An Evil Eye: A Novel Read online

  The tassel dropped back, to rest against the talisman of beaten gold, surrounded by blue glass beads that provided the newborn with protection. Still the kalfas held the cradle at the level of their shoulders. It was a heavy thing, ebony, inlaid with mother of pearl, with a slender rising prow: a tiny ship in which a frail new life embarked for a noble destiny, praise God.

  The baby already had a secret umbilical name, whispered by a midwife or the mother at the moment of its birth. Yashim could not remember the mother’s name. Ayesha? Was she the tall Circassian with ankles so fine that some of the other women had predicted they might break with the weight of her child? Always such solicitude for the welfare of their harem sisters! Voices trilling with concern—and spite, no doubt. Pembe, was it? He could not remember. She was not here among the family, nor did she follow the cradle. Perhaps she was not well. It was not a good sign.

  He glanced at the divan. The valide was leaning back against cushions, one knee elegantly upraised and a slender wrist poised upon it. The younger women—Bezmialem, the sultan’s mother, among them—sat at a distance; between them, many aunts. There was Talfa, the old sultan’s younger sister, who had married a pasha and returned to the sultan’s harem on his death; and her daughter, Necla; Yusel, her huge slave, on her knees beside her, her black face glistening with—what? Tears?

  Yashim sighed. Of course he was not immune. A birth touched him, like a death: this lesser contact with the mysteries, when the curtain moved between this world and eternity; the ordinary miracle that the rich and imperial strove for, as much as the poor did, in fulfillment of their plans and dreams.

  Perhaps, in the miracle of creation, they fulfilled themselves. Perhaps birth staved off a final encounter with the mystery. If so, that was a comfort Yashim could not share. He had been born, and he would die.

  One of the women gave a sort of sob, and reached into a jeweled bag. As the kalfas with the cradle passed her, she flung her hand into the air—and over the music Yashim heard the tinkling of little silver coins as they scattered across the floor. A cloud of children darted forward to retrieve them. Across the bowed backs of the children milling on the floor, Yashim caught sight of the Kislar aga. His black face was stony.

  Yashim blinked. The music—there was something wrong about the music. Even now, as he half turned his head, the violin seemed to whine; the flute sounded shrill and out of tempo. But as soon as he had noticed it, the music reassembled itself.

  He saw Talfa, close to the elderly valide. She was scowling while her great black slave kneaded her arm and wept. To his surprise, Talfa dashed a knuckle to her eye, too. The valide’s fingers clenched and unclenched, a sign of impatience. Uncertainly, Yashim allowed his gaze to travel around the divan again. Yes, people were actually crying.

  He stiffened. There it was again. The violin was on edge, a little flat. The whole ensemble was slipping out of time. Yashim shifted his weight: only a few bars, murky and discordant, yet for a moment he had felt as though he were on a lurching ship.

  The room righted itself. The music flowed on once more. The four kalfas moved gravely toward the aunts, sisters, and cousins of the old sultan. Talfa scattered her coins with a shaky hand. The old valide’s mouth twitched.

  It was a scene Yashim would not easily forget: the silent cradle, women crying, the band losing its way again, the children giggling and calling from the floor. Yashim shuddered, and muttered an involuntary blessing.

  At last the kalfas turned to go back through the doorway. The Kislar aga stepped aside, and the cortege passed through. Nobody spoke. Some of the women looked afraid. Hands were held to lips. Apart from the gabbling of the children, the room was silent. Even the music had slowly petered out: in their neat little Frankish hats, instruments in their hands, the girls of the orchestra were looking about at one another, wide-eyed and bewildered.

  From beyond the door came the sound of a woman’s scream.

  In the silence that fell before the scream came again, Yashim sensed a relaxation of the mood, like an escaping sigh.

  25

  “THE mother has discovered her infant,” the valide said.

  Yashim had to bow to catch her words. Around them women, eunuchs, and slaves were talking and weeping. An elderly eunuch patted his face with his bony fingers. Yashim noticed one mother snatch up her little boy and squeeze him, struggling, while the little boy opened his fist and tried to show her a collection of silver coins. Bezmialem, the young valide, had her head back and was squeezing the bridge of her nose between her fingers. Some of the younger women were shaking their heads, muttering to one another.

