BY the time Yashim left the palace that Friday afternoon it was almost dark, and at the market by the Kara Davut the stallholders were beginning to pack up by torchlight.
For a moment Yashim wondered if he should have joined Ibou, the willowy archivist, for lunch, for he had had nothing to eat all day and felt almost light-headed with hunger. Almost automatically he brushed aside the idea. Regrets and second thoughts seldom occupied him for long: they were futile emotions he had trained himself to resist, for fear of opening the floodgates. He had known too many men in his condition eaten up by bitterness; too many men—and women, too—paralyzed by their second thoughts, brooding over changes they were powerless to reverse.
George the Greek came swarming out from behind his stall as Yashim stood picking over the remains of a basket of salad leaves. The sight seemed to drive him into a frenzy.
“What for yous comes so late in the day, eh? Buying this old shit! Yous an old lady? Yous keeping rabbits now? I puts everything away.”
He set his hands on his hips. “What you wants, anyways?”
Yashim tried to think. If Palewski came to dinner, as promised, he’d want something reasonably substantial. Soup, then, and manti—the manti woman would have some left, he was sure. He could make a sauce with olives and peppers from the jar. Garlic he had.
“I’ll take that,” he said, pointing out an orange pumpkin. “Some leeks, if you have them. Small is better.”
“Some very small leeks, good. Yous making balkabagi? Yous needs a couple of onions, then. Good. For stock: one carrot, onion, parsley, bay. Is twenty-five piastres.”
“Plus what I owe you from the other day.”
“I forgets the other days. This is today.”
He found Yashim a string bag for his vegetables.
The manti woman was still at work, as Yashim had hoped. He bought a pound of meat and pumpkin manti, half a pint of sour cream in the dairy next door, and two rounds of borek, still warm from the oven. And then, for what felt like the first time in days, he went home.
In his room he lit the lamps, kicked off his street shoes, and hung his cloak on a peg. He trimmed the wicks and opened the window a fraction of an inch to clear the accumulated air. With an oil-soaked scrap of rag and a handful of dry twigs he started a fire in the grate and scattered a few lumps of charcoal on top. Then he began to cook.
He dropped the stock vegetables into a pot, added water from the jug, and settled it on the back of the stove to reach a simmer. He slid a ripple of olive oil over the base of a heavy pan and chopped onions, most of the leeks, and some garlic cloves, putting them on to sweat. Meanwhile, with a sharp knife he scalped the pumpkin, scooped out the seeds, and put them aside. Careful not to break the shell, he scraped out the orange flesh with a spoon and turned it with the onions. He threw in a generous pinch of all-spice and cinnamon, and a spoonful of clear honey. After a few minutes he set the pan aside and dragged the stockpot over the coals.
He put a towel and a bar of soap in the empty water basin and went downstairs to the standpipe in the tiny backyard, where he unwound his turban and stripped to the waist, shivering in the cold drizzle. With a gasp he ducked his head beneath the spout. When he had washed, he toweled himself vigorously, ignoring his smarting skin, and filled the water jug. Upstairs he dried himself more carefully and put on a clean shirt.
Only then did he curl up on the divan and open the valide’s copy of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. He could hear the stock bubbling gently on the stove; once the lid jumped and a jet of fragrant steam scented the room with a short hiss. He read the same sentence over a dozen times, and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again he was not sure if he had been asleep; there was someone knocking on the door. With a guilty start he scrambled to his feet and flung back the door.
“Stanislaw!”
But it wasn’t Stanislaw.
The man was younger. He was kicking off his shoes, and in his hand he carried a silken bowstring, looped around his fist.