An Evil Eye: A Novel

by Jason Goodwin

  Yashim raised his head, with a jolt.

  It had happened so slowly, so inexorably, that he hadn’t really noticed how Talfa had made herself queen of the harem. It was she rather than Bezmialem or Ibou who created and enforced the rules.

  But if the valide moved to Besiktas, Talfa’s influence as the senior lady of the harem would be eclipsed.

  Yashim picked up the pilaki and moved it off the heat, to the table. He scattered the parsley over the mussels.

  Then he washed his hands and wound the turban around his head, and went out into the night.

  112

  THE valide looked at Yashim with her bright eyes.

  “Am I going to Besiktas, Yashim? I can’t remember.”

  Yashim took her pale hand in his. He found the question difficult to answer.

  “Perhaps, valide hanum. When you are feeling stronger.”

  She closed her eyes, and smiled faintly. “I wonder. I wonder what Dr. Sevi would suggest.” Her eyelids flickered, and he felt the pressure of her hand relax.

  Yashim stooped and put his ear close to her lips. A silver carafe, fluted like a swan, stood on a small inlay table. Yashim grabbed at its neck and went to slosh some water into a glass. But the carafe was empty.

  He thrust it into Tülin’s hands. “Fetch water. Fill it.”

  She took the carafe and ran with it to the outer door.

  Yashim turned back to the valide. He smoothed a skimpy lock of hair from her forehead. She was papery to the touch; papery and thin. At his touch her eyes flickered, and moved slowly toward him.

  “Papa.” Her word was scarcely a breath, just a shape on her lips. “Papa.” Her eyes fixed on him now, watery and old and very deep. “Je me suis perdue,” she murmured. I am lost. “Mais—ça va bien.”

  He read the question in her eyes: the old question that always lay in the eyes of the dying. Her look was full of tenderness, as if the answer were already known, like a secret between them—the secret by which all men and women were bound, as long as men lived and died.

  He could not betray that look by moving his own eyes until the girl came back and Yashim heard the sound of water in the glass.

  He bent forward carefully, and brought the glass to the valide’s lips. The water ran across her tongue and he heard her throat catch. He brought the glass to her lips again. She swallowed slowly, closing and opening her mouth.

  He let her breathe, then tried again.

  After a while her eyes closed. The glass was almost empty.

  He looked into the valide’s face, noting the veins in her eyelids and the translucency of her skin. Bending very close, he caught a faint sigh from her lips.

  “I am going to fetch the doctor.” He went out into the courtyard. In the eunuch’s room he scribbled a note for the doctor, advising him to come with all possible speed, and handed it to a halberdier.

  “Not Inalcik,” he added. Inalcik was young, courteous, and French-trained ; he was always consulted by the ladies of Besiktas. “You must ask for Sabbatai Sevi. Do you understand? The old Jew.”

  “Sevi the Jew.” The halberdier bowed.

  But it was young Inalcik who came, smooth and serious in a black frock coat, stepping very precisely over the old stones of the courtyard with his bag in his hand.

  He went into the valide’s chamber and remained there for twenty minutes, listening to her chest through a stethoscope, examining her eyelids, writing notes in a yellow book with a fountain pen.

  When he emerged he looked solemn. They met Sevi at the gate to the harem. He wore a long coat, edged with velvet, and a blue skullcap. Dr. Inalcik looked surprised, and amused.

  “A second opinion, Dr. Sevi. I approve, heartily.” His eyes twinkled as he outlined his own diagnosis to the Jew, who stooped to listen. “I hope you will be able to do more than I have achieved,” he added.

  Sevi opened his hands. “I am very old, doctor. So is the lady.”

  As Yashim led him to the valide’s room, Sevi stayed him with his hand. “The mind?”

  “Wandering,” Yashim explained. “It has been like this for—” He screwed up his eyes, casting back. “A month, maybe more. Now, I think, she spends more time at home—her childhood home.”

  Sevi nodded. “Perhaps she had a very happy childhood. Can she walk?”

  “I haven’t seen her walk in weeks.”

  “Then why not a visit to her childhood home? It’s easier on the feet.”

