An Evil Eye: A Novel Read online

  Bezmialem had heard the pandemonium and locked her door. She sought only peace and seclusion.

  At her moment of triumph, when her son returned to the palace as sultan, Bezmialem had a headache.

  7

  “YASHIM efendi?”

  The halberdier swung back the door of the gatehouse. Outside Yashim saw a small closed carriage, with another soldier holding the door.

  “Please, efendi.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We must be quick, efendi.”

  Yashim climbed into the cab and the halberdier slammed the door. Yashim heard him shout something to the driver and then, with a lurch that shot him back into the buttoned leather seat, they were off. The carriage squeaked and swayed; Yashim wound his fingers around a leather strap in the dark. The windows of the cab were tightly curtained, but he could feel the drumming of the wheels on the cobbles and the slick lurch when they left hard ground for muddier, unpaved streets.

  Yashim peeled a curtain aside and peered out. At first he could make nothing of the high, blank walls, until the carriage veered to the right, flinging him back again, and they rolled under the High Gate, which gave its name—Sublime Porte—to the Ottoman government.

  The driver pulled on the reins; the cab’s pace lessened; the door was flung open and a young man in a Frankish uniform and cap saluted Yashim. As they bustled up the steps the young man’s sword clinked on the marble; then they were through the front door, scurrying down corridors where anxious faces peered at them in the candlelight, where doors opened noiselessly at their approach.

  Yashim knew exactly where they were going. He’d been there before, to the private chamber of the grand vizier, the man who held the reins of the empire for his sultan’s sake.

  The cadet threw open a door and ushered him in with a sweep of the hand.

  8

  A lamp was burning on a great mahogany desk.

  “Come.”

  The rumble of the vizier’s voice came from the divan, placed in an alcove at the far side of the room. Yashim half turned, in puzzlement.

  “Husrev? Mehmet Husrev Pasha?”

  As he approached the divan, he could make out a heavy figure sitting cross-legged in the half-light, wearing a Circassian shawl and a tasseled, brimless cap.

  As the pasha gestured to the edge of the divan, his ring caught the light. It was a sign of office, but until now Yashim had seen the ring of the grand vizier on someone else’s hand.

  “Changes, Yashim efendi,” the old pasha growled, as if he had read Yashim’s mind. “A time of change.”

  Yashim settled on the edge of the divan. “My pasha,” he murmured. He wondered how the change had been made, what had become of Midhat Pasha. “I was detained at the palace. I offer you my congratulations.”

  Husrev fixed him with a weary stare. His voice was very deep, almost a whisper. “The sultan is very young.”

  “We must be grateful that he can draw upon your experience,” Yashim replied politely.

  The old pasha grunted. He pressed his fingertips together in front of his face, brushing his mustache. “And at the palace?”

  “Sultan Mahmut’s women were slow to leave.” Yashim bit his lip; it was not what he should have said. Not when Husrev himself had moved so fast.

  Perhaps Husrev Pasha thought the same, because he gave a dismissive snort and slid a sheet of paper across the divan. “Report from the governor of Chalki. A dead man, in the cistern of the monastery.”

  “Who was he?”

  The pasha shrugged. “Nobody seems to know.”

  “But—he was killed?”

  “Perhaps. Probably. I want you to find out.”

  “I understand, my pasha.” For the second time that day, he was being asked to do someone else’s job.

  Husrev Pasha’s heavy-lidded eyes missed little. “Have I said anything to displease you, Yashim?”

  Yashim took a deep breath. “Is it not a matter for the governor, my pasha? The kadi, at least.”

  “Would I send for you if it was enough to direct the kadi? The governor?”

  Yashim heard the anger in his rumbling voice. “Forgive me, my pasha. I spoke without thinking.”

  To his surprise, the old vizier leaned forward and took his knee in his massive paw.

  “How old are you, Yashim?”

  “Forty.”

  “I have seen what may happen when a sultan dies. When you were a little boy, Yashim. We thought the sky was falling on our heads. Bayraktar’s Janissaries stormed the Topkapi Palace. In the provinces there was fear—and fighting on the streets of Istanbul. The Muslims afraid of the Greeks.”

