“There is a sponge in the basin,” she explained.
As she turned to go, Yashim said: “My arm is still very stiff.”
She shot him a smile and for the first time he saw her serious dark eyes twinkle.
“Then you will have to wash slowly,” she said, sweetly. And was gone.
Yashim sighed, and heaved his legs off the bed in a rustling cascade of napkins.
He washed himself, as the girl had said, slowly.
Aware that there was little time. Wondering what had become of Murad Eslek. Wondering what Marta meant to his friend Palewski—and he to her.
[ 98 ]
What is the time?”
Yashim had opened his eyes to find Palewski perched at the foot of his bed, his elbows resting on his knees, looking patiently into his face.
“After midnight. Marta has gone to bed.”
Yashim gave him a weak smile as a stray thought entered his mind. To Palewski I am only half a man—but the half he likes. The half he can trust. And he decided never to tell his friend about what happened between him and Eugenia at the Russian embassy.
“I have to thank you, Palewski, for saving my life.”
“And I you, my old friend, for allowing me to hobnob for an hour or so with the sultan.” He clapped his hands together. “It was a capital party!”
Yashim looked blank. Palewski told him about Derentsov’s challenge and the intimate conversation he had held with Sultan Mahmut IV.
“I get the impression, Yash, that the sultan has sleepless nights over this Edict of his. It will make him a very lonely man. He makes a lot of enemies.”
Yashim nodded. “I’m beginning to think that murder is the least of it. And tonight, but for you, they would have killed me too.”
“You were in a public place.”
But Yashim said: “I forgot something I’d learned. Working in the stoke-holes of the baths was one of the jobs that Janissaries took up, if they survived the purge. Tell me, you saw my signal?”
Palewski recounted the series of events which had brought him and the seraskier to the doors of the baths.
“The seraskier?” Yashim put in. “If I hadn’t been half-dead -he’s the man I need to speak to. I ought to go and find him.”
Palewski put out a restraining hand. “Marta left me particular instructions, Yashim. She expects to find you here in the morning. You are her patient. Perhaps you would like to drink some tea? Or something stronger?”
Yashim closed his eyes. “I’ve found out where the fourth man is going to appear.”
Palewski looked anxious. “Good, good,” he murmured. He straightened his back. “I’m sorry, Yashim, but do you know what I think? None of us are players in this scheme. We’re witnesses, at best: even you. It’s too—” He searched his mind. “You told me you had the impression that it was like a feast prepared, meze and a main dish, remember. Well, I believe you were right. We’re guests. And it’s a dangerous party.”
He stood up carefully and approached Yashim, crouching beside his pillow.
“You aren’t going to find anyone alive. None of the other cadets were killed where you found them. You won’t find this one being cooked in front of your eyes, either. Take this rest. You can go off, if you feel fit, very early in the morning after Marta has seen to you again.”
Yashim stared at the ceiling. It was sensible advice. He’d lost the time he needed, and nothing would bring it back. He wanted so much to do as his friend suggested, sleep—and trust to Eslek. He could be at the Kerkoporta by first light.
It was sensible advice. But in one particular, at least, the Polish ambassador could not have been more wrong.
[ 99 ]
The provisioning of a great city, the kadi liked to remark, is the mark of a successful civilisation. In Istanbul it was a business that had been honed close to perfection by almost two thousand years’ experience, and it could truly be said of the markets of Istanbul that there was not a flower, a fruit, a type of meat or fish that did not make its appearance there in season.
An imperial city has an imperial appetite, and for centuries the city had commanded daily tribute from an enormous hinterland. Where the Byzantines had managed their market gardens on the approaches from Thrace and Asia Minor, the Turks, too, raised vegetables. From two seas—the warm Mediterranean and the dark, gelid waters of the Black Sea—it was supplied abundantly with fish, while the sweetest trout from the lakes of Macedonia were carried to the city in tanks. From the mountains of Bulgaria came many kinds of honey to be turned into sweets by the master sweet-makers of Istanbul.
