“A slave, are you? So am I.”
“Well, there are slaves and there are slaves, as my old friend Husayn might say.”
Delusions are the greater part of any infatuation, and removal of my physical reaction to her taught me what a flimsy thing my love had been. I closed my eyes against the pain of my loss, but afterward my speech grew steadier and I spoke in my most flowery Turkish.
“My master is Sokolli Pasha, soon to take Esmikhan Sultan to wife. I am to see his bride safely to Constantinople.”
Baffo’s daughter seemed at a loss for something else to say, as the mighty often are when faced with unwanted, unlooked-for suits. So I drew a paper from my bosom. I knew it from the other two there by its finer Turkish grade. It was an announcement I had picked up in the bazaars of Constantinople as I ran my errands and had kept out of curiosity, never imagining when and where I might use it. Posted by the Venetian embassy to the Porte, in Turkish, Latin, and Italian, it offered in the name of Governor Baffo of Corfu a ransom of five hundred ghrush for the return of his daughter, who, he had reason to suspect, was being held captive somewhere in the harems of Turkey.
I placed the paper in Sofia’s hand saving, this time in Italian, “You might find this interesting as well.”
I had successfully broken down her defenses. To unfold the paper, which her curiosity could not resist, she had to juggle the corners of her sheet most precariously. But a few rapid blinks of her eyes against some tender memory were the only other signs of weakness she would give me, even after she’d read the announcement.
Quickly, firmly, she tore the paper into a hundred fingertip-sized pieces. “My father,” she said, meeting me firmly in the eve, “underbid by a whole sack of ghrush. To people here I am now worth six hundred.”
At that moment, the door to the mabein cracked open and the voice of a young man whispered, “Safiye? Safiye? Are you there? My love, you promised you’d be gone only a moment, and I am dying of desire.”
“You see, Veniero,” Safiye said. “I can’t stand here gossiping with you all night long.”
“Safiye? my love?” the young man said again.
“No,” I agreed in rather brazen, mocking Italian. “Your responsibilities are most onerous indeed.”
I made no attempt to muffle my words and they must have carried quite far. I could usually, with concentration, hold my voice down in a man’s registers and the next thing I knew, a very wiry pair of hands was about my throat. The bubble of my voice escaped and drifted higher, ending in a squeak. I managed to keep my balance during the onslaught, for though he was a few years my senior, my attacker was neither as large nor as strong as I, all bones and angles. But I was forced against the wall by his energy, nonetheless.
Not since Husayn have I heard such abuse in Turkish as I heard then. Subsequent to leaving my Syrian merchant friend, my training had all been geared to courtliness and manners. I did not know the meaning of half the words that were spat into my face by that furious young man. Clear enough, however, was the accusation that I had greatly wronged the honor of his women and that the only satisfaction he could take was my immediate death.
Safiye’s Turkish stumbled as she tried halfheartedly to intervene, “My love! My love!”
I was so busy trying to fend off my unknown attacker’s frenzied blows that I hardly realized when other women entered the hallway. They were drawn by the yells, the thud of his flesh on mine, and my scuffles trying to defend myself. In various stages of undress, the women came to see what the matter was.
I heard the voice I already recognized as that of my new young mistress, Esmikhan Sultan, cry: “Murad! Brother, stop!”
This told me the man was a prince of the blood and I must go easy on him. But months of unexpressed anger were seething within me and, between blows, I grew reckless. By God, what could they do to me that hadn’t already been done? Even if I killed this milksop, all they could do would be a blessing compared to what they’d already done.
Esmikhan cried again: “Murad! A eunuch! Only a eunuch!”
The young prince misunderstood her. He thought she meant to say that he was nothing but a useless eunuch compared to me (he could not help but be aware of the difference in our sizes) and it made him absolutely senseless with hurt and fury. Fortunately, my strength prevailed even against such passion.
“It is just as I said,” exclaimed one of the unseen ladies of the harem.
“Yes,” replied another. “Whatever can Sokolli Pasha have been thinking? To buy such a one for Esmikhan!”
