He kept talking until he had steered the old lady back into her apartment. He put the kettle on the stove and saw her to the sofa. “The men—were they Greek?”
“Greek? Maybe, I don’t know. They could not have been Muslims, my only efendi. Like animals,” she added, as he closed the door.
Yashim took the stairs two by two. The door at the top of the stairs was closed. He pushed it back with his fingertips, and watched as it swung slowly open onto a scene of desecration.
55
“SUELA, will you tell your mother something? Tell her that my name is Yashim. I am a lala.”
A guardian: he hoped that Mrs. Xani would understand. The ordinary eunuchs of Istanbul, the lala, served in families: they acted as chaperones, protectors, messengers, and mediators.
The girl nodded as if she understood, but when she spoke in Albanian her mother shook her head hopelessly.
“Tell her that I want to find your father.”
Suela’s eyes widened for a moment. She looked as if she were about to cry, but instead she bowed her head and murmured something in Albanian. Her mother raised her red-rimmed eyes and looked sadly at Yashim.
Xani received a salary of forty piastres a month, far more than he had earned as a porter. He had come to Istanbul fourteen years before: he had sold his land in Albania to his brother because it was not enough to keep a family. No, there was no bad blood between them; the brother had supported their marriage, twelve years ago. Both parents were dead. She had a mother living, who had been pleased with the match.
“So the family have no enemies in their village? No feud?”
The woman spoke. Suela said: “When Shpëtin was a baby we went to the village. We went in a boat. It was very far.”
“Where did you stay?”
“At my uncle’s house. I have four cousins, two boys and two girls. I like the girls very much. We played every day.”
“And here you have Shpëtin to play with.”
Suela nodded doubtfully. Shpëtin was six; Suela was growing too old for little boys’ games, perhaps. Yashim pressed on. “Do you have family in Istanbul?”
“My father’s uncle was here, but he was old and he died. My father was—he—was very sad.”
Yashim sat back, keeping his eyes on the ground. Instinct told him that Xani’s disappearance had nothing to do with the family: it was entangled, somehow, in events in the city, in the debt. “I want to ask your mother, has anyone been to see you in the last few days? Anyone asking for money?”
But nobody had.
“And in his work—your father is happy?”
“My mother says he is happy. He is proud to be a waterman. I think—I think he works very hard.”
“I am sure. Your mother—she doesn’t know where he might have gone?”
Suela gave her mother a frightened glance. “No.”
“Friends?”
The girl looked uncertain. She repeated the question to her mother, who merely shook her head and looked sadly again at Yashim. “Istanbul,” she whispered.
“My father and mother do not have friends in Istanbul,” Suela explained quietly.
Yashim pulled at his lip. “You say he liked his job, and he worked hard. Did he work the same hours every day?”
Suela screwed up her face, to remember. “In the beginning, he was always at home for supper. But he stayed at work very late, before he—he…” Her lip trembled.
“I understand,” Yashim said quickly. “Every evening, or just sometimes?”
“Just sometimes.” Suela turned to her mother. The two spoke together for several minutes. When Suela turned to Yashim her chin was tilted.
“My mother says that he stayed out quite late three times last week.”
“Do you know why?”
Mrs. Xani cast her eyes vaguely around the room. “My mother,” Suela translated eventually, “says that they had problems with the water.”
“Yes,” said Yashim slowly. “Yes, I think there have been some difficulties.”
He got up. He wanted to add, Your debt is paid. But the words stuck in his throat, as if they carried a meaning that no one wanted to hear.
56
YASHIM descended the hill by the Sublime Porte and crossed in front of the Nurisyane, where he had found the litter bearers the night before. Passing the entrance to the Egyptian bazaar he hesitated, then plunged in. The rich aromas of cinnamon and cloves, of cumin, coriander, and pounded ginger made his head whirl. Mountains of vividly colored powder rose on every stall, pungent spices gathered from all across the world, from the coasts of India and the mountains of China, from Persia and Arabia and the islands of the South Seas, brought here to this great entrepôt of the world’s trade by dhow, by carrack, by camel train and mule train, over deserts, through wild seas, crossing the passes of legendary mountain ranges, bartered and bought, fought for and pilfered, growing ever more valuable and rare until, at last, they reached this market on the edge of Europe, and vanished into a soup, or a dish of rice.
Yashim paused, dizzied by the reflection. What a world men had made! What adventures they undertook, simply to give color and pungency to their diet! The bazaar was a treasure-house—yet nothing would be changed if a wind scattered the powders to the skies; no one would starve; empires would not fall. The very stones of the bazaar would reek of spices a thousand years from now: what of it?
For something as trivial and evanescent, men could be killed. For an idea as immaterial as the scents that rose from the multicolored hillocks of ground seeds, people were prepared to die. An immigrant in the city, struggling to better himself and provide for his children, disappeared: for what? Nothing stolen, as it seemed. No one ate better. But perhaps an idea had been realized, a dream had been served. Lefèvre: dead in the street. No money on him, nothing taken. Killed for a book, perhaps: a few scraps of observation about a city that no longer existed, the thoughts and memories of men long since dead and gone. The city still lived and breathed and ate and slept. A pilaf could be eaten without saffron.
He left the Spice Bazaar by the northern gate, to wind his way through the alleys and arcades of the Grand Bazaar. He bought a new shawl and examined some old Korassian carpets; he dithered over a selection of English padlocks, before deciding that he didn’t need one, bought some plain china plates, and finally walked home through the Book bazaar. Goulandris’s shop was shuttered.
Widow Matalya and her ladies had done a thorough job. The floors were scrubbed. The walls had been whitewashed again, and they glowed in the golden afternoon light. His landlady had found a carpet for the sofa and replaced some of the cushions, but the empty bookshelves looked skeletal. Of his kitchen and its stores, only the metalware remained, iron pots and knives. The room smelled of soap.
Yashim sat down on the edge of the sofa and unwrapped a tiny parcel from the Egyptian market. The folded paper contained a single yellow block of ambergris, the strangest substance in the pharmacopeia of spices, and so rare that one sultan had been censured for using it on his beard. Ambergris was gathered from the Atlantic Ocean, hundreds of miles away, taken, so Yashim had heard, from the belly of the whale.
Its odor was sweet, yet not cloying; it was also irresistible, all-pervasive, the strongest, most penetrating scent in the whole world. Yashim lay back on the divan, with the tiny lump of ambergris resting on his own belly.
Slowly its scent stole out across his bare room, possessing it invisibly, permeating the air.
57