Jason Goodwin Read online

  The workman who leaned in up to his chest and gripped the obstruction finally saw what looked at first like a gigantic turkey, trussed for roasting.

  What he saw next made him a very sick workman indeed.

  12

  **************

  YASHIM rolled out of bed, slipped on a djellaba and slippers, took his purse from a hook, and went down into the street. Three turns brought him to the Kara Davut Sokagi, where he drank two cups of thick, sweet coffee and ate a borek, layers of honeyed pastry fried in oil. Often in the night, at the time when people tend to lie awake and follow their plans out until they drift away into a happy sleep, Yashim thought of moving from his rooms in the tenement to somewhere bigger and fighter, with proper views. He'd designed a small library for himself, with a comfortable, well-lit alcove for reading, and a splendid kitchen, too, with a room off the side for a servant to sleep in--someone to riddle up the fire in the morning and fetch him his coffee. Sometimes it was the library that looked out over the blue Bosphorus, sometimes it was the kitchen. The water threw soothing patterns of light onto the ceiling. An open window caught a glimmer of the summer breeze.

  And in the morning, coming down to the Kara Davut, he always decided to stay where he was. He'd leave his books to glower in the half-light, and his kitchen would fill the room with the scent of cardamom and mint and throw steam onto the windows. He'd labor up and down flights of steep stairs and crack his head, from time to time, on the lintel of the sunken doorway. Because the Kara Davut was his kind of street. Ever since he'd found this cafe, where the proprietor always remembered how he liked his coffee--straight, no spice, a hint of sugar--he'd been happy in the Kara Davut. The people all knew him, but they weren't prying or gossipy. Not that he gave them anything to gossip about: Yashim led a quiet, blameless life. He went to mosque with them on Fridays. He paid his bills. In return he asked for nothing more than to be left in peace over his morning coffees, to watch the street show, to be waved over by the fishmonger with news of an important haul or to visit the Libyan baker for his excellent sprouted-grain bread.

  Was that quite true? Did he really want to be left in peace? The seraskier's note, the sultan's summons, the fishmonger winking, and the coffee done right for him each day: weren't these exactly the links he craved? Yashim's air of invisibility sometimes struck even him as a protective pose, his own version of the stagy mannerisms of those little gelded boys who grew to become the eunuch guardians of a family and slipslopped after their charges, frowning and moueing and letting their hands flutter toward their hearts. Perhaps detachment was a mannerism he had adopted because the agony was too biting and too strong to bear without it. A very fragile kind of make-believe.

  Yashim looked along the street. An imam in a tall white cap lifted his black robe a few inches to avoid soiling it in a puddle and stepped quietly past the cafe, not turning his head. A small boy with a letter trotted by, stopping at a neighboring cafe to ask the way. From the opposite direction a shepherd kept his little flock in order with a hazel wand, continually talking to them, as oblivious to the street as if they were following an empty pathway among the hills of Thrace. Two veiled women were heading for the baths; behind them a black slave carried a bundle of clothes. A porter, bent double beneath his basket, was followed by a train of mules with logs for firewood, and little Greek children darted in and out between their clattering hooves. Here came a cavass: a thickly swaddled policeman with a red fez and pistols thrust into his belt, and two Armenian merchants, one swinging his beads, the other counting them with fingers while he spoke.

  Yashim sipped his coffee and ground his teeth. There had once been hatred in him; it had passed. It had ebbed away slowly, like a receding flood, leaving only its shining imprint in his mind, the dangerous outline of bitterness and rage. These days he walked warily where the flood had been, trying to recognize old landmarks, to piece together the elements of an honorable life out of the jumble of everyday objects he encountered.

  Yashim squeezed his eyes shut tight, to focus on the order of the day. He had to visit the seraskier. Standing by that cauldron in the wee hours of yesterday morning, there were any number of questions he'd been too surprised to ask. What had the soldiers been doing on the night they disappeared? What did their relatives think of the affair? Who were their friends? Who were their enemies?

  Then there was the cauldron to reckon with: the oddest and most sinister part of the whole affair. He needed to visit the soup makers to see what they had to say.

  As for the girl in the palace and the valide's jewels--that was, you might say, a more private affair. In every family home, there lay a region that was harem, forbidden to outsiders. In the Topkapi palace, this region was almost an acre in size, a warren of corridors and courtyards, of winding stairs and balconies so cunningly contrived that it was sealed from the world's gaze as effectively as if it had been built in the great Sahara, instead of in the middle of one of the greatest cities in the world.

  With the rarest exceptions, no man but the sultan himself, or men of his family, could enter the harem.

  Yashim was one of the exceptions. He could go where no ordinary man could go, on pain of death.

  It did not do to make too much of the palace harem itself. It wasn't the harem that made eunuchs, though many of them worked there, and the Black Eunuchs, led by the kislar agha, effectively controlled it. Unlike Yashim, unlike many of the White Eunuchs, unlike the castrati of the Vatican, the Black Eunuchs of the palace were utterly clean-cropped: shaved to the quick in a single sweep of the sickle blade wielded by a slaver in the desert. Each of them now carried a small and exquisite silver tube, tucked into a fold of their turban, for performing the most modest of bodily functions.

