands raised.

  “Aimée! Réponds-moi! Où est-tu? Aimée?” A little closer now. The water was as warm as it looked and the mud was squishy between her toes. All the little blacks played here, and Aimée knew why.

  The fastenings on her bodice were the hardest to undo. She was only six, after all. She wriggled and pulled, but the dress caught under her arms and then, as she tottered forward in the water, it puffed up around her and she went off sailing … Sailing like a little boat!

  A big black man had jumped in to get her out when she was already half sunk, and the family had arrived at the bank of the waterhole. They’d followed her trail, they said.

  After, Papa used to call her his petit paquebot. She smiled. She’d forgotten that.

  Talfa cleared her throat, and stood up.

  “Say goodbye nicely, Necla.”

  They performed temmena politely, and withdrew backward.

  Talfa was, in her way, a grand personage; but the valide outranked her.

  “Come, Necla. Hyacinth can take us to visit the other ladies now.”

  90

  THE road dipped behind a row of sheds that ran down to the water’s edge. They were roughly planked, beneath a patchwork of tiled and shingled roofs, and from one of them a crooked pipe leaked a haze of smoke. Yashim could smell the resin in the clear air.

  In a low, open-fronted boathouse, a man was working on his boat. Now and then he set down his tools and wrapped his icy fingers around a ball of dirty wool, to get them warm enough for the delicate reshellacking of the hull.

  He noticed Yashim out of the corner of his eye and straightened up.

  “Something smells good,” Yashim said, smiling.

  The workman glanced at him, and then at the pot bubbling on the brazier.

  “My own recipe, efendi. Fish. Turps. The fish is mostly bones.”

  “It must have been the turpentine.” Yashim peered further around the door, hovering.

  “Are you looking for someone, efendi? Please, step inside.”

  Yashim had often passed these boatyards. He noticed the broom, and the dangling blue glass eyes on a peg, and the pots of brushes standing on the bench. He always liked a workshop, each ranged with tools common and special, the battered, dripped-on workbench, the perpetual fire of a brazier, the tamped-down earth floor tidy in the morning, and by nightfall cluttered with debris.

  “You’re repainting her?”

  “I need to do it well, efendi, the paint and the lacquer. People think a boat is just wood, but that’s really only the beginning, you see? It’s what you do next that decides how she rides, how she looks—and how long she lasts, of course.”

  Yashim cast a critical eye along the black, tapered hull of the caïque.

  “That’s not just ordinary pine, efendi.” The boatman gestured with his brush, unable to conceal the pride in his voice. “It’s slow-grown, Black Sea. And a cedar keel, same as the sultan’s own caïque, if you’ll forgive me for saying so. That’s one of the reasons she’s lasted so well.”

  “You must have an in with the builder,” Yashim remarked.

  The man cocked his head. “I do, efendi. I do. I married his daughter.”

  “And how old is she? I mean, the caïque.”

  They both laughed.

  “Same age as my marriage, by God! Twenty-five years I’ve had them both.”

  Yashim uttered a bismallah, in polite and indirect acknowledgment of the caïquejee’s good fortune.

  “Please,” he added. “I’m interrupting your work.”

  The caïquejee shrugged, and bent over the hull of his boat to lay off the brush. Without looking up he said:

  “I know you, efendi. Forgive me, I don’t remember where—but I recognized your face.”

  Another man might have been pleased, flattered even; but Yashim frowned. Perhaps it was only the man’s talk. Or perhaps as he slid into middle age, his face and bearing were settling into shape: they had become impressionant. Memorable.

  “Forgive me, efendi. It’s just a hobby of mine, faces. I see ’em all the time, rowing people around. Sad or bad or having fun. Greek or Turk. Might as well take an interest. And I remember yours.”

  Yashim nodded. “I understand. You’re Spyro, aren’t you? We met the day they took down the old plane tree.”

  The caïquejee gave him an odd look. “Spyro.” He jabbed his thumb to his chest, then scrunched up his face and sought inspiration in the roof. “And I took you to the Balat stage.”

  “The bridge has come on since then,” Yashim said.

  Spyro leaned aside, and spat. “They’ll get their bridge, now.” He paused, ruminatively. “I
miss the tree. Like an old face, it was.” He dipped his brush into the pot and wiped the drips carefully off around the rim. “But I’ll tell you something, efendi, about the bridge. People think we’re sorry, but it won’t be the ruin of us caïquejees, and you know why? A caïquejee built it.” He laid off the brush against the lacquered hull. “God’s truth.”

