The Janissary Tree (6 page)

And
in the morning, coming down to the Kara Davut, he always decided to stay where
he was. He'd leave his books to glower in the half-light, and his kitchen would
fill the room with the scent of cardamom and mint and throw steam onto the
windows. He'd labor up and down flights of steep stairs and crack his head,
from time to time, on the lintel of the sunken doorway. Because the Kara Davut
was his kind of street. Ever since he'd found this cafe, where the proprietor
always remembered how he liked his coffee--straight, no spice, a hint of
sugar--he'd been happy in the Kara Davut. The people all knew him, but they weren't
prying or gossipy. Not that he gave them anything to gossip about: Yashim led a
quiet, blameless life. He went to mosque with them on Fridays. He paid his
bills. In return he asked for nothing more than to be left in peace over his
morning coffees, to watch the street show, to be waved over by the fishmonger
with news of an important haul or to visit the Libyan baker for his excellent
sprouted-grain bread.

Was
that quite true? Did he really want to be left in peace? The seraskier's note,
the sultan's summons, the fishmonger winking, and the coffee done right for him
each day: weren't these exactly the links he craved? Yashim's air of
invisibility sometimes struck even him as a protective pose, his own version of
the stagy mannerisms of those little gelded boys who grew to become the eunuch
guardians of a family and slipslopped after their charges, frowning and moueing
and letting their hands flutter toward their hearts. Perhaps detachment was a
mannerism he had adopted because the agony was too biting and too strong to
bear without it. A very fragile kind of make-believe.

Yashim
looked along the street. An imam in a tall white cap lifted his black robe a
few inches to avoid soiling it in a puddle and stepped quietly past the cafe,
not turning his head. A small boy with a letter trotted by, stopping at a
neighboring cafe to ask the way. From the opposite direction a shepherd kept
his little flock in order with a hazel wand, continually talking to them, as
oblivious to the street as if they were following an empty pathway among the
hills of Thrace. Two veiled women were heading for the baths; behind them a
black slave carried a bundle of clothes. A porter, bent double beneath his
basket, was followed by a train of mules with logs for firewood, and little
Greek children darted in and out between their clattering hooves. Here came a
cavass:
a thickly swaddled policeman with a red fez and pistols thrust into his belt,
and two Armenian merchants, one swinging his beads, the other counting them
with fingers while he spoke.

Yashim
sipped his coffee and ground his teeth. There had once been hatred in him; it
had passed. It had ebbed away slowly, like a receding flood, leaving only its
shining imprint in his mind, the dangerous outline of bitterness and rage. These
days he walked warily where the flood had been, trying to recognize old
landmarks, to piece together the elements of an honorable life out of the
jumble of everyday objects he encountered.

Yashim
squeezed his eyes shut tight, to focus on the order of the day. He had to visit
the seraskier. Standing by that cauldron in the wee hours of yesterday morning,
there were any number of questions he'd been too surprised to ask. What had the
soldiers been doing on the night they disappeared? What did their relatives
think of the affair? Who were their friends? Who were their enemies?

Then
there was the cauldron to reckon with: the oddest and most sinister part of the
whole affair. He needed to visit the soup makers to see what they had to say.

As
for the girl in the palace and the valide's jewels--that was, you might say, a
more private affair. In every family home, there lay a region that was harem,
forbidden to outsiders. In the Topkapi palace, this region was almost an acre
in size, a warren of corridors and courtyards, of winding stairs and balconies
so cunningly contrived that it was sealed from the world's gaze as effectively
as if it had been built in the great Sahara, instead of in the middle of one of
the greatest cities in the world.

With
the rarest exceptions, no man but the sultan himself, or men of his family,
could enter the harem.

Yashim
was one of the exceptions. He could go where no ordinary man could go, on pain
of death.

It
did not do to make too much of the palace harem itself. It wasn't the harem
that made eunuchs, though many of them worked there, and the Black Eunuchs, led
by the kislar agha, effectively controlled it. Unlike Yashim, unlike many of
the White Eunuchs, unlike the castrati of the Vatican, the Black Eunuchs of the
palace were utterly clean-cropped: shaved to the quick in a single sweep of the
sickle blade wielded by a slaver in the desert. Each of them now carried a
small and exquisite silver tube, tucked into a fold of their turban, for
performing the most modest of bodily functions.

Yet
men had been gelded for service in the time of Darius and Alexander, too. Ever
since the idea of dynasties arose, there had been eunuchs who commanded fleets,
who generaled armies, who subtly set out the policies of states. Sometimes
Yashim dimly saw himself enrolled in a strange fraternity, the shadow-world of
the guardians: men who since time immemorial had held themselves apart, the
better to watch and serve. It included the eunuchs of the ancient world, and of
the Chinese emperor in Beijing. What of the Catholic hierarchy in Europe, which
had supplied the celibate priests who served the kings of Christendom? The
service of barren men, like their desires, began and ended with their death;
but in life they watched over the churning anthills of humankind, inured from
its preoccupation with lust, longevity, and descent. Prey, at worst, to a
fondness for trinkets and trivia, to a fascination with their own decline, a
tendency to hysteria and petty jealousies. Yashim knew them well.

As
for the harem, none of the women there could come or go at will, of course. So
Yashim's current business in there was, in that sense, a more private affair. Even
time, Yashim reflected, ran differently on the inside: the harem could wait. Outside,
as the seraskier had warned, he had just nine ordinary days.

Brushing
the crumbs of the
borek
from his lips, Yashim decided that he would
visit first the guild, and then pay his call on the seraskier. Afterward,
depending on what he learned, he would go and question various people in the
harem.

Which
is why when a little boy darted into the cafe a few minutes later, red faced
and puffing and bearing an urgent note for Yashim from the seraskier, the cafe
owner shook his head and gestured helplessly up the street.

