He fished in his waistcoat and brought out a packet of papers.
Yashim gave a start. “I’ve seen these before. But how on earth-?”
“Found ’em, efendi, just lying in the grass. The night you saved my watch, on Chalki.”
He set the packet on the table and patted it, then pushed it over toward Yashim.
“I–I wanted you to have ’em. Never occurred to me you might have dropped them, but I see that now. You know what they are?”
Yashim eyed the packet. “Not exactly,” he admitted cautiously. “I glanced through them. I didn’t have much time, and my Russian’s none too fluent anyway.”
“I read Russian, Yashim efendi.”
He said it with modest diffidence, as if he expected Yashim’s reaction.
“You?”
Compston gave an apologetic shrug. “Never found much time for it, until I came across Pushkin.”
“Who?”
“Alexander Pushkin. He’s a Russian poet, dead now.” Compston absently reached into his waistcoat pocket and ran his fingers up a silver chain. The watch appeared in his hand. “Killed in a duel just a couple of years ago. Affair of the heart,” he added wistfully.
“Like your Byron?”
“Not bad, Yashim efendi. Put like that, you’re right. Pushkin is the Russian Byron. Languages don’t agree with me, but somehow Russian works.” He gave a short laugh. “They’re letters, written to your Kapudan pasha. I sort of pieced it together. Didn’t think much more of ’em, not until we heard about the Egyptian business. Then I thought of you. Here they are.”
“You didn’t think about them?” Yashim could not keep the note of surprise out of his voice. “Why not?”
It was Compston’s turn to sound surprised. “Well, there’s not much to them, efendi, is there? Or didn’t you read them? Sorry, of course
…” He frowned. “They’re nothing too important, judging by the hand. Common threats-I know your secret, a word from One Who Knows, that sort of thing. You know-your time is running out.”
“Blackmailing letters? From Galytsin?”
Compston raised an eyebrow. “Galytsin? No, no. But blackmailing letters, all right. Damned obscure. Full of spelling mistakes, just what you’d expect from some Russki blackmailer. Lowest form of villainy, blackmail. I don’t say Galytsin wouldn’t stoop to it, but he could never have written those letters.” He pointed at the packet. “Have a look yourself.”
Yashim scooped up the bundle and slipped it into his waistcoat. “Thank you.”
Compston waved a hand. “Please, don’t mention it. Feel much better now-one good turn, all that sort of thing. I say-” He pulled a worried face and bent to catch Yashim’s eye. “As a matter of fact, you won’t mention that we’ve met? Better not. Fizerley, well. He’s a bit of a stickler.”
“Of course not,” Yashim murmured. He was not really listening. He was staring into the surface of his tea and wondering whether he had got everything wrong.
After a moment he collected himself. “About the bridge,” he said. “I expect it’ll stand, all right. Fevzi Ahmet may be a traitor, but he’s no fool.”
“That’s just what I was afraid you’d say, Yashim efendi,” Compston replied unhappily. “Oh God, it’s going to be awful!”
109
When the man from the mountains first saw the sea, he knelt and wept, wondering how any man could command such an immensity.
But as the day wore on, he grew more used to it; he swallowed his doubts. The pasha was a man, like any other. He would die, as a man did.
The man with the knife did not stop to look at the swollen welt across his chest. It was changing color, weeping; and darker tentacles were spreading across his skin.
He stumbled on, to the sound of the gulls mocking him over the little waves.
110
At Besiktas Yashim asked to see the Kislar aga and was led downstairs to a Frenchified waiting room that was stuffy and windowless, furnished with two European sofas, an Italian clock, and a number of high-backed chairs that had lost some of their gilt, or a molded foot. Timid black faces he did not recognize looked in on him once or twice, before Ibou himself appeared.
He looked gray, Yashim thought; and one of his eyes was bloodshot.
The aga waited until the door had closed, and then subsided into one of the great sofas. He rubbed his hands across his face.
“The bridge,” he groaned. “I wish it had never been built.”
“You, too?” Yashim said in surprise.
“The opening ceremony,” the aga muttered. “Tomorrow, all the ladies, in caiques. In public! The sultan on horseback. Precedence, Yashim. You can’t believe.”
“The opening ceremony?”
The aga’s hand snaked out over the arm of the sofa. “Please, Yashim. Help yourself.” He popped a sugared lozenge into his mouth. “The public ceremony is tomorrow. The real ceremony began here, today-and worse than the changeover, if that’s possible. Who gets into the first caique? What shall they wear? Do they land this side of the bridge, or is it proper to go under it? I don’t know,” he added, in a tone to suggest he didn’t much care, either. “And now what new worries do you bring me, Yashim?”
Yashim frowned. His eye fell on an ormolu clock, standing on a shelf. It told ferenghi time, the hours spaced out impersonally between night and light. It was not how time seemed to Yashim: his hours had been as long as days. He could see its cogs and springs behind beveled glass.
He said: “What is the engine, Ibou? What does it mean?”
Ibou turned his head slowly and looked at Yashim slyly, out of the corner of his eye. “The engine?”
Yashim gazed at the clock. “Something Melda said.”
“A bit of foolishness. The housekeeper ladies make it a joke among them, when new girls are brought in.”
Yashim opened his hands and shrugged, nonplussed. “The engine?”
“Well, there’s an old table, down in the basement. The housekeepers fool about with it.” Ibou waved his hand as if it didn’t matter and was beneath his dignity to comment.
“Fool about?” But Melda hadn’t suggested fooling about. I have seen the engine, she’d said.
The aga heaved a sigh. “I should deal with it, I suppose.” He wiped his hands across his eyes. “They take the novices down to look at the table. The new girls.”
“Yes?”
Ibou blew out his cheeks. “The table stands on a stone flagged floor, which looks like a trapdoor. They- frighten the girls, a bit. That’s what I’ve heard.”
“The novices,” Yashim repeated. “And where does the engine come in?”
Ibou pulled a face. “Pouf. I don’t know. If a girl misbehaves, they tell them, she’ll be strapped to this table.” He stuck a finger in the air and rotated it. “They tell them never to reveal anything they’ve heard or seen.”
“Or what?”
The aga rolled his eyes. “Or they’ll strap her down, and the table will start to spin, around and around, and sink down through the floor into the Bosphorus.” He let his hand drop to his lap.
“I see.” Yashim was not smiling.
