“That’s where we will go,” the consul tells her with a sweep of his arm, as if offering her the sea with this journey.
“Si, padrone,” she murmurs in Italian, out of courtesy.
“Please tell me you won’t be frightened.”
He wants to laugh, she stands there, frozen to the spot, her eyes, as usual, hovering between keen attention and gentle contemplation. “A desert gazelle,” Augusto said one evening. Legnani had laughed awkwardly.
“You won’t, will you? Be frightened, I mean.”
She does not reply. Apart from snakes, she has always feared people more than the natural world or animals. She would like to tell him she has slept in a tree with monkeys and birds, has slept in a sheepfold with ewes and rams, that without her, he would have had a difficult time with the camels and donkeys, and the nomads whose language he did not understand, and the wells he never spotted, and the sandstorms he did not tackle as well as she did, not knowing how to cover himself but still keep breathing.
“No, padrone. I’m not frightened.”
She thinks she will put her trust in the sea. That with the sea there can surely be no other course of action than to hand yourself over. She will watch. And wait. Until Italy appears. With its happy women. Its happy children. Its husbands who arrive laden with gifts. And for the first time she wonders what she will do among so many lavishly contented people.
* * *
—
They stay in an inn on the Suakin peninsula for a month, waiting for the steamboat. They hear of the fall of Khartoum, Gordon Pasha’s death, decapitated on the stairs of his palace, lootings by slaves, Egyptians dying along with many of the Sudanese inhabitants of Khartoum, the city burning and in ruins. Bakhita is sixteen, she knows if she had stayed there, she too would have been pillaged, like a city. She has nightmares of Khartoum in flames, hears the children in its streets, sees them reaching out toward mothers who do not come for them. She hugs little Indir closer, he does not know what he has escaped. With her, he is afraid of nothing. Not the shouting at the inn, not the sounds of Suakin, the steamboat sirens, barked orders, famished seagulls, the lowing of wild oxen in the furious stench of burning herbs and coal, of kelp and dead fish. The town is violent, like its inhabitants, all of whom are passing through, some on business, others fleeing. Bakhita senses all this without being told. She sees the sea as an enraged river and knows that this savagery inflames them all, it is a city of towering stones that quake despite their size. Boats are laden to the gunwales with treasures from Sudan, India, and Egypt. This is a world caught between two worlds. An independent city that stands outside time. Bakhita can smell the fear of failure here and the brutal drive of profit. She keeps Indir close, tries to teach him a few words of Italian. He must learn to say Grazie, padrone, and Si, padrone, and Mi scusi, padrone. But Indir does not want to learn. He just has that dreamy, absent look in his eyes and huddles up to her like a cat with no idea about the world in which it sleeps. She protects him from everything, including prying eyes. More than once she has heard negotiations between men who want him. This little castrated child is what they want. And they are astonished when the consul says, “No. He’s not for sale. He is a gift, I have promised him to someone. No, I’m taking him to Italy, for a friend, I couldn’t do that to a friend, no…I’m keeping him.”
What of her…will he keep her too? She has faith, of course, the padrone is a good man, and if he keeps Indir he is bound to keep her, who would look after the child on the long crossing? He said 2,500 miles. Then added, “That’s a lot. Do you understand? You could never travel that far on foot.” She smiled and looked out to sea…not on foot, no…Sometimes the padrone has his head in the clouds.