It was a finely regulated business, all in all, from the Balkan grazing grounds to the market stall, in a constant slither of orders, inspections, purchases and requisitions. Like any activity that needs unremitting oversight, it was open to abuse.
The kadi of the Kerkoporta market had taken up his job twenty years before, and earned himself a reputation for severity. A butcher who used false weights was hanged at the doorway of his own shop. A greengrocer who lied about the provenance of his fruit had his hands struck off. Others, who had jibbed a customer, perhaps, or slipped out of the official channels to procure bargain stock, found themselves forced to wear a wide wooden collar for a few weeks, or to pay a stiff fine, or to be nailed by the ear to the door of their own shop. The Kerkoporta market had become a byword for honest deal—ing, and the kadi supposed that he was doing everything for the best.
The merchants found him officious, but they were divided as to the best way to deal with him. A minority were for clubbing together to manufacture some complaint against him from which he would be unlikely to recover; but the majority shrugged their shoulders and counselled patience. The kadi, some suggested, was merely establishing his price. Will not an ambitious carpet dealer wax lyrical over the colours and qualities and rarity of his carpet, as a prelude to negotiation? Will not a young wrestler hurl all his strength into the contest, while the older man uses no more than he actually needs to use? The time would come, they argued, when the kadi would start to crack.
The action brigade claimed that this man was different. The realists said he was human. And the subtlest minds of all quietly observed that the kadi had two daughters. The eldest, approaching the marrying age, was reputed to be very beautiful.
The kadi’s fall, when it finally came, was silent and absolute. The rumour of his daughter’s beauty was perfectly true; she was also meek, pious, obedient and skilful. It was these very qualities that caused the kadi such agony of mind, as he tried to choose a husband for her. He loved his daughter, and wanted the best for her; and it was because she was so good that he became so picky. It was because he was so picky that he eventually settled on a renowned teacher at the central medrese, a bachelor from an excellent wealthy family.
The kadi’s fortune was by no means equal to providing his daughter with the handsome dowry and memorable wedding festivities that the groom’s family customarily provided for their own daughters. They didn’t mind, of course; but it tormented the kadi. The cause of the torment was divined by the matchmaker, a shrewd old lady who chewed betel and wore a gold bangle for every union she had successfully negotiated: she tin—kled like a fountain when she moved. And she moved a lot: that is to say, she visited almost every house in the district on a fairly regular basis, and through one of these visits the Kerkoporta merchants learned of the kadi’s dilemma.
The affair was handled with delicacy and tact.
For fixing up a splendid wedding, and clubbing together to provide the girl with a stylish dowry, the merchants asked the kadi for nothing in return. Few markets were as well served as the Kerkoporta by its kadi, who had brought such order and regularity and honesty into the business that even a foreigner, as was widely known, could make purchases there in perfect confidence. Hardly anyone need even know that the dowry and the feast came as a private act of tribute from the market to the judge.
Nothing was said. No deals were struck, perish the thought.
The kadi continued to do his job with rigour, as before. He wasn’t even particularly grateful.
He was simply weary. Being honest was tiring, but it wasn’t as exhausting as carrying on with what he knew: that he had connived with the merchants he was deputed to regulate.
He continued to sit in the market house, hearing cases, investigating abuses, frowning at supplicants and keeping his own counsel. But he no longer punished transgressions with such severity. He no longer really cared whether the merchants cheated their customers or not. If he found gold in his purse, or a freshly slaughtered sheep delivered to his door, it roused neither gratitude nor indignation.
He had another daughter, after all.
[ 100 ]
The donkeys drummed on the cobbles with their little hooves. The two- wheeled carts jounced and swayed behind them, with a noise like sliding pebbles. The thin beams of lamplight careered around the blank walls.
Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.