  “You should not have come, hanum efendi,” Yashim said. “A sad occasion.”

  The valide glanced at him sharply. “For the lady, bien sûr. At my age, Yashim, one is inured to grief. Perhaps one even seeks it out, a little. I have lived too long to pretend that my death will be a cause of it.” She closed her fan. “The child was born without—the orifice nécessaire. I am sorry for the girl, of course. It will be a comfort to her to know that I was here.”

  The valide began to cough. Her hand went up and somebody pressed a handkerchief into it. She put the handkerchief to her lips and shut her eyes. “I wish to go home.”

  “Of course, hanum efendi.” It was a girl from the orchestra, carrying a flute. She smiled at Yashim and gestured to a eunuch.

  “Valide hanum!” Talfa, wet-faced, picked up the hem of the valide’s shawl and pressed it to her lips and eyes. “Please do not go yet. Everyone is so sad. Won’t you help me make her stay, Yashim?”

  “I am tired, Talfa,” the valide announced, crisply. “What was the mother’s name?”

  “Pembe, hanum efendi. A Circassian.”

  “You will please tell her, when it is appropriate, that I came tonight. And afterward, my child, I expect a visit.”

  “Nothing could please me more, valide hanum.” Talfa tittered, wiping her tears away with jeweled fingers. “Shall I bring Necla also?”

  The valide’s brow furrowed. “Necla? She is very young.”

  “She is eleven, hanum efendi.”

  “Bring her by all means,” the valide said, without obvious enthusiasm. “Next week, when I am recovered. Tülin?”

  “I am here, valide.”

  At the band girl’s signal, two slim black eunuchs bent forward to help the valide to her feet. She flinched impatiently, but at last she was upright between them.

  “You, too, Yashim. I expect a visit, soon.”

  The harem ladies stood respectfully as the valide walked away, supported on either hand by eunuchs. Tülin, the flautist, hovered around them. Yashim found himself face-to-face with Sultan Mahmut’s widowed sister.

  “We miss you in the harem, Yashim.”

  Yashim blinked: the resemblance to Mahmut was strong. Poor Talfa. She should have borne a son before her husband died. With only Necla, she had returned to the imperial harem.

  She took a lock of her hair and curled it on a pudgy finger.

  “I’ve been thinking about the way you live … outside,” she said, in the little high voice of the harem. “I often wonder why that is?”

  “It was settled many years ago,” Yashim replied cautiously. “By your noble brother’s wish.”

  “Peace be on him,”Talfa said, letting the curl of hair spring free. “Sultan Abdülmecid—I suppose he must have confirmed the arrangement.”

  Yashim hesitated. The new sultan had not revoked Yashim’s permission to live outside the palace walls. Nor, on the other hand, had he confirmed it. Yashim guessed that Talfa knew as much.

  “I am where I hope I can be most useful, hanum efendi,” he replied. “And in the Abode of Bliss, are you not under the gaze of the all-powerful sultan?”

  Talfa turned her head slightly and a dimple appeared on her cheek.

  “The sultan has so many cares, Yashim efendi.” She gave him a slanting gaze under her lashes. “It isn’t fair that you should leave it all to him. And you were very good th
e other day. You could be so useful here, efendi.”

  She giggled lightly.

  Yashim bowed, and felt his blood run cold.

  26

  AS the caïque turned up against the sluggish current, Palewski leaned back on the hard cushions and stared at the footings of the new bridge.

  For centuries, people had talked about throwing a bridge across the Golden Horn. On the Stamboul side lay the bazaars, the palaces, and the temples of faith; on the Pera side lived the foreign community, now a mixed bag of Italians and Levantines, who operated so many of the commercial enterprises of the empire. The great Byzantine emperor Justinian, who gave his city the incomparable Ayasofya, was supposed, by some, to have strung a chain of boats across the waterway. If he had done so, only the idea of the chain had survived: medieval Constantinople had protected itself from attack on the seaward side by hauling a massive chain, whose links weighed fifty pounds apiece, across the mouth of the Horn. In 1453, when the city fell to the Ottoman Turks, Mehmet II had dragged his ships over land to get around it.

