The Janissary Tree (17 page)

"You
should be more adventurous, Monsieur Yashim," she said, dimpling her cheek.

Yashim's
eyes widened. He felt the blood rush to his face. "I--I am sorry--"

"I
meant, of course, looking at old maps of your city." She looked at him again,
with curiosity. "You do speak French, or am I dreaming? Wonderful.

"The
map? Interesting, of course--it's one of the first detailed maps of Istanbul
ever made, shortly after the Conquest. Well, a hundred years or so. Fifteen
ninety-nine, Flensburg. Melchior Lorich. All the same, I suggest we look at
some of the paintings. Then, perhaps, you can form an idea of what
we
are like."

Yashim
was scarcely listening to what she was saying. The sensation he was
experiencing was unlike any he had ever known before, and he recognized that it
was not merely the effect of her beauty that produced it. Ordinary men might be
staggered, he supposed, but Yashim? Ridiculous! Beautiful women paraded by him
every time he entered the sultan's harem. He saw them, sometimes, all but
naked: how often they teased him, with their perfumed breasts and full thighs! How
they pleaded with him, these perfect creatures, for a stray touch of what was
forbidden and unknown! Yet they always seemed to him, in some fundamental
sense, to be clothed, veiled, forbidden.

Here
was a woman almost fully dressed--though he gazed at her lips, at the hollow in
her throat, at her bare slender shoulders. It was she who seemed the more
naked.

Never,
in a public room, had a woman spoken to him like this. Allowed him to touch her
skin with his lips.

She
laid a hand on his arm and led him along the paintings that hung on the wall.

"Tell
me, monsieur, does this shock you at all?"

The
hand shocked him.

They
were standing in front of a family portrait of the Czar Alexander, his wife,
and children. It was an informal composition, in the French style: the czar
seated beneath a tree in the sun; the czarina, like a ripe apple, leaning
against him; and several small, fair boys in silk breeches and girls in white
frocks grouped around them.

Yashim
tried to examine the picture but, yes, she was right.

"It
does shock me, a little."

"Aha!"

"Not
the woman"--Yashim, you liar!--"but the intimacy. It--it's so public. It makes a
show of something that should be private, between the man and the woman."

"So
you do not believe in the representation of the human form? Or you would set
other limits?"

Even
her voice, he thought, was scandalous. Her curiosity was more like a slow caress,
as if he were being explored, limb by limb.

"I'm
not sure how to answer. When I read a novel, I find there a representation of
form. Also the same intimacy--and other states of emotion, too. In the novel
they delight me. They seem shocking to me in some of these paintings. You will
accuse me of being inconsistent."

"I'll
accuse you of nothing, monsieur. When you read--perhaps you possess the
characters yourself? What passes between you and them remains private. But the
paintings are very public, as you say."

She
looked at him shyly from the corner of her eye. "You Turks, I think, understand
a great deal about private matters."

Yashim
gazed wildly at the painting on the wall.

"Harem--it
is forbidden, is it not?"

"But
not to you, madame," Yashim replied.

Eugenia
stifled a little gasp of surprise. "Oh? As a woman, you mean?"

"Of
course. And by virtue of your rank. I have no doubt you could visit the
sultan's own apartments, if you wished." He saw the eagerness on her face and
half regretted his remark.

"By
invitation, surely?" Her voice was coaxing now.

"But
I am sure that an invitation could be arranged," Yashim answered thickly,
wondering at his own behavior. What was he doing?

"I
had never thought of it," she said quietly. "By you?"

Yashim
was about to reply when the door to the ambassador's office swung open and the
prince appeared, followed by Potemkin.

"What
the devil--" The oath froze on the ambassador's lips.

Eugenia
gave him a small, cold smile.

"Monsieur
Yashim and I were having a most interesting conversation. About art," she
added. "Am I right?"

Yashim
bowed slightly. "Certainly, Princess."

The
prince looked heavily from Yashim to his wife.

"The
gentleman was on his way out," he snapped. "I am sure he is very busy. As are
we all. Good day, monsieur."

Yashim
put a hand to his chest and inclined his head. Once again he kissed Eugenia's
slender hand.

She
said, "Forgive me for detaining you. I do hope we can continue our conversation
another time."

Her
tone was impeccably ambassadorial. Cool. Disinterested.

But
Yashim's fingers were hot where she had squeezed them lightly with her own.

40

****************

AT
the baths he wanted heat, and more heat. When his head seemed banded with
flaming hoops, he let the masseur pummel him like dough and then lay a long
time in the cooling room with his eyes closed, scarcely breathing.

Later
on his way home he fell upon the vegetable market in a sort of frenzy: his old
friend George, the Greek vendor who arranged his wares like weapons in an
armory, or jewels on a tray, actually stepped out from behind his stall to lay
a heavy hand on Yashim's arm.

"Slow.
Slow," he said in his basso profundo. "You puts in this basket like a Greek
robbers, this, that, everything. Say to George, what you wants to cook."

He
prized the basket from Yashim's hands and stood there massive and
barrel-chested in his dirty tunic, hands on his hips, blocking Yashim's way.

Yashim
lowered his head.

"Give
me the basket, you Greek bastard," he said.

George
didn't move.

"The
basket."

"Hey."
George's voice was very soft. "Hey." Louder. He picked up some baby cabbages. "You
wants?"

Yashim
shook his head.

"I
understand," George said. He turned his back on Yashim and began to unload all
the vegetables from his basket. Over his shoulder he said, "Go, buy some fish.
I will give you a sauce. You kebabs the fish, some Spanish onion, peppers. You
puts on the sauce. You puts him in the fire. You eats. Go."