Murad Eslek raised a hand. The night porter gave a nod and let the barrier swing gently back into the wooden block on the other side of the gate, closing the road.
Eslek called out a brief thanks, and followed his carts into the square.
Sixty or seventy donkey carts jostled through the narrow openings, arguing their passage with a dozen or so much bigger mule carts, a flock of bleating sheep, and vendors still arriving. Space was constricted by the empty stalls Eslek and his men had been putting up over the last couple of hours, each one topped by a lantern. Wagon eight, Eslek noticed, had overshot its stall: no use trying to back up, it would have to be led round again for a second try, when the others were out of the way. One of the stallholders, wrapped in a horse blanket tied on with string, was demanding to know where his delivery was: cart five had got swept away by an eruption of mule carts coming up from the city. Eslek could just about make it out, with its high stack of poultry cages swaying dangerously in the distance. But for the most part everything was in place.
He began to help unload the leading cart. Baskets of aubergines, jute bags of potatoes, bushels of spinach thumped onto the stall. When it was almost done, Eslek wheeled back and began the same routine with the cart behind. The trick was to finish unloading simultaneously, keep the train together, and move out in order. Otherwise it was all back and forth, and no rest till sun-up.
He darted across the square to the poultry cart. Just as he feared, it had got wedged in behind a mule cart loaded with sacks of rice and no one was paying any attention to the driver’s shouts. Eslek grabbed the mule’s halter and waved his arm at the driver standing in the cart, swinging the heavy sacks into the arms of a man on the ground.
“Hey! Hey! Hold it!”
The driver shot him a glance and turned to pick up another sack. Eslek drove the mule’s halter back: the mule tried to lift its head but decided to take a step backwards instead. The cart jolted and the driver, caught off balance, staggered back with a sack in his arms and sat down heavily.
The stallholder grinned and scratched his head. The driver leaped from his cart in a fury.
“What in the name of God—oh, it’s you, is it?”
“Come on, Genghis, get this rattletrap backed off half a mo, we’re stuck. Here, pull her up.” He gestured to the donkey cart driver, who was sitting on the cart board with his long driving stick poised and ready. The rice carter backed his mule cart, the donkey driver whacked the dust from the donkey’s flanks, and the little beast trotted forward.
“Cheers!” Eslek waved, then jogged alongside his cart with a hand on the board. “Second time this week, Abdul. You’re holding us all up.”
He brought the cart to the back of his own train, told the driver to grab a crate and with the stallholder’s help they unloaded, dodging up and down the line. Most of the stallholders were already arranging their stock; the scent of charcoal hung in the air as the street-food vendors lit their fires. Eslek felt hungry, but he still had to clear the carts out; it was another hour before he saw them all safely through the gate, where he paid off the drivers.
“Abdul,” he said. “Just keep your eyes open, understand? Those mule men look tough, but they can’t touch you. Not if you don’t give them a chance. Just stick to the tail of the man in front, keep your eyes straight. They’re all bluster.”
He walked back to the market. Now and then he had to flatten himself against the wall to allow other donkey carts to clatter by, but by the time he reached the square the first hubbub of the night had subsided. The vendors were busy with their arrangements of fruit and vegetables, vying against each other by building pyramids, amphitheatres and acropolises of okra, aubergines and waxy yellow potatoes, or of dates and apricots, in blocks and bands and fancy patterns of colour. Others, who had lit their braziers, were waiting for the coals to develop their white skin of ash, and using the time to nick chestnuts with a knife, or to load a thick skewer with slices of mutton. Soon, Eslek thought with a pang of hunger and anticipation, the meatballs would be simmering, the fish frying, the game and poultry roasting on the spits.
He, too, had another job to do before he could eat. Once he had checked with his vendors, and reckoned their bills, he took a tour of the perimeter of the market. He paid particular attention to dark corners, shadowed doorways, and the space beneath the stalls whose owners he did not serve. He looked men in the face, and recognised them quickly; and now and then he lifted his head to scan the market as a whole, to see who was coming in, and to watch for the arrival of any carts he didn’t know.
