Jason Goodwin

by The Janissary Tree

  Yashim froze. "The Eski Serai?"

  "It's what I heard. Way back when, them Janissaries used to guard the old palace. It fell apart. But the Karagozi didn't abandon the tekke. They found a way to keep it--protected, like. They got the whole fire tower built atop of it, see?"

  Yashim saw. "Another tekke, then. That's what I need. The fourth."

  The fire watcher cracked a smile. "There were dozens, efendi. Hundreds."

  "Yes. But for the fire watchers? Was there--a special one?"

  Old Palmuk wrestled himself upright. He swayed over his lap, shaking his head.

  "I wish I knew, efendi. I wish I knew what you were on about. I don't know who you think I am, but you've got the wrong man. I--I don't know what you mean."

  He turned to look at Yashim, and his gray eyes were round.

  "I used to be an errand boy. On the docks." He was nodding now, staring at Yashim as if for the first time. "Get this, efendi. I weren't there."

  Yashim thought: it's true.

  I give the fellow money. I buy him shirts. And he really doesn't know a thing.

  71

  ***********

  YASHIM found the Polish ambassador in a silken dressing gown embroidered with lions and horses in tarnished gold thread, which Yashim supposed was Chinese. He was drinking tea and staring quietly at a boiled egg, but when Yashim came in he put up a hand to shield his eyes, turning his head this way and that like an anxious tortoise. The sunshine picked out motes of dust climbing slowly toward the long windows.

  "Do you know what time it is?" Palewski said thickly. "Have tea."

  "Are you ill?"

  "Ill? No. But suffering. Why couldn't it be raining?"

  Unable to think of an answer, Yashim curled up in an armchair and let Palewski pour him a cup with a shaking hand.

  "Mezes," Yashim said. He glanced up. "Mezes. Little snacks before the main dish."

  "Must we talk about food?"

  "Mezes are a way of calling people's attention to the excellence of the feast to come. A lot of effort goes into their preparation. Or, I should say, their selection. Sometimes the best mezes are the simplest things. Fresh cucumbers from Karaman, sardines from Ortakoy, battered at most, and grilled... Everything at its peak, in its season: timing, you could say, is everything.

  "Now, take these murders. You were right--they're more than isolated acts of violence. There is a pattern, and more. Taken together, you see, they aren't an end in themselves. The meal doesn't end with the mezes, does it? The mezes announce the feast.

  "And these killings, like mezes, depend on timing," he continued. "I've been wondering over the last three days, why now? The murders, I mean, the cadets. Almost by chance, I discover that the sultan is set to issue an edict in a few days. A great slew of reforms."

  "Ali yes, the edict." Palewski nodded and put his fingertips together.

  "You know about it?" Yashim's argument collapsed in astonishment.

  "In a roundabout way. An explanation was given to, Ali, selected members of the diplomatic community in Istanbul a few weeks ago." He saw that Yashim was about to speak, and raised a hand. "When I say selected, I mean that I for one was not included. It isn't hard to see why, if I'm right about the edict and what it means. One of its purposes--its primary purpose, for all I know--is to make the Porte eligible for foreign loans. Poland, obviously, is in no position to influence the bond market. So they left me out. It was essentially a Big Power arrangement. I heard about it from the Swedes, who got it from the Americans, I believe."

  "You mean the Americans were invited?"

  "Odd as it seems. But then, you know what Americans are? They're the world experts at borrowing money in Europe. The Porte wants them on its side. Perhaps they can coordinate their efforts. And, to be frank, I don't think the Porte has ever quite managed to work out whose side the Americans are on. Your pashas are still digesting the Declaration of Independence sixty years after the event."

  Palewski reached for the teapot. "The idea of a republic has always fascinated them, in a schoolboy sort of way. The House of Osman must be the longest-lived royal line in Europe. Some more tea?"

  Yashim put out his cup and saucer. "I've been wondering who knew about the edict. Foreign powers didn't occur to me."

  "But foreign powers," said Palewski, with patient cynicism, "are the whole point: foreign powers, foreign loans."

  "Yes. Yes, of course."

  They drank their tea in silence for a moment, marked only by the ticking of the German clock.

