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

the night of their departure. The boys who were leaving would ask the girls who were staying for the first dance…”
    Her voice trailed off.
    “Eventually the balls stopped happening, when everyone had gone.”
    “And your father?”
    “He runs the school where I have been teaching. He paints. He is making a book of Siberian wildflowers. It’s very beautiful, very detailed. I think he’s the first person to really study Siberian plants.”
    She laughed a bit awkwardly. “His real problem is me.”
    The butter was bubbling. Yashim began to drop spoonfuls of the zucchini mix into the pan: they spread and blossomed as they fell.
    “Why you?”
    “I think he feels he’s let me down. There’s no society. He feels that.”
    “No one to marry, you mean?”
    Natasha blushed. “I suppose so. Oh, Anton the miller is rich, but he thinks only about trees. And there’s a furrier who sends furs all over the world, and spends the winters in Moscow, but he’s old and has a mustache that gets into his soup. My father says he was a sort of criminal once. I can’t marry him.”
    Yashim slid the zucchini fritters from the pan, then started to make some more. “No, I see that.”
    “Do you? It sounds silly, perhaps. But I think it would break my father’s heart if I married one of the mujiks. As it is, he has very little heart left to break—it’s been broken so many times already.”
    “But you’ve come here to get him out of Siberia.” The vegetables were done. He fished them out of the broth and laid them on a platter.
    Natasha was so silent that Yashim looked around.
    “He has his school and his flowers,” she said, thoughtfully. “My mother is buried there, too.”
    “And you?”
    “Me? I’d stay with him.”
    Yashim cocked his head. “Then—” He waved a spoon. “What are you looking for?”
    “A pardon. I want the tsar’s forgiveness, for my father. He was so young when he joined the Decembrists. I would like to see him as a free man, not a prisoner. It is how he would wish to be seen.”
    Yashim nodded. He chopped a larger onion into shreds, and began to soften it in a pan with butter and garlic. He threw in a handful of pine nuts, and then a cup of rice, pushing the grains against the pan, feeling them stick and move reluctantly.
    He reached into the stockpot, tore off a piece of chicken breast, and laid it steaming on the board. He chopped it quite fine, stirred it into the rice, added currants, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, and a pinch of salt, then poured in some stock. The pan hissed and steam rose into the air.
    “You like this—cooking?”
    The question surprised him. “Yes. Why not?”
    Natasha shrugged. “In Russia, it’s a job for old women.”
    Yashim let the stock liberate the rice, and settled the pan to a low simmer on the edge of the stove. “You know L’ Avare ? The Molière play?”
    She smiled. “You should eat to live, not live to eat.”
    “I think the truth is somewhere between the two.”
    “In Russia we have bread, butter, and cheese. We eat a lot of soup.”
    “Soup’s good. I make soup in winter.”
    “I suppose you have many things to choose from in Istanbul.”
    Yashim chopped a clove of garlic with salt, and stirred it into a bowl of yogurt. “Try this, see if you like it.” He put a fritter on a plate, added a dollop of yogurt, and offered it to her.
    “What is it?”
    Yashim smiled, and explained.
    “Eggs. Of course, we have eggs, too,” she said hastily.
    Yashim was rolling the peppers on a board, shaking out the seeds. He lifted the lid of the rice, which was almost done, and squeezed some lemon juice over it, with a twist of pepper from the mill.
    “It’s delicious,” she said, handing him back the plate.
    “Would you like a job? It’s easy. Just spoon this rice into the peppers, like this.”
    She held one, green and waxy, between her fingers, and took a teaspoon. “Ow! It’s hot!”
    “Leave a little room at the top—the rice expands. Then, like