The Janissary Tree

[ 91 ]

An hour before dusk, Stanislaw Palewski joined a group of men spluttering with indignation at the doors of the Hammam Celebi, one of the better baths of the city on the Stamboul side. It stood at the bottom of a hill, below a network of crowded alleyways whose relatively generous width suggested that this was, all the same, a prosperous district, neither so crammed that its houses almost jettied into their neighbours across the street, nor so grand that they were hidden behind walls, but a district of well-to-do merchants and administrators who liked to saunter down the streets in the evening, and sit discussing the day’s news in the numerous cafes and eating houses. It was not far, in fact, from the Kara Davut, and it was with the idea of stopping for a bathe en route to Yashim’s Thursday dinner that Palewski had crossed the Galata bridge on foot, at peace with the world, with two bottles of the bison grass tucked very chill, and snug in their wrappings, into the bottom of his portmanteau.

The Hammam Celebi was unexpectedly closed for cleaning. Disappointed bathers clutched bags of clean linen and fulminated gloomily against the management.

“They are saying to come back in one hour, or even two!” A man with an Arab headcloth complained. “As if I should spend my evening running up and down hills carrying clothes like a pedlar!”

Another man added: “And as if this wasn’t Thursday!”

Palewski pondered this oracular argument. But of course: tomorrow was a holy day for rest and prayer, to be tackled unspotted, at least on the outer side. Thursday night was always busy at the baths.

“Forgive me interrupting,” he said politely. “I don’t quite understand what the matter is.”

The men turned to look him up and down. If they were surprised or displeased to find a foreigner—and a ferenghi, to boot—with a plain intention of entering their bath, they were certainly too well mannered to let it show. And when it came to bathing, the procedure was, by long tradition, a democratic one. The hours for men to use the hammam were hours when they could be used by all men, infidel or believer, foreigner or Stambouliot.

A third frustrated bather, a man with a small paunch and a few grey curls peeping from his turban, politely offered Palewski an explanation.

“For some reason none of us can fathom, the bath people have taken it into their heads to clean out the hammam in the middle of a busy evening, instead of at night.”

A fourth man spoke up, quietly.

“It may be some sickness. It has never happened before. Perhaps we should be praising the bath manager, instead of being so angry. We should take their advice and return in a short while. As for carrying our linen about, there are many decent cafes in the district, where one could easily while away the time. Is it not so?”

The group slowly dispersed. Palewski couldn’t tell if they still meant to return, after the last man had raised the possibility of disease. He thought, probably, yes. The Turks, after all, are fatalists. Like me.

That the baths could be closed down because of sickness surprised him more than the probability that everyone would come back in spite of it.

He wondered what to do. On the one hand, he had been looking forward to rubbing the blacking off his feet. On the other, though the delay might not make him late for Yashim, he was not yet quite as fatalistic as the Turks in the matter of disease.

He decided to sit and have a coffee somewhere, keeping an eye on the hammam. If it re-opened, and the signs were good, he could choose whether to go in. If not, he would simply go on to see his friend at the appointed time, and save his feet for the pump later. Or tomorrow morning, more likely, he remembered, thinking of all the vodka in his bag.

He turned, walked a short way up the hill, and chose a coffee shop from where he could watch the door of the hammam without moving his head. He could even look across the dome of the baths, and over the roofs behind, to watch the sun set into the Sea of Marmara, gilding the rooftops and the minarets, the domes and the cypress trees.