An Evil Eye

15

“I’ll clear a space,” Palewski said.

They were in his drawing room on the first floor of the residency. The windows were open, but no breeze stirred the wisteria outside. The grate had been swept clean and piled with logs, ready for the distant season when fogs and snows would return to Istanbul, but the rest of the room was in its usual state of comfortable disorder. Books lay on the armchairs, on the floor, and piled up on the sideboard. The escritoire was covered in papers. It looked as if a regiment of scholars had been surprised only moments before and forced to flee.

“The translation,” Palewski said, sweeping the sheets up and dropping them in an irregular pile on the seat of his armchair. “The watercolors must be somewhere…”

He found them in a shiny black tin box that had got lost under a large volume of maps.

“I’d rather you didn’t use the sable brushes,” he explained, handing Yashim a number 2 hog bristle.

“What’s this made of?”

“Don’t ask,” Palewski said. He handed Yashim a small plate.

Yashim selected a tube of cadmium red, squeezed a pea-sized bulb of paint onto the plate, and mixed it with the brush.

He let the handkerchief drop onto Palewski’s desk, and teased it open. The skin had dried slightly, and was curling and shrinking at the corners.

He took the skin between his thumb and forefinger and laid it on the desk, pressing it smooth. He dipped the brush in pigment, shook it, and began to stipple the ridged surface of the skin.

Palewski laid a sheet of paper on the blotter. Yashim picked up the skin and flipped it over onto the paper, taking care not to let it slip around. He took a second sheet of paper and laid it on top, then took a pile of books off the armchair and laid them on the paper.

He pressed down.

He and Palewski exchanged glances.

Yashim lifted the pile of books. Palewski lifted the paper.

And Marta came soundlessly into the room, bearing a tray.

Palewski looked up with a start.

“Ah, tea!” he enthused, letting the paper float back down. “Tea!”

Marta dimpled. “You need it when you’ve been to sea,” she said, and approached the desk.

Yashim sprang forward and seized the tray.

“Just what I hoped for, Marta. I was afraid the ambassador might offer me something stronger.”

Marta kept her grip on the tray. “When the kyrie has to work, Yashim efendi…”

She took Palewski’s bookwork very seriously. Marta was always gravely courteous to Yashim, but he sensed that she sometimes considered him a distraction.

He relinquished the tray obediently, and she set it down on the desk as Palewski whisked the papers away.

“I’ll pour,” Palewski said.

Marta’s lively black eyes darted from him to Yashim, and back. “As you wish,” she said lightly. She turned and left the room, her skirts whispering against the rug.

“So,” Palewski said.

Yashim carefully lifted the skin off the paper and they both craned over it.

“It’s a face?”

Palewski straightened up. “Not a face,” he murmured. “Rather the opposite, a Totenkopf. A death’s-head.”

Yashim looked baffled.

“It’s a skull, branded on the man’s arm.”

“But what-what could that possibly mean?”

Palewski placed his forefingers to his lips and frowned. “The reality of death, Yashim. Worms, bones, the grinning skull. Death conquers all, in effect.” The Islamic world had none of the imagery of faith or death that Catholics took for granted. No Madonnas, no cross. No danse macabre. “Here, I suspect, it’s a regimental brand.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “The soldier adopts the symbol because it represents what he wields. He deals in death, with all that implies. Also to demonstrate that he knows the worst that can happen to him. You conquer-and you heap up those skulls, the skulls of your enemies, as a warning and a recognition.”

“Like Tamerlane,” Yashim said.

“Tamerlane was a puritan. He stood against luxury and citified ease. To him, and to others like him, we are simply bones robed in flesh. In death, the reality is revealed. The soul, on the other hand, has nothing to do with all that. The skull reveals itself for what it is-an earthly prison. In Europe, the image became associated with the reformed church. Lutherans and Calvinists. Protestants in general. Most especially, among the Germans.”

Yashim took a deep breath. “The Germans. He was a German?”

Palewski shook his head. “Yes and no. I think we’re looking at a Russian brand. A Russian regimental badge.”

Yashim looked puzzled.

“Medieval Germans,” Palewski began. “ Drang nach Osten — the eastward push. Teutonic knights settling the pagan lands of the Baltic, pushing into East Prussia, Estonia and Latvia, up the coast. Later on, the Russians moved in, and the Baltic Germans had no choice but to accept the tsar as their overlord. They gave up their independence for jobs in the Russian army. The Baltic Germans take to the military life.”

Yashim nodded. “Like the Albanians, in our armies.”

“Very like. In Russia, the foot soldiers are Russians, pig-thick and loyal. The generals are Russians, too-loyal, but not necessarily so thick. But the officer corps is stuffed with vons — minor Baltic German aristocracy.”

“I see. And the Baltic Germans-how loyal are they?”

“Good question, Yashim. Obviously not considered quite as loyal as the generals-nor quite as dumb as the foot soldiers.”

“And the death’s-head? This brand?”

“Belongs, as far as I know, to a regiment that doesn’t officially exist.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Palewski shrugged. “It isn’t listed in the army book. You hear rumors. Stories about men with that insignia snatching a Tatar warlord, for instance. A platoon spotted in Afghanistan, to discomfit the British in India. It may be that the men who carry the death’s-head badge belong to other regiments but take orders through another channel, which remains secret. That’s what I think.”

Yashim backed away from the desk and slumped into an armchair.

“A secret service?”

“A military secret service, yes. Not the same as the tsar’s spies, quite-the ones I have to deal with,” he added, a little grimly. “My position may offend the tsar-but it’s a tactical detail. It doesn’t affect Russian strategy.”

Yashim blinked. The sun still shone, but the shadows had lengthened on the floor.

He glanced at the desk. The skin was curling up: as he watched, it gave a tiny start and rolled back and forth.

Yashim shuddered. “I think I need to take some advice.”

Palewski nodded. “Don’t forget to take the skin. I don’t think Marta would like it at all.”