The Bellini Card

6

Yashim took a caique across the Horn, directing it to drop him farther around the shore, at Tophane. He did not want to see the broken fountain again, or to witness the felling of that magnificent old plane. He made his way uphill, through the narrow alleys of the port; at night, this place was dangerous, but in the afternoon sun it felt almost deserted. A cat slunk low on its belly and disappeared under a broken-down green gate; two dogs lay motionless in a patch of shade.

He found the steps and climbed briskly up the steep slopes of Pera toward the Polish residency.

Most of the European ambassadors had already decamped for the summer. One by one they retreated from the heat of Pera, where the dust sifted invisibly and relentlessly off the unmade streets. They went to villa gardens up the Bosphorus, to conduct their intrigues and negotiations among the bougainvillea and the hyssop. Some of these summer palaces were said to be magnificent-the Russian and the British could be glimpsed, cool and white among the trees, from a caique gliding down the Bosphorus. The French, the Prussians, the Swedes all had their summer palaces. Even the Sardinian consul took rooms in the Greek fishing village of Ortakoy.

Stanislaw Palewski, Polish Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, remained in town.

It wasn’t that Palewski felt the need to remain close to the court to which he was accredited. Far from it: the ordinary burdens of diplomatic life rested lightly on his shoulders. No frowning monarch or jingoistic assembly issued him daunting instructions; no labyrinthine negotiations were ever set afoot by the Polish Chancellery. Poland had no monarch and no assembly. There wasn’t, indeed, a Poland at all-except one of the heart, and to that Palewski was bound with every fiber of his body.

Palewski had arrived in Istanbul a quarter of a century before, to represent a country that did not, except in the Ottoman imagination, exist any longer. In 1795, Poland had been invaded and divided by Austria, Prussia, and Russia, putting an end to the ancient commonwealth that had once battled the Ottomans on the Dnieper and at the walls of Vienna.

“You must always try to forget what you have lost,” Palewski had once remarked to his friend Yashim. “And I must always remember.”

On a whim, because the day was so hot, Yashim went past the gates of the Polish residency and over the Grande Rue to the cluster of Greek coffeehouses that had sprung up by the entrance to an old burial ground. Far away across the Bosphorus, beyond Uskudar, he could just make out the snowy slopes of Mount Olympos, shimmering in the heat.

Yashim bought a pound of Olympian ice, wrapped in paper.

He knocked several times on the peeling boards of the residency door. Eventually he pushed it open and spent a few minutes wandering alone through the ground floor of the dilapidated building. Out of curiosity he tried the dining room and found it as he had expected, almost impenetrably dark behind the tangle of clematis at the windows; the dining table sagged in the middle, and the stuffed, hard chairs ranged against the walls were green with mildew.

He went through to the back of the house, wondering if Marta, Palewski’s Greek maid, was in the kitchen. She was not. Through the open window he spotted a familiar figure half hidden in the tall grass and waded out to meet his friend.

Palewski lay full-length on a magnificent old carpet. He was propped over a book, wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat and a pair of blue cotton trousers. His feet were bare. A glass and jug of what looked like lemonade stood at his elbow.

“I brought you some ice,” Yashim said. Palewski jumped. He sat up and pushed his hat to the back of his head.

“Ice? Good of you, Yashim.”

Yashim slipped off his shoes and sat down cross-legged on the carpet. Palewski glanced at it. “Marta laid it out here-she says the sun kills the moth.”

“But you’re in the shade.”

“Yes. It was too hot.”

A magnificent palace weave of vermilion semicircles on a black background, the design of the carpet echoed the patterns of the caftans worn by the sultans in the glory days of the Empire, when the Iznik tile makers were at their best. It must have been more than two hundred years old. The Poles had been at their best then, too, battling the Ottomans on the Dnieper and the Prut.

“I haven’t seen this one before,” Yashim murmured. He ran his hand across the fine nap and winced.

“Rolled up in the attic. In canvas, too.” Palewski stood up. “Fluttering little bastards. Where’s that ice?”

He took it to the kitchen, where Yashim heard him banging around. He returned with a glass and the ice shattered in a bowl. Yashim gestured to the book on the carpet.

“Are you thinking of traveling?”

“I drag out the atlas now and then,” Palewski said. “My grand tour, suspended.”

Yashim nodded. Many rich young Europeans traveled through Italy and Greece when they came of age. Sometimes they came on to Istanbul, confusing the locals with their attempts to order coffee in ancient Greek.

Something moved at the back of Yashim’s mind. “When you say-suspended?”

Palewski busied himself with the ice and the jug, murmuring something Yashim could not quite catch. “Half thinking of going away for a while, Yashim.”

Yashim blinked. “Up the Bosphorus?” He found it hard to imagine Istanbul without Stanislaw Palewski.

“Farther. I don’t know.” Palewski pulled a face. “Not that I have a crowd of options. A felon in my dismembered country. Wanted by half the despots in Europe for upholding Poland’s dignity in a foreign court.” He shook his head. “Paris? Rome? London’s safest, I suppose.” He groaned. “Boiled beef and gin.”

Yashim smiled. “Pera’s pretty horrible in summer.”

Palewski scratched his ear. “I mean it, Yash,” he said gloomily. “The inaugural ball.”

Yashim laughed. “You have six weeks to get ready.” It was common knowledge that the young sultan would mark his accession by throwing a ball for dignitaries foreign and domestic on their return to the city. “I expect you’ve still got that glorious coat you wore last time-unless the moths have got it, too?”

“It’s not about moth, Yashim.” Palewski looked grave. “It’s the new sultan.”

“I’ve just met him,” Yashim said. “He has a cold.”

