"But proscribed, as you said. Forbidden."
"Ali, well, here in Istanbul, yes. But they have made a long journey across many centuries and many lands, from the eastern deserts to the borders of the Domain of Peace."
The imam smiled. "Don't look so surprised. The doctrine of the Karagozi won many frontiers for Islam. Perhaps it will do so again."
"Which borders? Where do you mean?"
"They are strong where you'd expect them to be. In Albania. Where the Janissaries were always strong."
Yashim nodded.
"There's a poem. You seem to know a lot, so perhaps you know this, too." He recited the verses he had found nailed to the Janissary Tree.
Unknowing
And knowing nothing of unknowing,
They spread.
Flee.
Unknowing
And knowing nothing of unknowing,
They seek.
Teach them.
The imam frowned. "It is, I recall, a Karagozi verse. Yes, I know it. Highly esoteric, don't you agree? It goes on to suggest some form of mystical and divine union, as far as I remember."
"What do you mean, it goes on?"
"The poem you've quoted is incomplete." The imam looked surprised. "I'm afraid I can't recite it exactly."
"But you could, perhaps, find out?"
"By the grace of God," said the imam placidly. "If you're interested, I can try."
"I would be grateful," Yashim said, rising.
They bowed to one another. Just as Yashim turned to go, the imam turned his face to the window.
"Sufic mysteries," he said quietly. "Beautiful in their way, but ethereal. I don't think they would mean much to the ordinary people. Or perhaps, I don't know, too much. There's a lot of passion, and even faith, in this kind of poetry, but in the end it doesn't suit the believers. It's too free, too dangerous."
I don't know about free, Yashim reflected.
But dangerous, yes.
Certainly dangerous.
Even murderous.
30
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He saw her swinging down the street, tall and graceful and challenging the men to stare. A few yards from him she slowed and began to look around. He put up a hand and waved her across.
She dragged back a stool and sat down abruptly. A group of old men playing backgammon at the next table rubbernecked with obvious stupefaction, but Preen didn't notice, or care.
"Coffee," she said.
Yashim ordered two, avoiding the tray boy's curious stare. Not for the first time in his life he wanted to stand up and explain. She's not, in fact, a woman, so everything is as it should be. She's a man, dressed as a woman.
But he admired her courage in coming to the cafe. He nodded grimly at the old men.
With scarcely a trace of makeup, the flush in Preen's cheeks was real: she looked, Yashim thought, better for it.
"We can't talk here," he said. "I'll cut along home, and you can join--"
"We'll talk here," she replied through gritted teeth. The boy served the coffees and began to flick a duster over an adjoining table. Yashim caught his eye and jerked his head. The boy sloped off, disappointed.
He looked at her. "You're looking very lovely today," he said.
"Cut it out."
She sounded tough, but she kept her eyes on the table and moved her head slowly from side to side. A trace of pleasure.
"It's better if we're not seen together at the moment. It's my job to blend in, to slip by unobserved. As for you, well, I'm not sure what we're into here."
"I'm a big girl," said Preen. Her lip quivered. Yashim grinned. Preen covered her mouth with a hand and shot him a look. Then she giggled.
"Oh, I know I'm naughty, sweetie. I just couldn't help it. I had to do something a bit wild, see someone I like. Shock him, too. To feel alive." She let a shiver of pleasure run through her body. "I've been talking to Istanbul's most disgusting man."
Yashim raised his eyebrows. "I'm amazed you can be so sure."
"A hunchbacked pimp, from the docks? I'm sure. He says someone saw your friends the other night."
Yashim leaned forward. "Where?"
"Somewhere reasonably salubrious. Is salubrious the word I want, Yashim?"
"Possibly. Your--informant--he wasn't there himself?"
"Not that he told me. Don't you want to know where?"
"Of course I want to know."
"It's some sort of gardens," Preen explained. "Along the Bosphorus."
"Ali." Perhaps salubrious was the word Preen wanted: all things are relative, after all.
