The Janissary Tree

[ 71 ]

Yashim found the Polish ambassador in a silken dressing gown, embroidered with lions and horses in tarnished gold thread, which Yashim supposed was Chinese. He was drinking tea and staring quietly at a boiled egg, but when Yashim came in he put up a hand to shield his eyes, turning his head this way and that like an anxious tortoise. The sunshine picked out motes of dust climbing slowly towards the long windows.

“Do you know what time it is?” Palewski said thickly. “Have tea.”

“Are you ill?”

“111. No. But suffering. Why couldn’t it be raining?”

Unable to think of an answer, Yashim curled up in an armchair and let Palewski pour him a cup with a shaking hand.

“Meze,” Yashim said. He glanced up. “Meze. Little snacks before the main dish.”

“Must we talk about food?”

“Meze are a way of calling people’s attention to the excellence of the feast to come. A lot of effort goes into their preparation. Or, I should say, their selection. Sometimes the best meze are the simplest things. Fresh cucumbers from Karaman, sardines from Ortakoy, battered at most, and grilled…Everything at its peak, in its season: timing, you could say, is everything.

“Now take these murders. You were right—they’re more than isolated acts of violence. There is a pattern, and more. Taken together, you see, they aren’t an end in themselves. The meal doesn’t end with the meze, does it? The meze announce the feast.

“And these killings, like meze, depend on timing,” he continued. “I’ve been wondering over the last three days, why now? The murders, I mean, the cadets. Almost by chance, I discover that the sultan is set to issue an Edict in a few days. A great slew of reforms.”

“Ah yes, the Edict,” Palewski nodded and put his fingertips together.

“You know about it?” Yashim’s argument collapsed in astonishment.

“In a roundabout way. An explanation was given to, ah, selected members of the diplomatic community in Istanbul a few weeks ago.” He saw that Yashim was about to speak, and raised a hand. “When I say selected, I mean that I for one was not included. It isn’t hard to see why, if I’m right about the Edict and what it means. One of its purposes—its primary purpose, for all I know -is to make the Porte eligible for foreign loans. Poland, obviously, is in no position to influence the bond market. So they left me out. It was essentially a Big Power arrangement. I heard about it from the Swedes, who got it from the Americans, I believe.”

“You mean the Americans were invited?”

“Odd as it seems. But then, you know what Americans are? They’re the world experts at borrowing money in Europe. The Porte wants them on side. Perhaps they can co-ordinate their efforts. And, to be frank, I don’t think the Porte has ever quite managed to work out whose side the Americans are on. Your pashas are still digesting the Declaration of Independence sixty years after the event.”

Palewski reached for the teapot. “The idea of a republic has always fascinated them, in a schoolboy sort of way. The House of Osman must be the longest-lived royal line in Europe. Some more tea?”

Yashim put out his cup and saucer. “I’ve been stupid,” he said. “I’ve been wondering who knew about the Edict. Foreign powers never occurred to me.”

“But foreign powers,” said Palewski, with patient cynicism, “are the whole point: Foreign Powers, foreign loans.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

They drank their tea in silence for a moment, marked only by the ticking of the German clock.

“Your Janissaries,” Palewski said, after a while. “Do you still believe that they exist?”

Yashim nodded. “Like it or not, I’m sure. You saw them blotted out, you told me. Very well. Poland, as the world supposes, vanished fifty years ago. You can’t even find it on a map. But that’s not what you tell me. You say it endures. Poland exists in language, in memory, in faith. It lives on, as an idea. I’m talking about the same thing.

“About the fire-towers, I was only partly right. I made a link between the three fire-towers I knew about—the two still standing, as well as the one which was burned and demolished in 182,6—and the cadets, whose bodies all turned up nearby. I needed to find a fourth fire-tower, didn’t I? But I can’t. There never was a fourth tower. But I knew the pattern was right. The fire-towers had the hand of the Janissaries on them, just like these murders. It had to be right.”

“Perhaps. But without a fourth tower it makes no sense.”

“That’s what I felt, too. Unless there was something else about the fire towers that I couldn’t see—something that could link all three of them to another place which isn’t a fire-tower at all.”

Palewski thrust out his lower lip and sighed. “I hate to say it, Yash, but you’re skating on very thin ice. Let’s forget my reservations for a moment. You suspect the Janissaries of murdering these cadets, because of the wooden spoons and all the rest of it.” He wrinkled his nose. “The pattern of the fire-towers comes to you because the Janissaries once manned them, as the city’s firemen. Abandon the fire-towers, and what happens to your Janissary theory? Tell me that. You can’t have it both ways.”

Yashim smiled. “But I think I can. I found what I needed to know a couple of days ago, but it wasn’t until today that I saw how it all fits together. The Galata Tower housed a Karagozi tekke, a place sacred to the Janissaries. The lost watch tower at the Janissary barracks had one, too.”

“But the Beyazit Tower,” Palewski objected, “is modern. And that’s exactly what I mean. By the time it was built the Janissaries—and the Karagozi, too—were already history. Really, Yash, this Janissary obsession is only getting in your way.”

