The valide lifted a bangled arm to the balustrade and turned her head. Her profile was still extraordinarily clear.
“Istanbul could become poor one day. Who knows?”
“I felt the same, valide,” Yashim admitted. “Istanbul and Venice always ate from the one dish.”
“I suppose you are right. Istanbul the master, Venice the servant-and when the master has dined, the servant clears his plate.” She looked at Yashim. “Perhaps that’s why the sultan came here last week. To talk about Venice.”
Yashim felt himself blush. “The sultan spoke of Venice?”
The valide raised her chin. “In the olden days, Yashim, the sultans left their dominions only in time of war-to conquer. But that age is past. Abdulmecid is young, Yashim, and he has not lived in the world. He knows it. I think he regrets it, too.”
But he has lived in the world more than the valide might suppose, Yashim reflected.
“He comes to me because he thinks I know Europe. I don’t discourage him.”
“You-have traveled, valide?”
“You might call it traveling, Yashim. Certainly I met some quite interesting men.” A smile hovered on her lips. “I threatened the Dey of Algiers with the vengeance of the French navy. Later, I pulled his beard. I, too, was very young.”
Yashim smiled. The dey had sent his captive on, to Istanbul, as a gift to the sultan. Perhaps he didn’t like having his beard pulled.
“But Abdulmecid is less experienced,” the valide continued. “I have encouraged him to read more French, I hope.”
Yashim remembered the Dumas.
“I have brought this back, valide. Dumas’s Ali Pasha.”
She took it with a small smile.
“I don’t think it’s quite right for the padishah,” she said.
“No,” Yashim agreed.
115
Before he left the palace, Yashim crossed the Third Court and entered the imperial archives, where the vast records of the bureaucracy that had governed millions of lives for centuries were all held.
He spent an hour going through an elaborate index, waving away all offers of help until he found the volume he wanted.
A librarian disappeared into the huge stacks, crammed with volumes of correspondence and reports, ancient scrolls, imperial firmans.
“The records you’re asking for are not yet bound.” The librarian fluttered his hands apologetically. “They have only just been delivered.”
“I’d like to see them anyway.”
The librarian frowned. “It’s against regulations to let out unbound records.”
Yashim waited.
“You can’t remove them, efendi.”
“I’ll examine them in front of you, if you like.”
The librarian sniffed. “That won’t be necessary,” he said crisply.
A few moments later, Yashim was leafing through a pile of diplomatic records.
It took him twenty minutes to find what he wanted.
116
“Where yous been, efendi? You have a yali now, I thinks, like some big pasha, hey?”
Yashim smiled and shook his head. “I’ve been away, George.”
George scratched his chest. “Is too hot here, Yashim efendi.”
George grabbed a bucket and roved from piles of spinach to pyramids of tiny cucumbers, sprinkling them with cold water. When he was finished he rubbed his wet hands across his face.
“Today, you is not busy, efendi.”
He caught a dozen or so tiny artichokes, one by one, and placed them on his scales. They were no bigger than his thumb.
“Some tomatoes. Some garlic. Aubergine-here.” He took four long green aubergines and weighed them, too. He carefully placed everything in the basket with his huge hands and crammed a fistful of herbs-parsley, dill, rosemary-on top.
He puffed up, waved his arms, and subsided with a gesture of calm. “You cooks in the heat and eats in the cool,” he bellowed, miming to suit. “Dolma. A raki. No meat.”
Yashim paused on the way home to buy bread, yogurt, and olives. When he got back, the little apartment was like an oven. He threw back the windows and left the door slightly ajar to encourage a breeze.
It was only when he picked up the basket again that he noticed a small parcel by the door.
He undid the string.
Inside was his knife.
With it came a letter.
My dearest Yashim, I wished to send you a souvenir of Venice, but really, there is nothing. So I sent Antonio to find your knife, in the courtyard of the fondaco.
You saved my life, which was not important until now. Before, I had no feeling-I lost it, I suppose, when my brother died, and then my mother. Until now I knew neither joy nor tenderness, but only pain, in the way you know about. With Nikola there is pain, but it is another kind, and it is very mixed with something else. Of course I wish- but what do I wish? For nothing. I commune with an angel. Father Andrea is very good.
I am sorry to have lost the painting, because it would have been good for us to have money. About the letters, I will let the fish read them. I know-and you know-that they did exist. Which is enough.
Your loving friend,
Carla A-I
He put the letter aside and examined the knife. The binding on the grip had come loose, but the steel itself was bright and sharp. He weighed it in his hand.
“You have traveled a long way,” he said aloud, “since Ammar made you.”
He wiped the blade with a cloth, glad that the knife was clean.
“Ammar made you to chop vegetables,” he said.
He took a board and set to work. With the knife he prepared the tiny artichokes, trimming their leaves. He chopped the tomatoes, slit the aubergines, crushed and salted the garlic cloves. The room filled with the scent of herbs.
The Tatar had been dispatched to expunge every trace of the sultan’s dishonor. To kill, leaving no witnesses.
Palewski had said something on the ship, before the porpoises broke the cover of the sea, something he had put from his mind.
Resid had sent a killer and not him.
I could have done it, Yashim thought, without killing anyone. I might have retrieved the letters-and the painting, too. That is my job.
He stuffed the aubergines with tomatoes, onion, a little parsley and garlic, carefully gathering the last fragments from the board.
If the Austrians already knew about the sultan’s visit, killing the witnesses was a waste. A waste of life,
