Never, in a public room, had a woman spoken to him like this. Allowed him to touch her skin with his lips.
She laid a hand on his arm and led him along the paintings which hung on the wall.
“Tell me, monsieur, does this shock you at all?”
The hand shocked him.
They were standing in front of a family portrait of the Czar Alexander, his wife and children. It was an informal composition, in the French style: the czar seated beneath a tree in the sun, the czarina, like a ripe apple, leaning against him, and several small, fair boys in silk breeches and girls in white frocks grouped around them.
Yashim tried to examine the picture but yes, she was right.
“It does shock me, a little.”
“Aha!”
“Not the woman”—Yashim, you liar!—“but the intimacy. It…it’s so public. It makes a show of something that should be private, between the man and the woman.”
“So you do not believe in the representation of the human form? Or you would set other limits?”
Even her voice, he thought, was scandalous. Her curiosity was more like a slow caress, as if he were being explored, limb by limb.
“I’m not sure how to answer. When I read a novel I find, there, a representation of form. Also the same intimacy—and other states of emotion, too. In the novel they delight me. They seem shocking to me in some of these paintings. You will accuse me of being inconsistent.”
“I’ll accuse you of nothing, monsieur. When you read—perhaps you possess the characters yourself? What passes between you and them remains private. But the paintings are very public, as you say.”
She looked at him shyly from the corner of her eye.
“You Turks, I think, understand a great deal about private matters.”
Yashim gazed wildly at the painting on the wall.
“Harem—it is forbidden, is it not?”
“But not to you, madame,” Yashim replied.
Eugenia stifled a little gasp of surprise. “Oh? As a woman, you mean?”
“Of course. And by virtue of your rank, I have no doubt you could visit the sultan’s own apartments, if you wished.” He saw the eagerness on her face, and half-regretted his remark.
“By invitation, surely?” Her voice was coaxing now.
“But I am sure that an invitation could be arranged,” Yashim answered thickly, wondering at his own behaviour. What was he doing?
“I had never thought of it,” she said quietly. “By you?”
Yashim was about to reply when the door to the ambassador’s office swung open and the prince appeared, followed by Potemkin.
“What the devil—” The oath froze on the ambassador’s lips.
Eugenia gave him a small, cold smile.
“Monsieur Yashim and I were having a most interesting conversation. About art,” she added. “Am I right?”
Yashim bowed slightly. “Certainly, princess.”
The prince looked heavily from Yashim to his wife.
“The gentleman was on his way out,” he snapped. “I am sure he is very busy. As are we all. Good day, monsieur.”
Yashim put a hand to his chest and inclined his head. Once again he kissed Eugenia’s slender hand. She said: “Forgive me for detaining you. I do hope we can continue our conversation another time.”
Her tone was impeccably ambassadorial. Cool. Disinterested.
But Yashim’s fingers were hot where she had squeezed them lightly with her own.
[ 40 ]
At the baths he wanted heat, and more heat. When his head seemed banded with flaming hoops he let the masseur pummel him like dough and then plunged himself into the icy water of the frigidarium.
Later on his way home he fell upon the vegetable market in a sort of frenzy: his old friend George, the Greek vendor who arranged his wares like weapons in an armoury, or jewels on a tray, actually stepped out from behind his stall to lay a heavy hand on Yashim’s arm.
“Slow. Slow,” he said in his bass profundo. “You puts in this basket like a Greek robbers, this, that, everything. Say to George, what you wants to cook.”
He prised the basket from Yashim’s hands and stood there massive and barrel-chested in his dirty tunic, hands on his hips, blocking Yashim’s way.
Yashim lowered his head.
“Give me the basket, you Greek bastard,” he said.
George didn’t move.
“The basket.”
“Hey.” George’s voice was very soft. “Hey.” Louder. He picked up some baby cabbages. “You wants?”
Yashim shook his head.
