Goodwin The Baklava Club

Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-30731-9
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 5, 300 Seiten

Reihe: Yashim the Ottoman Detective

In nineteenth-century Istanbul, a Polish prince has been kidnapped. His assassination has been bungled and his captors have taken him to an unused farmhouse. Little do they realize that their revolutionary cell has been penetrated by their enemies, who use the code name La Piuma (the Feather). Yashim is convinced that the prince is alive. But he has no idea where, or who La Piuma is - and has become dangerously distracted by falling in love. As he draws closer to the prince's whereabouts and to the true identity of La Piuma, Yashim finds himself in the most treacherous situation of his career: can he rescue the prince along with his romantic dreams? Jason Goodwin's bestselling 'Yashim' series has been published across the globe and received huge critical acclaim. In The Baklava Club, Goodwin takes Yashim on an adventure like no other, through the stylish, sensual world of Ottoman Istanbul.

Jason Goodwin is the Edgar Award-winning author of the Investigator Yashim series. The first five books-The Janissary Tree, The Snake Stone, The Bellini Card, An Evil Eye and The Baklava Club-have been published to international acclaim, alongside Yashim Cooks Istanbul, a cookbook of Ottoman Turkish recipes inspired by the series. Goodwin studied Byzantine history at Cambridge and is the author of Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire, among other award-winning nonfiction. He lives with his wife and children in England.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Goodwin, Jason

Leseproben

3

It seemed to Yashim that there were six of them, at least, after the front door banged and the young people raged upstairs and surged into Palewski’s drawing room, making a noise like porters with iron-shod trolleys on the cobbles of Galata Hill.

Then Palewski was surrounded, shaking hands, bowing at the young lady, and welcoming a tall fair youth who carried half a dozen bottles of champagne.

When the hubbub had abated, Yashim was surprised to count only four visitors in the room.

‘Miss Lund, may I present my esteemed friend Yashim? Yashim, Miss Lund.’

The men had not noticed that Palewski already had a visitor. Miss Lund sank a graceful curtsey and smiled at Yashim with enormous blue eyes. She was a very pretty girl, with almost white blonde hair held up in a bun, her shoulders covered with lace.

‘It is a pleasure, Signor Yashim,’ she said, in an accent Yashim could not quite place. Only, the accent did not matter, for Yashim could place her immediately, instinctively, the way a sipahi cavalry man judged horseflesh, or Palewski knew his guns.

‘We brought you some baklava, Count Palewski.’ A flat box swung from her finger by a loop of raffia. ‘Giancarlo says it goes well with champagne! I think these are the best sort – but perhaps you will judge, Signor Yashim?’

Yashim smiled. He was an intimate of the harem, and he knew women. When he saw the inclination of the plump shoulder, the trace of laziness around the bright blue eyes, he had recognised something in Miss Lund’s ease that reminded him of the .

A : yes, he would swear she was that. No door was closed to him, as it was to half the population of the city, screened by tradition and law into discrete spaces. Selamlik was the man’s world, at the gate; harem, the sanctuary. In the imperial harem lived many women who as slaves of the sultan formed the sultan’s private household. Some of them the sultan barely knew by sight, and some more he would know by name; but they all served him, in their way. They washed his shirts, arranged his kaftans, played him music and blushed at his approach. A few – a very privileged few – would have the honour of amusing him in bed. These girls were , as the saying went: the , whose particular task was to bear the sultan a child – a son – and so ensure the continuation of the House of Osman, which had ruled the empire now for six centuries, making it the oldest royal line in Europe, and perhaps the world.

If Miss Lund was the , it did not take Yashim long to guess who, in this room, performed the duties of a sultan.

Palewski introduced his friends in turn. Giancarlo was the tall one, who would turn heads in an Istanbul street: fair-haired and broad-shouldered, he looked well-fed and well-bred, with a high forehead and prominent cheekbones. His nose was big and his teeth flashed very white when he laughed. He laughed often, and then his eyes went to Miss Lund as though they shared a secret joke of their own.

Rafael looked older, but probably wasn’t: maybe it was the spectacles, or the short, dark hair that was already thinning a little. He shook Yashim’s hand and looked to the ground with a smile.

Fabrizio was a head shorter than Giancarlo but beautifully formed on a small scale, with a head of glossy black curls and a neatly waxed moustache. He was impeccably dressed. He had flung off a cape when he entered the room, to reveal a shirt of dazzling whiteness and trousers creased like knives.

Yashim inclined to them all, and smiled: they were the very group he had predicted, young, foreign and eager for an evening of champagne.

Giancarlo flung himself into an armchair and let his long legs fly upwards. ‘! I am not in love with the ladies of Pera, Palewski!’

‘Indeed.’ Palewski took some glasses from the sideboard and set them up.

‘Very ugly, and their moustaches bigger than the men’s. You haven’t noticed?’

‘As you may know, Pera was a Genoese colony before the Conquest,’ Palewski observed. ‘The ladies you object to are descended, in the main part, from the original colonists. Your compatriots.’

