An Evil Eye: A Novel Read online

  The second man did not, really, have to masquerade. Provided he stayed reasonably close to the cross street, on the steps, he would simply seem to be waiting for someone to come down. He need not try to be part of the mahalle at all, in which case he would not see Yashim until he was perhaps halfway down the stairs. Thirty yards.

  Yashim glanced ahead: light traffic, no crowd.

  He leaned into the rise in the street. Several people passed him in the opposite direction, tradesmen and apprentices on errands, two veiled women with sloshing pails of water from the pump, three schoolboys heading for the medrese, casting about for any diversion. Ahead, a simit seller with his tray balanced on his turban came over the rise.

  Yashim let the man come close, then flinched.

  “I don’t owe you a penny!” he exclaimed, flinging up his arm. “You’ve got the wrong man!”

  With his left hand he snatched out and grabbed the bewildered simit peddler’s shirt.

  The man put up his hands, instinctively.

  Behind Yashim, the people strolling had stopped and turned. Not quite a crowd, but more than enough to make it hard for the stop man to see exactly what was going on.

  Yashim grabbed the peddler’s hand and dragged himself back. The peddler spun, off balance. The tray tilted.

  Two dogs, apparently asleep in a doorway, rose with surprising agility and dashed forward.

  The buns spun from the tray.

  “My simit!” the peddler cried. A dog caught a simit in midair, while the schoolboys darted at the ground.

  An old man stepped out of his shop and made to catch the tray.

  Twelve yards back down the street, the stop man flung his corek to the ground with an exclamation of surprise, and broke into a run.

  It was no time for caution.

  His quarry had disappeared.

  19

  AT the back of the shop was a curtain, and behind the curtain a flight of wooden steps.

  At the top Yashim flipped the catch on the back window, pushed the casement, and vaulted out.

  It wasn’t much of a drop, because the house was built into the slope. Dodging the laundry lines, he raced along the alley. It ended in a wall. There was a water butt against the wall, and Yashim was soon over the top.

  He glanced back.

  The elderly shopkeeper was leaning out of his window, shaking his fist, and someone—his pursuer—was trying to get past him. The shopkeeper turned and seemed to begin arguing.

  Where Yashim’s wall touched the backs of the houses on the higher street there was a latticed window, without glass. Yashim aimed a kick at the casement catch.

  It broke, and as the window swung inward Yashim followed headfirst.

  The three women in the room were unveiled. Their sewing froze in their laps. They stared at Yashim openmouthed as he swept through, scattering apologies.

  Downstairs he found the street door bolted from inside, and a moment later he was mingling with the morning crowd making its way toward the junction.

  The cab was there, drawn up beneath the steps.

  Yashim sprang onto the box and fished a coin from his belt.

  “If you don’t mind,” he said, dropping the money into the driver’s palm, “we can take the ferenghis home together.”

  20

  AKUNIN, the stop man, sat slumped in the corner of the cab, chewing his nails. His companion sat on the bench opposite, humming tunelessly to himself and staring at the blind drawn across the window. Whenever the cab lurched he put out his hand and steadied himself against the dry leather seat.

  At the Egyptian bazaar the driver hitched his reins and brought the cab rolling to a halt.

  Yashim jumped off the box and made his way to the entrance of the bazaar, where he leaned back against a pillar amid a crowd of shoppers and porters and watched the two men descend from the cab. They paid the driver and made their way to the gate to the water stairs. Yashim followed, to see them settle in silence into a caïque, which shot off from the stage.

  Yashim turned away to find a coffee shop where he could complete his breakfast; twenty minutes later he returned to the landing stage and took a caïque himself.

  “To Therapia,” he said. “The Russian residency.”

  21

  PRINCE Alexander Petrovich Galytsin was called Alexander, after the tsar; Petrovich, after his father; and Galytsin, after the family estate outside Moscow. In Istanbul, where he served as military attaché to the Russian embassy, he was better known as the Fox.

  He sat at his desk with his collar unbuttoned and stared unblinking at the two men who stood before him.