  Yashim listened, and said nothing.

  “The city is quiet today,” the old pasha continued. “But the weather is hot, and the sultan is young. I am a little afraid, Yashim. Men have hopes I do not yet understand. Some have demands. Between demand and threat you cannot pass a horsehair. And the state is weak. Russia, as you know, gains every day at the expense of our people. Moldavia and Wallachia are occupied by the tsar’s troops, to the mouth of the Danube. Serbia rules itself, with their aid. Georgia and the Armenian lands are under Russia now.”

  He cracked his huge knuckles. “Egypt is strong. Long ago, we could count on Egypt; that time is past. Mehmet Ali Pasha is not to be trusted. We are caught, Yashim, between hammer and anvil.”

  He picked up a pile of documents at his elbow and let them drop heavily onto the divan. “With these, I must govern this empire. I must keep the peace.” He shrugged. “This is a dangerous time for all of us, Yashim, and I do not know exactly where the danger lies. Perhaps from a corpse in the Christians’ well.”

  “I understand, my pasha,” Yashim replied. “Your eyes must be everywhere.”

  “If not, Yashim, they would fill with tears.” He rubbed a massive thumb and finger over the bridge of his nose. “Tomorrow morning will be sufficient,” he said.

  9

  STANISLAW Palewski, Polish Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, put up a hand to steady his straw hat as a light wind threatened to tip it by the brim.

  “This,” he remarked, “is better than Therapia.”

  Yashim, beside him on the bench, grunted assent. When Istanbul lolled in the dog days, under the summer sun, the other European ambassadors liked to retreat to their summer residencies at Therapia, up the Bosphorus; only Palewski remained in town. He lacked funds; he lacked a summer residency; he lacked, in point of fact, a country.

  It had been Yashim’s idea to invite Palewski to spend a cooling day out on the water, traveling to the island of Chalki and back. Yesterday’s work in the harem had exhausted him, and the cannons booming out across the water had sounded like the blood pounding in his own head. The breeze at Marmara blew as well as the breezes of Therapia, and at a fraction of the cost: a ticket to the island could be had for a sequin—a seat on deck, a view over the water, a chance of seeing dolphins, and a glass of sweet tea into the bargain.

  Palewski was Polish, from his tongue to his heart, and represented a country that no longer existed—at least, it was not recognized by any of the Christian courts of Europe. The Ottomans sustained the notion that their old proud foe existed still; they accepted the credentials of an ambassador whose country had been swallowed by its neighbors. They even sustained the ancient custom of paying the ambassador a stipend for his maintenance, for magnanimity was the mark of a great empire, and old habits died hard; but the stipend was small and did not stretch to summer residencies.

  They made, perhaps, an unlikely couple, Palewski and Yashim; though anyone who had seen them together on the deck of the felucca might have noticed that both, in their way, were conservatively dressed. Palewski’s coat was well cut, in the old fashion, if slightly shabby, and his waistcoat was more colorful than the age prescribed; while Yashim’s embroidered waistcoat and white pantaloons belonged to a style that was fast disappearing in the capital. Most Ottoman gentlemen followed the lead of their late sultan in adopting dres
s coats and tight black trousers, beneath a scarlet fez. Yashim wore a fez, but it was swathed in a strip of linen, some twelve feet long, which he wound tightly around his head as a turban. On his feet he wore the comfortable leather slippers that the Ottomans had always worn, before the sultan persuaded them into tight-laced boots and woolen socks.

  An odd couple, then, but with more in common than might have at first appeared—not least a shared desire to escape the summer heat and enjoy the breezes out to sea.

  The largest of the Prince’s Islands advanced swiftly over the sun-pricked waters. The sails were furled, one by one; the canvas slapped, the chain ran out, and soon the boat was drawn alongside the quay. The Greek sailors stepped ashore with coiled rope and lazy familiarity.

