An Evil Eye (3 page)

9

S
TANISLAW Palewski, Polish Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, put up a hand to steady his straw hat as a light wind threatened to tip it by the brim.

“This,” he remarked, “is better than Therapia.”

Yashim, beside him on the bench, grunted assent. When Istanbul lolled in the dog days, under the summer sun, the other European ambassadors liked to retreat to their summer residencies at Therapia, up the Bosphorus; only Palewski remained in town. He lacked funds; he lacked a summer residency; he lacked, in point of fact, a country.

It had been Yashim’s idea to invite Palewski to spend a cooling day out on the water, traveling to the island of Chalki and back. Yesterday’s work in the harem had exhausted him, and the cannons booming out across the water had sounded like the blood pounding in his own head. The breeze at Marmara blew as well as the breezes of Therapia, and at a fraction of the cost: a ticket to the island could be had for a sequin—a seat on deck, a view over the water, a chance of seeing dolphins, and a glass of sweet tea into the bargain.

Palewski was Polish, from his tongue to his heart, and represented a country that no longer existed—at least, it was not recognized by any of the Christian courts of Europe. The Ottomans sustained the notion that their old proud foe existed still; they accepted the credentials of an ambassador whose country had been swallowed by its neighbors. They even sustained the ancient custom of paying the ambassador a stipend for his maintenance, for magnanimity was the mark of a great empire, and old habits died hard; but the stipend was small and did not stretch to summer residencies.

They made, perhaps, an unlikely couple, Palewski and Yashim; though anyone who had seen them together on the deck of the felucca might have noticed that both, in their way, were conservatively dressed. Palewski’s coat was well cut, in the old fashion, if slightly shabby, and his waistcoat was more colorful than the age prescribed; while Yashim’s embroidered waistcoat and white pantaloons belonged to a style that was fast disappearing in the capital. Most Ottoman gentlemen followed the lead of their late sultan in adopting dress coats and tight black trousers, beneath a scarlet fez. Yashim wore a fez, but it was swathed in a strip of linen, some twelve feet long, which he wound tightly around his head as a turban. On his feet he wore the comfortable leather slippers that the Ottomans had always worn, before the sultan persuaded them into tight-laced boots and woolen socks.

An odd couple, then, but with more in common than might have at first appeared—not least a shared desire to escape the summer heat and enjoy the breezes out to sea.

The largest of the Prince’s Islands advanced swiftly over the sun-pricked waters. The sails were furled, one by one; the canvas slapped, the chain ran out, and soon the boat was drawn alongside the quay. The Greek sailors stepped ashore with coiled rope and lazy familiarity.

A few minutes later, Yashim and his old friend had exchanged the sea breeze for the equally welcome shade of the ancient limes that flanked the path up to the monastery of Hristos. The air smelled of charcoal and roasted meat where the kebab vendors had set up their braziers in the shade; the cool white walls of the island houses and their ocher pantiled roofs, peeped through the trees. Others shared their path: veiled women in long striped coats, a sailor in a shirt without a collar, a Greek priest in high canonicals, little boys on errands with bare feet, and a stout woman in a headscarf who rolled along after her donkey, its panniers stuffed with reeds.

Close to the gateway of the monastery, set back from the avenue, stood a small café.

“Sherbet, Yash. They’ll do a pear syrup here, too,” Palewski suggested, steering his friend gently by the arm toward the café path.

Two men swerved past them, running up the hill.

“So hot,” Palewski murmured, raising an eyebrow.

Cushions were scattered on carpets spread beneath the boughs of an enormous pine, whose resinous fragrance perfumed the air. A boy in a waistcoat took their orders: he seemed distracted, glancing now and then through the trees toward the avenue of limes.

“Pear, not apple,” Yashim corrected him. “Pear for my friend, and coffee, medium sweet, for me.”

The two friends lay in companionable silence, watching the sky through the boughs of the tree. Rooks cawed in the upper branches; farther off, Yashim could hear a murmur of indistinct voices like wind soughing in the pines.

Palewski dipped into his pocket. He brought out a slim volume bound in soft red leather, which he opened and began to read.

Yashim struggled for a few moments with the curiosity that comes over anyone when they watch someone else with their nose in a book. Then he gave up.

“
Pan Tadeusz
—again,” Palewski replied, with a smile.

“The national epic,” Yashim murmured. “Of course.”

“Really, I never tire of it,” Palewski said. “It is the Poland I represent. Poland in the old days.” He sighed. “I wrote to Mickiewicz, proposing a French translation.”

“The poet? And did he reply?”

Palewski nodded. “Of course, he could do it himself. He lives in Paris. But he said he’d be delighted if I’d like to try.”

“And you’ve begun?”

“Awfully hard, Yashim.” Palewski leaned back and closed his eyes. He flung up a hand toward the trees and began to recite:

“Litwo! Ojczyzno moja! Ty jeste
jak zdrowie.
Ile ci
trzeba ceni,
, ten tylko si
dowie,
Kto ci
stracił. Dzi
pi
kno
tw
w całej ozdobie
Widz
i opisuj
, bo t
skni
po tobie.”