AT the other end of the city, Preen the köçek dancer lay back on the divan, staring at the dark window.
A jet-black wig of real hair, bolstered with horsehair plucked from the tail, was draped over a stand. Her pots of makeup, her brushes and tweezers, stood unused on the dressing table.
Preen tried to wriggle her frozen shoulder. The bandages the horse doctor had applied creaked. When it came to treating breaks and bruises, the girls always turned to the horse doctor: he had more practice and experience in a month than ordinary sawbones saw in a lifetime, as Mina said, because the Turks looked after their horses even better than themselves. He had probed Preen’s twisted shoulder and diagnosed a sprain.
“Nothing broken, God be praised,” he said. “When my patients break something, we shoot them.”
Preen had laughed for the first time since her attack. Laughter wasn’t the only medicine the horse doctor used, either: he had salved her shoulder and neck with a preparation of horse chestnut. He had then applied the bandages and painted the result with hot gum.
“Tastes dreadful,” he observed. “And stops the loops from sagging and coming apart. Whether or not it is medically necessary, who knows? But I’m too old to change my prescriptions.”
The gum had set and dried, and now it creaked whenever Preen moved her shoulder. At least she could work her fingers: two days ago they had been swollen and immovable. Mina had come to help her eat, bringing the tripe soup she loved in an earthenware bowl. Apart from the horse doctor and her friend Mina, Preen had no visitors: she had resolved to turn even Yashim away, should he come. Without her war paint she felt sure that she looked a fright.
She looked different, certainly. Her own hair was cropped close to a downy fluff, and her skin was very pale; yet Mina could see in the shape of her head and the high-boned face more than a trace of the boy she had once been, eager and fragile at the same time. With her big brown eyes she had pleaded with Mina to stay the night, and Mina had curled up beside her friend and watched her sleep.
On the third morning, Preen had had to tell her landlady that she had no intention of paying extra for her so-called guest. The conversation had been conducted through the door, because Preen refused to let the old woman come in.
“Perhaps I should deduct rent when I am not home for the night?” she called out. “It is your fault, anyway, that I have to have a nurse. I trusted you to keep an eye on people coming and going! And you let in a murderer!”
There was an outraged silence, and Preen grinned. Nothing could be more mortifying to the landlady than to be accused of slackness when it came to peering through her lattice. It was like doubting her faith.
That was earlier. Now Mina was coming in with bread and soup for their supper.
She helped prop Preen upright on the divan and handed her a bowl.
“You’re missing a lot of excitement, darling,” she said, sitting on the edge of the divan. “A positive invasion of handsome young men.”
She arched her eyebrows. “Men in tight trousers! The New Guard.”
Preen rolled her eyes.
“Doing what, exactly?”
“That’s what I asked them. Taking up positions, they said. Well, I couldn’t resist it, could I? I said I could show them a few they hadn’t thought of.”
They giggled.
“But what does it mean?” Preen demanded.
“It’s for protection, apparently. All that plotting and killing, it’s coming to a head. Oh, Preen, I’m sorry—you look white as a sheet. I didn’t mean—I mean, I’m sure it’s got nothing to do with what happened the other day. Look, why don’t you ask your gentleman friend?”
“Yashim?”
“That’s right, dear. Yashim. Come on, eat your soup and put on your face. I’ll help you. You can walk, can’t you? We’ll get a chair and go and find him right now.”
The truth, of course, was that Mina was getting just a tiny bit bored of her nursing duties. She fancied an outing, especially when there was something exciting going on outside. So she was her most persuasive and overruled Preen’s doubts.
“It’s just that—I don’t feel safe,” Preen admitted.
“Nonsense, darling. I’ll be with you, and we’ll find your friend. It’ll be fun, who knows? You’ll be perfectly safe going out. Just as safe as staying here. Safer.”
Later, Preen was to remember that remark.