The Architect's Apprentice (40 page)

In his dream Jahan was in his village. He trudged through the path leading to their house, the sun hot on his neck. Finding the gate open, he strode in. There was no one in the courtyard. Then he noticed a faint movement under a tree – a tiger. Not far from it a peacock strutted, a deer grazed on a scrubby tuft of grass. He plodded with the utmost slowness so as not to draw attention to himself. A vain attempt since the cat had already noticed him. Its eyes flicked to his, uninterested. At each step he came across other animals – a rhino, a bear, a giraffe. In his absence his family had built a menagerie.

Their house had been enlarged with more rooms, additional floors. Desperately, he searched for his mother and sisters, trotting along the marble corridors. Upstairs, in a room that resembled the Sultan’s palace, he stumbled upon his stepfather, sitting by himself. The man pointed towards the back garden – only there was no back garden any more. In its stead ran a rowdy river. Far ahead in a boat being dragged by the current was Sinan.

Jahan shouted. At his voice Sinan stood up and lost his balance, fluttering his arms like a bird about to take flight. The boat capsized, sending him into the water. Someone was shouting next to Jahan’s ear, poking him on the shoulder.

‘Wake up, Indian!’

Jahan did, his heart beating fast. Staring at him was the last person he expected to see: Mirka the bear-tamer. Jahan scowled at him, the memory of that night years ago returning as fast as a sword pulled out of its sheath.

Mirka took a step back, his hands raised in a gesture of defence. ‘Something happened. We had to tell you.’

Only then did Jahan notice the boy standing beside him. It was Abe, Chota’s new tamer – a young, slender, black African, no older
than sixteen. A kind soul but so inexperienced Jahan wouldn’t trust him with a rabbit, let alone an elephant.

‘What happened?’ asked Jahan.

Mirka averted his gaze. ‘The beast’s gone. He ran away.’

Kicking off the blanket, Jahan leaped to his feet and seized Abe by the arm. ‘Where were you? Why didn’t you keep an eye on him?’

The boy went limp, an empty sack in his hands. Mirka pulled Jahan away from him. ‘It’s not his fault. The beast went on a rampage, snapped his chains. Never seen him this mad.’

‘Something must have irritated him,’ Jahan said. ‘What did you do to him?’

‘Nothing,’ Abe answered, his voice dripping with fear. ‘He was possessed.’

Jahan changed into his
shalwar
and splashed water on his face. They tiptoed past the dormitories. Upon reaching the menagerie, they stopped at the entrance of the empty barn, looking for clues that weren’t there.

‘Which way did he go?’ Jahan asked.

A glance passed between Mirka and Abe. ‘He went out the main gate. The guards could not stop him.’

Jahan’s heart sank. In a city so vast how could he find Chota before he got himself into trouble?

‘I need a horse and a letter of permission,’ Jahan said to Mirka.

‘We’ll ask the Chief White Eunuch. He’ll be furious when he hears. But we’ve got to find the beast.’

In a little while Jahan was outside the palace gates, riding with no idea about which way to go. The streets sprawled in front of him, opening like fans. His horse – an aged, pale brown steed – was reluctant to gallop, though it soon gained pace. They passed through squares and bazaars.

Rounding a corner, Jahan came across a watchman with two Janissaries on his heels. The watchman lifted a cudgel, yelling, ‘You, stop!’

Jahan did.

‘Are you a
djinn
?’

‘No,
effendi
, I’m a human like you,’ Jahan said.

‘Then get off your horse! What are you doing outside at this hour, defying the Sultan’s rules? Come with us.’

‘
Effendi
, I’m from the palace,’ Jahan said, as he held on to the pommel of the saddle with one hand and gave him the letter of permission with the other. ‘An animal escaped. I have been sent to fetch it.’

Reading the letter, the man mumbled, ‘What sort of an animal?’

‘An elephant,’ Jahan said. When there followed no response, he added, ‘The biggest creature on land.’

‘How are you going to catch it?’

‘I’m his tamer,’ Jahan said, his voice breaking. ‘He’ll do as I say.’

Jahan wasn’t sure about this but luckily they did not press him further. He felt their eyes on his back even after he had left the street.

It was only when he saw a
muezzin
on his way to a mosque for the morning prayer that he realized how long he had been out searching. He remembered the ancient graveyard overlooking the Golden Horn and the talk that had passed between him and Sangram a lifetime ago.
I heard a strange thing about these beasts. They say they choose where they’d like to die. This one seems like he has found his place
.

When Jahan reached the site he was looking for, a wisp of cloud was hiding the moon, and a tang of salt was in the wind. He caught sight of a large shadow ahead, perhaps a boulder. Jumping off his horse, he approached. ‘Chota?’