"There's a kiosk there, apparently, perfectly clean. There are even little lanterns in the trees." Preen sounded almost wistful. "You can sit there and talk, and watch the boats in the straits, and have a coffee or a pipe."
The Yeyleyi Gardens were once a favorite of the court: the sultan would take his women to picnic there, among the trees. That must have been almost a century ago. The sultans had stopped coming when the place became popular; in time it grew faintly notorious. Not entirely respectable, the Yeyleyi Gardens had been the sort of place where lovers used to arrange to meet by accident, communicating in the tender and semisecret language of flowers. These days the encounters were more spontaneous but even better arranged, and the language possibly mercenary. He could quite imagine it being visited--a little hopefully--by what the seraskier called boys of good family.
"So--what? They arrived, had a pipe and a coffee, and left together?"
"So I'm told."
"By boat?"
"I don't know. He didn't say anything about a boat. No, wait, I think they left in a cab."
"All four of them together?"
"All five."
Yashim looked up sharply. Preen tittered.
"Four came, but five left."
"Yes, I see. And do you, Preen, know anything about this Number Five?"
"Oh, yes. He was a Russian."
"A Russian? You're sure?"
Yashim thought about this. Stambouliots had a tendency to mark down everyone vaguely foreign, and fair, as a Russian these days. It was a function of the late war, of all the wars the Porte had fought with the czar's men over the last hundred years.
"I think it must have been true," Preen said. "He was in a uniform."
"What?!"
Preen laughed. "White, with gold braid. Very smart. Very big guy. And a sort of medal on his chest, like a star, with rays."
"Preen, this is gold dust. How did you get it?"
She thought of the young Greek sailor.
"I made a few sacrifices." She smiled. Then she thought of Yorg, and her smile faded.
31
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ISTANBUL was not a city that kept late hours. After ten, for the most part, when the sun had long since sunk beneath the Princes' Islands in the Sea of Marmara, the streets were quiet and deserted. Dogs sometimes snarled and snapped in the alleyways, or took to howling down on the shore, but those sounds, like the muezzin's call to prayer at first light, were the night noises of Istanbul, and no one thought more about them.
Nowhere in the city was quieter than the Grand Bazaar, a labyrinth of covered streets that twisted and writhed like eels all the way down the hill from Beyazit to the shores of the Golden Horn. By day, the hum of the bazaar belonged to the most fantastic caravanserai in the world, an emporium of gold and spices, of rugs and linens, soaps and books and medicines and earthenware bowls. Some of the most delicate and useful products of the empire were manufactured daily within that square mile of passages and cubicles. The bazaar was a concentration of the empire's wealth and industry; it was served by its own cafes, restaurants, imams and hammams; the strictest rules were laid down for its security.
The heights that commanded the bazaar--the so-called Third Hill of Istanbul--on which the Beyazit Mosque stood, had been chosen by the Conqueror, Sultan Mehmed, for his imperial palace, but the building was still incomplete when he began work on another palace,
Topkapi on Seraglio Point, destined to be far greater and more magnificent. The old palace, or Eski Serai, later served as a sort of annex to Topkapi. It was a school where palace slaves were trained; a company of Janissaries was stationed in its walls; but its only royal inhabitants were the women of previous sultans, dispatched from Topkapi on the death of their lord and master to gloomy retirement in the Eski Serai.
That dismal practice had lapsed many years before. Eventually, the Eski Serai sank into disrepair, and finally into ruin; its remains were cleared and from the rubble rose the fire tower that still brooded watchfully over the Grand Bazaar.
The bag, which arrived in the night, was tied by its drawstrings to a heavy iron grille that protected the Grand Bazaar from prying eyes and enterprising thieves. By dawn, more than a dozen people had commented on it, and within the hour, in front of a very squeezed-up crowd, it was finally brought to the ground.
No one was eager to be the one who opened it. Nobody thought it contained treasure. Everyone thought that whatever it contained, it would be horrible, and everyone wanted to know what it was.
In the end, it was decided to carry the bag, unopened, to the mosque and ask the kadi for an opinion.
32
****************
SEVERAL hours later the bag was opened for the second time that morning.