More harem talk came in snatches through the ringing of blows to my head.
“Surely he cannot have been thinking at all.”
“It is even as I was told. The Pasha is too caught up in his work to have any clear thoughts of marriage.”
“Really! Such a young servant! Does he know his duties at all?”
“It is not a question of duties,” another voice chimed in, brimming with delight. “Such a young one, of such handsome face and features! I wonder if he is to guard Esmikhan or to woo her!”
“In my father’s harem,” fussed a stern old hag, “we were given no guard until he was clearly passed his prime or had been well disfigured by the pox. There is a tradition of the Prophet to support such caution. I know. My father was...”
“Sokolli Pasha is so old,” said yet another, nearly hiccoughing with giggles, “that he has sent another man to be groom for him in his place.”
Now the whole hall shrieked with laughter and the sweet young voice of my mistress cried out above them all, “Silence, for the love of Allah.” But they laughed more all the same.
“Where are your eunuchs, ladies?” I managed to gasp. “Is a fistfight such a novelty to you that you can only stand and stare?”
I sparred to the right, but caught the wall behind my opponent instead. “For the love of Allah”—I took a blow to the face and felt the blood swelling at the base of my nose that made my voice sound nasally—”call your eunuchs.” Then I got in a pair of good ones, cleverly fending off a jab to the kidneys. “Tell them to pull him off me”—next I got a hold on the prince’s arm, which he only escaped by ripping the fine damask of his caftan’s sleeve—”or I will do him harm.”
“Do me harm, will you?” The young prince choked with rage and hit me such a blow to the jaw that I was speechless after that. “We’ll see who does the most harm.”
“Ah, Veniero, Veniero!” Safiye’s Italian rose above all the rest. She stood, wringing the corner of her flimsy costume which was, for her, earnest concern. “This isn’t a convent, my dear Veniero. This is a harem. Don’t you know by now that to be found in another man’s harem is death?”
The mortification that she had known me in my former strength (which was, in fact, a weakness, groveling at her feet) was enough to invigorate me to get the prince by the shoulders in a strong hold and keep him there. This same emotion pushed into my throat and could be heard in my next words.
“And don’t you, my beautiful Sofia, know how to tell a eunuch from a man?” I forgot all Italian then and said it in Turkish so there’d be no mistake. “Even now, you look for secret lovers in castrati such as myself? Sofia Baffo, I am a eunuch. Thanks to you—” I turned to the prince. “Master, I have no designs on your women. I am a khadim.”
XXXIX
“Come here to the light and let me have a look at what you’ve done to yourself.”
In her own room, Esmikhan Sultan led me by the hand as gently as a child to the lamp that swung on a chain from a low beam.
“That eye will not be good.” She set me on the divan and leaned over to inspect. Attar of roses escaped her bosom as she did so with a scent that was noticeable even through the clots of blood forming in my nose. “And your lip is already swelling.”
With a few quick orders, she sent her maid scurrying off for the equipment that shortly allowed her to sponge my wounds with warm water smelling of steeped comfrey and myrrh. The odor of disinfectant brought ba
ck a nightmare of events I had to push from my mind with a physical gesture as if I were struggling with the prince once again. Esmikhan Sultan sat back and waited for the pain to pass me. She said nothing, but the sympathy in her eyes brought me more quickly into control.
“You know, ustadh, I haven’t named you yet.”
As if I were a puppy; I stiffened at the thought.
“I’m sorry,” my lady said. “I meant to warn you it might sting. I’ll try to be more gentle.”
I couldn’t tell her that it wasn’t her ministrations that made me flinch. I tried to relax my hand back into hers as she dabbed at my knuckles that had missed her brother’s face and hit the stone wall behind him instead.
“Lulu,” she announced. “I’ve always wanted to name my first khadim Lulu. Lulu if he was white, Sandal if he was black.”
“For the love of Allah!” The words escaped me. “Not Lulu.”
My lady blinked in surprise, as she would have if a puppy—or even an infant—had protested at his naming. I closed my eyes with renewed horror at my situation. These pampered women considered their eunuchs at the mercy of their wills no less than they did infants and puppies. I could not endure it.
