The Baklava Club: A Novel (Investigator Yashim) (18 page)

He reached out for various small pots and took a couple of cinnamon sticks, a few cloves, and a big pinch of salt. He pounded peppercorns and allspice berries into his mortar, and scraped them up and stirred them into the pan. They began to catch. A ladleful of water calmed the pot. He added a scattering of sugar.

From a flat basket on the side he selected four plump pomegranates, halved them on a board, and scraped the jeweled seeds into the mortar using a metal spoon. It was a fiddly job. He added a little more water to the pan, crushed the seeds under the pestle, poured the dark, tangy juice into the pan, gave it all a stir, and clapped on the lid. He moved the pan slightly off the coals, and went back to his paper, wiping his hands.

Who knew?
he wrote.
Paris? Midhat/Porte? P.

He put a ring around the last two names, then drew another line and wrote:
Where is the prince?

He sat back, tapping his teeth with the pencil. There was something else he wanted to add to the list, but it would not quite take shape.

Yashim sighed.

In the end he simply wrote:
Visitors.

39

Y
ASHIM
found the valide in a bad mood.

“
Tiens
, Yashim. I told you I wanted the girl entertained, and now you tell me you have to go chasing all over Istanbul for some imbecile who has taken a shot at your friend. It’s not as if he was dead, is it? And what I want counts for nothing.”

She rubbed her fingertips together irritably.

“Natasha enjoyed your
déjeuner sur l’herbe
. It sounds rather cosmopolitan to me.” She snapped her fingers at her shawl. “What are all these Franks doing in Istanbul, Yashim? It didn’t use to be like this.”

The valide was right, of course. Yashim could think of a number of reasons why more foreigners were in Istanbul, starting with the opening of the Ottoman market to British goods. The sultan’s decree placing all his subjects, Muslim or otherwise, on the same legal footing had emboldened the merchants and the bankers and stimulated trade, and foreigners washed in with the tide.

“Many people in Europe,” he said, “want change. Their own governments resist it. People look to the sultan to help them.”

“Like our Natasha.”

“Natasha. Palewski. Even those Italians feel more free here than at home.”

“Hmm. I hope, for their sake, they don’t overestimate our patience. Istanbul is not London. But talk to Natasha,” she added. “I must think what I shall write to the tsar.”

Yashim found Natasha asleep on the divan in her apartment, a book in her hand. He watched her for a while: her features were beautiful.

He sat gently on the divan.

“Natasha.”

Not quite awake when her eyelids flickered open, she saw Yashim and smiled and let them close again.

He put his hand on her arm. “Natasha.”

She was awake in an instant. “Don’t!” She snatched back her arm. “Oh, it’s you, Yashim. I’m sorry—I was dreaming.”

She sat up, and hugged her knees. Her hair was mussed up, and the side of her face was red where she had been lying on it.

“A bad dream?”

“I was at home,” she said slowly. “Only you were there, too. You were throttling Petovski. At least—then I woke up.” She smiled. “Saved you from the gallows, I expect.”

“By waking up? Thank you. Who’s Petovski?”

She was slow to reply.

“Our jailer. My parents despised him.”

“Then I’m glad I throttled him.”

She gave a little shiver. “He was a fat old man who came around to check that we didn’t have too much comfort, or that we had enough bread. To find out what we were reading, and dig around in our correspondence. He sent reports to the tsar. My father said he was just a minor functionary and the tsar never read anything he wrote. It just went to an office in Moscow and after a while they threw it all away. But of course, he decided everything about us.”

“I see. It’s a shame to let him into your dreams, too.”

She looked at him long and hard. “He’s not the only one, Yashim. I can’t—I can’t always keep them out.” She swallowed. “So. He used to bring me sweets, and try to sit me on his knee. I thought he was trying to find out things about my parents, hoping I’d tell him something he could use in his report. He’d pin me to his fat knees and pinch my cheeks.

“I didn’t tell him anything, ever.” She bit her lip. “I used to wriggle to get away, until I found—that is, I thought—well, he liked that.”

“Did your parents know?”

She shook her head. “It began around the time my mother died. But once, Petovski and my father had a scene, a real row. It was about the sweets—and he’d asked me for things in return. My father told him to get out and never come back. But he did. We couldn’t stop him.”

