An Evil Eye Part 31

108.

THE wrought-iron gates of the British emba.s.sy were surmounted by an escutcheon that showed a unicorn and a lion pawing at a crown.

Yashim gave the unicorn a mental salute as he pa.s.sed under the gate: the mythical beast amused him. On the face of it the British were a supremely practical people, interested in trade and fond-like Compston-of speaking their own mind, but the unicorn suggested a fanciful streak. Compston's obsession with the poet Byron was a case in point: the beefy English boy who appeared with a startled look at the top of the stairs was obviously not a soul in romantic torment.

He came down the stairs dragging on an overcoat.

"I say, Yashim efendi, what?" He took Yashim by the arm and steered him across the hall. "Coffee? Good little French place around the corner." He glanced around, and lowered his voice. "New boy from London. Wretched little sneak. Best not to be seen hanging about here."

A pimply young man looked up from a desk. "Going out, Mr. Compston?"

"Change of air. Been a bad smell in here these last few weeks, daresay you haven't noticed?"

Compston crammed on his hat and stepped outside. "Good dig, what? Bad smell, ha ha!"

Yashim let him lead the way to a small cafe on the Grande Rue.

"Messieurs? Qu'est-ce que vous desirez?" The owner was a Frenchman, stout and bald, with an elegant mustache. He had a napkin draped over his arm.

Compston ordered coffee, in his execrable French; Yashim asked for a verbena.

He watched as Compston spooned sugar into his cup and stirred it nervously.

"I say, Yashim efendi-" he began; then he seemed to check himself. "What price the new bridge?"

"The bridge? What of it?"

"Do you think it'll ever work? Fizerley says no, bound to collapse. Esterhazy-he's at the imperial emba.s.sy-says it'll stand. We've got a bet on it."

Yashim felt a twinge of impatience. "Forgive me, Mr. Compston. Our friend Palewski mentioned something you wanted to talk to me about. The bridge? I don't quite understand."

"Ah, yes, well-never mind about the bridge, efendi. Silly question." Compston flushed slightly. "My pater's not awfully keen on gambling himself. No, what I really wanted to talk about were these."

He fished in his waistcoat and brought out a packet of papers.

Yashim gave a start. "I've seen these before. But how on earth-?"

"Found 'em, efendi, just lying in the gra.s.s. The night you saved my watch, on Chalki."

He set the packet on the table and patted it, then pushed it over toward Yashim.

"I-I wanted you to have 'em. Never occurred to me you might have dropped them, but I see that now. You know what they are?"

Yashim eyed the packet. "Not exactly," he admitted cautiously. "I glanced through them. I didn't have much time, and my Russian's none too fluent anyway."

"I read Russian, Yashim efendi."

He said it with modest diffidence, as if he expected Yashim's reaction.

"You?"

Compston gave an apologetic shrug. "Never found much time for it, until I came across Pushkin."

"Who?"

"Alexander Pushkin. He's a Russian poet, dead now." Compston absently reached into his waistcoat pocket and ran his fingers up a silver chain. The watch appeared in his hand. "Killed in a duel just a couple of years ago. Affair of the heart," he added wistfully.

"Like your Byron?"

"Not bad, Yashim efendi. Put like that, you're right. Pushkin is the Russian Byron. Languages don't agree with me, but somehow Russian works." He gave a short laugh. "They're letters, written to your Kapudan pasha. I sort of pieced it together. Didn't think much more of 'em, not until we heard about the Egyptian business. Then I thought of you. Here they are."

"You didn't think about them?" Yashim could not keep the note of surprise out of his voice. "Why not?"

It was Compston's turn to sound surprised. "Well, there's not much to them, efendi, is there? Or didn't you read them? Sorry, of course ..." He frowned. "They're nothing too important, judging by the hand. Common threats-I know your secret, a word from One Who Knows, that sort of thing. You know-your time is running out."

"Blackmailing letters? From Galytsin?"

Compston raised an eyebrow. "Galytsin? No, no. But blackmailing letters, all right. d.a.m.ned obscure. Full of spelling mistakes, just what you'd expect from some Russki blackmailer. Lowest form of villainy, blackmail. I don't say Galytsin wouldn't stoop to it, but he could never have written those letters." He pointed at the packet. "Have a look yourself."

Yashim scooped up the bundle and slipped it into his waistcoat. "Thank you."

Compston waved a hand. "Please, don't mention it. Feel much better now-one good turn, all that sort of thing. I say-" He pulled a worried face and bent to catch Yashim's eye. "As a matter of fact, you won't mention that we've met? Better not. Fizerley, well. He's a bit of a stickler."

"Of course not," Yashim murmured. He was not really listening. He was staring into the surface of his tea and wondering whether he had got everything wrong.

After a moment he collected himself. "About the bridge," he said. "I expect it'll stand, all right. Fevzi Ahmet may be a traitor, but he's no fool."

"That's just what I was afraid you'd say, Yashim efendi," Compston replied unhappily. "Oh G.o.d, it's going to be awful!"

109.

WHEN the man from the mountains first saw the sea, he knelt and wept, wondering how any man could command such an immensity.

