Free The Baklava Club: A Novel (Investigator Yashim) by Jason Goodwin Page A

who else might know about it, too.

 
    15
    G IANCARLO, Rafael, and Fabrizio left the apartment in the afternoon. Birgit stayed at home, pleading a headache.
    When they had gone, she loosened her stays and began to brush her hair at the mirror, putting one finger down on a book on the dressing table to keep it open. The book was a new one, written by a Dane named Søren Kierkegaard, and it seemed to be about the effect of religious convention on religious faith. It was called On the Concept of Irony .
    Birgit found parts of it rather hard to follow, but she didn’t mind. She wanted to read a book in a language that none of the boys could understand and talk to her about—talk at her, perhaps, being the better term, for they were of an age, and sex, that made them recite their opinions, rather than discuss them. Søren Kierkegaard was her secret, her private friend. She found that he had a tendency to recite his opinions, too, but he did it in a language only she could understand.
    There were parts of On the Concept of Irony she did not follow, but she accepted that as a sort of irony, too, and it made her smile. “People understand me so little,” Søren had written, “that they do not even understand me when I complain of being misunderstood.” She thought of him as Søren.
    Birgit did not actually have a headache, but she craved a few hours of solitude, and she liked to brush her hair and read her book. Now and then she found herself wondering what Søren was like. She imagined him with flaming red hair, a long, beaky nose, and spectacles.
    It was rather hot, and her stays stuck to her skin where she had loosened them, plucking at her stickily as she shifted on the chair and followed the cascade of yellow hair with firm downstrokes of the brush. The feeling grew into an irritation, until she stood up, slipped out of her dress, and released the fastenings one by one. She tossed corset and dress onto the divan, and went on brushing her hair, standing with Søren’s book between the fingers of her left hand.
    It was warm enough to go naked. She glanced briefly at the window, but the latticed shutters were firmly closed.
    “Der ligger i den hele nyere Udvikling en stor Tilbøielighed til—langtfra med Taknemmelighed at erindre sig de Kampe og Besværligheder, Verden har udstaaet for at blive til det, den er—om muligt endog at forglemme de Resultater, den i sit Ansigts Sved har erhvervet, for paany at begynde forfra, og i ængstende Forudfølelse af.”
    There was nobody about to hear, and it felt nice to hear Søren speaking their language in the deep, scholarly voice she gave him, as best she could.
    “Efter disse almindeligere Betragtninger, hvis inderligere organiske Forhold til vort Forehavende paa sit Sted vil, saa haabe vi, vorde Læserne klart.”
    As for Ghika, the landlord, he didn’t care if the woman spoke Sanskrit or Irish—though he would have preferred to hear her speaking in a higher, more girlish tone. It wasn’t really her voice he cared about, as he congratulated himself on taking the trouble to put his eye to the keyhole of the apartment.
    What he could see exceeded all his hopes and expectations: a young woman with breasts that quivered with every stroke of the brush, every stroke of the brush that caressed her long blond hair.
    She was quite alone now. Those men had gone.
    And the door, evidently, was unlocked.
    He put out his tongue to wet his lips, breathing heavily at the door.

 
    16
    “I wonder,” said the valide, touching her hair, “if we did quite right to ask her?”
    “We, hanum efendi?” It was a bit of a jump, even for Yashim, who knew how the valide’s mind could work.
    “Such a homely little thing. A real hen.”
    “Hanum efendi?”
    “So reticent,” she said. “I expected, from her letters, more joie de vivre . A little wit.”
    “This evening you will present Natasha to the ladies?”
    “You needn’t stay. It will be an undignified affair, sans doute . Old women