83
THE little boy slipped through the gates and went slowly up to his trench in the dirt.
A window flew open with a squeal. The little boy did not look up.
Marta put her head out. “Shpëtin! Did you see where the efendi went?”
The little boy picked up his stick. He pushed the dented ball along the trench.
At the window, Marta gave an exasperated sigh and shrugged. She turned to the ambassador.
“No, lord. I don’t know. They went together, I think, but I don’t know.”
Palewski frowned. “I’m not easy about this, Marta. If Yashim went with the boy, he must have had a reason.”
“Yes, lord.” Marta nodded her head slowly.
And this, Palewski thought, is the second time the boy comes home alone.
“You talk to him, Marta. He thinks I’m some sort of ogre. See if he’ll show us where they went.”
Marta gave a doubtful shrug. “The boy—he’s a little strange, lord.”
“He’s a boy, isn’t he? Boys are all—well, like boys.” Palewski felt himself at a loss. “Just ask him for me. Please.”
84
YASHIM put his hand on a human face.
He sprang away from the corpse, flailing through the water. He was backed into a corner before he remembered that here, in the dark, he could soon lose all sense of direction.
All sense of proportion.
There was no need to guess whose body it was that rolled through the water. The missing man had been found.
Yashim tried not to think about what would happen next. He would grow cold, and weak. In the end he would drown in two feet of water, sharing the Albanian’s liquid grave.
He needed a way out.
Carefully now he felt his way around the pit, searching for anything that could help him climb the slippery walls. The floor was covered in loose stones and fallen bricks: the ceiling, he supposed, was slowly falling in. Once again he brushed against Xani’s corpse. Fighting a wave of nausea, he rolled the body over, feeling for anything the man had carried—a knife, a coil of rope. Something bubbled on the surface of the water, and Yashim gagged at the stench.
He groped at the man’s chest, feeling something hard there, like a chain. On the chain was a crucifix. He pulled hard and the body lurched upward; then the chain broke and he heard the corpse sink back into the water.
He went back to the wall, hoping it was the right one, and scratched at the wall with the end of the cross. It didn’t get him far.
He ran his fingers over the wall, looking for a crack, a projection, anything. The wall was smooth as butter.
He unfastened his cloak and wrung out the water. Holding one end, with his back to the wall, he flicked the cloak up and over his head. The end he was holding went limp for a few seconds, then the cloak tumbled down over his head. The end he had thrown was sopping wet. He thought for a few moments with his eyes shut. Then he shook the cloak out flat on the water’s surface. He started groping on the floor for bricks, lobbing them as best as he could judge toward the center of the cloak. After a minute he gathered the cloak together by its edges and hefted the weight. It was as much as he could do to drag it through the water.
He set the bundle against the wall and tried climbing on it. The stones slithered down under his weight. He stepped off and tried to tie the ends of the cloak together, to make a tighter bundle. After three or four attempts he gave up. He couldn’t get the wet, slopping half knots of the cloak to hold together.
He wasted half an hour using the crucifix and the chain to sew the cloak tight. He floated Xani’s corpse over the bundle of stones and tried to get a footing. The corpse was soft underfoot and would not keep still. He could not reach the opening.
He felt very tired.
He shook the cloak, to dislodge some of the stones, tucked in the corners, and dragged the bundle up to the level of his chest. Water poured from the cloak. He squeezed it, and it grew lighter.
He summoned his strength and tossed the bundle high up against the wall. It dropped back, into his arms. He tried again, taking a step back. When he had thrown it he reached forward to catch it, if it fell. This time he heard a muffled splash. The cloak did not fall back.
Yashim found stones on the floor and began to lob them upward.
The work kept him from feeling the cold.
When he had lobbed a dozen stones into the dark, he stopped and listened. There was a new sound, of gurgling water. He stepped forward and touched the wall. He couldn’t feel anything. He put his lips to the wall and felt the water trickling down.
It was cold as ice.
He went back to lobbing stones, in the dark.
It was only another way to die.
85
“YOU’RE quite sure?”
“Quite sure, Dr. Millingen. Thank you.”
“At least you have some fine Turkish slippers now,” he said, smiling.
“Yes. You have been kind.” She turned to the little sunken door and knocked.
Widow Matalya answered the door. She did not know what to think, finding the Frankish woman on her doorstep, with a strange man. Dr. Millingen tipped his hat politely, and the old woman sniffed, transferring her distaste onto a solid target: hats, she thought, were very nasty things.
“Please, madame—do keep in touch.”
Amélie gave him a curious smile. “I shall have to, I suppose,” she said.
She went in. The old woman closed the door and turned with a very set expression on her face, her lips compressed.
“Monsieur Yashim—Yashim efendi—he’s upstairs?” Amélie pointed a finger.
The widow’s eyes bored into her.
“I think I’ll just go up and see,” Amélie said gaily. “Salut!”
86
PALEWSKI put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Look here,” he said, breathing hard. “Are we going far? A long way?”
The boy looked up and nodded.
“In that case,” the ambassador said firmly, “we’ll take a chair.”
He snapped his fingers at a couple of men squatting against a wall.
“My treat,” he said, smiling. “Just point these fellows in the right direction, there’s a good boy.”
Down on the shore they swapped the chair for a caïque. The little boy pointed up the Golden Horn.
“Fener? Balat? Fener stage, boatman, please.” Perhaps Yashim had simply gone off home, he thought. But once they reached Fener, the little boy made some complicated signs and shook his head vigorously.
“All right,” Palewski said. “We’ll walk, I see. Not too far now, eh?”
He regretted taking the boy’s advice as he toiled up the hills, but they were in a shabby neighborhood that Palewski did not know, and there were no lounging chairmen here.
Finally the boy jumped up onto a low wall and sat there, kicking his heels and looking intently at a doorway across the street.
“He went in there?”
Palewski climbed the steps. There was a padlock on the door, so Palewski turned around and caught the boy’s eye. He pointed at the door. The little boy nodded.
Palewski glanced up and down the street. Apart from the little boy on the wall, it seemed perfectly empty.
Stanislaw Palewski, unlike Dr. Millingen, was not a man who placed much faith in the benefits of regular exercise. His arms were thin; his legs were long. But he was still capable of sudden, violent physical effort.
He stood back, leaned against the parapet, and doubled those long legs by bringing his knees up close to his chin.
Then with a splintering crash he brought both feet down hard on the door and burst it open.