The boulder shifted.

‘Why did you come here?’

Chota lifted his head and let it drop immediately. His mouth, most of his teeth gone, opened and closed.

‘Naughty boy! Don’t do this again.’ Jahan hugged his trunk, weeping.

Together they witnessed the break of day. The sky showed them its brightest hues, like a cloth merchant hawking his precious silks. Jahan watched Istanbul with its seagulls, steep slopes and cypress trees, seized by a dawning comprehension that their time in this city
was coming to an end. Strangely, it didn’t make him feel sad. That would come later, he knew. Sadness was always belated.

After much begging Jahan managed to convince Chota to follow him to the palace. They put him in his barn, chained him with stronger fetters, filled his buckets with new fodder and hoped his escape would soon be forgotten. Yet the mahout finally had to face what he had refused to see before. The elephant was dying. And the great beast wanted to be alone when the end arrived.

There was a tree in Paradise unlike any on earth. Its branches were translucent, its roots absorbed milk instead of water, and its trunk glittered as if ice-bound, though when one got close to it, it was not cold, not cold at all. Every leaf of this tree was marked with the name of a human being. Once a year, during the month of Shaban, on the night between the fourteenth and the fifteenth day, all the angels gathered around it, forming a circle. In unison, they flapped their wings. Thus they raised a powerful wind that shook the branches. Gradually, some of the leaves fell off. Sometimes it took a leaf quite a while to drop down. At other times, the descent was as quick as the blink of an eye. The moment a leaf reached the ground the person whose name was written on it breathed his last. This was why the wise and the learned would never step on a dry leaf, lest it bore the soul of someone somewhere.

In 1588, a rainy day it was, Master Sinan’s leaf touched the soil. He had worked until the final moments, his health and his mind always strong. It was only in the last weeks that he was bedridden. The three apprentices clustered around him, together with the head foremen who had worked with Sinan for so long. The women, clad in their veils, lined up by the door, and even though Jahan dared not glance in their direction, he knew one of them was Sancha, Sinan’s loving concubine.

His voice merely a whisper, the Chief Royal Architect told them, in the faint light that seeped through the blinds, that he had written, signed and sealed his will. He said, ‘You shall read it when I am gone.’

‘You are not going anywhere, master. May God always keep you with us,’ Nikola said, furtively wiping a tear.

The master lifted his hand, as if to wave away such pleasantries. ‘There is something important you should know. The accidents …
the delays … I have found out how they happened. It was in front of my eyes … all this time, I never saw.’

Suddenly the air in the room changed. Everyone held his breath, waiting to hear more. A tense anticipation gushed into the space where there had only been sorrow a while ago.

‘Wait for forty days after my death,’ Sinan said, stumbling over his words. ‘Open my will and see which one of you I’d like to become my successor, God willing. You ought to carry on building. You ought to surpass what I’ve done.’

‘Master … about the accidents, you were saying. Aren’t you going to tell us who’s behind them?’ Jahan asked.

‘Jahan … fiery spirit … you were always the most curious one,’ Sinan said with difficulty. ‘It all must have happened for a reason. One must think of the reason, not hate the person.’

Remembering Mihrimah’s final words, Jahan felt an ache so powerful he couldn’t talk. She, too, had mentioned that everything had a reason. He waited for an explanation, but it didn’t come. In a little while the apprentices were ushered out, as they had tired the master enough. It was the last time Jahan saw him. The next night, earlier than usual, Sinan went to sleep. He did not wake up.

And this is how after almost fifty years as the Chief Royal Architect and 400 exquisite buildings, not counting his many shrines and fountains, Sinan departed this world. He had always left a flaw in his works to acknowledge he wasn’t perfect or complete, as such qualities belonged solely to God. In much the same way he died, at the glorious but imperfect age of ninety-nine and a half.

On the seventh day following Sinan’s death his family summoned a prayer meeting for his soul. Relatives, neighbours, pashas, artisans, students, labourers and passers-by … came from far and wide to attend the rite. There were so many guests that they spilled into the courtyard and from there on to the street, all the way down to the next neighbourhood. Even those who had never met him mourned his loss as if he were one of their own. Hard-boiled candies and sherbets were offered, meat and rice distributed to the rich and the poor. Olive branches were burned while the Qur’an was recited from beginning to end.
Yusuf Sinanettin bin Abdullah
. His name was uttered in unison, over and again, an incantation that opened closed hearts. Halfway through, Jahan caught the whiff of a fragrance he knew well: the blend of ambergris and jasmine with which his master perfumed his kaftans. He glanced around, wondering if he were here, watching them from an alcove or a niche, listening to what was said in his absence, smiling that smile of his.

