The Janissary Tree (3 page)

"So
they had attended the engineering university?"

"They
passed with top marks. They were the best."

"Were?"

"Please,
a moment." The seraskier raised a hand to his forehead. "At first, in spite of
everything, I thought like you. I supposed they had had some adventure and
would reappear later, very shamefaced and sorry. I, of course, was ready to
tear them into strips: the whole corps look up to those young men, do you see? They
set, as the French say, the tone."

"You
speak French?"

"Oh,
only a very little. Enough."

Most
of the foreign instructors in the New Guard, Yashim knew, were Frenchmen, or
others--Italians, Poles--who had been swept into the enormous armies the Emperor
Napoleon had raised to carry out his dreams of universal conquest. A decade
since, with the Napoleonic Wars finally at an end, some of the more indigent
remnants of the Grande Armee had found their way to Istanbul, to take the
sultan's sequin. But learning French was a business for the young, and the
seraskier was pushing fifty. Go on.

"Four
good men vanished from their barracks last night. When they did not appear this
morning, I asked one of the
temizlik,
the cleaners, and found out that
they had not slept in their dormitory."

"And
they're still missing?"

"No.
Not exactly."

"What
do you mean, not exactly?"

"One
of them was found tonight. About four hours ago."

"That's
good."

"He
was found dead in an iron pot."

"An
iron pot?"

"Yes,
yes. A cauldron."

Yashim
blinked. "Do I understand," he said slowly, "that the soldier was being
cooked?"

The
seraskiers eyes nearly bulged out of his head. "Cooked?" he echoed weakly. It
was a refinement he had not considered. "I think," he said, "that you should
just come and take a look."

4

****************

Two
hours later, Yashim had seen just about all that he wanted to see for one
morning. For any number of mornings.

Summoning
a lantern bearer, the seraskier had walked him eastward through the empty
streets, following the city's spine toward the imperial stables. Outside the Beyazit
Mosque, torches nickered in the dark; they passed the Burnt Column close to the
entrance to the Grand Bazaar, now shuttered and still, holding its breath as it
guarded its treasures through the night. Farther on, near the Sehzade Mosque
above the Roman aqueduct, they ran across the night watch, who let them go when
he saw who it was. Eventually, they reached the stables. The stables, like the
Guard itself, were new. They had been erected close below the ridge, on the
southern side, on an area of ground that had been vacant since the suppression
of the Janissaries ten years before, when their vast and rambling barracks had
succumbed to bombardment and conflagration.

Yashim
had found the cauldron, just as the seraskier had described. It stood in a
corner of one of the new stables, surrounded by bedding straw and lit by large,
globular oil lamps suspended on heavy chains from the tie beam way overhead. The
horses, the seraskier explained, had been removed.

"It
was the horses' disturbance that brought the matter to light," he added. "They
do not like the smell of dead men."

Yashim
had not realized when the seraskier described it that the cauldron was so very
big. It had three short legs and two metal loops on either side for handles;
even so, Yashim could barely see over the top. The seraskier brought him a
mounting stool, and Yashim climbed it to look inside.

The
dead soldier was still in his uniform. He was coiled in a fetal position at the
bottom of the pot, just covering the base: his arms, which were tied at the
wrist, were drawn up over his head, making it impossible to see his face. Yashim
stepped down and brushed his hands automatically, though the rim of the pot was
perfectly clean.

"Do
you know who he is?"

The
seraskier nodded. "Osman Berek. I took his pocketbook. You see--

He
hesitated.

"Well?"
Yashim prodded.

"I
am sorry to say, the body has no face."

Yashim
felt a chill of disgust. "No face?"

"I--I
climbed in. I turned him just a little. I thought I would recognize him,
but--that's all. His face has been hacked off. From below the chin to above the
eyebrows. It was done, I think, at a single blow."

Yashim
wondered what force was needed to sever a man's face from his body at a blow. He
turned around. "The cauldron is always here? It seems an odd place for it."

"No,
no. The cauldron came with the body."

Yashim
stared. "Please, efendi. Too many surprises. Unless you have more?"

The
seraskier considered. "The cauldron simply appeared in the night."

"And
nobody heard or saw anything?"

"The
grooms heard nothing. They were asleep in the lofts."

"The
doors are barred?"

"Not
usually. In the event of a fire..."

"Quite."
According to an old saying, Istanbul suffered three evils-- plague, fire, and
Greek interpreters. There were so many old wooden buildings in the city, too
closely packed: it took only a careless spark to reduce whole sections of the
city to ashes. The unlamented Janissaries had been the city's firemen, too: it
was typical of their degeneration that they had combined their fire duty with
the more profitable occupation of fire raising, demanding bribes to put out
fires they themselves had started. Yashim vaguely remembered that the
Janissaries had manned an important fire tower on the edge of their old
barracks here, which ironically collapsed in the conflagration of 1826. Subsequently,
the sultan had ordered the construction of an extraordinary new fire tower at
Beyazit, a 260-foot-high pillar of stone, topped with an overhanging gallery
for the fire watchers. Many people thought that the Beyazit Tower was the
ugliest building in Istanbul; it was certainly the tallest, standing as it did
on the Third Hill of the city. It was noticeable, all the same, that there were
fewer fire alarms these days.

"And
who found the body, then?"

"I
did. No, this is not a surprise. I was called because of the cauldron, and
because the grooms were unhappy about the state of the horses. I was the first
one to look inside. I am a military man, I've seen dead men before. And"--he
hesitated--"I had already begun to suspect what I might see.

Yashim
said nothing.

"I
gave nothing away. I ordered the horses out and had the doors barred. That's
all."

Yashim
pinged the cauldron with his fingernail. It gave a tinny sound. He pinged
again.

The
seraskier and he looked at each other.