  He came without a bag, or instruments of any kind. He knelt by the divan and took the valide’s hand in his own. After a while he peered more closely at her fingers.

  Yashim felt a twinge of doubt. In Sevi’s day, the doctor often examined a woman through a curtain. Childbirth, disease, all manner of conditions had to be treated by the doctor without actually touching, or even inspecting, the woman’s body; it was the tradition, it maintained propriety.

  “Modern medicine,” Inalcik had remarked, as he clipped open his bag and retrieved his stethoscope, “goes rather deeper to the sources and the causes of discomfort and illness.”

  The old Jew remained on his knees for some time, watching the valide’s face, absently rubbing her hand in his.

  He seemed to have gone into some sort of dream. Yashim gave a discreet cough and the old man sighed.

  He unfolded slowly, and stood up.

  “Poison?” Yashim asked.

  Sabbatai Sevi looked at him sadly. “Poison? No. The valide sultan,” he added gravely, “is extremely thirsty.”

  113

  ROXELANA dreamed. She dreamed she was all dressed up like a big bear. Furry boots. Furry hat.

  “You must catch it this time, silly!”

  “I will try, my precious!” The kalfa smiles at the little girl. But it is hard to catch a ball made of snow when the light is beginning to fade.

  Roxelana knows this. It is what makes her laugh.

  She says: “You may sit in the arbor. I am going to play.” When the kalfa crouches down to put a shawl around her, Roxelana tells her about the bear. The kalfa is Elif.

  The kalfa laughs, smoothing her hair, but her eyes go out toward the garden.

  Roxelana runs to the tree, taking big steps in the snow, like a bear. She is a bear and can hide behind the thick black trunk. There is not as much snow on the ground here.

  Peep-o! Her kalfa is Melda now, sitting in the arbor, on the stone seat where they have put the cushions. Peep-o!

  Silly Melda! She is not looking. She doesn’t know there is a bear so close.

  She glances around. The trees at the end of the harem garden are tangled, and black and white with snow, and the snow between is quite fresh and smooth. She sets off, planting her fur boots into the white coverlet one after the other. Counting. Melda cannot see her; the tree is between them.

  One step, two step, three step, four.

  The trees are close. She can see between them now, into the shadows. For a bear those shadows would be a good hiding place.

  Roxelana stops. She turns her head and looks back with a dubious frown. Of course she cannot see her kalfa, because of the big tree. What she can see are her footprints in the snow, and for a moment she wonders how they got there, those footprints coming after her across the shrouded lawn. They have swerved from the big tree and chased after her, dark sockets running across the whiteness. They are headed right toward her. To where she is standing.

  And before she can turn her head she knows that the bear is on the other side, in the shadows behind her. The little girl opens her mouth to scream, but nothing comes out.

  She hears the kalfa calling, and sees herself running back toward the big tree, running too slowly, willing her face forward, with the footprints always just a step behind her.

  She woke up, gasping, wide-eyed in the dark.

  The quilt had slipped onto the floor: it made a shape in the dark, and Roxelana was cold and afraid and all alone.

  114

  IN snow, Istanbul transformed itself from a city of hal
f a million people into a fantastic forest running down to an icy shore: its domes were the earthworks of a vanished race of giants, its minarets gaunt boles of shattered trees, its roofs, blanketed under a rippling veneer of snow, terraced fields marked only by the arrowed tracks of birds and the dimpled pawprints of hungry cats. The rattle of porters’ barrows, the clatter of hooves, the usual hum of markets and muezzins and street hawkers were muffled. Some lanes were blocked; now and then great slides of snow would precipitate themselves from the roofs and land with a whump! on the street below.

  Yashim glimpsed lamplight as he reached the water steps at Balat. He had left the valide in the care of two elderly eunuchs, who were to give her sips of lukewarm water whenever she awoke. Tülin had retired to the girls’ dormitory, taking her instrument with her. He had gone back down the stairs with the sound of Tülin’s flute blowing in his ears.

  She played beautifully. She played, perhaps, as a consolation. But the music had needled him.

