It was sensible advice. But in one particular, at least, the Polish ambassador could not have been more wrong.
[ 99 ]
The provisioning of a great city, the kadi liked to remark, is the mark of a successful civilisation. In Istanbul it was a business that had been honed close to perfection by almost two thousand years’ experience, and it could truly be said of the markets of Istanbul that there was not a flower, a fruit, a type of meat or fish that did not make its appearance there in season.
An imperial city has an imperial appetite, and for centuries the city had commanded daily tribute from an enormous hinterland. Where the Byzantines had managed their market gardens on the approaches from Thrace and Asia Minor, the Turks, too, raised vegetables. From two seas—the warm Mediterranean and the dark, gelid waters of the Black Sea—it was supplied abundantly with fish, while the sweetest trout from the lakes of Macedonia were carried to the city in tanks. From the mountains of Bulgaria came many kinds of honey to be turned into sweets by the master sweet-makers of Istanbul.
It was a finely regulated business, all in all, from the Balkan grazing grounds to the market stall, in a constant slither of orders, inspections, purchases and requisitions. Like any activity that needs unremitting oversight, it was open to abuse.
The kadi of the Kerkoporta market had taken up his job twenty years before, and earned himself a reputation for severity. A butcher who used false weights was hanged at the doorway of his own shop. A greengrocer who lied about the provenance of his fruit had his hands struck off. Others, who had jibbed a customer, perhaps, or slipped out of the official channels to procure bargain stock, found themselves forced to wear a wide wooden collar for a few weeks, or to pay a stiff fine, or to be nailed by the ear to the door of their own shop. The Kerkoporta market had become a byword for honest deal—ing, and the kadi supposed that he was doing everything for the best.
The merchants found him officious, but they were divided as to the best way to deal with him. A minority were for clubbing together to manufacture some complaint against him from which he would be unlikely to recover; but the majority shrugged their shoulders and counselled patience. The kadi, some suggested, was merely establishing his price. Will not an ambitious carpet dealer wax lyrical over the colours and qualities and rarity of his carpet, as a prelude to negotiation? Will not a young wrestler hurl all his strength into the contest, while the older man uses no more than he actually needs to use? The time would come, they argued, when the kadi would start to crack.
The action brigade claimed that this man was different. The realists said he was human. And the subtlest minds of all quietly observed that the kadi had two daughters. The eldest, approaching the marrying age, was reputed to be very beautiful.
The kadi’s fall, when it finally came, was silent and absolute. The rumour of his daughter’s beauty was perfectly true; she was also meek, pious, obedient and skilful. It was these very qualities that caused the kadi such agony of mind, as he tried to choose a husband for her. He loved his daughter, and wanted the best for her; and it was because she was so good that he became so picky. It was because he was so picky that he eventually settled on a renowned teacher at the central medrese, a bachelor from an excellent wealthy family.
The kadi’s fortune was by no means equal to providing his daughter with the handsome dowry and memorable wedding festivities that the groom’s family customarily provided for their own daughters. They didn’t mind, of course; but it tormented the kadi. The cause of the torment was divined by the matchmaker, a shrewd old lady who chewed betel and wore a gold bangle for every union she had successfully negotiated: she tin—kled like a fountain when she moved. And she moved a lot: that is to say, she visited almost every house in the district on a fairly regular basis, and through one of these visits the Kerkoporta merchants learned of the kadi’s dilemma.
The affair was handled with delicacy and tact.
For fixing up a splendid wedding, and clubbing together to provide the girl with a stylish dowry, the merchants asked the kadi for nothing in return. Few markets were as well served as the Kerkoporta by its kadi, who had brought such order and regularity and honesty into the business that even a foreigner, as was widely known, could make purchases there in perfect confidence. Hardly anyone need even know that the dowry and the feast came as a private act of tribute from the market to the judge.
Nothing was said. No deals were struck, perish the thought. The kadi continued to do his job with rigour, as before. He wasn’t even particularly grateful.
He was simply weary. Being honest was tiring, but it wasn’t as exhausting as carrying on with what he knew: that he had connived with the merchants he was deputed to regulate.
He continued to sit in the market house, hearing cases, investigating abuses, frowning at supplicants and keeping his own counsel. But he no longer punished transgressions with such severity. He no longer really cared whether the merchants cheated their customers or not. If he found gold in his purse, or a freshly slaughtered sheep delivered to his door, it roused neither gratitude nor indignation.
He had another daughter, after all.
[ 100 ]
The donkeys drummed on the cobbles with their little hooves. The two- wheeled carts jounced and swayed behind them, with a noise like sliding pebbles. The thin beams of lamplight careered around the blank walls.
