Yashim took a good look at the pasha’s house and grounds. The estate stretched to about three acres, enclosed by an eight-foot wall topped with overhanging tiles, built to take advantage of every natural slope; even from the hillside it was impossible to see over it. There were two gates, the lesser one approached by a narrow mule track.
Yashim could hear dogs barking within the walls.
Later in the afternoon, while he was drinking tea in a small cafe along the shore, he again met the fisherman who cooked with tomatoes, and he took advantage of the license of the islands to invite him for a drink.
For a Muslim to sit with a Christian, openly drinking ouzo-even if the Muslim gentleman stuck to his tea-would have been unthinkable in most parts of Istanbul itself. Perhaps, in a dark Tophane tavern where foreign sailors regularly loitered for their billets, such a meeting would just have been possible; but here on the island-that place for romantic assignations, as Palewski had said-the rules seemed to be more relaxed. Yashim sipped his tea while his new friend watered his raki and drank it, flushed and happy, at Yashim’s expense.
Within an hour, Yashim had found out how to get into the pasha’s garden.
“But not dressed like that, if you’ll forgive me, kyrie,” the young man ventured, with a charming smile. Then some of his confidence seemed to evaporate, because he added, “You’ll have to wear some of Dmitri’s things,” and scowled, as if the reality of what he had agreed to do had just struck him.
“Let’s talk to Dmitri, then, my friend.” Yashim stood up. The young fisherman got slowly to his feet, punching his fist into his palm.
“My trouble, kyrie, is that I talk too much.”
39
As Dmitri predicted, the gate opened as the distant bells of the monastery rang for vespers.
“I’ve brought my mate again,” Dmitri said, jerking his thumb.
Yashim put a finger to the brim of his hat. The doorkeeper let them through the gate and closed it after them, shooting two bolts before he walked away.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” he said gruffly, over his shoulder.
Dmitri picked up a watering can from beside the gate. “You can take the mattock,” he said.
Yashim swung the mattock over his shoulder and followed the gardener to the well, set back behind a hedge of prickly pears and a drooping willow tree. He laid the mattock down, and glanced over the prickly pears.
Across a courtyard, neatly paved in a geometric pattern of small stone blocks, a tilted apple tree was laden with small fruit. Just beyond it stood a fine konak, with spreading eaves and whitewashed walls.
The shutters on the ground floor were closed.
Beyond the konak was another door, which belonged to a small lodge, or guardhouse, built up against the wall.
A dozy blackbird sang in the apple tree. Otherwise the courtyard was perfectly still. A huge fig drooped its man hands from the southern wall, and from it arose the hum of drowsy bees; the cobbles below were stained and spotted by dropped fruit.
A pair of swallows worked the intervening air.
As if to dispel a dream, Yashim brushed a hand through the air above his head, and approached the konak across the dry cobbles.
40
At this hour of the day when the sun slanted almost horizontally across the landscape, you could sometimes make out dark forms behind the latticework that protected the upper windows of every Ottoman house. Men spoke of glimpses of a pretty hand, or a pair of liquid eyes, to which imagination attached the figure of a houri from Paradise. Yashim ducked under the pears and walked quickly across the courtyard to the back door.
My name is Yashim: I am a lala from the palace, he could say. We have been concerned for your safety while the pasha is away.
Nobody answered his knock. He listened. No footsteps; no whispers.
Yashim tried the shutters. They were fastened from the inside, but overhead was a balcony facing away from the church and toward the hills. With a swift glance around, he shinned up from the shutter to the balustrade.
A lattice door pierced by a thousand little openings was shut fast by an inside hook. Yashim slipped a knife from his belt and slid the blade into the jamb. It clicked against the hook and the door swung free.
He stood, breathing heavily in the doorway.
Once before he had entered a harem like this, by stealth. He’d been looking for a man hiding among the petticoats-and Fevzi Ahmet had been waiting for him downstairs.
Now it was Fevzi’s house. Fevzi’s harem.
He stepped through the doorway.
“Ladies! Ladies! I am Yashim, a lala from the palace! Come out, and do not be afraid!”
41
Fevzi Ahmet, coming into the guardroom. Pulling off a pair of gloves.
He spits.
“Nothing. A time waster.”
“Perhaps I could talk to him? I’ve been wondering-perhaps he doesn’t realize what he knows?”
Fevzi pours himself a glass of tea. “No. There’s no point, Yashim.”
“Never give up-you say that yourself, Fevzi efendi.”
The bloodshot eyes. “There’s no point. He’s already dead.”
42
There was no reply to Yashim’s call; he knew he had not expected one. He slipped off his shoes and stood at the head of the stairs, gazing at the doors that led off the upper landing and wondering where to begin. There was a faint smell of starch and roses.
The house was an old country villa built by some Greek merchant, with wide, scrubbed oak boards, walls of planked and polished cedar, and a plaster ceiling decorated a long time ago with a painted motif of flowers. Here and there the ceiling needed repair.
Gingerly he tried a door. It swung back onto what might have been an apartment for one of Fevzi’s ladies, but when Yashim stepped cautiously inside he was reminded of a linen merchant’s warehouse. Even in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, the greatest emporium on earth, with its fourteen miles of covered alleys, its workshops and restaurants and cafes and hammams, Yashim would have been surprised to find such a collection of printed cotton quilts, hammam towels and sheets. In teetering piles on the divan, spilling onto the rugs on the floor, stacked against the walls, were pantaloons, with frills, and pretty striped chemises; handkerchiefs and pattens with cotton sides; yards of muslin of a fine grade, and bolts of cloth-blue, green, a deep indigo, patterned cotton, figured silks.
Out on the landing he stopped to listen. The silence rushed in his ears.
He pushed the door to the room that overlooked the entrance.
In the corner, a narrow pallet lay rolled up on the floor. Otherwise the room looked empty. The shutters were
