What if, after all, Resid believed he had gone to Venice?
It was also an irksome restriction: he felt in a sort of limbo in his own city. He read, he went to the hammam, he cooked and ate, but in his heart he knew he was simply marking time. Two Thursdays came and went without the customary dinner he was used to preparing for his friend Palewski; the second time he went out to a locanta in Pera and found himself ordering an old palace dish, ek ili kofte, meatballs in a sauce of egg and lemon. Several times, too, he found himself outside the Polish Residency, and on these occasions he unfailingly went up the crumbling steps and knocked on the door, to see if Marta had any news.
Only his visit to Malakian, in the Grand Bazaar, had eased his sense of idleness. He found the old Armenian cross-legged, as always, outside the tiny cubicle that held his queer and fascinating collection of antiques, impassively watching the crowds that swirled down the covered lane.
“You are well, Malakian efendi?”
“I did not expect to see you, Yashim efendi. I am well, thank you.” He patted an empty stool. “I have something for you. You will have coffee?”
When Yashim was sitting down, Malakian clapped his hands and sent a little boy running through the crowds.
Life was returning to the bazaar, Yashim noticed. The sultan’s death had cast a pall over the city, like an echo of the days when the death of a sultan stopped time in its tracks and the city waited to learn which of the sultan’s sons had won his way to the throne of Osman. But that was long ago, when the sons of sultans were trained to govern and to fight. This time there had been no contest.
The boy returned, a tray in his hands. Malakian took the coffee and handed a cup to Yashim. For a few minutes they talked about business.
“It dried up,” Malakian agreed. “Many of the caravans delayed their departure. But the bazaar, too, was empty, so I could neither buy nor sell.” He shrugged. “It was good to have a little quiet. But now they are come again.”
“The caravans?”
“You understand how it is, efendi. I have only this small shop-I do not have caravans at my command. But the drivers, they will pick up some little thing and bring it to me. Look. Two French pistols.” He opened a wooden box and brought out the guns. “From Egypt, I believe.”
Yashim turned them over in his hands. “Good quality. But old now.”
Malakian sighed. “Some things get better as they grow old. But guns? You are right. We make always newer ways to kill.”
He replaced the pistols in their box. “I will sell them to a Frenchman, so that he can say his father was with Napoleon. For you I found this.”
It was a small knife with a four-inch blade and a wooden handle bound with cord.
“A cook’s knife,” Yashim murmured. “Very comfortable.”
Malakian bent forward and pointed to the mottled blade. “Like me, you think it is not interesting. But then I saw this.”
Yashim turned the blade and noticed a faint inscription along the flat edge.
“Ammar made me,” he read slowly, squinting. The Arabic was worn, almost smooth. “What’s this?”
Malakian wagged his head. “Damascus steel.”
“That’s unusual,” Yashim admitted.
“Unusual? Here is the soft steel-here, and here-to protect the edge. It rusts, of course. On either side, the soft steel-and between them, the true blade. You see how it shines? Even now bright. Such a plain knife, for cooking. Do you like it?”
Yashim grinned. The best steel in the world. A blade fit for a warrior-in the kitchen. Of course he liked it.
“It must have been made for a sultan’s kitchen,” he said.
“Of course. I hear you like to cook, so I make it a present. You can give me one asper.”
“One asper?”
“We say, Yashim efendi, that you cannot give a knife. But if you pay me a little coin, it is all right.”
Yashim dipped into his pocket. Everyone had his superstitions. “Thank you, Malakian efendi. I shall treasure it.”
“You should use it,” Malakian remarked. “Have it sharpened.”
Yashim nodded, touched by the old shopkeeper’s generosity. But then Aram Malakian was an extraordinary man. So much slid between his fingers-so much knowledge was stored in that enormous head.
“Do you know anything about an Italian painter, efendi? His name was Bellini. Centuries ago, he came to Istanbul and painted a portrait of the Conqueror.”
“Bellini, hmmm.” Malakian frowned and tugged at one of his enormous earlobes. “I hear of this name before. Bellini. I remember.”
“Four hundred years ago,” Yashim added.
Malakian gave a dry smile. “I do not remember this Bellini personally, Yashim efendi. But there is something I recall.” He gazed at the ceiling. “Metin Yamaluk.”
“The calligrapher?”
Malakian nodded. “And his father and grandfather before him, also, and their fathers, to the time of Sultan Ahmet, I believe, who built the Blue Mosque. The family came from Smyrna.”
Yashim could vaguely recall meeting Yamaluk in the Topkapi Palace, where he worked in the copying room. But that was years ago, and the calligrapher had been an old man already.
“Metin Yamaluk is still alive?”
“If God wills. He retired years ago, it is true, but he still works. His hand is more elegant than ever, in fact. I remember he had a book he sometimes liked to look at. He said it gave him refreshment-but he was also ashamed, because it was a pagan book, of pictures, very well drawn. It came from Topkapi, Yashim efendi.”
Yashim frowned. “Stolen, you mean?”
Malakian paused and stared at Yashim. “Stolen!” He spat. “This knife. I give to you. You think-stolen? We give it back to-who, efendi? The Sultan of Rum? The Caliph Harun al Rasid? The son of a son of a cook?”
“No, of course, I didn’t mean-”
“Yashim efendi.” Malakian put his broad hands on his knees and rested his weight there. “When I was a boy, I played chess with my godfather. He was a merchant. He traded to Baku, Astrakhan, and up the Volga. He would tell me about the chess set he had been given by his father. The white pieces carved from camel bone, the black from Indian ebony. It came from, I don’t know, maybe Samarkand or old Kiev. He said that every piece contained inside it, like in a little cage, a tiny image of itself. A king inside a king. A pawn in a pawn. You could see it, and hear it rattle, but there was no way into it.”
He sighed and rubbed his ear. “I wanted to see that chess set so much. But when I asked him if he would bring it to the house, he told me he didn’t have it anymore. I asked him where it had gone, and he only smiled and shrugged. Sold, or lost, or stolen-which? I wondered, every time I wondered.”
“Perhaps,” Yashim said carefully, “it was simply-left behind.”
The old Armenian cocked his massive head. “Much better, Yashim efendi.” He made a slow, sweeping gesture, taking in the pistols in their box, the knife, the shelves at his back. “Left behind,” he said in his deep voice.
“Who knows?” Yashim said slowly. “Perhaps one day, Malakian efendi, it will come to you. A caravan driver with a chess set.”
“You understand too much, Yashim efendi,” Malakian said. He sounded sad. “Metin Yamaluk lives in Uskudar. He said the drawings were by Bellini.”
^* See, however, The Janissary Tree.
14
Palewski was right that Antonio Ruggerio had been disappointed by his choice of lodgings, but the cicerone had not abandoned him yet, by any means.
He presented himself early at the American’s apartment, anxious that Signor Brett should not give him the slip. He need not have worried.
“Perhaps the signore would prefer if I were to return in-one hour?” he suggested, once he had caught sight of Palewski’s bleary face at the door.
“Just come in, Ruggerio. What time is it?”
Palewski excused himself to dress, leaving the Venetian sitting at the window in the vestibule. There was nothing in the room but an empty bottle of prosecco, a glass, a copy of Vasari’s Lives, and the gentleman’s splendid top hat, sitting by the pier glass on a little marble console. Its shiny nap had already encouraged Ruggerio to draw important conclusions about the American collector.