Jason Goodwin - An Evil eye

“Which is why you could order coffee while I dress.”

Half an hour later they arrived at the school gate, whose huge curling eaves projected over the street. Yashim turned to look back at the view, both novel and familiar: two sloping, crooked streets lined with low wooden houses, running down to a tiny open space. Not quite a square, nor even a piazza, it was simply a haphazard confluence of sloping lanes paved with huge, smooth cobbles. A thread of water spun from a brass spigot into a small ornamental fountain, fed from the aqueduct he could see in the distance, built by Emperor Trajan more than a thousand years ago.

Istanbul was a city that packed time like a spyglass in its case. It was a place where centuries passed in moments, and where a minute-like this one, standing on the school steps-could seem like an age. Yashim had not been back to the palace school, where the empire trained her best and brightest boys, for fifteen years.

“I lived here once,” Yashim said.

The boy’s eyes swiveled briefly toward him. “Yes, efendi.”

Yashim sensed the boy’s doubt and disappointment. “And you are-nineteen?” He smiled, a little sadly. “Almost ready to graduate, I suppose.”

“Seventeen, efendi.”

“You look older. Tell me, what talents do you have?”

The boy looked at him levelly. “Talents? Very few, efendi, from what I’m told.”

They crossed the courtyard. At the foot of the stairs Yashim hesitated, inhaling the familiar smell of sweat and roses. “It’s not Pirek lala still?”

The cadet looked blank. “Efendi?”

They came out onto a gallery overlooking an enclosed courtyard. For a moment Yashim was tempted to hang back: the man leaning over the rail was Pirek lala, the old eunuch with the iron-shod stick.

He blinked, and the old lala was gone.

“Bozu! I saw that! Keep your foot flat and try it again.” The man at the rail was much younger, though his beard was gray. He was dressed in naval uniform. “The wrestling, Yashim efendi. I am the tutor.”

Yashim salaamed. The hall was just as he remembered, with high rectangular windows on three walls and a floor of raked and watered sand. Below them a dozen or so youths grappled with one another, stripped to the waist, their bodies oiled and gleaming. Yashim watched them for a while, remembering another set of boys trying anxiously to perfect their moves, grunting with exertion as they shifted from hold to hold.

Yashim had been a good wrestler, agile and strong. He was out of practice now, but he’d never lost the technique. Twice, at least, it had saved his life.

“They look fit.”

“They should be,” the tutor replied, a little grimly. “I keep ’em busy, morning, noon, and night. I run a tight ship here, efendi. If they can’t take the pace, out they go. Army can take ’em.” He stroked his beard. “One I’ve had my eye on. Wrestles well. Not so much with the gerit — too young-but runs like a hare.”

“Which one?”

“Name’s Kadri,” the tutor said. “Penmanship, rhetoric, wrestling, whatever-the best I’ve seen in fifteen years. He’ll win his races every day for a week. He’ll memorize twenty sutras in a couple of hours.” He glared at Yashim.

“I see. Wonderful.”

The tutor’s beard quivered. “Half a dozen times I’ve been on the point of telling him to pack.”

“You mean, to leave the school?”

“It’s like this, Yashim efendi. Kadri just goes out, like a lamp in a draft. Finest student I’ve had, and then for a day, for a week: nothing. No results. Lights up again when he’s ready, but it upsets the others, you see? Sense they’re winning only because Kadri doesn’t care.”

Yashim nodded. The Ottomans had discovered esprit de corps long before the French gave it a name. It was the founding principle of the whole administration of the empire, and this school’s purpose was to engender it in the ranks of those who would go on to rule.

Of course, the Ottoman elite was riven by cabals and cliques, whose shifting alliances interfered with the frictionless running of the empire. But esprit de corps remained the ideal.

The tutor was working his fingers together, one hand clasped above the other.

“He has no talent.”

“You said he could run.”

The tutor squinted at him. “Meant the talent of an Ottoman. If he has it, I can’t find it. Excels at everything, but focuses on nothing.”

Yashim bowed his head. “And you want me to talk to him?”

“Talk to him?” The tutor gave a shaky laugh. “No, Yashim efendi. I want you to find him.”

To Yashim’s surprise the tutor stuffed his beard into his mouth and chewed. “Forgive me, I did not make myself clear. Kadri himself is not the problem. The problem is that Kadri has disappeared.”

The lady Talfa waddled to the divan.

“Let me get comfortable,” she said. She dropped her slippers and settled against the cushions. “There. You may begin.”

She raised her chin and closed her eyes.

Her dresser knelt at the edge of the divan. She opened her leather bag and took out some little jars, a few pots, a sable brush, and a pair of silver tweezers, which she laid out on the carpet.

It was widely acknowledged within the harem that Talfa, the late sultan’s sister, possessed less than flawless skin. One of the older women had suggested that Talfa resembled her late brother in a number of ways. “She has the same air of command. The same eyes. Only, the blessed sultan lacked such a fine mustache.”

The dresser kept her face lowered as she opened the pot of wax and took up the spatula.

She frowned as she looked into the pot, and turned it slightly toward the light. Then she gave a little gasp.

Talfa opened her eyes.

“What’s the matter now?”

The dresser let the pot slip from her fingers and brought her hand to her mouth.

Talfa’s hand flew to her chin. “What is it?”

“I–I don’t know, hanum efendi. There was something in the pot.”

“In the pot?” A look of annoyance clouded the princess’s face. “Well, pick it up.”

The girl gingerly picked up the pot, and turned it so that Talfa could look inside.

She peered in, then dabbed at it with a finger.

Something black and long sprang out, and they both started. The dresser let the pot fall.

On the carpet between them lay the thick, ribbed tail of a rat.

Talfa’s face slowly crumpled as she squeezed her eyes shut and opened her mouth. Then she screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

The boys’ dormitory in a long, narrow room high up under the eaves contained twelve cots and a table with a washbasin. On a stand lay a copy of the Koran, transcribed by gifted boys over the years; Yashim thought he recognized his own hand in the pages, but he could not be sure. It was a long time ago.

The fire in the grate was cold.

A barred window at the end of the room looked out over the many-domed roof of the refectory. Beyond it, across a narrow lane, he could see the leaded dome of a small mosque.

“Took him from Anatolia,” the tutor said. “He’d been living wild.”

“Wild?”

“In a cave, apparently. One of the clansmen found him. Sent him on.”

Yashim nodded. It wasn’t unusual for boys to be sponsored to the school. No doubt one of the clan chiefs of Anatolia had recognized Kadri’s talents and sent him to Istanbul in the hope that one day he would be in a position to repay the favor.

The tutor shrugged. “Long time ago, Yashim efendi. For Kadri, I mean. He was only seven or eight-half a lifetime ago, in fact. Been in training ever since.”

“He left from here?”

The tutor made a gesture of bewilderment. “Must be so. We do a roll call every night. Kadri was marked in.”