The Janissary Tree (13 page)

"Like
the dervish. Ecstatic states. Liberation of the soul from the prison of the
body."

"Exactly,
but the means were different. You might say, more primitive."

"How
so?"

"True
adepts considered themselves to be above all earthly bonds and rules. So rule
breaking was a way of showing their allegiance to the brotherhood. They would
drink alcohol and eat pork, for instance. Women were admitted under the same
conditions as men. Much of the clear guidance of the Koran was simply brushed
aside, as unimportant or even irrelevant. Such transgressions helped to create
a bond between them."

"I
see. Perhaps that made it easier for the Christian-born to approach Islam?"

"In
the short term, I agree. They gave up fewer of their base pleasures. You know
what soldiers can be like."

Yashim
nodded. Wine, women, and song: the litany of the campfire in every age.

"If
they ignored the guidance of the Koran," he said slowly, "what guidance did
they receive?"

"A
very good question." The imam put his fingertips together. "In one sense, none
at all. The true Karagozi believed in no one but himself: he believed that his
was the soul that persisted in every state--creation, birth, death, and beyond. The
rules were irrelevant. But the ridiculous thing is, he had rules of his own,
too. Magic numbers. Secrets. Superstitions. A Karagozi will not set his spoon
on the table, or stand on a threshold, that sort of thing.

"Obeying
the petty regulations of the order allowed him to break the laws of God. It is
scarcely to be wondered at that all sorts of bad types were attracted to the
Karagozi order. Let's not exaggerate. The original impulse, if confused, was
pure. The Karagozi followers thought of themselves as Muslims. That is, they
attended prayers in the mosque, like everyone else. The Karagozi element was
another layer in their spiritual allegiance, a secret layer. They were
organized in lodges, what we call tekkes. Places of gathering and prayer. There
were many of them, in Istanbul and elsewhere."

"Were
all the Karagozi Janissaries?"

"No.
All the Janissaries were Karagozi, broadly speaking. Which is not the same
thing. Perhaps, my friend, we have been too quick to speak of them and their
doctrines in the past tense. The blow to the Janissaries? A setback. Maybe, in
the end, a creative one. You know, faith may sharpen itself in adversity. I
would imagine that we have not heard the last of the Karagozi. Perhaps not
under that name, but the currents of spirituality they tap are deep."

"But
proscribed, as you said. Forbidden."

"Ali,
well, here in Istanbul, yes. But they have made a long journey across many centuries
and many lands, from the eastern deserts to the borders of the Domain of
Peace."

The
imam smiled. "Don't look so surprised. The doctrine of the Karagozi won many
frontiers for Islam. Perhaps it will do so again."

"Which
borders? Where do you mean?"

"They
are strong where you'd expect them to be. In Albania. Where the Janissaries
were always strong."

Yashim
nodded.

"There's
a poem. You seem to know a lot, so perhaps you know this, too." He recited the
verses he had found nailed to the Janissary Tree.

Unknowing

And
knowing nothing of unknowing,

They
spread.

Flee.

Unknowing

And
knowing nothing of unknowing,

They
seek.

Teach them.

The
imam frowned. "It is, I recall, a Karagozi verse. Yes, I know it. Highly
esoteric, don't you agree? It goes on to suggest some form of mystical and
divine union, as far as I remember."

"What
do you mean, it goes on?"

"The
poem you've quoted is incomplete." The imam looked surprised. "I'm afraid I
can't recite it exactly."

"But
you could, perhaps, find out?"

"By
the grace of God," said the imam placidly. "If you're interested, I can try."

"I
would be grateful," Yashim said, rising.

They
bowed to one another. Just as Yashim turned to go, the imam turned his face to
the window.

"Sufic
mysteries," he said quietly. "Beautiful in their way, but ethereal. I don't
think they would mean much to the ordinary people. Or perhaps, I don't know,
too much. There's a lot of passion, and even faith, in this kind of poetry, but
in the end it doesn't suit the believers. It's too free, too dangerous."

I
don't know about free, Yashim reflected.

But
dangerous, yes.

Certainly
dangerous.

Even
murderous.

30

****************

He
saw her swinging down the street, tall and graceful and challenging the men to
stare. A few yards from him she slowed and began to look around. He put up a
hand and waved her across.

She
dragged back a stool and sat down abruptly. A group of old men playing
backgammon at the next table rubbernecked with obvious stupefaction, but Preen
didn't notice, or care.

"Coffee,"
she said.

Yashim
ordered two, avoiding the tray boy's curious stare. Not for the first time in
his life he wanted to stand up and explain. She's not, in fact, a woman, so
everything is as it should be. She's a man, dressed as a woman.

But
he admired her courage in coming to the cafe. He nodded grimly at the old men.

With
scarcely a trace of makeup, the flush in Preen's cheeks was real: she looked,
Yashim thought, better for it.

"We
can't talk here," he said. "I'll cut along home, and you can join--"

"We'll
talk here," she replied through gritted teeth. The boy served the coffees and
began to flick a duster over an adjoining table. Yashim caught his eye and
jerked his head. The boy sloped off, disappointed.

He
looked at her. "You're looking very lovely today," he said.

"Cut
it out."

She
sounded tough, but she kept her eyes on the table and moved her head slowly
from side to side. A trace of pleasure.

"It's
better if we're not seen together at the moment. It's my job to blend in, to
slip by unobserved. As for you, well, I'm not sure what we're into here."

"I'm
a big girl," said Preen. Her lip quivered. Yashim grinned. Preen covered her
mouth with a hand and shot him a look. Then she giggled.

