An Evil Eye

80

“ So my grandson needs me after all.” The valide plucked at an invisible thread on her shawl. “I blame myself.”

“Valide?”

“My son preferred fat girls, Yashim. Imagined they lacked energy. So I picked out Bezmialem. A foolish prejudice of mine.” Her silver bangles tinkled on her arm. “I thought Bezmialem was stronger than she turned out to be. More intelligent.”

Yashim nodded in sympathy.

“She is merely thin, au fond.” The valide gave an expressive little shrug, as if to dismiss the whole affair. “One learns, Yashim. The new palace at Besiktas was, of course, Mahmut’s mistake,” she added. “I told him so.”

“You will find it-strange,” Yashim suggested.

“I am aware of that. Perhaps I should have gone before, but I am a stubborn woman.”

Yashim tried to imagine the valide at Besiktas, with its gauzy windows and chandeliers, its stiff upholstered chairs and yards and yards of open, empty space.

“I shall rely on you,” the valide continued. “And Tulin knows Besiktas quite well. A cause de sa flute. ”

“You’re fond of her, valide.”

“Fortunately for you, she can’t read French.” The valide wagged her finger. “Tulin plays the flute with the other girls. The sultan’s orchestra. Very pretty. And it keeps them occupied. Here at Topkapi she sees an old woman and some superstitious eunuchs. I am thinking of her interests, as it happens. I do not wish her to be too much alone,” she added. “Isolation is dangerous in the harem, Yashim. A girl must have friends.”

Yashim smiled. “You told me once that a girl needs enemies.”

The valide shrugged. “Better an enemy than no one at all. To be regarded, that’s something. But to be truly alone-in here, at least-it’s a kind of death.”

“When you first came here, hanum, you must have been isolated.”

“I, Yashim? What a ridiculous idea.” Unconsciously she raised a hand to her hair. “The place was positively crowded, and I was a French girl, was I not? Espece de merveille! And on the way-well, I had learned more than most of the Circassians. More Turkish, certainly.

“I shall leave in two weeks, inshallah. I will ask Tulin to find out which day would be propitious.” She caught his glance, and raised an eyebrow. “Not for my own sake, Yashim. I do it for the girls.”

“It may be just as well, hanum. There have been-well, some disturbing incidents in the harem.”

“Indeed. The Kislar aga has told me so.”

Yashim looked surprised. “He has spoken to you-about Elif?”

The valide put her fingers to her temples. “Elif, Fatima, Begum,” she intoned wearily. “Really, Yashim.”

“But Elif-” Yashim looked doubtful. “Melda. He told you about Melda?”

The valide frowned. “My son, the sultan, does what he likes.”

“Hanum?” Yashim shifted uneasily on the edge of the divan: it seemed to him that the valide’s mind was drifting toward the past.

“He does exactly what he likes.” The valide raised her chin and looked down her beautiful cheekbones. “He moves his court into that wretched palace of his. Everything French, he says.” Yashim nodded slowly, unable to halt the confusion in the valide’s words. She looked at him severely. “I don’t want people thinking I am to blame. His father never proposed such an absurd thing, wanted us to be comfortable. I had no intention of moving myself, naturellement. I am perfectly comfortable where I am.”

She spoke in clipped tones, not moving her head. When she had finished, she held the pose for a few seconds longer, and blinked rapidly, as though she had something in her eye.

“You have much to do, valide,” Yashim said quietly.

The valide turned to Yashim with the smile that had ravished a sultan. “You are very thoughtful, Yashim. I count you among my oldest and dearest friends. Thank you so much for coming.”

She held out her hand, tilted to one side, like a European.

Yashim stooped, and took it in his: her hand was very small, and mottled, and he felt the fragile bones beneath her skin where he raised it to his lips.