Jason Goodwin - An Evil eye

Yashim smiled. “You told me once that a girl needs enemies.”

The valide shrugged. “Better an enemy than no one at all. To be regarded, that’s something. But to be truly alone-in here, at least-it’s a kind of death.”

“When you first came here, hanum, you must have been isolated.”

“I, Yashim? What a ridiculous idea.” Unconsciously she raised a hand to her hair. “The place was positively crowded, and I was a French girl, was I not? Espece de merveille! And on the way-well, I had learned more than most of the Circassians. More Turkish, certainly.

“I shall leave in two weeks, inshallah. I will ask Tulin to find out which day would be propitious.” She caught his glance, and raised an eyebrow. “Not for my own sake, Yashim. I do it for the girls.”

“It may be just as well, hanum. There have been-well, some disturbing incidents in the harem.”

“Indeed. The Kislar aga has told me so.”

Yashim looked surprised. “He has spoken to you-about Elif?”

The valide put her fingers to her temples. “Elif, Fatima, Begum,” she intoned wearily. “Really, Yashim.”

“But Elif-” Yashim looked doubtful. “Melda. He told you about Melda?”

The valide frowned. “My son, the sultan, does what he likes.”

“Hanum?” Yashim shifted uneasily on the edge of the divan: it seemed to him that the valide’s mind was drifting toward the past.

“He does exactly what he likes.” The valide raised her chin and looked down her beautiful cheekbones. “He moves his court into that wretched palace of his. Everything French, he says.” Yashim nodded slowly, unable to halt the confusion in the valide’s words. She looked at him severely. “I don’t want people thinking I am to blame. His father never proposed such an absurd thing, wanted us to be comfortable. I had no intention of moving myself, naturellement. I am perfectly comfortable where I am.”

She spoke in clipped tones, not moving her head. When she had finished, she held the pose for a few seconds longer, and blinked rapidly, as though she had something in her eye.

“You have much to do, valide,” Yashim said quietly.

The valide turned to Yashim with the smile that had ravished a sultan. “You are very thoughtful, Yashim. I count you among my oldest and dearest friends. Thank you so much for coming.”

She held out her hand, tilted to one side, like a European.

Yashim stooped, and took it in his: her hand was very small, and mottled, and he felt the fragile bones beneath her skin where he raised it to his lips.

At the door he found Hyacinth. The old man looked gray.

“Is it true?”

“True?” Yashim echoed.

“Do you, too, think I am some kind of fool?” Hyacinth whispered with sudden fierceness. “That I sleep and eat and smile like a child?”

His long fingers clamped around Yashim’s arm. His hold was strong, and Yashim checked himself.

“It’s a suggestion, that she should go to Besiktas. I’m sorry,” he added. He had not thought of Hyacinth.

The old eunuch nodded, turning his head from side to side; his nostrils flared. “It was in the air, Yashim efendi.” He spread the fingers of one hand in Yashim’s face. “I felt it, here. The harem, I breathe. You understand? I watch its breath like a mother watches her child. Every breath. Every word. Each tiny glance. When they took the women-” His fingers tightened into a ball. “And now she goes.”

His eyes glittered, and his grip tightened on Yashim’s arm. “And will I go, or stay?”

Yashim bit his lip. The valide had spoken of her body slave, the girl-Tulin. “I don’t know, Hyacinth. I’m sorry. I wish I knew.”

“Ah.” Hyacinth let out a ragged sigh and closed his eyes. Without another word he released Yashim’s arm and turned, shaking his head. Yashim watched him shuffle away along the corridor, his slippers slapping on the polished cobbles.

Yashim followed the street that dropped from Ayasofya mosque to the shore of the Golden Horn. Beyond the mosque of the valide, past the entrance to the spice bazaar, the ancient walls disappeared into a warren of haphazard wharves and boatyards that had grown up around them after many centuries of peace. Here and there one could still glimpse a section of banded brick and stone, or crenellations that crumbled above a riot of roofs and makeshift staircases, as the old defenses were gradually absorbed into the fabric of the city. Beyond the walls, the water stirred listlessly against the muddy banks.

At the Prison Gate Yashim found a caique and crossed the Horn. The new bridge was almost complete. In summer they had cut down the great plane tree that had given the people shade, because it stood in the way of the bridge.

Without its spreading branches to protect him, the wind was keener; the crossing chilled him. At the foot of the Galata steps he stopped for coffee, and sat cross-legged with his back to the brazier, looking out across the water. The weather had finally turned. A late Indian summer had ebbed away; the storks had flown south and already white crests ruffled the Bosphorus, whipped up by a wind that blew across the Black Sea from the steppes of Central Asia.

The Turks had come from the same place, centuries ago. Nomads, shepherds, horsemen: tent-dwelling tribesmen who worshipped stones and rivers, and met beneath the spreading branches of a tree to administer justice and settle their affairs. It would have been a tree, Yashim thought, much like the great plane that had drooped its branches over the Golden Horn, festooned with rags and prayers.

He half closed his eyes. That, of course, had been the purpose of the tree: in the minds of the people it was a link between heaven and earth, a conduit between earthly troubles and heavenly justice. It was not so much a belief as an instinct: justice belonged to the sky and the open air. Justice and fairness flourished in the open, from the kadi, who gave his verdict in an open court, to the Turkish tribal chief, who spoke to his people sitting around the trunk of a tree.

He stared, frowning, into his coffee. How times had changed! The spreading tree had been exchanged for the palace, and its harem, where everything was effectively invisible. Nobody knew, and nobody cared, who lived there, or how they lived-or died. In a world closed and enveloped in secrecy, justice withered like a pale shoot deprived of the sun.

Yashim slapped some silver on the table and strode from the cafe, his cloak billowing behind him; outside he turned his back on the water and began to mount the steps two by two, dodging the porters bent double under their enormous loads, the musical instrument sellers, the sherbet vendors, and the little Jewish boys who sold paper on every landing. All Pera seemed to teem on the steps, veiled women, priests in black, foreign sailors, businessmen in frock coats and fezzes, builders in turbans. Yashim kept his head down and moved fast, not drawing breath until he reached the rusted iron gates of the Polish residency.

Dry leaves swirled around his feet as he crossed the yard. He climbed the steps and let himself into the dim hall. From overhead he heard the distant sound of a fiddle. Picking his way carefully through the gloom he reached the stairs, where the treads creaked as he mounted toward the light that streamed through the landing window.

He paused there for a moment, leaning his forehead against the glass. Outside, Marta was on the grass, pegging clothes on a line. Farther off, beyond the yellowing leaves, Yashim could make out the cobbled coach yard where the widow Baxi still lived with her two children-just another of the myriad tiny and traditional arrangements that made up the city’s shape and population. He could even see the Baxi boy outside, under the pump, dangling a piece of string for a cat.