Jason Goodwin

by The Janissary Tree

  "Even here, there is plenty of sadness. Even in the Abode of Felicity. The Happy Place."

  He paused. Asul had not moved, except to rub the ring slowly between her fingers.

  "You don't have to say anything, Asul. Not now. Not to me. The sadness is yours, and only yours. But I want to give you something else, besides that ring."

  Asul raised her chin.

  "Advice." Yashim inclined his head, wondering how much he might say. How much she might understand. "Nothing can be changed, Asul. The loss is never repaired, the pain is never fully over. That is our fate, as men or women.

  "Bitterness is not a better kind of grief, Asul. Grief has its place, but bitterness invades a wound like rot. Slowly, bit by bit, it shuts you down. And in the end, even though you are alive, you are really dead. I've seen it happen."

  Asul pressed her lips together. She glanced downward, blinking. "Will I keep the ring?" Her voice was small, unsteady.

  Yashim gazed at her, silent for a moment. A few minutes longer, and she would tell him what she knew. And with that single act of self-betrayal, perhaps, the bitterness would return.

  He found the handle of the door.

  "I will speak to the valide myself," he said.

  He needed to speak to her anyway, he thought. To fulfill a promise. To procure an invitation.

  50

  ****************

  THE seraskier clawed his way to the edge of the divan with his heels and clambered to his feet.

  "You should have told me." His voice was clipped, correct. "I did not ask you to speak to foreigners. Unbelievers."

  Yashim, sitting on the divan, put his chin upon his knees.

  "Do you know why I brought you in? Do you think it was because I wanted discretion?" He glared at Yashim. "Because you're supposed to be fast. My men are dying. I want to know who is killing them, and I don't have a lot of time. It's Monday already; we've got just one week exactly before the review. Days have gone by, and you've told me nothing. You were quick enough in the Crimea. I want to see that right here. In Istanbul."

  The veins on his temples were pulsing.

  "Poems. Taxi rides. They tell me nothing."

  Yashim got to his feet and bowed. When he reached the doorway, the seraskier said, "Those meetings were fixed up by me."

  Yashim's cloak swirled. "Meetings?"

  The seraskier stood against the window with his hands behind his back.

  "Meeting the Russians. I've made it my business to see that my boys get an education. Present arms and salute your superior officer! Fine. Learn how to load a breech gun or to drill like a Frenchman? That's the half of it. Someday we are going to be fighting the Russians. Or the French. Or the English.

  "How do they think? How willingly do the men fight? Who are their heroes? You can learn a lot if you understand another man's heroes."

  The seraskier cracked his knuckles.

  "I could pretend that none of that matters. There was a time when we met our enemies on the field and crushed them underfoot. We were very good. But times have changed. We are not as fast as we were, and the enemy has become faster.

  "We can't afford to ignore them--Russians, Frenchmen. Yes, even those Egyptians can teach us something, but not if we suck on narghiles here, in Istanbul, trying to imagine what they are like. It's for us to go out and learn how they think."

  Yashim scratched his ear. "And you think your officers can learn all this by having coffee with the Russian military attache?"

  The seraskier thought: he is not a military man. Not a man at all.

  He spoke with exaggerated precision. "You asked me the other day if I spoke French. In fact I do not. Nowadays we have a book, a dictionary, which gives all the words in Turkish and French so that our men can read some of the French textbooks. This book never existed when I was young. Apart from the officers we engage to teach our men, I have never met a Frenchman. Or an Englishman or a Russian. And never, of course, any of their ladies. Of course not. I would not know how to--"

  He broke off, gripping the air with outstretched hands.

  "How to act. How to speak with them. You know? Thirty years ago the idea would not have occurred to me. Now I think about it all the time."

  "I understand." Yashim felt a wave of pity for the seraskier, in his Western uniform, his efficient boots, his buttoned tunic. These were symbols he endured, not knowing exactly why, like one of those simpletons in the bazaar who feel that no medicine is good unless it causes them some pain. Magic boots, magic buttons. Ferenghi magic.