"It's
very light," Yashim remarked. They were silent for a moment. "What do you
think?"

"I
think," said the seraskier, "that we do not have much time. Today is Thursday."

"The
review?"

"Ten
days. To find out what is happening to my men."

5

****************

It
had been a difficult morning. Yashim went to the baths, was soaped and
pummeled, and lay for a long time in the hot room before returning home in his
freshly laundered clothes. Finally, having explored the matter in his mind in
every way he could think of in an effort to draw a lead, he turned to what he
always considered the next best thing.

How
do you find three men in a decaying, medieval, mist-benighted city of two
million people?

You
don't even try.

You
cook.

Getting
up, he moved slowly over to the other side of the room, which lay in darkness. He
struck a lucifer and lit the lamp, trimming the wick until the light burned
steadily and bright. It fell on a neat arrangement of stove, high table, and a
row of very sharp-looking knives, suspended in midair by a splice of wood.

There
was a basket in the corner and from it Yashim selected several small, firm
onions. He peeled and sliced them on the block, first one way and then the
other. He set a pot on the stove and slipped enough olive oil into it to brown
the onions. When they were turning, he tossed in a couple of handfuls of rice
that he drew from an earthenware crock.

Long
ago he'd discovered what it was to cook. It was at about the same time that
he'd grown disgusted with his own efforts to achieve a cruder sensual
gratification and resigned himself to more stylized pleasures. It was not that,
until then, he had always considered cooking as a woman's work: cooks in the
empire could be of either sex. But he had thought of it, perhaps, as a task for
the poor.

The
rice had gone clear, so he threw in a handful of currants and another of pine
nuts, a lump of sugar, and a big pinch of salt. He took down a jar from the
shelf and helped himself to a spoonful of oily tomato paste, which he mixed into
a tea glass of water. He drained the glass into the rice, with a hiss and a
plume of steam. He added a pinch of dried mint and ground some pepper into the
pot and stirred the rice, then clamped on a lid and moved the pot to the back
of the stove.

He
had bought the mussels cleaned, the big three-inch mussels from Therapia, up
the Bosphorus. He opened them one by one with a twist of a flat blade and
dropped them into a basin of water. The rice was half cooked. He chopped dill,
very fine, and stirred it into the mixture, then tipped it into a dish to cool.
He drained the mussels and stuffed them, using a spoon, closing the shells
before he laid them head to toe in layers in a pan. He weighted them down with
a plate, added some hot water from the kettle, put on a lid, and slid the pan
over the coals.

He
took a chicken, jointed it, crushed walnuts on the flat of the cleaver, and
prepared Acem Yahnisi, with pomegranate juice.

When
everything was done he picked up a swan-necked ewer and very carefully washed
first his hands, then his mouth, his face, his neck and, lastly, his private
parts.

He
took out his mat and prayed. When he had finished, he rolled up the mat once
more and put it away in a niche.

Soon,
he knew, he would have a visitor.

6

****************

STANISLAW
Palewski was about fifty-five years old, with a circle of tight gray curls
around his balding pate and a pair of watery blue eyes whose expression of
beseeching sadness was belied by the strength of his chin, the size of his
Roman nose, and the set determination of his mouth, which at this moment was
compressed into a narrow slit by the rain and wind backing off the Marmara
shore.

He
walked, as he did every Thursday night, along the road that ran from the New
Mosque up the Golden Horn, a conspicuous figure in a top hat and frock coat. The
coat, like the hat, had seen better days; once black, it had been transmuted by
wear and the damp airs of Istanbul into something more nearly approaching sea
green; the velvet nap of the topper had worn smooth in many places,
particularly around the crown and on the rim. Approaching a pair of ladies
swathed in their chadors, accompanied by their escort, he stepped politely into
the road and automatically touched the brim of his hat in salute. The ladies
did not directly acknowledge his salutation, but they bobbed about a little,
and Palewski heard a muffled whisper and a giggle. He smiled to himself and
stepped back onto the pavement to resume his walk.

As
he did so, something chinked in his bag, and he stopped to check. Nothing
explicitly forbade the diplomatically accredited representative of a foreign
power from walking through the city carrying two bottles of 60 percent
bison-grass vodka, but Palewski wasn't eager to put the case to the test. For
one thing, he was not absolutely sure that there hadn't ever been, in the whole
tumultuous history of the city, an edict which made carrying liquor a flogging
offense. For another, his diplomatic immunity was at best a fragile kind of
favor. He had no gunboats at his disposal to ride up the Bosphorus and bombard
the sultan into a more amenable frame of mind if things went wrong, as Admiral
Duckworth had done for the English in 1807. He had no means of exerting
government pressure as the Russians had done in 1712, when their ambassador was
locked up in the old Castle of the Seven Towers. Forty years ago, the rulers of
Russia, Prussia, and Austria had sent their armies into Poland to wipe the
country from the map. Palewski, in truth, had no government at all.

The
Polish imperial ambassador to the Sublime Porte rearranged the damp cloth that
protected his bottles, drew the strings of his bag tight again, and walked on
through a dwindling series of streets and alleyways until he came to a very
small porte cochere in one of the back alleys of the old town down by the
Golden Horn. The door was small because it was sunken: only the upper
three-fifths showed above the level of the muddy ground. A scattering of small
boys tore past him, no doubt rubbing yet another layer of shine into the back
of his old coat. A snapping bell, clapped between the fingers, announced the
approach of a man in a tiny donkey cart, weaving his way with miraculous
precision through the narrow interstices of the close medieval streets. Hurriedly,
Palewski knocked on the door. It was opened by an old woman in a blue wimple
who silently stood back to let him enter. Palewski, stooping, stepped in just
as the cart swept by with a pattering of tiny hooves and a shout from the man
at the reins.