Ali Pasha was at the height of his power and luxury when he sent Mouchar to find me in Venice. I understood from Mouchar’s tales that the Pasha wanted himself and his success immortalised by a Western artist, who might bring images and tales of his splendour to the so-called civilised kingdoms of Western Europe. He must have commissioned some spy to find a painter who would make him look beautiful for posterity, and who was also sufficiently famous to have important clients visit her studio, where studies of his image would confront them from the wall. Perhaps his informant had also discovered that I was the kind of woman who would make a journey to Albania alone and without hysterics. Perhaps he had heard even more intimate facts. I realised that it was unlikely that my love affair with Casanova had evaded the ears of the Pasha’s diligent spies.
At the same time it occurred to me that I had asked too few questions about the exact nature and term of my employment. I clung to my instinct that Mouchar would look after me, and I tried to persuade myself that our amity, which deepened daily, was my protection.
We arrived at the palace to be greeted in the courtyard by the massed servants of the Pasha. I nodded and smiled at the draped and turbanned multitude. Mouchar accompanied me to my quarters and waited respectfully outside while I arranged my few possessions in the airy stone room with its windows looking out on the bad-tempered mountains hunched above us. I fingered the white silk hangings of the bed and sniffed at the aromatic sheepskin rug on the floor. I touched the leathery petals of flowers I had never seen before. They looked like goat-heads and smelt of rotting fruit, a surprisingly delicious scent. When I had washed my face, changed my clothes, and dampened my suffering brushes, I met Mouchar in the corridor. He looked approvingly at my pink dress and the snowy fisiù tied at my neck, but he was much too polite to utter a compliment, for it would have meant that my previous appearance, dishevelled and dirty, might thereby have been insulted. There was no end to the subtlety of Mouchar’s courtesy. Sometimes he made me ashamed of my lingua biforcuta.
He took me on a tour of the palace, at least of the parts that I was permitted to see. We passed though blue-tiled halls and marble archways. The Pasha’s palace was crowded like a warehouse with gold, paintings, glass and silks. Some of these goods, Mouchar told me, were the inheritance of the Pasha’s short-lived second wife, and the others were largely confiscated from his enemies. I saw what could be nothing other than a Carpaccio sketch of a dragon next to a watery English landscape. The whole building had the atmosphere of a tasteless millionaire’s bazaar, the styles of the plundered goods were so diverse. There was no theme or style to its display.
Perhaps its very profusion was the point of it, I thought. Mouchar discouraged my tendency to linger in front of the art. ‘Come, Cecilia, the Pasha is waiting.’
I dragged my feet, childishly. I was frightened. Such magnificence was not easy to maintain, I was sure. The unsettling atmosphere of the place seemed to whisper of crimes against the flesh. My thoughts ran in dark directions. I already knew that there were deep bitternesses to soothe within the Pasha’s family. There must have been witnesses to the massacre of the women. There must have been people who knew too much, and who must be silenced. Then their silencers must have been disposed of to ensure secrecy. Mouchar had told me about hostile tribes and robbers in the hills whom the Pasha hunted, hanged, beheaded, dismembered, roasted and impaled, ‘to preserve the safety of his beloved People’. It was a part of one of these robbers whom I had seen on my arrival in Jannina.
We walked deeper into the Pasha’s domain. There were no doors in the core of the palace: Persian rugs, suspended on poles and ominously stained, served this purpose. The effect conspired to make the visitor insecure, wondering what daggers or delights lurked behind these fragrant hangings that undulated as one passed. There were few walls, but serried panels and grilles of delicately carved wood lined with rich, light fabrics that sighed as we walked along. I thought I heard the echoes of distant soldiers’ footsteps, but it could equally have been the tapping of stealthy bare feet closely following us. Mouchar appeared unperturbed so I trotted along beside him, trying to suppress my imagination for the sake of the embarrassing growls of fear that emerged from my stomach.
I had a constant feeling of being watched. I could have sworn that I heard little intakes of breath just behind my ears at times. I heard disturbances in the air, like the wings of doves beating in a box. I heard a snatch of a song. Once I heard a definite giggle. I spun sharply around. ‘What is that?’ I demanded. Mouchar explained that, at this time, Ali kept between five and six hundred women in his harems, and, besides those, an equal number of effeminate youths. These languid young people were kept locked up. It was their laughter and their songs that I could hear from behind the wooden and gilded grilles.