  "Your Janissaries," Palewski said after a while. "Do you still believe that they exist?"

  Yashim nodded. "Like it or not, I'm sure. You saw them blotted out, you told me. Very well. Poland, as the world supposes, vanished fifty years ago.

  You can't even find it on a map. But that's not what you tell me. You say it endures. Poland exists in language, in memory, in faith. It lives on, as an idea. I'm talking about the same thing.

  "About the fire towers, I was only partly right. I made a link between the three fire towers I knew about--the two still standing, as well as the one that was burned and demolished in 1826--and the cadets, whose bodies all turned up nearby. I needed to find a fourth fire tower, didn't I? But I can't. There never was a fourth tower. But I knew the pattern was right. The fire towers had the hand of the Janissaries on them, just like these murders. It had to be right."

  "Perhaps. But without a fourth tower it makes no sense."

  "That's what I felt, too. Unless there was something else about the fire towers that I couldn't see--something that could link all three of them to another place that isn't a fire tower at all."

  Palewski thrust out his lower Up and sighed. "I hate to say it, Yash, but you're skating on very thin ice. Let's forget my reservations for a moment. You suspect the Janissaries of murdering these cadets, because of the wooden spoons and all the rest of it." He wrinkled his nose. "The pattern of the fire towers comes to you because the Janissaries once manned them, as the city's firemen. Abandon the fire towers, and what happens to your Janissary theory? Tell me that. You can't have it both ways."

  Yashim smiled. "But I think I can. I found what I needed to know a couple of days ago, but it wasn't until today that I saw how it all fits together. The Galata Tower housed a Karagozi tekke, a place sacred to the Janissaries. The lost watch tower at the Janissary barracks had one, too."

  "But the Bayezit Tower," Palewski objected, "is modern. And that's exactly what I mean. By the time it was built the Janissaries--and the Karagozi, too--were already history. Really, Yash, this Janissary obsession is only getting in your way."

  "I don't think so. I just discovered that the Bayezit Tower was built smack on top of an old Karagozi tekke at the Eski Serai. So that makes three. What I'm looking for now is another Karagozi tekke--and I don't even know where to start."

  Palewski groped on the table beside him and produced a set of leather boards. Inside was a single foolscap sheet of paper, folded in two, but loose.

  He opened the sheet and there, to Yashim's surprise, was a meticulously executed bird's-eye view of Istanbul, in ink. Where the sky should have been, the air was thick with names, notes, and numbers.

  "You were asking for a map. Last night, I remembered Ingiliz Mustafa," he said. "I ransacked the place to find this."

  "English Mustafa?"

  "He was actually a Scotsman. Campbell. He came to Istanbul about sixty years ago, to start a school of mathematics for the artillerymen. Became a Muslim, too."

  "He's still alive?"

  Palewski snorted. "No, no. I'm afraid even the practice of Islam couldn't do that for him. One of his pet obsessions was the holiness of Istanbul-- how the city was steeped in faith. I daresay he became a very good Muslim, but you can't easily overcome a Scottish training in the sciences. This map shows all the mosques, saintly tombs, dervish tekkes, and such that he could locate in the city. He had it printed here, too."

  He dipped into the pocket of his dressing gown fo
r a pair of reading glasses.

  "Look, every holy place in the city has a number. The key is up here. Fourteen: Camu Sultan Mehmed. Mehmed's Mosque. Twenty-five: Turbe Hasan. The Tomb of Hasan. Thirty, look, Tekke Karagozi. And another one. Here, too."

  Yashim shook his head in disbelief.

  "Only a foreigner would do something like this," he said. "I mean it's so--so--" He was going to say pointless but thought better of it. "So unusual."

  Palewski grunted. "He wanted to show how his adopted faith was embedded in the very fabric of the city. Plenty of Karagozi tekkes to choose from, too."

  Yashim peered at the map for a while. "Too many," he murmured. "Which is the right one? Which is the fourth?"

  Palewski leaned back with his fingers over his eyes, thinking. "Didn't you tell me that the three fire stations were also the oldest tekkes in the city? Isn't that what the fire watchers said?"