"Oh,
I know I'm naughty, sweetie. I just couldn't help it. I had to do something a
bit wild, see someone I like. Shock him, too. To feel alive." She let a shiver
of pleasure run through her body. "I've been talking to Istanbul's most
disgusting man."

Yashim
raised his eyebrows. "I'm amazed you can be so sure."

"A
hunchbacked pimp, from the docks? I'm sure. He says someone saw your friends
the other night."

Yashim
leaned forward. "Where?"

"Somewhere
reasonably salubrious. Is salubrious the word I want, Yashim?"

"Possibly.
Your--informant--he wasn't there himself?"

"Not
that he told me. Don't you want to know where?"

"Of
course I want to know."

"It's
some sort of gardens," Preen explained. "Along the Bosphorus."

"Ali."
Perhaps salubrious
was
the word Preen wanted: all things are relative,
after all.

"There's
a kiosk there, apparently, perfectly clean. There are even little lanterns in
the trees." Preen sounded almost wistful. "You can sit there and talk, and
watch the boats in the straits, and have a coffee or a pipe."

The
Yeyleyi Gardens were once a favorite of the court: the sultan would take his
women to picnic there, among the trees. That must have been almost a century
ago. The sultans had stopped coming when the place became popular; in time it
grew faintly notorious. Not entirely respectable, the Yeyleyi Gardens had been
the sort of place where lovers used to arrange to meet by accident,
communicating in the tender and semisecret language of flowers. These days the
encounters were more spontaneous but even better arranged, and the language
possibly mercenary. He could quite imagine it being visited--a little
hopefully--by what the seraskier called boys of good family.

"So--what?
They arrived, had a pipe and a coffee, and left together?"

"So
I'm told."

"By
boat?"

"I
don't know. He didn't say anything about a boat. No, wait, I think they left in
a cab."

"All
four of them together?"

"All
five."

Yashim
looked up sharply. Preen tittered.

"Four
came, but five left."

"Yes,
I see. And do you, Preen, know anything about this Number Five?"

"Oh,
yes. He was a Russian."

"A
Russian? You're sure?"

Yashim
thought about this. Stambouliots had a tendency to mark down everyone vaguely
foreign, and fair, as a Russian these days. It was a function of the late war,
of all the wars the Porte had fought with the czar's men over the last hundred
years.

"I
think it must have been true," Preen said. "He was in a uniform."

"What?!"

Preen
laughed. "White, with gold braid. Very smart.
Very
big guy. And a sort
of medal on his chest, like a star, with rays."

"Preen,
this is gold dust. How did you get it?"

She
thought of the young Greek sailor.

"I
made a few sacrifices." She smiled. Then she thought of Yorg, and her smile
faded.

31

**************

ISTANBUL
was not a city that kept late hours. After ten, for the most part, when the sun
had long since sunk beneath the Princes' Islands in the Sea of Marmara, the
streets were quiet and deserted. Dogs sometimes snarled and snapped in the
alleyways, or took to howling down on the shore, but those sounds, like the
muezzin's call to prayer at first light, were the night noises of Istanbul, and
no one thought more about them.

Nowhere
in the city was quieter than the Grand Bazaar, a labyrinth of covered streets
that twisted and writhed like eels all the way down the hill from Beyazit to
the shores of the Golden Horn. By day, the hum of the bazaar belonged to the
most fantastic caravanserai in the world, an emporium of gold and spices, of
rugs and linens, soaps and books and medicines and earthenware bowls. Some of
the most delicate and useful products of the empire were manufactured daily
within that square mile of passages and cubicles. The bazaar was a
concentration of the empire's wealth and industry; it was served by its own
cafes, restaurants, imams and hammams; the strictest rules were laid down for
its security.

The
heights that commanded the bazaar--the so-called Third Hill of Istanbul--on which
the Beyazit Mosque stood, had been chosen by the Conqueror, Sultan Mehmed, for
his imperial palace, but the building was still incomplete when he began work
on another palace, Topkapi on Seraglio Point, destined to be far greater and
more magnificent. The old palace, or Eski Serai, later served as a sort of
annex to Topkapi. It was a school where palace slaves were trained; a company
of Janissaries was stationed in its walls; but its only royal inhabitants were
the women of previous sultans, dispatched from Topkapi on the death of their
lord and master to gloomy retirement in the Eski Serai.

That
dismal practice had lapsed many years before. Eventually, the Eski Serai sank
into disrepair, and finally into ruin; its remains were cleared and from the
rubble rose the fire tower that still brooded watchfully over the Grand Bazaar.

The
bag, which arrived in the night, was tied by its drawstrings to a heavy iron
grille that protected the Grand Bazaar from prying eyes and enterprising
thieves. By dawn, more than a dozen people had commented on it, and within the
hour, in front of a very squeezed-up crowd, it was finally brought to the
ground.

No
one was eager to be the one who opened it. Nobody thought it contained
treasure. Everyone thought that whatever it contained, it would be horrible,
and everyone wanted to know what it was.

In
the end, it was decided to carry the bag, unopened, to the mosque and ask the
kadi for an opinion.

32

****************

SEVERAL
hours later the bag was opened for the second time that morning.

"It
is a terrible thing," the kadi said again, wringing his hands. He was an old
man, and the shock had been great. "Nothing like this... ever..." His hands fluttered
in the air. "It has nothing to do with us. Peaceful people... good neighbors..."

The
seraskier nodded, but he was not listening. He was watching Yashim drag at the
cords. Yashim stood up and tipped the bag over onto the floor.