by Anna Tambour
“And you, scoundrel,”—Burhanettin didn’t even glance at Ekmel—“who smiles as he cheats me as if I’ve got the sense of an almond!”
The honey merchant’s eyes answered Burhanettin by producing two tears big as Timursaçi’s pearls, wasted on the confectioner.
“Is the sun to set before your master speaks?” Burhanettin asked, his nose beside the donkey’s, who had taken one sweet-smelling horn of the man’s moustache into its mouth and was gently tugging.
“For you, Effendi,” Ekmel said, bending till his face was close, “I have brought something so special that, that . . . ” He straightened, and reaching to the rump of the donkey, patted with his left hand, the hand that wore a ring with a little pin.
“Oh!” The animal jerked its head up and glared at Ekmel, who was sorry to see that there was not even one hair hanging from the beast’s lips.
“But for you, Effendi,” Ekmel continued, seeing that Burhanettin had finally decided to stand and look at him, “I thought of going to Özdem in Gaziantep, and would have, but for the friendship you show this bag of bones.”
Burhanettin had never worked for a Sultan, so he was no Effendi. He was a guild member of the shop helvassis, specifically, the helvassian-i-dukkan, specialists in honey-based confections. But his shop was far from the halls of power, his town more celebrated for its storks than its populace. Ekmel’s flattery would have annoyed him if the honey merchant hadn’t supplied him for years with honeys of quality and variety so outstanding that Burhanettin could never allow his admiration to show. The honeys that Ekmel found were what Effendi Celebi, the Great Timursaçi’s own helvassia-i-dukka would have bribed anyone to find. And Burhanettin’s sweetmeats were so good that he was a secret in the town, as no one wanted him to be lured to the Sultan’s palace, to their loss.
He twirled his moustache into shape again, but if he were a bull at that moment, you would have called him ‘crooked horn’.
“Well, out with it, you fox that has never been caught.”
Ekmel reached into one of the donkey’s baskets and pulled out a little glass, shaking it free of straw and polishing it with a cloth. Then he reached in again and pulled out one of his one- occa-weight sample jars. He handed the glass to Burhanettin and with a magician’s flourish, uncorked the plain glazed jar. Now he held a stick of olivewood, which he stuck into the jar and pulled up, carrying with it a rope. He caught the rope on his stick and reached to the glass, where he held the stick just so high—you could see the rope slip off the stick and coil happily into the glass. Then he handed Burhanettin the stick.
Making ropes of honey was something Burhanettin had been born to do, so this could not impress him, nor was it meant to. Ekmel busied himself sealing the jar and bedding it in straw again in the basket, his eyes turned away from Burhanettin, who poked the stick into the glass, pulled it out, sniffed the glass, held the glass up so that the sun peered through it.
Finally, “What is this preposterance?”
“What does it seem?” Ekmel countered, leaning an arm on the basket as if it were an embroidered cushion and he were at home, enjoying his hubble-bubble.
“But it couldn’t be,” Burhanettin said, talking to the glass.
“Not so loud,” Ekmel shushed.
“Enough with your theatrics.”
Burhanettin’s eyes burned. “I’ve work to do and you mock me with your Effendi and your . . . your fakes. You and your orchid honey, your primula honey from the forests around Xo Man.”
He thrust the glass toward the honey merchant, but somehow whirled away toward his shop. “This is too much, Ekmel. For all I know, you’ve bled her to play this trick on me.” He lifted the glass to the donkey, and walked the two steps to his doorway.
His back was bent now in the motion of entering, but time seemed to have stopped.
“May your children treat you as you have treated me,” Ekmel said, though he must have known that Burhanettin had never married.
Then Ekmel cried, “To Gaziantep, beast!”
Burhanettin emerged so fast, the lintel shoved his hat off. He didn’t stop to pick it up in his rush to clutch Ekmel’s wrist.
