The Janissary Tree

[ 95 ]

Yashim had been dreaming. He dreamed that he and Eugenia were standing naked, side by side in the snow, watching a forest fire crackle in the treetops. It wasn’t cold. As the fire advanced, the warmth increased, and the snow began to melt. He shouted ‘Jump!’ and they both leaped over the edge of the melted snow. He had no recollection of hitting the ground below, but he had started to run across the square towards the huge cypress. Eugenia was nowhere but the soup master reached out with his enormous hands and lit the cypress with a match. It burned like a rocket as Yashim held on to it, pressing his face against the smooth bark; but when he tried to pull away he couldn’t, because his skin had melted and stuck to the tree.

He coughed and tried to raise his head. His eyes opened. They seemed to be filmed over: his vision was foggy. He made another effort to raise his head and this time his cheek sucked against the hard top of the massage bench, where he lay in a pool of his own sweat. He rolled over, his whole body slithering on the bench, and swung his legs to the floor.

A dull pain throbbed through his feet, and it took him some moments to realise that the soles of his feet were burning against the stone floor. He sat back on the bench, legs raised, and looked round. There was nobody else there.

The steam was peeling away from the floor in angry ribbons, which blended into a fog that thickened as it approached the dome. Yashim found that he was breathing hard: the air was so hot and humid that every breath stuffed his throat like a rag, and brought him no relief. With a heavy hand he dashed the sweat from his eyes.

The fog felt curiously intimate, as if it were really a problem with his eyes, and this seemed to disorient him: he jerked his head about, searching for the doors. He saw his wooden clogs beside the massage bench. With his feet in the clogs he stood swaying for a moment, holding onto the bench; and then, like a man struggling through the snow, he staggered forwards towards the door. He fell against it, groping for a handle: but the door was as smooth as the walls.

No handle.

Yashim drummed with his fists, unable to shout, his breath sobbing through his teeth. No one came. Again and again he crashed against the door, throwing his whole weight behind his shoulder; but it didn’t budge, and the sound itself was flattened against the iron-bound oak. He sank into a squat, one hand against the door for support.

The heat rolling off the floor made it impossible to hold that position for very long. He stood up slowly; bent double, he pushed himself along the wall. The spigot in the first niche had stopped flowing. There was a scoop on the floor, but it contained only an inch of water and the metal was hot.

He could not guess how long he crouched there, gazing down between his arms at the water in the scoop. But when the water started to steam he thought: I’m being braised.

But I am thinking.

I must get out.

Gingerly he raised his head, for it felt as though it must burst at any minute: he needed to keep the water out of his eyes.

A faint pattern of light penetrated the fog above. It came from the pattern of holes let into the roof of the dome, and for a second Yashim wondered if he could somehow climb up and reach it, thrust his hands, maybe, and his lips against the holes.

You can’t climb the inside of a dome, he said to himself.

His eye followed the base of the walls, searching for anything that he could use.

He almost missed it: the long bamboo cane attached to the head of a mop, tucked up into the angle between the floor and the wall.

He could hardly pick it up: his fingers were puffy and hard to bend.

Yashim raised the flimsy cane with an effort. Too short.

Once more he started round the room. Twice he almost blacked out, and fell to his hands and knees: but the burning stone tortured him back to life, and he tottered on until he found the second cane.

Now he needed a strip of cloth to bind them together. He tore at a towel with his fingers and his teeth, whimpering now.

At last he managed to create a nick in the hem. Even tearing the cloth he was like a puny child, nearly too weak to raise his arms, but at last he had a bandage of cotton which he secured around the two bamboos. The remaining scrap he tied to the top of the pole, and then he began to raise it up. The bare end struck on the side of the dome. He scraped it upwards.

It was too short.

Through the vapour, against the dome, Yashim could hardly tell how short. His face was set in a rictus now, his teeth bared. He staggered across to the massage bench and clambered onto it. Every movement was an agony. As he raised his arms he noticed that they were almost purple, as if blood was starting to ooze from his pores.

He started to pump the stick up and down, up and down. At every stroke he felt that he was pumping the blood, too, through the pores in his skin. He faintly remembered that he needed to make the stick move, but he could no longer remember why this had seemed important, only that it was all the instruction he possessed. It was all he had left.