by Jane Johnson
‘ “Hear him roar!”
‘ “A mangy-looking lion, indeed.”
‘ “Whoever saw a black lion? He is a hyena, a feral dog.”
‘ “Not much of a luxury man!”
‘ “Man? He is no man, not any more!”
‘They all laughed at that. I threatened them with death and dismemberment, in Senufo, then in English, Italian and finally Arabic, until one of them came and stood over me and hauled up his robe and shook his male parts at me. “This is what a real man looks like, you stinking pander!” He was about to piss on me when the man who had paid for my mutilation came out and drove him and his companions away and gave orders that I be dug up. Remarkably, I healed. I knew I was healing, for I was aware of the cost of every ingredient in every poultice and liniment they applied to my mutilation and could calculate the return on their investment. By the time they took to using wolf’s onion, which is a very expensive herb, I knew I was going to survive and I took a perverse pleasure in the expense.’
Her eyes are shining – with tears? I have been so caught up in the telling I have not been watching her face.
‘Did you not want to die?’
‘I did want to die. For a long time I wanted to die. I lay there full of grief and hatred and fury and shame. I denied God; then I prayed to him. I suffered nightmares and flashes of memory – of my former life, of the mutilation. But little by little there came a time when I found I noticed other things than my own misery. The small bliss of clean cotton against the skin. Losing my terror of pissing. The flicker of sunlight between rushes. The song of birds. The taste of bread. The sound of children’s laughter …’
A tear that had swelled in her eye now overflows the lid and spills slowly down her cheek. I find my hand, of its own accord, reaches out to brush it away.
She shifts backwards away from me like a startled animal.
‘I am sorry.’
‘No. No. You took me by surprise, that’s all.’ She gives me a steady look. ‘I had not expected kindness.’
Kindness. Is that what it was, that gesture? Perhaps, in part: but there was self-interest there too. For now I feel a bond with this woman, a connection, a slow-burning fire: somehow I must save her from herself. I must persuade her to convert so that she will live and I may see her, just occasionally, in the gardens of the harem, with the sun in that yellow hair, meet her eyes across the fountain as Black John sings his melancholy songs …
I summon every iota of persuasion I can dredge from my soul. ‘My life now is not so bad. I take what small pleasures there are to be taken by simply being alive. Of which there are many, even here, even in my reduced state.’
‘Life persists, I suppose, the urge to survive. What stubborn beings we are, holding tight to what little delight is left to us.’ She shakes her head wonderingly.
‘I ask myself if there is some mystical vessel in the soul in which such pleasures accumulate like water in a glass? Finally the emptiness is replaced with life and suddenly one day, in a great surge, you want to live more than you want to die. I have come to accept that I shall never be a free man, nor marry nor father children, yet I eat, I sleep, I laugh, and think and watch and feel. I am myself. I persist.’
She casts her gaze down and I see her hands knot in her lap. ‘Children. Ah, yes, there we are: the weak spot. And yet I would be a fruitless tree, twice dead,’ she says softly at last.
‘I do not understand.’
‘In the Book of Jude it is the description of an apostate: one who is spiritually dead, and will go to the Lake of Fire. But it means more than that, to me.’ She looks up from her interlocked fingers. ‘It’s what I am. A virgin woman, untouched and without issue. Yet I have always wanted children.’
Something knots inside me.
‘I was on my way from Holland to be wed to an Englishman when they captured me. Just think, I might be there now, in my great house in London, a married woman of estate, maybe even, a month and more into my marriage, a woman with child.’
Is this my chance to press my case? ‘If you want the chance to bring new life into the world, Alys Swann, then just say the shahada. You will be gently treated; you will be fêted. The sultan is good to the women of his harem; their lives are far from onerous. You are more like to die of boredom and too much comfort, than of fear or pain.’
‘And the children that are born of such a union?’
‘They are his own, and acknowledged. Bear him a son and you will be accorded great status, maybe even taken as an official wife.’
