Slowly the room began to empty out.
The masseur kept on working on Yashim’s body.
Slowly, and more slowly.
There was only one man left in the hammam, asleep on a bench. The masseur raised his fingers from Yashim’s neck. Yashim didn’t move.
The masseur went over to the sleeping bather and scooped him up in his powerful banded arms like a little baby. The man started, and opened his eyes, but when the masseur set him down again he was in the tepidarium, facing a cold plunge. The masseur gave him a friendly little shove and he leaped into the cold tub, gasping and laughing. He’d been asleep!
The masseur shot the bolt of the hammam door and folded his huge arms over his chest.
Inside the hot room Yashim slept on, dreaming of melting snow.
[ 93 ]
How do I look now, old man?”
Fizerly looked his friend up and down with a critical eye.
“Capital, Compston. Or should I say, Mehmed? If we’re going out to explore the old city, just remember that you’re Mehmed from here on.”
Compston chuckled and looked at himself in the embassy mirror. Fizerly had been awfully clever with the turban—in the end, they’d arranged it so that not a hair of his blond head straggled out, and even if the balance of the turban had suffered slightly in consequence it wouldn’t show. “Just keep moving your head about like a good chap,” Fizerly had suggested, helpfully. Not Fizerly, that is. Ali. Ali Baba, at your service.
Compston-Mehmed giggled and rubbed a little more soot into his eyebrows.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t rain,” he said.
[ 94 ]
Palewski drank his coffee slowly, watching the sunset. Outside, the hubbub of traffic was subsiding, the porters going empty-handed uphill, a few small donkey carts returning to stables, while the numbers of people taking the evening air increased. Sometimes Palewski recognised them—a palace official he couldn’t name, a Greek dragoman linked to one of the Phanariot merchant houses, an imam looking exactly as he had looked fifteen years before, when Palewski had had a discussion with him on the history of the idea of the transmigration of souls. Later he saw a couple of juniors from the British embassy—Fizerly, he recalled, with the straggling whiskers, now smoking a Turkish cheroot, sauntering along with a boy in a curious sort of hat, apparently made out of various pieces of his underwear, nodding and laughing at his side. Palewski wondered vaguely what they were doing, dressed like children out of a nativity play. Nobody seemed to pay them much attention, and they strolled down the hill and disappeared round the corner of the baths.
How much Istanbul had changed in the thirty years he had known it! What was it that he had said to Yashim? He had said he mourned the passing of the Janissaries. Well, the past ten years had been particularly lively. Since the suppression of the Janissaries there had been nothing to restrain the sultan except the fear of foreign intervention, and the sultan was a born mod-erniser. He’d taken to the European saddle faster than anyone. The change that had come over the city went beyond the gradual but continuous disappearance of turbans and slippers, and their replacement by the fez, and leather shoes. That was a change which Palewski was romantic enough to regret, though he did not expect it to be complete in his lifetime—if only because the great city still drew people from every corner of the empire towards it, people who had never heard of sumptuary laws, or shoe-laces. But more people from outside the empire were coming in, too, and in the gradual rebuilding of Galata after the great fire there were oddities like the French glovemaker, and the Belgian who sold bad champagne, ensconced in their little shops, with tinkling bells, just as if they were in Cracow.
The door opened and a gust of cold air entered the fug of the cafe. Palewski recognised the man who came in, too, though for a while he couldn’t place him: a tall, bullish man in late middle age, distinguished by a white cloak. He was followed in by two European merchants Palewski had seen around, but not spoken to. He thought they might be French.
The three men took a table slightly behind Palewski’s line of sight, so it was a while before he glanced back and recognised the seraskier, who had shrugged back his cloak and now sat with booted legs tightly crossed, his blue-grey uniform jacket buttoned to the neck. He was toying with a coffee cup, listening with a slight smile to one of his companions who was leaning forward and making a point, quietly, with the help of his hands. French, then. Or Italian?
