“How do men make a city? You think a sultan claps his hands and it appears like the palace of a djinn? No, not even a sultan can do this. Water. Water to build a city. And water to defend it, also.”
“Defend it?”
“Of course. Great walls, brave soldiers, even a wise sultan in command—these can delay a city’s fall. But water decides the battle.”
Yashim considered the naziry’s remark. “Istanbul is vulnerable, then,” he said.
The naziry raised an eyebrow. “It is not as vulnerable as you might guess, Yashim efendi. That is our responsibility. But without us, the city is dust. It cannot eat. It cannot live.
“This,” he added, pointing the stem of his pipe toward the glittering bent, “is the blood of Istanbul.”
Yashim looked at the shimmering water. The foresters and the naziry’s men were squatting in a circle, sharing out the rest of the pilaf and meat.
“The men of the guild,” Yashim began, “they are all Albanians, aren’t they?”
The naziry made a motion of dismissal. “They are men who understand one another, that is all.” He was silent for a moment. “But yes, also we have a gift. Is it because we come from the mountains, that we understand the fall of water, and the measure of distances? I do not know how it is, but God gives every race some special task. A Bulgar knows his sheep. A Serb can always fight. A Greek knows how to talk and a Turk how to be silent. But we Albanians—we can read water.”
And keep secrets, Yashim thought. Sustain memories.
“You have great experience,” he said.
The naziry shrugged. “Even with a gift, a man must learn. Do you see the blood of a man—his liver—his lungs? A doctor sees a man this way, after many years’ experience. You see a city: you see its streets, its hills, its houses, its people. But you do not see as deeply as we can. We, who are members of a guild two hundred strong.”
“And what do you see, naziry?”
“Another city, Yashim efendi; like a maze. In parts it is older than memory.” He puffed thoughtfully on his pipe. “A dangerous place for a man without experience.”
Yashim leaned forward. “There was a man called Xani—”
“It is a maze,” the naziry repeated.
He raised his hand, and the servant stepped forward.
“I wish to sleep,” the naziry said. “Take these away.”
He put his hand to his chest and inclined his head very slightly toward Yashim. “As I say, a most dangerous place.”
He lay back on the carpet and closed his eyes.
Yashim sat watching him for several minutes, not moving.
The naziry began to snore.
102
DR. Millingen came down the steps of his house and climbed into the sedan chair waiting for him in the road. The chairmen shouldered their burden and began to lope placidly through the crowd streaming downhill toward the Pera landing stage.
Dr. Millingen settled his hands on the clasp of his leather bag. Edinburgh, he thought, had prepared him for much, but nothing could ever quite reconcile him to a sedan chair. The sultan had ordered it, of course, so there was little point in refusing the apparent honor—and as a mode of transport it was certainly well suited to the steep and convoluted streets of modern Pera, where a horse might struggle through the crowd, or slip on the cobblestones going downhill. But Millingen always felt ridiculous, and exposed, like a cherry on an iced cake.
He breathed heavily and patted his bag. It was all in the mind. The thing to remember was that no one cared but him. He caught sight of his own reflection in the wide glass window of the Parisian patisserie, in his swaying litter, and smiled to himself. The cherry on the cake, indeed.
Nobody in Istanbul would give him so much as a second glance.
103
PALEWSKI bit down on the eclair and wiped a squirt of creme anglaise from his cheek with his thumb. “Pera, these days. It’s not the patisseries I object to,” he mumbled. “Only the people.”
Yashim nodded, and took a sip of his tisane, watching the English doctor disappear, swaying, through the Pera crowds.
He reached into his coat and pulled out an envelope, which he smoothed flat on the little marble table. “The people,” Yashim echoed finally. “And when, do you think, they began to change?”
There was no mistaking the chairmen’s livery. Even without the gold edging, the waistcoats they were wearing were far too new and clean to rank them with the ordinary chairmen of the city. It was Besiktas, then, for the doctor. He could be gone for hours.