There were tears in her eyes.

“Petovski said that I was grown up, and that from now on he had to interview me properly. I had to go alone.”

She shook her head and stood up abruptly, and walked over to the window.

“He’d given me so many sweets and I should give him something back.” She put her hand on the lattice, and spread her fingers. “What could I do? He said if I didn’t do what he wanted, he’d have Father sent back to the mines. And he could. Maybe he was nothing to the tsar, but in Irkutsk? It made me sick. There was nothing I could do except try not to let my father know. I was afraid he’d get angry again, and endanger himself. Maybe he’d have killed Petovski. I don’t know.”

She was wiping her fingers, pulling them through her other hand.

“Yashim, I’m sorry. It must have been the dream.”

“Go on.”

“Petovski had a yellow house outside the village, and an old woman who cooked and cleaned for him. But when I knocked it was Petovski himself who opened the door. He had put something in his hair, to make it shiny, and a sprig of heather in his buttonhole. The woman wasn’t there—he said it was her afternoon off.

“It was just a log house, really, with a room on either side of the hall and a kitchen and scullery out at the back. He had a fire going in the bedroom, and a table with some tea things. Some cake. He said it was cozy, and he took away my muff, and my coat, and my hat. He told me he’d buy a little house and make me the mistress of it, and he would come and see me just as if we were married. He said it would be good for my father, and he would see to it that he was more comfortable and had the books he wanted, and French wines, and everything.

“I said I couldn’t live on my own, and that we couldn’t be married. Something like that. So he said—” She swallowed. “He said it didn’t matter. Because we”—she began to dissolve into tears—“we could always have an interview there, at his house, when the cleaning woman was out.”

“Interviews.” Yashim put a hand to her shoulder. She drew back and took a breath.

“Interviews—without any talk. And then, afterward, he talked. He talked to say I mustn’t tell. I didn’t mean to, because it was so disgusting. Every week I had to go. After a while he stopped bothering to give me cake.” She clasped her hands together in front of her, and straightened her arms. “It’s not over.”

“You mean—he still…?”

“I mean, the story. I don’t know why, but I want to tell you. I have never been able to tell anyone else, before you.” She paused, and gazed at her hands in her lap. “The shame, Yashim. You try to block it out, but it’s not like that. The lie—the horror—they say it gets under your skin but it
is
your skin. You can’t block it out without hiding yourself. It’s like being locked out of the world.”

“I know,” Yashim said, gently. “I know exactly.”

“My whole body crawled with what Petovski did, and I kept it a secret. My father never guessed that anything was wrong, even though Petovski did do some of the things he promised—more fuel, sugar, that sort of thing. No French wines.” She gave an unhappy smile. “Every week … Sometimes he drank. Sometimes he was so drunk I would just leave him and come home. He wasn’t very important, he was just a little man.”

In the cave, Yashim thought: in the cave, where cruelty met innocence and innocence was lost, there had been shame, and self-disgust at so much damage inflicted by little men.

“I found that out. One day I came for my interview and when he opened the door he looked quite frightened. Instead of taking me into his bedroom, we went into the parlor, and there was a fire in there and he introduced me to two other men who were standing by it. They weren’t as old as he was, and they were better dressed.

“‘Some vodka, Lev Ivanovich,’ the tall one said. He snapped his fingers and Petovski’s hands were shaking so much he spilled the drink on the tray.

“One of the men drank the vodka, and then he said: ‘So this is your little secret, Petovski. Eh?’

“Petovski was cringing in front of these men, and all I could think was that he’d been discovered, and would be punished.”

Natasha had slipped into a monotone, staring straight ahead of her.

“That was not their idea.” She shrugged. “The men were by the fire, and Petovski was trembling and groveling. In Siberia, everything is down to rank. Where you live, your pay, your chances of promotion, everything lies in the hands of your superiors. I don’t know how they found out about me—maybe they saw me visiting, or maybe he talked, Petovski. He was so often drunk.”

She took a deep breath.

