There’s no doubt about it, something is worrying him, she thought as she pinned up her hair.
The anti-misophthalmic campaign was now at its peak. It rose higher every day like a rain-swollen stream, sucking countless human lives into its headlong rush.
Evil eyes were not the only ones to be ceaselessly hunted down. The same energy was devoted simultaneously to rooting out declared or supposed defenders of the evil eye, as well as individuals considered to be covert opponents of the implementation of the qorrfirman and the close and distant relatives and retainers of owners of the evil eye. Other people were charged with lacking clear sight, with indifference, or with insufficient zeal. Sometimes, these latter folk were able to make the same charges against their accusers.
An unprecedented disorder struck the vast state like a hurricane. People now talked openly about settling scores and power struggles between political factions. Other voices proclaimed sentences against the very people who seemed best shielded from the storm — the functionaries whose job it was to put the qorrfirman into effect. The “bad-eyes,” as they called them, had managed to infiltrate the qorroffices and even the central commission, and once inside, had exploited their positions to spread havoc.
“Aha,” you could hear people muttering, “so that’s why we thought, and on occasions even allowed ourselves to remark, that there is something strange about all this! Yes, it’s an incontrovertible fact that only the sovereign is just. If you serve him devotedly, then you get your proper reward; but if you stray into error, if you commit a fault, however brilliant you may have been in your career of service up to that point, you will be punished like anyone else.”
“You are right. We’re so lucky to have him, may Allah grant him long life! Without him life would be a snakepit. Did you hear what went on yesterday in front of Tabir Sarrail?”
And that is how, despite all the turmoil and havoc, the most incredible stories managed to circulate. Now and then, like a straw borne on the crest of a wave, you got just a glimpse of that rumor about the grand vizier.
Everyone in the house must have noticed he’d grown slimmer, but she was the only one to mention it to him.
“You’ve lost weight,” she said, after they’d bolted the bedroom door behind them. “Why? Is it from all the work you have to do?”
“Yes, I do have lots of work.” After a pause, he repeated, “Lots.”
“Come, you’re going to forget all about it. .”
She had now lost all modesty. She lay on the bed and first put her arms round him, and then her long, slim legs, of a white so pure that they gleamed in the half-light. She let out a faint, steady moan, which only at particular moments rose to a scream close to sobbing.
Moments later, when they were lying in peace, he cast his eye on the bluish marks on her naked thigh, where they looked like official seals. She expected him to make some comment about them, but to her great surprise the question he asked was of an entirely different nature.
“Have you ever approached the Köprülüs to ask them for help?”
She shook her shoulders in a gesture of surprise. “Why?”
“Oh, no reason… I just noticed that in your household you hardly ever talk about them.”
“That’s true. They really are cousins of ours, but only very distant ones. And anyway, my father, with his funny character. .”
“I see,” he said, not taking his eyes off the bruises.
She ran her fingers over his chest.
“You seem worried,” she said in a caressing tone.
He averted his eyes.
“No, I’m all right.”
“Does your work weigh on your mind?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. I have no reason. . On the contrary.”
“What do you mean by ‘on the contrary’?”
“Stop asking me such irritating questions!”
“If that’s how you feel!” she exclaimed, clearly annoyed. She tried to turn her back to him, but he held on to the sheet she was attempting to pull over her belly. A special, almost abnormal light in her fiancé’s eye dissipated the squabble almost instantly, and she began to look at his face with great attention. His eyes were fixed on her crotch as if this was the first time he had seen it.
“In three weeks’ time we’ll be married, and we’ll be able stay like this for hours on end.”
“Yes. . Maybe I’ll be given the leave I’m due at that time.”
“Really? That would be wonderful. . We’ll get up late, and stay awake half the night. . It’ll be splendid to do it again when we’re half asleep, in the middle of the night, in the dark.”
He shuddered as if he’d just awakened from a daydream. “In the middle of the night, in the dark?” he almost shouted.
“Shh! Keep your voice down. What’s come over you?”
“In the middle of the night, in the dark. .” he said again, his voice now fading.
Slowly, she stroked his neck and his forehead. “Something is tormenting you,” she whispered as if she were talking to someone asleep. “But don’t worry. Basically, all you are doing is applying the law. Leave the remorse to the people who sowed this whirlwind… Do you hear what I’m saying? They’re the ones who should have pangs of conscience. . Now come here and do it again, my darling.”
Eventually they heard that the grand vizier had been fired. Gossips first said he’d been relieved of the top job to take up a less prominent position; then they said he’d simply been asked to resign; finally, “asked to” was replaced by “told to.” So it wasn’t a demotion or a change of position, or a discharge for slackness in implementing state decrees, among them, in particular, the qorrfirman. No, he was simply being sacked, accompanied by house arrest, on the specific and savage grounds that he was afflicted with the evil eye.
Now, all the grand vizier’s intimates and colleagues knew full well that their master had a slightly menacing cast. What surprised people was that the Sultan, whose eagle eye missed nothing, hadn’t noticed long before.
“That’s not so easy,” others objected. “We all know now that crossed eyes aren’t always evil, as long as they’re not combined with other specific features.”
“Yeah, yeah,” people retorted, “those are things you can interpret any way you like.”
Straight after the grand vizier’s fall, the original rumor arose with new vigor: “Didn’t we tell you that the ultimate purpose of the whole massacre was simply to liquidate the grand vizier?”
“Well, if that’s true,” came the response, “then tell us why, now that the purpose has been met, the campaign hasn’t been brought to an end?”
“For the very reason of camouflaging why it was organized in the first place. Anyway, just as the terror machine takes some time to start up and to get into top gear, so it takes time for the brakes to bring it to a stop.”
And just as it takes time for the dust to settle after a landslide, so it took quite a while for this shock and all the disturbance it caused to come to a final conclusion. A wave of purges, which everyone suspected would be the last, swept over the state. People had only one thing on their minds: keep clear of this rolling wave, for though it was most likely the last, it seemed well set to be the most murderous.
They were lying down together. She was entirely naked and he was half-undressed. He’d told her the truth only a few moments before. She hadn’t screamed, hadn’t sobbed, almost as if she’d been expecting the confession. She listened to what he had to say with her face as white as a sheet. Only when she nestled up to him did he feel her wet tears on his own cheek. That’s probably the way the acid will trickle down over my cheekbones, he thought, after it has burned out my eyes. If his request to be blinded by the medieval European method (that is to say, by darkness) was rejected (he hadn’t dared ask for the Romano-Carthaginian technique), then he would probably be let off with the acid. There is worse, an office colleague had remonstrated. Just think of the Byzantine, not to mention the Tibetan, which is the most awful by far.