Out here, on the leads, he had the perfect view. From down below, Aya Sofia seemed to rise in a single burst, the massive central dome supported on a buttressed ring that floated in the air over two half domes on either side. This was how artists since time immemorial had pictured it, round shouldered like so many mosques; but in this they erred. Built in the sixth century, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian's great church was a reconciliation of two opposed forms. The great circle of the dome, rising on a round gallery of arches, thrust itself skyward through a lead-covered square. There was space at the four corners, where the pitch of the roof was slight, at most, and so it was from here, two hundred feet above the ground, that the seraskier saw across the seven hills, over the Seraglio to the dark waters beyond, touched here and there by a bobbing lantern. Farther west he imagined the water reflecting the flames that even now were shooting skyward, sending out brilliant showers of sparks, springing their way from rooftop to rooftop, consuming the wooden walls of the old portside houses, bursting through doorways, roaring down alleys. An unstoppable, purifying furnace fueled by two thousand years of trickery and deceit.
The flames belonged to the city. All those long centuries they had smoldered, now and then breaking loose, feeding on the packed-up tinder that had been sifting into the shadows and the corners of Istanbul, its crooked angles dredged with dust and detritus and the filth of a million benighted souls. A city of fire and water. Dirt and disease. A city that stank on the water's edge like a decaying corpse, too rotten to be moved, shining by the oily bloom of putrefaction.
He turned to the south. How dark the Seraglio looked! Shuttered behind its ancient walls, how it brooded on its own eminence! But the seraskier knew better: it was a vulture's nest, scattered with the filth and droppings of the generations, piled on the bones of the dead, filled with the insistent gaping cry of fledglings warmed by their own excrement and fed with filth plucked from the surrounding midden of the city in which it had been built.
The seraskier stepped forward to the gutter and looked down into the square where his men were standing by their guns. Order and discipline, he thought: good men, molded these last few years in proper habits of deference and obedience. They knew the penalty for stepping out of line. Order and obedience made an army, and an army was a tool in the hands of a man who knew how to use it. Without order you had only a rabble that snarled and bit like a mad dog, ignorant of its purpose, open to every suggestion and prey to every whim.
Well, this night he would show the people who was stronger: the blind rabble and the vulture's nest, or lead and shot and the power of discipline.
And when the smoke cleared, a new beginning. A brave new start.
He smiled, and his eyes glittered in the firelight.
Then he stiffened. He eased away from the wall and slid the pistol from his belt.
He cocked the firing pin and laid the barrel in a straight line, pointing back toward the arch.
Someone was coming up the stairs.
The shadow lengthened, and the seraskier saw the eunuch blinking as he turned his head from side to side.
"Well done, Yashim," said the seraskier, smiling. "I wondered if you would come."
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The seraskier tapped his foot on the sloping roof.
"Do you know what this is? Do you see where we are?"
Yashim gazed at him.
"Of course you do. The roof of the Great Mosque. You see the dome, above your head? The Greeks called it Hagia Sophia, the Church of the Holy Wisdom. One hundred and eighty-two feet high. Enclosed volume, nine million cubic feet. Do you know how old it is?"
"It was built before the days of the Prophet," Yashim said cautiously.
"Incredible, isn't it?" The seraskier chuckled. He seemed to be in the best of spirits. "And it took just five years to build. Can you imagine what an effort that must have required? Or what we could do with such energy today, applied to something actually worthwhile?"
He laughed again and stamped his foot.
"How does something so old get to last so long? Well, I'll tell you. It's because no one, not even the Conqueror Mehmet himself, had the wit or courage to knock it down. Do I surprise you?"
Yashim frowned. "Not entirely," he replied quietly.
The seraskier looked up.
"Thousands of sheets of beaten lead," he said. "Acres of it. And the pillars. And the dome. Just imagine, Yashim! It's been weighing on us all for fourteen hundred years. We can't even see beyond it, or around it. We can't imagine a world without it. Can we? Do you know, it's like a stench, nobody notices it after a while. Not even when it's poisoning them." He leaned forward. The gun, Yashim noticed, was still steady in his hand. "And it's poisoning us. All this." He waved a hand. "Year after year, habit piled on prejudice, ignorance on greed. Come on, Yashim, you know it as well as I do. We're smothered by it. Tradition! It's just grime that accumulates. Why, it even took your balls!"
Yashim could no longer see the seraskier's face against the light of the fires at his back, but he heard him snicker at his own thrust.
"I've just come from the palace," Yashim said. "The sultan is safe. There was a coup of sorts--"
"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. Reinstate 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. 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 s
ystem 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 labor, 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 fight 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 around 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.
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"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-moi," the fair one said. "Mais---parlayvoo francais?"
The seraskier spun around 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 around the seraskier, putting up a hand to wave.
"Je vous connais, m'sieur--I 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 out by a muffled crump that sounded like a clap of thunder. The ground 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 that 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 fight were the wrong way around.
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 reappeared, lower down, loping south across a cat-slide roof.
For a moment the whole city lay spread out beneath his 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."
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"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 that 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 that 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 quarter.
Palewski put up two fingers and touched his mustache, to hide a smile.
"Pally's the word for it, Yash. I've a mind to present the sultan with a little something that arrived for me this morning, saved by providence from the fire in the port."
"Ali, 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?"
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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 light-headed.
Jason Goodwin Page 29