Jason Goodwin

by The Janissary Tree

  His thumb searched for the gate. His fingers stretched and encountered a tight bunch of muscle. His hand clamped shut, with iron force.

  The girl gave a gasp, and the kislar agha pulled himself free. He put his sore fingers under his armpit, but he did not let go.

  He wriggled his fingers and the girl jerked her head back. The kislar agha pressed harder. The girl felt herself being pressured to roll aside, and she obeyed the pressure.

  The eunuch saw the girl flip over and fling out her arms to meet the ground. He gave a sudden pull with the pincer of his hand.

  Panting now, he dropped to his knees and began to fumble at the folds of his cloak.

  He'd forgotten all about the silver ring.

  He remembered only the need for punishment, and the itch for pleasure.

  46

  ****************

  PREEN had found it hard to believe what the imam seemed to be saying. A revival of the Janissaries? New Guard cadets found murdered in despicable ways?

  She picked up a pair of tweezers and began to pluck her eyebrows.

  She wondered, looking into the mirror, if the imam's message had anything to do with the information she had brought her friend Yashim.

  Murder.

  Her heart skipped a beat.

  Today she would take the line ever so slightly higher: she could always heighten the curve with kohl. She began to hum.

  Nothing she'd heard in the mosque had anything to do with Yashim, or her, or that disgusting pimp.

  She worked briskly with a practiced hand along the arch of her brow, watching herself in the mirror.

  But Yorg could be involved in anything. With anyone.

  She'd only peddled a little ordinary gossip. It was nothing.

  Though Yashim had been pleased. Gold dust, he called it.

  But Yashim wouldn't tell. She moved her hand and began on the other eyebrow.

  Yorg would tell. Yorg would tell anything, if he was paid enough.

  Or frightened enough.

  Preen sucked in her breath. The idea of Yorg being afraid was, well, scary.

  She lowered her tweezers and snapped up a piece of kohl between their jaws. Carefully she started to thicken the line.

  What would Yorg do, she wondered, if he heard about the murdered soldiers? Not at mosque. The Yorgs of this world heard nothing at mosque. They wouldn't even go.

  But if he heard, and started putting two and two together?

  The kohl wavered. The face in the mirror was very white.

  He'd squeal, for sure.

  47

  ****************

  FIRE officer Orhan Yasmit cupped his hands around his mouth and blew into them. It had been a filthy morning, not just because it was damp and cold but because the mist made it almost impossible for him to work properly. Who could spot a fire in this miasma? He could scarcely see across the Golden Horn.

  He stamped a few times to warm up, then crossed the tower to the southern side and peered gloomily down toward the Bosphorus. On good days, the Galata Tower presented him with one of the finest views the city could afford, almost three hundred feet up above the Golden Horn, across to Stamboul with its minarets and domes, south to the Bosphorus and Scutari on the farther side--sometimes he could actually see the mountains of Gule, purple in the distance.

  It was a solid tower of massive dressed stone, built by the Genoese almost five hundred years before, when the Greek emperor ruled in Byzantium and Galata was its Italian suburb. Since then it had survived wars and earthquakes--even fires. The face of the city had changed, as minarets replaced the spires, as more and more people settled in the burgeoning port, building their wooden houses cheek by jowl, fragile wooden houses crammed like dry tinder into the declivities of the seven hills. They'd been kicking over their braziers, letting their candles tilt, sending out careless sparks for centuries, too. Hardly ten years ran by without some section of the city burning to the ground. That any of it still stood at all was a testament to the wisdom of the Genoese master builders who erected the Galata Tower.

  The trick with any fire was to catch it early, contain it quickly. And to use it wisely--in the Janissary days, to control and shape it to the Janissaries' best advantage. Orhan Yasmit was too young to have known those days personally, but he had heard the stories. Oh, the Janissaries put out fires--in the end.

  Orhan Yasmit leaned on the parapet, wondering how much longer it would be before he was relieved. He looked down. He had no trouble with vertigo. He liked to watch the people bustling back and forth so far below him: with the sun on his back there were times when he came close to feeling like a flying bird, skimming the rooftops and the marketplaces. From above, in their turbans, the people looked like birds' eggs, rolling about beneath his feet: the foreigners with their small heads looked weird. More like insects.