  “You lost him,” he said quietly.

  The man who had hummed hung his head and mumbled something into his beard.

  “Speak up, Shishkin.”

  “We—we didn’t give ourselves away, your highness.”

  “Oh, wonderful.” Galytsin picked up a stiletto letter opener and balanced it between his fingers. “Now you take me for an idiot, too. Stand up.” Akunin had buckled at the knees. “I told you to take him by surprise, discreetly. You delivered the note. Three hundred yards on a dead-end street, and you lost him. And somehow you didn’t give yourselves away? Which of you took the decision to abort the mission?”

  The two men stared at their feet. At last Akunin said miserably: “It was me, your highness. It’s—it’s how we were trained.”

  Galytsin stared at the man. “At least you did that part right,” he said. In affairs of this kind, the crucial thing was not to disclose yourself.

  “He didn’t see us, your highness. He couldn’t know who we are.”

  Galytsin placed the point of the knife on his blotter and twisted it slowly. “You are dismissed, for now.”

  The men bowed, touching their forelocks, and backed out of the room. Prince Galytsin’s eyes were fixed on the little hole he had bored in his blotter with the paper knife.

  His secretary entered. “A Turkish gentleman, your highness. He says he is from the Porte, and wishes to speak to you.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Yashim, your highness. He has no appointment.”

  An expression appeared on the prince’s face that the secretary could not interpret. “Send him in.”

  “With no appointment?”

  Galytsin raised his eyes. The secretary disappeared.

  He laid the letter opener on its leather rack and took a fresh sheet of paper from the holder.

  He wrote a few words across the top of the page, and laid down his pen.

  “Yashim, your highness.”

  Yashim paused in the doorway. Galytsin was known to him by name, but they had never met.

  “You expected me earlier, I believe.”

  Galytsin looked at him curiously. “The invitation was a little clumsy. My apologies. Please, do sit down.”

  Yashim settled on the hard chair.

  Galytsin hesitated. “I am at your disposal, monsieur.”

  Yashim inclined his head. “I come from the grand vizier, your highness. Two days ago, at the monastery of Hristos on the island of Chalki, the monks discovered the body of a man. It is possible that he was a Russian. Fair-haired, big, early middle age, with a long scar on his face between the mouth and the ear. Someone disposed of him in the monastery well, where he was found. He may have been in the well for some weeks. His neck was broken, although the condition of the body makes it impossible to tell if he was dead before he was thrown into the well.”

  The prince’s expression was impassive. “What makes you believe he was a Russian?”

  “There were other signs, your highness.”

  “I should hope so.” Galytsin waved a hand. “What you have told me is hardly conclusive. Fair hair? A scar? Why, it covers half the world.”

  Yashim reached into his waistcoat and brought out a silk handkerchief.

  “This is perhaps more specific,” he said. He dangled the handkerchief over the desk, and something dropped onto the prince’s blotter. />
  Only Galytsin’s eyes moved. “What is this?”

  “The man had a brand, on his inner arm,” Yashim explained. “Something you might recognize.”

  Galytsin touched the withered skin with the tip of his letter knife, and glanced up at Yashim.

  “Well?”

  “A … Totenkopf.” Yashim frowned with the effort of remembering the unfamiliar word. He spoke many languages, but German was not among them. “A death’s-head.”

  Galytsin skewered the flap of skin with his knife. “If, as you say, the man was a Russian,” he began, lifting the blade, “the circumstances are peculiar.”

  The flap of skin trembled on the tip of the knife.

  “I do not think that Greek monks make a habit of murdering Russians.”

  “That was my impression,” Yashim agreed. “But you are in contact with the monastery?”

  Galytsin smiled. “The tsar naturally feels sympathy for our coreligionists, the orthodox faithful, wherever they may be,” he said drily.

  He leaned aside and dropped the flap of skin into the wastepaper basket.

  “Thank the grand vizier for advising me of the unfortunate occurrence. Perhaps you will do me the favor of keeping me informed?”