"It is a terrible thing," the kadi said again, wringing his hands. He was an old man, and the shock had been great. "Nothing like this... ever..." His hands fluttered in the air. "It has nothing to do with us. Peaceful people... good neighbors..."
The seraskier nodded, but he was not listening. He was watching Yashim drag at the cords. Yashim stood up and tipped the bag over onto the floor.
The kadi gripped a doorway for support. The seraskier skipped to one side. Yashim himself stood breathing heavily, staring at the pile of white bones and wooden spoons. Wedged in the pile, unmistakably dark, was a human head.
Yashim hung his head and said nothing. The violence is terrible, he thought. And what have I done to stop it? Cooked a meal. Gone looking for a toy cauldron.
Cooked a meal.
The seraskier put out a booted foot and stirred the heap with its toe. The head settled in its grisly nest. Its skin looked drawn and yellow, and its eyes glittered faintly beneath half-lowered lids. Neither of them noticed the kadi leave the room.
"No blood," said the seraskier.
Yashim squatted down beside the bones and spoons. "But one of yours?"
"Yes. I think so."
"You think so?"
"No, I'm sure. The mustache." He gestured faintly to the severed head.
But Yashim was more interested in the bones. He was laying them out, bone by bone, paying particular attention to the shin, the femur, the ribs.
"It's very odd," he murmured.
The seraskier looked down. "What's odd?"
"There's not a mark on them. Clean and whole."
He picked up the pelvis and began turning it this way and that between his hands. The seraskier pulled a face. He'd dealt with corpses often enough--but fondling bones. Euch.
"It was a man, anyway," Yashim remarked.
"Of course it was a fucking man. He was one of my soldiers."
"It was just a thought," Yashim replied pacifically, setting the pelvis in position. From overhead it looked almost obscenely large, thrusting out from the skeletal remains spread on the marble floor. "Maybe they'd used another body. I wouldn't know."
"Another body? What for?"
Yashim stood up and wiped his hands with the hem of his cloak. He stared at the seraskier, seeing nothing.
"I can't imagine," he said.
The seraskier gestured to the door and heaved a sigh. "Like it or not," he said, "we're going to have to tell the people something."
Yashim blinked.
"How about the truth?" he suggested.
The seraskier looked at him levelly.
"Something like that," he said abruptly. "Why not?"
33
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FINE cities whose contented citizens support an intelligent administration do exist, containing not a single dilapidated public building, a solitary weed-strewn building lot, or even a crumbling palazzo; but a great city must have them all, for decay, too, is a sign of life. In the right ear, dereliction whispers of opportunity. In another ear, of delinquency and corruption. Istanbul in the 1830s was no exception.
The ragged bellpull that now lay, inert, in Yashim's hand as he stood at the top of the steps by the front door of a building in Pera, Istanbul's so-called European quarter across the Golden Horn, inspired a similar reflection. He sensed that in some way the broken bell claimed kinship with much that was already ragged and moldering in the ancient metropolis, from cracked basilicas to sagging wooden houses, from the office of the patriarch to waterlogged pilings in the port.
At the last, mortal wrench of the cord, a bell had pealed somewhere inside the old mansion. For the first time in weeks, and the last time for years, a bell announced to the Polish ambassador that he had a visitor.
Palewski maneuvered himself off the divan with an oath and a tinkle of broken glass.
At the head of the stairs he gripped the balustrade and began to descend, quite slowly, toward the front door. He stared for a moment or two at the bolts, then stretched, flexed the muscles in his back, ran a hand across his hair and around his collar, and wrenched it open. He blinked involuntarily in the sudden rush of winter light.
Yashim shoved the remains of the bellpull into his hands and stepped inside. Palewski closed the door, grumbling.
"Why don't you just come in through the windows at the back?"
"I didn't want to surprise you."
Palewski turned his back and began to mount the stairs.
"Nothing surprises me," he said.
Yashim glimpsed a dark corridor, which led to the back of the residency, and a sheet covering some furniture stacked in the hall. He followed Palewski up the stairs.