By the time we arrived at the receiving chamber I was completely subdued. In fact, I was so nervous that I was afraid I would start laughing at an improper moment.
Mouchar told me, ‘When I introduce you, say nothing until you are addressed by our Master. Speak in French, but slowly. Do not be anxious. He mislikes nervous people. You will find him gentle and kind, I know. He is ready to love you.’
‘Love me?’ My voice was high and thin.
‘As a daughter.’
Mouchar walked though a tapestried aperture, motioning for me to wait. I stood in the corridor, my throat dry and my hands hot. There was a little flare of a headache hovering over the bridge of my nose. As soon as Mouchar entered the throne room, genuflecting and flourishing his wrist, I heard the Pasha utter a jolly command in a flawed tenor voice, purring with goodwill and satisfaction. Mouchar turned back to me, smiled and beckoned.
As instructed by Mouchar, I dropped into a deep curtsy immediately upon entering the room. Even as I rose, I kept my eyes modestly lowered. I raised them very slowly. I noticed that the Pasha was reclining on a velvet banquette draped with the rippling skin of a prodigiously large lion. The first thing I saw was its snarling maw, poised to snap. The first thing I saw of the Pasha himself was his knees. They were plump as a grandmother’s, swaddled in vivid silk. I saw the hem of his damask tunic, the colour and crepy texture of dried blood. Then I saw a long dagger studded with brilliants curved around his thigh.
‘Rise, rise, my lovely dear,’ said the Pasha, gesturing with his soft fat palms. ‘Let us look at you. Ah yes, very nice, very nice indeed. You have done well, Mouchar, I am satisfied,’ he said, without taking his eyes off me. ‘The portrait shall commence tomorrow, Madame Cecilia Cornaro. I shall enjoy looking at you while you look at me.’
There was nothing menacing in his words but there was something sarcastic in his smile and something terrible in his chuckle. I thought suddenly, He has a lizard’s eyes, Viridian and Cadmium Yellow. Now I examined my new subject further. Two ruffs of dark fur bristled from his shoulders; he looked like an engraving I had seen of a beast called a warthog. He wore a high turban composed of many small rolls of fine gold muslin. His face was almost unlined, his reptilian eyes small and brilliant in the context of his face. His plump, baby-like body was rolled comfortably inside its linens and damasks. He was easy in his skin, lounging on the lush red velvet of the banquette. He fondled his hookah like a kitten.
In the role of artist, I was instantly at my ease. The usual involuntary processes had started inside my brain. I began to memorise the planes of his cheekbones. His voice had already given me ideas for the colours I would use: Sanguineo Red, Indigo and Lamp Black. The engraving, I thought, had been accurate though it had not captured the child-like rosiness of his skin. White, Yellow Ochre and Vermilion, I thought, a little Rose Madder to tone it in. Candour beamed from his smooth countenance, and a little pleasant lechery. Even this somehow put me even more at my ease.
The Pasha let me know — ‘Go now, my lovely dear, as we have matters here to discuss’ – that I was dismissed. I was to repose in my quarters until my work commenced the next morning. I returned to my room and tell upon the beautiful bed
where I slept for seventeen hours without waking.
And so I settled in to the Palace of Tepelene. First, I painted one quick portrait of the Pasha as I had found him on our first acquaintance. When he saw it, he nodded to Mouchar again, and smiled at me. ‘Yes, it is well done, a speaking likeness. Next time, you will show my teeth, please. They are very wonderful.’ His mouth widened to a dragon-like snarl that showed plentiful white enamel inside. I suddenly suspected that the Pasha planned for my portraits to frighten his peers in the West.
After that day, he barely spoke to me. My instructions came from Mouchar. One day, for example, I was to paint a profile of the Pasha, in a green robe. He would be available to me, while meeting with his tax collectors, for two hours the next day. In the afternoon I was to paint a colour study of the favourite daughter, which the Pasha wished to see on his dinner plate that night. The next day, I was to make a pastel of the smallest granddaughter, and so it went on.