  Yashim got to his feet, and bowed. “I am sure the grand vizier would wish it.”

  Galytsin flipped a hand carelessly. When Yashim had gone, he summoned his secretary.

  “I want Yashim watched. If Akunin and Shishkin fail me again, I will have them cashiered and sent to Siberia. Make quite sure they understand.”

  He sat for a few moments longer, his pale hands folded neatly on the desk.

  Galytsin was not a man given to endure disappointment for long. Smaller minds could be frustrated by little setbacks like these; but Galytsin took the longer view.

  When you were playing for empires, even a setback could be an opportunity.

  22

  FOR Yashim, too, the interview provided an opportunity, for as his caïque returned him to Istanbul, it overhauled a fishing boat bringing in the morning’s catch. Back at his apartment, Yashim laid two mackerel on the board. He liked all fish, but mackerel was best: he always liked a mackerel sandwich off the boats that drew up along the Golden Horn in the evening, grilling their fish on shallow braziers along the shore.

  Today, he had more elaborate plans.

  Taking the sharp kitchen knife an Armenian friend had given him, he made a tiny incision below the gills of each fish. Through the narrow opening he drew out the guts, taking care not to widen the little cuts any further, then he rinsed the fish and laid them back on the board.

  He dropped a handful of currants into a bowl and covered them with warm water from the kettle.

  With a rolling pin he rolled and bashed the mackerel from the gills to the tail. He snapped the backbones two or three times along their length, pinching the fish between his fingers until the skin was loose. Carefully he began to empty the skin, squeezing the flesh and the bones through the tiny openings.

  He picked up the two skins, each still attached to its head and tail, and rinsed them out.

  He dried his hands, and peeled and chopped a few shallots. While they softened in the pan, he crushed peeled almonds and walnuts with the rolling pin, chopped them fine with the knife, and stirred them into the shallots with a handful of pine nuts. As they colored he added the currants and a handful of chopped dried apricots. He put cinnamon, allspice berries, and a pinch of cloves into his grinder and ground them over the nuts, adding a dash of kirmizi biber, or black charred chili flakes.

  He scraped the flesh from the fish bones and tossed it into the pan with a pinch of sugar.

  He chopped parsley and dill, split a lemon, and squeezed it over the stuffing.

  It smelled good already. He took a nibble, sprinkled the mix with a pinch of salt and black pepper, then stirred it and took it off the heat.

  When it was cool, he stuffed the mixture back into the mackerel skins, squeezing and patting them to restore their shape.

  He laid a wire grill over the coals, scattered the fish with flour and oil from his fingers, and laid them on the wire, turning them as they spat and sizzled.

  Meanwhile, he sharpened his knife on a stone.

  When the mackerel skin was bubbling and lightly browned, he took the fish from the heat and sliced them thickly on the board. Very carefully, he slid the fish onto a plate.

  23

  IN the palace Elif bowed her head and gently touched the strings of her violin, straining to hear their tiny hum. Her face was rapt; it was also very beautiful. All the orchestra girls were beautiful—it went without saying, for they played, and lived, for the pleasure and delight of God’s felicity on earth, Sultan Abdülmecid.

  They were dressed almost jauntily à la Franca, their shining hair drawn back and pinned beneath exquisite bejeweled shakos, in green tunics and black trousers. They carried European instruments to match their costume, as was the fashion, though at a word they could have reassembled with traditional tanburs, ouds, and neys, for each of the girls was an adept in either form.

  Elif glanced up to where Melda was tuning her mandolin, her ear cocked to the belly of the instrument.

  The two girls exchanged smiles.

  Smiles were the baksheesh of the harem, of course, like frowns and enthusiasm, frostiness and barbed remarks. A smile or a stamped foot—the harem girls passed them back and forth as minor articles of trade. Behind every gesture lay the desire to be noticed. Behind the desire to be noticed lay the hope of preferment: up the ranks of the harem girls, closer and closer to the body of the man whose life, in a way, these girls were destined to curate.

  But the smile that passed between Elif and Melda was a smile of sheer complicity.

