2006 - The Janissary Tree

by Jason Goodwin

  “A coup?” The seraskier ran his tongue across his lips.

  “Yes. The palace eunuchs, led by the Kislar Agha. They were set to turn back the clock. Re-instate the Janissaries. It was all in that Karagozi verse—remember?”

  The seraskier blew out his cheeks. “Come, Yashim. This isn’t important. You know that, don’t you? Eunuchs. Sultans. The sultan’s finished. The Edict? Did you really think the Edict was going to make a difference? You saw him today, didn’t you, the old boozer? What makes you think any of them can do a thing? They are half the problem. The Edict is just another worthless piece of paper. Equality, blah blah. There’s only one equality under these skies, and that’s when you’re in the line, shoulder to shoulder with the men beside you, taking orders. We could have figured that out years ago, but we grew crooked.”

  “The Janissaries?”

  The seraskier gave an amused grunt.

  “The Janissaries—and their Russian friends. Some of them, I gather, were living in Russian territory. And the rebels wanted Russian help.”

  “Who warned you?” Yashim asked. “Not Derentsov?”

  The seraskier chuckled. “Derentsov doesn’t need money. It was your friend in the cab. The scarface.”

  Yashim frowned. “Potemkin…kept you informed?”

  “Potemkin informed me, initially. But he was too expensive. And too dangerous.”

  Yashim regarded the seraskier in silence. “So you found someone else to keep you up to date with the Janissary plot. Somebody safe, who wouldn’t be much noticed.”

  “That’s right. Somebody cheap and inconsequential.” The seraskier grinned, and his eyes widened with delight. “I found you.”

  “I gave you the timing of the rebellion.”

  “Oh more, much more. You kept the plot alive, didn’t you? You helped to create the atmosphere I needed. Down there, a city in panic. They’re defeated already. The Janissaries. The people. And now the palace, too.”

  He ran his hand around his chest: a gesture of relish.

  “For you, I’m afraid, I have a choice prepared between life and death. Or should I say, between devotion to the state and…what, a romantic attachment to an outdated set of traditions.” He paused. “For the empire? Well, the choice is made. Or will have been made in”—he drew a glinting orb from his pocket—“approximately eighteen minutes. The choice between all this, this weight and history and tradition, this great weight squatting over us all like the dome of Justinian’s cathedral—and starting fresh.”

  “But the people—” Yashim began to interrupt.

  “Oh, the people.” The seraskier half-turned his head, as if he wanted to spit. “The world is full of people.

  “We’re well placed, up here, aren’t we?” the seraskier went on. “To watch the palace burn. And with the dawn, a new era. Efficient. Clean. The House of Osman served us well in its time, yes. Reform? An Edict? Written in water. The system is too crazy and tottering to reform itself. We need to start fresh. Sweep away all this junk, these pantaloons, sultans, eunuchs, whispers in the dark. We have suffered under an autocracy that doesn’t even have the power to do what it wants. This empire needs firm government. It needs to be run by people who know how to command. Think of Russia.”

  “Russia?”

  “Russia is unassailable. Without the czar it could beat the world. Without all its princes and aristocrats and courts. Imagine: run by experts, engineers, soldiers. It’s about to happen—but not in Russia. Here. We need the Russian system—the control of labour. The control of information. That’s an area for you, if you like. I’ve said you’re good. The modern state needs ears and eyes. We’ll need them tomorrow, when the first day dawns on the Ottoman republic.”

  Yashim stared. He had a sudden vision of the seraskier the first time they’d met, reclining so awkwardly on his divan in trousers and a jacket, reluctant to sit at the table with his back to the room. A fine western gentleman he made. Was that what all this was about?

  “Republic?” He echoed the seraskier’s unfamiliar word. He thought of the sultan and the valide, and all those women in the court: and he remembered the glittering fanatical light in the eyes of the leading eunuchs, and the unexpected death of the chief.

