Yashim allowed for a suitably impressed pause.
“The cauldrons,” he suggested.
“Yes, yes, that is what I’m thinking about. There seems to be one missing.”
[ 15 ]
The seraskier sat on the edge of the divan, staring down at his shiny leather riding boots.
“Something will have to be announced,” he said finally. “Too many people know what’s happened as it is.”
The workmen had been too scared to touch the obstruction in the drain once they knew what it was. Leaving it still concealed across the mouth of the drain, they had fled downhill to inform the caretaker of what they had found. The caretaker informed the imam, who was at that moment setting out to climb the minaret to call the morning prayer. In a hurry, not quite knowing what to do, the imam sent the caretaker to track down the morning watch: the old man could hear the sound of the prayer breaking out all over the city as he scurried through the streets.
By dawn light, a group of men could be seen milling about the drain. One of them had been sick. Another, hardier, braver or more desperate than the rest for the night watch’s proffered sequins, had manipulated the grotesquely misshapen corpse out of the drain and onto the cobbles, where it was finally bundled onto a sheet, wrapped and hoisted onto a donkey cart that went slipping and swaying down the slope to the Nusretiye, the Mosque of the Victory.
The workman who had made the discovery had already gone home, to sleep off his horrors or sluice them away in the vivid warmth of the baths. His mate, better shielded from the shock, remained to enjoy his moment with the crowd. Already his story, somewhat improved from its first rendition, was being retailed with appropriate embellishments among latecomers to the scene, and within the hour several versions of events were circling through the city. By lunchtime these stories were so finely rounded that two of them were able to actually pass each other without the slightest friction, leaving some people to believe that it had been a day of oddities in which an Egyptian sphinx had been dug up out of the foreshore while in Tophane a nest of cannibals had been surprised at their gory breakfast.
The seraskier had intercepted the rumours considerably earlier. He heard that a man, very possibly one of his missing recruits, had been found in bizarre circumstances close to the Mosque of the Victory. He sent to the mosque for more information, and learned that the body had been put into an outhouse normally used by some of the workers on the site. He dispatched a note to Yashim, who was at that moment eating his borek in the cafe on Kara Davut Sokagi, suggesting they meet at the mosque, and rode over to see.
Thoroughly shaken and repelled by the condition and appearance of the naked corpse, he had returned to his apartments to find Yashim—in a state of ignorance and unconcern—examining the spines of the military manuals and regulation books that filled the bookshelves opposite the divan.
The seraskier became very angry.
[ 16 ]
The master of the soup-makers’ guild had been angry with Yashim, too. The fact that the stranger knew more about the missing cauldron than he did seemed to him in some degree sinister.
“Is this some kind of a joke?” he demanded furiously, when his eyes had—rather superfluously, Yashim thought— devoured the store-room in a fruitless search for the enormous missing cauldron. After all, you could hardly conceal a cauldron the size of an ox behind a few scrolls and hand-weights. At the same time Yashim felt sorry for the master: such a thing, he was almost certain to say, had never happened before in all the history of the guild. Now it had happened on his watch: a theft.
“I can’t believe it. I have the key.” He held the key up and stared at it, as if it might suddenly break down and confess to illicit behaviour. Then he shook it angrily. “This is highly irregular. Twenty-four years!” He glared at Yashim. “I’ve been here twenty-four years.”
Yashim shrugged amiably.
“Do you keep the key with you all the time?”
“In the name of God, I sleep with my keys!” the master snapped.
“You might update the lock.”
The master cocked his head and leaned slowly towards Yashim.
“You say you come from the palace,” he growled. “What is this? You are some inspector?”