Yashim
went. When he had the fish, he came back and George was crushing walnuts open
with his hands and peeling cloves of garlic, which he put together in a twist
of paper.

"Now
you, efendi, go home and cook.
The
pepper.
The
onion. No, I
don't take money from crazy mans. Tomorrow you comes, you pays me double."

When
Yashim got home, he laid the fish and vegetables on the block and sliced them
with a thin knife. The onions were sharp and stung his eyes. He riddled up the
stove and chucked in another handful of charcoal. When he had threaded the
pieces onto skewers, he smashed the walnuts and the garlic with the flat of a
big knife and chopped, drawing together the ever-dwindling heap with the flat
of his hand until the hash was so sticky he had to use the blade to scrape it
off his skin. He anointed the fish with the sauce and let it lie while he
washed his hands in the bowl his housekeeper set out for him every morning and
afternoon.

He
laid the skewers over the dull embers and drizzled them with a string of oil. When
the oil hissed on the fire, he waved the smoke with a cloth and turned the
skewers, mechanically.

Shortly
before the fish was ready to flake from the stick, he sliced a loaf of white
bread and laid it on a plate with a small bowl of oil, some sesame seeds, and a
few olives. He stuffed a tiny enameled teapot with sprigs of mint, a piece of
white sugar, and a pinch of Chinese tea leaves rolled like gunshot, poured in
water from the ewer, and crunched it down into the charcoal until its base bit
into the glow.

Finally
he ate, sitting in the alcove, wiping the peppers and the fish from the skewer
with a round of bread.

Only
then did he pick up the small folded note that had been waiting for him when he
got home.

It
was from the imam, who sent his greetings. He had done a little research, as
well. In a firm hand he had written out the final verses of Yashim's Sufi poem.

Unknowing

And
knowing nothing of unknowing,

They
sleep.

Wake them.

Knowing,

And
knowing unknowing,

The
silent few become one with the Core.

Approach.

Yashim
sat up and crossed his legs. Then he propped the window ajar, rolled himself a
cigarette the way an Albanian horse merchant had shown him how, with a little
twist at one end and a half inch of cardboard at the other, and drank a glass
of scalding sweet mint tea while he read the verses again.

He
lay down on his side. Fifteen minutes later, his hand snaked out and groped for
the old fur that lay rumpled somewhere by his legs. He hauled it over his body.

In
three minutes--for he was already half dreaming--Yashim the eunuch was fast
asleep.

41

****************

The
Polish residency was favored by the dark. As dusk gathered, even its railings
seemed to shed their rust, while the ragged curtain of overgrown myrtle that
sheltered the carriage sweep from the eyes of the street jostled together more
closely, bulking black and solid as the darkness deepened. Then empty rooms,
long since uninhabited, where the plaster sifted in eddying scales from the
ornate ceilings and settled on wooden floors that had grown dull and dusty
through disuse, gave out false hints of life within, as if they were merely
shuttered for the night. And as night fell, the elegant mansion reassumed an
appearance of weight and prosperity it hadn't known for sixty years.

The
light that flickered unevenly from a pair of windows on the piano nobile seemed
to brighten as the evening wore on. These windows, which were never
shuttered--which could not, in fact, be shuttered at all, owing to the collapse
of various panels and the slow rusting of the hinges in the winter
damp--revealed a scene of wild disorder.

The
room where only a few hours before Yashim had left the Polish ambassador
dithering over whether to open the bison grass or simply a rustic spirit
supplied to him, very cheap, by Crimean sailors, looked as if it had been
visited by a frenzied bibliophile. A violin lay bridge down on a tea tray. A
dozen books, apparently flung open at random, were scattered across the floor;
another twenty or more were wedged haphazardly between the arms of a vast
armchair. Tallow dripped from a bracket onto the surface of a well-worn
escritoire, on which was piled a collection of folio volumes and several tiny
decorated tea glasses that hadn't been used for tea. It seemed as if someone
had been searching for something.

Stanislaw
Palewski lay on the floor behind one of the armchairs. His head was thrown back,
his mouth open, his sightless eyes turned upward toward the ceiling.

Now
and then he emitted a faint snore.

42

****************

THE
seraskier picked up a handful of sand and sprinkled it across the paper. Then
he tilted the sheet and let the sand run back into the pot.

He
read through the document one more time and rang a bell.

He
had thought of having the notice printed for circulation, but on reflection he
decided to have it simply transcribed, by hand, and delivered to the mosques. The
imams could interpret it in their own fashion.

From
the Commander of His Imperial Highness's New Guard in Istanbul, greetings and a
warning.

Ten
years ago it pleased the Throne to secure the peace and prosperity of the
Empire through a series of Auspicious Acts, intended to extirpate a lying
heresy and put an end to an abuse that his Imperial Highness was no longer
prepared to tolerate. As by his wars, so by his acts, the Sultan achieved a
complete victory.

Those
who, by dealing death, would wish to return the city to its former state, take
heed. The forces of the Padishah do not sleep, nor do they tremble. Here in
Istanbul, a soldier meets death with scornful pride, secure in the knowledge
that he sacrifices what is unreal for what is holy, and serves the greater
power of the Throne.

In
all your strength you will be crushed. In all your cunning you will be
outfoxed. In all your pride, humbled and brought forward to face the supreme
penalty.

Once
again you will flee and be brought from your holes by the will of the Sultan
and his people. You have been warned.