  “A caïquejee?”

  “The Kapudan pasha to you and me. Begging your pardon, efendi.”

  “Fevzi Ahmet Pasha?”

  Spyro bent his head and lifted the brush, leaning back to survey his work. “His father worked the boats. Little man. Kept the color in his hair right up to the day he died.”

  “He took a wife on the Danube,” Yashim added.

  “That’s right, he did.” He looked up. “You are better at this than me, efendi.”

  “Go on.” It was like a melody heard across the water, fugitive and incomplete. Yashim had heard it before, but he wanted to hear it again.

  “A girl from the Danube,” Spyro said. “Fevzi was her boy. Fevzi as he was, efendi.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “Nice-looking lad. Popular on the boats.” He paused. “After what happened, I suppose that’s what kept him together. His old father wouldn’t let him work, so he found a job with some army man. New Troop.”

  Yashim almost missed it. “After—what? What happened?”

  Spyro glanced apologetically at the brush in his hand. “Forgive me, efendi. I like to work fast—you need to lay off the paint quickly, or it dries and streaks the finish. It’s the only time I’m anxious in a year, when she’s out of the water, like this.”

  “Please, go ahead.”

  Spyro dipped the brush and added another streak to the strippeddown hull. Yashim could just see the top of his head. “There were two of them, efendi,” he muttered. “Fevzi, and the little girl. Gül, her name was. Fevzi’s little sister. Oh, she was a bright one! She and her dad, she’d make him laugh. Ride about in his caïque and pretend she was the valide sultan, do this, do that. Fevzi was popular but Gül stole the whole village, believe me. Two long plaits down her back, and her only ten or so when … when …”

  The top of his head disappeared.

  “Ach, what a shame. Still chokes me up, efendi, after all those years. She doted on her dad, and on her big brother, too. That’s what did it. Fevzi’s practicing his strokes, you see? Every evening, when his father’s home, Fevzi takes the caïque out and learns to pull. Little Gül, begging for a ride. But they wouldn’t let her go, see? She was only a little girl.”

  He stood up and waved his brush. “So one evening, the lad lets her come. She wants to go up the strait—gives her orders like an empress. There’s a bit of a current above Rumeli Hisar, nasty rip. The boy knew about that, kept well out, he said, but—well. They bring the barges from Varna down, mostly timber, twenty tons, four on a line. You’ve got to steer clear of those because they can’t maneuver much. Maybe the poor lad took his eye off the water for a moment. Panicked, steered into the rip.

  “I remember coming home that night, seeing the boats out on the water, all lit up. Must have been twenty, thirty, or more. Every boat in the village. They were looking for little Gül.”

  “And did they find her?”

  “The one that found her was her own father.” Spyro shook his head. “Terrible, it was. He jumped in and hauled her out. Kept saying she was all right, just had to get her warm. ‘She’s sleeping,’ he said. Over and over. ‘Just asleep.’” He looked at Yashim. “It broke us all up. I think it was the saddest night of my life, when the old man brought his daughter back. It took him ages to understand. He wouldn’t let go. Nobody wanted to be the one to say it.

  “Fevzi Ahmet came in, white as a sheet. Wet, swollen-eyed. He’d been searching, too, hadn’t he? He looked at his little sister in his dad’s arms, and he said: ‘She’s dead.’” Spyro pinched his lips together, and shook his head. “Just straight. ‘She’s dead.’

  “It was like the old man suddenly understood. He laid Gül’s body on the ground and he lifted both his arms. I don’t know what was in his head, but it was something terrible, to hear a man curse his own son. The lad just stood there and let him go on, in front of the whole village. Never said a word.”

  The caïquejee shook his head. “People talk about tragedy, don’t they? Fevzi left. His mother died soon after that. They said it was a wasting disease, but it was what happened that night that killed her. Fevzi’s old man went a bit strange. I’m sorry to say it, but people avoided him. Everyone felt sorry for him, but there was something, I don’t know, just terrible about the way he’d cursed his son. And some people felt sorry for Fevzi Ahmet, too, though there were plenty of others who blamed him and said the old man had been right.”

  “And you, Spyro? What did you believe?”

  “I couldn’t say. The old man was out of his wits. And Fevzi had loved that little girl, so I suppose that drove him another way.” He shrugged. “But I believed in the curse, if that’s what you mean.”