  Lanterns hung from the mooring poles; two caïquejees were keeping warm by knocking ice from the base of the poles with the ends of their oars. Yashim had heard that the Golden Horn might freeze.

  He stamped his feet and one of the caïquejees grabbed a lantern and swung it up.

  “Fare, efendi?”

  “Pera stairs,” he said. “How’s the ice?”

  The man blew out his cheeks. He reached down into his caïque and scattered the cushions, which had been piled up beneath a tarpaulin. “If it gets any thicker, I’ll carry you on my back,” he said cheerfully. “At your pleasure, efendi.”

  The boatman picked up the oars and with a deft flick of his arm sent the fragile craft racing into the deep, still waters of the Golden Horn. Overhead a few stars shone among the drifting clouds, and on either bank the snow showed pale against the hills. Something was alive in the back of Yashim’s mind; something that wanted to be remembered, but lurked there, shy of the glare of his thoughts as if it feared the eye.

  The boatman set him down opposite the steps that climbed the hill to the Galata Tower. Yashim was relieved to find that they had been swept and even scattered with ashes. His breath cooled on his cheeks as he climbed, pausing now and then to admire the snowy hills of Istanbul. A dog, whimpering on its cold paws, slunk past in the shadows. Yashim skirted the shacks that had spilled out around the base of the tower, and pressed on up a sloping street to the Grande Rue.

  At the Polish residency, someone—Marta, perhaps—had scraped a path across the frozen carriage sweep to the front steps. As he slithered on the ice, Yashim wondered if it might have been better to leave the snow.

  He thumped on the door and felt the frame quiver. A chunk of snow fell from the roof of the porch. Without waiting for an answer, Yashim pushed inside.

  Inside it was even colder, but Yashim knew better than to linger in the darkened hall. He took the stairs gingerly, two at a time, using the rail to guide him.

  He paused at the top. Palewski would be reading in his comfortable chair by the fire, perhaps working on his translation, surrounded by sheets of paper, a glass at his elbow. A band of light showed beneath the door.

  Long ago, when they were new to each other, there had been courtesies on both sides, bows, salaams, even little speeches in the proper Ottoman style, and in good French. Yashim would have found it unthinkable that he should slip in unannounced, and unacknowledged; but years of friendship and understanding had knocked off the courtesies like so many rococo embellishments.

  Yashim entered without knocking.

  A comfortable heat radiated from a crackling log fire. The shutters were closed, the candles were lit, and across the room an oil lamp cast a pool of yellow light across a small round table covered with a green chenille cloth.

  Palewski was sitting at the table, both hands laid flat on the chenille cloth. Opposite him sat his housekeeper, Marta. She too had her hands on the table.

  A thread of blood was trickling from Palewski’s nose.

  Behind Marta stood a man with a rifle, and the muzzle of the rifle was pressed against the nape of Marta’s neck.

  Behind Yashim the door closed.

  A voice he knew all too well spoke in his ear.

  “So, Yashim. After all these years.”

  115

  “I am sure you can appreciate your friends’ position,” Fevzi Ahmet said. “The ambassador made an effort to rearrange it, but you see I was able to change his mind.”

  Palewski spoke without turning his head. “I’m sorry, Yashim. I thought it was you earlier, on the stairs.”

  Yashim tasted bile in his mouth.

  The pasha smiled. “I won’t detain them longer than necessary.”

  “Necessary for what?”

  “Securing your cooperation.”

  Fevzi Ahmet folded his arms. In ten years his face had grown thinner, and his hair was gray. He had lost some of the thuggish beauty that had attracted the late Sultan Mahmut to him, but his black eyes were as deep and cold as ever.

  What do you want?”

  “Just put your hands up, over your head.”

  Yashim glanced at Marta. Her eyes flickered toward him as he lifted his hands. He saw her jaw clench, and her eyes rolled upward. She blinked slowly, then looked at Palewski, and forced a little smile.

  Palewski rubbed the tablecloth with his fingertips and held her gaze.

  “You wonder why I have risked coming back to Istanbul?”

  “Of course.”

  Fevzi Ahmet considered him for a while.