  Four hundred sequins in silver money, from the room they had sequestered. Two necklaces, one of onyx, one of jasper. A gilded coffeepot, three silk shawls, and a jade mouthpiece that Elif thought was more valuable than she let on.

  She turned a peg a fraction and laid a finger to the string, watching the Kislar aga advance steady-paced into the great chamber. Behind him came a crocodile file of elderly women, visiting from Eski Saray—the Ceremony of the Birth was an outing they would relish. The lady Talfa, with her personal black slave, let the older women settle, then plumped down among the cushions.

  The orchestra had been instructed to play only when the last guest was seated, so the musicians watched in silence as the harem cavalcade poured in. After Talfa came a stream of young girls, recently adopted into the imperial family—the whites purchased in Circassia, or in the market at Istanbul. They fluttered to the divan, or stole humbly into its shadow. Behind them came the other girls, Abdülmecid’s girls—led by two matrons of honor, barely seventeen, who had borne him children in his days as prince—who all settled in order of precedence onto the low divan.

  Elif suppressed a contemptuous little smile as she saw Bezmialem come in, at the tail of the younger women. She was pale, even for a Circassian, but still beautiful at thirty-two—she could easily pass for one of the girls, they all reckoned—with her blond curls and her small, white, oval face. Right now, she seemed to be just one of the girls, coming in without proper ceremony.

  Elif’s attention wandered to the Kislar aga, standing with his hands folded across his belly at the door to the private apartments of the imperial consorts. The aga was good at ceremony himself. She wondered if the young sultan would attend, and whether he would look the way she remembered; for Elif, like most women in the harem, glimpsed the padishah but rarely.

  A squabble broke out among the women settling on the divan as Bezmialem sought out a place. They whispered angrily, hissing and fluttering their jeweled hands. The black eunuchs stepped forward, reminding the girls to put their jealousies away behind bland smiles and flashing eyes. The women whispered and rustled; the eunuchs piped and squeaked; Bezmialem stood twisting her thin white fingers; and a cloud of little children—those of the late sultan and those of the
present sultan, mingling with perfect familiarity with the children of slaves, for they were, after all, one family—fidgeted and giggled, or looked around with interest and hauteur as they sat at the edge of the divan, jeweled slippers sliding on the rich carpet.

  Elif saw the Kislar aga raise his chin and beckon to someone she had not yet noticed in the crowd: a man in a brown cloak who stood quietly at the far corner. Later, had she been asked, she could have described in minute detail all the people in the room, their jewels, their positions, their choice of colors and fabrics; but she could not have recalled Yashim. For that was his special gift, to be invisible. Elif saw him—and her eye moved back to the Kislar aga.

  The aga drew himself up and bowed minutely to the orchestra. Elif laid her bow on the strings and felt the scarcely perceptible tug of rosin on the hairs.

  24

  THE four kalfas held the cradle high. It was the cradle in which all babies of the imperial line were placed, tightly swaddled, for their first outing into the world.

  For boys, it was the world of women, girls, and their neutered attendants that would move around them for seven years.

  For girls born behind the lattice, raised in its fretted shadow, it was the only world they would ever know, and on their marriage they would exchange one shadow for another.

  Yashim looked again at the cradle. The red tassel meant another girl: disappointment for some, but an opening for the others who shared the sultan’s bed. The tassel swung out as the kalfas moved and for an instant it seemed to Yashim that they were out of step, that the cradle was not securely held. But then a hand went up; the women checked their step and began again to walk slowly around the room. Starting from the right, as tradition demanded.

  The khadin, then, was delivered of a girl. She would not be joining the ranks of the most favored consorts of Sultan Abdülmecid. That chance might fall to others, also intimate with their young sovereign. Much would depend on how quickly the mother could recover from the birth; and on how much interest she could coax from the young sultan in his daughter. She was not his first; his third, if Yashim’s memory served. But there: he was out of touch. The sultan was not the same sultan who had superintended his own beginnings in the palace service. This was not the harem he had known.