“Fascinating stuff, Yashim. Maybe I could take a caique up to the British embassy and cadge an evening in the gardens on the strength of it.” The ambassador picked moodily at the grass. “Sultan Mahmut may have been a reformer, but he had a proper sense of his own power. He waited almost twenty years to achieve it, but by the time he was big enough to do what he liked, I was a sort of fixture. He liked the way it broke the Russians’ hearts to have me turn up at his functions.”

“He liked you,” Yashim said.

“That doesn’t count in politics. Anyway, he’s gone.”

“And Abdulmecid?” Yashim watched his friend in silence for a moment. He saw the way his friend was thinking. “He won’t drop you.”

“I can’t agree,” Palewski said stiffly. “Mahmut was old and fierce. He was pleased to think that the Ottomans were the only people in Europe who still recognized the Polish Republic. Abdulmecid is young and probably nervous of stepping out of line. The assembled corps diplomatique are watching to see if he drinks champagne from the wrong sort of glass.”

Yashim frowned. “Are you guessing, or has someone spoken to you about it?”

Palewski dismissed the question with a wave. “Of course not. No one ever will. In case you’re wondering, they haven’t stopped my stipend yet, either. It doesn’t mean a thing. They’ll probably go on paying that until I drop down dead. It’s the Ottoman way, Yashim. Polite and indirect. You know that.”

Yashim had been tracing a pattern in the carpet with his finger. “I could try to speak to someone, if you like.”

Palewski blew out his cheeks. “Decent of you, Yashim. Just don’t think it would sway the balance.”

Yashim drew a long breath. “I could find out if you’re invited?”

“It’s a bit late, actually. I saw the Sardinian consul yesterday in the street. Grinning like an organ grinder and all ready to move up to his hovel in Karakoy. Had the wretched invitation in his pocket. The Sardinian consul, Yash! Wouldn’t surprise me if the sultan asked that French tailor in Pera to come along. It’s not an exclusive affair.”

Yashim sighed.

“I’m in a difficult position at the palace, too.”

He told Palewski about Resid’s warning and the sultan’s interest in an old painting.

When he had finished he took a sip of lemonade.

“Very weak,” Palewski explained grimly, as Yashim choked. “Low-grade stuff, too. I wouldn’t use bison grass.” He lay on his side, his chin cupped in his hand. “Ask yourself: What if the Bellini does exist?”

Yashim shrugged. “I buy it for the sultan.”

Palewski was quiet for a moment. “Do you remember Lefevre, the Frenchman? He stole old books.”

Yashim nodded. How could he forget? ^*

“I told you then about provenance. About how a book could become valuable if it had a story attached to it. Remember?”

Yashim remembered. Old books, guarded in some monkish scriptorium for generations, could accrue a value far beyond their worth as literature. Sometimes, it seemed, beyond the value of a human life.

“Bellini’s portrait of Mehmet could be worth a lot of money, Yash,” Palewski said. “A Bellini’s just the sort of thing some young milord would want to carry off in triumph to his big house. And a Bellini portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror-so much the better. Exotic. Story attached. Impresses his friends.”

Yashim’s chin sank onto his breast. He thought of the Iznik tiles he had rescued. To him they were priceless, irreplaceable. They were beautiful works of an artist’s skill and imagination-but in Istanbul they were treated like old bricks.

He took a sip of Polish lemonade.

“Imagine if some turbaned Ottoman dignitary arrives in Venice with instructions to buy the painting and a sultan’s purse at his disposal.”

Yashim’s nose prickled against the vodka. “I pay too much,” he said simply.

“You’re a sitting duck, Yashim. You’ll pay double for an artwork that many of Abdulmecid’s subjects will think is blasphemous. Mahmut left the Ottoman state almost bankrupt: it’s an open secret. Resid is right. This, Yashim, is a watery command.”

“But if I don’t go…” Yashim trailed off.

“Well, you’re in a fix, Yashim. If you don’t go, the sultan may resent it. If you do, Resid will never forgive you.”

Yashim snatched up Palewski’s atlas and bent his head over the map. Mountains on the atlas were shown as a scattering of tiny peaks, cities as small black dots. The edge of the land was represented by a pretty shading, in blue.

His first commission from the new regime-and already it was compromised! Resid wanted him to stay and forget. The sultan wanted him to go. Resid was right: Palewski said so, but the sultan ruled.

Yashim laid a finger on the map. “You’re right. I can’t go.” He picked out the Latin inscriptions. Adriaticum. Ragusa. Venetia. “But you can. You can go and buy the sultan’s Bellini, my old friend.”

Palewski opened his mouth and shut it again in astonishment. “Me?” He sat up. “Yashim, you must have taken leave-”

“The grand tour-resumed,” Yashim interrupted. “And more important, the sultan’s gratitude.”

Palewski looked at him uncertainly.

“The Conqueror, restored by the Polish ambassador to the city he won? I think it’s worth an invitation to the inaugural ball.”

His friend looked up into the branches of the mulberry tree. “Yes, but-the Austrians, Yash. My position. All-this.” He waved a hand around the ill-kempt lawn. “What would Marta say?”

Yashim smiled. “Leave her to me. It’s summer, and all the ambassadors are away. As for the Austrians, well.” He paused. Palewski was scarcely regarded favorably by the Habsburgs. He’d been a thorn in their side ever since he arrived in Istanbul, a refugee from his own estates in southern Poland. The Habsburgs had sequestered his country, and they ruled over Venice, too.

“The answer, my friend, is that you will travel in disguise.” And seeing that Palewski was opening his mouth to protest, he added, “And I’ll have a drop more lemonade.”

^* See The Snake Stone.