The Janissary Tree (20 page)

Palmuk
bent over a basket and wedged his cone of buns between the wickerwork. Then he
stood looking out toward Stamboul. He appeared not to have heard.

Suppressing
a sigh, Yashim fished for his purse beneath the folds of his cloak. Selecting
three coins, he chinked them together in the palm of his hand.

Palmuk
turned. "Why, efendi, I call that handsome. A welcome contribution to the
fund."

The
money disappeared into a pocket of his tunic.

"It's
information you want, mate. Efendi. A hint to the wise, am I right? You've been
handsome with me, so I'll be handsome with you, as the saying goes. All right:
there isn't a fourth tower. Never was, as far as I know."

There
was a silence. The fireman ran a hand over his mustaches.

Their
eyes locked.

"Is
that it?"

The
fireman shrugged. "It's what you asked for, ain't it?"

"Right."

Neither
man moved for a few moments. Then Palmuk turned his back on Yashim and stood by
the parapet, looking south to the Bosphorus, lost in the fog.

"Mind
the stairs as you go down, efendi," he said, not looking around. "They're
slippery when it's wet."

48

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

"IT'S
mine," said the girl.

It
was the only thing she'd said so far.

Yashim
bit his lip. He'd been trying to talk to her for half an hour.

Lightly,
at first. Where was she from? Yes, he knew the place. Not the exact place
but--he drew her a picture in words. Mountains. Mist. Dawn creeping down the
valley. Was that like it?

A
blank. It's my ring.

Heavy:
we don't think it belongs to you. A serious charge. Unless you tell us what you
know it'll be the worse for you, girl. Its mine.

Cajolery:
come on, Asul. You have a life half the women in Circassia would die for. Whims
granted. Luxuries. A safe and honorable and
enviable
position. A
lovely girl like you. The sultan's bed and then--who knows?

She
pushed out her lips and turned her head, threading a curl with her fingers.

Yanked
the curl savagely, pressed her lips together.

"My
ring," she blurted.

"I
see. She gave it to you?" Yashim asked gently.

"Don't
believe a word," the kislar agha interrupted. "They all lie like hyenas."

Yashim
raised his shoulders and swallowed his irritation. "Asul may answer as she
pleases, but I hope it will be the truth."

The
kislar snorted. The girl flashed him a contemptuous look.

"She
never gave it to me."

"Um.
But did you have some agreement, some understanding about the ring?

The
girl gave him a strange look. "I don't know what you're talking about. What
does it matter, anyway? She's dead, isn't she? Fucking fish food. What does it
matter if I took the ring?"

Yashim
frowned. Did he have to explain the idea of theft? There was something
particularly repugnant about stealing from a corpse. A sacrilege. If she didn't
at least feel that, where could he begin?

"It
may matter very much indeed. Was she dead or alive when you took the ring?"

But
the gorgeous little face had clammed up again.

Yashim
knew these mountaineers, raised among the far-off peaks of the Caucasus. Hard
as their stony houses, as their frozen tracks in winter. Living on air, forever
feuding with their neighbors. God had made them beautiful, especially their
women: but he made them hard.

Wearily
he put the question again. Alive? Or dead?

She
made no response.

Perhaps
she was right, after all. What did it matter? Yashim looked again at the ring
in the palm of his hand. The dresser was right. It was no better than market
trash, a plain band of silver, with a worn motif on the annulus that seemed to
show two snakes swallowing each other's tails.

He
glanced at the girl. She was wearing bangles, a torque: all gold. Not unusual
here, in the harem, where gold and jewels from across the empire went to
satisfy the cravings of the women for--what had the valide called
it:--distinction? Yet he knew how objects like these could take on a resonance
no outsider could ever detect or guess at: how they could become the focus of
spite or jealousy in spite of their intrinsic worthlessness, the cause of livid
arguments, rages, tears, fights.

The
sultan's women had been raised on the hardscrabble. What was death out there? Babies
died. Women died giving birth to babies who died, and men got shot in the back
for an unlucky word--or lived to be a hundred. Death was nothing: honor counted.
In the mountain world they came from, people took offense at the lightest word
and allowed feuds to develop into bloodshed over generations, long after their
original causes were forgotten.

Was
it possible, Yashim asked himself, for a feud like that to have been carried
into the palace? The distance that separated the Caucasus from Istanbul was too
great. More than geographical.

The
snakes, what did they mean? Round and round they ran, forever swallowing their
tails: a symbol of eternity, was it, derived from some impious mumbo-jumbo
peddled by shamans in the mountains?

Yashim
sighed. He had the feeling that he was stirring up problems where they didn't
exist, making trouble where it wasn't needed. Wasting his own time. All he had
achieved was to sharpen the animosity he detected flying between Asul and the
kislar agha.

"That's
it," he said. He bowed to the black eunuch and, taking him by the arm, drew him
aside. "Five more minutes, Kislar. Give me that. Alone."

Looking
into his bloodshot eyes, Yashim found it hard to know what he was thinking.

The
kislar grunted. "You are wasting your time," he said. His eyes slid around to
fasten on the girl.

"The
lala
will talk to you in private." She glanced up, expressionless.
"You know what we expect."

And
he left the room.

49

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

ASUL
watched the door close and very slowly turned her eyes to look at Yashim. He
had the feeling that she had never looked at him until now. Perhaps never
really registered his presence in the room.

"Here,"
he said softly. "Catch."

The
girl's eyes followed the ring through the air. At the last moment, with a
movement snakelike in its speed, she put out a hand. She clenched the ring in
her fist, balled against her chest.

"I've
seen you before," she said in a small voice.

Yashim
blinked slowly but said nothing.

Asul
glanced down and uncurled her fingers. "He will take it from me again," she
said.

"But
I will ask him not to," Yashim said.

The
girl almost smiled. A weary flicker of expression crossed her face. "You."

Yashim
pressed his palms to his face. "When you are hurt," he began slowly, "when you
have lost something--or someone--it makes you sad, doesn't it? Sometimes change
is good, and sometimes it makes us only want to cry. When you are young, it is
hard to believe in pain or loss. But sadness is what makes us alive. The dead
don't grieve.

"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."