  Hearing footsteps, he eased himself off the parapet and turned around. He expected to see the duty fireman, but the man who stepped out onto the platform was a civilian, a stranger in a plain brown cloak. Orhan frowned.

  "I'm sorry," he said sharply. "I don't know how you got in, but civilians aren't allowed up here."

  The stranger smiled vaguely and looked around.

  "Two pairs of eyes are better than one," he remarked. "I won't detain you.

  Orhan could make nothing of this.

  "You might say that we're both working for the same service. I'm here for the seraskier."

  Orhan instinctively stood a little straighter.

  "Well," he said grudgingly, "it's no use your being here anyhow. No one could see a thing on a day like this."

  Yashim blinked at the fog. "No, no, I suppose not." He went to the parapet and leaned out. "Amazing. Do you often look down?"

  "Not much."

  Yashim cocked his head. "I expect you hear stuff, though. I've noticed that myself. The way sounds can carry much farther than you expect. Especially upward."

  "True." Orhan wondered what all this was leading up to.

  "Were you on duty the day they found that body?"

  "I was on the night before. Didn't hear or see anything, though." He frowned. "What do you want up here, anyhow?"

  Yashim nodded, as if he understood. "This tower must have been here a long time."

  "Five hundred years, they say." The fireman slapped a hand on the parapet. "The Stamboul tower, Beyazit, that's mostly new."

  "Mostly new?"

  "There's always been a fire watch over there, see, but the tower used to be shorter. Good lookout over the bazaar and such, but to the east you've got the mosque, and that used to block the view that way. Didn't matter so much, not with the Janissary Tower beyond to cover the ground."

  "Ali. I thought there'd been another fire tower there--above Aksaray?

  Orhan nodded. "Proper job, by all accounts. Gone now, along with the tekke underneath and all the rest."

  "Tekke? What tekke do you mean?"

  "Tekke, prayer room, whatever. Like here, downstairs. For that Janissary Karagoz mumbo-jumbo. Oldest Karagozi tekkes in the city, apparently. That tower's gone now, like I said. Got burned down during the--well, a few years back, you know what I mean? So what they did was, they raised the tower at Beyazit. To get the lift, see, over the mosque? Must have doubled its height, I reckon--and all in stone, now, like this one. The old ones were wood and kept burning down. So there you are, we've got the two towers as good as the old three. Better, really, being all stone."

  "I'm sure. Go on. Tell me about the fourth tower."

  Orhan gave the stranger a look. "There isn't a fourth. Galata, Stamboul, that's it."

  "There must be another. Yedikule, maybe?"

  "Yedikule?" The fireman grinned. "Tell me who'd be sorry if Yedikule caught fire?"

  Yashim frowned: the fireman had a point. Yedikule was the sink of the city, down in the southeast where the walls of Byzantium joined the sea. Apart from the dirt, and the feral dogs that prowled its mean, dark streets, the tanneries were there; also a grim
edifice, old even when the Ottomans took Istanbul, known as the Castle of the Seven Towers, variously used as a mint, a menagerie, and a prison, particularly the latter. Many people had died within its walls; still more had wanted to.

  "But you can watch Yedikule from the new tower at Beyazit, efendi. Stamboul and Galata, like I told you. Cover the city."

  Yashim winced. The second verse of the poem swam into his head.

  Unknowing

  And knowing nothing of unknowing,

  They seek.

  Teach them.

  He was obviously a slow learner.

  "Look," Orhan said affably. "You can ask old Palmuk, if you like."

  A whiskered face appeared in the hatch. Palmuk was not really old, only perhaps twice Orhan's age, with thick white mustaches and a noticeable paunch. He came out of the hatch wheezing.

  "Those bloomin" stairs," he muttered. Yashim noticed that he was carrying a paper twist of sugared buns. "No babies, then?" He winked at Yashim.

  "Now, Palmuk, I don't think the gentleman wants all that. He is from the seraskier."

  Palmuk took the warning with an exaggerated roll of his eyes.