  A few minutes later, Yashim and his old friend had exchanged the sea breeze for the equally welcome shade of the ancient limes that flanked the path up to the monastery of Hristos. The air smelled of charcoal and roasted meat where the kebab vendors had set up their braziers in the shade; the cool white walls of the island houses and their ocher pantiled roofs, peeped through the trees. Others shared their path: veiled women in long striped coats, a sailor in a shirt without a collar, a Greek priest in high canonicals, little boys on errands with bare feet, and a stout woman in a headscarf who rolled along after her donkey, its panniers stuffed with reeds.

  Close to the gateway of the monastery, set back from the avenue, stood a small café.

  “Sherbet, Yash. They’ll do a pear syrup here, too,” Palewski suggested, steering his friend gently by the arm toward the café path.

  Two men swerved past them, running up the hill.

  “So hot,” Palewski murmured, raising an eyebrow.

  Cushions were scattered on carpets spread beneath the boughs of an enormous pine, whose resinous fragrance perfumed the air. A boy in a waistcoat took their orders: he seemed distracted, glancing now and then through the trees toward the avenue of limes.

  “Pear, not apple,” Yashim corrected him. “Pear for my friend, and coffee, medium sweet, for me.”

  The two friends lay in companionable silence, watching the sky through the boughs of the tree. Rooks cawed in the upper branches; farther off, Yashim could hear a murmur of indistinct voices like wind soughing in the pines.

  Palewski dipped into his pocket. He brought out a slim volume bound in soft red leather, which he opened and began to read.

  Yashim struggled for a few moments with the curiosity that comes over anyone when they watch someone else with their nose in a book. Then he gave up.

  “Pan Tadeusz—again,” Palewski replied, with a smile.

  “The national epic,” Yashim murmured. “Of course.”

  “Really, I never tire of it,” Palewski said. “It is the Poland I represent. Poland in the old days.” He sighed. “I wrote to Mickiewicz, proposing a French translation.”

  “The poet? And did he reply?”

  Palewski nodded. “Of course, he could do it himself. He lives in Paris. But he said he’d be delighted if I’d like to try.”

  “And you’ve begun?”

  “Awfully hard, Yashim.” Palewski leaned back and closed his eyes. He flung up a hand toward the trees and began to recite:

  “Litwo! Ojczyzno moja! Ty jeste jak zdrowie.

  Ile ci trzeba ceni,, ten tylko si dowie,

  Kto ci stracił. Dzi pikno tw w całej ozdobie

  Widz i opisuj, bo tskni po tobie.”

  Yashim could not understand the words; he had stopped listening. He could hear a sound like angry bees, buzzing farther up the avenue; now and again he heard shouts.

  “I’ve made a start, Yash, but it’s picking the words. And matching the rhyme—”

  Yashim bent forward and touched his knee. “Don’t go away,” he said.

  “But I haven’t given you my translation yet.”

  Yashim had scrambled to his feet. “I’ll listen later.”

  “Your coffee’s coming.”

  “I’ll be back.”

  He went to the avenue and turned up the hill. A few hundred yards ahead he could make out the wooden gate of the monastery. The gate was shut, and outside it a few dozen men were standing in a semicircle, their backs toward Yashim.

  “Unbelievers!”

  “Open the gate!”

  A man stooped and picked up a stone, which he threw against the wooden gate. Soon the whole crowd was hurling stones, which thunked against the heavy wooden planks.

  Yashim moved to the edge of the circle.

  “What are you doing?”

  The man beside him turned his head sharply. “The unbelievers, efendi. They have the body of a Muslim in there. They are hiding him.”

  Yashim frowned. “How do you know that?”

  “At night, they will feed him to the dogs!”

  Yashim put up a hand. “How can you know so much? Have you talked to them, inside? Have you seen this Muslim?”

  The man turned angrily. “Open this gate! We are Muslims!”

  Yashim glanced back. More men were surging up the avenue; some were shaking their fists.

  Ever since the Greeks of Athens had secured their independence, Greeks and Turks had been like flint and steel, striking sparks that threatened to set the empire alight. Husrev Pasha was right, these were uncertain times. The weather was too hot—and a man was dead.

  Yashim put his hands in the air and stepped out in front of the gathering crowd.

  “Listen to me.”

  The men paused, curious.

