The Baklava Club: A Novel (Investigator Yashim) (12 page)

“He’s been to Istanbul, surely?” Giancarlo exclaimed. “Why, it’s the view from his own bedroom window!”

The porter, it seemed, had always been happy to keep it there, too. “What do I want with all that trampin’ up and down, efendi? Too many people, beggin’ your pardon, and nowhere to sit.”

They reached a hilltop, but there was no view through the trees.

“This is the way!” Birgit said gaily, pointing out a path that followed the hilltops; so they followed her, and came out above a shallow valley where the woods had been cleared, and a farmhouse nestled at the foot of the slope.

Everyone cast admiring glances at the view, attracted by the sight of a glittering pond just beyond the house. The walk had made everyone quite hot.

“This will be perfect,” Yashim declared, and when Rafael looked dubious he pointed to the sagging roof. “There’s no one here—look.”

The farm had been recently abandoned. The grassy slope was dotted with juniper and thin beech saplings, as the woods encroached on the cleared land, and the farmhouse itself was enlaced in wild figs and thistles that grew luxuriantly in the rich soil of the yard.

The porter laid down the baskets, and they agreed to meet before sundown. He stumped off up the slope and disappeared into the woods.

Giancarlo produced wine from his haversack and buried it in the pool, while Yashim unrolled a rug and set up the picnic. Father Doherty sat on the rug, and ran a handkerchief over his face. Natasha and Birgit laid their bonnets aside and wandered off to pick flowers while the boys explored the ruined house, forcing open a door and rummaging inside for bits of broken pottery and an old tin jug with no bottom, little offerings which they brought back with the excitement of savants opening an Egyptian tomb.

Giancarlo made a fire.

“More sticks! Fabrizio, Rafael—go and look under the trees.”

Father Doherty watched the boys go up the hill. “Leadership,” he murmured, and winked at Yashim. “A regular platoon.”

Natasha had found a long stick and was prodding the pool with it, chatting to Birgit. Yashim watched them together for a moment, the dark head and the blond bending together, and smiled.

Fabrizio returned with an armful of kindling and dropped it on the ground. “Ouf!” He brushed twigs and lichen off his shirtfront. Rafael came down the hill dragging a branch; Fabrizio laughed.

“Much too big, Rafael!”

“We can feed it into the fire,” Rafael said.

“Natasha’s peppers, stuffed with rice and chicken,” Yashim announced, setting the glazed dish on the rug. He laid out the salad, and dishes piled high with fresh mint, arugula, and parsley, with the bread from the Libyan baker on Kara Davut, unwrapped from its linen coverings, still warm.

“Please, eat,” he urged, dropping a spoon into the dish of artichokes.

There were sighs and exclamations of delight: the long walk had given them all an appetite. They drank the Italians’ cold wine and ate
à l’Ottomane
, with their fingers, reclining like emperors and empresses on the grass.

“It’s like home,” Giancarlo said. “The grass, and the woods. It could be Tuscany.”

“Really?” Birgit looked around. “It’s like your home? Perhaps, one day—”

“Well, with the hills, too, and the figs. I don’t know—it has a Tuscan feel. Italian, I should say. It’s good to be out of the city.”

Rafael said quietly, “I’ve always lived in Rome.”

“And does Istanbul remind you of Rome, at all?” Yashim wondered. “They call it the second Rome, with its seven hills.”

“Both littered with ruins,” Rafael agreed. “And domes, too, and sunken roads. A little. But Istanbul looks grandest from the water. You can’t compare the Tiber to the Bosphorus.”

“Istanbul’s more like Palermo, anyway,” Fabrizio said.

They waited for him to go on. He shrugged. “Blank walls. Alleyways. Palermo was Arabic, but they’re Islamic cities, aren’t they? Right on the water. Plenty of hills, and lots of steps. Up and down—and hot.”

Yashim nodded. It was the longest speech he’d heard Fabrizio make.

“And all of them crumbling,” Giancarlo pointed out. “Flaking stone and peeling paint. Rome is just the same.”

“For the present,” Rafael said. “When Rome is the capital of a united Italy—”

“Boys, boys.” Doherty rolled his eyes. “Must you always be spoiling a good view with your politics? I appeal to you, Miss Lund—and to you, too, my dear! Just look about you. For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills!” he declaimed, grabbing a tuft of grass and holding it aloft. “Deuteronomy, my friends. The good land!”