  "Oho, old Frog's Legs, eh? Well, efendi, you tell him not to worry about us. We get cold, we get wet, but we do our duty, ain't that right, Orhan?"

  "You might not think it, efendi," Orhan said, "but Palmuk's got the best pair of eyes in Galata. You'd think he could smell a fire before it's even started."

  Palmuk's face twitched. "Steady, there, boy." He turned to Yashim. "You wondering about them babies I mentioned? It's fireman's talk, that is. Baby--that's a fire. A boy's a fire on the Stamboul side. We hang out the baskets that way"--he gestured to four huge wicker baskets leaning against the inside of the parapet--"and that puts the lads in the right direction, see? A girl, that's Galata side."

  Yashim shook his head. However long you lived, however well you thought you knew this city, there was always something else to learn. Sometimes he thought that Istanbul was just a mass of codes, as baffling and intricate as its impenetrable alleys: a silent clamor of inherited signs, private languages, veiled gestures. He thought of the soup master and his coriander. So many little rules. So many unknown habits. The soup master had been a Janissary once. He looked at Palmuk again, wondering if he, too, wore a tattoo on his forearm.

  "You've been a fireman a long time, then?"

  Palmuk stared at him, expressionless. "Nine, ten years. What's it about?"

  Orhan said, "Gentleman wants to know about another tower. Not the old barracks place. A fourth tower. I told him there wasn't one."

  Palmuk dug into his paper twist and took out a bun, looked at it, and took a bite.

  "You did right, Orhan. You can cut along now, old Palmuk's in command."

  Orhan yawned and stretched. "I could use a nap," he said. "Fire in?"

  "Warm and bright, mate."

  With a happy sigh, and a small bow to Yashim, Orhan lowered himself down the hatch and went off to enjoy the brazier in the fireman's cuddy down below.

  Palmuk took a turn around the walls, looking out and finishing his bun.

  Yashim hadn't moved.

  Palmuk leaned over the parapet and looked down.

  "Funny," he said. "As you get older, you lose your head for heights. They ought to pay me more, don't you think?"

  He looked back at Yashim, his head cocked.

  "Know what I mean?"

  Yashim eyed the fireman coldly. "A fourth tower?"

  Palmuk bent over a basket and wedged his cone of buns between the wickerwork. Then he stood looking out toward Stamboul. He appeared not to have heard.

  Suppressing a sigh, Yashim fished for his purse beneath the folds of his cloak. Selecting three coins, he chinked them together in the palm of his hand.

  Palmuk turned. "Why, efendi, I call that handsome. A welcome contribution to the fund."

  The money disappeared into a pocket of his tunic.

  "It's information you want, mate. Efendi. A hint to the wise, am I right? You've been handsome with me, so I'll be handsome with you, as the saying goes. All right: there isn't a fourth tower. Never was, as far as I know."

  There was a silence. The fireman ran a hand over his mustaches.

  Their eyes locked.

  "Is that it?"

  The fireman shrugged. "It's what you asked for, ain't it?"

  "Right."

  Neither man moved for a few moments. Then Palmuk turned his back on Yashim and stood by the parapet, looking south to the Bosphorus, lost in the fog.

  "Mind the stairs as you go down, efendi," he said, not looking around. "They're slippery when it's wet."

  48

  ****************

  "IT'S mine," said the girl.

  It was the only thing she'd said so far.

  Yashim bit his lip. He'd been trying to talk to her for half an hour.

  Lightly, at first. Where was she from? Yes, he knew the place. Not the exact place but--he drew her a picture in words. Mountains. Mist. Dawn creeping down the valley. Was that like it?

  A blank. It's my ring.

  Heavy: we don't think it belongs to you. A serious charge. Unless you tell us what you know it'll be the worse for you, girl. Its mine.

  Cajolery: come on, Asul. You have a life half the women in Circassia would die for. Whims granted. Luxuries. A safe and honorable and enviable position. A lovely girl like you. The sultan's bed and then--who knows?

  She pushed out her lips and turned her head, threading a curl with her fingers.

  Yanked the curl savagely, pressed her lips together.

  "My ring," she blurted.