Burhanettin was the strongest man in town. He had to be, to make his helva-i-sabuni (the nougat so favoured by Ekmel’s donkey), stirring bubbling pastes of honey and butter and starch and sesame and . . . never varying the direction—till if you were in his place, your arm would grow a throat to scream with, and the sweet cement would still laze in its pot, not ready to be poured. He made striped taffy by pulling great ropes of boiled honey till a golden rope turned pale as a woman’s throat. He twisted that rope with another he had coloured blush with violets and hearts of— but enough already of his secrets, for it is said All precious things obtained free come with a complimentary curse.
Ekmel’s fingers were swelling to fat blue plums, choked by Burhanettin’s grip on his wrist. But Ekmel’s eyes were locked steadfast on Burhanettin’s eyes which from narrow slits, grew wider and wider . . . till the helvassi mouthed without daring to expose the word to sound:
“Kirand-luhun?”
“The very.” Ekmel’s smile was broad. “Or you may twist my arm off.”
“How much?” Burhanettin whispered.
Before the nightingale awoke
AT THIS HOUR, the nightingale’s head is tucked under her wing, the baker is kneading, the sun is sleeping, and Faldarolo’s eyebrows hang by their roots, exhausted by a night of dance.
Faldarolo is trudging home, heavier than the day earlier by a few piastres, but lighter by ten occas of his own flesh, melted in the fever of his music: the commands, not of the wedding party nor the guests. No, they are only thoughtless. His commands come from the bladder-pipe herself.
Faldarolo’s flesh demands flesh, his head and limbs and those eyebrows and eyelids demand sleep, but the bladder-pipe must first be satisfied.
His slippered feet slop faintly against stone and dew-laden dust, and soon one can hear other slipper talk. In the musicians’ quarter now, they in their weary ones and threes are coming home to eat their odd-time meal, and when the sun awakes, to sleep.
As soon as Faldarolo enters the room that is his home, he closes his eyes. It is a measure of sleep, and he knows where everything is, for everything is so close to nothing that his toes have nought to fear.
He sits on his scrap of rug, takes the velvet cloak off the bladder-pipe and lays her in his lap. On a wooden shelf jutting from the rough stone wall, an earthenware pot sits in a glazed dish of water. The cloth covering the pot is damp, its ends in the water. He lifts the cloth with his left hand and with his right, scoops a wad of something.
Faldarolo massages the pale yellow stuff into the bladder- pipe, all over the skin of the bladder and into the wood of the pipes. Though (or possibly because) her bladder once lived in a sheep, sheep fat she will not consider, nor olive or shea oil. She demands butter—and only the sweetest will do—butter from ass’s milk, no less.
Faldarolo covers the holes in the bladder pipe and blows silently, the better to puff out every last wrinkle so that he can massage the butter into her skin. The air in the room is cold, but the measured friction of his patient fingers melts the butter till the bladder-pipe is glossy and fragranced and resilient to look at and feel, making a healthy faint crackle every time she draws breath.
And finally, when she is satisfied but not a moment sooner, Faldarolo places her cloak around her and lays her on her soft, padded shelf.
Sleep takes pity on him, and wraps herself around him.
And when the nightingale wakes and the streets of the musicians’ quarter resound with snores, when Faldarolo would normally be fast asleep, fed in his dreams by the scent of ass’s butter mixed with the voice of the bladder-pipe—just when this would normally be the case—on this morning, he woke with a start.
“Quiet, stomach,” he growled.
But it wasn’t his stomach, who was quiet as a thief.
Something was wrong.
He jumped up from his pallet and picked up the bladder-pipe. His stomach panicked, stumbling against his bones like a blind beast in a race.
With a lack of respect that showed his urgency, Faldarolo tore off the bladder-pipe’s cloak.
And not a moment too soon! There, on the swell of the bladder—the cream-pale skin—a blotch glowed like a slap on her face.
Virgin in the restaurant carriage
SAVVA, VALENTIN, AND GALINA huddled over the book in the only place on the train that was secure from prying eyes: the restaurant car. Galina had locked it at both ends, her wont when the restaurant ran out of food, and when she had a delivery of something special from Valentin.
Large CLOSED signs on fore and aft windows and a long stretch of featureless land unbroken by settlements ensured privacy. Cosiness came from the feast (just polished off, to the last smear) of juicy smoked salmon and thick, rich smetena, compliments of Valentin (the salmon) and Galina (smetena liberated from the restaurant’s supply).
