Invisible Yashim, the lover who leaves no mark.
“Perhaps I am telling you because I think you will not judge me.”
“No one can judge but God.”
She stood up, erect and graceful, and poured a glass of wine.
“He would be twenty-four,” she said. “A little peasant boy from Istria.”
“Would you-would you look for him?”
She shook her head. “I tried. Two years ago I went back to the convent where he was born. They understood, Yashim, those nuns. They understood, they prayed with me-but they couldn’t help. They said-they said that my son was a blessing to a woman who had lost her child.” She clenched her hands. “And I have become that woman, Yashim. Not by the will of God, but by my own. My own!”
She picked up the glass and drained it, and with a wild laugh she flung it into the fireplace.
“Why should I ever be afraid, Yashim? You can be frightened only when you have hope, and I have none.”
But later she curled up to him: “I want you to take me again, caro.”
But Yashim only shook his head and stroked her hair until she fell asleep.
Then he got up, silent and weary, and went to the room that had been prepared for him.
96
He dreamed Palewski’s dream that night: of a never-ending search beneath the stones of Venice, and each stone had to be turned, one by one, by hand. But there was nothing underneath: only earth and water. And there was a woman, wringing her hands beside him.
He could still hear her groans and cries when he woke up, in the dark, and lay there listening against his will.
Muttering a prayer for her soul. A prayer against the darkness of the night.
He rolled swiftly aside and leaped to his feet.
That scream-was it really the sound of a woman mourning?
Or the sound of danger?
After the scream, silence.
The corridor was pitch-dark. Yashim felt his way along the wall. He reached a door and passed it. The next door he opened: slatted moonlight filtered through the louvered shutters onto the four-poster bed, hung with dark drapery; the room felt huge and empty.
He was about to shut the door when a low growl made the hair stand up on the nape of his neck.
He took a step into the room, wishing he had a candle.
And a white shape launched itself through the air and slammed him back against the wall.
He felt soft hair whip across his face and hard nails dragging across his chest.
She bit him like a wild animal, on the neck, on the cheek, clawing at his chest and shoulders.
He got a hand beneath her chin and flung her back. He could taste blood on his lip.
Carla staggered back and then flung herself forward again, sobbing and biting.
Yashim grabbed her arms and tried to force them down. She whirled around from side to side, trying to break his grip, dragging him back toward the bed.
Then he was on top of her, pinning back her hands above her head. Her hips writhed under him.
She spat into his face.
Yashim shook his head. Furious, he dragged a cord from the post and doubled it around her wrists. She twisted under his grip, almost threw him off, so he shifted his weight farther up her body. Her legs thrashed the bed.
With a heave he shifted her shoulders across the bed, bringing her wrists to the bedpost. As he leaned over her to tie them back, she jerked her head, snapping at him.
She made a furious lunge at the cord with her arms, trying to move it.
With a spring Yashim was off the bed, standing close, panting.
The cord held.
Carla gasped, reaching for breath. Between gasps, she began to laugh.
Yashim closed his eyes; his chest heaved.
She thought she had won.
He felt a rush of anger: if she had won, then he had lost.
Let it be, he told himself. Let it be.
His breathing eased.
And something cold, and very fine, slid up beneath Yashim’s ear as a voice whispered in it softly, “Thank you.”
97
Seconds passed.
Yashim supposed that Carla had laughed again.
He was very still now. He felt the blade below his ear.
But just one thought ran through his mind, like a drumbeat.
Te ekkur ederim meant “thank you” in Turkish.
Yashim tensed his stomach. His shoulders bunched.
And he jackknifed. He took a step forward, his shoulders dropped, and he doubled at the waist.
He sensed, rather than felt, the blade slicing through the soft skin behind his ear.
He kicked back abruptly with one leg.
His hope was that the Tatar had lost form: killing Venetians was like liming a tree for birds.
His foot connected, but not hard: the next moment, the Tatar had a grip of his ankle. Left hand-Yashim wrenched himself forward and took a mouthful of the bed.
With both hands on the mattress he launched himself backward.
The Tatar sidestepped easily, but now Yashim was at his back. As the Tatar whipped around, Yashim flung out one fist, and then the other. The raised knuckle of his middle finger sank into the Tatar’s cheek.
The Tatar had him by the scruff of his neck; Yashim felt himself choke and flailed blindly. Then the Tatar seized his waistband and with a grunt sent him crashing through the air-Yashim raised his hands and the shutters burst apart like rotten twigs.
But Yashim was already twisting as he flew: his knees doubled against the windowsill and for a second he saw the dark bulk of buildings swing upward. His head cracked against the wall-in a moment the Tatar would flip his feet through the window, and he would be gone.
Instinctively, Yashim tensed his legs. With a final effort he jerked himself upright: the Tatar was at the window.
Yashim grabbed him with both hands-but the momentum was too feeble to carry him into the room. As he fell back again he kicked out, spinning them both into space, precipitating the Tatar over and over into the air.
Only in Venice would anyone survive a two-story drop.
The Tatar smacked into the water first. Yashim seemed to pummel in on top of him and was thrashing and coughing as he came up for air.
He kicked out, in panic: the Tatar was still beneath the water.
Yashim scudded back, toward the security of the palazzo wall, and there, in the faint glow of lamplight on the water, he saw the Tatar break the surface ten yards away.
He was swimming away, up the canal.
Yashim wished he could let him go.
He wiped his mouth with his fingers and tasted blood.
With his other hand he found the knife. The knife that Malakian had given him for an asper: the cook’s knife.
A knife that a hunter might carry, too, for slipping off a pelt.
The knife that was made of damascene.
Yashim kicked off from the wall and began to hunt.
98
“WonderfuL, wonderful,” Palewski murmured. He had his boots before the fire and a sheaf of drawings on his lap.
“Very good!” he said enthusiastically, holding a drawing of the cottage up before his eyes. He nodded vigorously, and his new friend chuckled and bobbed about.
Rather like having a child of one’s own, Palewski thought.
“Wonderful,” he said again, picking a new sketch out of the heap. “Maria, have you seen what our friend has done?”
Maria came over and leaned against his chair. Palewski felt the roundness of her breast against his cheek.
“This,” he said. “And this.”
Maria heaved a sigh. “Incredible! Like an angel!”
“Perhaps you’d like to sit here and look through them, Maria?”
“Yes, signore-but mamma wants the room swept and clean.”
“I could sweep.”
Maria laughed. A warm, happy laugh: it was the first time she’d laughed since she came home. “I think he really likes it when you look at his drawings.”