An Evil Eye: A Novel

by Jason Goodwin

  She covered her face and began to weep hot, real tears. Yashim welcomed them: anything, he thought, was better than that frozen impassivity.

  “And then—what then?”

  Melda wiped her eyes. “Then she took some things to drink, to make—to make—the stare-baby come out.”

  “What drinks? How—”

  “They made her bleed.” Her mouth twisted into a horrified grimace. “They. Made. Her. Bleed. She—said—she was on fire.”

  Yashim gazed at her, aghast. Elif ’s death had always seemed to him to be perverse, unnatural—but he had never imagined it like this.

  “I’ll get you somewhere warmer, and you should take something. Some soup. We can talk again later, if you like.”

  He stood up. She gave no sign of hearing him. At the door he turned and she was still sitting like a frightened hare, showing the whites of her eyes as she watched the place where he had been.

  At the end of the corridor he tapped at the door of the orderly’s room. There was no reply. He opened the door and checked: it was empty.

  He let out an exasperated sigh. Hyacinth had seemed so ineffective, but his death revealed just how much the running of the harem had depended on him. Sweeping the ground, feeding a girl in the hospital, getting the other eunuchs off their backsides: since he’d gone the whole place seemed to have ground to a halt.

  With a flash of anger he surged down the corridor toward the eunuchs’ quarters and burst into their common room.

  Within three minutes, alarmed old men were running hither and thither in pursuit of their duties. Yashim went to the kitchens, where he found a cook washing rice while another scraped carrots.

  “Soup. What have you got?”

  The man stirring the rice looked at him stupidly and shrugged, mouth open. The man scraping carrots jerked his chin. “The stock’s all there. What do you want?”

  Yashim lifted the lid and sniffed: good chicken broth.

  “Can you clear the broth?”

  The carrot man nodded.

  Yashim had visited the kitchens before, but this was the first time he had hefted a palace pan or wielded a palace knife. He selected a small heavy iron pan.

  “We use those ones for the sultan, efendi.”

  “The sultan is no longer here, my friend,” Yashim replied. “Where are your spices?”

  He laid the ingredients out on the chopping board: onion, garlic, a long red chili, and a carrot that the man had scraped clean. He set the sultan’s pan on a gentle heat and covered its base with olive oil, adding a small knob of butter before he chopped the onion into very small pieces.

  The knife, he noticed, was as keen as his own, and heavier: it would split a silk scarf.

  Finding himself in the greatest kitchen in Istanbul, Yashim set about making one of the simplest dishes he knew: lentil soup.

  He scraped the seeds out of the chili and chopped it together with the garlic, admiring the balance of the knife and the slight feathered curve toward its tip. The butter had melted; he shook the pan and swept in the vegetables, with a big pinch of cumin and coriander.

  He cut the carrot into small dice, and stirred it into the onions as they began to turn.

  The cook passed him a small brass grinder. Yashim smelled the fenugreek: he gave it a few twists and handed it back.

  “Thank you,” he said. “You have the lentils?”

  The cook nodded. He handed Yashim a cup of lentils, which he poured into the pan like a cascade of treasure, stirring them around for a few moments with a small spoonful of white sugar.

  The cook brought him a bowl of the clarified stock.

  Yashim smiled. “When you like,” he said; and then: “enough.” The steam rose in a puff, and drifted into the vast cool vaults overhead. “Now, a lid—and I’ll help you with the carrots, if you like.”

  When they were sitting together, side by side, Yashim asked him what he was cooking.

  The cook gave a lopsided grin. “It’s not how it is done,” he explained. “I am only the peeler. But one day, I shall be a cook.”

  “You were a cook today,” Yashim reminded him.

  The man stole a glance at the man washing rice. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Yes, perhaps I was.”

  When the soup was done, Yashim ladled it into a bowl and sprinkled it with chopped parsley.

  He put a bowl over the top, to keep it warm, and carried it carefully back to the harem.

  He caught sight of Tülin at the entrance to the Golden Road as she came out of the valide’s courtyard. She stopped in front of him, and smiled.