He raised his glass. “A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates,” he recited. “A land of olive oil and honey, wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it! Ay, it’s the Irish lament, to be sure.

“When thou hast eaten and are full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee.”

“Amen,” said Birgit.

The priest declared his intention of having a snooze. Rafael ate two pieces of baklava, and Birgit laughed at him affectionately.

One by one, slightly flushed, the boys stripped off and splashed about in the pond, slinging mud and shouting happily in Italian. They pretended to want to throw the girls in, but Birgit only smiled and waved them away. Giancarlo reached out for Natasha, who was gathering more flowers. He grabbed her arm.

“No!” She wheeled on him, her hand raised. “Let go!”

“A nice swim!” He swung on her arm, teasing.

“Let me go.”

He began backing toward the pool, tugging Natasha along.

She struggled. Giancarlo laughed.

“Oh!” He sprang back, his hand to his cheek. “I—I am sorry, mademoiselle. I didn’t mean…” He glanced around, guiltily, and Yashim quickly looked away.

“I am sorry,” Giancarlo repeated. “Your flowers—let me pick them up.”

“I’ll do it. It doesn’t matter.”

Giancarlo backed away, embarrassed, and joined the boys in the pool. Natasha crouched in the grass, collecting her flowers: Yashim thought he should go and help, but just as he decided to get up, she stood and walked away toward the farmhouse, her head bent.

He found her leaning on a wall behind the ruined farmhouse, where a spray of nettles had attracted a thousand blue butterflies. She looked around.

“Like the colors of the tiling in the mosque,” she said. “I’ve never seen such butterflies. My father would love them.”

“They are beautiful. Perhaps you should paint them for him?”

“I don’t paint the way he can,” she said. “I wonder why they don’t get stung? I suppose they tread very lightly on the nettle leaves.”

They watched the blue cloud lifting and falling.

“I’m sorry if I behaved badly,” Natasha said at last. “I didn’t mean to hurt him. Giancarlo. I just don’t like being grabbed, like that.”

“He won’t mind. He shouldn’t have panicked you.”

“Panic—that’s what it is.” She smiled at him. “Shall we go back to the fire? I picked you some flowers.”

Later, Birgit drifted down to the water wearing only her shift, and swam with her lover while the other boys picked over the remains of Yashim’s feast. She emerged unself-consciously transparent, voluptuous in wet undergarments that clung to her pale nipples and revealed the contours of her body. Yashim spotted Doherty rearranging his hat over his eyes, and poked another stick into the fire. Birgit came and sat beside them, now and then holding out the hem of her skirt to catch its warmth.

She talked about the Danish summer, short but so warm that everyone went to the countryside if they could afford it, and swam, if they knew how. “We have picnics, too—but not so good. Herring and black bread. And you, Natasha? In Siberia?”

“In summer it’s a bit the same—cheese and bread, with pickles. And smoked meat. Too many mosquitoes. I like the winter picnics best. Then someone digs a hole in the ice and catches fish—pike, and perch, and salmon, too. They make a good soup, and it’s hot. But we start with stroganina.”

“Stroganina?”

“Frozen fish. It’s cut into long strips, and you eat it with salt and pepper. It’s a very strong taste. I like it.”

“Brrr!”

“I like these spices, too,” Natasha admitted. She put the flowers she had picked in a patterned glass and set them in front of Yashim. He smiled at her.

“I’ll show you how to use them,” Yashim said.

Birgit chuckled. “Yashim efendi’s School of Cookery—why not? I’m sure Natasha would enroll.”

Seeing Natasha blush, Birgit changed the subject. She was reading a book by a young philosopher called Søren Kierkegaard, who would have liked it here, Birgit was sure. Yashim smiled. He liked her easy manner. She reminded him of those palace odalisques but she lacked their affectations—their lisps and piping insincerities.

She talked about Kierkegaard, and the conversation turned to the love of nature. Natasha mentioned Aksakov.

“Palewski was talking about him, too, just the other day,” Yashim said. “Aksakov and an Englishman called Gilbert White.”

“Oh yes,” Natasha said. “Gilbert White of Selborne.” She proceeded to give them a digest of White’s nature writings. Yashim lay back and listened. She must make a very charming teacher in her father’s school, he thought, impressing the little Siberians with her low and serious voice. After a while Birgit started to get dressed.