Palewski wondered if he might order another coffee himself. He looked down the hill: the doors of the baths were still shut, but another knot of men with bags of linen had gathered outside, presumably rehearsing the complaints he had listened to half an hour before. Cleaning the baths! On a Thursday night, too. Sacrilege! Scandal! Palewski grinned, and waved at the waiter.
Well, he could see that they were cleaning the baths—and thoroughly, too. The little air vent at the top of the dome was releasing a corona of white steam which rose, eddied and then trailed away in the dusk. Caught by the dying rays of the sun, the steam sometimes refracted a rainbow of colour. Very pretty, Palewski thought. Next came a stick, bound with a trailing white cloth, to riddle out the vent. Very thorough, Palewski thought. If they finish in time, I will certainly try my luck.
The waiter brought him a fresh coffee. Palewski leaned back to overhear the conversation going on behind him, but it was being muttered at a distance, over the bubble of pipes, the hiss of boiling water, and the murmur of low conversation around the room. Disappointed, he looked out of the window again.
How odd, he thought. The stick was still going up and down in the hole, and the scrap of cloth was fluttering with it, like a tiny flag.
There’s cleaning, Palewski thought curiously, and obsession.
And as he watched, the stick suddenly wavered and keeled over to one side. Stuck at an angle, the little white cloth waved and flapped in the evening breeze like a signal of surrender.
[ 95 ]
Yashim had been dreaming. He dreamed that he and Eugenia were standing naked, side by side in the snow, watching a forest fire crackle in the treetops. It wasn’t cold. As the fire advanced, the warmth increased, and the snow began to melt. He shouted ‘Jump!’ and they both leaped over the edge of the melted snow. He had no recollection of hitting the ground below, but he had started to run across the square towards the huge cypress. Eugenia was nowhere but the soup master reached out with his enormous hands and lit the cypress with a match. It burned like a rocket as Yashim held on to it, pressing his face against the smooth bark; but when he tried to pull away he couldn’t, because his skin had melted and stuck to the tree.
He coughed and tried to raise his head. His eyes opened. They seemed to be filmed over: his vision was foggy. He made another effort to raise his head and this time his cheek sucked against the hard top of the massage bench, where he lay in a pool of his own sweat. He rolled over, his whole body slithering on the bench, and swung his legs to the floor.
A dull pain throbbed through his feet, and it took him some moments to realise that the soles of his feet were burning against the stone floor. He sat back on the bench, legs raised, and looked round. There was nobody else there.
The steam was peeling away from the floor in angry ribbons, which blended into a fog that thickened as it approached the dome. Yashim found that he was breathing hard: the air was so hot and humid that every breath stuffed his throat like a rag, and brought him no relief. With a heavy hand he dashed the sweat from his eyes.
The fog felt curiously intimate, as if it were really a problem with his eyes, and this seemed to disorient him: he jerked his head about, searching for the doors. He saw his wooden clogs beside the massage bench. With his feet in the clogs he stood swaying for a moment, holding onto the bench; and then, like a man struggling through the snow, he staggered forwards towards the door. He fell against it, groping for a handle: but the door was as smooth as the walls.
No handle.
Yashim drummed with his fists, unable to shout, his
breath sobbing through his teeth. No one came. Again and again he crashed against the door, throwing his whole weight behind his shoulder; but it didn’t budge, and the sound itself was flattened against the iron-bound oak. He sank into a squat, one hand against the door for support.
The heat rolling off the floor made it impossible to hold that position for very long. He stood up slowly; bent double, he pushed himself along the wall. The spigot in the first niche had stopped flowing. There was a scoop on the floor, but it contained only an inch of water and the metal was hot.
He could not guess how long he crouched there, gazing down between his arms at the water in the scoop. But when the water started to steam he thought: I’m being braised.
But I am thinking.
I must get out.
Gingerly he raised his head, for it felt as though it must burst at any minute: he needed to keep the water out of his eyes.