“I understand,” George said. He turned his back on Yashim and began to unload all the vegetables from his basket. Over his shoulder he said: “Go, buy some fish. I will give you a sauce. You kebabs the fish, some Spanish onion, peppers. You puts on the sauce. You puts him in the fire. You eats. Go.”
Yashim went. When he had the fish, he came back and George was crushing walnuts open with his hands and peeling cloves of garlic, which he put together in a twist of paper.
“Now you, effendi, go home and cook. The pepper. The onion. No, I don’t take money from crazy mans. Tomorrow you comes, you pays me double.”
When Yashim got home he laid the fish and vegetables on the block and sliced them with a thin knife. The onions were sharp and stung his eyes. He riddled up the stove and chucked in another handful of charcoal. When he had threaded the pieces onto skewers he smashed the walnuts and the garlic with the flat of a big knife and chopped, drawing together the ever-dwindling heap with the flat of his hand until the hash was so sticky he had to use the blade to scrape it off his skin. He anointed the fish with the sauce and let it lie while he washed his hands in the bowl his housekeeper set out for him every morning and afternoon.
He laid the skewers over the dull embers and drizzled them with a string of oil. When the oil hissed on the fire he waved the smoke with a cloth and turned the skewers, mechanically.
Shortly before the fish was ready to flake from the stick he sliced a loaf of white bread and laid it on a plate with a small bowl of oil, some sesame seeds and a few olives. He stuffed a tiny enamelled teapot with sprigs of mint, a piece of white sugar and a pinch of Chinese tea leaves rolled like gunshot, poured in water from the ewer and crunched it down into the charcoal until its base bit into the glow.
Finally he ate, sitting in the alcove, wiping the peppers and the fish from the skewer with a round of bread.
Only then did he pick up the small folded note that had been waiting for him when he got home.
It was from the imam, who sent his greetings. He had done a little research, as well. In a firm hand he had written out the final verses of Yashim’s Sufi poem.
Unknowing
And knowing nothing of unknowing,
They sleep.
Wake them.
Knowing,
And knowing unknowing,
The silent few become one with the Core.
Approach.
Yashim sat up and crossed his legs. Then he propped the window ajar, rolled himself a cigarette the way an Albanian horse-merchant had shown him how, with a little twist at one end and a half-inch of cardboard at the other, and drank a glass of scalding sweet mint tea while he read the verses through again.
He lay down on his side. Fifteen minutes later his hand snaked out and groped for the old fur that lay rumpled somewhere by his legs. He hauled it over his body.
In three minutes—for he was already half-dreaming—Yashim the eunuch was fast asleep.
[ 41 ]
The Polish Residency was favoured by the dark. As dusk gathered, even its railings seemed to shed their rust, while the ragged curtain of overgrown myrtles which sheltered the carriage-sweep from the eyes of the street jostled together more closely, bulking black and solid as the darkness deepened. Then empty rooms, long since uninhabited, where the plaster sifted in eddying scales from the ornate ceilings and settled on wooden floors that had grown dull and dusty through
disuse, gave out false hints of life within, as if they were merely shuttered for the night. And as night fell, the elegant mansion reassumed an appearance of weight and prosperity it hadn’t known for sixty years.
The light which flickered unevenly from a pair of windows on the piano nobile seemed to brighten as the evening wore on. These windows, which were never shuttered—which could not, in fact, be shuttered at all, owing to the collapse of various panels and the slow rusting of the hinges in the winter damp -revealed a scene of wild disorder.
The room where only a few hours before Yashim had left the Polish ambassador dithering over whether to open the bison grass or simply a rustic spirit supplied to him, very cheap, by Crimean sailors on the sly, looked as if it had been visited by a frenzied bibliophile. A violin lay bridge down on a tea tray. A dozen books, apparently flung open at random, were scattered across the floor; another twenty or more were wedged haphazardly between the arms of a vast armchair. Tallow dripped from a bracket onto the surface of a well-worn escritoire, on which was piled a collection of folio volumes and tiny glasses. It seemed as if someone had been searching for something.