  Spyro dabbed at the paintwork, then dipped his brush again and wiped it carefully on the rim of the pot. “Like a fish, she is. Safe in the water, vulnerable in the open air. You know how it is, with all these sheds crammed up together. And not everyone, efendi, as careful as I like to be.” He began to paint.

  “There was a fire at the yali along the way,” Yashim said. “It was the Kapudan pasha’s place, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s right, efendi.” Spyro paused for a moment. Yashim wondered if he was thinking about the work Fevzi Pasha did then, before he became a naval man; the way he made people afraid. “I don’t know why he came back here. Perhaps—I don’t know, efendi. Perhaps even he couldn’t keep away, in the end. But it couldn’t be like the old times. He kept himself to himself, and the family, too.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, the fire, of course. It was in the night, efendi—only the women in the house, too, and the little girl. And the old gentleman who was a lala. He used to do the shopping, so we’d seen him about. Dear old thing, my wife said.” He hunched his shoulders tight for a second. “It had got ahold, to be honest, while everyone was asleep. The noise woke us—me and the wife. We had to burst the gate down, to get in. By the time we got in, there wasn’t much left.”

  “And the little girl died.”

  “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Spyro straightened up. “It’s in the Bible, and it shouldn’t be.”

  “The curse?”

  Spyro nodded. “I saw him that night. Ran by me as we were coming in to help, bundle of something in his arms. He just looked at me, efendi. Cold as ice, it was, that look. I think—he knew. He sent us each a gold piece, efendi. I gave it back.”

  “He was never extravagant.”

  “That’s it,” the caïquejee said slowly. “Not an extravagant man, Fevzi Pasha. But I wouldn’t take a piece of gold for doing what I thought right, efendi. There, I’ll leave it to dry now.”

  He picked up a cloth and took the pot of shellac off the heat.

  “It haunts me, fire,” he said.

  Yashim was a long time in replying. “I worked for him, all those years ago,” he said at last.

  Spyro turned, and Yashim could see the sullen pouches in his face. “I thought you were interested in the boat. Forget we spoke, efendi.”

  “I just wanted to talk.” Yashim wondered how to allay the man’s fears: it was like scraping mud from a boot. “I just wanted to know, that’s all.” He paused. “I don’t have to remember your name. I don’t need to know.”

  He could see the caïquejee working his jaws. “I’m Spyro. As you remembered. I’m a caïquejee, same as he was once.”

  He stared down at the hull of his boat. “That’s it,” he said. “I’m finished, now.”

  91

  TALFA was enjoying herself.

  One of the old lady housekeepers had bowed very low and burst into tears.

  “Come, come, Ayesha, dr
y your tears!” Talfa smiled kindly, and reached out to take the woman’s hand. “You must remember what a distinguished life you’ve had. What a boon you have been to us all, and to my brother, of course, especially. You should be thanking God, not crying for what is done.”

  The former housekeeper nodded, and dabbed a handkerchief to her eyes. “You are right, my lady. Of course what you say is true, and I must try to be happy with what God has chosen for me. But—oh!”

  She crushed the handkerchief to her lips.

  Necla hung her head. She found it all too sad, and dull, and awkward. With each bleak encounter she sensed her mother’s spirits rise, as if the spectacle of the rejected women’s grief and abandonment sharpened her awareness of her own good fortune. The sadder they were, the happier her mother sounded.

  “Necla, my dear, do try to sit straight. That’s better. Now, say hello to your auntie Pevenna.”

  Necla remembered some of them, as they flitted forward with tears and brave smiles, bowed low, and pinched her cheeks.

  “How well she looks!”

  “Such a treasure, little Necla! I wonder, do you remember your auntie … ?”

  “You’ll be filling out soon, little one! You will make us all so proud …”

  Her mother, gayer than ever, ordered noses to be blown, eyes to be wiped. The valide had been something of an ordeal; but here Talfa had brought life and warmth back into these women’s benighted lives.

  Talfa’s quick little eyes darted everywhere.

  “And who is that, Hyacinth? There, beside the divan—the girl with the mandolin?”

  “The mandolin? That is Melda, my lady. She is staying with us for a short while.”

  “Melda? Our Melda?”

  “She belongs to the ladies’ orchestra, mama,” Necla said quietly.

  “I am aware of that.” Talfa sniffed. “I’m afraid, Necla, it does not explain what she is doing here.”

  Hyacinth bent forward. “Her nerves, my lady,” he fluted apologetically. “She needs rest.”

  “Rest?” Talfa frowned. “Bring her to me.”