13

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

MUSTAFA
the Albanian sniffed suspiciously at the bowl of tripe. There were, he knew,
certain parties in the city who had embraced heretical doctrines. Daily, he was
certain, they were extending their dangerous influence over the weaker, more
impressionable members of society: young men, people from out of town, even
students at the madrassas, who surely should know better, found it all too easy
to succumb to the subtle blandishments of these rogues. Some of them, he was
well aware, simply abused the authorities' trust. Others--and who could say they
were not encouraged by that baleful example?--recognized no authority at all. Well,
he thought grimly, he was there to root them out.

He
sniffed again. The color of the soup was good: no obvious sign of innovation
there. Mustafa was of the school that followed the saying of the Prophet, peace
be on him: in change there is innovation, innovation leads to blasphemy,
blasphemy leads to hellfire. The notion that a good tripe soup needed the
addition of a pinch of pounded coriander was the kind of innovation which, if
left unchecked, would gradually undermine the whole guild and destroy its
ability to serve the city as it should. It made no difference whether or not
the heretics charged extra for the spice: the confusion would have entered
men's minds. Where there was a weakness to be exploited, there would greed find
its encouragement.

Mustafa
sniffed again. Lifting the horn spoon that hung around his neck as a symbol of
his office, he dipped it into the bowl and turned the contents over. Tripe.
Onions, regularly shaped, faintly caramelized. He dug down to the bottom of the
bowl and examined the spoon carefully in the light for any specks or
impurities. Satisfied, he lifted the spoon to his lips and sucked noisily. Tripe
soup. He smacked his lips, his immediate fears allayed. Whatever secrets this
young apprentice held in the recesses of his heart, he could definitely make
the proper article on demand.

Two
anxious pairs of eyes followed the spoon to the guild master's lips. They saw
the soup go in. They heard the soup flow about Mustafa's palate. They watched
anxiously as he held his hand close to his ear. And then they watched,
delighted, as he nodded curtly. An apprenticeship redeemed. A new master
soupier born.

"It
is good. Keep an eye on the onions: never use them too large. The size of your
fist is good, or smaller." He brought up his own massive paw and curled the
fingers. "Too big!" He shook the fist and laughed. The apprentice tittered.

They
discussed arrangements for the apprentice's formal induction into the guild,
his prospects, the extent of his savings, and the likelihood of his finding an
opening within the next few years. Mustafa knew that this was the most
dangerous moment. Newly fledged soupiers always wanted to start right away,
whatever the circumstances. It took patience and humility to carry on working
for an old master while you waited for a shop to come free. Patience, yes.
Impatience led to coriander and hellfire. Mustafa tugged at his mustache and
squinted at the young man. Did he have patience? As for himself, he thought,
patience was his second skin. How could he have lived his life and not acquired
patience in positively redemptive quantities?

14

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

It
was a singular request, for what use could a man have for a play cauldron at
this time of the year? Mustafa the Albanian seemed to hear a dangerous word
whispered in his ear. Was it not an innovation, to let a stranger examine the
storerooms of the Guild of Soup Makers? It certainly seemed an insidious
precedent.

Yashim
blinked, smiled, and opened his eyes wide. He thought he could guess exactly
what was going through the old soup master's mind.

"I'm
known at the palace: the gatekeepers there could vouch for me, if that's a
help."

The
guild master's frown remained firmly in place. His massive hands lay quietly
folded over his paunch. Perhaps, Yashim thought, the palace card was the wrong
one to try: every institution in the city had its pride. He decided on another
throw.

"We
live in strange times. I'm not so young that I can't remember when things
were--better ordered, in general, than they are today. Every day, right here in
Istanbul, I see things I'd never have dreamed of seeing in my young days. Foreigners
on horseback. Dogs literally starving to death on the streets. Beggars in from
the countryside. Buildings removed to make way for strange mosques. Frankish
uniforms." He shook his head. The soup master gave a little grunt.

"The
other day I had to return a pair of slippers that had cost me forty piastres:
the stitching was coming away. And I'd only had them a month!" That was quite
true: Yashim had bought the slippers from a guildsman. For forty piastres they
were meant to last a year. "Sometimes, I'm sorry to say, I think that even our
food doesn't taste quite the way it used to."

Yashim
noticed the soup master's fingers clench and wondered if he'd gone a bit far. The
soup master put a hand up to his mustache and rubbed it between his finger and
thumb. "Tell me," he rumbled, "do you like coriander seed? In soup?"

It
was Yashim's turn to frown. "What a peculiar idea," he said.

Mustafa
the Albanian got to his feet with surprising agility.

"Come,"
he said simply.

Yashim
followed the big man onto the balcony around the courtyard. Below the
balustrade, under the arcade, men were busy frying tripe. Apprentices staggered
to and fro with buckets they'd filled from the well in the center of the court.
A cat slunk through the shadows, weaving between the legs of enormous chopping
blocks. Yashim thought: even the cat has its position here.

They
descended a flight of stairs and came out into the arcade. A man wielding a
shiny cleaver looked up as they appeared, his eyes streaming with tears. His
cleaver fell and rose automatically on a peeled onion: the onion stayed whole
until the man swept it aside with a stroke of the blade, and selected another
from the basket hanging at the side of the block. Mechanically he began to peel
and chop it. Not once did he so much as glance down at his fingers.

Now
that, Yashim thought with admiration, is a real skill. The onion man sniffed
and nodded a greeting.

The
master entered a corridor and began fumbling at his belt for keys. At length he
felt what he was looking for and drew it out on a chain. He stopped in front of
a thick oak door, banded with iron, and placed the key into the lock.

"That's
a very old key," Yashim remarked.