An Evil Eye

38

It took Yashim less than two hours to reach Chalki. He crossed in a hired felucca because he did not want to be observed, landing at a small fishermen’s jetty about half a mile from the main quay.

The fishermen he found mending their nets told him that Fevzi Pasha had bought the konak about three years before. He had made himself unpopular with the islanders by forbidding them to use the rocks down by the shore below the house; he claimed that he and his household-his women, the fishermen assumed-required absolute privacy. This in spite of the high walls that surrounded the konak and its gardens.

“You’d have to pile those rocks one on top of another to look over that wall,” one fisherman remarked. “Perhaps he’s afraid someone wants his money.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing it,” another added. “He doesn’t spend it around here, leastways.”

“Too right. What, a couple of fellows to do his garden?”

“Never sends to the market, either.”

“That’s right. Only a little market, kyrie, not like what you’d see in the city. But it’s money for the islanders. Muslims here, as well as Christians, but he won’t use them. Everything from stores, I’m told.”

Yashim took a good look at the pasha’s house and grounds. The estate stretched to about three acres, enclosed by an eight-foot wall topped with overhanging tiles, built to take advantage of every natural slope; even from the hillside it was impossible to see over it. There were two gates, the lesser one approached by a narrow mule track.

Yashim could hear dogs barking within the walls.

Later in the afternoon, while he was drinking tea in a small cafe along the shore, he again met the fisherman who cooked with tomatoes, and he took advantage of the license of the islands to invite him for a drink.

For a Muslim to sit with a Christian, openly drinking ouzo-even if the Muslim gentleman stuck to his tea-would have been unthinkable in most parts of Istanbul itself. Perhaps, in a dark Tophane tavern where foreign sailors regularly loitered for their billets, such a meeting would just have been possible; but here on the island-that place for romantic assignations, as Palewski had said-the rules seemed to be more relaxed. Yashim sipped his tea while his new friend watered his raki and drank it, flushed and happy, at Yashim’s expense.

Within an hour, Yashim had found out how to get into the pasha’s garden.

“But not dressed like that, if you’ll forgive me, kyrie,” the young man ventured, with a charming smile. Then some of his confidence seemed to evaporate, because he added, “You’ll have to wear some of Dmitri’s things,” and scowled, as if the reality of what he had agreed to do had just struck him.

“Let’s talk to Dmitri, then, my friend.” Yashim stood up. The young fisherman got slowly to his feet, punching his fist into his palm.

“My trouble, kyrie, is that I talk too much.”