Fabrizio smiled, showing a fine row of little white teeth. ‘Giancarlo is all for Italian unity, in principle. But the Genoese? When you get down to it, Giancarlo’s Italy barely stretches from Lucca to Viareggio, by the sea. It excludes a village near Carrara, and even certain houses in Lucca, I believe.’

They burst out laughing, Giancarlo laughing hardest of them all. Yashim listened, mystified by their private jokes. Carrara? Some houses in Lucca?

Palewski popped a cork and filled the glasses. ‘I feel just the opposite. When Poland rises from the ashes, I want her to reunite with Lithuania, and have East Prussia thrown in for good measure. All or nothing!’

‘To the great Commonwealth of Poland Lithuania!’ cried Giancarlo, raising his glass.

‘To a united Italy!’ Palewski rejoined.

‘Death to tyrants!’

‘Down with the Inquisition!’

Miss Lund settled quietly beside Yashim on the window seat. She took a sip of champagne and glanced over the rim of her glass.

‘Politics,’ she murmured. ‘The find it exciting.’ She had very pretty little ears, Yashim noticed, decorated with bouncing corkscrew curls. She blinked. ‘And you, Signor Yashim, are you a passionate politician, too?’

Yashim thought of Palewski with his new toy and his memories of punts and ducks on the Polish lakes, and of these youths, with their noisy enthusiasms. It was all boys, and boyhoods, this evening. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘I was never quite young enough.’

Miss Lund chuckled. ‘The ambassador is not – so young.’

Palewski was leaning against the mantelpiece, glass raised, expounding something to the young men.

‘Enthusiasm for his cause may keep him young, all the same. Politics.’

It was Miss Lund’s turn to pull a face. Yashim gave her a sympathetic smile: ‘United Italy?’

‘Oh yes, in spite of what Fabrizio says. They’re all mad for it, Giancarlo most of all. That’s why we’ve come to Istanbul.’

‘To unite Italy? You seem to be a long way from home.’

She misunderstood him. ‘I’m Danish,’ she said. ‘You can call me Birgit. Don’t forget that my ancestors probably sailed up here a thousand years ago, to do business with the Byzantine emperor.’

‘Or to join the Varangian Guard.’

‘The Varang—? Remind me, please.’

Yashim told her about the Viking warriors who had formed the imperial bodyguard in Byzantine times. ‘But Palewski knows much more about it than me. Fair-haired giants, he says, with double-edged axes.’

‘Hmm. Do you think Giancarlo could be a Varangian, Signor Yashim?’

‘I’m sure – you at least could rely on him, Miss Lund.’

She glanced away, with a pleased smile.

‘And you, signor?’

‘I suppose you could say,’ Yashim replied thoughtfully, ‘that I am a sort of nineteenth-century Varangian.’

She laughed. ‘And who do you guard, Signor Yashim?’

He would have said that his role was to protect the sultan’s household and his empire; but then a cork popped, and a boy was shouting across the room.

‘Birgit! Drink up and have another!’ Giancarlo sprang from the armchair and took up the bottle.

Rafael laid a hand on his arm. ‘She doesn’t need –’

Giancarlo shook him off with an impatient shrug. ‘Birgit’s all right. These northerners can drink – eh, Palewski? Fabrizio’s the one we ought to watch.’ He stood behind Fabrizio’s chair and circled his shiny curls with the bottle. ‘Sicilian blood.’

Fabrizio glanced up, his exquisite little face a perfect mask. Gian carlo swung the bottle towards the window and advanced on Birgit.

Yashim stood up, smiling. ‘Your friend was saying that you are in Istanbul to unite Italy? You’ll forgive me, we Ottomans are sometimes out of touch …’

‘Of course.’ Giancarlo hesitated, then lowered the bottle. ‘Birgit – Signor Yashim – some champagne?’

Birgit shook her lovely head, and laid a hand on her glass. ‘But I see you have opened the baklava, Giancarlo?’

‘Baklava? Of course. Forgive me.’ He returned with the box. ‘I like the green ones best!’

‘They are pistachio, no?’ Birgit’s hand hovered over the honey ed treats. ‘Will you explain, Signor Yashim?’

He glanced into the box. ‘These are pistachio, and these are made with walnut. This one is made with the same thin dough, as fine as a rose petal, shredded first and then baked. They smell very good. Where did you get them?’

‘Not very far from here.’ She gave some directions and Yashim nodded, smiling. ‘He’s very good.’

‘I love the way he picks them out, in sheets, with his knife,’ Birgit said, chuckling. ‘And this one,’ she added, taking a bite, ‘is my favourite.’

Giancarlo nodded. ‘Yes, Signor Yashim. It’s time that Italy belonged to her people, the Italians. It’s a long shot, but it will come. First we have to deal with the Pope.’

‘The Pope?’

Giancarlo nodded. ‘I am – or was – a Catholic, Signor Yashim. The Pope should be a man of God but not a despot. He cannot serve two masters.’

Palewski said: ‘These boys, Yashim, think the Pope is in a fix. On one hand, he’s the vicar of Christ, the conscience of...