  Fifty years later, the renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci had submitted a design for a bridge shaped like a curving bow, or a crescent; the sketch was put on file and forgotten. Three centuries passed. Then the late sultan—proponent of change everywhere in the empire—entrusted the project to his favorite, the Kapudan pasha Fevzi Ahmet, commander of the fleet. A man who had a reputation for getting things done.

  Palewski sighed. Where the great plane tree that shaded the shoreline on the Pera side had stood, the ground looked dusty and hard-baked. The pasha’s bridge would be as ugly and practical as any of the new buildings that had disfigured the old city in the past twenty years—the commercial houses of Pera, the blank barracks of the New Troop on Üsküdar, the sultan’s hideous new palace at Besiktas. Worst of all, he thought, it would dissolve the ancient distinction between Stamboul, with its palaces and domes and bazaars, and modern, commercial Pera across the Horn.

  It was growing dark when the caïque dropped him at the Balat stage. Palewski tipped the oarsman and made his way unhurriedly through the steep streets before stopping at a sunken doorway picked out in bands of red and white stone. The widow Matalya opened the door and Palewski removed his hat.

  “Gone out, efendi,” the old lady remarked. “Messengers back and forth, and I don’t know what. Would you like to wait?”

  Palewski agreed, and went on up to Yashim’s apartment carrying his old portmanteau, stuffed with a shawl. Wrapped in the shawl was an excellent brandy—1821—which the French ambassador had once given him, though Palewski had forgotten why. He sat on the divan while the familiar outlines of the flat bled into darkness; just before it became too dark to see, he stood up and fumbled with the lamp. In Yashim’s kitchen various plates and bowls were covered with muslins. The brazier was barely warm: he poked his finger into the coals, then wiped the soot off absently on his coattails. At last he found a piece of bread and a painted glass, and settled down to read Yashim’s latest Balzac.

  At the beginning of chapter three he eased off his shoes and drew his feet up onto the divan.

  27

  THE great oda, overlooking the Bosphorus, emptied out. The orchestra packed up their instruments. The ladies of the harem drifted away. The children were shepherded off by the black eunuchs, still sniffling. It had been a very remarkable day; not an auspicious one. There was lots to discuss later.

  Only the lady Talfa remained, with her slave.

  “Bring me coffee.”

  Yusel heaved herself to her feet and was about to waddle off when she raised her hands in surprise. “What have we here?”

  On the carpet at the foot of the divan sat a little girl, fast asleep, with her head on her knees.

  Yusel bent down and shook her gently. “Best run along now, little one.”

  The girl saw Yusel bending over her and scrambled to her feet, looking blankly from Yusel to the lady Talfa.

  Yusel mimed a low temmena, a bow with the hand almost trailing the ground. The girl took the hint. She presented Talfa with a graceful bow.

  She looked about five years old.

  “Very pretty, very nice,” Talfa murmured. The sad events of the afternoon had put her into a good mood. “And what, little one, is your name?”

  “Roxelana, hanum.”

  “Charming! And tell me, Roxelana, who looks after you?”

  Roxelana glanced down and traced a pattern in the carpet with her little slippered foot. “No one, hanum.”

  Talfa frowned. “No one? Where do you sleep?”

  “I sleep—with the girls.” She slid her foot against her leg. “Wherever I am, hanum.”

  “The Kislar aga knows about this? And Bezmialem?”

  The little girl glanced up, biting her lip.

  The princess let out an exasperated sigh. “It’s a muddle, that’s clear. Never mind, I’m glad we’ve had a little chat. I will see that something is done for you.”

  Roxelana looked down at her slippers and stirred her foot on the dark flags. “You won’t send me away, hanum?”

  “What a ridiculous notion!” Talfa giggled. “As long as you behave yourself, my dear, you’ll stay in the harem forever and ever. Now run along. You can visit me this evening, after prayers, and we’ll see what can be done.”