  Yet men had been gelded for service in the time of Darius and Alexander, too. Ever since the idea of dynasties arose, there had been eunuchs who commanded fleets, who generaled armies, who subtly set out the policies of states. Sometimes Yashim dimly saw himself enrolled in a strange fraternity, the shadow-world of the guardians: men who since time immemorial had held themselves apart, the better to watch and serve. It included the eunuchs of the ancient world, and of the Chinese emperor in Beijing. What of the Catholic hierarchy in Europe, which had supplied the celibate priests who served the kings of Christendom? The service of barren men, like their desires, began and ended with their death; but in life they watched over the churning anthills of humankind, inured from its preoccupation with lust, longevity, and descent. Prey, at worst, to a fondness for trinkets and trivia, to a fascination with their own decline, a tendency to hysteria and petty jealousies. Yashim knew them well.

  As for the harem, none of the women there could come or go at will, of course. So Yashim's current business in there was, in that sense, a more private affair. Even time, Yashim reflected, ran differently on the inside: the harem could wait. Outside, as the seraskier had warned, he had just nine ordinary days.

  Brushing the crumbs of the borek from his lips, Yashim decided that he would visit first the guild, and then pay his call on the seraskier. Afterward, depending on what he learned, he would go and question various people in the harem.

  Which is why when a little boy darted into the cafe a few minutes later, red faced and puffing and bearing an urgent note for Yashim from the seraskier, the cafe owner shook his head and gestured helplessly up the street.

  13

  ****************

  MUSTAFA the Albanian sniffed suspiciously at the bowl of tripe. There were, he knew, certain parties in the city who had embraced heretical doctrines. Daily, he was certain, they were extending their dangerous influence over the weaker, more impressionable members of society: young men, people from out of town, even students at the madrassas, who surely should know better, found it all too easy to succumb to the subtle blandishments of these rogues. Some of them, he was well aware, simply abused the authorities' trust. Others--and who could say they were not encouraged by that baleful example?--recognized no authority at
all. Well, he thought grimly, he was there to root them out.

  He sniffed again. The color of the soup was good: no obvious sign of innovation there. Mustafa was of the school that followed the saying of the Prophet, peace be on him: in change there is innovation, innovation leads to blasphemy, blasphemy leads to hellfire. The notion that a good tripe soup needed the addition of a pinch of pounded coriander was the kind of innovation which, if left unchecked, would gradually undermine the whole guild and destroy its ability to serve the city as it should. It made no difference whether or not the heretics charged extra for the spice: the confusion would have entered men's minds. Where there was a weakness to be exploited, there would greed find its encouragement.

  Mustafa sniffed again. Lifting the horn spoon that hung around his neck as a symbol of his office, he dipped it into the bowl and turned the contents over. Tripe. Onions, regularly shaped, faintly caramelized. He dug down to the bottom of the bowl and examined the spoon carefully in the light for any specks or impurities. Satisfied, he lifted the spoon to his lips and sucked noisily. Tripe soup. He smacked his lips, his immediate fears allayed. Whatever secrets this young apprentice held in the recesses of his heart, he could definitely make the proper article on demand.

  Two anxious pairs of eyes followed the spoon to the guild master's lips. They saw the soup go in. They heard the soup flow about Mustafa's palate. They watched anxiously as he held his hand close to his ear. And then they watched, delighted, as he nodded curtly. An apprenticeship redeemed. A new master soupier born.

  "It is good. Keep an eye on the onions: never use them too large. The size of your fist is good, or smaller." He brought up his own massive paw and curled the fingers. "Too big!" He shook the fist and laughed. The apprentice tittered.

  They discussed arrangements for the apprentice's formal induction into the guild, his prospects, the extent of his savings, and the likelihood of his finding an opening within the next few years. Mustafa knew that this was the most dangerous moment. Newly fledged soupiers always wanted to start right away, whatever the circumstances. It took patience and humility to carry on working for an old master while you waited for a shop to come free. Patience, yes. Impatience led to coriander and hellfire. Mustafa tugged at his mustache and squinted at the young man. Did he have patience? As for himself, he thought, patience was his second skin. How could he have lived his life and not acquired patience in positively redemptive quantities?

  14

  *****************

  It was a singular request, for what use could a man have for a play cauldron at this time of the year? Mustafa the Albanian seemed to hear a dangerous word whispered in his ear. Was it not an innovation, to let a stranger examine the storerooms of the Guild of Soup Makers? It certainly seemed an insidious precedent.

  Yashim blinked, smiled, and opened his eyes wide. He thought he could guess exactly what was going through the old soup master's mind.

  "I'm known at the palace: the gatekeepers there could vouch for me, if that's a help."

  The guild master's frown remained firmly in place. His massive hands lay quietly folded over his paunch. Perhaps, Yashim thought, the palace card was the wrong one to try: every institution in the city had its pride. He decided on another throw.

  "We live in strange times. I'm not so young that I can't remember when things were--better ordered, in general, than they are today. Every day, right here in Istanbul, I see things I'd never have dreamed of seeing in my young days. Foreigners on horseback. Dogs literally starving to death on the streets. Beggars in from the countryside. Buildings removed to make way for strange mosques. Frankish uniforms." He shook his head. The soup master gave a little grunt.