But as the day wore on, he grew more used to it; he swallowed his doubts. The pasha was a man, like any other. He would die, as a man did.

The man with the knife did not stop to look at the swollen welt across his chest. It was changing color, weeping; and darker tentacles were spreading across his skin.

He stumbled on, to the sound of the gulls mocking him over the little waves.

110.

AT Besiktas Yashim asked to see the Kislar aga and was led downstairs to a Frenchified waiting room that was stuffy and windowless, furnished with two European sofas, an Italian clock, and a number of high-backed chairs that had lost some of their gilt, or a molded foot. Timid black faces he did not recognize looked in on him once or twice, before Ibou himself appeared.

He looked gray, Yashim thought; and one of his eyes was bloodshot.

The aga waited until the door had closed, and then subsided into one of the great sofas. He rubbed his hands across his face.

"The bridge," he groaned. "I wish it had never been built."

"You, too?" Yashim said in surprise.

"The opening ceremony," the aga muttered. "Tomorrow, all the ladies, in caiques. In public! The sultan on horseback. Precedence, Yashim. You can't believe."

"The opening ceremony?"

The aga's hand snaked out over the arm of the sofa. "Please, Yashim. Help yourself." He popped a sugared lozenge into his mouth. "The public ceremony is tomorrow. The real ceremony began here, today-and worse than the changeover, if that's possible. Who gets into the first caique? What shall they wear? Do they land this side of the bridge, or is it proper to go under it? I don't know," he added, in a tone to suggest he didn't much care, either. "And now what new worries do you bring me, Yashim?"

Yashim frowned. His eye fell on an ormolu clock, standing on a shelf. It told ferenghi time, the hours s.p.a.ced out impersonally between night and light. It was not how time seemed to Yashim: his hours had been as long as days. He could see its cogs and springs behind beveled gla.s.s.

He said: "What is the engine, Ibou? What does it mean?"

Ibou turned his head slowly and looked at Yashim slyly, out of the corner of his eye. "The engine?"

Yashim gazed at the clock. "Something Melda said."

"A bit of foolishness. The housekeeper ladies make it a joke among them, when new girls are brought in."

Yashim opened his hands and shrugged, nonplussed. "The engine?"

"Well, there's an old table, down in the bas.e.m.e.nt. The housekeepers fool about with it." Ibou waved his hand as if it didn't matter and was beneath his dignity to comment.

"Fool about?" But Melda hadn't suggested fooling about. I have seen the engine, she'd said.

The aga heaved a sigh. "I should deal with it, I suppose." He wiped his hands across his eyes. "They take the novices down to look at the table. The new girls."

"Yes?"

Ibou blew out his cheeks. "The table stands on a stone flagged floor, which looks like a trapdoor. They-frighten the girls, a bit. That's what I've heard."

"The novices," Yashim repeated. "And where does the engine come in?"

Ibou pulled a face. "Pouf. I don't know. If a girl misbehaves, they tell them, she'll be strapped to this table." He stuck a finger in the air and rotated it. "They tell them never to reveal anything they've heard or seen."

"Or what?"

The aga rolled his eyes. "Or they'll strap her down, and the table will start to spin, around and around, and sink down through the floor into the Bosphorus." He let his hand drop to his lap.

"I see." Yashim was not smiling.

"It's a bit of fun, Yashim."

Yashim had seen many girls fresh off the hills enter the palace for the first time. He remembered a little black girl bought by one of the late sultan's khadins, who came into the harem with her eyes and mouth like Os. She had gone about stroking everything and muttering, "Isn't it lovely! Isn't it lovely!" over and over again. In the evening she had thought she would be sent away; when they explained she would live there forever, she burst into tears.

He'd seen others, though, halting and shy, bemused by the form of speech they heard, dazzled by the bearing of the harem women, stupefied by the luxury. Some physically shook with fear at the prospect of being introduced. Yashim thought of Hyacinth, frightened by the first snow.

"The engine doesn't exist," Ibou snapped.

"Not here. But at Topkapi? Maybe there is an engine. Maybe, Ibou, your predecessors found it useful to have one."

The Kislar aga shrugged lightly. "At Topkapi, Yashim, I worked in the library. n.o.body pushed books into the Bosphorus. How would I know? The lady Talfa is the one to ask. She showed it to the girls."

"I see." He thought of Melda, frozen with misery. "Who would Elif have confided in, when she had her trouble? Apart from Melda. Would she have spoken to Talfa? Asked her for help, maybe?"

"Talfa?" The Kislar aga looked incredulous. "They hated each other."

It was Yashim's turn to look surprised. "Why?"

Ibou groaned. "That dreadful day, when the new girls came across, Elif was very rude to the lady Talfa. She treated her like one of Sultan Mahmut's concubines."

"Not a good start."

"No. The lady Talfa gave her-and Melda-the job of escorting a little girl."

"Which they didn't like?"

"They thought it was b-b-beneath them. Elif was very, very angry. She made remarks-and did some foolish things, I believe."

"Foolish things?"

The aga rolled his eyes. "She put a rat's tail in the lady Talfa's makeup pot."

"Who told you that?"

"I didn't need to be told. You could hear Talfa all over the palace."