“ Ayran, efendim? It’s iced, very cool.”
Ayran was a drink of yogurt, whipped with water and a pinch of salt, and they accepted it gratefully, smiling at each other over the rims of their glasses. “I see you’re growing a mustache at last,” Yashim said. Kadri grinned, and wiped his upper lip.
“You know, Kadri, it’s at times like this that I pity sultans in palaces.”
It could have been him, of course. If Talfa had her way, the luxury of eating on the street would be all but lost to him.
Kadri nodded. “I don’t want to go back to school,” he said. “Not yet.”
“That’s what I was afraid you’d say.” Yashim sighed. “They may not have you back if you leave it too long. If that matters,” he added, after a pause.
He glanced at his new young friend. Kadri looked better than he had looked just a few days before: the pimples on his forehead had cleared up and his eyes were brighter than ever.
“What do you think, Yashim efendi?”
“About the school?” Yashim looked up at the sky. “I’m not sure I can advise you, Kadri. The school exists to produce a special caste of men, who go on to run this empire. You can become one of them.”
“You didn’t,” Kadri said.
“Efendim!” The waiter set a tray before them, with the little cubes of roasted lamb, bread, and a gypsy salad of cheese with red onion and peppers.
Yashim laughed. “I like to believe I have my uses, Kadri. The school also, perhaps incidentally, gives you training. Persian, Arabic, the classics. Things that a man should know. Rhetoric and logic. You study ethics, and the wisdom and poetry of the holy Koran. Those are things that can give you happiness; a consolation, at least.”
“It sounds-gloomy.”
“Not at all.” Yashim smiled. “It’s learning how to live. But it’s not the only way,” he added. He popped a morsel of tender lamb into his mouth and glanced at his young friend. “The medreses will teach you a great deal, if you prefer that route. Or books. Books teach you a number of things, including how to distinguish truth from fiction; and how to govern yourself.”
Kadri nodded. “I can’t decide.”
“No matter. I’ll have coffee, and then we must finish our work.”
Back in his kitchen, Yashim inspected the vegetables: the cloth under the colander was soaked. He squeezed four lemons into a bowl and beat them into a pint of olive oil.
“We’ll pot this up,” he said, “and then-I have an idea.”
Yashim tossed the vegetables in the colander, and then raked them into two glass jars, finishing with the dressing.
“This is for me-and this is for a friend,” he added, screwing down the lids. “I think, Kadri, you should stay with the ambassador-you seem to get along well. But in the mornings you could do something else.”
Kadri looked doubtful. “What could I do, Yashim efendi?”
“Come with me. And bring the pickle, too.”
At the Balat stage they took a caique to Pera, from where they made their way uphill, toward the Galata Tower, and then higher, to the fringes of the Frankish town that was constantly growing and rebuilding itself across the hill.
Yashim crossed into a side street and stopped at a shabby-looking door.
“Ready?”
Kadri looked anxious, but he forced a smile. “Ready, Yashim. What is this place?”
Yashim rapped on the door. “A den of iniquity. Riffraff. Dancers and actors. It’s run by an old friend of mine, who used to be a kocek dancer. It’s a theater.”
Kadri giggled. “It’s not something they teach us about at school.”
“That, Kadri, is the whole point.”
The door opened a crack. A pair of dark eyes examined them for a moment, and then the door opened wide.
“Preen’s upstairs, Yashim.” It was Mina, who attended to the accounts. “Come in-and bring those pickles. And your little friend, of course.”
59
“ Can you sing? Dance?”
Kadri shook his head. “I can run-and jump.”
“All right, darling.” Preen pursed her lips. “Let’s work with that. For the time being, I’ll get you to help Mustafa with the props and scenery. Learn some of the ropes.”
“I’ll pay for his board,” Yashim said, fishing out his purse. He shook the money into his hand.
“Don’t worry about that,” Preen said, with a wave. “Another mouth makes no difference.” She frowned, and pointed at something glinting in Yashim’s palm. “What’s that?”
“Oh, something… a nail,” he said carelessly. “I found it-in someone’s house.”
Preen peered at it for a moment, then her head snapped back. “Get rid of it, Yashim. Throw it out.” She gestured toward the window, but then her expression changed. “No, don’t throw it. You shouldn’t have touched it.”
Yashim picked up the nail and spun it between his fingers.
Preen winced. “Stop! You don’t know what it does!”
“I’ll throw it away,” Yashim said reluctantly.
“No, no.” She bit at her finger. “I know a woman, not far away. It’s better that we go to see her. Believe me, Yashim, don’t be stupid.”
Yashim shrugged and put the nail in his pocket.
“We can go there now,” Preen continued. “Kadri, come and meet Erkan, the Strongest Man in the World.”
The Grande Rue was lined with European shops, behind whose bright windows people came with money and left with packages wrapped in paper. Preen led Yashim across, and plunged into the network of alleys that lay in a tangled skein above the Bosphorus. Here, by a dimmer light, matters were decided by superstitious gestures, by almanacs and eggs broken into a bowl of oil, by imprecations and talismans. Here people sought out propitious days, avoided dark corners, waggled their fingers behind their backs, resorted to nostrums, prayers, and the prognostications of wise women. These were the ordinary calculations of the everyday world, in which every moment held its weight, every movement was a portent, each word and gesture held a meaning.
Yashim put a hand to his pocket and felt the nail, with its little ridge of thread, and hastily withdrew it again.
Preen knocked at a door.
“Who is it?”
“Preen, Mrs. Satzos. With a friend.”
“Please come in. The door is not locked.”
The light seemed to bend and flutter toward them. The whole room was lit by dozens of tiny candles, burning and flickering in glass jars all around the walls.
A little table held a jug and a bowl, and several plain glasses. The walls were lined with shelves. On the shelves stood the flickering lights, and over each of them loomed an indistinct shape. Some were crosses, of tin or bronze, occasionally inset with small beads of colored glass that twinkled in the candlelight, but there were also books, set flat against the wall, and on one shelf-a more disagreeable surprise-a row of stuffed dolls with beady eyes and silk faces, their arms fixed in a gesture of benediction. Behind one candle he noticed a hand of Fatima, made of punched tin. Several small icons, almost black with age or soot, defied analysis.
“I brought him straight to you, Mrs. Satzos,” Preen was saying. “He wanted to throw it out the window. Yashim?”
Yashim laid the nail on the cover of a brassbound book he supposed to be a Bible.
