He gave her the blandest of smiles and bowed.
The valide frowned. “Where have you been, scelerat!” she hissed.
Yashim put out his hands. “I saw a door, I went through…I have never been here before.”
The shadow of the sou naziry fell across the screen.
“Valide! Your fragrant presence here this day brings much honor upon us. It shall be known that the company of the sou yolci was not forgotten, by your grace.”
The valide’s face softened at a stroke. “You are most kind, naziry. I do not forget that of all the treasures of Istanbul, that which you guard is the most precious to the people.”
“Valide, you speak the truth. Is it not written that of all living things water is the vital principle?”
“It is written,” the valide replied. Yashim repressed a smile: he doubted, in his heart, whether the valide really knew. “I have a servant, naziry.”
“Yes, Valide?” The sou naziry sounded faintly puzzled.
“Yashim, he is called. A lala. He is an honest man, and desires to talk with you.” She waved Yashim forward, and her bangles clinked.
Yashim stepped out from behind the screen and bowed. The naziry gave a curt nod and then raised his hands.
“You will forgive me, Valide. I have no time for the lala now,” he said. “For two days, I must inspect the bents. On my return…”
He bowed before the screen. The valide made no sound.
97
Yashim placed the vegetables in his basket and took the money from his purse.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah-and no offense, efendi! But this coin’s light-look, five piastres more, and there’s the deal.” The brother hopped from foot to foot, one hand outstretched, glancing up and down the road. “I’m coming, hanum! Five piastres, efendi.”
Yashim felt a surge of irritation as he counted out the tiny coins.
When he got back to the apartment he was not surprised to find Amelie on the divan, reading a book.
“I hoped you’d come back,” she said.
“You prepared the stove.”
“If you needed it…”
“Yes. I’ll make pilaf,” he said. “Don’t move. Just read your book.”
He stripped two onions from their hulls, chopped them fine, and dropped them with a handful of pine nuts into a pan of olive oil, which he set on the coals. He crushed two cloves of garlic and brushed off their skins with the knife, then chopped them roughly and added them to the onion with the flat of the blade. He drizzled two handfuls of rice from the crock into the pan and stirred it when the rice began to stick. After a few minutes the rice was becoming clear, so he pulled the pan from the coals and looked into the stockpot, which was starting to steam. He let it rise to the boil.
Amelie had been watching him.
“Max never liked to cook,” she said. “He didn’t have a sense of taste. Perhaps, you know, that’s why he never liked to kiss.”
Yashim put the rice back on the heat and ladled out some stock.
“It certainly explains something,” he muttered. When she asked what he meant, he told her about the dolma he’d given her husband.
Amelie laughed. “You chose the wrong Frenchman.”
The rice was drying out. Yashim put a few more ladlefuls of stock into the pan and stirred it in.
“I think he was a Swiss,” he said carefully.
Amelie was silent for a while. Yashim added salt, pepper, and a pinch of cinnamon to the rice, and covered it with a domed lid. “Did he tell you about his time in Greece?” he asked.
“Oh yes. He saw the Parthenon, and Epidaurus in the Peloponnese. He said there was so much more waiting to be unearthed-and thank God Napoleon had invaded Egypt, not Greece!”
“But he had a war there, all the same,” Yashim said. “If he went in the twenties.”
“He never told me much about that,” Amelie said.
“What about Byron? Did he mention Missilonghi?”
“Was that where Byron died? No. Max never said anything about that.”
“So he never said anything about Dr. Millingen-or Dr. Meyer?” Yashim trimmed the stems of four baby artichokes and set them to steam over the stock. He glanced around.
Amelie was holding her head in her hand, as if deep in thought.
“Millingen?” She looked up quickly, in time for Yashim to notice a pink flush fading from her cheeks. “The sultan’s physician?”
Yashim stood with the knife in one hand, the disk of the choke in the other.
“I-” She gave a little laugh. “I met him, just yesterday. Isn’t that a coincidence?”
“Extraordinary,” Yashim agreed mildly, turning to the chopping block again.
“I didn’t want to tell you-I thought you’d be angry with me.”
Yashim began to slice the choke carefully.
“I was stuck here with nothing to do, so I decided to go and have a look at Aya Sofia. I’m afraid I got a little carried away, and I forgot that Christians are not welcome in a mosque.”
“That depends on the mosque,” Yashim said. “But Aya Sofia-no. An unbeliever-and a woman alone. At least-you were alone?”
“It was thoughtless of me. I’m sorry. I hope I haven’t offended you.”
Yashim looked down at the chopping board. “No,” he said. “What happened?”
“They chased me out. It was frightening-I wasn’t sure what they would do to me. Then a carriage pulled up and I tumbled in.”
“I see. And Dr. Millingen?”
“It was his carriage. He brought me back here.”
Yashim pursed his lips gently, sunk in thought.
“You came straight on here, from Aya Sofia?”
“Yes. He was perfectly gentlemanly, very stiff and English. He was in a hurry. I thought you would be angry-and then you weren’t here. And when you did come back, you were half dead, and, well, you know the rest. I forgot the whole thing until now.”
Yashim picked up the board and swept the slices of artichoke into the pan with his fingers. He had a prickling sensation in the back of his head.
He stirred the rice slowly.
Something here, he knew, was wrong-and it wasn’t his pilaf. There was something about Amelie that was odd as well, beyond her hesitation or her blushes.
She was wearing a pair of little pointed slippers.
98
Palewski reached out from under the bedclothes to take the tea. “Thank you, Marta.”
“Wrong,” Yashim said, settling himself at the foot of the bed. Palewski opened his eyes.
“Good God, it’s you! Really, Yashim, you may as well have a bed here until the wretched Lefevre woman’s gone.”
“Too late.” Yashim pulled a folded paper from his cloak. “I found this note under my door this morning.”
Palewski opened it. Mon cher Monsieur Yashim. Few words can express my gratitude to you. To lose a beloved husband, to find oneself cast adrift in a foreign land, to realize that all one’s highest hopes and fondest dreams are gone irretrievably: these are blows that strike to the depths of a woman’s soul. Without you, cher monsieur, I should have sunk beneath them before now. Your kindness and hospitality gave me the energy to meet such adversity-perhaps, even a sense of hope. But now, I feel, that energy is spent; I feel weary and, but for you, alone. I intend to present myself without further delay to the French ambassador-who will, if he is kind as I believe him to be, ensure my safe return to France. I shall remember you with affection, and wish that you will sometimes think of me, your very humble and obedient friend, Amelie Lefevre.
“A very proper expression of sentiment, Yashim,” Palewski said warmly. “‘Blows that strike to the depths of a woman’s soul.’ Dear me. You’re probably sorry she’s gone. I think I am.”
Yashim wrung his hands. His lips still burned where she had kissed him.
“The embassy was my first suggestion. I must have made her feel unwelcome. She was my guest.”