Jason Goodwin - An Evil eye

He swung his arms, sucked at the cold air. He knew now precisely why he had chosen to live outside, away from the palace; precisely why Talfa’s insinuations had made his flesh creep and his ancient fears rise up. Preen was right: he could not bear to be trapped. He beat his arms over his chest and thought of Ibou’s subterranean rooms, of the women who dragged out their lives within the confines of a harem, of Kadri bursting his constraints and vaulting the walls of his palace school.

Shadowed, muffled figures slipped past him in the gloom. Now and then he shivered, like an animal discovering its limbs after a long sleep: ever since that ceremony of the birth he had been laboring under a burden of dread. And dreadful things had happened. At Besiktas, a girl had become possessed by a demon: a demon of the mind that created the demon in her belly. Hyacinth’s fear of abandonment was a demon, too, which plagued him remorselessly until he died falling from the balustrade. Yashim was oppressed by thoughts of Fevzi Ahmet, the mentor whose example he had rejected, whose memory he had thought buried and contained.

Yashim stepped almost automatically into a caique. Later he could remember reaching the landing stage, but not how he had crossed the Horn, nor how he had come home.

Images floated unbidden into his mind: a little boy standing frightened in the snow; Pembe, the mother of the sultan’s ruined child; a bloodstained sheet; Hyacinth’s frail body in the pool. He shuddered: for a few moments he had felt that he was seeing with another eye. An evil eye, which roamed from Besiktas to Topkapi, picking out its victims, sapping their will to live.

Back in his apartment he riddled the stove, angrily, and added a scoop of charcoal. He stood for a moment warming his hands above the glow, then he wiped them and stripped the skin from a pair of onions, which he split on the board. He sliced the halves in both directions, and let the tears well in his eyes. One day, Ibou had said once, you will mourn the valide yourself.

He put a shallow pan on the coals and added a slick of oil. He smashed the garlic with the flat of a blade and swept it from the board with the onions into the pan. They began to sizzle on the heat, and he wiped his eyes. He peeled a few carrots, potatoes, and a knob of celeriac, then pulled the chopping block toward him and began to slice the vegetables, first into strips, then into little dice.

He shook the pan.

The valide had once told him that a long life inside the harem depended on intelligence, not good health. But the valide was not well.

The onions were soft; he stirred in the vegetables, turning them in the oil.

It took a man or a woman to cast the eye. And there was one woman in the harem whose bitterness was active-and corrosive. Talfa was the senior lady in the sultan’s harem. Talfa had intuitively divined Yashim’s own fear of being pinned down in the palace, and played upon it. Talfa was bitter, and ambitious.

Perhaps she had frightened others? Pembe claimed that Talfa put the evil eye on her. Bezmialem had become a cipher. Elif had died at Besiktas, Hyacinth at Topkapi-but thanks to Tulin, the valide’s handmaiden, he knew that Talfa had gone to Topkapi only days before, and talked of nothing while the valide dozed. Talfa had insisted on meeting all the sultan’s ladies, so that they might meet her daughter, and then she had spoken to Melda. Taken her apart. Taken her aside for a little chat.

He sprinkled some sugar over the pan and threw in a couple of bay leaves. He covered the vegetables with water, and left them to come to the boil while he cleaned the mussels.

Talfa knew Topkapi very well, from top to bottom. She had been born there, after all. Talfa would know all about the engine. It didn’t matter whether the engine really existed or not. He might spend hours in the palace, searching for a contraption that whirled people to their doom-and all he might find would be a dusty table in a neglected room.

Ibou said that Talfa and Elif hated each other.

But Talfa had a knack for divining people’s fears, and playing on them. Elif ’s stare-baby-where had that come from? Perhaps Talfa had suggested a desperate remedy.

It made her bleed.

By taking Melda to Topkapi, Yashim had thought he was protecting her.

Instead, he had isolated her. What was it the valide had said? To be truly alone-in here, at least-it’s a kind of death.

Yashim tapped a mussel on the board. The mussel closed, and he tossed it into the bowl. Eventually he tipped the bowl and drained the juice into the pan. After a few minutes he stirred in the mussels.

Had Melda confided in Hyacinth? Talfa had something on Hyacinth that would make his heart sink, too.

Yashim took a bunch of parsley and chopped it on the board. He imagined Talfa dripping with feigned concern: “Poor Hyacinth. With the valide gone, there’ll be just you, won’t there? You and the old women at Topkapi?”

Yashim raised his head, with a jolt.

It had happened so slowly, so inexorably, that he hadn’t really noticed how Talfa had made herself queen of the harem. It was she rather than Bezmialem or Ibou who created and enforced the rules.

But if the valide moved to Besiktas, Talfa’s influence as the senior lady of the harem would be eclipsed.

Yashim picked up the pilaki and moved it off the heat, to the table. He scattered the parsley over the mussels.

Then he washed his hands and wound the turban around his head, and went out into the night.

The valide looked at Yashim with her bright eyes.

“Am I going to Besiktas, Yashim? I can’t remember.”

Yashim took her pale hand in his. He found the question difficult to answer.

“Perhaps, valide hanum. When you are feeling stronger.”

She closed her eyes, and smiled faintly. “I wonder. I wonder what Dr. Sevi would suggest.” Her eyelids flickered, and he felt the pressure of her hand relax.

Yashim stooped and put his ear close to her lips. A silver carafe, fluted like a swan, stood on a small inlay table. Yashim grabbed at its neck and went to slosh some water into a glass. But the carafe was empty.

He thrust it into Tulin’s hands. “Fetch water. Fill it.”

She took the carafe and ran with it to the outer door.

Yashim turned back to the valide. He smoothed a skimpy lock of hair from her forehead. She was papery to the touch; papery and thin. At his touch her eyes flickered, and moved slowly toward him.

“Papa.” Her word was scarcely a breath, just a shape on her lips. “Papa.” Her eyes fixed on him now, watery and old and very deep. “Je me suis perdue,” she murmured. I am lost. “Mais-ca va bien.”

He read the question in her eyes: the old question that always lay in the eyes of the dying. Her look was full of tenderness, as if the answer were already known, like a secret between them-the secret by which all men and women were bound, as long as men lived and died.

He could not betray that look by moving his own eyes until the girl came back and Yashim heard the sound of water in the glass.

He bent forward carefully, and brought the glass to the valide’s lips. The water ran across her tongue and he heard her throat catch. He brought the glass to her lips again. She swallowed slowly, closing and opening her mouth.

He let her breathe, then tried again.

After a while her eyes closed. The glass was almost empty.

He looked into the valide’s face, noting the veins in her eyelids and the translucency of her skin. Bending very close, he caught a faint sigh from her lips.

“I am going to fetch the doctor.” He went out into the courtyard. In the eunuch’s room he scribbled a note for the doctor, advising him to come with all possible speed, and handed it to a halberdier.