An Evil Eye

75

Melda collapsed onto the divan, weeping.

She was dressed in the usual harem motley, a jumble of tailored and traditional costume bought in Paris and the Grand Bazaar, Turkish slippers peeping out from beneath French petticoats, a slashed and striped velvet jacket over a bodice of ruched silk, a corded girdle and a muslin shawl.

Yashim drew up a stool and perched on it, one leg drawn up, wrists dangling.

“Melda, my name is Yashim. I want to talk about what happened to Elif.”

The girl covered her face with her hands.

“She was ill, Melda, wasn’t she? Something inside, that was hurting her very badly. She should have seen a doctor.” He frowned. “You know what a doctor is, Melda?”

Melda’s shoulders heaved. Very gently, Yashim took her wrists and lowered her hands.

“Melda?”

She turned her face away.

“Tell me,” Yashim urged. “Tell me what happened to Elif.”

She shook her head convulsively.

“I-have-seen-the engine,” she gasped.

“The engine?”

She dragged her hands free and clapped them over her ears, rocking to and fro.

“I don’t understand, Melda.”

Her eyes grew very wide, and she moved her hands to cover her mouth. Outside, the muezzin was calling the faithful to Friday prayers.

“How could you understand?” she burst out. “You-did you step out from a rock, or drop from a stork’s beak? Did I grow like an apple on a tree? No!” Bright spots had appeared on her cheeks, and her hands were clenched. Gone was the court lisp, the fluting voice, the trembling eyelash. Melda spoke in the stony voice of the mountains where she was raised; and she evoked an ancient bitterness, as old as the pagan gods of Circassia. “Men plant children in our bellies, and we bear them until we die.”

Yashim rocked slowly back.

Melda turned her eyes on him and then, like a snake, she drew back her head and spat.

“Elif was pregnant.”

Yashim remained motionless, gazing at the girl’s face. “The sultan chose her?”

The Kislar aga had said nothing about that, Yashim thought. Everything about a girl was carefully considered before she was promoted to gozde: her looks, her bearing, her conduct. To be selected to share the sultan’s bed was a very high honor: from it, with ordinary luck, flowed all the rewards the sultan could bestow upon a woman-rank, and fortune, and power within these four walls.

“The sultan?” Her lips trembled. “How? How, efendi, could that be?”

She covered her face with her hands and began to sob.

Yashim murmured a few words: he hardly knew what to say. He stood up and went to find the Kislar aga.