* * *
—
And then one day it is time to leave. Leave for real. The yelling and jostling on the quay like in a marketplace. There are men and women in front of her and behind her, she is trapped between these people stamping and huffing, bumping into each other, she clutches Indir’s hand tightly, he clings to her white tunic, crying. Now it is all over. She is leaving her country. It is over. And she wishes she would appear. The one person who might cry, Don’t go! The one person who would find it unbearable. She hears people calling Goodbye! in every language but hears no one begging her Don’t go! She turns around, looks over the bundles on people’s backs, over their heads and shoulders, it is a heavy-laden world, a world of ropes and filth, orders and obedience, some people gesticulate to each other to say Goodbye! or I’m here! Climb up here!, there are those parting and those coming together. Some whistle, others yell. On the banks she can hear dogs barking themselves hoarse. Water slaps against the hull, and birds screech in the heavy wind. But the woman who might beg Bakhita not to leave, the woman who might open her arms wide to call her back, has never seen the sea, does not even know it exists. That Italy exists. Or that Bakhita is leaving. Bakhita closes her eyes to conjure them all, as far as her memory will allow, to take them all with her. With her eyes closed, she looks at images of her childhood, her long-distant childhood, when Kishmet was the big sister and watched over them, because that was the way of the world. Peaceful. And protected. She remembers that.
The journey needed to be long to give Bakhita time to absorb it. There needed to be that forty-day crossing, the slow progress through the Suez Canal, a corridor trapped in the desert between Africa and Asia, linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. There needed to be days and nights unlike anything else, skies that came down to the meet the sea, skies under which a human is reduced to nothing. And at every stage, witnessing the ceremonies of reunions and of goodbyes. Tiny people on the quayside, waiting. And being reunited. Watching as they hug and disappear together, still gazing at the shore but losing sight of them. Their faces gone. Lost in the crook of a shoulder. The moist warmth of a neck. Clasped to each other.
* * *
—
As the days go by she explains to Indir that soon they will be saying goodbye, he will be in one house and she in another, does he understand? They won’t have the same master. Indir’s face hardens stubbornly, he grinds his teeth, and she can tell he would thump her if he could, if he were not restraining himself he would hit her. He does not. But the closer they come to the Italian coast, the less he can tolerate this journey. He vomits, his forehead is clammy, he moans and refuses to eat. At first Bakhita is afraid, as if this now useless little slave boy might be thrown overboard. But Callisto Legnani merely criticizes her for failing to calm the child. She is amazed that such an intelligent, knowledgeable man should not understand a young boy’s suffering. There is a remedy, of course. She knows it. But she cannot give it to him. She cannot tell him they will not be parted. At night he makes sudden, panicky movements, throwing his head against her chest in his sleep, winding her, she hears him cry, call out. Wishes she could console him. But she has never consoled anyone. And she remembers little Yebit who died at the tattooist’s hands. It is an image that often comes back to her, and rather than feeling remorse or pain, she is aware of her powerlessness, her defeat in the face of evil. She strokes Indir’s head, hugs his small body, grown so thin it is like a badly assembled collection of spindly lengths of ebony, he is clumsy and absentminded, she thinks the “operation” must have damaged his mind.
They sleep on the floor in the same cabin as the consul and his friend, who did not take the risk of trusting them to the deck reserved for slaves, servants, brigands, and every type of trafficker. During the day she stays on the upper deck, close to the cabin, not venturing into the boat’s maze of corridors. Through the windows she glimpses lounges and dining rooms, and sometimes hears a piano. She looks at the sea and thinks of everything there is beneath it. The deep cold world where the sunlight stops. She knows they are sailing over long-dead souls. She has heard of slave crossings bound for whole new worlds, knows Africa is being robbed of Africa. Rifles are the great masters and yet…there are skies that console her, stars
that flit across the darkness like showers of light, and moons so huge it seems the boat has drawn closer to the sky. She meanwhile is drawing closer to another continent. Another life. And for once she knows where she is going, she is going to the padrone’s house, she will be in service to his wife, Signora Legnani, in a city called Padua. She smiles at the consul when she thinks of this, unaware that soon he will vanish from her life, forever.