From time to time he wondered what was keeping Yashim.
A troupe of jugglers and acrobats, six men and two women, took up a position near the cypress tree, squatting on their haunches, waiting for light and crowds. Between them they had set a big basket with a lid, and Murad Eslek spent a while watching them from the corner of the alley beneath the city walls until he had seen that the basket really did contain bats, balls and other paraphernalia of their trade. Then he moved on, eyeing up the other quacks and entertainers who had crowded in for the Friday market: the Kurdish story teller in a patchwork coat; the Bulgarian fire-eater, bald as an egg; a number of bands—Balkan pipers, Anatolian string players; a pair of sinuous and silent Africans, carefully dotting a blanket spread on the ground with charms and remedies; a row of gypsy silversmiths with tiny anvils and a supply of coins wrapped in pieces of soft leather, who were already at work, snipping the coins and beating out tiny rings and bracelets.
He took another look across the market and thought of food, though he knew it would be a few minutes yet before he could eat. The air was already spiced with the fragrance of roasting herbs; he could hear the sizzle of hot fat dripping on the coals. He lifted a cube of salty white bread from a stall as he passed by, and popped it in his mouth; and then, since no one had rebuked him, he stopped a moment to admire the arrangement of the spit, worked by a little dog scampering gamely round inside a wooden wheel. Nearby he saw out of the corner of his eye a man flipping meatballs with a flat knife. He drew a few meatballs to the side of the pan, and Eslek stepped forwards.
“Ready, then?”
The man cracked a smile and nodded.
“First customer Friday is always free.”
Murad grinned. He watched the man scatter a few pitta breads on the hot surface of the pan, press them down with the blade of his knife and flip them over. He pulled one towards him and opened it up with a quick arc of the point and a sliding motion with the flat side.
“Chilli sauce?”
Murad Eslek’s mouth watered. He nodded.
The man took a dab of sauce on the end of his knife, spread it inside the bread, scooped up two meatballs and stuffed them home with a generous handful of lettuce and a squeeze of lemon.
With the kebab in two hands, Eslek sauntered happily through the stalls, munching greedily.
He saw nothing to surprise him. Eventually he went down the alley by the walls and found the dark passageway Yashim had mentioned. He mounted the steps care
fully, and made his way back to the tower. The door was still on its chain as Yashim had left it. He sat down on the parapet, swinging his legs, licking his fingers, and looked down through the cypress at the market below.
The sky had lightened, and it would soon be dawn.
[ 101 ]
When Yashim opened his eyes again it was still dark. The fire in the grate had died out. Wincing slightly, he eased himself upright and slipped his legs over the edge of the bed. His feet felt bruised and swollen, but he forced himself to stand upright. After he had hobbled up and down the room for a few minutes, he found the pain was bearable. He found his clothes by accident, putting out a hand in the darkness to steady himself. They were neatly piled on a table where Marta must have placed them.
He took his cloak from the hall and stepped out into the early morning air. His skin was tender, but his head was clear.
He walked swiftly down towards the Golden Horn. The lines of the Karagozi poem circled in his head to the rhythm of his footsteps.
Unknowing
And knowing nothing of unknowing,
They sleep.
Wake them.
He quickened his pace to reach the wharves. On the quayside he found a ferryman awake, huddled into his burnous against the dawn chill, and once across he took a sedan chair and ordered the bearers to the Kerkoporta market.
[ 102 ]
I saw you arrive,” Murad Eslek explained. He’d recognised Yashim immediately, and rushed to greet him before he disappeared into the crowd. Now that the day had broken there were plenty of people milling past the stalls, filling their baskets with fresh produce. “I’ve been looking about, like you said. Nothing unusual. A few performers I don’t know, that’s about it. Quiet, everything normal.”
2006 - The Janissary Tree Page 24