‘A high honour to which to aspire.’ Her tone is clipped. ‘And the children stay with their mothers?’
‘Children here are greatly cherished. They stay in the harem until they are of an age to be trained in their duties.’ I pause, but conscience drives me on. ‘Sons are greatly cherished,’ I amend. ‘Sons buy you status within the harem; but they may also buy you jealousy and enmity from the other women, and that can be … dangerous.’
The amazing eyes flicker over my face, then she drops her gaze and sits there contemplating her hands, until I feel sure I have destroyed every chance of persuasion by my honesty. Fool! I chastise myself. For a moment there I sensed the tide turning in my favour, but now there is a terrible stillness to her that suggests some degree of acceptance. Of her martyrdom? If she goes to her death, she will take me with her. The memory of the bliss I experienced on stepping outside the gaol earlier that afternoon returns to me, poignant and mocking. Ben Hadou is an arch-manipulator, I think. A diplomat, an ambassador, a negotiator. And yet he appears to have decided that the task of turning this woman would defeat him, and offered me up in his place. I can imagine his words now: ‘Nus-Nus will make a more favourable impression on her, majesty, than your humble servant. Such a big, black man, speaking in eloquent English? A low jungle-dweller, raised to the heights of court servant and educated enough to pour poetic phrases in her ears? How could she not trust the word of such a fellow? Perhaps he will even tell her his own story: how could she fail to be moved by that?’ And Ismail, forgetting that he has not seen me for three weeks while I festered in a cell, says, ‘Yes, he has a gentle manner for an abid: you are a wise man, Al-Attar: go fetch the boy at once.’
I am expendable; already facing a death sentence. Who would miss me? No one. I see Zidana’s lips curled into that malicious smile. ‘Good luck … you will need it.’
Will I have to beg this fragile woman for my own life, I wonder? It is a last resort, and ignoble. I feel a tremor of intent run through me as I prepare to cast myself down and beg Alys for my sake, if not for her own, to submit herself to the sultan’s will. Outside, the mournful wail of the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer: fourth prayer, appositely the maghrib – ‘The Westering’, the setting of the sun. I wonder if it will be my last.
‘I have known all the time it would come down to this,’ she says quietly. ‘To whether the hardness of my will and the strength of my faith can overcome the tenderness of my heart.’ Pause. ‘It seems to me there is much to fear, whichever prevails.’ Her eyes seek mine. I do not know what she sees there, but the smile she gives me is sweet indeed. ‘If I resist, they will kill not only me but you also, won’t they?’
Suddenly I cannot speak. Instead, I nod dumbly.
She looks away.
11
My little room has been restored, just as ben Hadou promised. My old blanket is spread smooth across the narrow divan; the prayer mat sits square in the middle of the chamber, and my lap-desk has been placed on the wooden chest, beside my incense burner. A new candle has been inserted into the candlestick. I move these items and open the chest, to find my clothing neatly folded within; but of the couching book there is no sign. Abdelaziz’s nephew must have taken it elsewhere. I wonder why; and whom I will have to go to ask to have it returned to me. I hope I will not have to go to the vizier himself.
I walk out to the courtyard and stare around in the twilight. Nothing has changed out here except that with the warm
weather after the rain the vegetation has grown more lush and there are more flowers out on the hibiscus, cheery scarlet trumpets proclaiming their indifference to the strife of the world of men. Usually the sight of them would lift my heart, but today they depress me.
‘Nus-Nus?’
I turn, to find Abid, one of the sultan’s body-slaves, regarding me with a wide grin. ‘You’re back! We thought you were dead. Samir gave us to believe as much.’
‘Did he now? I wonder why.’
The lad looks awkward. He knows more than he is saying, I suspect. Then I look down and see that he is carrying the couching book.
