The Janissary Tree

[ 94 ]

Palewski drank his coffee slowly, watching the sunset. Outside, the hubbub of traffic was subsiding, the porters going empty-handed uphill, a few small donkey carts returning to stables, while the numbers of people taking the evening air increased. Sometimes Palewski recognised them—a palace official he couldn’t name, a Greek dragoman linked to one of the Phanariot merchant houses, an imam looking exactly as he had looked fifteen years before, when Palewski had had a discussion with him on the history of the idea of the transmigration of souls. Later he saw a couple of juniors from the British embassy—Fizerly, he recalled, with the straggling whiskers, now smoking a Turkish cheroot, sauntering along with a boy in a curious sort of hat, apparently made out of various pieces of his underwear, nodding and laughing at his side. Palewski wondered vaguely what they were doing, dressed like children out of a nativity play. Nobody seemed to pay them much attention, and they strolled down the hill and disappeared round the corner of the baths.

How much Istanbul had changed in the thirty years he had known it! What was it that he had said to Yashim? He had said he mourned the passing of the Janissaries. Well, the past ten years had been particularly lively. Since the suppression of the Janissaries there had been nothing to restrain the sultan except the fear of foreign intervention, and the sultan was a born mod-erniser. He’d taken to the European saddle faster than anyone. The change that had come over the city went beyond the gradual but continuous disappearance of turbans and slippers, and their replacement by the fez, and leather shoes. That was a change which Palewski was romantic enough to regret, though he did not expect it to be complete in his lifetime—if only because the great city still drew people from every corner of the empire towards it, people who had never heard of sumptuary laws, or shoe-laces. But more people from outside the empire were coming in, too, and in the gradual rebuilding of Galata after the great fire there were oddities like the French glovemaker, and the Belgian who sold bad champagne, ensconced in their little shops, with tinkling bells, just as if they were in Cracow.

The door opened and a gust of cold air entered the fug of the cafe. Palewski recognised the man who came in, too, though for a while he couldn’t place him: a tall, bullish man in late middle age, distinguished by a white cloak. He was followed in by two European merchants Palewski had seen around, but not spoken to. He thought they might be French.

The three men took a table slightly behind Palewski’s line of sight, so it was a while before he glanced back and recognised the seraskier, who had shrugged back his cloak and now sat with booted legs tightly crossed, his blue-grey uniform jacket buttoned to the neck. He was toying with a coffee cup, listening with a slight smile to one of his companions who was leaning forward and making a point, quietly, with the help of his hands. French, then. Or Italian?

Palewski wondered if he might order another coffee himself. He looked down the hill: the doors of the baths were still shut, but another knot of men with bags of linen had gathered outside, presumably rehearsing the complaints he had listened to half an hour before. Cleaning the baths! On a Thursday night, too. Sacrilege! Scandal! Palewski grinned, and waved at the waiter.

Well, he could see that they were cleaning the baths—and thoroughly, too. The little air vent at the top of the dome was releasing a corona of white steam which rose, eddied and then trailed away in the dusk. Caught by the dying rays of the sun, the steam sometimes refracted a rainbow of colour. Very pretty, Palewski thought. Next came a stick, bound with a trailing white cloth, to riddle out the vent. Very thorough, Palewski thought. If they finish in time, I will certainly try my luck.

The waiter brought him a fresh coffee. Palewski leaned back to overhear the conversation going on behind him, but it was being muttered at a distance, over the bubble of pipes, the hiss of boiling water, and the murmur of low conversation around the room. Disappointed, he looked out of the window again.

How odd, he thought. The stick was still going up and down in the hole, and the scrap of cloth was fluttering with it, like a tiny flag.

There’s cleaning, Palewski thought curiously, and obsession.

And as he watched, the stick suddenly wavered and keeled over to one side. Stuck at an angle, the little white cloth waved and flapped in the evening breeze like a signal of surrender.