The masseur went over to the sleeping bather and scooped him up in his powerful banded arms like a little baby. The man started, and opened his eyes, but when the masseur set him down again he was in the tepidarium, facing a cold plunge. The masseur gave him a friendly little shove and he leaped into the cold tub, gasping and laughing. He’d been asleep!
The masseur shot the bolt of the hammam door and folded his huge arms over his chest.
Inside the hot room Yashim slept on, dreaming of melting snow.
[ 93 ]
How do I look now, old man?”
Fizerly looked his friend up and down with a critical eye.
“Capital, Compston. Or should I say, Mehmed? If we’re going out to explore the old city, just remember that you’re Mehmed from here on.”
Compston chuckled and looked at himself in the embassy mirror. Fizerly had been awfully clever with the turban—in the end, they’d arranged it so that not a hair of his blond head straggled out, and even if the balance of the turban had suffered slightly in consequence it wouldn’t show. “Just keep moving your head about like a good chap,” Fizerly had suggested, helpfully. Not Fizerly, that is. Ali. Ali Baba, at your service.
Compston-Mehmed giggled and rubbed a little more soot into his eyebrows.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t rain,” he said.
[ 94 ]
Palewski drank his coffee slowly, watching the sunset. Outside, the hubbub of traffic was subsiding, the porters going empty-handed uphill, a few small donkey carts returning to stables, while the numbers of people taking the evening air increased. Sometimes Palewski recognised them—a palace official he couldn’t name, a Greek dragoman linked to one of the Phanariot merchant houses, an imam looking exactly as he had looked fifteen years before, when Palewski had had a discussion with him on the history of the idea of the transmigration of souls. Later he saw a couple of juniors from the British embassy—Fizerly, he recalled, with the straggling whiskers, now smoking a Turkish cheroot, sauntering along with a boy in a curious sort of hat, apparently made out of various pieces of his underwear, nodding and laughing at his side. Palewski wondered vaguely what they were doing, dressed like children out of a nativity play. Nobody seemed to pay them much attention, and they strolled down the hill and disappeared round the corner of the baths.
How much Istanbul had changed in the thirty years he had known it! What was it that he had said to Yashim? He had said he mourned the passing of the Janissaries. Well, the past ten years had been particularly lively. Since the suppression of the Janissaries there had been nothing to restrain the sultan except the fear of foreign intervention, and the sultan was a born mod-erniser. He’d taken to the European saddle faster than anyone. The change that had come over the city went beyond the gradual but continuous disappearance of turbans and slippers, and their replacement by the fez, and leather shoes. That was a change which Palewski was romantic enough to regret, though he did not expect it to be complete in his lifetime—if only because the great city still drew people from every corner of the empire towards it, people who had never heard of sumptuary laws, or shoe-laces. But more people from outside the empire were coming in, too, and in the gradual rebuilding of Galata after the great fire there were oddities like the French glovemaker, and the Belgian who sold bad champagne, ensconced in their little shops, with tinkling bells, just as if they were in Cracow.
The door opened and a gust of cold air entered the fug of the cafe. Palewski recognised the man who came in, too, though for a while he couldn’t place him: a tall, bullish man in late middle age, distinguished by a white cloak. He was followed in by two European merchants Palewski had seen around, but not spoken to. He thought they might be French.
The three men took a table slightly behind Palewski’s line of sight, so it was a while before he glanced back and recognised the seraskier, who had shrugged back his cloak and now sat with booted legs tightly crossed, his blue-grey uniform jacket buttoned to the neck. He was toying with a coffee cup, listening with a slight smile to one of his companions who was leaning forward and making a point, quietly, with the help of his hands. French, then. Or Italian?
Palewski wondered if he might order another coffee himself. He looked down the hilclass="underline" the doors of the baths were still shut, but another knot of men with bags of linen had gathered outside, presumably rehearsing the complaints he had listened to half an hour before. Cleaning the baths! On a Thursday night, too. Sacrilege! Scandal! Palewski grinned, and waved at the waiter.
Well, he could see that they were cleaning the baths—and thoroughly, too. The little air vent at the top of the dome was releasing a corona of white steam which rose, eddied and then trailed away in the dusk. Caught by the dying rays of the sun, the steam sometimes refracted a rainbow of colour. Very pretty, Palewski thought. Next came a stick, bound with a trailing white cloth, to riddle out the vent. Very thorough, Palewski thought. If they finish in time, I will certainly try my luck.
The waiter brought him a fresh coffee. Palewski leaned back to overhear the conversation going on behind him, but it was being muttered at a distance, over the bubble of pipes, the hiss of boiling water, and the murmur of low conversation around the room. Disappointed, he looked out of the window again.
How odd, he thought. The stick was still going up and down in the hole, and the scrap of cloth was fluttering with it, like a tiny flag.
There’s cleaning, Palewski thought curiously, and obsession.
And as he watched, the stick suddenly wavered and keeled over to one side. Stuck at an angle, the little white cloth waved and flapped in the evening breeze like a signal of surrender.
[ 95 ]
Yashim had been dreaming. He dreamed that he and Eugenia were standing naked, side by side in the snow, watching a forest fire crackle in the treetops. It wasn’t cold. As the fire advanced, the warmth increased, and the snow began to melt. He shouted ‘Jump!’ and they both leaped over the edge of the melted snow. He had no recollection of hitting the ground below, but he had started to run across the square towards the huge cypress. Eugenia was nowhere but the soup master reached out with his enormous hands and lit the cypress with a match. It burned like a rocket as Yashim held on to it, pressing his face against the smooth bark; but when he tried to pull away he couldn’t, because his skin had melted and stuck to the tree.
He coughed and tried to raise his head. His eyes opened. They seemed to be filmed over: his vision was foggy. He made another effort to raise his head and this time his cheek sucked against the hard top of the massage bench, where he lay in a pool of his own sweat. He rolled over, his whole body slithering on the bench, and swung his legs to the floor.
A dull pain throbbed through his feet, and it took him some moments to realise that the soles of his feet were burning against the stone floor. He sat back on the bench, legs raised, and looked round. There was nobody else there.
The steam was peeling away from the floor in angry ribbons, which blended into a fog that thickened as it approached the dome. Yashim found that he was breathing hard: the air was so hot and humid that every breath stuffed his throat like a rag, and brought him no relief. With a heavy hand he dashed the sweat from his eyes.
The fog felt curiously intimate, as if it were really a problem with his eyes, and this seemed to disorient him: he jerked his head about, searching for the doors. He saw his wooden clogs beside the massage bench. With his feet in the clogs he stood swaying for a moment, holding onto the bench; and then, like a man struggling through the snow, he staggered forwards towards the door. He fell against it, groping for a handle: but the door was as smooth as the walls.