Part 15 (2/2)

”No burden at all. We can discuss Roman law and drink up this case of Riesling,” Palewski said amiably. He peered at the boy. ”Or rather, not, of course.”

Kadri lowered his eyes.

”When you ran away from the school, Yas.h.i.+m efendi-I mean, tonight I met you and Palewski efendi. You have both been so-so kind, and generous. But ...”

Yas.h.i.+m nodded. ”When I ran away I met a caiquejee, who gave me breakfast. Some kind people. A big Greek, who threw me a melon.”

Kadri looked dubious. ”A mackerel sandwich is better.”

Yas.h.i.+m smiled. ”He sold fruit and vegetables, not fish.”

”And then you went back to school again?”

”I went back to the school,” Yas.h.i.+m agreed. ”After that, they found me a job.”

Yas.h.i.+m meant to say something else: that he met Fevzi Ahmet, and the direction of his life was changed.

Absently, he put a hand to his pocket.

Palewski c.o.c.ked his head. ”That old Greek at the market? Whatsisname, George?” He turned to Kadri. ”He did better than that, my young friend. Yas.h.i.+m saved his life.”

”How was that, Yas.h.i.+m efendi?”

Yas.h.i.+m did not reply.

”George got attacked,” Palewski answered for him, settling back into his chair. But Yas.h.i.+m was not listening anymore.

The packet he had discovered in the crock of rice was gone.

54.

”YOU think your conscience feeds you? You think the sultan commands you to avoid blood?”

The walls of the prison run with damp, like the sweat on a man's back. Black mold mottles the stones, and the straw underfoot is wet. The air is clammy, and it stinks.

Yas.h.i.+m and the turnkey hurry after Fevzi Ahmet, who strides down the tunnel breathing heavily through his nostrils. At each gate the turnkey stoops almost apologetically, fumbling with the lock, and they wait for the lock to be turned behind them.

Under a torch, two guards are playing dice.

They straighten up immediately, flinging the dice against the wall.

When the man is brought in, chained by his neck and his wrists, he turns his head from the light.

The guards shackle him to the wall, hands above his head, his back to Fevzi Ahmet.

His hands have no fingernails.

Yas.h.i.+m keeps his mouth shut, but he can hardly breathe.

Fevzi Ahmet produces a knife. He gathers the man's long matted hair in his fist and saws at it with the knife.

He drops the hank of hair to the floor. He takes hold of the man's ear.

The muscles along the man's back begin to move.

”Your brother, the bishop.”

”I don't understand,” the man whimpers in Greek. ”My brother? I have not seen him.”

”I can't understand,” Fevzi Ahmet says.

Yas.h.i.+m says: ”He says he hasn't seen his brother.”

Fevzi Ahmet frowns and jerks his head.

”I don't understand Greek.”

Yas.h.i.+m sees Fevzi Ahmet's arm rise. Hears the man scream.

”Your brother, the bishop,” Fevzi Ahmet repeats, through gritted teeth.

Later, when the man is dragged away, Fevzi Ahmet wipes the knife on the warden's sleeve.

55.

FAR up the Bosphorus, the pages who watched the tapers in the sultan's chamber nodded drowsily. The young sultan, almost stifled by the weight of the great brocade across his bed, dreamed about women and s.h.i.+ps.

On the floors above, some seventy women lay asleep. Talfa sprawled hugely across a divan, her black slave flat on her back on the floor at her feet, snoring. Overhead, Bezmialem's pretty eyelids flickered as she dreamed, not for the first time, of the moment she had turned back the quilt and started creeping up between the old sultan's mottled thighs. On divans in other rooms, girls slept in a tangle of beautiful limbs, like puppies; lips parted, fingers unfurled, unguarded. What were their dreams, as they stirred and whimpered in the dark? They dreamed of the Circa.s.sian hills, no doubt; and of sheep bells and gunshots in the ravines; they dreamed of jewels and soap; of jealousies and love: galleries of dreamers, every one of them following the moving images that flitted innocently behind their eyelids.

Not quite everyone, perhaps. Here and there, a sigh, a moving hand, a caress: for love, too, has its place in the gallery, in the darkness. And what of fear? Of eyes that stare in the dark, of rigid limbs, cold hands, and the icy clutch on the heart among those unfortunates who hardly dare to sleep? They must be counted among the seventy.

Ibou, the chief black eunuch, tries to lift that obscurity with a burning lamp: he, too, is not asleep. He wakes, rises, and lights the lamp to sit with his head bowed, wearily padding in his mind from floor to floor, from room to room, trying to remember everything he has seen, trying to forecast everything that may occur. Now and then his hand drops to the little plate beside him, and he pops another sweetmeat into his mouth, and chews.

56.

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