  “Listen to me. I am from the palace.”

  A bareheaded man stepped forward. “The unbelievers! They treat the Muslims like dogs!”

  Yashim laid a hand on the man’s shoulder, and invited him to sit down. He opened his arm, gesturing along the line. “All of you, please. Sit down.”

  The men began to form knots. After all the noise, the quiet voice of the stranger seemed almost hypnotic. Some squatted, and one or two of them actually sat, crossing their legs.

  “We will find out what is going on here,” Yashim continued. The name came to him at that moment. “Where is Mullah Dede?”

  The men looked around. Mullah Dede was not there.

  “Fetch the mullah. Go.”

  “Who are you?” It was a fat man in an open shirt. He had his hands on his hips and he was glancing right and left. “Who are you, from the palace?”

  “I am Yashim.” He spoke quietly, but loud enough for the men to hear. A wary look appeared on the fat man’s face. “And your name?”

  “I am … Hasan.”

  Men are driven by fear: and they fear only what they do not know.

  “Will anyone else give me their name?”

  Men looked away, feeling the ground with their eyes.

  Yashim could see the figure of the mullah climbing briskly up the avenue. “When Mullah Dede comes we will all sit quietly, while he and I discuss the matter.”

  The mullah walked in slowly through the ring of men, looking from right to left. He saw Yashim, and salaamed.

  “What is this gathering, my son? They say the monks have taken the body of a Muslim. Can this be true?”

  “We will ask the monks,” Yashim replied.

  “Yes, that is the best way.” Mullah Dede nodded slowly. “We will enter, and speak with the abbot.” He turned to the men squatting on the ground. “Go, all of you. Go in peace, and if we have need of you again, I will call.”

  Yashim glanced at Hasan. He was swaying, as if uncertain what to do; eventually he turned away and began to go down the hill. Many joined him; a few, however, only moved farther off, and squatted under the trees, planning to see what happened next.

  “And now,” said Mullah Dede, “we will knock on the door, and hope that we are answered, inshallah.”

  “Inshallah,” Yashim echoed.

  10

  AT the sultan’s palace at Besiktas, the lady Talfa was jingling an enormous bunch of iron keys threaded onto an iron loop.

  “Some of you gir
ls,” she announced, “will receive keys yourselves as you settle in to your duties. That will be a matter for the Kislar aga to arrange, with my help, naturally.”

  They were on the ground floor of the palace, where the windows were shuttered on the inside with diamond-shaped lattices to prevent anyone from looking in.

  The girls avoided one another’s eyes, anxious not to be thought overbold. Many of them hoped to receive a key and to be allotted an important task. They had already inspected the laundry, under the lady Talfa’s direction: there would be a laundry kalfa, maybe two. They had looked into rooms containing the coffee sets for the coffee kalfa to manage; a silver room, stacked with plates, trays, and ewers; a china room, whose china kalfa would preside over the proper storage and cleaning of the Chinese porcelain.

  The lady Talfa had familiarized them with each part of the building she knew so well. Baths had a key; so did the dressing rooms, where the sultan’s linen would be stored, properly folded and stacked away, and his frock coats, brushed every day and inspected for any sign of moth or dirt, with lengths of silk and muslin for his turban. There was even a slipper room, to which a slipper kalfa would possess the key.

  The girls who followed the lady Talfa were used to luxury, but the scale of Besiktas bewildered them; the number of potential responsibilities and duties excited them. Some of them had forgotten their training and wandered openmouthed, eyes darting from precious silks to the immaculate polished parquet and marble on the floors. All of them were feeling weary, and slightly overawed.

  Which was just how the lady Talfa wanted it, as she turned a key in the cellar door.

  “Bring the lantern,” she said, “and follow me.”

  They descended a stone staircase. Some of the girls reached out to clutch each other: it was quite dark, and the shadows that raced across the vault overhead seemed sinister and demonic. Somebody tripped and squealed.

  At the bottom of the steps, the lady Talfa turned and held the lantern at her shoulder. Her face was plunged into dark shade. The girls, feeling the cold, shivered; they wondered why they had been brought down here.