‘Well, that’s a relief: I wondered where it had gone.’ It seems that things are returning to normal, little by little. I take the book from him. Its old leather feels warm and comforting in my hands; its proportions and weight are as familiar to me as my own. As I turn to cross the room with it hugged to my chest, Abid says, ‘You’re to come now. The sultan is asking for you.’
I bend and stow the precious book back in the chest where it belongs.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Putting it away for safe keeping.’
‘Well, don’t! Bring it with you.’
‘Now?’ I say stupidly.
‘Now!’
‘Are there corrections to be made?’ I imagine that Samir Rafik has filled it with errors and that this has been contributory to his removal …
‘His majesty has a woman with him now.’
Fifth prayer is imminent. The sultan would never ignore the ‘Isha’ salah’ in favour of a couching: he is a devout and fervent man, meticulous in observing the correct forms of worship. Perhaps Abid has misunderstood.
‘It’s too early.’
‘And to translate for him. He can’t make the white woman understand his orders. He needs you to translate for him so that she does as she is told, and then record the couching in the book.’
My heart stalls, then kicks wildly. But what had I expected?
Arriving at the sultan’s private quarters, I find him stripped to his long cotton undertunic, stalking the room stiff with fury and frustration; but at least his hands are empty of weapons.
‘Majesty!’ Placing the couching book down carefully, I prostrate myself upon the silk rugs.
‘Get up, Nus-Nus,’ he says impatiently, hauling me by the arm. ‘Tell the stupid woman to take her damned clothes off!’
I scramble to my feet. Alys sits hunched on the corner of the sultan’s divan with her hands crossed over her chest. Tatters of a silk kaftan – a clean rose-pink that has replaced the soiled turquoise – hang from her shoulders like strips of flayed skin. She does not look up as I approach.
I have seen so much random violence in this place, witnessed sudden deaths, mutilations and woundings; I have been privy to hundreds of deflowerings, seductions and – not to put too fine a point on it – rapes, that I should be immune to one more incidence of the same; but it seems I am not.
‘Alys.’
She lifts her gaze to me. ‘I’m so sorry to cause such a fuss,’ she says.
‘Alys, you must not anger him any more. Let him do what he must and it will be over all the sooner.’ The words seem terrible to me even as I speak them. ‘Take your gown off, Alys.’
For a long moment she holds my gaze. I do not know what I read in those blue depths. Accusation? Disappointment? Anger? She keeps her eyes fixed firmly on me as she shrugs the remnants of the kaftan down from her shoulders. Beneath it she wears nothing at all. Even pinned by her regard, my peripheral vision takes in every inch of her bare skin, the delicacy of her clavicles, the narrowness of her upper arms, the full swell of her breasts.
Ismail pushes me aside. ‘Stop gawping, boy. Not that I blame you: she’s a peach, is she not? A little thin for my liking, but a peach nonetheless.’ I swear he is salivating.
The sound of the muezzin calling the faithful to fifth prayer shivers through the candlelit air and the sultan hesitates. He closes his eyes for a long moment and I see his lips move as he whispers, ‘Forgive me, Merciful One.’ Then in a single swift movement he tears his tunic up over his head and stands there stark naked. I avert my eyes; too late, and see more than I intended.
It’s not that I haven’t seen his august majesty naked before: I have attended him a thousand times at the hammam. I have scrubbed his back and rubbed liniment into his limbs after the hunt. He is wiry, this king, wiry and well knit. His muscles look like knotted wood: in a man-to-man fight, I should be able to break him in two. But power radiates from him, from his smallest movement, as if he were born to kingship, though he came to power but five years ago. That sensation is compelling, even when he is in his most relaxed state; but rampant it is overwhelming.
‘Get behind the screen, Nus-Nus, and tell her to get on the bed.’
I feel Alys’s gaze on me as I cross the room, retrieve the couching book and take my place behind the carved cedarwood. Her eyes remain locked on my face even through the fretwork. My voice shakes as I say, ‘Please get on the bed, Alys.’
