It was a stone staircase, with a landing between the floors. Yashim stopped to contemplate the landing window, high in the wall. Then he moved on downstairs and into the courtyard, to study the dormitory block from the outside. It was just as he remembered, built in the spare classical Ottoman style, with deeply inset windows and dressed stone walls.
Beyond these walls so much had changed in the years since Yashim was there. Laws had been changed, the Janissaries suppressed. Egypt, the ancient grain store of the empire, had slipped from the sultan’s grasp under its charismatic Albanian overlord, Mehmet Ali Pasha; Russia had moved closer.
“Fazil!”
One of the boys coming out of the gymnasium broke away from his companions and salaamed.
“Fazil shares the dormitory with Kadri. Tell the efendi what happened this morning.”
Fazil gave his account. Kadri hadn’t been in his bed when the gong went.
“Did you look under all the beds?” Yashim asked the boy again.
Fazil scratched one leg against the other and admitted that he couldn’t be sure.
“How about your own bed?”
“I–I think so, efendi. Or one of the boys would have looked.”
“And the chimney?”
“I can’t remember, efendi. Later, I looked for sure. I am sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Yashim assured him. “Thank you for telling me.” He was surprised how little seemed to have changed since his day. The boys, it was true, were dressed differently, in Frankish uniforms-but they were the same boys as before, lanky, handsome, darting from one classroom to the next holding their books.
He half smiled to himself as he caught sight of an imam in his white cap and long brown robes, treading solemnly along the cobbled path. That element of the curriculum, at least, was unchanged.
“Either Kadri is still here, tutor, or-” Yashim squinted up at the side of the building. “Is the catch on that landing window fastened?”
The tutor heaved a sigh of impatience. “Anyone who jumped from that window, Yashim efendi, would be dead at the foot of the wall.”
Yashim nodded. “Let’s find someone with a ladder.”
34
Donizetti Pasha, the instructor general, cracked his white baton down on the lectern.
“Ladies, ladies, please.” He leaned forward on his toes and blew out his cheeks so that his mustaches tickled his nose. “I hope you are not too stiff?”
He placed the baton down and laced his fingers together, arching them over his little bald head, leaning this way and that. “You must do the same. Stretch your fingers!”
The orchestra obeyed. There was the sound of instruments being laid aside, and a few suppressed giggles, because Donizetti Pasha was a man and his talk sounded intimate: stiff, fingers. To have these parts, these feelings, referred to by a strange man-well!
Elif, smiling, caught Donizetti’s glance and blushed.
The maestro was no stranger to the palace himself. In his twelve years at the Porte he had written marches for the new army bands, airs for sultans, and innumerable studies and scherzos for the more musical members of the imperial family, including the rousing march unofficially considered the Ottoman imperial anthem, with its swelling brass and occasional daring swoops into a minor, Oriental key.
Donizetti Pasha nodded. “Good, good. Now, like this.”
He waggled his fingers beside his cheeks. The ladies of the harem orchestra followed suit.
“Ciao, ciao, ciao, ciao!” Donizetti hunched his shoulders and his eyes twinkled.
“Ciao, ciao, ciao, ciao!” trilled the harem ladies. They looked about them and laughed.
“Va bene!” the maestro cried jovially. “Now your fingers are relaxed, and you can play like angels! Violins, especially.”
He cast a meaningful glance toward the violins, and picked up the baton. “When you are ready. One, two, three. And-” He flicked the tip of his baton through the air, and the violins picked up the beat.
Giuseppe Donizetti smiled, and gave the violins a deep nod. Really, they were not too bad. Not bad at all! What a sensation they would make in Milan-the loveliest orchestra in the world, belli di Bosforo! Each a flower, plucked from the waysides of the Caucasus- Ah, Giuseppe, Giuseppe! Lower your eyes, man! Concentrate on the score. For your own good health.
He had tutored the young prince Abdulmecid, now the sultan, on pianoforte and violin-the youth lacked attack, perhaps, but he was competent and some of his compositions showed promise-but when the young sultan had first suggested that Donizetti Pasha should lead the ladies’ orchestra every week, the Paduan maestro had found his heart beating like a drum.
“No man other than the sultan has ever stepped into his harem,” he had confided in a letter to his little brother. “I am to make history! Not only shall I meet the sultan’s ladies, but I am to direct them with my baton, every week!”
To which his brother had replied with a dry warning. “I advise you, my dear brother, to read the contract carefully before you commit yourself. As I understand the harem rules, your baton may be the first thing to go if you accept such a position.”
Donizetti Pasha had chuckled a little uneasily at the gibe. His brother, of course, took his own baton to the ladies of Paris and Naples without stint: it had been that way ever since his Lucia di Lammermoor had made him the darling of Italian opera. Giuseppe did not begrudge his younger brother his good fortune, either with the ladies or the stage: they had been born poor, and Giuseppe remained grateful for the attainments that had led him to a position of trust and honor within the Ottoman Empire. It was a snug billet, as a soldier might say; and he was a married man.
In the event, his anxiety-and his brother’s warning-had proved unfounded. The sultan was as good as his word. Every Thursday, the girls of the orchestra assembled in the Grand Salon under the direction of the amiable Italian. They played minuets for him; they galloped into rondos; they beat the drum and scraped the string and blew the reed and fingered the stops for him; and if some of them believed themselves in love, why, Donizetti Pasha was far too short, and round, and twinkling on his toes to suspect such a thing.
He was the only man, beyond family, that many of them had ever seen before. Portly and innocent; but a man.
35
Yashim took his leave of the tutor at the gate.
“Our best hope is that Kadri makes up his own mind to come back.”
“I still don’t think it’s possible-”
Yashim held up a hand. “Nor do I. Not really. But the window was unlocked. There’s a chance that he’s still here, of course. We may simply have to wait for our young friend to make himself known. Eventually, at least, he has to get hungry.”
The tutor snorted. “He disgraces himself, and us. Nobody runs away from the palace school. It has simply never happened before. Damn Kadri!” And he stuffed his beard into his mouth and chewed on it, angrily.
Yashim opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again.
36