“You don’t like Lulu?”
I was incapable of answering such unfeigned astonishment.
“It means a pearl and I thought—Pearl for a white, Sandal, the sweet-smelling wood, for a black. We always name our eunuchs such names. Don’t you know? Hyacinth, Narcissus. For precious metals or perfumes.
“You don’t like Lulu.” She repeated the idea in an attempt to convince herself. “You looked so much like a beautiful, rare pearl when I first saw you this afternoon.” She laughed a little as she gently daubed at my blackening eye. “I must admit you don’t look much like one now. More like blotchy marble. Or a carbuncle. Shall you go through life with the name Carbuncle?”
“My name is Giorgio Veniero.” I hissed at the sting of pronouncing a dead patronym.
My lady rocked back on her heels and blinked at the sounds in incomprehension. That eunuchs should have names—or lives, even—beyond what their mistresses gave them was clearly novel to her.
“Giorgio Veniero,” I repeated. “Veniero.”
She made a couple of attempts at the foreign syllables, making them sound like the sort of disease my uncle once caught from whores. By San Marco, she was simple, protected so unnaturally in that simplicity. And I was to spend the rest of my life with no company but such women? Why had my reflexes of self-preservation taken over once again? I should have let Prince Murad kill me.
Finally, I realized it was hopeless. She would continue to mangle my name that way day in and day out.
“But what shall I call you then?”
“Just call me a man—”
“A man?” There was no insult in her voice. Just surprise.
“No, I cannot be called even that any more. Just call me a soul whom God—Allah—has seen fit to curse beyond any other. Adam got off lightly compared to me.”
Perhaps my struggle with the Turkish failed to convey all the bitterness I meant with it.
“You are Allah’s servant,” she stated.
“His slave, his khadim.”
“So are we all, Abdullah. So are we all when we have the humility to know it. Some are more blessed because Allah helps them to learn it more readily than others. Yes, so are we all.” Was she merely reciting something Turks learned by rote? Or was this her own intelligence? “So. I will call you Abdullah—Allah’s servant.”
“Abdullah.” At least it was male. “That was the name my friend Husayn always teased he’d give me if I came to play Turk in his homeland. Like I called him Enrico.”
“Do you mind?”
What did it matter? What did anything matter anymore? I shrugged my acquiescence.
“Abdullah it is then.” She wrung her cloth out in its bowl with renewed determination. “Yes, I do think it suits you. Much better than Lulu. You are different from other khuddam. Perhaps you are newer at it than others?”
“Perhaps.”
“Is this your first post?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps that explains it.”
“Perhaps.”
“Well, I shall do my best to see it is the only one you ever have. It isn’t easy, so I understand, for khuddam to change mistresses once they’ve become attached, like family.”
Attachment to anything seemed impossible, but I said, “At your service, my lady.”
For the first time, I felt some gratitude for the patience Salah ad-Din’s fat, sloppy wife had had in trying to teach me the stiff formalities of my new station. She insisted on teaching me when becoming a more marketable commodity was the last thing I wanted to do, when I was too consumed with rage to breathe evenly for days on end. There was some purpose in these forms. They were an escape.
“Is there truth in what the others were saying?” Esmikhan began again.
“What others?”
My lady bit her lip, flattening its usual roundness, until it was more like an average mouth. “Sokolli Pasha—my betrothed—perhaps he made a mistake in sending you, one so young and inexperienced.”
“I think he hasn’t much experience with eunuchs, lady, that is true.”
With a sigh, she turned more merry. “Well, I see nothing wrong with you. The way you stood up to my brother— I’d trust you on my side against anyone.”
“It’s only when I knew he was your brother that I let him get off so easily. Anyone else—”
“I appreciate that, ustadh. Anyone else would need more help than Safiye can offer him tonight.”
She finished with the water. It was getting cold in any case. She tossed the cloth into the bowl with a little splash and gestured for the maidservant to remove it.
When the girl was gone, she said: “You know Safiye, don’t you?