A faint pattern of light penetrated the fog above. It came from the pattern of holes let into the roof of the dome, and for a second Yashim wondered if he could somehow climb up and reach it, thrust his hands, maybe, and his lips against the holes.
You can’t climb the inside of a dome, he said to himself.
His eye followed the base of the walls, searching for anything that he could use.
He almost missed it: the long bamboo cane attached to the head of a mop, tucked up into the angle between the floor and the wall.
He could hardly pick it up: his fingers were puffy and hard to bend.
Yashim raised the flimsy cane with an effort. Too short.
Once more he started round the room. Twice he almost blacked out, and fell to his hands and knees: but the burning stone tortured him back to life, and he tottered on until he found the second cane.
Now he needed a strip of cloth to bind them together. He tore at a towel with his fingers and his teeth, whimpering now.
At last he managed to create a nick in the hem. Even tearing the cloth he was like a puny child, nearly too weak to raise his arms, but at last he had a bandage of cotton which he secured around the two bamboos. The remaining scrap he tied to the top of the pole, and then he began to raise it up. The bare end struck on the side of the dome. He scraped it upwards.
It was too short.
Through the vapour, against the dome, Yashim could hardly tell how short. His face was set in a rictus now, his teeth bared. He staggered across to the massage bench and clambered onto it. Every movement was an agony. As he raised his arms he noticed that they were almost purple, as if blood was starting to ooze from his pores.
He started to pump the stick up and down, up and down. At every stroke he felt that he was pumping the blood, too, through the pores in his skin. He faintly remembered that he needed to make the stick move, but he could no longer remember why this had seemed important, only that it was all the instruction he possessed. It was all he had left.
[ 96 ]
“Avec permission, seraskier.” Palewski stuck out his hand as he bowed. “Palewski, ambassadeur de Pologne.”
The seraskier glanced upwards with a look of surprise. Then he smiled politely.
“Enchante, Excellence.”
“I’m so sorry to interrupt,” Palewski continued, “but I have just seen something rather strange and I wanted your opinion.”
“Mais bien stir.” The seraskier did not sound impressed. What he and the Polish ambassador found strange could be entirely different things. “What have you seen, Your Excellency?”
It occurred to Palewski that any explanation he could give would sound thin, even laughable. He turned to the seraskier’s companions.
“Would you excuse me? I’d like to borrow the seraskier for just one minute. Indulge me, effendi.”
The men made noncommittal gestures, but said nothing. The seraskier looked from them to Palewski with an impatient half-smile.
“Very well, Excellency.” He was on his feet. “My apologies, gentlemen.”
Palewski took him by the arm and steered him into the street.
“Something funny just happened at the baths,” he began. “First they closed them, quite suddenly, on a Thursday night.” He had seized on this detail, which had so baffled him at first, as being the oddest from a Turkish point of view. “They are supposed to be cleaning them out, but a minute ago I watched someone waving a flag out through a hole in the roof. I say a flag, because there is simply no other explanation I can think of. It looked like, well, a signal. And now it has stopped. D’you see, effendi? It may sound odd to you, but it really did look like that—as if someone had been signalling, and then was stopped for some reason. I wanted to go down there myself, but seeing you—well, I thought you could make an enquiry with greater weight.”
The seraskier frowned. It sounded like rubbish, of course, and whatever went on in a hammam was really no concern of his…and yet, the Pole was clearly agitated.
“For your sake, Excellency, we will go and ask,” he said, with as much gallantry as he could muster.
[ 97 ]
Yashim could hear voices. A tiny sliver of light cut into the darkness as he raised his eyelids a fraction of an inch. Something that soothed him pressed for a moment against his body, and was gone. Dim shapes moved in the light. Dreadful accident…stroke of
luck…Then someone was wiping his face with a cool wet cloth and Palewski’s own face swam into view.
“Yash? Yashim? Can you hear me?”
He tried to nod.
Palewski put a hand under his head and tilted him forwards.
