An Evil Eye

68

The girl had shadows beneath her eyes, no doubt about it. Her face was drawn; at the rehearsal she had played so timidly that Donizetti had almost lost his patience.

“Violins! Violins!” He had tapped the lectern with his baton. “No, no. This is not what I want.” He mimed a violinist crouched over her instrument, hands feebly shaking. “No. Andante! Forza! Take the lead!” He swiped down with his invisible bow and glared at the violins.

The violins had looked nervously at Elif. Her eyes were downcast: she had no intention of meeting Donizetti’s.

“Elif,” Tulin whispered. “Are you all right? You look-” She had been about to say the girl looked ill, but it was unmannerly to be too direct. Unwise, perhaps: people said it brought the eye. She bit her lip: the word hung in the air, unspoken.

Elif looked at her nervously. “What is it, Tulin? What can you see?”

“Are you eating well?”

“Eating?” Elif hesitated, as if she were thinking about this for the first time. “Yes-no. I’m frightened, Tulin.”

Tulin smiled and patted the girl on her knee. “What of? Some girl, is it? I can speak to her.” She said it with emphasis: she was older, the orchestra girls respected her.

Elif laced and unlaced her fingers on her lap. “It’s not what you think. Oh!” She put a hand to her lips, where it fluttered against her mouth. “Something bad,” she breathed at last.

Tulin glanced around. Donizetti, the Italian, had gone with a little bow and a wave, and now the girls of the orchestra were packing up their instruments. Bright-eyed, a little flushed, they chattered together in low voices. One girl was giggling with her hand over her mouth; another was prodding her neighbor with a fiddle bow. A blond Circassian bowed myopically over her score, holding her hair back above her ear with one hand, wondering where she had gone wrong before.

For the girls this was a moment of freedom, before the tall black eunuchs stepped in and respectfully shooed their pretty charges to their chores. Respectful but firm, especially with the younger girls of lower rank whose jobs kept them far away from the body of the sultan.

Tulin frowned at the frightened girl. Elif was a kalfa, but only to a little girl: a little girl of scant importance.

“If it’s something bad you must tell me, Elif,” she said quietly. “I think there are many things you don’t understand. You’re young.” She put out a hand and eased a lock of the girl’s jet-black hair over the tip of her ear. “When you talk about your troubles they always seem less. Don’t bottle things up.” She smiled brightly and held the girl’s chin. “Look! Maybe it’ll turn out to be nothing at all!”

She saw the struggle in Elif’s eyes, the warring doubt and hope. The girl blinked fiercely: doubt won. “This is very bad,” she said in a thin voice, close to tears.

Tulin considered. “Come, my little one. You can tell me, whatever it is. I am quite sure you have nothing to worry about.”