“She is innocent,” I judged, as did husband and brother.
“Of course,” said Husayn, looking away from the spectacle with disinterest.
“Why do you say ‘of course’?”
“Because if she has the courage to do this, she mustn’t have a guilty hair on her head. I can only think it will make her look at her husband differently from now on. She will have learned he is not the only creature Allah made so, and that He, all praise to Him, made many much better. I’d say any man is a fool who demands this of his wife in the first place.”
With this dismissal, Husayn returned to his soaking and I must confess that my own discomfort soon numbed me to anyone else’s.
I was aware of the curious and rather unpleasant sensation of other men’s naked, parboiled flesh against mine under the water, but again, I was too numb to think much about it. I didn’t think of it, in fact, until Husayn suddenly leapt up out of the water, steam curling from his skin, and began a most shocking tirade. I thought for a moment that it was aimed against me, and that he’d forgotten once again that he needed to go easy on the Turkish for me.
“A curse on your religion!” This harangue started where the Venetian began and progressed from there to “May Satan stick his finger up your ass!” and “They found your grandfather’s shoes under your mother’s bed, you know that?”
I recoiled from the horrible blackness of such thoughts as from a physical blow. He was better in this language than he was in Venetian, I had to grant him that. Cursing is the first thing a traveler becomes fluent in, I reminded myself, and, if I couldn’t comprehend the reason for the abuse, I could at least learn the flair.
But presently the realization sank through the heat-fog in my brain that the object of his abuse was not me. It was the creature who’d been pressing so restlessly up against my opposite side.
I blinked against the steam as the figure retreated before Husayn’s barrage and then vanished at Hades’ rim. The steps were more exaggeratedly feminine, I thought, than those of the accused adulteress. It was only then that I realized what neither Husayn nor I could express in each other’s tongue. I’d been picked out by a sodomite as a likely candidate to share his vice by my shoulder-length locks, my hairless chin, and the air of not quite belonging, all of which matched his.
I couldn’t even meet Husayn’s eyes to give him thanks for my deliverance. My shame was too great—the helpless, polluted guilt of a victim. I hadn’t the strength to shove the blame off where it belonged—on the aggressor. Where was the gauntlet I could run to prove my innocence in this case?
Husayn offered none, but ushered me quickly back to the room where we’d begun our ceremony. Here our clothes still waited in their little cubicles and the cooler air seemed to fist space for breath in our lungs once again.
But there was to be no safety in clothes yet. The smirking African quickly replaced my dripping, loin-clinging towel with a dry one. He then threw another over my shoulders, a third over my head. I tried to smile some gratitude back at him and I saw the smirk lose its edge.
At this point, Husayn brought a Turk across the room for me to meet. The stranger was towel-draped like everyone else. Why my host should pick this Turk and not any of the identical others escaped me, and I have no recollection of his features beyond the fact that he was over fifty.
I assumed at first that this introduction was to distract me from my recent shame by presenting decent examples of the race for me to know. Acquaintance was bound to be minimal. The stranger knew no Venetian at all and the sickness in the pit of my stomach kept me still preferring the African’s softened smile.
Still, Husayn persisted in making the introductions. He gave a name I’ve now forgotten and modified it with “From Iznik, where he is head of the tile works there. His kilns are famous. No one else in the world knows the secret he keeps of firing that brilliant cobalt blue that is so valued. He is the man I brought you here hoping to find.”
When I made no reply, the man salaamed, a gesture of graciousness as it is incumbent on the younger to bow first. I tried to imitate the gesture, unsuccessfully on the platforms of my pattens. After that, there was very little else to do but stand and grin awkwardly at each other until by mutual though nonverbal consent we retired to our cubicles. I went to one, Husayn and the tilemaker together to the one next door.