The boat comes into the harbor in Genoa. A slow sad entrance that bids a definitive farewell to Sudan, with the foghorn reverberating heartbreakingly around the hills. It is springtime, April 1885, the air is sweet, the sky as pale and clear as dawn. Bakhita pushes away Indir’s hand clutching at her tunic, wishes he had already stopped loving her, also wishes she could hug him in her arms and tell him so many things there is no longer time to say. She does not know whether slaves are beaten to death here, in Italy. Indir takes her hand and cries, “Si padrone grazie padrone mi scusi padrone!” It is his surprise. His gift for their arrival. He remembered the words and learned them in secret. He says it again, “Si padrone grazie padrone mi scusi padrone!” She smiles at him, but her throat constricts with emotion, please let him be strong enough. She carries some bags, Callisto Legnani and Augusto Michieli, both also laden, walk ahead with the beaming faces of returning conquerors. The quay is as busy as in Suakin, bags of grain on the dock, cargoes in nets, dockworkers cursing, beggars and barefoot children. This is the first shock, the first inexplicable fact: barefoot children in an Italian port. Bakhita thinks they must be from another country, like herself, and are hoping to stay here, in the country Anna described to her, the country of sunshine and freedom. There is a woman on the quayside. She watches them and opens her arms wide. This is the first image Bakhita is to have of Maria Turina Michieli: a woman opening her arms like a mother. Augusto goes to his wife and hugs her discreetly, before planting a kiss on her forehead. Bakhita thinks Indir is for her, the gift is for her, can see it in her big happy eyes. But an argument breaks out and Bakhita more or less understands the gist of it, even though Maria and Augusto do not speak the same Italian she knows. Maria looks over at Indir and Bakhita, and waits for something that is not forthcoming. Augusto shrugs, as awkward as a child, and then his wife points to the two slaves, her eyes clouding with astonishment and rage. Her voice is curt, far too shrill.
“You have nothing for me, Augusto? Nothing?”
“The boy is for the consul’s friends, Maria…And the girl is his own servant—”
“But what about me, Augusto, have you brought nothing for me? No Negro at all?”
“Maria…we left so quickly. Khartoum has fallen, you know, the news is terrible.”
“What I know is that Callisto, Callisto thought to bring gifts. He thought of more than just saving his skin.”
Callisto Legnani comes over, explains that the crossing with two slaves was dangerous and expensive, and it was a miracle they escaped Khartoum in time, a miracle they survived the journey through the desert. And then he adds very quietly that he promised a eunuch to some friends a long time ago, a Genoese couple who are waiting for them at the inn. In the morning he will leave for Padua with Bakhita, who is for his wife. Maria looks at the two men as if they have colluded in this, loathes them for disappointing her and loathes herself for behaving as they have always seen her: embittered and demanding. She was so happy she’d made this trip, had come to wait for them on the quayside in Genoa, she was expecting something different, and now it’s all ruined. Bakhita follows them with the bags, walking with the rolling gait of the newly disembarked. The little streets climb up and up, they are narrow and smell of fish and sweet herbs like spicy flowers, these powerful dry smells are all new.
* * *
—
When they reach the inn, Bakhita knows from the look on their faces that these friends of the consul’s, the Sicas, are Indir’s new masters. It is a look she knows, appraising and thrilled. They have taken rooms for their friends, but they themselves are setting off immediately, they live higher up in the city. Signora Sica flutters around Indir, clapping and laughing. Once again, Bakhita does not properly understand the language, but Indir is for this woman. She says she adores him! What’s his name? “Indir.” She says, “No, Enrico,” and she asks him to sing, she wants to teach him. “La-la-la!” she sings, gesturing for him to continue the arpeggio with his castrati’s voice. But Indir simply says, “Si padrone grazie padrone mi scusi padrone” and looks at Bakhita. She nods, yes, well done, but still corrects him: “Padrona.” She thinks he is being more sensible than she is, he can tell that Signora Sica is kind, and happy to have him. The couples say their goodbyes, hand-kissing and friendly shoulder-slapping, Bakhita watches these strange codes, the woman adjusts her hat and takes the arm that her husband holds out to her. And off they go. Take a few steps, turn back. Look at Indir and wait. She gives a surprised little laugh. He whistles for the child to join them. Bakhita is aware of the air, air that every one of them is breathing, but it is different for each of them. She sees this familiar, perennial situation. A slave going to new masters. There is no violence. Only a shocking gentleness. The consul prods Indir in the back, with an embarrassed little laugh, his gift isn’t absolutely spot-on. The child stumbles, freezes, and stays where he is. Bakhita crouches down to his level, holds him to her, and takes in the smell of his skin, whispers that he must go now, he must run over to his new masters. But all at once he starts howling, an unbearable screaming sound, high-pitched and heartrending, the friends eye one another in panic, make hushed plans with flushed cheeks. Not sure what to do. Maria Turina Michieli looks at Bakhita and sees what the others do not. Sees the little child being snatched away from this Negro girl, sees the love between them, she looks at the girl and wants her. It is no more complicated than that. She wants her. The consul grabs the child from Bakhita’s arms, systematically opens his fingers gripping her tunic, the child growls and puffs breathlessly, carried aloft by the consul like a bag, and he turns back again, reaching his arms toward Bakhita and sobbing. The consul almost throws him at Signor Sica, whose wife backs away slightly, and then they leave. The child’s exhausted cries can still be heard, the signora’s shoes click-clicking on the ground, and then nothing, silence intercut with the song of indifferent birds. It is over. Maria Turina Michieli is still looking at Bakhita who, surely, must know a great many things. Carrying bags. Earning the love of children. And weeping in silence.
Bakhita watches from the bedroom window. There. This is Italy. Surely. She sees the sea swallowed up in the encroaching evening, as if backing away to disappear. Streetlamps come on in the small streets, and what Anna said is true, there are women out at this time and some walk alone, but they are all clothed and all white, try as she might, Bakhita sees not a single black or mixed-race face, not a single woman in a djellaba, not a single man in a turban, the voices she can hear inside the walls of houses are strident and full of astonishment, people call to each other in long tired words, words that seem to forget themselves halfway through, and Bakhita is surprised not to understand what they are saying. Are they speaking something other than Italian? And yet here she is. This is Italy. She has arrived. In this country where she has no sister, no one to search for, no one to recognize. She has left Indir, as planned. And her heart is broken. Why, at least once in her life, does she not help a child? The little slave boy thinks she betrayed him. He’s right. She didn’t beg the master to keep him.
* * *
—
It is now completely dark. There must still be men in the port, loading and unloading riches for the pleasure of gain. Her personal pleasure would be to be with her loved ones. To tell them about this journey, describe it to someone. Describe the land seen from the sea, which is always far away, even as you draw close. Describe the wind whipping up violently like a warrior. The men on deck playing cards and betting money as if deaf to the warring wind. And drinking. And fighting. The clamor or anger, all the ti
me.
* * *
—
The only thing that soothes her when she goes to bed that night is knowing she will set off with the padrone the next day. She understands the language he speaks better and better, and knows how to serve him. He gave her the white tunic, he has never touched her, and he saved her from Khartoum, before Khartoum was consumed by flames, she owes him her life. There is a bed in her room at the inn. She smooths out the sheets, tucks them in more neatly, and then lies down on the ground. She longs for the heat of little Indir’s body. Knows that at this very moment he is sucking his thumb and calling to her. She feels as if she is still rocking on the boat, and to overcome her land-sickness she breathes in time with this pitching, curls her body up tight and tries to follow the rhythm of the swell. It is the first time she has slept alone. Since she was locked up by her captors, she has never spent a night alone. And she suddenly misses Binah. Is surprised by this, has not felt it for a long time. The part of their life that they shared is so long ago now, did it really happen? Has she invented memories for herself with a little girl who made everything bearable for her? Did she invent herself a friend? A sister? A childhood? She no longer knows her origins. She listens to the sea, can hear it but not see it, its inhalations as long and slow as solitude.
* * *
—
When Callisto Legnani sees her the next morning, he comes over to her, smoothing his mustache, and from this mannerism she detects his embarrassment. Wonders what she has forgotten to do. What she has done wrong. But the consul’s voice is as gentle as ever.
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