  "Things are moving fast. Even here." The seraskier rubbed a hand across his chin, watching Yashim. "The sultan recognizes that our military review presents him an opportunity. Next Monday, all the city will be watching. People will see the banner of the Prophet at the head of the troops. The jingle of cavalry, brightwork sparkling, beautiful mounts. There'll be the deep lines of soldiery, marching in step. Whatever they think of us now, they'll be moved. They will be impressed, I'm sure of that. Better still, it's going to make them proud."

  The seraskier raised his chin with the population, and his nostrils flared as if pride were something he already smelled in the air.

  "To coincide with the display, the sultan will issue an edict. An edict that will move us all along in the direction he wants us to take. It is up to us to support him. To try to learn the good things that the infidels can teach us now. Even, as you say, by having coffee with the Russians."

  But Yashim had stopped listening. "An edict?"

  The seraskier lowered his voice. "You may as well know. Changes will be made in many areas. Equality of the people under a single law. Administration. Ministers instead of pashas, that sort of thing. It will follow the way the army has been reformed on Western lines, and it will not be enough. Naturally."

  Yashim felt flattened. What did he really know about anything? In six days, an imperial edict. An order for change. With an effort he pushed aside the thoughts that crowded in.

  "Why the Russians? Why not send our boys to have tea with the English? Or drink wine with the French ambassador?"

  The seraskier rubbed a hand across the back of his enormous neck. "The Russians--were more interested."

  "And that didn't strike you as being suspicious?"

  "I'm not naive. I took a risk. The boys from the Guard were--what shall I say?--sheltered. I thought it safer for them to make some mistakes now, in Istanbul, than to be ignorant later, on the battlefield."

  Yet they might have survived a battle, Yashim thought.

  In Istanbul they didn't have a chance.

  51

  ****************

  THE man who kills in the dark is not afraid of darkness.

  He waits for it. It is reliable, it always comes.

  Darkness is his friend.

  His feet were bare, to make no sound. He knew he would make no sound.

  Years ago, he was one of the Quiet Men. One of the elite. Now he watched the daylight ebb from the grating that lay overhead. In four hours' time he would lift the grating as easily and silently as a feather, and begin his work. But now he would wait.

  He remembered the day of selection. The colonel sat with a rose on his lap and a blindfold over his eyes at the center of the barracks hall and dared the men to approach him, one by one. To lift the rose--and return to their place. The reward: a commission in the sappers.

  The stone floor of the hall was strewn with dried chickpeas.

  Nobody had the dexterity and the patience that he had. His self-control. One or two others reached the rose: but their eagerness betrayed them.

  They taught him how to move in the dark, making no sound. It was easy.

  They taught him how to live underground. They buried him alive, breathing through a cane.

  They explained to him how shadows worked, what the eye could see, the difference between movement and movement.

  They ordered him to be a shadow. Live like a rat. Work like a miner. Kill like a snake.

 
Patience. Obedience. Time, they said, is an illusion: the hours pass like seconds, seconds can seem like lifetimes.

  Inch forward under the enemy's lines. Burrow into his defenses. Listen for the enemy sappers, the countermines, the creaking of the props. Absorb the dark like a second skin. Kill in silence.

  And if he was captured--it happened, that far forward of the lines--say nothing. Give nothing.

  They didn't talk much, anyway. That suited him, too, he'd never been a talker. The sappers were the Quiet Men.

  He hadn't needed friends when he had the corps. He belonged. He shared faith. And the faith carried him through. Through the cramped tunnel. Beyond the cramped muscle. Over fear and panic into the timeless and immobile center of all things.

  Then came the betrayal. The shelling of the barracks. Dust, falling masonry, splinters of stone. A wall that hung in the air before it fell. He remembered that moment: an entire wall, thirty feet high, blown from its foundations and sailing, hanging in the air.