  The seraskier had known that they would gather together. And he, Yashim himself, had persuaded the sultan to let the artillery into the city.

  “That’s right,” said the seraskier curtly. “We’ve seen those weak old fools for the last time. Blathering about tradition! Padding round in their own nest, like silly chickens. Defying history.”

  He drew himself up.

  “Think of it as…surgery. It hurts, of course. The surgeon’s knife is ruthless, but it cuts out the disease.”

  Yashim felt his heart grow still. With it, his mind cleared.

  The seraskier was still talking. “For the patient the agony brings relief,” he was saying. “We can be modern, Yashim: we must be modern. But do you really think modernity is something you can buy? Modernity isn’t a commodity. It’s a condition of the mind.”

  Something stirred in Yashim’s memory. He clutched at it, an elusive shape, a form of words he’d heard before. The man was still talking; he felt the memory slipping away.

  “It’s an arrangement of power. The old one is over. We have to think about the new.”

  “We?”

  “The governing classes. The educated people. People like you and me.”

  No one, Yashim thought, is like me.

  “People need to be directed. That hasn’t changed. What changes is the way they are to be led.”

  None of us are alike. I am like no one.

  I will stay free.

  [ 127 ]

  I’m going down, now,” the seraskier said quietly. “And you -you’ll stay up here, I’m afraid. I thought you might come with me, but it doesn’t matter.”

  He gestured with his gun, and Yashim stepped out of the archway onto the sloping roof.

  “Shall we just change places, slowly?” The seraskier suggested. They circled each other for a few seconds, and then the seraskier was in the arch.

  “You see, I’m not going to shoot you. I still think you might want to change your mind. When the troops fall back. When this place starts to burn.”

  But Yashim wasn’t really listening. The seraskier had seen his eyes stray from his face, and then widen, almost involuntarily. But he mastered an impulse to turn around. Deflection tactics were no more than he expected.

  Yashim’s surprise was not at all affected. Behind the seraskier, up the stairs, two extraordinary figures had made a silent appearance. One was dark, the other fair, and they were dressed like believers, but Yashim could have sworn that the last time he had clapped eyes on these two they had been wearing frock coats and cravats in the British embassy.

  “Excusez-tnoi,” the fair one said. “Mais—parlayvoo fran$ais?”

  The seraskier spun round as though he had been shot.

  “What’s this?” he hissed, turning a wary look on Yashim.

  Yashim smiled. The fair young man was glancing round the seraskier, putting up a hand to wave.

  “Je vous connais, m’sieur -1 know you, don’t I? I’m Compston, this is Fizerly. You’re the historian, aren’t you?”

  There was a tinge of desperation in his voice which, Yashim thought, was not misplaced.

  “They are officials at the British embassy,” he told the seraskier. “Much more modern than they look, I imagine. And efficient, as you say.”

  “I’ll kill them,” the seraskier snarled. He jabbed his gun at them, and they shrank back.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you,” Yashim said. “Your republican dawn could quickly turn into dusk if you bring British gunboats to our doorstep.”

  “It’s of no consequence,” the seraskier said. He had regained his composure. “Tell them to get out.”

  Yashim opened his mouth to speak but his first words were drowned by a muffled crump that sounded like a clap of thunder. The gro
und trembled beneath their feet.

  As the sound of the explosion died away the seraskier jerked the watch from his pocket and bit his lip.

  Too early, he thought. And then: it doesn’t matter. Let them begin the barrage.

  He waited, staring at his watch.

  Fifteen seconds. Twenty seconds. Let the guns fire.

  The sweat had broken out on his forehead.

  There was another bang, slightly fainter than the first.

  The seraskier looked up and flashed a look of triumph at Yashim.

  But Yashim had turned away. He was standing on the roof, hands held aloft, staring out over the city as the wind caught at his cloak.

  Beyond him, the seraskier saw the burst of light. It glanced off the pillars of the dome, flinging Yashim into brilliant relief where he stood against the skyline. The seraskier heard the rumble of the guns which followed. There was another burst of light, as of an exploding shell, and another deep rumble, and the seraskier frowned. He knew what was puzzling him. The sound and light were the wrong way round.