Jahan reflected on Sancha, knowing she was somewhere in the house, behind these walls, her forehead pressed against the glazed window, her short hair adorned with a gauzy scarf. It pained him so much, the knowledge that she could no longer work with them, that he had to chase away his thoughts, like a flock of black crows.

After the prayer, the apprentices walked together for a while – Nikola, Davud and Jahan. The sky was murky and overcast, as though to reflect their mood. Dry leaves hovered in the breeze; seagulls plunged for a morsel. They kept running out of conversation. It wasn’t only grief. There was something else, something that hadn’t been there before. Jahan understood that throughout all these years Sinan had been the invisible thread holding them together. True, in the past, they had displayed petty jealousies, but Jahan had always attributed these to a shared love of the master and a wish to excel in
his eyes. Now he saw that, in truth, they had been more different than alike, the three of them, three passing winds, each headed in a different direction. He wasn’t the only one who sensed this. All at once, they were weighing their words like polite strangers.

As they made their way across a bazaar, they stopped to get some flatbread with
pekmez
.
*
None of them had eaten at the house of mourning and the walk had made them hungry. Jahan was haggling with a vendor when, right behind him, he heard a sneeze. Glancing sideways, it was not from a stranger, as he had expected. Instead, it was from Nikola, now half covering his face, as though in shame. When he pulled his hand away, there was a drop of blood on his palm.

‘You all right?’ Jahan asked.

Silently, Nikola nodded. His eyes were two shooting stars in the serene firmament of his face. Davud, engrossed in the turtles that a peasant was selling, seemed not to have noticed anything. Turtles were sought after these days, as their shells, when crushed into a powder and eaten with yoghurt soup, were said to cure many an illness.

Under the swooping boughs of a willow tree they tucked into their food, gossiped about the people who had attended the ceremony and those who had not shown up. But there was one question nobody dared to broach: who among them would replace their master? They would have to wait for the will to be opened. Until then, it was futile to speculate. How could they know what was cast in the runes, written in the stars, when even Takiyuddin had not? So they spoke about this and that, curt words that did not add up to anything, and soon afterwards each went his own way.

The next day, Jahan was summoned to the Chief White Eunuch’s quarters and informed that he was to start teaching at the palace school – a reputable job that filled him with apprehension and pride in equal measure.

Later on, when he met his students, he found in their young faces innocence and curiosity, pretension and ignorance, dexterity and
laziness. Which of these qualities would take precedence over the rest, he wondered; would schooling make any difference or had their paths already been drawn? Had his master been alive, he would say, ‘Every man is given his own
kismet
, for God never repeats the same fate twice.’

Immersed in his own concerns, weeks passed by. It was only then that it occurred to him he had not heard from either Davud or Nikola. He sent both a message. When no answer came from either, he was worried, particularly for Nikola. Davud had a wife and children; Sancha still lived in Master Sinan’s house; Jahan had Chota and a bed in the menagerie and now another one in the palace school. But Nikola had only his aged parents, both of whom had recently passed away. He realized how little he knew him. All these years they had toiled side by side, summer and winter, and yet they still remained a mystery to each other.

On Tuesday morning, Jahan decided to visit Nikola. Fog had settled into the city; the sun was a blurry halo behind billows of grey. At first glance, the settlement of Galata on the far side of the Golden Horn was the same as always. Houses – half stone, half wood – were arranged in rows like decayed teeth; there were churches with no bells; the scents of candles and incense wafted from the chapels; and a medley of people – Florentines, Venetians, Greeks, Armenians, Jews and Franciscan monks – milled about.

Jahan rode his horse at a trot, observing his surroundings. As he went deep into the back alleys, the crowd thinned. It became quiet. Too quiet. Something was not right. Closed shutters, bolted doors, packs of ravenous dogs, dead cats on the pavement and a foul smell that enveloped everything. Upon entering Nikola’s street, he shuddered, as though a nippy breeze had passed through him. There were crosses painted on some of the houses, and prayers in Latin and Greek, unfinished and unintelligible, scribbled in haste.

Jumping off his horse, he went near another sign, only this one was on Nikola’s door. He didn’t know how long he stood there staring, unable to leave, unwilling to go inside. A neighbour, a man with a back so hunched that he seemed bent, approached. ‘What do you want?’

‘My friend lives here. Kiriz Nikola – you know him?’

‘I know everyone. Don’t go in there. Stay away.’

‘What is it?’

‘The curse, it’s back.’

‘You mean …’ Jahan halted, detecting the man’s contempt for his ignorance. It was the plague again. ‘How have we not heard about it?’