“Safiye? Is that what you call her?” Not she-demon? Not bitch?
“You know her? From before?”
“From before.”
“She is Italian, too. Is it such a very small country? You Italians certainly give my Grandfather the Sultan trouble enough in battle and on the high seas.”
“Italy was a long, long time ago.” Couldn’t we finish with the subject?
“I see.” I think she did make an attempt to change the topic, though it wasn’t far enough for me. “Well, Safiye has certainly brought life to this harem. Life to my brother, too, which you tried to knock from him again tonight. I have never had such a dear, dear friend as Safiye is.”
“What pleases my lady pleases me.” Another one of those good, noncommittal phrases.
“I do hope Sokolli Pasha will allow me to continue to see her.”
“I am sure that what pleases my lady will also please my master.”
Selim’s daughter chuckled.
What was so humorous about the way I ran through a eunuch’s dialogue? “My lady?”
“Nothing. Just—wasn’t it funny when my brother finally discovered that he, not you, was the intruder here in the haremlik? How he soon skulked back into the mabein with his seriously wounded pride? He is such a blustering bag of hot air. You mustn’t mind him.”
“I shouldn’t mind him so much if my eve wasn’t throbbing like it is.”
My lady laughed again, louder. “And Safiye, how she turned so indignantly from you and quickly followed her lover. Nobody ever brought her to heel before like that.”
“She would follow her lover.”
“Oh, not Murad. She only does what Murad says when it pleases her. You, Abdullah. You, with your put-down. ‘Looking for lovers among the khuddam?’ I wonder who’ll recover sooner, Murad from his black eyes or Safiye from your words.”
My lady and I had met only briefly before, just long enough for me to register her plump, healthy youthfulness in my mind. I had weighed it sadly against the sharp middle age of my master, who was to be her husband—and even more sadly, equated it with a younger form of Salah ad-Din
’s wife. But now, I saw how truly pleasant she was to look at. Not overwhelmingly beautiful, perhaps, with her round face and round, dark eyes, black curls and round mouth dimpling with her laughter over a round chin. A prominent mole marred the left side of her nose. But she was good-natured and pleasanter still when her personality bubbled unhampered to the surface.
I laughed in spite of myself and she laughed back.
Then, with sudden and inexplicable unity, Esmikhan and I laughed together. It was infectious, a fever of laughter. We laughed and laughed until the tears flowed, until our sides ached. We couldn’t look at one another without falling into another fit. Finally, first she and then I collapsed to the cushions of the divan and rolled and laughed and cried until we were spent.
***
“Good night, my lady.”
How long had we lain thus side by side until a chill brought me to myself? Selim’s daughter had laughed herself into an immobile exhaustion. She didn’t reply. Perhaps she even slept. I shivered again in the autumn chill that had crept into the room. I found a quilt and tossed it over her sleeping form. Her little hennaed feet curled up under it in gratitude, but her breath came deeply now. She slept.
It was good for Esmikhan Sultan to laugh. As a bride, she must have been under a lot of tension, and would come under more.
But it was also good for me. I hadn’t allowed myself to laugh since I’d slept in Husayn’s guest room so very long ago.
I’d been afraid it might hurt my mutilation. I found now that it did not.
XL
We moved through the autumn hills that were thick with the acrid smell of asphodel like smoke to the flame-orange turn of the leaves. The bridal train was more glorious than I had dared to hope. The master had meant to send only his old black retainer, Ali, and myself. He was too busy with duties of state at the moment, though he promised he would travel a day’s journey out of Constantinople to meet us.
At the last minute, some word of conscience, perhaps from the Sultan himself, had reminded Sokolli Pasha that this was a princess of the blood he was marrying, not just any old peasant. For duty’s sake, he had increased our numbers to thirty out of the capital. Our escort, however, was not composed of musicians, mimes, acrobats, and other merrymakers common to wedding parties, but a squadron of janissaries. It was as if our charge were a chest of taxes in pure gold traveling through a land of barbarians rather than a bride crossing the very bosom of the Turkish homeland.
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