  He remembered how it flexed and buckled like the flanks of a galloping horse. As if the air itself was thick as water. It was a moment that seemed like an eternity.

  It gave him ample time, then, to seek the hollow and roll up into it.

  Like a man entombed. But not dead. Breathing through an aperture in the rubble. Working the rubble gradually from head to toe like a worm coming up for the dew.

  The grating overhead was now invisible. The sapper could see it, though, by moving his head just a fraction of an inch. By using the light that no one else could see.

  He raised his chin. This was the time.

  Patience was all that mattered.

  Obedience was all that mattered.

  People would die. People had to die.

  Only death could sanctify the empire's rebirth.

  Only sacrifice could cleanse and protect the holy shrines.

  The four pillars of the Karagozi.

  The assassin felt in his pouch. He touched the ground with the palm of his hand.

  And then, like a cat, he began to move.

  52

  ****************

  YASHIM leaned forward and fixed his eyes on page 34 of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. But it was no use. The book had been open on the same page for half an hour.

  Whose law would it be? Would it be like the Frankish laws, which allowed the Greeks to have a country but denied the same convenience to the Poles? And would it work as well in the highlands of Bulgaria as in the deserts of Tripolitana?

  The necessary leap? Perhaps. A single law for everybody, regardless of their faith, their speech, their parentage. Why not? He doubted that such a thing was sacrilegious, but then... plenty of others would think it was.

  As he revolved these questions in his mind, Yashim wondered who else, precisely, knew about the edict. The sultan and his viziers, of course. High-ranking dignitaries like the seraskier himself, no doubt. The religious leaders--the mufti, the rabbi, the patriarch? Probably. But the rank and file--priests and imams, say? No. And not the common people of the city. For them it was to be a surprise. As it had been for him.

  He snapped the book shut and closed his eyes, leaning back on the divan.

  In the past few hours he had thought this through a dozen times. There was going to be trouble, he could be sure of that.

  But there was something else.

  Something he knew was there, like a face in the crowd. Something he'd missed.

  53

  ****************

  The man sat suddenly upright.

  The assassin thought: he smells me. It made things more interesting. He'd been trained to infiltrate like an odor, not as a man. Now the odor clung to him.

  The man sniffed.

  Click.

  Very slowly the man got to his feet. A knife in his hand.

  Now where had that come from?

  The assassin smiled. He felt for his pouch. His fingers closed on something hard.

  The man with the knife stood crouching, craning his neck.

  "Who's that? What do you want?"

  The assassin didn't move.

  A breeze caught the tattered curtain at the window and it flapped. The man with the knife wheeled around, then back again. He peered into the dark.

  He craned his neck. Very slowly he turned his head.

  He was trying to hear.

  The assassin waited. Watching.

  The man's head moved through the midway point of its turn.

  The assassin flicked his wrist and the cord snaked out. He plucked it back with a fierce grunt and the man with the knife was jerked off balance, scrabbling with both hands at his neck.

  The assassin gave the cord another savage tug.

  The man started sawing at the air, searching to cut the cord. The assassin stepped out of the shadows and pushed him down. He caught the knife wrist and wedged his thumb between the tendons: the knife clattered to the floor as the hand spasmed open.

  The assassin was astride him now. He put a hand to his belt and slid out a wooden spoon.

  The man on the floor was choking.

  The assassin slackened the cord for an instant. His victim gave a shuddering gasp, but it was a false respite. The assassin slipped the wooden spoon beneath the cord and began to twist it.

  54

  ****************

  A fat man, eager for sleep, felt himself rolled off the bed and hit the ground. He opened his eyes and saw a pair of women's feet.

  "All right, petal? Here's your kit. Shove it on, love, I'm done. Go on."

  The fat man scrambled blearily into his robes. Get out, he thought. Five on the table, he'd be gone before she knew.

  The woman watched him scurry through the door.