The African, now sharing some of his hidden rhythm with me under his breath, saw me couched on a pile of pillows and rugs within the cubicle. He swaddled me as any infant in yet more towels, these holding the delicious warmth of sitting by the furnace still in their tiny pockets of nap. He then proceeded to wick the wet from my body by pressing his long, black, pink-tipped fingers gently up and down the toweling.
I found the sensation quite pleasant but had no desire to be handled in any way by any man, I didn’t care whose chore it was. I gestured him away, refusing likewise the signs I took to mean “Massage?” and “Narghile?” I did take the offer of “Coffee,” a word novel to Turkish that I did understand.
Two similar thimbles full of the sweet, thick, frothy, muddy Arabic stuff went next door as well. And I supposed it was the tilemaker who was smoking that medicinal, relaxing weed first discovered by the savages in the New World but lately cultivated in the lands around the Black Sea. The warm, dark, tangy balsamic odor filled the air, one of the first times I ever smelled burning tobacco. Such was the latest fashion in that drain of all the world’s indulgences, Constantinople.
I’ve heard it said the seduction of tobacco can also affect others in the room besides the smoker. Certainly combined with the purgative of heat and water, the sweetness of the coffee, and the emotional storms I’d been through that day, it had its consequences. I found I could no longer stave off a gradually enveloping and voluptuous drowsiness. I suppose I did doze, and perhaps for quite some time as the interminable and soporific asking after health and welfare droned on in the next cubicle.
I could not at first determine what it was that brought me awake until I heard it again. I heard the slats of a packing crate creaking open, the nestle of straw. Even more to the point were the words I heard. In sharp relief, as foreign words always are when they tumble into the otherwise smooth stream of native speech, I heard Husayn pronounce the names of Filippo and Bernardo Serena.
Venetians. Not just any Venetians, either. These were two brothers, now deceased and succeeded by their sons. Close to thirty years ago the Serena brothers had patented the almost magical process by which canes of opaque glass— usually white but sometimes the very skillful managed blue as well—could be imbedded in otherwise clear crystal. The masterpieces the Serena factory had been turning out—goblets, jugs, plates—continued to amaze the world. And shortly it was not just Serena but the entire glass-making lair of Murano that worked the magic. Venice set little store by patents when there was city wide profit to be made.
Letting the profits go beyond the Republic, however, was a different matter altogether.
I had imagined there might be a few of these pieces among Husayn’s imports. It was only natural, as there was never enough supply to fill the Turks’ luxuriant demand. My suspicions were confirmed when I heard the tilemaker’s husky exclamation as the straw parted to reveal its contents followed by Husayn’s pronunciation of the Italian term for the technique, “vetro a filigrana.”
So Husayn has found a buyer. That is well, I thought as I drifted back toward oblivion. Just at the edge, however, I suddenly burst into wakefulness.
This was not just any wealthy buyer. This was a man who had a certain technical skill, a certain vested interest. This was a man who could turn a little knowledge into a going concern. He would not just buy a vase, and he would pay much, much better than vase price. He would buy an industry— and undermine the wealth-producing monopoly of another.
Somehow, somewhere, Husayn in the guise of a Venetian merchant must have learned the secret of vetro a filigrana and was about to sell it. Venice was ruined.
&nb
sp; I was up off the stupefying rugs in a moment, finding that without pattens the marble under my feet shot cold up into the cocoon of my swaddling along my staggering legs. Towels dropped from me like puddles of water as I groped for at least the dignity of my chemise. My skin that had been scrubbed down to the shine shrank from the dirty linen and my own smell crinkled my nose as it had never offended before. The shirt was stiff and rank with sweat and salt. I gritted my teeth and ignored the sensation. Indeed, I felt that with the shirt, I was reclaiming the birthright that had been scrubbed from me.
Still struggling with the points of my hose, I burst into the neighboring cubicle.
I knew I was not mistaken in my appraisal of the situation when I saw Husayn look up at my arrival. His hands were frozen in the act of describing the glassblowers’ mold and showing how the opaque canes alternated with the clear ones in lining that mold—more than even I knew of the secret process before that moment. I didn’t need Turkish to understand.