  The little girl bowed again, and walked with self-conscious solemnity to the door of the oda.

  At the door she turned and flashed a timid smile. “Thank you, my princess.”

  Talfa waggled her fingers. A small smile hovered on her lips.

  28

  AFTER the funeral the young man sold his sheep and the standing corn.

  He thought long and hard about his inheritance, knowing the pasha would have to die.

  It was not a question of rank. It was a matter of retribution.

  A matter of honor. He had already chosen his weapon: it would be a knife. A knife because it was easy to conceal, and very sure. He had slaughtered many animals with this knife.

  Istanbul was a long way off, of course. But he knew the roads the camels took, as far as the boundary of his province. There would be people after that, to show him the way.

  No one would notice the knife.

  29

  “BALZAC!” Palewski exclaimed, as Yashim came in. “Acceptable in small doses, with brandy. I thought you’d never come.”

  “It’s Thursday,” Yashim objected. “I always come.”

  “I know,” Palewski said, tossing the book aside. “You have nobody else to cook for.”

  Yashim raised an eyebrow. “The Prophet, may he be praised, instructed the faithful to give charity,” he replied, turning to the kitchen. “Especially to the friendless.”

  “Litwo! Ojczyzno moja! ty jeste jak zdrowie,” Palewski declaimed. “I am alone in a foreign land.”

  While Yashim set out the dishes, Palewski grumbled about the new bridge. “Ghastly. I had hoped, with the Kapudan pasha away with the fleet, that work would grind to a halt. No such thing—it’s all modern methods now.” He picked up a slice of stuffed mackerel and held it in midair. “You look tired, Yashim.”

  Yashim gave him a weary smile. “Husrev Pasha thought the Russians should know about their missing friend. The Fox was not very informative.”

  “And the Totenkopf?”

  “He barely reacted. Picked up the skin and dropped it into the wastepaper basket.”

  “The Galytsins, Yashim, have lied for the tsar since the time of Ivan the Terrible. I once met a fellow who had been tutored in the Galytsin house. He said even their tutor told lies. Alexander Petrovich was a very good pupil, apparently.” He ate the mackerel dolma. “Why did Husrev decide to let them know?”

  Yashim shrugged. “In the interest of neighborly relations. Better it came from us than from the little man on the ferry.”

  “Hmm.” Palewski reached for another dolma. “A Russian murdered on the islands. Russian ambassador demanding explanations. A useful little crisis for the grand vi
zier.”

  “Useful?”

  “Dust in the sultan’s eyes, Yashim. Something to frighten him a bit. Husrev wants to show his mettle. You’d almost think that if this crisis hadn’t arisen, he’d have been tempted to invent it himself.”

  Yashim shook his head. “The man had been in the water for weeks. Husrev Pasha couldn’t have known the sultan was about to die.”

  “We all knew, Yashim.”

  “Not to the day. Not to the week.”

  Palewski sighed. “I suppose you’re right. Husrev’s no shrinking violet, but getting a Russian agent killed on the off chance? It’s too much.” He reached for another dolma. “And in the middle of nowhere, too.”

  “Chalki?”

  “It’s an island, for goodness’ sake. A place you go to escape the heat, or for Greek lovers to meet by prearranged chance.”

  Yashim nodded. “That’s been bothering me. Chalki is only for monks and fishermen.” He picked up a cabbage leaf stuffed with pine nuts and rice. “I’d understand if a Russian military agent ended up dead in a Tophane backstreet. But Chalki’s a trap for the killer.”

  “True.” Palewski pursed his lips. “Why not meet in the Belgrade woods—or in a quiet café up the Bosphorus?”

  Yashim blinked. “Because Chalki was where they had to meet.”

  Palewski looked perplexed. “Had to meet, Yash?”

  “Obviously, yes, if the Russian came to meet someone who was on Chalki already.”

  “One of the monks?”

  Yashim wasn’t thinking of the monks.

  His mind roved back to that afternoon on the rocks, among the Greek fishermen.

  “Tomatoes!” Yashim slumped back into the chair. “The pasha’s mansion—that konak, among the trees.”