butter.
He unfastened his cloak and wrung out the water. Holding one end, with his back to the wall, he flicked the cloak up and over his head. The end he was holding went limp for a few seconds, then the cloak tumbled down over his head. The end he had thrown was sopping wet. He thought for a few moments with his eyes shut. Then he shook the cloak out flat on the water’s surface. He started groping on the floor for bricks, lobbing them as best as he could judge toward the center of the cloak. After a minute he gathered the cloak together by its edges and hefted the weight. It was as much as he could do to drag it through the water.
He set the bundle against the wall and tried climbing on it. The stones slithered down under his weight. He stepped off and tried to tie the ends of the cloak together, to make a tighter bundle. After three or four attempts he gave up. He couldn’t get the wet, slopping half knots of the cloak to hold together.
He wasted half an hour using the crucifix and the chain to sew the cloak tight. He floated Xani’s corpse over the bundle of stones and tried to get a footing. The corpse was soft underfoot and would not keep still. He could not reach the opening.
He felt very tired.
He shook the cloak, to dislodge some of the stones, tucked in the corners, and dragged the bundle up to the level of his chest. Water poured from the cloak. He squeezed it, and it grew lighter.
He summoned his strength and tossed the bundle high up against the wall. It dropped back, into his arms. He tried again, taking a step back. When he had thrown it he reached forward to catch it, if it fell. This time he heard a muffled splash. The cloak did not fall back.
Yashim found stones on the floor and began to lob them upward.
The work kept him from feeling the cold.
When he had lobbed a dozen stones into the dark, he stopped and listened. There was a new sound, of gurgling water. He stepped forward and touched the wall. He couldn’t feel anything. He put his lips to the wall and felt the water trickling down.
It was cold as ice.
He went back to lobbing stones, in the dark.
It was only another way to die.
85
“You’re quite sure?”
“Quite sure, Dr. Millingen. Thank you.”
“At least you have some fine Turkish slippers now,” he said, smiling.
“Yes. You have been kind.” She turned to the little sunken door and knocked.
Widow Matalya answered the door. She did not know what to think, finding the Frankish woman on her doorstep, with a strange man. Dr. Millingen tipped his hat politely, and the old woman sniffed, transferring her distaste onto a solid target: hats, she thought, were very nasty things.
“Please, madame-do keep in touch.”
Amelie gave him a curious smile. “I shall have to, I suppose,” she said.
She went in. The old woman closed the door and turned with a very set expression on her face, her lips compressed.
“Monsieur Yashim-Yashim efendi-he’s upstairs?” Amelie pointed a finger.
The widow’s eyes bored into her.
“I think I’ll just go up and see,” Amelie said gaily. “Salut!”
86
Palewski put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Look here,” he said, breathing hard. “Are we going far? A long way?”
The boy looked up and nodded.
“In that case,” the ambassador said firmly, “we’ll take a chair.”
He snapped his fingers at a couple of men squatting against a wall.
“My treat,” he said, smiling. “Just point these fellows in the right direction, there’s a good boy.”
Down on the shore they swapped the chair for a caique. The little boy pointed up the Golden Horn.
“Fener? Balat? Fener stage, boatman, please.” Perhaps Yashim had simply gone off home, he thought. But once they reached Fener, the little boy made some complicated signs and shook his head vigorously.
“All right,” Palewski said. “We’ll walk, I see. Not too far now, eh?”
He regretted taking the boy’s advice as he toiled up the hills, but they were in a shabby neighborhood that Palewski did not know, and there were no lounging chairmen here.
Finally the boy jumped up onto a low wall and sat there, kicking his heels and looking intently at a doorway across the street.
“He went in there?”
Palewski climbed the steps. There was a padlock on the door, so Palewski turned around and caught the boy’s eye. He pointed at the door. The little boy nodded.
Palewski glanced up and down the street. Apart from the little boy on the wall, it seemed perfectly empty.
Stanislaw Palewski, unlike Dr. Millingen, was not a man who placed much faith in the benefits of regular exercise. His arms were thin; his legs were long. But he was still capable of sudden, violent physical effort.
He stood back, leaned against the parapet, and doubled those long legs by bringing his knees up close to his chin.
Then with a splintering crash he brought both feet down hard on the door and burst it open.
The ambassador turned to the little boy, who was watching him with astonishment from across the street, and gave him a most unambassadorial wink.
Then he went into the icy gloom to find his friend.
87
Yashim was singing an old song from the Balkans, about a man who went down to the river and caught the soul of his dead lover in his nets.
He spun slowly in the darkness, sometimes kicking his legs, sometimes reaching for a better grip on the man who had become his new friend. They’d only just met, too, he thought. Dear Xani! Stinking, buoyant, and obliging. What very good luck it was they’d met, at last.
If only Xani were still warm, Yashim thought dreamily. The pit was slowly filling, deeper and deeper as the flow backed up against the cloak and stones overhead. He heard a tapping, unlike the sound of water gushing into the pit from the blocked conduit above. For some minutes he tried to imagine what it could be, before he discovered that it was the sound of his own chattering teeth.
He found that his whole body was shaking, convulsing in sudden spasms that shook his grip on the dead man and sometimes sent him spluttering and flailing beneath the surface of the ice-cold water. Sometimes he had a sense of being underwater altogether; sometimes he closed his eyes and felt a wave of great lassitude and peace wash through him, so that he wanted to let go and sink, gently and dreamily, into the depths. He had not touched the bottom of the pit in hours, it seemed. Now and again he found himself beneath the spout of water dropping from the blocked conduit.
He heard someone singing an old Turkish marching song, in a small, tired voice. He thought it must be Xani.
