He went through to the back of the house, wondering if Marta, Palewski’s Greek maid, was in the kitchen. She was not. Through the open window he spotted a familiar figure half hidden in the tall grass and waded out to meet his friend.

Palewski lay full-length on a magnificent old carpet. He was propped over a book, wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat and a pair of blue cotton trousers. His feet were bare. A glass and jug of what looked like lemonade stood at his elbow.

“I brought you some ice,” Yashim said. Palewski jumped. He sat up and pushed his hat to the back of his head.

“Ice? Good of you, Yashim.”

Yashim slipped off his shoes and sat down cross-legged on the carpet. Palewski glanced at it. “Marta laid it out here-she says the sun kills the moth.”

“But you’re in the shade.”

“Yes. It was too hot.”

A magnificent palace weave of vermilion semicircles on a black background, the design of the carpet echoed the patterns of the caftans worn by the sultans in the glory days of the Empire, when the Iznik tile makers were at their best. It must have been more than two hundred years old. The Poles had been at their best then, too, battling the Ottomans on the Dnieper and the Prut.

“I haven’t seen this one before,” Yashim murmured. He ran his hand across the fine nap and winced.

“Rolled up in the attic. In canvas, too.” Palewski stood up. “Fluttering little bastards. Where’s that ice?”

He took it to the kitchen, where Yashim heard him banging around. He returned with a glass and the ice shattered in a bowl. Yashim gestured to the book on the carpet.

“Are you thinking of traveling?”

“I drag out the atlas now and then,” Palewski said. “My grand tour, suspended.”

Yashim nodded. Many rich young Europeans traveled through Italy and Greece when they came of age. Sometimes they came on to Istanbul, confusing the locals with their attempts to order coffee in ancient Greek.