  Yashim glanced back at Marta. Kadri: Kadri wasn’t here. He was upstairs. Asleep.

  “Just before I left with the fleet,” Fevzi Ahmet said, “one of Galytsin’s agents came to see me. He brought me some unwelcome news.”

  “A Baltic German, blond, scarred. He was blackmailing you. You killed him.”

  Fevzi’s eyes were like snow holes. “Four out of five. You’re losing your touch.”

  Fevzi Pasha sat down in Palewski’s armchair, making Yashim wince. He picked up the poker and riddled the fire. A log crashed down, emitting a shower of sparks. “I need your help.”

  “You seem to have help already,” Yashim said, nodding to the man with the gun.

  “Oh yes, the caïquejees. Splendidly loyal, I must say, to one of their own. But I’m afraid this is rather beyond them. Beyond any man, except you.”

  Yashim frowned. “Why me?”

  Fevzi Ahmet let out an exasperated sigh, and stabbed the fire. “Four years ago, when I was promoted to Kapudan pasha, the Russians approached me with an offer.”

  “I thought it was earlier than that,” Yashim said drily. “Saint Petersburg? Ten years, at least.”

  “Saint Petersburg, Yashim.” Fevzi Ahmet frowned. “The Russians gave me a whore … ?”

  Yashim looked at him. “You gave Batoumi away.”

  “Batoumi was already lost. My job was to let it go.”

  “What do you mean, it was your job? To exchange Batoumi for a woman?”

  A flash of irritation crossed Fevzi Ahmet’s face. “I took my instructions from the grand vizier. They didn’t involve you—and I thought you were too green. Perhaps you still are.” He fixed Yashim with a stare. “Ironic, isn’t it? Now I need your help.”

  “So you say. Four years ago, what offer did the Russians make?”

  “Galytsin made me an expensive offer, in return for news. My inactivity.” He shrugged. “All that matters is that I turned them down.”

  “Oh?”

  “The Russians are hard, Yashim. I didn’t reckon on the cost of ignoring them. A few weeks later my home was burned to the ground.” Fevzi Pasha clinked the poker against the grate. “My wife was inside. A concubine, and the old lala who looked after them.” He paused. “And my daughter, too.”

  Yashim looked away.

  “But I saved her, Yashim.”

  Yashim glanced up quickly. Fevzi Pasha’s eyes were bright with triumph.

  “Yes—I saved her. The lala dro
pped her into my arms.”

  116

  KADRI opened his eyes in the dark and wondered what had woken him.

  He glanced at the window; it was a dark night, and he could not tell what time it was.

  He pushed his blanket aside and swung his bare feet onto the floor, cocking his head, listening to a faint murmur from somewhere downstairs.

  Perhaps Yashim had come?

  He was about to get back into bed when he realized that he was thirsty.

  He would go down to the kitchen and fetch a glass of water without disturbing the two men.

  He pulled on a woollen coat the ambassador had lent him, and padded to the stairs.

  Somewhere below, a floorboard creaked.

  Kadri had lived wild in the hills of Cappadocia, and he was not afraid of the dark, but he paused at the sound.

  “All ready?”

  Kadri was suddenly alert.

  Someone had whispered on the landing below.

  He bent over the banister, listening.

  117

  FEVZI Pasha rested the tip of the poker against the grate. “The fire taught me that as long as I had a family, I would never be safe. The Russians might try again, and next time they would use my daughter. So I gave her up.”

  Yashim thought back to the horrible doll in Fevzi Ahmet’s house.

  “The sultan had appointed me to command the fleet, and to build a bridge across the Golden Horn. I had to put her somewhere safe.”

  “The sultan’s palace,” Yashim murmured.

  “I arranged for her to enter the sultan’s harem, yes. Only an old eunuch would know who she was. So I thought.”

  “Hyacinth?”

  “Full marks, Yashim. But then you know the story, don’t you? It was me and Hyacinth—until someone told the Russians, after all.”

  He was staring at Yashim, but Yashim was aware only of something unlocking in his mind—something about Hyacinth, and the harem, and the dead girls.