“I don’t think so. I just discovered that the Beyazit Tower was built smack on top of an old Karagozi tekke at the Eski Serai. So that makes three. What I’m looking for now is another Karagozi tekke—and I don’t even know where to start.”

Palewski groped on the table beside him and produced a set of leather boards. Inside was a single foolscap sheet of paper, folded in two, but loose. He opened the sheet and there, to Yashim’s surprise, was a meticulously executed bird’s eye view of Istanbul, in ink. Where the sky should have been, the air was thick with names, notes and numbers.

“You were asking for a map. Last night, I remembered Ingiliz Mustafa,” he said.

“English Mustafa?”

“He was actually a Scotsman. Campbell. He came to Istanbul about sixty years ago, to start up a school of mathematics for the artillerymen. Became a Muslim, too.”

“He’s still alive?”

Palewski snorted.

“No, no. I’m afraid evert the practice of Islam couldn’t do that for him. One of his pet obsessions was the holiness of Istanbul -how the city was steeped in faith. I daresay he became a very good Muslim, but you can’t easily overcome a Scottish training in the sciences. This map shows all the mosques, saintly tombs, dervish tekkes and such that he could locate in the city. He had it printed here, too.”

He dipped into the pocket of his dressing gown for a pair of reading glasses.

“Look, every holy place in the city has a number. The key is up here. Fourteen: Cammi Sultan Mehmed. Mehmed’s mosque. Twenty-five: Turbe Hasan. The tomb of Hasan. Thirty, look, Tekke Karagoz. And another one. Here, too.”

Yashim shook his head in disbelief.

“Only a foreigner would do something like this,” he said. “I mean it’s so…so…” He was going to say pointless, but thought better of it. “So unusual.”

Palewski grunted. “He wanted to show how his adopted faith was embedded in the very fabric of the city. Plenty of Karagozi tekke to choose from too.”

Yashim peered at the map for a while.

“Too many,” he murmured. “Which is the right one? Which is the fourth?”

Palewski leaned back with his fingers over his eyes, thinking. “Didn’t you tell me that the three fire-stations were also the oldest tekkes in the city? Isn’t that what the fire-watchers said?”

Yashim’s mind began to race. Palewski continued: “Perhaps I’m just saying this because I’m a Pole, and all Poles are at bottom antiquarians. This dressing gown, for instance. You know why I wear it?”

“Because it’s cosy,” said Yashim absently.

“Yes and no. It’s Sarmatian. Years ago, you see, we Poles believed that we were connected to a half-mythical tribe of warriors who came from Sarmatia, somewhere in central Asia. I suppose we didn’t know properly where we came from, and went looking for pedigree, if you like. There was a rage for it, and the supposed Sarmatian style—you know, silk and feathers and crimson leather. I found this hanging in a wardrobe when I came here. It’s a relic from another age. That’s what I like best about it. Every morning I envelop myself in history. In the fancied glory of the past. Also it’s jolly comfortable, as you say.

“Well, what makes me sit up is the thought that these tekkes are old, really old. Maybe the first ever established in the city. That’s your pedigree, if you like. That’s where your chaps might want to begin. Maybe the fourth tekke is also one of the original lodges in the city. The first, or the fourth, whatever. So you need to look for a tekke that’s as old as the other three you know about.”

Yashim nodded. The four original tekkes. It fitted: it was what traditionalists would want.

“Which might explain something else that’s been bothering me,” he said aloud. “Not the timing—that’s the Edict—but the number. Why four? If you’re right, if someone is going back to the beginning, trying to start over, then four’s the obvious number. Four is the number of strength, like the legs of a table. It’s a reflection of earthly order. Four corners of the earth. Four winds. Four elements. Four is bedrock.”

“And it’s going back, to the very origins of the whole Ottoman enterprise! Holy War—and Istanbul as the very navel of the world.”

Yashim could hear the soup master explaining that the Janissaries had built the empire: that they, under the guidance of the Karagozi babas, had won this city for the faith.

“Whenever things have gone wrong, people have stepped forward to explain that we’ve simply deviated from the true old ways, that we should go back and try to be what we were when the whole of Europe lay trembling at our feet.”

“Well,” said Palewski drily, “not the whole of Europe.”

“Poland excepted, the valiant foe.” A look of doubt crossed Yashim’s face.

“But how do we work out which was the original, fourth tekke? Your map here doesn’t give dates, even if anyone knew them.”

Palewski bit his nails.

“If we had an older map,” he said slowly. “A really good one, to cross reference with this one. Most of these tekkes, after all, wouldn’t exist. You might get somewhere by a process of elimination.”

He rubbed his palms together.

“It would have to be a very good map,” he mused. Then he shook his head. “To be honest, I’m not sure there’s anything early enough for you. I certainly don’t have such a thing.”

Yashim set his jaw, and stared into the fire.

“Does the name Lorich mean anything to you?” He asked quietly. “Flensburg. Fifteen something.”

Palewski’s eyes widened.

“How on earth, Yash? It’s the most astonishing panorama of the city ever made. Or so I’ve heard. I’ve never seen it, to be honest. There must have been several copies but you won’t find one here in Istanbul, that’s for sure.”

“An astonishing panorama,” Yashim echoed. “But you’re wrong, my friend. I think I know just where to find it.”