  “I came to ask for wood,” she said. “But it seems to be taken care of, now.”

  Yashim bowed politely. “I hope they’ll send in someone from outside,” he remarked. “To replace Hyacinth. It turns out he was something of an administrator, after all. These fellows are just like chickens.”

  “Yes. We need a fox, Yashim efendi.”

  She smiled again, and Yashim smiled, too. Out in the open air, the girl was remarkably pretty: she had a freshness about her that was more than youth, or the crisp winter air.

  “I’m worried about Melda, in the hospital.”

  “Yes.” She nodded gravely. “I have been thinking about her.”

  “I’ve had her moved to a warmer room, and I’m taking her this soup, but she’s—I know you have plenty to do, Tülin, but I’d be grateful if you’d look in on her now and then.”

  “Hyacinth didn’t encourage anyone to talk to her. But I’d like to help if I can.”

  “That would be good. She’s been too much alone, I think.”

  Tülin cocked her head back. “The lady Talfa spoke with her,” she said. “She was very kind.”

  “The lady Talfa?” Yashim was surprised. “She came here?”

  “Oh yes, she came over from the Besiktas palace to visit the valide. With her daughter. Later on she met all the ladies, and took Melda off for a chat.”

  Yashim grunted. “I’m sure she meant well.”

  Tülin giggled. “I am sure of it, too, Yashim efendi. She is a very—grand lady.”

  “Quite.”

  She held his gaze. “I’d better get back, now that they are bringing wood.”

  “Of course. But don’t forget the girl. Melda.”

  “I won’t.”

  Yashim shook his head. He wanted to say he was sorry for being short with her that morning; that Tülin could have told the valide the news about Hyacinth, after all. But they had an understanding now, and there was no need to say anything.

  105

  PALEWSKI glanced around a little furtively, then draped himself over the parapet of the new bridge and inhaled the scent of grilling fish.

  It wasn’t bad; not bad at all. The convenience of it! And a little restaurant underneath, too, to sit out in the spring sunshine and watch the boats go by.

  He glanced up and down. He wasn’t the only person admiring the new bridge. It was as if the whole of Istanbul had chosen that afternoon to inspect this novel adornment to the city. It wasn’t beautiful. At best, with its sturdy pontoons and hefty plankwork, it was impressively functional.

  And its function, Palewski had to admit, was almost sublime. He had thought of it, when it was being built, as a dreary commonplace, a purely commercial affair to allow the passage of goods and men between Istanbul and Pera. People tramping back and forth, muddying the distinction between the two: French hatters opening shops in the bazaar, perhaps; imams sallying forth to wag a finger at the more scurrilous delights of Pera.

  And yet—a bridge!

  He looked up and, seeing a familiar figure approaching him across the planks, he raised a finger in the frosty air. “You see, Kadri,” he announced. “This bridge is already performing its essential function.”

  Kadri looked surprised. He bowed. “I am very pleased to meet you here, Palewski efendi.” After a moment’s hesitation he added: “Its essential function?”

  “Yes. I was thinking, a bridge is a forced marri
age, if you like. Istanbul and Pera clapped together. Pompous groom. Reluctant bride.”

  “But which is which?”

  Palewski shook his head. “It’s not altogether like that, Kadri. I see it now. Not a marriage at all. The bridge,” he added, with an air of serious triumph, “is a trysting place.”

  Kadri looked expectantly at the older man, and said nothing.

  “A trysting place, Kadri. Where the lovers meet.”

  “I see,” the boy said doubtfully.

  “Not lovers in the literal sense, of course.” He waved his hand. “Air of license. Ladies out for a walk. Pashas saluting. Hobbling Sufis and swaggering tars. Jolly fellows all about. Everyone cheerful and bright-eyed, somehow. You know what it reminds me of? You should know.”

  Kadri looked round pensively. “The theater?”

  “Intelligent boy. Forget your ragged crew, all that paint and declamation. This is the real theater in Istanbul. Long may it last!”

  Kadri raised his arm and pointed. “Here comes Yashim efendi!”

  106

  THE man with the knife stood in the low doorway of the caravansary, rubbing his chest.