‘Dolt! You only hear what you are allowed to hear,’ the man said before he strode away. He didn’t go too far. From the threshold of the house across the street he kept watch, his eyes like narrow slits.

Jahan took his sash off and wrapped it around his mouth and nose. He pushed Nikola’s door. Had it been locked, he would have given up. But it was ajar, propped open with a wedge to make sure it wouldn’t close. Whoever had placed this here intended to return and knew there was no one inside to open the door.

Upon entering the house, a heavy stench hit him like an unexpected blow. He found himself in a corridor, narrow, musty and dim. He had to wait for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. The first room was empty. In the next one, by the pale light of a candle, a man was lying on a mat. His dark hair lacked lustre, his skin was drained of colour, his high domed forehead was covered in sweat – it was and it was not Nikola, this man with a few days’ stubble on his always carefully shaved face. Beside him was a small wooden figure of a man with a chestnut beard and long hair.

There were two clay bowls by his side: one with water, one with vinegar. His clothes were damp with sweat, his lips chapped. Jahan put his hand on his forehead. It was burning. At Jahan’s touch he flinched. With a great effort he turned his head towards him, unseeing.

‘It’s me, Jahan.’

Nikola’s breath came out in sputters, like the crackle of a smouldering log before it burns out. ‘Water,’ Nikola rasped.

He drank greedily. Through his open shirt Jahan saw spots on his chest, a purple that verged on black, and a nasty swelling in his armpit. He had a pressing urge to run away from this place of suffering, but, while his mind whispered cowardice, his body stayed anchored. Soon there was a rattle at the door. Two nuns appeared. Long dark cloaks, white muslin masks on their mouths.

‘Who are you?’ the elder one demanded. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’m his friend,’ Jahan said. ‘We worked together under the late Chief Royal Architect.’

A startled silence hung in the space between them. ‘I’m sorry if I spoke harshly,’ she said. ‘I took you for a thief.’

Jahan felt a rush of dismay, dreading that this woman with eyes old and calm as stones had seen through him. Unaware of his thoughts, the nun went on. ‘Nobody comes to these houses. Only robbers.’

‘Robbers?’

‘Yes, they come to steal from –’

She did not finish her sentence. Instead she moved towards Nikola. She made him drink out of the flask she had brought and wiped his forehead with a flannel dipped in vinegar, touching him without any sign of the repugnance that Jahan had felt. Meanwhile the other nun was busy wiping excrement off the sheets.

Jahan wanted to ask them if they were not afraid of death but he kept his thoughts to himself. He whispered, ‘Are there many others?’

‘No, but there will be.’

Nikola started to cough. Blood spilled from his mouth and nose. The elder nun, seeing Jahan’s horror, said, ‘You should go. There is nothing you can do here.’

Saddened but somehow relieved to hear this, Jahan asked, ‘How can I help?’

‘Pray,’ was all she said.

Jahan inched towards the door, then stopped. ‘That figure over there, who is he?’

‘Saint Thomas,’ said the nun with a tired smile. ‘The patron saint of carpenters, builders, architects and construction workers. He was
also known as a doubter. He doubted everything, could not help it. But God loved him just the same.’

Two days later Jahan heard that Nikola had died. In a world where everything was in flux, he, the most stable and reliable soul he had known after Master Sinan, was gone. Then followed the others. Hundreds of them. From Galata the disease travelled to Uskudar, leaped to Istanbul and, as if thrust by an angry hand, bounced back to Galata. Once again, mobs took to the streets, looking for someone to blame. Nor was the palace immune. The Chinese twins who took care of the apes went the way of all flesh. The monkeys turned aggressive, unhappy in the royal cages where their forefathers had once been such privileged guests. Taras the Siberian hid in his shed, ashamed to be alive at his age.

Then Sangram died. This kind-hearted, loyal servant of the seraglio, who had always wished to return to Hindustan some day, breathed his last miles away from his homeland. The next victim was Simeon the bookseller of Pera. His wife, duped by some tinkers and vendors, agreed to sell his books for a handful of aspers. Piled on rickety carts, those precious books from all the world over left Pera and travelled to their new destinations. Many got lost on the way. Simeon, who had always desired to be in charge of a magnificent library, had not even been able to bequeath his own collections to someone who would appreciate them.

Jahan, who learned about all this much later, waited in suspense, wondering who would be the next. But for a reason he could not comprehend the disease spared him and continued on its pilgrimage south like a predatory bird, casting a dark shadow over the villages and towns it passed through. In the Christian cemetery, not far from the Virgin of the Spring, where Emperor Justinian’s church was no more but the holy spring remained, Nikola’s headstone read: