Yashim’s eye fell on the table. The signora, he noticed, scrubbed it every day with lye and ashes. The signora might not notice if he used it-carefully-as a chopping board.
“Giddy,” Palewski said again, as if the word pleased him. “I was looking at a beautiful Koran, in the Armenian monastery, and I felt-giddy. Only legible book in the place, as far as I could see. They got it from my old neighbor’s family-the Aspis.”
The man on the pallet turned his head and Yashim saw his eyes were open wide. His skin was drawn tight against the skull, but his eyes were big and dark and unafraid.
Yashim smiled. “Palewski, our friend needs water, and some soup.”
He turned to his baskets. Palewski held a glass to the young man’s lips and heard him drink.
The onion was green; Yashim took off its top and tail, then chopped it into halves. He sliced the halves.
“I don’t know how you can think of food,” Palewski remarked. “After this morning.”
Yashim shrugged. He dropped a lump of butter into the cauldron and pushed it up against the fire. For a few moments he handled the cooking irons, trying to work out which did what, before he tipped the onion into the cauldron and lifted the handle onto a notch in the bar.
He admired the arrangement of irons, adding them to his stock of dreams. Yashim had always dreamed of a yali by the Bosphorus, with water reflected on his ceiling. Better water than here, he thought: Venice, at least in summer, stank.
He glanced across to where Palewski was feeding the man who looked like an emaciated child.
But the man will live, he thought. He knows who killed Eletro.
And I know, too.
He paused, touching the rim of the cauldron.
Not his name. Not his whereabouts. But I know what he is.
He stirred the onion with a spoon and frowned.
What I don’t know yet is: Why?
78
Brunelli waited much of the afternoon for Vosper’s Ottoman servant, but when he did not appear at four o’clock he decided to take another walk.
The beggar must have followed his instructions. Certainly the American had disappeared.
Giving his apartment over to a pasha’s servant.
Brunelli knew one thing the stadtmeister and Vosper did not know: that Signor Brett claimed to have been in Istanbul before he arrived in Venice.
Brunelli walked on, taking turns as random as his thoughts.
He found himself on the Rialto bridge.
There was a link, he knew, between the two events: the pasha and the mysterious American.
But the American seemed to have vanished into thin air. He might have left Venice altogether. And as Signor Brett took his leave, a pasha’s servant made his appearance-in exactly the same place.
Vosper, of course, had never met Brett. He couldn’t identify the man he was looking for, on such an absurd charge, by sight at all.
But even Vosper, surely, couldn’t have believed that Brett was a pasha’s servant?
He turned a corner and reached the Zattere, with its long view of the Giudecca and the decayed wharfs, dilapidated houses, and old churches lining the waterfront.
Vosper, obviously, was capable of believing anything, but why would Brett spin him such an extraordinary story?
Brunelli stopped. He burst out laughing.
If Brett wanted to shake Vosper off his tail, what better than a lie so huge, so wildly inspired, that Vosper would be forced to swallow it whole?
If Brunelli had thought for a moment that Vosper and the stadtmeister were right, and that Brett was a suspect, he would have had no hesitation in joining them in the hunt.
But he had met the man, and he trusted his own intuition perfectly. That dimpled trollop Maria had backed him, too. Brett was crooked, somehow, but he wasn’t a killer.
He had given Vosper the slip. He’d convinced the stadtmeister that the bureaucracy his paymasters were so famous for had finally become unhinged, and the sky was falling on his head.
Brunelli grinned.
He liked Brett, and he’d like to talk to him for a while.
He thought he knew where to find him, too.
79
In the signora’s frying pan Yashim fried slices of aubergine in oil. When they were brown, he took them out and laid them on a plate. He chopped tomatoes roughly and put them into the pan with a pinch of salt and sugar, stirring them from time to time.
He peeled and chopped a few cloves of garlic, which followed the onions into the cauldron. When the onions were soft, he stirred in a couple of pounds of minced lamb. The lamb had been expensive; he had to try several butchers before he found it.
The meat browned. He threw in a big pinch of cinnamon, a bunch of torn basil, and the tomatoes.
In the milk pan he melted butter and flour to make a thick roux. He added milk slowly, keeping the pan at the edge of the fire. When he had the sauce, he sprinkled it with salt and a pinch of grated nutmeg.
He scraped the meat into the flat earthenware, covered it with layers of aubergine, and poured the sauce on top.
With the moussaka ready, he rinsed off the frying pan and oiled it. When it was very hot he crushed into it a few dried peppers between the palms of his hands and cooked them until the flakes were almost black. He spooned the homemade kirmizi biber into a cup of flour.
“The Armenian monastery.”
He spoke so quietly that Palewski, chasing flies on the windowpane with a handkerchief, couldn’t be sure he’d heard properly.
“The monastery?”
“You said you were giddy. You were in the library, looking at a Koran.”
“That’s right. Felt peculiar.”
“An old Koran?”
“No, no. Quite recent-very lovely, too.”
“From the Aspi family, you said? Did you see who made it?”
“I just wanted to go home and sleep, Yashim.”
“I’d like to see it,” Yashim said.
“Now?”
“I think that would be best,” Yashim agreed. “Wrap up. It could be cold on the water.”
80
It took them almost an hour to reach the island. The channel was marked with stakes, gaunt as gibbets in the dusk. The water was still and oily.
Palewski pulled the bell rope and they heard it jangle in the porter’s lodge. After a few minutes a little window was thrust back and a face appeared.
“Who are you? It’s late.”
The monk spoke in Italian; Yashim answered in Armenian. “I apologize, Father. Signor Brett visited the monastery a few days ago, but he was unable to speak to Father Aristo.”
“Father Aristo,” the monk echoed. “He will be in the scriptorium.”
He undid the bolts and let them in. When he had locked the door again he put his hands in his sleeves. “Please, follow me.”
They crossed a courtyard and entered a wide passage. The sconces had just been lit. The monk opened a door softly, without knocking, and Yashim inhaled a rich and pleasantly familiar smell of old books, ink, and wood. The scriptorium was lined with shelves, lost in the gloom; a candle guttered on the broad oak table that ran down the middle of the room.
The table was bare, except where it erupted into a confusion of papers and books close to the candle, reminding Yashim of the Polish ambassador’s study in Istanbul. Father Aristo’s conical black hat stood on a pile of dictionaries, and Father Aristo’s bald head lay on the papers. He appeared to be asleep.
The monk smiled. “Father Aristo works so hard,” he whispered. Then, a little louder: “Father. Father Aristo.”
“We came to see the Koran, especially,” Yashim said quietly. “Perhaps we should let Father Aristo sleep?”
The monk shook his head. “He would be disappointed.”
He touched the old monk’s arm.
Father Aristo raised his head and looked around, blinking. His beard was magnificent and white.
“Some visitors, Father.”