  He had hoped the welt would fade; it was less than a scratch, after all, the skin scarcely broken, and there had been no blood. But it did not fade. It felt hot, instead, and around it the skin was flushed. In the mornings, when he moved his arms, the welt was sore.

  The guardian of the caravansary received him doubtfully. He was not a merchant, with goods to protect; nor did men wander at this time of year, looking for work.

  “Three days,” he said reluctantly. “Three days, then you’ll move on, see?”

  For a day and a night the man slept, feverishly. On the second day he showed the guardian his wound.

  A doctor was fetched. He frowned at the scratch, and prepared a hot poultice to draw the poison out.

  But the man knew what happened when a mad dog bit you and drew blood. It could be weeks, or months, but in the end you went mad, too, and died.

  The pasha’s life hung by a tiny thread.

  He had so very little time.

  107

  YASHIM walked with his head down, lost in the crowd and oblivious to the great stream of humanity that swirled around him as he descended to the shore of the Golden Horn.

  “Fine times, efendim! It’s our work, every inch—and every inch will get you closer! Bring the ladies! All safe, all sound!”

  Beside him, men were shouting and laughing.

  Yashim heard their words and saw their happy faces, but he made nothing of it. He could not rid himself of the possibility that Hyacinth had taken his own life. He may have slipped on the ice and overbalanced. He was an old man, after all. But he had asked, “Is it true?” Yashim had said that yes, he believed it to be true: the valide would be moving to Besiktas. And Hyacinth might not be going.

  The memory turned like the wheels of the cart that Yashim was following at a cautious distance, to avoid the splash as it lurched into a puddle of dirty water freckled with recent snow. The cartwheels bounced, and began to drum as if they were running over the deck of a ship.

  The traffic was busier than usual: he’d never seen or heard so many carts and porters scurrying about here on a winter’s evening.

  He hunched his shoulders against the wind, and looked up for a caïque.

  Hyacinth fell, he repeated to himself. Hyacinth fell against the palace balustrade, in the snow.

  He blinked and looked around. He saw a balustrade beside him: higher, perhaps, and made of wood.

  “Try it, efendim! No charge—Pera to Istanbul!”

  Happy men were standing in a knot, urging people on with their arms.

  Yashim took a step forward. He glanced down, astonished to see his feet planted on wooden planks. All around him was a seething mass of people, laughing and pointing, dodging the carts that thundered across the planks.

  He stopped. An old man was coming toward him, planting his stick carefully on the boards, grinning and nodding.

  “See that, efendi! See that! Don’t be afraid. I did it with my stick—seventy years I’ve waited for this day! Never left Stamboul before. Free! It’s free!”

  A ragged-looking man with a shock of corkscrew hair shot through the crowd. He was barefoot, and intent, and he carried a small bag in his fist.

  The crowd parted automatically to let him through, and through the gap Yashim recognized two familiar faces.

  They swept him up, arm in arm.

  “I was just telling our young friend, Yashim, that the bridge is a splendid piece of theater. Istanbul meets Pera—the old empire and the new Europe! Preen should mount a tableau.”

  Yashim said nothing. Only when they had stepped onto land, and were at the bottom of the steps that led to the Galata Tower, did he stop and turn, looking back at the bridge. He shook his head. “Our navy,” he said at last. “Do you know what it amounts to? Almost nothing. A few ships of the line, ill-trained crews, foreign officers. Our navy is an illusion—a costly one, for us. The grand vizier thinks that it can stop the Russians. It can’t.”

  “Not when it’s in Alexandria, certainly,” Palewski said drily.

  “No—never. It’s not our style—we’re afraid of the sea. Look at Husrev Pasha. He’s an old Bosniac—what does he know of the sea? We’ve had two great engagements in the last few hundred years, and we lost them both. Lepanto, 1580. Wiped out. Navarino, 1827. Total collapse of the fleet.”

  “‘God gave the land to the Turks, and to the Christians he gave the sea.’ I know the saying.”

