On the divan Preen was sitting with her elbows in, holding her hands palms up. Preen was a dancer and her gestures were expressive and precise. Yashim recognized her pose immediately. It was a gesture as old as Istanbul itself. The Greeks had captured it here, in light, fastened to the domes of their churches; but it was common to all the city’s faiths, and to the people of the city in the centuries to come.
The gesture of acceptance.
It lasted only a moment before Preen rolled off the divan and sprang to her feet.
“You owe him something,” she said emphatically. “Getting you away from Topkapi.”
“I don’t owe him anything, Preen.” Yashim gave a curious half-smile. “I think I saved his life.”
She paused on the tips of her toes and whirled a finger at him.
“For that, Yashim, I think he will never forgive you.”
62
“ You will do this, Yashim, because I order it done. I do not wish to repeat myself.”
“I can talk to them. I think they are only afraid, Fevzi efendi.”
“Give me the torch.”
“Wait, efendi. They spoke Georgian.”
But Fevzi efendi does not wait.
Later, when the fire is dying down, he seems to have forgotten all about Yashim’s protest. He slaps him on the back.
“This is how it must be done,” he says quietly. “Permanent.”
63
In the palace, in Bezmialem’s room, Ibou gave a small cry of disgust.
Ibou had always hated mice. Topkapi had been patrolled by a small army of cats, who came and went from the harem quarters at will, padding along ledges, creeping from rooftops and the branches of trees, invading the sanctuary night after night. They were tolerated as long as they kept quiet; only recalcitrant toms were dropped into sacks and drowned. The girls were amused by their feline affairs; some of them even put out milk.
But there were no cats at Besiktas. No cats, and now-mice.
With a moue of distaste, Ibou dropped the skirt onto the floor.
“Tulip!”
He heard the eunuch padding along the corridor.
“Aga?”
“This!” He pointed to the offending mass. “A mouse nest”-he dropped his voice to a whisper-“under a skirt that hasn’t been moved for days. It is too much.”
Tulip peered apologetically at the little brown heap. Then his long black face turned green, and he looked up wide-eyed.
“No, aga, it is not a nest. I cannot touch it! Allah preserve us!”
“What is it?” Ibou felt the eunuch’s horror invading his scalp: it made his hair crawl. “What is it, then?”
He peered more closely, then started back as if he had been stung.
“Bezmialem-where is she?”
Tulip shrank back. “Sh-she is sewing, Aga. With the other girls.”
“Keep her there, and fetch the imam.”
It was not, after all, a mouse’s nest: not unless mice made up figurines of wax and hair, studded with little children’s teeth.
64
On the slab, in the steam room, Yashim shuddered as the heat attacked his limbs; sweat poured from his skin.
All around him, men were being soaped and sluiced, scrubbed and pummeled by the bath attendants. He could hear the clack of sandals on the stone and the gurgle of running water in the traps. He pressed his fingers to his eyes.
For most of his adult life, Yashim had struggled to put the past behind him.
What is done is done, people said. They gelded him, but he did not die. He revived to become useful: it was another way to be a man. Day by day he lived and breathed and slept to live another day, without bitterness, without remorse. That was the lesson he had learned at the palace school: not how to wrestle, or to memorize the Koran, but how to shed his regrets, how to master his memories, so that he could hold himself together as a man.
He pressed his feet against the side of the slab.
He had made himself… quiet.
Fevzi Pasha had detected that. Fevzi Pasha had used it.
Yashim remembered one long vigil, on a warm night, when he had begun to talk to punctuate the silence. When Fevzi wanted to know a thing he was like a fishmonger filleting his fish with a narrow blade, probing and slicing, moving from one muscle to the next. Yashim had told Fevzi everything: all the memories he’d buried.
“I’ll find out who did it, Yashim.”
“I–I don’t think I want to know.”
“Ignorance keeps you weak.” He sneers. “You don’t have a choice.”