“The man who had drunk the vodka, not the tall one, ordered me to undress. I didn’t understand. I wanted them to rescue me. I stood stock still until Petovski slapped my face and began to unfasten my buttons. ‘You do anything the gentlemen ask,’ he said. And then the tall one kicked him, and told him to go out to the scullery and wait.”

Natasha looked at Yashim. “They never went to the bedroom, never took me there. And Petovski never touched me again. But every week I went to the—the interview. Sometimes one, sometimes both of them. Every week. I had to hide it, as if there were two Natashas, the one who looked after her father and taught at school, and another one, who went to those men…” She trailed off, biting her lip.

“But after a few months I started to look ill. Even my father couldn’t help noticing. He got me goat’s milk, and eggs and meat. He did portraits, little sketches, for people in return. And after a while I started to look better. My skin grew clear, my hair was shiny again. I even put on some weight—I had become very thin, you see.

“My father was pleased. He said the eggs did me good, and I believed it, too.”

Natasha stared for a long time at the wall, without speaking. At last she said: “Am I frightening you, Yashim?”

“Yes. Go on, if you want.”

“You are the only person I have ever told.”

“Your uncle Sergei?”

“He had gone. They’d all gone. There was only my father, and it was easy to deceive him. I had been deceiving him for a year, or more. But of course, in the end, I found out what to do.”

“You were pregnant.”

She nodded, slowly. “One of them said he liked it like that. He liked me to be pregnant. But the tall one was angry. They argued about it. In front of me, as if I were a piece of furniture.”

She twisted her fingers together. “There were old women in the villages—my father used to speak with them, about the flowers and the plants. They knew everything about them. For the spirit. And for the body.”

She glanced up at Yashim. Her eyes were hard and her jaw clenched.

“Even that—it was something else to hide. I don’t mean just the pain, because that was nothing. It passes. I mean—the ground was too hard. For three months I kept the bundle of cloth hidden in the outhouse. In the spring I dug a hole and buried it in the yard.”

Yashim put out his hands. “Natasha.”

She looked uncertainly at his hands and then, very deliberately, slowly, she lifted her own, and placed them on his. He felt them shaking. His thumbs slid across her fingers.

They stood there, silently, holding hands.

“Have you—escaped now?” Yashim asked at last.

She shrugged. “The valide asked me to Istanbul.”

“You must have—” he hesitated. “You must have many dreams.”

She closed her eyes, and moved imperceptibly closer to him. “My dream, Yashim, is not to dream anymore,” she said.

40

Y
ASHIM
waited by a pillar, looking out over the cobbled yard of the Sublime Porte. Two officers in uniform stood to attention by the gates in the full glare of the sun. Several windows were open overhead; from one of them a man with long mustaches was scattering crumbs for the pigeons on the windowsill.

There was no harm in feeding birds. On the contrary, it was a meritorious act, a kindness. Yashim heard a clapping of wings, and took a deep breath.

Perhaps the man with the mustaches had limed the window sill?

“Do you expect a reply, Yashim efendi?”

A door opened on the court and a
chaush
in yellow livery jogged by, carrying a message. At the gate he saluted; the officers acknowledged him.

Yashim had encountered cruelty before; had been its victim, when his mother was murdered and he had been pinned down, trapped struggling and screaming in the cave.

He remembered the soft hiss of his mentor, years later: mentor, tormentor. “
The eunuch.
” He’d blotted out the cruelty, moved on; rebelled, finally.

He swayed, as if he stood at the edge of a dark abyss.

“Efendi? Are you all right?”

Yashim blinked. Natasha’s story had dimmed his vision. He saw design in simple gestures, cruelty in gentle faces.

“I’m sorry. What did you say?” There was the courtyard, in the sun, and here was a secretary.

“I wondered if you expected any reply, Yashim efendi.”

He saw a young man wearing the fez and the stambouline, with a gentian in his buttonhole. He was one of those modern young men, undoubtedly fluent in a foreign language, who had joined the service since Yashim’s day, without moving through the traditional palace schools. The gentian signaled ambition, Yashim suspected, rather than romance.

“Possibly. I’ll wait.”

When the secretary had gone, an old man in slippers and a fez emerged from a basement staircase onto the courtyard, dangling a tray of coffee cups from his finger. He crossed the courtyard and pushed open a door and disappeared.