  "The other day I had to return a pair of slippers that had cost me forty piastres: the stitching was coming away. And I'd only had them a month!" That was quite true: Yashim had bought the slippers from a guildsman. For forty piastres they were meant to last a year. "Sometimes, I'm sorry to say, I think that even our food doesn't taste quite the way it used to."

  Yashim noticed the soup master's fingers clench and wondered if he'd gone a bit far. The soup master put a hand up to his mustache and rubbed it between his finger and thumb. "Tell me," he rumbled, "do you like coriander seed? In soup?"

  It was Yashim's turn to frown. "What a peculiar idea," he said.

  Mustafa the Albanian got to his feet with surprising agility.

  "Come," he said simply.

  Yashim followed the big man onto the balcony around the courtyard. Below the balustrade, under the arcade, men were busy frying tripe. Apprentices staggered to and fro with buckets they'd filled from the well in the center of the court. A cat slunk through the shadows, weaving between the legs of enormous chopping blocks. Yashim thought: even the cat has its position here.

  They descended a flight of stairs and came out into the arcade. A man wielding a shiny cleaver looked up as they appeared, his eyes streaming with tears. His cleaver fell and rose automatically on a peeled onion: the onion stayed whole until the man swept it aside with a stroke of the blade, and selected another from the basket hanging at the side of the block. Mechanically he began to peel and chop it. Not once did he so much as glance down at his fingers.

  Now that, Yashim thought with admiration, is a real skill. The onion man sniffed and nodded a greeting.

  The master entered a corridor and began fumbling at his belt for keys. At length he felt what he was looking for and drew it out on a chain. He stopped in front of a thick oak door, banded with iron, and placed the key into the lock.

  "That's a very old key," Yashim remarked.

  "It's a very old door," the master replied sensibly. Yashim almost added, "And none the worse for that," but decided against it. The lock was stiff; the master winced and the key slid sideways in the slot, depressing the necessary pins. The door opened lightly.

  They were in a large, low-ceilinged room, lit by an iron grating so high up in the opposite wall that a portion of the ceiling had been sloped upward to meet it. A few dusty rays of the winter sun fell on a curious collection of objects, ranged in shelves along the side walls. There were wooden boxes, a stack of scrolls, and a line of metal cones of varying sizes whose points seemed to rise and fall like the outline of a decorative frieze. And there, at the back of the hall, stood three enormous cauldrons.

  "All our old weights," said the master. He was looking lovingly at the metal cones. Yashim repressed his impatience.

  "Old weights?"

  "Every new master sees to it that the guild weights and measures are renewed and reconfirmed on his appointment. The old ones then are stored here."

  "What for?"

  "What for?" The master sounded surprised. "For comparison. How else can any of us be sure that the proper standards are being kept? I can place my weights in the balance and see that they accord to a hair's breadth with the weights we used at the time of the Conquest."

  "That's almost four centuries ago."

  "Exactly, yes. If the measures are the same, the ingredients must also be the same. Our soups, you understand, do not merely conform with the standards. They are--I do not say the standard itself, but a part of it. An unbroken line that comes down to us from the days of the Conquest. Like the line of the house of Osman itself," he added, piously.

  Yashim allowed for a suitably impressed pause.

  "The cauldrons," he suggested.

  "Yes, yes, that is what I'm thinking about. There seems to be one missing."

  15

  ****************

  The seraskier sat on the edge of the divan, staring down at his shiny leather riding boots.

  "Something will have to be announced," he said finally. "Too many people know what's happened as it is."

  The workmen had been too scared to touch the obstruction in the drain once they knew what it was. Leaving it still concealed across the mouth of the drain, they had fled downhill to inform the caretaker of what they had found. The caretaker informed the imam, who was at that mome
nt setting out to climb the minaret to call the morning prayer. In a hurry, not quite knowing what to do, the imam sent the caretaker to track down the morning watch: the old man could hear the sound of the prayer breaking out all over the city as he scurried through the streets.

  There is no God but God, and Muhammad is His Prophet.

  By dawn light, a group of men could be seen milling about the drain. One of them had been sick. Another, hardier, braver, or more desperate than the rest for the night watch's proffered sequins, had manipulated the grotesquely misshapen corpse out of the drain and onto the cobbles, where it was finally bundled onto a sheet, wrapped, and hoisted onto a donkey cart that went slipping and swaying down the slope to the Nusretiye, the Mosque of the Victory.

  The workman who had made the discovery had already gone home, to sleep off his horrors or sluice them away in the vivid warmth of the baths. His mate, better shielded from the shock, remained to enjoy his moment with the crowd. Already his story was being retailed with appropriate embellishments among latecomers to the scene, and within the hour several versions of events were circling through the city. By lunchtime these stories were so finely rounded that two of them were able actually to pass each other without the slightest friction, leaving some people to believe that it had been a day of oddities in which an Egyptian sphinx had been dug up out of the foreshore while in Tophane a nest of cannibals had been surprised at their gory breakfast.