‘Is that all?’ I asked Mouchar satirically. I had never had the time and nature of my portraits dictated to me like this before. I was not too cowed to protest.
‘There is this, Madame Cecilia,’ said Mouchar with a bow. He handed me a heavy velvet purse. ‘The Pasha wishes you to know that your genius will not languish unrewarded.’
Most days I painted the Pasha. I sat at my easel, watching as he terrorised and seduced the people whom he had enslaved. I saw him towering over a shivering miscreant, and laying gentle hands on a loyal servant. He stopped noticing me. I saw the comings and goings of his ministers and his lieutenants. I saw the cringing tax-collectors backing out of the room. I saw honoured guests arriving, I heard their downfall being plotted the next day. I saw him pawing at a shy new girl brought to the harem, and fingering the hair of one of his slender youths. The Pasha shared his life with me so that I could better paint him. I soon realised that my first instincts had been correct: unlike my other subjects, it was not his erotic bloom that he wanted me to capture, but his power.
In my quarters, rare and costly flowers were delivered every day. My ewer of water was always cool and fresh, with rose petals floating in it. I had found in an annexe to my room a bath sunk deep into the marble. Whenever I asked, it was filled with hot perfumed water and I lay there resting my shoulders from the exertions of my brush. I dined with the Pasha and his entourage. I enjoyed the new tastes and smells at the Pasha’s table. Curried plover I tried, and snipe with black cherries, and pistachio-flavoured jellies of a firm and chewable texture. How Casanova would have loved to share this experience with me! I was happy in the work, particularly painting the pampered little princesses. The velvets and brocades of their tunics gave me hours of pleasure. The Poupée de France would have her delicate nose put out of joint, I thought – she would look almost shabby in comparison to the Pasha’s women. The servants were bashful but kind, and very curious. I would often find clusters of them chattering in front of my easel. When they saw me they would disperse like a flock of sparrows, smiling shyly.
My own clothes were delicately cleaned and arrived in my room smelling of jasmine and lavender. More velvet purses arrived, and some jewellery.
It seemed to me that it was not such a bad thing to be adopted as the daughter of an Oriental potentate.
And so I was there in the receiving chamber the day that George Gordon, Lord Byron came to pay his respects to Ali Pasha of Albania.
Rumours of his arrival were already rife. Like me, he had already spent some days in Jannina where he had shown himself and his proclivities for all to see. Riders from Jannina brought new gossip every day. Of the young lord it was said that he was as beautiful as an angel and carnally voracious of both sexes. He swam like a turtle. His equipage was incredible: three beds and at least four leather trunks of staggering proportions. All this information the loyal Mouchar conveyed to me from the giggling ladies of the harem, who always, he told me, knew everything important before anyone else did.
‘Does he not realise that he is in danger here?’ I asked Mouchar. The English were little loved in Albania.
‘I believe that the Pasha is disposed to be gentlemanly towards young lords – for it seems there are two of them. As you know, the English forces have just taken the Ionian islands from the French. It cannot hurt the Albanian cause to make welcome two noblemen from the conquering nation.’
‘But Lord Byron is not a soldier?’
‘Indeed not,’ smiled Mouchar. ‘I believe that the milord is a species of poet. The other one, his friend, also writes, but apparently looks less poetic.’
That afternoon the Englishmen arrived at the Palace of Tepelene, and within an hour they were brought to the presence of the Pasha. Ali had chosen to receive them in a large room paved with marble, a fountain playing over painted Dutch tiles at the centre. I could see that the whole court was titillated at the thought of the glamorous young visitors. I sat with my easel beside the fountain, working on a new portrait, with Mouchar beside me. All around the Pasha sat his officers and tax-collectors, in white robes and gaudy jewels, chattering and sighing like housewives.
A servant preceded the two visitors, who hovered in the entrance as gauchely as adolescents. In the dark archway I could not at first see them well. From their awkward postures they seemed very young. They started like ponies when Mouchar took up his post in front of the Pasha, bowed low, and began the preliminaries to which I was by now accustomed. Finally he announced, ‘George Gordon Lord Byron and his companion John Cam Hob House. You are welcome. You may approach our Lord.’