Stanislaw Palewski lay on the floor behind one of the arm—chairs. His head was thrown back, his mouth open, his sightless eyes turned upwards towards the ceiling. Now and then he emitted a faint snore.
[ 42 ]
The seraskier picked up a handful of sand and sprinkled it across the paper. Then he tilted the sheet and let the sand run back into the pot.
He read through the document one more time and rang a bell.
He had thought of having the notice printed for circulation, but on reflection he decided to have it simply transcribed, by hand, and delivered to the mosques. The imams could interpret it in their own fashion.
From the Commander of His Imperial Highness’s New Guard in Istanbul, greetings and a warning.
Ten years ago it pleased the Throne to secure the peace and prosperity of the Empire through a series of Auspicious Acts, intended to extirpate a lying heresy and put an end to an abuse which His Imperial Highness was no longer prepared to tolerate. As by his wars, so by his acts, the sultan achieved a complete victory.
Those who, by dealing death, would wish to return the city to its former state, take heed. The forces of the Padishah do not sleep, nor do they tremble. Here in Istanbul, a soldier meets death with scornful pride, secure in the knowledge that he sacrifices what is unreal for what is holy, and serves the greater power of the Throne.
In all your strength you will be crushed. In all your cunning you will be outfoxed. In all your pride, humbled and brought forwards to face the supreme penalty.
Once again you will flee and be brought from your boles by the will of the Sultan and his people.
You have been warned.
The seraskier felt that he had made an effort to clarify the situation. Rumour was an insidious force. It had this in common with the passion for war: it could be, and needed to be, controlled.
Drill the men. Straighten the rumour. Keep the initiative and leave the enemy guessing. The eunuch suspected some kind of Janissary plot, but the seraskier had prudently decided to keep his terms vague. The implication was there, of course, between the lines.
A textbook approach.
The seraskier stood up and walked to the darkened window. From here he could look down on the city it was his duty to defend. He sighed. In daylight he knew it as an impossible jumble of roofs and minarets and domes, concealing a myriad crooked streets and twining alleyways. Now specks of lamplight blended in the dark, softly glowing here and there, like marsh-light shimmering over a murderous swamp.
He curled his fingers around the hem of his jacket and gave it a smart tug.
[ 43 ]
Yashim’s first waking thought was that he’d left a pan on the coals. He shot from the divan and stood unsteadily in the kitchen, rocking on his heels. He looked around in bewilderment. Everything was as it should be: the stove banked low, its hotplate barely warm; a stack of dirty pans and crockery; the blocks and knives. But he smelled burning.
From outside there rose a confused medley of cries and crashes. He glanced at the open window. The sky was lit with a glow like the early dawn, and as he watched an entire roofscape was suddenly picked out in silhouette by a huge roar of flame which shot upwards into the sky, and subsided in a trail of sparks. It was, he judged, barely a hundred yards away: one, maybe two streets off. He could hear the crack of burning timber, and smell the ashes in the air.
An hour, he thought. I give it an hour.
He looked round at his little apartment. The books ranged on the shelves. The Anatolian carpets on the floor.
“Ah, by the jewels!”
The blaze had broken out in an alleyway which opened out into the Kara Davut Sokagi. The mouth of the alley was blocked by a throng of eager sightseers, anxious householders, many of them bare-headed, and women in every stage of dishabille, though every one of them contrived to cover her nose and lips with a scrap of cloth. One woman, he noticed, had yanked up her pyjama jacket, exposing a delicious ripple of flesh around her belly while concealing her face. They were all staring at the fire, as if frozen.
Yashim looked around. In the Kara Davut, people were emerging from their houses. A man Yashim recognised as the baker was urging them to go back and fetch their buckets. He stood on a step beside the fountain at the head of the street, gesticulating. Yashim suddenly understood.
“Get these women out of here,” he shouted, prodding the men next to him. “We need a line!”
He jostled the men: the spell that had fallen over them was broken. Some of them woke up to the sight of their women, half-dressed.
“Take them over to the cafe,” Yashim suggested. He intercepted a young man running forward with a bucket.