  Yashim's mind began to race. Palewski continued: "Perhaps I'm just saying this because I'm a Pole, and all Poles are at bottom antiquarians. This dressing gown, for instance. You know why I wear it?"

  "Because it's cozy," said Yashim absently.

  "Yes and no. It's Sarmatian. Years ago, you see, we Poles believed that we were connected to a half-mythical tribe of warriors who came from Sarmatia, somewhere in central Asia. I suppose we didn't know properly where we came from and went looking for pedigree, if you like. There was a rage for it, and the supposed Sarmatian style--you know, silk and feathers and crimson leather. I found this hanging in a wardrobe when I came here. It's a relic from another age. That's what I like best about it. Every morning I envelop myself in history. In the fancied glory of the past. Also it's jolly comfortable, as you say.

  "Well, what makes me sit up is the thought that these tekkes are old, really old. Maybe the first ever established in the city. That's your pedigree, if you like. That's where your chaps might want to begin. Maybe the fourth tekke is also one of the original lodges in the city. The first, or the fourth, whatever. So you need to look for a tekke that's as old as the other three you know about."

  Yashim nodded. The four original tekkes. It fitted: it was what traditionalists would want.

  "Which might explain something else that's been bothering me," he said aloud. "Not the timing--that's the edict--but the number. Why four? If you're right, if someone is going back to the beginning, trying to start over, then four's the obvious number. Four is the number of strength, like the legs of a table. It's a reflection of earthly order. Four corners of the earth. Four winds. Four elements. Four is bedrock."

  "And it's going back, to the very origins of the whole Ottoman enterprise! Holy war--and Istanbul as the very navel of the world."

  Yashim could hear the soup master explaining that the Janissaries had built the empire: that they, under the guidance of the Karagozi babas, had won this city for the faith.

  "Whenever things have gone wrong, people have stepped forward to explain that we've simply deviated from the true old ways, that we should go back and try to be what we were when the whole of Europe lay trembling at our feet."

  "Well," said Palewski drily, "not the whole of Europe."

  "Poland excepted, the valiant foe," Yashim said generously.

  A look of doubt crossed his face. "But how do we work out which was the original, fourth tekke? Your map here doesn't give dates, even if anyone knew them."

  Palewski bit his nails.

  "If we had an older map," he said slowly, "a really good one, to cross-reference with this one. Most of these tekkes, after all, wouldn't exist. You might get somewhere by a process of elimination."

  He rubbed his palms together.

  "It would have to be a very good map," he mused. Then he shook his head. "To be honest, I'm not sure there's anything early enough for you. I certainly don't have such a thing."

  Yashim set his jaw and stared into the fire.

  "Does the name Lorich mean anything to you?" he asked quietly. "Flensburg. Fifteen something."

  Palewski's eyes widened.

  "How on earth, Yash? It's the most astonishing panorama of the city ever made. Or so I've heard. I've never seen it, to be honest. There must have been several copies but you won't find one here in Istanbul, that's for sure.

  "An astonishing panorama," Yashim echoed. "You're wrong, my friend. I think I know just where to find it."

  72

  ***********

  HALF an hour later, Yashim was standing in the portico of the Russian embassy, toying with the irritating reflection that knowing was not altogether the same thing as finding. He was only half a mile from Palewski's ambassadorial residence and scarcely twenty yards from the map that he had seen hanging in the gallery in the vestibule upstairs. But for all his ability to reach the map, it might have been in Siberia.

  The ambassador, it appeared, was not at home. Yashim wondered if he kept Palewski's hours: perhaps he was even now in bed with his luscious wife. The idea upset him, and he asked to see the first secretary instead. But the first secretary could not be contacted, either. It occurred to Yashim to ask to see the ambassador's wife: but common sense, as well as an inherited notion of propriety, ruled that out. Even Christian women didn't come to the door for every man who knocked.

  "Is there anyone I can speak to? It's very urgent."

  The moment he heard the deliberate military tread, Yashim knew who could be found to speak to him. The crippled hand. The ugly scar.

  "Good afternoon," Potemkin said. "Won't you come in?"

  As he followed the young diplomat into the great hall, his eyes flickered automatically to the stairs.