Then two men, one homely and the other beautiful, stepped out of the shadows. Hobhouse came first, scarcely displacing the air around him, he had so little grandeur to him. He was a tall man with a large pale hook of a nose and a prim little pink pucker of a mouth under it. Equal parts white, Yellow Ochre and Vermilion, simple as that, I thought. Everyone was, frankly, disappointed. We looked over his shoulder.
Did I imagine it, or did we all draw breath then?
When Byron entered the room, with a nodding bird-like lilt to his step, it was as if everything fell to shadow around him. He was like a lit alabaster lamp in a dark place – cool, pure, flawed and holy, but with something erotically charged about him and something of the grave, too.
In those first seconds, I learnt that face by heart, counting off a rosary of its perfections. Mouchar had been right: Lord Byron looked a poet. He looked like a poet from the tilt of his head to the turn of his feet. I could see that there was something wrong with one of them; he must have injured himself on the arduous journey, I thought. He looked like a poet in his high-vaulted breast and his narrow waist, emphasised by the full military regalia he had chosen for his first interview with his host. He looked a poet as he bowed subtly and sweetly to the Pasha. As he did so his magnificent sabre grazed the ground as if caressing it.
Even if I had never spoken to him, I could have fallen in love with Byron for the way his eye-sockets were moulded into his head at such an exquisite angle, for the way that even the opaque jelly of his eye was voluptuous. I could have fallen in love with him for the long black shadow of his lash on the moonstone of his cheek. I could have fallen in love with him for the slender curl of the groove between his nose and lip. I could have fallen in love with him for the chestnut corona of his hair, blooming in ringlets around his face and arranged so that the outline of his head was triangular as a kitten’s. I could have fallen in love with him for the eloquence of his eyebrows and their quarrel with his eyes. For it seemed to me, even the first seconds I saw him, that those eyebrows arched in contempt, saying, ‘This means nothing to me,’ but the bright glossing of the eyeball said, ‘The poetry of this moment is tearing me apart.’
He did not appear to see me.
‘Your Honour,’ he murmured, with his eyes becomingly downcast so that the pale lids curved over his cheek like shells. Lead White, Rose Madder and Raw Sienna for the face, I thought. French Ultramarine and Yellow Ochre for the bluish shadows around the mouth an
d chin. In the lips, nostrils and ears, Purple Lake, reduced with white. His lightish voice was marvellously tuned to his elegant French. I heard Hobhouse, gruffer and less graceful, echo him an instant later.
Ali Pasha had contrived to welcome Byron standing and now motioned to him to sit at his right side. Mouchar explained in whispers that both gestures constituted a great compliment, for no Turk would rise to meet a guest who was his social inferior.
The Pasha was gracious to Hobhouse, pointing to a small stool in a corner. A conversation ensued in slow, archaic French on the Pasha’s side and careful compliments on the other. Like a benevolent old uncle trying hard to please, Ali showed the two young men all his favourite gold and silver toys, and urged them to look through an English telescope at a distant rider on the hills outside Tepelene. He told them, ‘That man is the chief minister of my enemy Ibrahim Pasha, who has deserted his master and is on his way to me.’ Hobhouse and Byron exchanged glances, obviously wondering what fate awaited the rider.
Without changing his expression, Ali suddenly posed his first question to his guests, ‘Now, tell me what has brought you to my country?’ His tone was no longer honeyed but dry and gelid.
Byron seemed to be rendered silent by fear and confusion. Hobhouse was quicker to absorb and manoeuvre through the danger, and answered, ‘The desire of seeing so great a man as yourself.’
Ali smiled. ‘So you hear of me in England? What do they say of me?’
Byron recovered himself. He replied, ‘You are a very common subject of conversation in England. They speak respectfully of you in the places of power, and in the lower places, the women shiver as they whisper about you.’
Ali Pasha was not inaccessible to this kind of flattery The conversation became more comfortable. Affection and affability flowed from the Pasha. He asked Byron why he had left Britain at such a young age. ‘How can you bear to be so far away from your mother for so long?’ When he saw Byron struggling to answer this fluently, the Pasha changed the subject. He complimented Byron upon his beauty.
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