Jason Goodwin: An Evil eye

Husrev’s hand moved slowly toward the little bell. “Our village?”

“Polje, Husrev. The family home.”

“You want money?” Husrev Pasha growled. “Or work? Why are you here?”

The man stepped closer. “I want vengeance, for the girl you stole.”

Husrev Pasha blinked hurriedly. “Girl? What girl?”

“Janetta. The woman you stole to be a sailor’s whore.”

“Janetta-?” The grand vizier frowned.

“My wife.”

Husrev’s yellow eyes flickered to the shadow that stood before him. “She will become a queen,” he said, slowly. “You are-what? A shepherd? What can you give that woman now?”

The man hesitated. Husrev Pasha’s hand closed around the bell.

“My wife is dead. She died. In a fire at the sailor’s house.”

“No, no.” Husrev Pasha lifted the bell and shook it.

The peal startled the man.

He saw his journey coming to nothing. His vengeance unappeased.

But he was swift with a knife. He had always been good with the knife.

Husrev Pasha caught the spark of metal in the light.

The man with the knife knew how to kill.

A weight caught him below the knees. He was a big man and he fell back, seeing the ceiling spin, and the raised knife in his hand-and then the room was full of voices.

He let the knife drop.

He could not remember if he had killed the pasha or not. He thought, after all his trouble, that he would feel something. Elation, or satisfaction. Even disappointment. Instead, he felt only very tired.

“ A long time ago, when I was a boy, there was a man in the village who had the evil eye. He was not a bad man, Yashim. He was a good man. But bad luck attended him, everywhere. Cattle became sick when he looked them over. Women dropped things as he went by.” Husrev shrugged. “He stopped going to the church, because twice his presence made an icon fall. He carried bad luck with him. But you-you are lucky.”

Yashim rubbed his chin and contemplated the grand vizier.

“Perhaps it’s you who has the luck, Husrev Pasha,” he said. He had expected to find the vizier alone. Instead, he had heard the peal of the bell, and had hurled himself upon the deranged man. Now that the assassin had been taken away, the room was still. Husrev Pasha, he noticed, remained seated on the divan, just as he had been when the killer drew his knife.

“Tulin is dead,” Yashim said.

The heavy lids sank. “Tulin is dead,” Husrev repeated. He worked his jaw. “But I am the grand vizier.”

The silence hissed in Yashim’s ears.

“Tell me, Yashim. In the harem is a little girl-”

“Roxelana.”

“She is-well?”

“She is well. But not in the harem anymore.”

“Not?”

“Roxelana is on her way to Egypt.”

Husrev’s eyes were the color of old parchment.

“You will be making a report?”

“No. No, I will not be making a report. You have enough paper as it is.”

Something approaching a smile moved on the pasha’s lips.

“You are good, Yashim efendi. Thank you.”

Preen took Kadri’s chin in her hand.

“What was it, darling? Theater life too dull?”

Kadri smiled, and ducked away. “Too exciting, maybe.”

“I was about to teach you to juggle,” Preen said, with mock reproach. “Juggling’s another whole two kurus a week.”

“I’m going to try it on my own,” Kadri said. “Will you give me a job when I’m finished at school?”

Preen waved a hand. “Oh, you’ll be on your way by then. Grand vizier by thirty.”

They both glanced at Yashim, who stood at a discreet distance pretending to read a playbill tacked to the wall, his hands clasped behind his back.

“Not my idea,” he announced, without turning. “The Great Kadri! The India Rubber Man!” He swept his hand across the playbill. “Dropped from a roof! Fired from a cannon! It’s safer than politics,” he added.

As they were leaving, he took Preen by the hand.

“That party,” he said. “Where you saw Fevzi Pasha-and the girl.”

“Hmm?”

“Husrev Pasha wasn’t there, too, by any chance?”

Preen frowned. “As a matter of fact-why do you ask?”

“I just wonder-I don’t know. Perhaps we all had Fevzi Pasha slightly wrong.”

“Wrong? The man’s a monster, Yashim.”

“Of course. Of course. I know that.”

She gave him a curious look. “You’re not going soft on him now, darling? I don’t know what it is about you and that man-if he’s not the devil, he’s got to be an angel. But that’s not the way it works.”

Yashim nodded. “I know. I met him-” He shrugged. “I suppose it was an impressionable age. Kadri’s got you, luckily.”

“Kadri, Yashim, is not a fool.” She smiled. “Go on. Take him back to the school.”

“ It’s too extraordinary,” the valide said. “I put the whole thing down to that wretched Kislar aga. The one you recommended, Yashim.”

Yashim shifted uncomfortably on the divan.

“Ibou was hardly to blame,” he said. “The dealer tricked him. Perhaps even the dealer didn’t know.”

“Pouf! A dealer always knows. It’s his business, Yashim. Like horses, like girls. She must have had a crooked pedigree. I never much liked her myself. Valide this, valide that. And desperate to get to Besiktas, of course. I saw that straightaway. But I enjoyed her magic. It reminded me of Martinique.”

“Martinique?”

“Where I grew up. Chickens. Trances. We called it voodoo. Brought back happy memories.”

“She denied you water,” he said. “She pushed Hyacinth over the parapet, too. It wasn’t magic.”

The valide waved a hand, and her bangles chinked.

“It’s always magic, if you want.” She shrugged. “Talfa believes in it. So did the girl you brought here-Melda. What happened to her friend?”

“Elif believed she was pregnant,” Yashim said. “She thought Donizetti Pasha had given her a baby.”

The valide clapped her hands together. “That’s it, Yashim.” Her face was serious. “He is round, like a mushroom-but she was very young. He twirled a mustache. He caught her eye.”

“Tulin gave her something,” Yashim said. “A potion.”

The valide shivered. “It was very cruel,” she said.

“Melda believed it, too. She believed she had a secret that was too dangerous to reveal.”

“Tsk, tsk.” The valide shook her head. “These girls from Circassia! It is the mountains, Yashim. It makes them stubborn, and leaves them ignorant.”

“And this-” Yashim gestured at the walls. “This harem…”

“Encourages them to be silly, too. I know it, Yashim. Almost alone of all the women who come here, I have the benefit of an education. Ne t’en souviens-tu pas? Between you and me, Yashim, it’s like catching snowflakes. They have desires, hopes, plans, secrets. And they wear them on their faces, like maquillage.”

“And die, as a result?”

“Of course. Death is a secret, like any other.”

She touched a hand to her cheek, and smoothed it back.

“Tell me, Yashim, what did you make of our friend Monsieur Gautier?”

“‘Everything that is beautiful is useless,’” Yashim quoted. “It seemed insincere.”

“Very silly,” the valide agreed. “It could have been written by one of our girls.”

“If any of them knew how to write,” Yashim pointed out.

“Or understood French, Yashim.”