And neither did the tilemaker.
The tilemaker had risen out of his cocoon of towels with the excitement of what he was learning. In his hands he held the archetype of all his future profits: an exquisite tazza spun with sugar-like decoration from the heart of the deep-petaled lobes around its bowl to the foot of its finger-thin pedestal.
I said something. I’m not certain what it was—doubtless the blackest curse I could bring to my lips—but the roar of anger in my head made me deaf to the rationality of any language. In one moment, I whipped the doublet off my shoulder and through the tilemaker’s hands, bringing the tazza with it. The glass shattered into a million slivers on the mottled marble of the floor, likewise rifled from another empire.
And with the glass shattered the world.
Pushing Turks aside, I made my way alone to the open chaos of Bayazid Square and its hopelessly unsatisfied pigeons.
XXI
I fled down the street I’d climbed in Husayn’s company earlier that day, hoping the late afternoon surge of traffic would cover me.
He would come after me, of that I was certain. I was so certain that even an hour later, with the setting sun melting Ay a Sofia into pure gold, I was still taking my steps at a lope, trying to look all ways at once like a hunted rabbit. I actually thought I caught a glimpse of the bounce of his turban, there in the square before the greatest of all Constantinople’s holy places. Husayn was answering yet another call to prayer.
At this sight, real or imagined, my exhausted feet found one more burst of strength which carried me around the huge heap of the mosque to the left. There, off in a corner, I saw a dark doorway that seemed deserted enough. I claimed it.
A single torch left by workmen and reaching the end of its life illuminated thirty or so well-worn stone steps that sank downward. I followed them cautiously. The earth closed over me, shutting out all sound, all threat of the strange city in which I was alone and a foreigner.
As I descended, I began to hear water, lots of water, below and, off, beyond sight, a metallic drip, drip, drip. Frail but precise notes sounded as if the strings of a lute were being methodically touched. The failing torchlight revealed a great underground cistern in yellowed highlights, with enough water to provide an imperial city for the duration of the longest siege—or to keep the gardens of an extravagant palace green for several peaceful stints from May until October. I could not, in fact, see the end of either water nor the columns that held the arched roof over it. The columns, too, were rifled Byzantine, I noticed bitterly.
I bent and, with a cupped hand, tasted my discovery. It was dullingly cold but sweet. With quick scoops I replaced all that the baths had sweated from me.
Thus refreshed, I discovered that the notion of siege held my mind. Here, in this underground fountain, was water, safety, a deserted and secure hiding place.
When at last I emerged from the reservoir—when both torch and sun had finally burned out and all the world was dissolving down to a uniform sludge of twilight—the inkling of a new plan had formed in my mind. The top of the cistern’s stairs stank of cats, wiping the fresh, clean smell of the water below from my nostrils but not from my mind.
The thing to do now was to try to find the slave market. The slave market and Sofia Baffo.
***
The streets of Constantinople were silent and grave, cold with the disappearance of the sun. The public world of men, I saw, was but the vain, garish illusion of the day. It was the private life of the harems that was real, and to that reality all mortals retreated at night.
Like the blooms of some gigantic morning glory, the shops and houses had folded in upon themselves. But everywhere, I could feel the tight tendrils of the plant that remained after the blooms had faded. At first I feared my feet might become entangled in this unseen growth as I made my way through the streets alone. Then I assured myself that they were but the invisible connections between houses made by the women, women invisible themselves in veils or closed sedans. Yet by exchanging gossip, comfort, lore, and measures of flour, they made bonds that were strong enough to be sensed even in the dark.
I myself felt attached to such a tendril. It led me unfailingly to the great wooden gate of the slave market, but of course that gate was heavily bolted. It had been so since noon, for it was unmeet to expose either merchandise or buyers, all of the highest quality, to the heat of the day even in March.
