No handle.
Yashim drummed with his fists, unable to shout, his breath sobbing through his teeth. No one came. Again and again he crashed against the door, throwing his whole weight behind his shoulder; but it didn’t budge, and the sound itself was flattened against the iron-bound oak. He sank into a squat, one hand against the door for support.
The heat rolling off the floor made it impossible to hold that position for very long. He stood up slowly; bent double, he pushed himself along the wall. The spigot in the first niche had stopped flowing. There was a scoop on the floor, but it contained only an inch of water and the metal was hot.
He could not guess how long he crouched there, gazing down between his arms at the water in the scoop. But when the water started to steam he thought: I’m being braised.
But I am thinking.
I must get out.
Gingerly he raised his head, for it felt as though it must burst at any minute: he needed to keep the water out of his eyes.
A faint pattern of light penetrated the fog above. It came from the pattern of holes let into the roof of the dome, and for a second Yashim wondered if he could somehow climb up and reach it, thrust his hands, maybe, and his lips against the holes.
You can’t climb the inside of a dome, he said to himself.
His eye followed the base of the walls, searching for anything that he could use.
He almost missed it: the long bamboo cane attached to the head of a mop, tucked up into the angle between the floor and the wall.
He could hardly pick it up: his fingers were puffy and hard to bend.
Yashim raised the flimsy cane with an effort. Too short.
Once more he started round the room. Twice he almost blacked out, and fell to his hands and knees: but the burning stone tortured him back to life, and he tottered on until he found the second cane.
Now he needed a strip of cloth to bind them together. He tore at a towel with his fingers and his teeth, whimpering now.
At last he managed to create a nick in the hem. Even tearing the cloth he was like a puny child, nearly too weak to raise his arms, but at last he had a bandage of cotton which he secured around the two bamboos. The remaining scrap he tied to the top of the pole, and then he began to raise it up. The bare end struck on the side of the dome. He scraped it upwards.
It was too short.
Through the vapour, against the dome, Yashim could hardly tell how short. His face was set in a rictus now, his teeth bared. He staggered across to the massage bench and clambered onto it. Every movement was an agony. As he raised his arms he noticed that they were almost purple, as if blood was starting to ooze from his pores.
He started to pump the stick up and down, up and down. At every stroke he felt that he was pumping the blood, too, through the pores in his skin. He faintly remembered that he needed to make the stick move, but he could no longer remember why this had seemed important, only that it was all the instruction he possessed. It was all he had left.
[ 96 ]
“Avec permission
The seraskier glanced upwards with a look of surprise. Then he smiled politely.
“Enchante, Excellence.”
“I’m so sorry to interrupt,” Palewski continued, “but I have just seen something rather strange and I wanted your opinion.”
“Mais bien stir.” The seraskier did not sound impressed. What he and the Polish ambassador found strange could be entirely different things. “What have you seen, Your Excellency?”
It occurred to Palewski that any explanation he could give would sound thin, even laughable. He turned to the seraskier’s companions.
“Would you excuse me? I’d like to borrow the seraskier for just one minute. Indulge me, effendi.”
The men made noncommittal gestures, but said nothing. The seraskier looked from them to Palewski with an impatient half-smile.
“Very well, Excellency.” He was on his feet. “My apologies, gentlemen.”
Palewski took him by the arm and steered him into the street.
“Something funny just happened at the baths,” he began. “First they closed them, quite suddenly, on a Thursday night.” He had seized on this detail, which had so baffled him at first, as being the oddest from a Turkish point of view. “They are supposed to be cleaning them out, but a minute ago I watched someone waving a flag out through a hole in the roof. I say a flag, because there is simply no other explanation I can think of. It looked like, well, a signal. And now it has stopped. D’you see, effendi? It may sound odd to you, but it really did look like that—as if someone had been signalling, and then was stopped for some reason. I wanted to go down there myself, but seeing you—well, I thought you could make an enquiry with greater weight.”
The seraskier frowned. It sounded like rubbish, of course, and whatever went on in a hammam was really no concern of his…and yet, the Pole was clearly agitated.
“For your sake, Excellency, we will go and ask,” he said, with as much gallantry as he could muster.
[ 97 ]
Yashim could hear voices. A tiny sliver of light cut into the darkness as he raised his eyelids a fraction of an inch. Something that soothed him pressed for a moment against his body, and was gone. Dim shapes moved in the light. Dreadful accident…stroke of
luck…Then someone was wiping his face with a cool wet cloth and Palewski’s own face swam into view.
“Yash? Yashim? Can you hear me?”
He tried to nod.
Palewski put a hand under his head and tilted him forwards.
“Drink this,” he said. Yashim felt the rim of a glass against his lips, but his lips felt huge. His fingers seemed to be in gloves, they were so hard to bend.
“Can he speak?”
It was the seraskier’s voice.
I am dreaming, Yashim thought.
Hands picked him up and moved him through the air. Then he was lying back again, covered with a blanket.
Palewski saw his friend settled on the litter and motioned to the bearers. To the seraskier he said: “I’ll take him to the embassy. He’ll be safe there.”
The seraskier nodded. “Please let me know how he is doing later.”
The litter-bearers shouldered their poles and followed the ambassador out into the night.
Yashim was aware of the jouncing of the litter as they threaded through the dark streets. He heard the slap-slap of the bearers’ feet and the jingle of little bells, and wondered how badly he was hurt. Sometimes the fabric of the litter rasped against his skin and he almost shouted out.
A runner had gone on ahead to give Palewski’s maid time to make up a bed and lay a fire; when they arrived she was already on the stairs with a wedge of fresh linen. Palewski took candles off a table in the hall to light the bearers’ way, and so expertly did they carry him that Yashim only knew they were going upstairs by the slope of the ceiling.
They transferred him to the bed. Palewski settled a fire in the stove that stood in one corner of the room, tiled with a design of twining blue flowers, while Marta appeared with a basin of cold water and a sponge, turning down the sheet so that she could dab delicately at Yashim’s inflamed skin.
Yashim felt nothing, only a wave of nausea that now and then clutched at his belly and made him retch. When he did, Marta cleaned him up without a word. He slept for a while, and when he woke she was there again, with a spoonful of liquid so bitter it made his mouth ache; but he swallowed and the nausea slowly dissolved.
Marta brought up a basin of warm water that smelled of lavender and honey. Yashim was breathing steadily now. By the light of the candles he watched the silent Greek girl with her straight brow and olive skin, standing over the basin, absorbed in her task. She took a pile of big linen napkins and one by one she soaked them in the basin, wrung them out, and spread them on a clothes rack to cool. Her straight black hair was gathered in two plaits, pinned to the side of her head; when she bent forwards he could see the little hairs on the nape of her neck as they caught the light.