  "The staff do not usually admit people without an appointment. I am sorry if you have been waiting a long time. The ambassador and his staff have a heavy workload today. His Excellency is expected at the palace tonight. I am afraid it is impossible that they should be interrupted."

  He sounded nervous, on edge, Yashim thought.

  "You may be able to help me. The other day I saw an interesting map outside the ambassador's office, which I'd like to look at again. I wonder--?"

  Potemkin looked puzzled. "A map?"

  "Yes. By Melchior Lorich. It is hanging in the vestibule upstairs."

  "I am sure His Excellency would be delighted to show it to you," Potemkin said, more smoothly. "If you would care to put your request in writing, I will personally see that it receives his attention."

  "Now?"

  Potemkin managed a half smile. "I'm afraid that's impossible. Requests of this nature take, what, a month or so to organize. Perhaps we can cut it down, though. Shall we say three weeks?"

  "I know the map is just there, up the stairs. I'll disturb no one."

  Potemkin continued to smile and said nothing.

  "Fifteen minutes," Yashim said desperately.

  "You forget, monsieur, that this is a working embassy. It is neither a museum nor a public gallery. But I am sure that His Excellency the Prince would be delighted to consider your request--in good time. In the meantime, unless you have anything else--?"

  "I don't suppose you have had a chance to look at the porter's accounts yet," Yashim observed sardonically.

  "No," the attache agreed softly. "Not a chance. Allow me to show you out, monsieur."

  73

  ***********

  The ambassador's wife, at that very moment, was being helped to undress by five eager handmaidens, who took each garment as it was relinquished and examined it with varying degrees of excitement and admiration.

  The valide's suggestion that she should bathe with the women of the sultan's harem, coming on top of her offer of a puff on the narghile, had temporarily robbed Eugenia of the power of speech. She was not easily nonplussed, but it had occurred to her immediately that the sultan might take it into his head to enjoy a bath himself. Alternatively, that he might choose to enjoy the spectacle from a concealed lattice. Finally, she wondered if the valide was simply teasing her.

  "It's quite all right," the valide said
. "The sultan never uses the women's bath. The girls would be delighted, but if you'd rather not..."

  That's two of my three concerns answered, at least, Eugenia thought. "I'd be charmed," she answered.

  Minutes later she was laughing as the girls examined her stays, pulling funny faces. One girl puffed up her cheeks and blew. Another, to general merriment, mimed turning a little lock with a key. With a shrug of her firm, creamy shoulders, she demonstrated to Eugenia that Ottoman women enjoyed certain freedoms denied their European cousins. But when Eugenia stepped out of her petticoat, they stood back with what looked like sincere admiration for the effect--until they caught sight of her pubic hair. At this, with equal sincerity, they simply goggled in surprise. Then they helped her unlace and escorted her into the bath.

  Later, Eugenia was to reflect on the difference between a Turkish bath and a Russian one. On her father's estates outside Moscow she had often leaped from the steamy log cabin to gasp with pleasure in the snow, while the bathing attendants scrupulously beat her skin to a glow with a whippy bundle of birch twigs. In the harem bath the pleasure was attained without the pain, such as it was: the pleasure seemed infinite and curiously detailed. She was soaped, and rubbed, and massaged, and it seemed that no part of her body escaped the attentions of the girls, or of the stalwart woman who flexed her limbs, cracked her neck, and even bent her fingers and toes. It was only through a massive effort of will, which she afterward half regretted, that she conveyed her opinion of the hot wax and a razor that the bath attendant automatically produced. By the time she had bathed, and she was lounging naked on a sofa in the room beyond, surrounded by other women smoking, sipping coffee, and assessing their prize-- and all her clothes--Eugenia had no idea how much time had passed. The chirruping of the women was very restful, and their birdlike cadences mingled with the smell of applewood and tobacco to take her back, when she closed her eyes, to a childhood in autumn, by a river far away, and not so long ago.

  She was woken by a cool hand on her shoulder. Automatically she pushed herself upright and found the kislar agha impassively staring down at her. Then he nodded several times and showed his little teeth, making a gesture that she was to rise.