An Evil Eye

37

Yashim picked his way through the marketplace, where a few street dogs scavenged among the litter of husks and hulls, rinds and squashed fruit.

George was still there, swinging baskets of summer vegetables onto a handbarrow.

“Why yous comes so late, eh? Yous buying cheap today, efendi? Like beggarmans?”

Yashim shrugged. “I’m looking for a boy. Run off from school.”

“Maybe he finds himselfs a good job.” George picked up an empty basket and began slinging eggplants, tomatoes, zucchini, and garlic into it. He dragged a handful of parsley from a bunch in a clay pot and stuffed it into the basket. “I am sorry that you loses this boy, Yashim efendi, but today”-he put his hand on his chest and smiled-“today, I finds a boy.”

“A boy? Where?”

George laughed. “Eleuthra, my daughter, she gives me a big grandson this morning. A Hercules, Yashim efendi! Big like this.” He measured out a giant baby between his huge hands, and spat to one side the way you did when you heaped praise upon one so young and defenseless.

Yashim smiled. “I’m glad for you, and for your daughter. May God bless the child.”

George thrust the basket of vegetables at Yashim. “This is for yous. As my friend.”

When Yashim got home, he put the vegetables on the table and went over to the divan. He knelt down and reached under the quilt until his hands closed on a small box, which he took to the window.

George was forever giving Yashim his vegetables for nothing because Yashim had saved his life; but the weight of his obligation was becoming so burdensome that Yashim was almost tempted to buy elsewhere, on the sly. The trouble was that George always brought the youngest and freshest produce to market. Some people sold vegetables, and some grew them: George did both.

Yashim picked through the coins in the box. They turned up in the bazaar from time to time: Byzantine bezants from the days of Greek dominion, Persian silver from the reign of Shah Abbas, crude rubles from the early Russian tsars. Sometimes a gypsy, sitting over his tiny lamp with his tweezers and pliers, would open his little sack of metalware and pull out a coin from a distant era or a faraway place.

His fingers closed around a sliver of pure gold, a Persian daric from the age of Darius, found by a caiquejee in shallow water. It had come out of the water as bright and clear as it had gone in, two thousand years before-or so the goldsmith who had weighed and priced it had said.

Now he put it on the shelf. He would give it to George’s grandson. It was, he hoped, a lucky coin. He would have a little box made for it, to stop them from punching a hole in it and having the boy wear it around his head.

He went back to the kitchen and began sorting the vegetables from the basket. He did it slowly, turning each one in his hand as though looking for blemishes, letting his thoughts settle.

A boy was loose in Istanbul. It was not a disaster. For a quick-witted young man, Istanbul was a very interesting place; a hospitable place, even, Yashim reflected.

When the tutor said no one had ever run away from the palace school, Yashim had not tried to contradict him. But one hot afternoon, near the end of his last year in the school, Yashim had walked out of the gates and down the hill to the Grand Bazaar.

Yashim’s father had sent him to the palace school because he could think of nothing else that might assuage the agony of his condition. So Yashim had been older than the other boys: already, in most respects, a man. Loose in the city, he had walked at random all that day, and spent the night curled beneath a caique upturned on the shore. In the morning the caiquejee had found him there, fast asleep, and given him breakfast. A day later Yashim returned to the school. The old lala, his tutor, made no comment-he seemed to think he’d gone to Eyup, to the tomb of the Companion of the Prophet.

But a few days later he had been introduced to Fevzi Ahmet.

Yashim took two eggplants, topped and tailed them with his paring knife, and sliced them lengthwise. He laid the slices on a plate and sprinkled them with salt.

Three weeks ago, in the dying days of Sultan Mahmut’s reign, a Russian agent had visited Chalki. Evidently not for the good of his health. Not for the good of his immortal soul. He came because Fevzi Ahmet, the Kapudan pasha, lived on the island.

Perhaps he came to spy on the Kapudan pasha. Perhaps Fevzi Ahmet found him in his garden, or rifling his papers. Time was short; the fleet about to sail. He killed the Russian with his bare hands, disposed of the corpse in the monastery well, and left.

But if Fevzi Pasha had caught a spy-why would he try to conceal the body? Why, above all, would he not try to inform the grand vizier?

If Fevzi Pasha wanted the death to remain secret, the dead man must mean more to him than he wanted anyone to know.