  They began to climb the Pera steps. “It’s the sea that counts, these days,” Yashim said. “We built our empire by land—because our cavalry was faster than the rest, and because we knew how to govern. All that has changed. It’s ships that matter, in trade and war. With ships you can conquer distant lands, like the British in India. On land, nothing much has changed. But you can bombard a city from the sea—guns, men, drawn anywhere in the world at an instant.”

  “Istanbul has never been so vulnerable, that’s true.”

  “That, too. When Mehmet the Conqueror took the city from the Greeks, he had one huge cannon dragged over the mountains to the city walls. And he attacked by land.” He swept an arm across the panorama. “Today, battleships could reduce Istanbul to rubble in a few days.”

  “I had no idea you were such a strategist, Yashim.”

  “I’m not. I’ve been thinking, though. For fifty years or more, the empire has been crumbling around the edges. Losing possessions to Russia on the Black Sea. Losing ground to Egypt in the south. It’s been like watching a bear attacked by dogs. In the end, the dogs will always win.”

  “Decline, decline.” Palewski shrugged. “All empires, in the end, are doomed to fall.”

  “Naturally—unless they receive unexpected aid.”

  “Quite. But the Ottomans, as I’ve mentioned, don’t have powerful friends.”

  “No—until now, we’ve simply managed our own decline, alone.”

  They passed below the Galata Tower.

  Palewski’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, until now?”

  “It was what you said about the bridge that made me see it. Europe comes to Istanbul, is that what you said? For fifty years we’ve been clamped in a pincer between Russia and the Egyptians—and when the Greeks sought independence, the British and the French made sure they got it, too. No, we don’t have friends. We don’t even have an alliance of interests.”

  “Pretty tight,” Palewski said. “And gloomy.”

  “Until Fevzi Pasha sailed into Alexandria and gave up the fleet.”

  Palewski frowned. “Gloomier still, I’d have thought.”

  Yashim shook his head. “On the contrary. I think Fevzi Pasha’s defection may save the empire.”

  Palewski gave a dry laugh. Yashim turned.

  “Britain and France, you said, don’t care who governs Istanbul—as long as it isn’t the Russians. But the British are very touc
hy about anything that crops up along their line to India. Since Napoleon’s day the French feel they have a sort of proprietary interest in Egypt and the Middle East. Protecting the Catholics, for example. Both want to preserve the balance of power in Europe.”

  “What are you suggesting, Yashim?”

  “Fevzi Ahmet may have inadvertently done what no one has managed to achieve for twenty years—least of all Husrev Pasha. He fights yesterday’s battles, Palewski. Two fronts—the Russians and the Egyptians. Until now, we haven’t had allies. Don’t you see?”

  “That by defecting to the Egyptians—?”

  “Fevzi Ahmet has forced the issue. Either the Powers let it go, in which case the Russians organize a protectorate in Istanbul, and the khedive rattles his saber over the Middle East—”

  “Or the British have to intervene. Yes, I’m beginning to see what you mean. The empire needed outside help—and now it can’t refuse.”

  “It was the bridge that made me see it. You said it yourself: the bridge is theater. And so is diplomacy. Fevzi Pasha built a bridge that would bring European Pera into Istanbul. The next thing, ambassador, is a diplomatic approach to the French.”

  Palewski startled. “When you say ‘ambassador’—?”

  “It can’t be Husrev Pasha. It isn’t his job to spell out the weakness of the Ottoman state. I can’t do it. The only Englishman I know is a thirdgrade secretary to the ambassador.”

  “Ah, yes. Mr. Compston. I can’t quite see him shaping European policy for years to come.”

  “But you could. You’re neutral and you have the rank. The French ambassador is a friend, isn’t he? Just have a word in his ear, and let him do the rest.”

  Palewski glanced around. They were passing the mouth of the lane that led down to the British embassy. “Speaking of Compston, he dropped in earlier. Rambled on about how you saved his watch or something. Seems to feel he’s under some sort of obligation to you.”

  Yashim waved his hand impatiently.

  “Well, he was most anxious to talk to you, Yashim. Felt he owed you something, can’t remember what it was about.” Palewski screwed up his eyes. “A tip about some papers, I think. He said to get in touch—you’d know why.”