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
Stanislaw Palewski had tucked himself up in the window seat of his sitting room with a glass at his elbow, Gyllius in his hand, and a bottle not far away, before he became aware that there was something unusual about his room.
He looked around, mystified. He glanced out of the open window. The girl, Suela, was sitting under the tree, watching her brother playing in the dirt with a stick and with a concentrated look on his face. Palewski sniffed the air, then his glass. His gaze fell on the sideboard, beneath the oil portrait of Jan Sobieski, the victor of Vienna. He looked at the sideboard for quite a while, and then, with a puzzled grunt, he got up and went over to look at the flowers.
Marta had filled a very beautiful vase with late-flowering tulips, the Turkish sort, with frilly petals. It seemed to Palewski, as he ran his finger over the surface of the sideboard, that she had polished that as well.
He went back to his seat, wedged himself into it with his knees up and his feet against the shutter board, and took a drink.
It was all very extraordinary, he thought to himself. Poor Marta! This business with Xani must be upsetting her more than he’d thought.
Where the devil, he wondered, had the wretched man got to?
58
Yashim riddled the stove, threw on some coals, and blew on them until they caught. While the charcoal heated, he unpacked his basket. Flour, rice, oiclass="underline" he had bought replacements, but he would have to look for some new containers. A pat of butter, wrapped in paper. He frowned, thinking ahead; he had forgotten pepper.
He went to the window and looked down into the alley. It was empty. He leaned farther out and shouted: “Elvan!”
He went back to the fire, took out three ripe eggplants, and wiped them with a damp cloth. He laid them on the coals, then took a knob of butter and dropped it into a small pan. On an impulse he lifted the pan to his nose and sniffed: it smelled perfectly clean, however, so he put it down guiltily on the side of the brazier, where the butter would melt.
He turned the eggplants and went back to the window. “Elvan!”
The butter was sliding off across the pan, so he stirred it with a wooden spoon, watching it begin to bubble. He took a big pinch of white flour in his left hand and began to sift it slowly over the butter, still stirring; as he watched, it began to form soft crumbs and then a yellow ball.
He took the pan off the heat, turned the eggplants again, and went to the window.
A small boy was standing in the alley with his hands on his hips.
“Elvan! It’s me, Yashim!”
The boy looked up.
“Some milk, please. And white pepper, if you can get it,” Yashim shouted. Elvan held up a hand, Yashim flipped a coin, and the boy dived and caught it, as he always did.
When the skins were charred Yashim swaddled the eggplants in a cloth. He sharpened a knife. After a minute or two he began to scrape the skins with the edge of the blade. Underneath the blackened skin the flesh was white; he remembered Mavrogordato’s arms on the desk, and pulled a face.
Elvan came in with a jug of milk and a screw of pepper.
“You remembered, white?”
“Of course, efendi.” The little face took on an expression of injured innocence, and Yashim laughed.
“You may keep the change,” he said.
He wiped the eggplants with a soft cloth, then pounded them in the mortar. He warmed up the pan again and slowly began adding the milk, drop by drop.
In the French embassy in Pera the ambassador would be penning his report. Word by word the case against Yashim would form and swell, in the smoothest diplomatic style: accusing no one, implying much.
There was a tap on the door. Yashim frowned. “Elvan?” He called, not taking his eyes off the pan.
He heard the click of the latch and felt a prickling at the back of his neck.
Very carefully he set the pan aside. He glanced at the door, slowly swinging inward, then at the knife on the block.
“Who’s that?” he called. “Who’s there?”
59
Madame Mavrogordato’s face was set. At the opposite end of the long table, Monsieur Mavrogordato cast her a furtive glance and helped himself to a dish of lamb. Madame Mavrogordato watched the footman place the dish on the side table.
“You may remove Alexander’s setting, Dmitri. When he comes in, he can eat in the kitchen. And tell him that his father wants to see him.”
“Yes, madame.”
Dmitri withdrew. Mavrogordato picked up his knife and fork.
“So!” Her voice was like a milled edge.
His hands froze in midair.
“So! You can eat!”
“We have to eat, Christina, or we’ll die,” said Mavrogordato unhappily. His knife wavered uncertainly over the lamb.
Madame Mavrogordato stared him down. “Sometimes, Monsieur Mavrogordato, one must choose between disgrace and death.”
“Now, Christina, please…” He put the knife and fork down gently by his plate.
“Disgrace, Monsieur Mavrogordato,” she intoned. “This time I want you to speak to Alexander. If he carries on in this way, he will earn a reputation for himself.”
Mavrogordato nodded.
“A reputation, Monsieur Mavrogordato. And the Ypsilanti girl is almost seventeen.”
Mavrogordato nodded.
“We cannot allow the match to fail. The Ypsilanti may not be so rich, but they have-” Her head quivered gently. She could not quite bring herself to say the word.
Mavrogordato nodded again. He blinked. After a pause he picked up his knife and fork. “A strange fellow came to see me today,” he said casually.
Madame Mavrogordato did not reply.
“He-ah-was called Yashim. I believe he was a eunuch.”
Five minutes later, when Mavrogordato’s lamb had congealed on the plate, he wished he hadn’t changed the subject, after all.