Palewski opened a door. "Ali," he said.
Yashim followed his friend into a small, low-ceilinged room lit by two long windows. Against the opposite wall stood an elaborate chimneypiece decorated with sheaves of carved shields and the bows and arrows of a more chivalric age; in the grate, a fire glowed dully. Paleiski threw on another log and kicked the fire; a few sparks shot up. The flames began to spread.
Palewski threw himself into a massive armchair and motioned to Yashim to do the same.
"Let's have some tea," he said.
Yashim had been in this room many times before; even so, he looked about with pleasure. A mottled mirror in a gold frame hung between the louvered windows; beneath it stood Palewski's little writing desk and the only hard chair in the room. The two armchairs, drawn up to the fire, were leaking their stuffing, but they were comfortable. Over the fireplace hung a portrait in oils of John Sobieski, the Polish king who lifted the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683; two other oils, one of a man in a full wig on a prancing horse, and the other a family scene, hung on the wall by the door, over a mahogany side table. Palewski's violin was perched on it. The farther wall and the alcoves by the fireplace were ranged with books.
Palewski reached forward and yanked once or twice on a tapestry bellpull. A neat Greek serving girl came to the door and Palewski ordered tea. The girl brought a tray and set it down on the charpoy in front of the fire. Palewski rubbed his hands together.
"English tea," he said. "Keemun with a trace of bergamot. Milk or lemon?"
The tea, the fire, and the rich tones of the German clock on the mantelpiece soothed the Polish ambassador into a better mood. Yashim, too, felt himself relax. For a long while neither man said anything.
"The other day you quoted something to me--an army marches on its stomach. Who said that? Napoleon?"
Palewski nodded and pulled a face. "Typical Napoleon. In the end his armies marched on their frozen feet."
Not for the first time, Yashim promised hi
mself to probe Palewski's attitude to Napoleon. It seemed a combination of admiration and bitterness. But instead he asked, "Does anything about the way the Janissaries named their ranks strike you as significant?"
"Significant? They took titles from the kitchen. The colonel was called the soup cook, wasn't he? And there were other ranks I remember--scullion, baker, pancake maker. Sergeant majors carried a long wooden ladle as a badge of office. As for the men, to lose a regimental tureen in battle--one of the big cauldrons they used for making pilaf--was the ultimate disgrace. They had the provisioning sorted out. Why the Janissaries?"
Yashim told him. He told him about the cauldron, about the man trussed ready to roast, the pile of bones and wooden spoons. Palewski let him speak without interruption.
"Forgive me, Yashim, but weren't you in Istanbul ten years ago? They call it suppression, don't they? Laughter can be suppressed. Emotion. But we're talking about flesh and blood. This was history. This was tradition. Suppressed? What happened to the Janissaries wasn't even a massacre."
To Yashim's surprise, Palewski was scrambling to his feet.
"I was there, Yashim. I never told you this, because no one--not even you--would have wanted to know. It's not the Ottoman way." He hesitated, with a rueful smile. "Have I told you this before?"
Yashim shook his head. Palewski raised his chin.
"June sixteenth, 1826. Sunny day. I was over in Stamboul on some errand or another, I forget," he began. "And boom--the city explodes. Kettles drumming on the Etmeidan. Students in the madrassas humming like ripe cheese. Get back, I think. Down to the Golden Horn, grab a caique, tea on the lawn, and wait for news."
"Tea?" Yashim interjected.
"It's a figure of speech. Rather like the lawn. But never mind: I never made it here. Golden Horn. Silence. There were the caiques, drawn up on the Pera side. I waved and capered on the landing stage, but not a miserable soul stepped forward to ferry me across. I tell you, Yashim, it made the hairs prickle on the back of my neck. I felt as if I'd been quarantined.
"I had a rough idea of what was brewing. I thought of some of the pashas I knew--but then, I thought, they'd have trouble enough without me tagging along. To be honest, I wasn't sure it was wise to be barricaded into some grandee's mansion at the moment of crisis, which we all knew was coming. Guess where I went instead."
Jason Goodwin Page 9