“White examined all the evidence,” Natasha went on, “and he says that the little birds, in winter, hibernate by burying themselves in the mud of ponds, like this one. Do you think that’s true?”

“White was an
Anglican
clergyman,” Father Doherty murmured from under his hat, which had slipped sideways. “Very little he could say would be dependable. Aristotle, now, he’d tell you about the little birdies, so he would.”

Natasha startled: she seemed to have forgotten Doherty’s presence.

“What brings you to Istanbul, Father?”

Doherty sat up and fanned himself with his hat.

“Philology, theology, divinity, and prayer! What do you think of that? Which is, of course, only a way of saying that I am a humble ant who toils in the dust of ages past! Vellum, my dear girl, and papyrus—isn’t that the name for paper still, in Russian? Pappa-roos!”

Natasha was about to correct him but Father Doherty swept on, patting his forehead with a handkerchief.

“It’s a battle, dear lady. On the one hand, libraries, archives, the accumulated lore of the millennia—and on the other, mites, worms, and natural decay. So many books, so many testaments—and we are so few.”

Poor Doherty, Yashim thought. Nobody much liked him, and he was lonely.

Much later, when everyone had taken the slow caïques back down the Golden Horn, and said goodbye, Yashim took Natasha back to the palace.

“Those boys—they aren’t really exiles,” Natasha said. “Not like my father.”

“They aren’t prisoners, no.”

Natasha shivered. “I didn’t feel easy with—what was his name?”

“The priest? Doherty.”

“No, the boy, the smaller one. Fabrizio. His eyes.”

Yashim smiled. “Perhaps you were looking too beautiful.”

“Don’t say that. Birgit’s the beautiful one. He looked at her in a funny way, all the time. And—well.”

“Well?”

“Just, well.”

The caïque dipped as it turned toward the shore. Lights burned at the Eminönü stage. He helped Natasha out of the boat.

“Do you feel safe here—at night?” she asked, breaking the silence as they walked slowly up the long street toward the palace.

“Just here, as safe as anywhere. There are some districts—the port, at Tophane, for one; some places around Pera—graveyards. But it’s a safe city. Nobody goes out at night, except the watchmen.”

“I had no idea it would be so big,” Natasha admitted. They turned at the palace wall and began climbing the narrow alley behind Ayasofya. “Perhaps that’s what frightens me, sometimes.”

The slope leveled off, and they emerged at the Fountain of Ahmet III, whose enormous eaves puddled the ground in the shade of a waxing moon. Yashim took Natasha to the gate, where the guards saluted him, and walked her through to the little gate of the harem.

One of the elderly black eunuchs opened the door, yawning.

“It’s not a caravansary for travelers,” he said sniffily.

“Good night, Yashim.”

Yashim touched her hand, and bowed. “Good night, Natasha. Thank you for coming.”

22

P
ALEWSKI
laid the letter on the desk and poured himself a brandy. He took the glass to the window and knelt on the seat, looking into the night through his own dim reflection in the glass. Somewhere a dog barked, hoarse and deep.

It was many years since he had undertaken a mission that could be compared with this, he thought. Commanding a troop, or riding to Moscow alone through the winter snows, he had felt the weight of empires on his shoulders.

His reflection shrugged back at him. It was a long time ago. Some of the empires had fallen, some of the hopes had died. Everyone had changed.

He closed his eyes. Palewski pictured Europe as a map tilted against the light, on which mountains rose and rivers flowed, and the names of countries were stamped out like the letters of a patent medicine. France was lit; England lit; Spain—it was too far away. But at the center of the map the light was dimmest, the borders bleeding into gray at the junction of three empires, obscuring the shadow lines of his own, dejected country.

Once an Austrian, drunk, had shouted at him: “Your Poland is nothing to the Committee!” Palewski had seen the sudden look of regret on his face, an almost comical shift from sneer to fear, and then the gray-clad officers had crowded around; it was hard, a few moments later, to be sure what the man had said. The Committee, yes, it existed: men with hands on the levers of power, their ears straining at every door, sustaining despots and emperors.

What if now, beneath his hand, the spirit of change could be awakened? Palewski saw the borders breaking up like ice floes on the Vistula or the Don. Light crept across the surface of his mental map—with Istanbul pulsing, like a lighthouse.