The Janissary Tree

[ 6 ]

Stanislaw Palewski was about fifty-five years old, with a circle of tight grey curls around his balding pate and a pair of watery blue eyes whose expression of beseeching sadness was belied by the strength of his chin, the size of his Roman nose and the set determination of his mouth, which at this moment was compressed into a narrow slit by the rain and wind backing off the Marmara shore.

He walked, as he did every Thursday night, along the road which ran from the New Mosque up the Golden Horn, a conspicuous figure in a top hat and frock coat. The coat, like the hat, had seen better days; once black, it had been transmuted by wear and the damp airs of Istanbul into something more nearly approaching sea-green; the velvet nap of the topper had worn smooth in many places, particularly around the crown and on the rim. Approaching a pair of ladies swathed in their chadors, accompanied by their escort, he stepped politely into the road and automatically touched the brim of his hat in salute. The ladies did not directly acknowledge his salutation, but they bobbed about a little and Palewski heard a muffled whisper, and a giggle. He smiled to himself, and stepped back onto the pavement to resume his walk.

As he did so, something chinked in his bag, and he stopped to check. Nothing explicitly forbade the diplomatically accredited representative of a foreign power from walking through the city carrying two bottles of 52% proof bison grass vodka, but Palewski wasn’t eager to put the case to the test. For one thing, he was not absolutely sure that there hadn’t ever been, in the whole tumultuous history of the city, an edict which made carrying liquor a flogging offence. For another, his diplomatic immunity was at best a fragile kind of favour. He had no gunboats at his disposal to ride up the Bosphorus and bombard the sultan into a more amenable frame of mind if things went wrong, as Admiral Duckworth had done for the English in 1807. He had no means of exerting government pressure as the Russians had done in 1712., when their ambassador was clapped up in the old prison of the Seven Towers. Forty years ago, the rulers of Russia, Prussia and Austria sent their armies into Poland to wipe the country from the map. Palewski, in truth, had no government at all.

The Polish Imperial Ambassador to the Sublime Porte rearranged the damp cloth which protected his bottles, drew the strings of his bag tight again, and walked on through a dwindling series of streets and alleyways until he came to a very small porte cochere in one of the back alleys of the old town down by the Golden Horn. The door was small because it was sunken: only the upper three-fifths showed above the level of the muddy ground. A scattering of small boys tore past him, no doubt rubbing yet another layer of shine into the back of his old coat. A snapping bell, clapped between the fingers, announced the approach of a man in a tiny donkey cart, weaving his way with miraculous precision through the narrow interstices of the close medieval streets. Hurriedly, Palewski knocked on the door. It was opened by an old woman in a blue wimple who silently stood back to let him enter. Palewski, stooping, stepped in just as the cart swept by with a pattering of tiny hooves and a shout from the man at the reins.

Outside, the light, such as it was, was fading; inside, it had never, apparently, risen. Palewski wondered briefly whether sunlight had penetrated to this spot at all in the past fifteen hundred years: the sunken doorcase, he had long suspected, was early Byzantine work, and he had no reason to imagine that the dark wooden handrail, to which he was now clinging as he swung blindly but unfalteringly upstairs, was anything but Byzantine itself, like the stone of the house, and the window embrasures, and the very probably Roman vaulting overhead.

At the head of the stairs he paused to catch his breath and analyse the peculiar mixture of fragrances seeping through the lighted crack at the foot of the door in front of him.

Yashim the eunuch and Ambassador Palewski were unlikely friends, but they were firm ones. “We are two halves, who together become whole, you and I,” Palewski had once declared, after soaking up more vodka than would have been good for him were it not for the fact, which he sternly upheld, that only the bitter herb it contained could keep him sane and alive. “I am an ambassador without a country and you—a man without testicles.” Yashim had considered this remark, before pointing out that Palewski might, at a pinch, get his country back; but the Polish ambassador had waved him away with a loud outbreak of sobs. “About as likely as you growing balls, I’m afraid. Never. Never. The bastards!” Soon after that he had fallen asleep, and Yashim had employed a porter to carry him home on his back.

The impoverished diplomat sniffed the air and adopted a look of cunning sweetness which was entirely for his own benefit. The first of the smells was onion; also chicken, that he could tell. He recognised the dark aroma of cinnamon, but there was something else he found it hard to identify, pungent and fruity. He sniffed again, screwing his eyes shut.

Without further hesitation or ceremony he wrenched open the door and bounded into the room: “Yashim! Yashim! You raise our souls from the gates of hell! Acem Yahnisi, if I’m not mistaken—so like the Persian fesinjan. Chicken, walnuts—and the juice of the pomegranate!” he declared.

Yashim, who had not heard him come up, turned in astonishment. Palewski saw his face fall.

“Come, come, young man, I ate this dish before you were weaned. Tonight let us give it in all sincerity a new and appropriate name: The ambassador was out of humour, and now is delighted! How’s that?”

He presented the bottles to his host. “Still cold, you feel! Marvellous! One day I shall take a light and go down into that cellar and find out where the icy water comes from. It may be a Roman cistern. I shouldn’t be surprised. What a find!”

He rubbed his hands together while Yashim, smiling, handed him a glass of vodka. They stood for a moment looking at one another, then tossed back their heads simultaneously, and drank. Palewski dived on the mussels.

It was going to be a long evening. It was a long evening. By the hour of the dawn prayer, Yashim was aware he had just nine days left.