Palewski looked out to sea and sighed. “Do you know, I am missing Venice much more than I’d expected.”
114
The Bosphorus quivered in the summer heat. On the Pera shore of the Golden Horn, where once the plane had extended its grateful shade, sunlight sprang from the rubble of the broken pavement. Across the Horn the courtyards of the mosques were full; people squatted against the walls and moved lazily to and fro between the arcades and the fountains.
Outside the Topkapi Palace, Yashim stopped by a fountain whose scrolled and overhanging eaves created a welcome strip of shade. He set a book and a small parcel down on the stone bench and washed his hands and face beneath the spigot. Then he went through the main gate of the Topkapi Palace into the First Court.
There were more people here than was usual, now that the Ottoman court had moved to a new, European-style palace on the Bosphorus. They came for the dappled shade of the trees beneath which they sat cross-legged: elderly men in fezzes and pantaloons, drawing on long pipes; younger men with swathed wives, watching their children scamper through the dust.
Yashim crossed the court and reached the High Gate, where he knocked.
A sleepy halberdier opened a wicket.
“Yashim lala, to see the valide sultan.”
Inside, the gatehouse was cool and dark. Yashim sank gratefully down onto a stone bench.
A few minutes later, another halberdier saluted him, and they went out into the glare of the Second Court. Instead of crossing to the far corner and the entrance of the harem, the halberdier took him to the central gate and then right, toward the Treasury.
He found the valide in the Baghdad Kiosk, lounging on a divan set up beneath the arches.
She smiled and raised a hand when she saw him, her bracelets tinkling like water.
“Don’t look so shocked, Yashim,” she said as he approached. “There are limits to our endurance.”
Yashim smiled and bowed. The valide’s apartments were like ovens in the heat.
“It’s not the heat, Yashim. I was born to it, after all. It’s the stillness. I thank the sultan, Yashim. He suggested I come here.” She patted the divan. “I have no idea how he intends to rule and frankly I am too old to care. But I approve of his consideration.”
The Baghdad Kiosk was one of the oldest parts of the palace, a medieval cavern open to the breeze with a view running straight up the Bosphorus.
“I’m not shocked, valide. I’m only pleased that the sultan-”
“Remembers me?” She arched an eyebrow, while Yashim shook his head. “I even sleep here sometimes,” she said. “I also like the view. It makes me feel like a sultan myself.”
A girl came in carrying a tray of cooling sherbet.
“Tell me about Venice,” the valide said.
Yashim almost dropped his glass.
“Venice, valide?”
“Do the women still sit in their altana on the roofs, making their hair go yellow?”
Yashim lowered his eyes, nonplussed. The valide’s vision of Venice was so different from the one he’d seen.
“I brought you something,” he remembered.
She undid the parcel. Inside, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, was a pair of candlesticks. They were made of a twist of pink Murano glass, and each had a tassel of colored pendants dangling from the rim.
The valide examined them carefully. “Very pretty, Yashim.”
Yashim felt satisfied; the valide was never lavish with her praise.
“I should have liked to have seen Venice,” she continued. “But perhaps it is very ugly now?”
“It is beautiful, valide. But it is poor.”
The valide lifted a bangled arm to the balustrade and turned her head. Her profile was still extraordinarily clear.
“Istanbul could become poor one day. Who knows?”
“I felt the same, valide,” Yashim admitted. “Istanbul and Venice always ate from the one dish.”
“I suppose you are right. Istanbul the master, Venice the servant-and when the master has dined, the servant clears his plate.” She looked at Yashim. “Perhaps that’s why the sultan came here last week. To talk about Venice.”
Yashim felt himself blush. “The sultan spoke of Venice?”
The valide raised her chin. “In the olden days, Yashim, the sultans left their dominions only in time of war-to conquer. But that age is past. Abdulmecid is young, Yashim, and he has not lived in the world. He knows it. I think he regrets it, too.”
But he has lived in the world more than the valide might suppose, Yashim reflected.
“He comes to me because he thinks I know Europe. I don’t discourage him.”
“You-have traveled, valide?”
“You might call it traveling, Yashim. Certainly I met some quite interesting men.” A smile hovered on her lips. “I threatened the Dey of Algiers with the vengeance of the French navy. Later, I pulled his beard. I, too, was very young.”
Yashim smiled. The dey had sent his captive on, to Istanbul, as a gift to the sultan. Perhaps he didn’t like having his beard pulled.
“But Abdulmecid is less experienced,” the valide continued. “I have encouraged him to read more French, I hope.”
Yashim remembered the Dumas.
“I have brought this back, valide. Dumas’s Ali Pasha.”
She took it with a small smile.
“I don’t think it’s quite right for the padishah,” she said.
“No,” Yashim agreed.
115
Before he left the palace, Yashim crossed the Third Court and entered the imperial archives, where the vast records of the bureaucracy that had governed millions of lives for centuries were all held.
He spent an hour going through an elaborate index, waving away all offers of help until he found the volume he wanted.
A librarian disappeared into the huge stacks, crammed with volumes of correspondence and reports, ancient scrolls, imperial firmans.
“The records you’re asking for are not yet bound.” The librarian fluttered his hands apologetically. “They have only just been delivered.”
“I’d like to see them anyway.”
The librarian frowned. “It’s against regulations to let out unbound records.”
Yashim waited.
“You can’t remove them, efendi.”
“I’ll examine them in front of you, if you like.”
The librarian sniffed. “That won’t be necessary,” he said crisply.
A few moments later, Yashim was leafing through a pile of diplomatic records.
It took him twenty minutes to find what he wanted.
116
“Where yous been, efendi? You have a yali now, I thinks, like some big pasha, hey?”
Yashim smiled and shook his head. “I’ve been away, George.”
George scratched his chest. “Is too hot here, Yashim efendi.”
George grabbed a bucket and roved from piles of spinach to pyramids of tiny cucumbers, sprinkling them with cold water. When he was finished he rubbed his wet hands across his face.
“Today, you is not busy, efendi.”
He caught a dozen or so tiny artichokes, one by one, and placed them on his scales. They were no bigger than his thumb.
“Some tomatoes. Some garlic. Aubergine-here.” He took four long green aubergines and weighed them, too. He carefully placed everything in the basket with his huge hands and crammed a fistful of herbs-parsley, dill, rosemary-on top.
He puffed up, waved his arms, and subsided with a gesture of calm. “You cooks in the heat and eats in the cool,” he bellowed, miming to suit. “Dolma. A raki. No meat.”
Yashim paused on the way home to buy bread, yogurt, and olives. When he got back, the little apartment was like an oven. He threw back the windows and left the door slightly ajar to encourage a breeze.
It was only when he picked up the basket again that he noticed a small parcel by the door.
He undid the string.
Inside was his knife.
With it came a letter.