Part 20 (2/2)

70.

THE sh.o.r.es of the Bosphorus flushed red, then yellow as the trees turned. Small fires burned in the fields. The season expired in a blaze of heat, an Indian summer. The fishermen predicted a cold winter: the sudden blaze, and the fish running deep.

Yas.h.i.+m found the valide in her apartments at Topkapi. She was propped up on pillows on the divan and eating an iced sherbet.

”It's cooler now, valide. You are comfortable?”

”I was raised in the Caribbean, Yas.h.i.+m. The heat does not affect me. I choose to sit in the Baghdad Kiosk because it's quiet.”

Yas.h.i.+m c.o.c.ked his ear, and heard nothing.

”Yes, yes, it's quiet enough now. They're all asleep, thank G.o.d,” the valide said. ”Just like country girls. Which, of course, they all were once upon a time. I suppose it's a sort of second childhood.”

Yas.h.i.+m was baffled. ”Asleep, valide? Who do you mean?”

The valide gave a little gesture of impatience. ”Tut-tut-tut. Really, Yas.h.i.+m, the ladies, I tell you. My son's ladies. I do wish you would keep up.”

”The late sultan's ladies came here?”

”From the old palace. The luckier ones got married off, of course. Our sultan sent all the hopeless cases on to me. I suppose it pleased the eunuchs. They lead lives of such ennui at Topkapi, with only me to talk about. But now they have a flock of women to fuss over, and they are happy. As for the ladies, well. It upsets me, I admit. They are so very ingratiating. And they are all so old! Perfect frights, some of them.”

”How many, hanum?”

The valide waved a jeweled hand. ”I haven't counted, Yas.h.i.+m. I'm not a housekeeper. Dozens, I should say. Terribly aged. Some of them”-she lowered her voice, while at the same time speaking more loudly than before-”quite feebleminded now, I'm sorry to say.”

”It must have come as a dreadful shock to them,” Yas.h.i.+m ventured.

”To them, Yas.h.i.+m? Why? Mahmut was my son.”

”Of course, valide. I only meant-”

”Marzipan, for instance. She was such a skinny, shy little thing-that's why I gave her the name.” Yas.h.i.+m nodded: all the girls got new names when they came to the harem. Often they were mildly ironic. ”Yesterday, I saw a fat, frumpy old woman sitting with her knees this far apart, smiling like an idiot. Marzipan. I couldn't believe it. Why they think to surround me with these dreadful old people, Yas.h.i.+m, I just can't imagine.”

She glanced at him, a little slyly, he thought. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. The valide had not aged like other women. She was still slender, and her face preserved in outline the beauty that had carried her into a sultan's arms. But the valide was difficult about flattery: you had to be careful.

”Age is a terrible thing, Yas.h.i.+m,” she added, a little sadly.

He took her hand. He should have spoken, after all. Somehow the arrival of these women had disturbed the valide more than she let on; more, perhaps, than the death of her son. For years now she had been alone in the palace with her memories and dreams; and there was a certain hauteur in her loneliness, in the knowledge that Topkapi was hers. Now that she shared it with the superannuated baggage of the harem, that grandeur had dissipated a little.

He glanced about the room. The mirror that had always hung at the side of the divan had been replaced by a framed inscription.

”You, valide, are as beautiful as you ever were.”

”I don't enjoy a mirror anymore,” she said unnervingly. Yas.h.i.+m felt his cheeks redden. ”I'd rather look at young people now. That's why I have my Tulin.”

Tulin: it meant ”poppy.” ”Tulin?”

”My handmaiden, Yas.h.i.+m. I found her the name. I think it's rather sweet.”

”I hope she's as sweet as her name, valide.”

”I think I may say that I am something of a judge of character. Tulin appears to me ... almost perfect.”

”Almost, hanum?”

”Tiens, Yas.h.i.+m. Only G.o.d can p.r.o.nounce any woman perfect, absolument. And then only at the hour of her death.”

Yas.h.i.+m gave a sigh, and smiled. The valide was always something of a coquette.

”A book for you, Yas.h.i.+m. Perhaps it will amuse you-I found it ridiculous. It is written by”-she glanced at the cover-”Theophile Gautier.”

71.

YAs.h.i.+M clapped his book shut with an exclamation of surprise. ”Everything that is useful,” Gautier had written, ”is ugly.”

Yas.h.i.+m contemplated the nutcracker in his hand, with its chased bra.s.s handles and polished iron jaws. He let his eyes wander around the apartment, from the shelf beside the divan, with its collection of porcelain and books, to the stack of crocks and pans in the far corner where he cooked. What sad world did this Gautier inhabit, that everything useful could be described as ugly? It was a fault of the Franks to make their slightest opinions sound like revealed laws, of course.

At his thigh were a marble mortar and the knife with Ammar made me inscribed on the Damascus blade. These useful things, Yas.h.i.+m felt, were also beautiful. With half-closed eyes he thought about Istanbul-its lovely minarets for calling the people to prayer, the scalloped and fluted fountains, which relieved the people's thirst. He considered the slender caiques, which bustled people across the water in all directions, and cracked another walnut, smiling as his thoughts turned to the sultan's palace.

The loveliest women that the empire could provide-would Gautier call them useless, then? Yas.h.i.+m knew the harem as a school, an arena for ambition, a human factory geared to the production of royal heirs. Many a pasha had blessed the Circa.s.sian girls for drawing a headstrong sultan away from delicate affairs of state and into their beds. The mere effort of observing the intricate etiquette of the harem quarters was enough to keep a sultan busy.

Gautier, he felt, had got it the wrong way around.

He laid the book on the divan, careful not to let his oily fingers stain the green leather binding with walnut juice.

Yas.h.i.+m took the mortar to his kitchen, set it on the bench, and put a small open pan on the coals. He began to pound the walnuts with a stone pestle. When the pan was hot he threw in a scattering of c.u.min seeds. He rattled the pan on the coals and poured the seeds into a black iron grinder. He turned the handle and ground the c.u.min over the walnuts. He added a pinch of kirmizi biber, which he had made in the autumn. He sprinkled the end of a dry loaf with water, then carried on pounding the walnuts. Eventually he squeezed the bread dry and crumbled it into the mortar between his fingers, along with a generous dollop of pomegranate mola.s.ses.

When the muhammara was finely pounded, he stirred a thread of olive oil into the mix. He tasted the puree, added a pinch of salt and a twist of pepper, and poured it into a bowl, which he covered with a plate and set to one side.

For the next hour he worked at his remaining meze: a light salad of beans and anchovies mixed with slices of red onion and black olives, and another made with grated beetroot and yogurt. Finally, he made soup with leeks and dill.

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