Valentin had been unusually nice to Savva, inviting him (with Galina’s reluctant permission). The more, the smaller, and Galina’s appetite was growing, as was her belly. Was it Valentin’s or Savva’s? She shuddered at it being the product of that snub- nosed worm, but when Valentin wasn’t around and the cars were unheated, and she’d had enough to drink . . . Well, what is one to do in this job, when the rocking of the cars, ever and ever and ever makes one long for . . . Better not to think of what one longs for. Romance is for nightingales. People have only each other.
And Savva, thought Galina, smiling at him regally behind the cold but gorgeous Valentin’s back—Savva would jump off a carriage to show his love.
The book, though.
Savva had been unusually brave. At the passengers’ breakfast hour when he folded the bedding in 3H, he found it: a book in English. He could see that. He knew some English. It was useful, after all. The passengers were in the restaurant car at the time—foreign tourists. He shoved the book inside his jacket and left the compartment quickly. They would expect other things to be stolen. Maybe they wanted to complain about these Russians. So many tourists did. A walkman of theirs tantalised from where it lay on their window table. Savva smiled as he filled the samovar. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
Now, his pirated prize on a wiped-down restaurant table, he could hardly stop from gloating. He had not only spelled out the letters to Galina and Valentin of that word on the cover, but had translated what it meant. VIRGIN. And the picture on the cover. What a woman! Those nipples—sharp enough to draw blood, but what a way to die.
Valentin picked up the book. “The Impossible Virgin,” he read out in English, his accent not only not bad, but disgustingly good.
“Is there anything you can’t do?” Savva burst out, embarrassing only himself.
“Make a bed.”
Valentin leafed through the book, Galina leaning over so that her hair must have tickled Valentin’s nose.
“You don’t know an S from a samovar, Galina, so give him room,” Savva said.
“What means ‘impossible’?” Galina asked.
“You too?” Savva couldn’t believe his ears. Galina could talk English as well as him.
Valentin shut the book. “Impossible is what Savva finds, whenever he tries to do something he can’t, which is all the time. This book included. It’s a novel. Just a trick cover, you fool.”
Savva didn’t believe him. Valentin was probably pretending it was worthless, trying to sweep the book into his clutches, like sunflower seedshells into a dustpan. But maybe Valentin was right, and the thing was really garbage, so he asked, “No scenes of you know what?”
Valentin rolled his eyes. “He can’t even say the word, let alone find it.”
Galina puffed out her chest, a little miffed. After all, if she was carrying Savva’s child, and it was likely she was, Valentin being almost always too busy for love, then Valentin’s slurs against Savva were both an insult to her offspring and an insult to her taste.
“It was a good try,” she said to Savva. “Of course you couldn’t have read the book out there.” She turned to Valentin and poked him in the chest. “He couldn’t have, working as hard as he does.”
Valentin picked up the book and opened it to a random page.
“You know what? Here’s your ‘you know what’. From the top of page sixty-two: Uncle Volodya looked out across the wide field, its golden richness cut down in the prime of life by the army of tractors that he commanded. His broad smile showed strong white tee—”
Savva stalked out of the car, leaving the door open for air and who knows who else to rush in.
Galina sighed. “Leave us our dreams, Valushka. Even I thought that Westerners wrote books worth reading. That’s as decadent as a Department Directive.”
Valentin laughed: two elegant coughs. “The world is a boring meal, Galina, and all the players are leftovers in it. You’re lucky that you’re sheltered from reality here.” He put a hand to her plump cheek, and as a leg kicks when hit by a hammer, Galina puckered her lips.
“That lipstick is wrong for you,” he said.
“What?”
“You should wear something more delicate. And you must look in a mirror. You do have one, my little golubetz? Half of it has missed your lips.”
The wind from the door that Savva had left irresponsibly open caught Galina’s carefully built haystack of hair, and gave it a vicious twist. “Some of us must work, Valentin.”