Finding the rear of the establishment was not quite as instinctive. I had to calculate footsteps and try to work them through the domestic solids with a complicated sort of geometry. At last a strong tug on my invisible tendril assured me that I had the right alleyway. I climbed up a wall, over a roof of crumbling tile, and finally dropped into what, if one can recognize by sight what one hears by sound, was the very courtyard I had heard through Sofia’s windows that morning.
Yes, there were the windows, high up in one wall, still large enough for a man to crawl through. The only trouble was that they were shuttered. The shutters were flimsy with lattice so that the cool of a summer night’s air would not be lost. But now they were adjusted for the winter weather and might effectively keep out any thief such as myself. Determination must supply where inexperience failed.
The slave shop and its courtyard had been designed with security in mind, but long, uneventful years must have made the occupants careless. The produce and shade of a grape arbor had come to outweigh the danger of placing it right against the wall. It was a fragile ladder and it swayed ominously as I went at the shutter with an adze I had found leaning against an outbuilding. Between silence, security, and haste, no straight line could be drawn, but in spurts and starts I pursued my task.
The hinges began to give.
I am no theologian, yet I am persuaded that God has a special place in His heart for the insurgency of youth. Often He does no more than wink at what, if dared by an older man, would immediately bring down wrathful punishment. Up to this point, fantastic as it may seem, I am certain I had His approval—or, at least, not His strong disapproval.
Or perhaps it was not God but something more magical— perhaps a kiss planted on my infant forehead by my mother as a talisman when she knew she would soon die and leave me without her kind protection. I do not remember such a kiss, but I did feel some power watching over me that night and I am certain that, had I backed down any time before those hinges came loose, I could have made it back to the guest room in Husayn’s house with no punishment at all.
Indeed, my immunity may have extended beyond that point. I have rehearsed these events over in my mind a thousand times every day since that night, searching for the precise step I took that was one step too far. At one exact moment, I believe, I gave up the freedom to act of my own will, to retreat, to retrace my steps, to have my life tumble on in a different, happier vein. Where was that moment when my will abandoned me, when a fate was kicked loose to tumble down upon me in a landslide that cannot be stopped and still dumps its debris on me even now? I have been unable to answer this satis
factorily. Husayn, I know, thinks it was the very moment I left his care. But I am convinced I could have gone even further than the removal of that shutter with no permanent damage done.
Madonna Baffo, as it happened, slept alone in that great room that night. She had heard me scrambling about in the dry grapevines and was awake and aware of who I was even before moonlight poured through the open window into her room. She did not, therefore, scream to betray me. She stood waiting, looking in the brazier-smoked moonlight like a costly icon in a wash of exotic incense. She gave me a hand as I let myself down through the window and smiled with pleasure as she greeted me in a whisper.
“How nice to see you, Signor Veniero.”
I did not take time to plead with her that she call me Giorgio. I had greater demands of her. “I have come to rescue you,” I said.
To my surprise, she turned and walked a few steps away, toying with me.
“But...but this is impossible,” she said.
“It’s not. I’ve found the perfect place for us to hide. An old cistern quite near here where you can wait.”
“I’ve no desire to be damp and cold in a cistern.”
“It’ll be just for a short while, just until I manage to get across to Pera and get one of our countrymen to bring a boat and—”
“But Signor Veniero, I can’t. I can’t climb walls like you can—like a fly. Like you have been doing, so it seems, since the very first day I met you.”
To be likened to a fly was not what praise I had expected for my feat, but I ignored it.
“You can,” I insisted. I was offering her what she had most
coveted of me at our first meeting, after all. “I will help you. You can do it. You must do it.”
“I don’t know.” she said. Not that she was afraid, not that she mistrusted me—simply that she did not know.
I did know. I grabbed her quickly and firmly about the waist—(that waist, my God! the touch of it made my arms fall into weak spasms)—and carried her to the window.
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