Wu Ming - Altai

We left the warehouses and fish stalls behind us, crossed the Imperial Road, and came back down toward the district of Kadirga, on the shore of the White Sea, the site of one of the city’s three arsenals.

The sedan chair passed through the entrance to a big building set into the city wall, revealing still more gates and courtyards above a sequence of three terraces. From without, the structure’s appearance was imposing but plain, typical of Ottoman seraglios, which surprise visitors with the contrast between their simple facades and elaborate interiors. I sheltered from the rain beneath the closed balcony of a house and asked a passer-by who owned the residence in front of me. Sadrazam Mehmet Pasha, was the reply.

The Grand Vizier Sokollu.

Over the next few days I pondered this discovery, until I realized that I hadn’t resolved a thing. From Solomon’s journey I could deduce that the bailiff’s letters very swiftly ended up in front of the eyes of Sokollu. But I had no proof of their transit, and besides, I didn’t need any. My aim was to work out how those letters reached Venice, and I was sure that the Grand Vizier was not the courier I was looking for. Too reckless, for him, to act as a direct go-between in this correspondence. It was one thing to read the enemy’s messages, quite another to help them reach their destination.

Don Yossef had talked to me for a long time about Ashkenazi’s dealings. The doctor’s properties were on the island of Crete. Vines, olives and lemons. His ships regularly came and went from Candia. Nothing better than a Venetian colony to deliver the bailiff’s letters to the right people. If my idea was correct, I had to work out who would bring them to the island, and when.

I plunged into the depths of Galata like a pearl fisher, hoping to come back up with the treasure in my hands. I lingered in the taverns till late; I unloaded bales of silk on the planks of the jetty. I spoke Turkish, Dalmatian, Italian, Ladino. I won the words of gamblers at dice, I bought them from merchants, I forced open the silence of drifters. I lent an ear to whispers and tall tales, to the conversations of barbers and cries in the street, to the gossip and secrets of the port. I reacquired the taste for an activity congenial to me. I felt gratified.

In the end I got hold of three names, all commercial agents working for Solomon Ashkenazi.

The first was a Greek. I managed to meet him in a tavern during a shadow play, and without too much difficulty I got him drunk on raki and mulled wine. He told me his life story, listed the lovers he had had, and finished off by accusing himself of several murders. I couldn’t imagine Ashkenazi entrusting such a man with the task of passing on secret messages.

The second came from the Crimea. A silent, discreet character, rather more suited to the task. Still, obeying an old instinct from my days on the lagoon, I paid more particular attention to the third candidate, who looked the least likely.

His name was Bernardo Traverso, and his ship was due to set sail at the end of the month. He was Genoese, his every fiber filled with hatred of Venice. I had met him before on several occasions, at the kahvehane on the Golden Horn, the one I frequented with David Gomez. He said he had been to Goa and Brazil and that always, in every corner of the world, he had met a galuscio Venetian who was ready to squeeze his cuggie . He even complained that the Venetians who lived in Istanbul lived in a district that had been built, stone by stone, by the Genoese before they surrendered it to the Sultan. I was struck by his resentment, because that, ostentatiously displayed, might act better than anything as a screen for secret activities in favor of Venice.

I became convinced that he was the pearl I was diving for.

Bernardo Traverso wasn’t one of those Europeans who live confined in Galata, as if it were an Italian or French city, eating the same food that they would eat at home, not learning a word of Turkish and despising all Ottoman practices, even the most pleasing and wholesome.

Instead, he went often to the Old City, where he applauded the acrobats in the local markets, played dice, bet on the ram fights and greyhound races at the hippodrome. He was an equally assiduous visitor to the nearby baths at the Seraglio, so much so that some people wondered whether cleanliness was the only reason for this deep attachment.

Each time he went into the hammam I waited outside, pretending to take an interest in the shops selling herbs and syrups, before tailing him again as soon as he came out, guided by his fragrance of cedar.

On the fourth occasion of this kind, driven by boredom, I discovered a welcoming and not very crowded kahvehane down the street. From the benches outside, resting against the wall, you could keep an eye on the entrance to the baths. As soon as I sat down I took off my slippers, ordered a coffee and, not even thinking about it, started listening in on the conversations of the other patrons.

Two bearded old men, sucking on the rims of their cups, were loudly commenting on the news of the day. The Doge had ordered the arrest of all the Jews and Ottomans living in Venice. Now it was time to pay back the favor and do the same with the Venetians in Galata. No, quite the contrary. Precisely because they were treated well in Istanbul, they should demand that their compatriots do the same at home with the good Muslims. And the Jews? They needed putting down here too, not freedom. They needed sorting out, them and their wives, always jeweled up like queens; who knows how much they enjoyed humiliating the good Muslims. That was why God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, had punished their arrogance by setting fire to the Jewish quarter some months ago.

I ordered a plate of cakes while a toothless young man, his face covered with scars, recommended the services of a prostitute to two others. A fourth, older than his companions, dismissed the youth’s tedious advice and suggested instead blond Mursel, a Bulgarian tellak at the baths, who could pleasure you three times in a row with his mouth. This boy, most importantly, was also a good poet, and liked to recite his erotic verses and love lyrics. The toothless boy screwed up his nose and said that only an ignorant heretic like the Shah of Persia would write his poems in Turkish. The truly literate and the great sultans wrote in Arabic or in Persian. Yes, of course, everyone agreed, but no one understood Persian, and if you don’t understand erotic poetry how on earth are you going to get a boner?

I paused with my cup in midair. Then I finished my coffee and ate the last baklava. For a few minutes I contemplated a flight of midges, until I saw Traverso coming out of the baths and walking away. I paid what I owed, my fingers still sticky with honey. I quickly put on my slippers and headed for the hammam.

Inside, beneath the great dome, stood a white limestone fountain. The water that poured from it, slipping from one basin to the other, filled the silence like the voice of a stream. All around, cushions and carpets accommodated a dozen clients; on the seats along the walls the same number of men were taking their clothes off. Daylight imprinted the colors of the stained glass on their faces.

A freckled servant came toward me to hand me clogs and a bath towel.

“Mursel?” I asked.

“I’ll get him for you right away, Effendi; he’s just come free. Meanwhile you can get undressed and have a drink.”

Mursel was a bony young man, almost beardless, with curls so blond they looked white. Like the other tellaks he was naked to the waist and wearing a blue cloth skirt. He was holding a pot of aromatic oil. He talked to me in a low voice.