“Drink this,” he said. Yashim felt the rim of a glass against his lips, but his lips felt huge. His fingers seemed to be in gloves, they were so hard to bend.
“Can he speak?”
It was the seraskier’s voice.
I am dreaming, Yashim thought.
Hands picked him up and moved him through the air. Then he was lying back again, covered with a blanket.
Palewski saw his friend settled on the litter and motioned to the bearers. To the seraskier he said: “I’ll take him to the embassy. He’ll be safe there.”
The seraskier nodded. “Please let me know how he is doing later.”
The litter-bearers shouldered their poles and followed the ambassador out into the night.
Yashim was aware of the jouncing of the litter as they threaded through the dark streets. He heard the slap-slap of the bearers’ feet and the jingle of little bells, and wondered how badly he was hurt. Sometimes the fabric of the litter rasped against his skin and he almost shouted out.
A runner had gone on ahead to give Palewski’s maid time to make up a bed and lay a fire; when they arrived she was already on the stairs with a wedge of fresh linen. Palewski took candles off a table in the hall to light the bearers’ way, and so expertly did they carry him that Yashim only knew they were going upstairs by the slope of the ceiling.
They transferred him to the bed. Palewski settled a fire in the stove that stood in one corner of the room, tiled with a design of twining blue flowers, while Marta appeared with a basin of cold water and a sponge, turning down the sheet so that she could dab delicately at Yashim’s inflamed skin.
Yashim felt nothing, only a wave of nausea that now and then clutched at his belly and made him retch. When he did, Marta cleaned him up without a word. He slept for a while, and when he woke she was there again, with a spoonful of liquid so bitter it made his mouth ache; but he swallowed and the nausea slowly dissolved.
Marta brought up a basin of warm water that smelled of lavender and honey. Yashim was breathing steadily now. By the light of the candles he watched the silent Greek girl with her straight brow and olive skin, standing over the basin, absorbed in her task. She took a pile of big linen napkins and one by one she soaked them in the basin, wrung them out, and spread them on a clothes rack to cool. Her straight black hair was gathered in two plaits, pinned to the side of her head; when she bent forwards he could see the little hairs on the nape of her neck as they caught the li
ght.
When she was ready she took the first honey-scented napkin and folded it.
“Please close your eyes,” she said, in a voice as soft as a dove’s. She laid the napkin firmly over his forehead, and he felt her fingers smooth the damp cloth over his eyelids, and mould it across his nose and cheekbones.
“Can you roll onto your side? Here, let me help you.”
A moment later he felt another cool cloth pressed around his chin and neck and shoulder. His left arm was lifted, and Marta’s fingers smoothed another napkin over the side of his chest and his back.
“Try not to move,” she said. As she worked her way down his body Yashim began to find his sensations returning. He felt her palms on his buttocks and thighs, through the cool cloth. At length she reached his feet, and helped him roll onto his back to finish wrapping his right side.
“I feel like an Egyptian mummy,” Yashim croaked. She put a finger to his lips. His voice had sounded weak and strained: he even wondered if she had heard what he said.
He must have dozed, because suddenly he was afraid he was being smothered, unable to open his eyes, crushed by a fearful pressure on his chest and limbs. He gave a cry, and tried to struggle free, but two small hands pressed him back by the shoulders and a voice whispered softly: “I am here, don’t worry. It’s all right. It’s better now.”
For a moment he felt her breath on his lips, and then she had removed the bandage over his eyes and he opened them to see her standing over him with the napkin in one hand and a shy smile on her face.
He smiled back. For the first time since she had touched him, he was conscious of his nakedness; conscious that he was, once again, alone with a woman. He raised himself gingerly on one elbow, and she seemed to feel it, too, because she turned to the candle and said: “If you feel better, you should wash. The honey will be sticky. I will fetch what you need.”
She was gone for a minute. When she returned she carried a basin of warm water and a robe draped over her arm. She set the basin down by the bed and laid the robe near his feet.
2006 - The Janissary Tree Page 23