  He should have heard the guns roar, and then seen the light flash as the shell reached its target, The seraskier leaped from the archway and began to run, his feet making no sound on the thick lead sheets.

  Yashim made a lunge for him, but the seraskier was too quick. In an instant he had seen what he had not expected to see, and with brilliant military intuition he had grasped precisely what it all meant to him. The guns were working the wrong end of the city, the shells exploding far away. He did not break stride. He shrank slightly as Yashim reached out, but a moment later he was over the gutters and half-running, half-sliding down the leaden roof of the supporting half dome.

  He moved with a speed that was terrible to see. Yashim darted to the edge and began to lower himself down onto the conical roof, but the seraskier had already dropped from sight. Then he suddenly re-appeared, lower down, loping south across a cat-slide roof.

  For a moment the whole city lay spread out beneath the seraskier’s feet. He saw again the dark mass of the seraglio. He saw the lights twinkling on the Bosphorus. He saw men and women streaming through the square beneath him, and in the distance the chutes of flame that peeled away from the sudden yawning gaps that the artillery was making in their path.

  As for him, there was only one direction he could take.

  For many years after that, an Armenian army contractor who married a rich widow who bore him six sons would tell the story of how he was almost crushed by an officer who fell on him from the sky.

  “Not a common soldier, mind you,” he would end his story, with a smile. “God, in his Grace, sent me a general: and I’ve been dealing with them ever since.”

  [ 128 ]

  I need an escort, Palewski,” Yashim was explaining. “You know, somebody with an ‘in’ with the sultan. He’d expect that. And you two are very pally, aren’t you?”

  It was Saturday morning. The rain which lashed against Yashim’s windows had been falling steadily since before dawn, much to the advantage of the New Guards struggling to extinguish the city fires. With the breaks their cannon had opened in the night, the fire had been contained to the area of the port, and although the damage was said to be serious, it did not approach the scale of 1817, or 1807, or of almost a dozen major fires which had broken out in that district in the previous century. And the port, when all was said and done, was not the most prized Istanbul quartier.

  Palewski put up two fingers and touched his moustache, to hide a smile.

  “Pally’s the word for it, Yash. I’ve a mind to present the sultan with a little something which arrived for me this morning, saved by providence from the fire in the port.”

  “Ah, providence,” echoed Yashim.

  “Yes. I happened to notice that stocks were getting rather low last Thursday, so I ordered another couple of cases out of bond immediately. What do you think?”

  “Yes, I think that the sultan would appreciate the gesture. Not that he’d drink it, of course.”

  “Of course not. No bubbles in it, for one thing.”

  They smiled at each other.

  “I’m sorry about the thug last night,” Palewski said.

  Yashim yawned, shaking his head.

  “I don’t know what you hit him with. He was gentle as a lamb when I got back. Preen and her friend were chatting away with him, you can’t believe. Not that he said much, naturally, but he seemed to be enjoying their company. Preen said she could take him to a doctor. I think she said a horse doctor, but there you are. He seemed very grateful when I explained it to him.”

  “In mime?”

  “In sign. It’s a language I learned when I was at court.”

  “I see.” Palewski frowned. “I didn’t hit him, you know.”

  “I know. I’m glad. Will you call for me at six?”

  [ 129 ]

  Yashim slept deeply until one o’clock, then dozed for another hour, sliding in and out of dreams where he heard only voices speaking to him in tones he knew and languages he didn’t understand. Once he saw the seraskier, talking perfect French with a light Creole accent, and lashed himself awake. Was it a dream that the seraskier had spoken to him in the language of his dreams? A condition of the mind. The phrase rolled around his head, and he sat up, feeling lightheaded.