He had told Husrev Pasha the truth. They had not parted as friends.
65
It was ten years since he and Fevzi Ahmet went to Russia. Fevzi Ahmet Pasha-for Sultan Mahmut had promoted him for the event, to negotiate a treaty with the tsar. Mahmut trusted him. Fevzi Ahmet took Yashim, his still and silent companion, as a matter of course. “Keep your eyes open,” he’d said.
The snow had been monstrous that winter, with ice in the Black Sea ports. He and Fevzi had traveled by sleigh, swaddled in furs like chicks in their nest. Yashim remembered the whip cracking in the icy air, the jangle of bells, hoarfrost splintered on the pines. Once a small black bird had dropped from the sky, frozen stiff. The driver had crossed himself, and Fevzi had laughed, shortly. “Omens are for Bulgars and old women.”
Yashim found the whiteness implacable. It allowed them no footholds, shattered their sense of scale. Mile after mile after mile: the same trees, the same wooden villages, rest stops in silent inns, and fresh horses that always looked the same. Fevzi was infected with a sort of snow blindness, drugged, slow, prey to fits of giddiness. In Istanbul he had made one careful step after another, always up, always pleasing. In Saint Petersburg-white river, white streets, the buildings white and interminable against a pale sky-his judgment was devoured. He blundered like a man who had lost his horizons. Yashim stood by aghast, unable to understand the change in his mentor. He remembered Fevzi sweating as he matched the Russians glass for glass in the colorless alcohol their hosts pretended to be drinking.
He remembered the girl, too.
“I heard something. I thought-I was afraid you were in trouble.”
“Trouble?” Fevzi is panting. He grins and brings his face close to Yashim’s, and Yashim can smell his breath.
He steps back, embarrassed. Fevzi catches him by the arm.
“A peasant. She is very beautiful. Come.”
Yashim sees only the suffering.
He stands, confused, and for a long moment Yashim cannot speak.
“Why?”
Fevzi’s mood changes. “What do you know? She’s mine.”
He brings up his hand and places it over Yashim’s face. “A man would understand,” he says, and pushes him back.
Among the Russians, Fevzi Ahmet expanded like a great balloon. He was grand-his gestures wider than they ought to have been, his contempt for detail exaggerated. When the Russians showed him on a map what he was about to sign away, he merely shrugged, as if to say that Batoumi, with its strategic position on the Black Sea, was a bagatelle for a sultan as powerful as his own. Fevzi Ahmet gave Batoumi away because he did not want to seem niggardly in such company; because he had compromised himself. Had it not been for Yashim he might have given away more-and the sultan’s affection would not have saved him from the silken bowstring.
They returned together, in the thaw: troika, droshky, and finally an imperial barge that knocked continuously against the broken ice. Whatever trust had existed between them, too, had broken up.
Yashim did not betray his mentor, who had given everything away. It was not the casual gift of Batoumi that broke his faith, but the proof of something he had suspected for a long time. Fevzi Ahmet employed cruelty without any end in view.
Yashim did not betray Fevzi Ahmet, because he was too proud-and too ashamed. Instead, he sought permission to leave the palace and live in the city: as he explained to the grand vizier of the day, his way was di
fferent from Fevzi Ahmet’s. He knocked his forehead on the steps of the sultan’s throne and said: “I have learned much, but I cannot be more than what I am. I can be a lala, my padishah, a guardian. I see things clearer from farther off.”
Surprisingly, the sultan had agreed. He must have made his own assessment of Fevzi’s diplomatic gifts, because he also moved Fevzi to military duties, which he carried out punctiliously, as far as Yashim heard. But Yashim never saw Fevzi again.
Yashim blinked. An attendant was standing in front of him with a jug and a sponge. He slid from the hot slab and followed the man to the sluice.
66
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” the valide snapped; but she shifted a little uneasily on the divan.
The egg rolled across the surface of the oil.
The soothsayer drew a sharp breath. “I see… blood.”