  "I see. She gave it to you?" Yashim asked gently.

  "Don't believe a word," the kislar agha interrupted. "They all lie like hyenas."

  Yashim raised his shoulders and swallowed his irritation. "Asul may answer as she pleases, but I hope it will be the truth."

  The kislar snorted. The girl flashed him a contemptuous look.

  "She never gave it to me."

  "Um. But did you have some agreement, some understanding about the ring?

  The girl gave him a strange look. "I don't know what you're talking about. What does it matter, anyway? She's dead, isn't she? Fucking fish food. What does it matter if I took the ring?"

  Yashim frowned. Did he have to explain the idea of theft? There was something particularly repugnant about stealing from a corpse. A sacrilege. If she didn't at least feel that, where could he begin?

  "It may matter very much indeed. Was she dead or alive when you took the ring?"

  But the gorgeous little face had clammed up again.

  Yashim knew these mountaineers, raised among the far-off peaks of the Caucasus. Hard as their stony houses, as their frozen tracks in winter. Living on air, forever feuding with their neighbors. God had made them beautiful, especially their women: but he made them hard.

  Wearily he put the question again. Alive? Or dead?

  She made no response.

  Perhaps she was right, after all. What did it matter? Yashim looked again at the ring in the palm of his hand. The dresser was right. It was no better than market trash, a plain band of silver, with a worn motif on the annulus that seemed to show two snakes swallowing each other's tails.

  He glanced at the girl. She was wearing bangles, a torque: all gold. Not unusual here, in the harem, where gold and jewels from across the empire went to satisfy the cravings of the women for--what had the valide called it:--distinction? Yet he knew how objects like these could take on a resonance no outsider could ever detect or guess at: how they could become the focus of spite or jealousy in spite of their intrinsic worthlessness, the cause of livid arguments, rages, tears, fights.

  The sultan's women had been raised on the hardscrabble. What was death out there? Babies died. Women died giving birth to babies who died, and men got shot in the back for an unlucky word--or lived to be a hundred. Death was nothing: honor counted. In the mountain world they came from, people took o
ffense at the lightest word and allowed feuds to develop into bloodshed over generations, long after their original causes were forgotten.

  Was it possible, Yashim asked himself, for a feud like that to have been carried into the palace? The distance that separated the Caucasus from Istanbul was too great. More than geographical.

  The snakes, what did they mean? Round and round they ran, forever swallowing their tails: a symbol of eternity, was it, derived from some impious mumbo-jumbo peddled by shamans in the mountains?

  Yashim sighed. He had the feeling that he was stirring up problems where they didn't exist, making trouble where it wasn't needed. Wasting his own time. All he had achieved was to sharpen the animosity he detected flying between Asul and the kislar agha.

  "That's it," he said. He bowed to the black eunuch and, taking him by the arm, drew him aside. "Five more minutes, Kislar. Give me that. Alone."

  Looking into his bloodshot eyes, Yashim found it hard to know what he was thinking.

  The kislar grunted. "You are wasting your time," he said. His eyes slid around to fasten on the girl.

  "The lala will talk to you in private." She glanced up, expressionless. "You know what we expect."

  And he left the room.

  49

  ****************

  ASUL watched the door close and very slowly turned her eyes to look at Yashim. He had the feeling that she had never looked at him until now. Perhaps never really registered his presence in the room.

  "Here," he said softly. "Catch."

  The girl's eyes followed the ring through the air. At the last moment, with a movement snakelike in its speed, she put out a hand. She clenched the ring in her fist, balled against her chest.

  "I've seen you before," she said in a small voice.

  Yashim blinked slowly but said nothing.

  Asul glanced down and uncurled her fingers. "He will take it from me again," she said.

  "But I will ask him not to," Yashim said.

  The girl almost smiled. A weary flicker of expression crossed her face. "You."

  Yashim pressed his palms to his face. "When you are hurt," he began slowly, "when you have lost something--or someone--it makes you sad, doesn't it? Sometimes change is good, and sometimes it makes us only want to cry. When you are young, it is hard to believe in pain or loss. But sadness is what makes us alive. The dead don't grieve.