An Evil Eye

31

Yashim awoke to a pounding in his head and squinted at the sunlight. He rubbed his temples, swung his legs off the divan, and groaned.

The pounding did not stop.

“ Evet. I’m coming, I’m coming,” he grumbled, picking his way past the empty dishes. A young soldier stood at the door.

The soldier saluted.

“Come in.”

As he stepped in he whipped off his kepi and tucked it under his arm, standing stiffly amid the remains of last night’s feast. The half-empty brandy bottle stood on a low table close to the soldier’s knee, but the soldier was too rigid to notice it.

Also, Yashim realized, probably too young to recognize it.

“I have come from the palace school, efendi. The principal requests that you attend on him immediately.”

The palace school-of course. In Yashim’s day, the young men had worn turbans and pantaloons.

Yashim sighed. “Very well. If you would be so kind as to run down to the cafe on Kara Davut and order coffee for me? One for yourself, too, if you like.”

The boy positively quivered with correctness. “We should not lose time, efendi.”

“Which is why you could order coffee while I dress.”

Half an hour later they arrived at the school gate, whose huge curling eaves projected over the street. Yashim turned to look back at the view, both novel and familiar: two sloping, crooked streets lined with low wooden houses, running down to a tiny open space. Not quite a square, nor even a piazza, it was simply a haphazard confluence of sloping lanes paved with huge, smooth cobbles. A thread of water spun from a brass spigot into a small ornamental fountain, fed from the aqueduct he could see in the distance, built by Emperor Trajan more than a thousand years ago.

Istanbul was a city that packed time like a spyglass in its case. It was a place where centuries passed in moments, and where a minute-like this one, standing on the school steps-could seem like an age. Yashim had not been back to the palace school, where the empire trained her best and brightest boys, for fifteen years.

“I lived here once,” Yashim said.

The boy’s eyes swiveled briefly toward him. “Yes, efendi.”

Yashim sensed the boy’s doubt and disappointment. “And you are-nineteen?” He smiled, a little sadly. “Almost ready to graduate, I suppose.”

“Seventeen, efendi.”

“You look older. Tell me, what talents do you have?”

The boy looked at him levelly. “Talents? Very few, efendi, from what I’m told.”

They crossed the courtyard. At the foot of the stairs Yashim hesitated, inhaling the familiar smell of sweat and roses. “It’s not Pirek lala still?”

The cadet looked blank. “Efendi?”

They came out onto a gallery overlooking an enclosed courtyard. For a moment Yashim was tempted to hang back: the man leaning over the rail was Pirek lala, the old eunuch with the iron-shod stick.

He blinked, and the old lala was gone.

“Bozu! I saw that! Keep your foot flat and try it again.” The man at the rail was much younger, though his beard was gray. He was dressed in naval uniform. “The wrestling, Yashim efendi. I am the tutor.”

Yashim salaamed. The hall was just as he remembered, with high rectangular windows on three walls and a floor of raked and watered sand. Below them a dozen or so youths grappled with one another, stripped to the waist, their bodies oiled and gleaming. Yashim watched them for a while, remembering another set of boys trying anxiously to perfect their moves, grunting with exertion as they shifted from hold to hold.

Yashim had been a good wrestler, agile and strong. He was out of practice now, but he’d never lost the technique. Twice, at least, it had saved his life.

“They look fit.”

“They should be,” the tutor replied, a little grimly. “I keep ’em busy, morning, noon, and night. I run a tight ship here, efendi. If they can’t take the pace, out they go. Army can take ’em.” He stroked his beard. “One I’ve had my eye on. Wrestles well. Not so much with the gerit — too young-but runs like a hare.”

“Which one?”

“Name’s Kadri,” the tutor said. “Penmanship, rhetoric, wrestling, whatever-the best I’ve seen in fifteen years. He’ll win his races every day for a week. He’ll memorize twenty sutras in a couple of hours.” He glared at Yashim.

“I see. Wonderful.”

The tutor’s beard quivered. “Half a dozen times I’ve been on the point of telling him to pack.”

“You mean, to leave the school?”

“It’s like this, Yashim efendi. Kadri just goes out, like a lamp in a draft. Finest student I’ve had, and then for a day, for a week: nothing. No results. Lights up again when he’s ready, but it upsets the others, you see? Sense they’re winning only because Kadri doesn’t care.”

Yashim nodded. The Ottomans had discovered esprit de corps long before the French gave it a name. It was the founding principle of the whole administration of the empire, and this school’s purpose was to engender it in the ranks of those who would go on to rule.

Of course, the Ottoman elite was riven by cabals and cliques, whose shifting alliances interfered with the frictionless running of the empire. But esprit de corps remained the ideal.

The tutor was working his fingers together, one hand clasped above the other.

“He has no talent.”

“You said he could run.”

The tutor squinted at him. “Meant the talent of an Ottoman. If he has it, I can’t find it. Excels at everything, but focuses on nothing.”

Yashim bowed his head. “And you want me to talk to him?”

“Talk to him?” The tutor gave a shaky laugh. “No, Yashim efendi. I want you to find him.”

To Yashim’s surprise the tutor stuffed his beard into his mouth and chewed. “Forgive me, I did not make myself clear. Kadri himself is not the problem. The problem is that Kadri has disappeared.”