“Your eggs are not fresh enough,” the valide sniffed.
“But it is not your blood, valide efendi,” the soothsayer replied, comfortably; then, in a rapid singsong voice, she began to recite:
“This is mine eye, the eye of fate, the eye of seeing.
See all, break our bread, show all, and the first shall be last.
Three of three is ninety-nine
And these are the names by which we ask our way.”
She passed a hand across the plate and settled back on her heels.
“Well?”
“I cannot see until it is over.” As if to prove her point, the egg yolk slipped to the edge of the plate. “Ah.” She studied the plate for a few moments. “There is change, but nothing for you to fear. Someone else arranges it. Not a woman. Nor a man?”
“A eunuch, evidemment. Everything around me is in the hands of such people.”
“You have not traveled recently, hanum?”
“ Tiens! Your question is absurd.”
“What is done and what is to come can be very close-especially when I make a reading of a long life, like yours.”
“Tchah! So I am to start traveling, am I? At my age?”
“Perhaps traveling is the wrong word. A journey, yes.”
“I think I can believe that,” the valide replied, drily. “I am very old. You shake your head?”
“I do not see death, hanum efendi. But it is not clear. I see someone close to you, who needs you.”
The valide arched her eyebrows slightly. “My grandson?”
“Perhaps. That is all I can see.”
“Pouf! It is not much. I had expected- eh bien. Nothing more.” She plucked the shawl that lay around her shoulders. “Now I am a little tired.”
She closed her eyes. A greenish vein throbbed in one of her fingers.
An hour passed. When the valide awoke, she found Tulin sitting on a cushion at the foot of the divan.
“Have I slept long?”
Tulin smiled, and put aside her embroidery. “No, valide. But perhaps you are hungry?”
The valide shook her head, and mouthed a silent “No, no.” She took a deep breath. “Tulin, get rid of that disgusting plate of egg.”
“I have already done so, hanum.”
“Ridiculous, all that prognostication. What would a chicken know about the future of a queen? If it were the other way around, I could understand.”
Tulin laughed. “Nobody ventures to tell a chicken’s fortune.”
The valide champed her teeth. “Of course not. All chickens go the same way, into the pot. Who put such a silly idea into your head?”
67
Ibou hoped that she, of all people, would have an answer.
He did not expect the answer she gave. He expected sympathy and advice, not fear.
She shrank back: “Did you touch it?”
“I rolled it into a handkerchief,” he said.
“I meant, did it touch your skin?”
He tried to think. He had not wanted to touch it; instinctively he had taken it up in his handkerchief, wadding the fine lawn cotton around the object so that he would not feel its ridges and bumps.
“I d-don’t think so. No, I am sure.”
She had been holding her breath; now she exhaled slowly. “And words? Did you use words?”
He shook his head. “I did not know what to say.”
She frowned. “Let me look at your eyes.”
She stared into them for a time, then slowly she raised her hands and outlined the form of his head and shoulders in the air.
“It is as I thought. You are cut off from God, Ibou.”
“I pray to God!”
She cupped her chin in her hand, and said musingly, “Yes, you pray. But can he hear you, as you are? Do you have problems, Ibou? Pains, worries, that keep you awake at night?”
He stared at her, frightened a little. “Yes.”
“I guessed it.”
She turned and began to rummage in a little silk bag.
“What are you doing?”
“What I can.” She took something from the bag and laid it beside her on the divan. Then she took his hands in hers. “Someone has put a spell on you, Ibou. That is why when you pray, he cannot hear you.”
The aga’s nostrils flared. “What can you do?”
“We must find you a guide, to take you back.”
“You? C–Can you guide me back?”
She looked at the frightened man levelly. “The choice does not lie with me. I cannot choose to be your guide to the light, Ibou. It is you who must choose.”
“Then-I choose you.”
She shook her head. “How do we know that this is the choice of your heart? You have to draw your guide to you, Ibou. Listen. This is what you must do.”