Wordlessly she gets to her feet, letting the torn kaftan pool around her ankles. She should look vulnerable, defeated; but her dignity is like armour. She turns towards me as if offering herself and I find I cannot take my eyes from her, or even blink. Time feels suspended so that my heart feels caught between one beat and the next.
‘Tell her to get on the bed, damn it!’ Ismail barks, breaking the spell. ‘On her knees.’
Particularly with the Christian apostates, he does this: makes them present their hindquarters to him like an animal to be mounted, allowing for no human contact but the sexual act itself. It is his way of reducing them; making them know that he values those who convert under duress or out of self-interest less highly than those born Muslim. It is another of those strange contradictions in him, that he should be the one forcing the apostasy, yet prizing the strength of their conviction. I have seen him shed genuine tears for women who have chosen martyrdom rather than apostasy.
I pass on his order in faltering terms and see her shudder. ‘I am sorry, Alys,’ I start; but she stays me with a look. ‘It will pass. I shall pray for a son, a good strong healthy boy.’
She arranges herself on the white sheet that has been spread across the great bed, face towards me. When he enters her, without niceties, I see her grimace, but she masters herself and as I relay his instructions she makes the mechanical adjustments required, as if asked to move a chair or open a drawer.
I hope the coupling will be swift, for all our sakes, and before long Ismail is growling, his head thrown back, every muscle tense with lust. All the time her eyes remain locked on mine and I know I am her refuge, the still point into which her spirit flows even as her body is abused. It is as if a red-hot wire has been stretched between us: I feel her pain like a fire in my own abdomen, every nerve in me alive with empathy.
And then suddenly, even more disconcertingly, I feel myself swell and harden. The phenomenon is so shocking that I break eye contact and look down. There can be no mistaking the tenting of my djellaba. What unholy magic is this? Have I been possessed by a demon? Is the sultan’s potency so singular that it has infected me? But I have witnessed a hundred – a thousand! – of his couchings and experienced nothing before but distaste and detached boredom. It must be a miracle! I feel like crowing in triumph; but then a profound shame falls upon me. Am I so perverse that I should come alive only at the cost of another human being’s humiliation and pain? The erection wilts as quickly as it rose and when I force myself to look up again, the sultan has finished his business and Alys is turned away from us both, the bloodied sheet clutched against her.
His business concluded, Ismail shrugs into a heavily embroidered robe and, striding quickly to the door, shouts for the women to take her away. They bustle in, coo over the bloodied sheet – as of course is their purpose (for now they will rush back to the harem and proclaim the purity of the Englishwoman and the potency of the sultan so that what
ever offspring may result will be unquestionably his own), cover Alys in the extravagant gown reserved for those deflowered by the sovereign, and whisk her away.
My eyes follow her; but she does not look back.
She has survived the worst of it; what matters now will be endurance. But there is no comfort to be had from that cold fact. I feel bereft, emptied out – appalled. I feel, I realize, much as I did after sleeping with one of the whores in Venice. I did not admit it to myself at the time, or revisit it since, but those loveless encounters have left me with a good dose of shame, and I feel now as if it were I, rather than the sultan, who has used Alys, and then cast her away.
‘Nus-Nus!’
The voice of command shatters my reverie. I shoot to my feet in such panic that I drop the couching book and, in bending to retrieve it, bring the fretted screen crashing down between us. For a long moment we stare at each other, just two men revealed to one another as men; no more. Then the moment passes and the fear returns and I find myself wondering whether he will sense my lapse, but he simply smiles. His expression is unfocused, dreamy.
‘Magnificent, the Englishwoman.’
‘Alys.’
‘Was that her name?’
‘Yes, sire. Alys. Alys Swann.’ And suddenly, as if plucking the memory out of the air, I remember where last I came upon this English word. I will play the swan, / And die in music. I recall the words, though not their context. Doctor Lewis taught me English by reading with me from his much prized folio, fifty years old and battered by love and use. The words come from the play about the Moorish king and the white woman he had taken to wife: my lips curl.