  She was done for the night. Done with outside business, anyhow. No one would come now.

  Upstairs would know the final customer had left. She was left with one more trick to turn, the worst.

  Carrying her lamp, she climbed the stairs. At the top she paused, hearing nothing.

  Very slowly she pushed the door ajar. The room smelled terrible.

  Silently she put in her head. She stretched out her hand, carrying the little lamp, and the shadows started to flicker around the room.

  Months ago, the woman had lost her faith in God. She had begged, she had prayed, she had pleaded with Him night after night, and every dawn had brought the same answer. So she cursed Him. Nothing changed. In the end, she had forgotten Him.

  But what she saw now was like a revelation.

  "Thank God," she said.

  55

  ****************

  YASHIM went down to the water stairs at first light, still clutching the note that the kadi had written shortly after the morning prayer. By the time he was settled in the bottom of the boat, the note was limp with the exhalations of Istanbul's morning damp, between fog and drizzle, but he didn't need to read it again.

  While the rower dragged busily at his heavy sculls and sent the caique skimming toward Seraglio Point, Yashim drew up his knees on the horsehair cushion and automatically let his weight settle on his left arm, to trim the fragile boat. A wooden spoon, the kadi had written: having seen the bag of bones and wooden spoons tipped out over his floor only yesterday, the coincidence had inspired him to inform Yashim.

  Twenty minutes later, the rower turned the caique and backed it neatly against the Yedikule stairs in a flurry of backstrokes and shouts.

  As soon as Yashim saw the little man sprawled facedown in the mud with a wooden spoon bound tightly to the back of his neck, he knew that this was not the fourth cadet. The corpse's hands were by his ears, his knees slightly bent, and there was a curve in his back that made him look, Yashim thought, as if he were simply peering down into a hole in the mud.

  Yashim rolled the corpse over and looked at its face.

  The staring eyeballs. The protruding tongue.

  He shook his head. The night watchman, who had been squatting close to the body for several hours, spat on
the ground.

  "Do you know him?"

  The night watchman shrugged. "Fings "appen, innit?" He glanced over at the corpse and brightened. "Yer, good lad an' all. Did some blokes a favor. Women, y'know, and all that."

  He scratched his head.

  "Mind you, fackin" tough." His simple mind slipped into the reverse key. "Bit too 'eavy, if you ask me. They didn't like "im, not the women."

  Yashim sighed. "These women. Are you saying he ran a brothel?"

  "Yeah. Funny-lookin" geezer, too."

  Yashim walked away, squelching in mud up to his ankles. Up on the quay he saw the entrance to a courtyard and picked his way across a scattering of rubbish to a pump. He cranked the handle. A thin trickle of brown water dribbled from the spout.

  People were stirring in the apartments around the courtyard. A shutter banged and a woman leaned out of an upstairs window.

  "Hey, what you doin"?"

  "I'm washing my feet," Yashim muttered.

  "I'm chuckin" this bucket, so watch out."

  Yashim beat a hasty retreat, the mud still clinging to his feet. What a foul district this was!

  He walked around the corner, hoping to find a cab or a sedan chair. Every doorway seemed to have its ragged beggar or snoring drunk: some of them stared blearily at Yashim as he walked past. The bars were supposed to close at midnight, but Yashim knew that they tended to stay open for as long as anyone had money to spend, finally pushing the last patrons into the street when their purses were empty and their guts were full. He couldn't understand the attraction. Preen had once argued with him, saying that she enjoyed the bars, their mixture of happy and sad.

  "Except for drunks, you can never tell who you'll meet, or why they're there. Everybody has a story. I like stories," she had said.

  Too many of those stories ended like this, Yashim felt, soaking up your own vomit in a cold doorway. Or head down in the mud, dead, like that crook-backed brothel keeper he'd just seen, maintaining the tone of the neighborhood.

  Hadn't Preen mentioned speaking to a hunchback?