68
The girl had shadows beneath her eyes, no doubt about it. Her face was drawn; at the rehearsal she had played so timidly that Donizetti had almost lost his patience.
“Violins! Violins!” He had tapped the lectern with his baton. “No, no. This is not what I want.” He mimed a violinist crouched over her instrument, hands feebly shaking. “No. Andante! Forza! Take the lead!” He swiped down with his invisible bow and glared at the violins.
The violins had looked nervously at Elif. Her eyes were downcast: she had no intention of meeting Donizetti’s.
“Elif,” Tulin whispered. “Are you all right? You look-” She had been about to say the girl looked ill, but it was unmannerly to be too direct. Unwise, perhaps: people said it brought the eye. She bit her lip: the word hung in the air, unspoken.
Elif looked at her nervously. “What is it, Tulin? What can you see?”
“Are you eating well?”
“Eating?” Elif hesitated, as if she were thinking about this for the first time. “Yes-no. I’m frightened, Tulin.”
Tulin smiled and patted the girl on her knee. “What of? Some girl, is it? I can speak to her.” She said it with emphasis: she was older, the orchestra girls respected her.
Elif laced and unlaced her fingers on her lap. “It’s not what you think. Oh!” She put a hand to her lips, where it fluttered against her mouth. “Something bad,” she breathed at last.
Tulin glanced around. Donizetti, the Italian, had gone with a little bow and a wave, and now the girls of the orchestra were packing up their instruments. Bright-eyed, a little flushed, they chattered together in low voices. One girl was giggling with her hand over her mouth; another was prodding her neighbor with a fiddle bow. A blond Circassian bowed myopically over her score, holding her hair back above her ear with one hand, wondering where she had gone wrong before.
For the girls this was a moment of freedom, before the tall black eunuchs stepped in and respectfully shooed their pretty charges to their chores. Respectful but firm, especially with the younger girls of lower rank whose jobs kept them far away from the body of the sultan.
Tulin frowned at the frightened girl. Elif was a kalfa, but only to a little girl: a little girl of scant importance.
“If it’s something bad you must tell me, Elif,” she said quietly. “I think there are many t
hings you don’t understand. You’re young.” She put out a hand and eased a lock of the girl’s jet-black hair over the tip of her ear. “When you talk about your troubles they always seem less. Don’t bottle things up.” She smiled brightly and held the girl’s chin. “Look! Maybe it’ll turn out to be nothing at all!”
She saw the struggle in Elif’s eyes, the warring doubt and hope. The girl blinked fiercely: doubt won. “This is very bad,” she said in a thin voice, close to tears.
Tulin considered. “Come, my little one. You can tell me, whatever it is. I am quite sure you have nothing to worry about.”
69
The man with the knife had walked a long way.
He joined a camel train, and walked with it in silence for three days. When the camels halted at a town, the man walked on.
70
The shores of the Bosphorus flushed red, then yellow as the trees turned. Small fires burned in the fields. The season expired in a blaze of heat, an Indian summer. The fishermen predicted a cold winter: the sudden blaze, and the fish running deep.
Yashim found the valide in her apartments at Topkapi. She was propped up on pillows on the divan and eating an iced sherbet.
“It’s cooler now, valide. You are comfortable?”
“I was raised in the Caribbean, Yashim. The heat does not affect me. I choose to sit in the Baghdad Kiosk because it’s quiet.”
Yashim cocked his ear, and heard nothing.
“Yes, yes, it’s quiet enough now. They’re all asleep, thank God,” the valide said. “Just like country girls. Which, of course, they all were once upon a time. I suppose it’s a sort of second childhood.”
Yashim was baffled. “Asleep, valide? Who do you mean?”
The valide gave a little gesture of impatience. “Tut-tut-tut. Really, Yashim, the ladies, I tell you. My son’s ladies. I do wish you would keep up.”
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