She grabbed the door and held it open just enough for him squeeze out. “And take that book. I don’t want to be caught with it.”
Valentin bowed and clicked his heels, something he did for women, as he did look pre-Revolutionary in the most delicious way. The book against his chest burned. He couldn’t read English very well at all, but what he’d read had steamed up his imagination enough that he was desperate for a sit on the toilet. He’d use the one in Savva’s carriage, as maybe Savva had filled the hook there with fresh newspaper scraps.
Galina’s face burned. The shame of it—that Valentin! Golubetz indeed. Even pregnant, she had a figure that could satisfy two men at once.
“I am not a cabbage roll. And what lipstick?” With all her food needs these days, her pay didn’t stretch to lipstick, and no lover had been thoughtful enough to give her cosmetics. She locked the door and stuck her hand in her pocket for her mirror.
Two thousand a session
THE MAN GAZED up into the woman’s eyes as if he wanted to throw himself into their depths. But then his eyes wandered down her long throat, to the mountains—
“Before the time of Gwandurf,” she said.
Her belly, so close to his head, was flat as—
“of Gwandurf” she said with even crisper enunciation, though that voice, musical as—
“Don’t sit there like flat beer.”
tap tap tap . . .
His fingers finished what she’d dictated, so he looked into her eyes again.
“You get more beautiful every—”
“Type or I’ll leave.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, placing his hands over the keyboard. “Shoot.”
“when the little people of Bungendore . . . ”
The man was obedient for the rest of the session, and when the dictation ended at the 2,000th word, he dropped to his knees and clasped her legs (their shape peekabooing through the flow of her neo-classic robe).
“I can’t live without you. Stay,” he said, for the nth time. “Melissa can’t—”
“Melissa can’t what?” His wife’s head appeared in the doorway, like an apple on a stick. “D’you want dinner or should I give it to the dog?”
“Melissa can’t hear me when I say I’m coming,” he said.
“And get up from the floor, Rick.”
The man left his study backside first, kissing his open hand and extending it like a tray, mouthing as he backed out, “To you, my lady.”
He squared his should
ers going down the stairs.
“I hope, I really hope,” he loudly announced without actually speaking, “that someday, Melissa, you will see. And I hope that moment reveals to you: your husband, Richard K. Stubbs, in flagrante delicto with the only woman who does things for me, who does things to me: the Elusive One, the Supportive One, the Adorable One: The Muse Herself.”
Lucky for him that Melissa Rowe-Stubbs didn’t hear him. Nor did the Muse who’d already left to get herself ready for her next call: an as-yet-unknown author, a librarian.
The virgin crop
THE GREAT TIMURSACI (Timur the Hirsute) was so named, not because he was a Great Timur with strength-giving hair in abundance, but because in truth, he had none, thus the need to appel him with this distinguishing characteristic so that he would never be thought Otherwise.
This Timur was not only lacking hair on the top of his head. He was smooth-cheeked as a cherry and his lips were soft and wet.
Thus, since the day his father the previous Great and two older brothers were strangled and he was released from the Prison of Princes and Old Wives, he wore a moustache that rivalled the greatest bulls of all Time.
Each horn was so long that any man could stretch his arms out and the Great Timursaçi’s visage exceeded that man’s grasp.
The moustache was held on by a fragrant gum collected, it was said, from the droppings of the cinnamologus. This is probably a lie.
The truth is that since he ascended many years ago, a new moustache has been made annually for the Great Timursaçi, and this moustache has required the hair of every virgin in a village so secret it must pretend to move every year, and is only visited by a man known to the villagers as ‘him with the basket, who finds us’.
The basket descends from the hole in the wall, its load weighed down by a rock the size of a theoretical loaf. When it reaches the peak of Munifer’s reach, he grabs it, his jerk on the rope making great show of the value of his time and its waste here amongst these peasants. His eyes, hidden from above under his long lashes, shine like wet coals. He’d climbed up steep terraces to get here, to this cluster of piles of stones. In each rough tower, people and beasts (in good years) live all in a closeness. The village-of-no-name’s great disguise is that this village looks exactly like so many others, with as little to show for itself.