  He got up, leaving his cloak on the divan. The room felt warm, the stove was lit: his landlady must have crept up to light it while he was asleep. He picked up the kettle and settled it onto the coals. He took three pinches of black tea and dropped them into the pot. He found a pan by the stove with a few manti inside: Preen seemed to have cooked his supper and eaten it with her friend; and the mute, too, maybe. They’d saved something for him.

  He set it on the stove and watched the butter melt, then stirred the manti with a wooden spoon. He thought of making a tomato sauce with the jar of puree, then decided that the manti were ready and he was too hungry, so he simply tipped them onto a plate and ground a few rounds of black pepper over them.

  They were not excellent, he had to admit; slightly hard around the edges, in fact, but wonderfully good. He poured the tea, and drank it with sugar and a cigarette leaning back on the divan and watching the raindrops sparkling on the lattice: the rain had stopped and a weak wintry sunlight was making a last appearance before it faded for the night.

  Palewski had been almost right, he thought. A dangerous party: always a guest, never a player. Only obliged to stand by, confused and helpless, as the old, grand battle raged, a battle that would never be won between the old and the new, reaction and renovation, memory and hope. Coming in too late, when last night’s manti were already curling at the edges. Until he spoke to the bombardier, who swung the guns in time.

  After a time he began to look around the room, not stirring but glancing from one object to the next before he saw what he wanted. He reached out and took it in his hand, half-smiling: a little cloisonne dagger with no pommel, only its beautifully enamelled hilt and scabbard making a single crescent, tapering to a fine point. He slid the dagger halfway out, and admired the gleam of its perfect steel, then pushed it back, hearing the tiny click as it settled into the scabbard again.

  Damascus steel, cold drawn, the product of a thousand years’ experience—and the finer it was worked, the less it showed the labour. It was not as they crafted such things now. He wondered if she’d know the difference, not that it mattered. It was a beautiful and satisfying thing. Dangerous, but protective too. Perhaps she’d look at it now and then, and in her white northern world of ice it would bring back some memory to make her smile.

  For several minutes he weighed the dagger in his palm, thinking of it; and then he frowned and set it gently aside, and got up and washed in the basin as best he could.

  [ 130 ]

  We have orders to admit no one until the disturbance has subsided,” the butler intoned, placing his large body in the doorway of the embassy.

  “There is no disturbance,” Yashim said. The butler
merely pursed his lips.

  Yashim sighed, and held out a small package. “Would you see to it that this reaches Her Excellency the Princess?”

  The butler glanced down and sniffed. “And from whom shall I say it comes?”

  “Oh—just say a Turk.”

  “Yashim!”

  Eugenia was coming slowly down the stairs, one hand floating by the rail and the other at her cheek.

  “Come in!”

  The butler stepped back and Eugenia took Yashim’s hands in hers and led him to the sofa. The butler hovered over her.

  “That’s all right,” she said. “We’re friends.”

  “From the gentleman, Your Highness.”

  The butler handed her Yashim’s packet, and stood back.

  “Tea for our visitor, please,” Eugenia said. When the butler had gone she dropped the packet on her lap, took hold of Yashim’s hands again and looked him steadily in the eye.

  “I think…we are going home.” She flashed a sudden smile, and squeezed his hands. “Derentsov—my husband—is furious. And frightened. He thinks he’s been betrayed.”

  Yashim nodded slowly.

  “You know who it was, don’t you?” Eugenia tilted her head back and appraised him with a slow smile. “They all think that you don’t matter. But you are clever.”

  She saw Yashim glance away. “Do you want to know?” he asked her, quietly.

  She shook her head. “It would spoil everything. I have a duty to my husband, and there are some secrets I can’t keep. He was raving this morning, saying he’d been compromised. No choice but to resign. Determined to return us to St Petersburg, and face the czar.”

  “And the balls, and the dinners, and the ladies with their fans. I know.”

  “It will be hard.”

  “But you have a duty to your husband.”

  They laughed softly together.

  “What is this?” She said, hefting the packet in her hand.

  “Open it, and see.”