An Evil Eye

110

At Besiktas Yashim asked to see the Kislar aga and was led downstairs to a Frenchified waiting room that was stuffy and windowless, furnished with two European sofas, an Italian clock, and a number of high-backed chairs that had lost some of their gilt, or a molded foot. Timid black faces he did not recognize looked in on him once or twice, before Ibou himself appeared.

He looked gray, Yashim thought; and one of his eyes was bloodshot.

The aga waited until the door had closed, and then subsided into one of the great sofas. He rubbed his hands across his face.

“The bridge,” he groaned. “I wish it had never been built.”

“You, too?” Yashim said in surprise.

“The opening ceremony,” the aga muttered. “Tomorrow, all the ladies, in caiques. In public! The sultan on horseback. Precedence, Yashim. You can’t believe.”

“The opening ceremony?”

The aga’s hand snaked out over the arm of the sofa. “Please, Yashim. Help yourself.” He popped a sugared lozenge into his mouth. “The public ceremony is tomorrow. The real ceremony began here, today-and worse than the changeover, if that’s possible. Who gets into the first caique? What shall they wear? Do they land this side of the bridge, or is it proper to go under it? I don’t know,” he added, in a tone to suggest he didn’t much care, either. “And now what new worries do you bring me, Yashim?”

Yashim frowned. His eye fell on an ormolu clock, standing on a shelf. It told ferenghi time, the hours spaced out impersonally between night and light. It was not how time seemed to Yashim: his hours had been as long as days. He could see its cogs and springs behind beveled glass.

He said: “What is the engine, Ibou? What does it mean?”

Ibou turned his head slowly and looked at Yashim slyly, out of the corner of his eye. “The engine?”

Yashim gazed at the clock. “Something Melda said.”

“A bit of foolishness. The housekeeper ladies make it a joke among them, when new girls are brought in.”

Yashim opened his hands and shrugged, nonplussed. “The engine?”

“Well, there’s an old table, down in the basement. The housekeepers fool about with it.” Ibou waved his hand as if it didn’t matter and was beneath his dignity to comment.

“Fool about?” But Melda hadn’t suggested fooling about. I have seen the engine, she’d said.

The aga heaved a sigh. “I should deal with it, I suppose.” He wiped his hands across his eyes. “They take the novices down to look at the table. The new girls.”

“Yes?”

Ibou blew out his cheeks. “The table stands on a stone flagged floor, which looks like a trapdoor. They-frighten the girls, a bit. That’s what I’ve heard.”

“The novices,” Yashim repeated. “And where does the engine come in?”

Ibou pulled a face. “Pouf. I don’t know. If a girl misbehaves, they tell them, she’ll be strapped to this table.” He stuck a finger in the air and rotated it. “They tell them never to reveal anything they’ve heard or seen.”

“Or what?”

The aga rolled his eyes. “Or they’ll strap her down, and the table will start to spin, around and around, and sink down through the floor into the Bosphorus.” He let his hand drop to his lap.

“I see.” Yashim was not smiling.

“It’s a bit of fun, Yashim.”

Yashim had seen many girls fresh off the hills enter the palace for the first time. He remembered a little black girl bought by one of the late sultan’s khadins, who came into the harem with her eyes and mouth like O s. She had gone about stroking everything and muttering, “Isn’t it lovely! Isn’t it lovely!” over and over again. In the evening she had thought she would be sent away; when they explained she would live there forever, she burst into tears.

He’d seen others, though, halting and shy, bemused by the form of speech they heard, dazzled by the bearing of the harem women, stupefied by the luxury. Some physically shook with fear at the prospect of being introduced. Yashim thought of Hyacinth, frightened by the first snow.

“The engine doesn’t exist,” Ibou snapped.

“Not here. But at Topkapi? Maybe there is an engine. Maybe, Ibou, your predecessors found it useful to have one.”

The Kislar aga shrugged lightly. “At Topkapi, Yashim, I worked in the library. Nobody pushed books into the Bosphorus. How would I know? The lady Talfa is the one to ask. She showed it to the girls.”

“I see.” He thought of Melda, frozen with misery. “Who would Elif have confided in, when she had her trouble? Apart from Melda. Would she have spoken to Talfa? Asked her for help, maybe?”

“Talfa?” The Kislar aga looked incredulous. “They hated each other.”

It was Yashim’s turn to look surprised. “Why?”

Ibou groaned. “That dreadful day, when the new girls came across, Elif was very rude to the lady Talfa. She treated her like one of Sultan Mahmut’s concubines.”

“Not a good start.”

“No. The lady Talfa gave her-and Melda-the job of escorting a little girl.”

“Which they didn’t like?”

“They thought it was b-b-beneath them. Elif was very, very angry. She made remarks-and did some foolish things, I believe.”

“Foolish things?”

The aga rolled his eyes. “She put a rat’s tail in the lady Talfa’s makeup pot.”

“Who told you that?”

“I didn’t need to be told. You could hear Talfa all over the palace.”

“And you knew it was Elif?”

“Who else? She denied it, naturally.” Ibou blew out his cheeks. “You cannot believe the spite and fury of these women, Yashim.”

“I wouldn’t say that, Ibou.”

He got up. Yashim knew that all sorts of children lived in the harem-princes and princesses, slave girls, children adopted into the imperial family for political or diplomatic reasons. “Who was the girl?”

Ibou shrugged. “We call her Roxelana. The lady Talfa took a shine to her. Very quiet little thing.”

“Why Roxelana? She’s Russian?”

“Either that, or it’s just because she has red hair.”

“And that’s all you can tell me?”

“She has red hair. She didn’t like her kalfas wearing their orchestra uniform. She didn’t like their hats.” Ibou flung up his hands in exasperation. “She’s about five. Just a little girl, Yashim. Hyacinth would have been the person to ask, if you wanted.”

Yashim saw the tears welling up in the aga’s eyes.

“Hyacinth? Why Hyacinth?”

“Because Hyacinth was responsible for taking her into the harem. It was Hyacinth who gave her the name.”