Free The Bellini Card by Jason Goodwin Page A

back? I could still come in, every day or two, but I am afraid that without him, there is—there is not much for me to do.”
    “I’m sure your mother and father would like to see you.”
    Marta nodded and looked pleased. Her family lived up the Bosphorus, in the Greek village of Karaköy. Yashim had met them, and her brothers. She had six, and they were devoted to her.
    “Thank you, efendi. I will go this afternoon.”
    Yashim walked slowly back to the Golden Horn, taking the steep and crooked steps that led from the Galata Tower. Halfway down he became aware of an unfamiliar murmuring from the shoreline below.
    From the lower steps he gazed out over a crowd gathered around the gigantic plane tree. Its branches cast a deep pool of shade over the bank of the Golden Horn, where the caïque rowers liked to sit on a sweltering day, waiting for fares. The lower branches of the tree were festooned with rags. Each rag marked an event, or a wish—the birth of a child, perhaps, a successful journey, or a convalescence—a habit the Greeks had doubtless picked up from the Turks, and which satisfied everyone but the fiercest mullahs.
    Yashim heard the distinct rasp of a saw; he realized that there were men in the tree. There was a sharp crack, and one of the branches subsided to the ground; the crowd gave a low groan. He scanned the faces turned toward the plane: Greeks, Turks, Armenians, all workingmen, watching the slow execution with sullen despair; some had tears running down their cheeks.
    Two swarthy men in red shirts started to attack the fallen branch with axes, stripping away the smaller growth: Yashim recognized them as gypsies from the Belgrade woods. They worked swiftly, ignoring the crowd around them. Out of the corner of his eye, Yashim caught a sparkle of sunlight on metal: a detachment of mounted troops was drawn up beyond the tree. Perhaps the authorities had expected trouble.
    He looked more carefully at the crowd. Most of them, he guessed, were watermen for whom the felling of the tree was a harbinger of bad times to come. What would become of them, when people could walk dry-foot between Pera and old Istanbul? But the tree was an old friend, too, which had sheltered them from the heat and the rain, accepted their donations, brought them luck, sinking its roots deeper and deeper with the passing decades into the rich black ooze. No one had turned up to witness the destruction of the fountain: that, in the end, was only a work of man. But the plane was a living gift from God.
    A second branch, thirty feet long or more, fell with a crack and a snapping of twigs, and the crowd groaned again. For a moment it seemed as though it would surge forward: Yashim saw fists raised and heard a shout. Someone stepped forward and spoke to the woodmen, still hacking at the first branch. They listened patiently, staring down at the tangle of twigs and branches at their feet; one of them made a gesture and bothmen resumed their work. The man who had interrupted them turned back and pushed his way out of the crowd.
    Yashim watched him: a Greek waterman, who stumped away to his caïque drawn up on the muddy shoreline and stood there, looking up at the sky.
    Yashim followed him down the steps.
    “Will you take me across to Fener, my friend?”
    The Greek hitched his waistband and spat. “I will take you to Fener, or beyond.”
    As they pulled away, Yashim turned his head. Two more branches had fallen, and the tree looked misshapen. He could hear the rasp of the saw and the
toc-toc
of the woodman’s axe. A team of horses was dragging away the first bare branches.
    The rower pulled on his oars, muttering to himself.
    A hundred yards out, Yashim noticed a crimson four-oared caïque cutting up the Golden Horn at an angle that would soon bring them close together. A young man sat in the cushions, and Yashim recognized Resid Pasha. Normally he would have directed his rower to avoid the imperial craft, but this time was different: it