“Give me that—get another!” He swung the bucket to a man standing nearby.
“Form a chain—take this and pass it on!”
The man seized the bucket and swung it forwards, into a pair of waiting hands. Another boy ran up to Yashim with a loaded bucket. The back of the line needed attention, Yashim realised. “You, stay here. Pass that bucket and be ready to take another.”
He darted back, seizing bystanders and hustling them into positions a few feet apart. More buckets were being produced; as fast as they came the baker swung them through the fountain and passed them down. Yashim ran along the chain, checking for gaps, and then on to the head of the line to make sure that empty buckets were being returned. For the first time he found himself in the alley.
The flames were gusting along the narrow street: as Yashim looked, a window burst in a shower of sparks and a long tongue of flame shot out and licked into the eaves of the neighbouring house. The flame retreated; but in a moment it had burst out again, tunnelled to its neighbour by the wind that was already being drawn like a bellow’s blast into the narrow opening of the alley. Yashim, standing several paces back, could feel the wind ruffling his hair even as he felt the heat on the side of his face. He felt powerless. Suddenly he remembered what had to be done.
“A break! A break!” He darted into the nearest doorway and found a whole family working the well in the backyard. “We must make a break—not here, across the street.” Nobody paid him the slightest attention: they were all busy fetching water, sloshing it onto the facade of their house which was already beginning to scorch and blister in the heat. “An axe! Give me an axe!”
The man of the house nodded to a woodpile in the corner of the yard. With a jerk Yashim flipped the broad-headed splitting axe out of the log where it had been buried and dashed out into the street.
“A break!” he yelled, brandishing the axe. Several bystanders stared at him. He turned on them. “Get your tools, people. We’ve got to take down this house.”
Without waiting for their reaction he whirled his body round with a shout and embedded the axe in the plaster infill. A piece the size of a hand fell away. He struck again: laths splintered and gave way. I
n a few minutes he had cleared a space large enough to wield an axe against the upright timbers. By now a few others had joined him: two men he sent through the house to check that there was no one still inside, and then to set to on the other side. He paused to catch his breath, leaning on the axe. The four men at work were stripped to the waist, the approaching firelight reflected in vivid glints in the sweat on their skin.
“Janissary work,” said one, through gritted teeth, as he chopped with the flat of his axe in short, savage blows against a tenon pin. The wooden pin was growing mashed at the end; the man made a few swift passes and cut it again, and with a heave on the flat of his axe sent it loose out the other side. Yashim gripped the pin and jerked it out.
The building gave a lurch. Several panels of plaster from the upper storey crashed down at their feet and exploded into a powder that was immediately whipped away by the rush of hot wind flaring down the street. Yashim glanced back. Two houses along, the fire was beginning to take hold. Sparks were flying past: one of the men he’d sent to the back of the house stuck his head out through a pair of uprights leaning at a drunken angle to the ground and hurriedly withdrew it. Everyone laughed.
“They’ll be out in a moment. And none too soon,” a man said. They scented victory: their mood had changed.
Sure enough, the two men appeared suddenly on the other side of the frame and darted out through the collapsed doorway.
“To think we used to get the Janissaries from the Beyazidiye Pound to do this for us!”
They were enjoying themselves now. A slithering crash from overhead told them that the joists had sprung: the planking of the upper floor leaned at an angle that was already putting pressure on the roof supports, forcing them up.
“It’s going wide!” Yashim bellowed. It was true: the whole frame of the house was sagging towards them, spinning around. “Watch out!” Yashim backed, darted forward down the street away from the fire. The others followed. At twenty yards they stopped to watch the whole frame of the house take a sudden lurch into the street like a drunk wheeling from the wall. The roof tiles seemed to hang suspended in the air until, with a crash that could be heard over the crackling of the fire and the shouts from the upper end of the street, the edifice fell with a sudden whump! and a scouring plume of dust and fragments picked up by the wind billowed towards them like an angry djinn.
2006 - The Janissary Tree Page 12