Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh

by Robert Irwin

  He heard her cry out,

  ‘Oh my beloved, I swear to you that I am only marking your body because I desire it. My whip is making a map to guide my loving kisses.’

  Then suddenly the blows increased yet further in ferocity and she seemed to be talking to herself in a foreign language, in which guttural words mingled with groans and hisses. It was not long before Orkhan, half swooning, slumped against the floor. Then she was upon him, pressing herself against his back and licking his blood.

  ‘You are mad,’ he groaned.

  ‘So I am,’ she replied. ‘My jinns have come back and they want your blood. Oh my beloved master, forgive me, but I cannot hold back from this.’ And she resumed kissing and licking at his wounds.

  At last she raised her face from his body and gave a deep sigh. When she next spoke, her voice was calm and gentle,

  ‘Now the kiss of the whip has taught you a little about the strange delight of suffering. Even so, you still have no idea about the pain of being a woman. In order to really make love to a woman, you will have to learn what it feels like to be one and to be made love to as a woman.’ She ran a hand over his hair.

  ‘Don’t go away, will you?’

  And she was gone, leaving Orkhan chained on the floor of the giraffe stable.

  When she returned, she nudged him with her foot and used it to turn him as far over as his chains would allow. Looking up at Roxelana, he first noticed that her mouth was rimmed with blood. Then he saw a large, greased and gleaming red thing attached by an intricate array of straps to the lower part of her belly and he moaned in dread.

  ‘This dildo,’ she said, pointing to the thing ‘consists of a unicorn’s horn sheathed in red Cordovan leather. It is only used for the deflowering of virgins.’

  Then she briefly caressed his mouth with her foot, before kicking and turning him again, so that he was lying face down on the straw. She prodded him again with her foot.

  ‘I want you kneeling.’

  ‘When I am free you will pay for this.’

  But, she struck at him with the butt of the whip and he did as he was told.

  ‘How will I pay for it?’ Roxelana demanded sarcastically. ‘Have me flogged, will you?’

  As she spoke, she knelt over his bottom and spat on her hands before using the spittle to moisten the passage of her instrument in advance. Then she mounted him and rammed the dildo in, or rather, she attempted to, but Orkhan was very tight.

  So she began to whisper hotly in his ear, begging him to relax and calling him her ‘handsome darling’ and her ‘plaything’. But all the while she continued to thrust with the horn between her legs. It felt like a great fist which, in beating its way upwards, was seeking to cleave Orkhan from bottom to top. It was as if he was being impaled on the shaft of the animal girl. It was as if he was carrying the woman inside him. It was as if he was being possessed by a dark demon who would not be denied entrance.

  There was a final shudder as she at last succeeded in driving the horn into him. Pleasure and pain, exquisitely compounded, surged within him, overwhelming his will, so that he suffered orgasm.

  Roxelana stroked his head. He could feel her breasts pressing against his back. He was in agony, and yet he longed for nothing more than to be able to turn to embrace his violator.

  ‘Now, my Sultan, a door has been opened for the Holy Rapture,’ she whispered, and giving the dildo a final twist, she continued ‘It is possible that you are now ready to yield to the total extinction which is perfect love.’

  She might have said more, but at that moment they heard the sound of women’s voices outside the stables. Roxelana thereupon swiftly unstrapped herself from the dildo’s harness and slipped away. Orkhan briefly fainted.

  When he came to, he saw that Perizade was kneeling beside him and drawing gently on the harness of the dildo to extract it.

  ‘Yeeugh, it’s all bloody!’ she exclaimed ‘One of the animal girls has been sporting with you. Anadil is waiting outside, but she must not see you like this. Most of the concubines and their servants have been hunting for you. At first we feared that you might have tried to flee the Harem, but then we thought that you would not and could not leave the Harem, because you are already addicted to what is between our legs. Finally we realised that you must still be in the zoo and that one of the animal girls must have spirited you away for her pleasure.’

  She rolled Orkhan over carefully. He tried to speak, but could not. He tried to stand, but slumped forward with his head on Perizade’s heavy breasts. She laid him back on the straw. Her heavy breasts swung low over his face.

  ‘You see, you cannot escape me. I am your destiny.’

  ‘Perizade, please help me,’ he gasped in his chains.

  ‘I think that I know what will revive you. Your viper must be thirsty, isn’t it?’ she asked solicitously, and, without waiting for an answer, she drew up her skirt and straddled him, lowering her plump fleshy thighs on to his face. Once more the thirsty viper slithered its way in to slake its thirst in the Tavern of the Perfume-Makers.

  Then she rose from his face and cast about to find the key for the manacles and his robe. When Orkhan was dressed and on his feet, she took his hand.

  ‘We will not say exactly what happened — even to Anadil. It would never do for the imperial concubines to hear of this. But you need to be cleaned up. It is time for the hammam.’

  Chapter Six

  FAIRY INTRIGUES

  A great philosopher once observed that the conversation of a pretty concubine is like the study of history. Both are endlessly delightful, but one learns nothing from either. Anadil was waiting outside. She carried a parasol and was wearing a silk pink robe and gloves.

  She started talking the moment Orkhan came within earshot.

  ‘There you are at last. Have you been sporting with one of the animal girls? All the princes have been the same. They were like animals too and when they come out of the Cage all they could think about was rubbing flesh against flesh. I say that it is the job of we Harem girls to school you men in the arts of a more courtly love.

  And she offered him her gloved hand to be kissed.

  ‘And keep your head down. I do not like to be looked at all the time. As we walk along, you must tell me how pretty I am and you may propose small ways in which you can be of service to me.’

  As Orkhan walked close beside her, he felt himself drowning in Anadil’s perfume. She told him that it was ylang-ylang. He thought that it was redolent of the tomb — of memorial stones, thick carpets, funereal chants and burning censers — bitter and ominous. Perizade, who was a little ahead of them, said that the shortest way to the hammam, would be through the mews, but Anadil rejected this advice, saying that Perizade’s route would only take them further into the zoo. So she gave the directions, in between instructing Orkhan on the discipline of the gaze and about how he might advance from the profane sphere of sex to the sacred sphere of love. Orkhan listened with half an ear. He was admiring the flare of Perizade’s hips and the undulation of her walk.

  With her free hand Anadil tapped him on the arm,

  ‘I hope that you enjoyed your sex with the animal girl. From now on, until the moment of your death, there will be no more sex of any kind… That girl now was she as pretty as me?’

  ‘She was not.’

  ‘That is not a proper answer. You must list the ways in which she was not as pretty as me.’

  Orkhan dutifully compiled a list of compliments to please Anadil, but his eyes were on Perizade and his mind was elsewhere again. Something Roxelana had said made him apprehensive, yet he could not remember what it was. But by now, everything made him apprehensive — Anadil’s perfume, her reference to the moment of his death, the desolation of the Harem. In the distance, they could hear the eerie singing of the eunuchs. But the route they took, through narrow corridors running between abandoned reception chambers and lumber rooms, was entirely deserted. Orkhan was thinking, as he walked with Anadil and Perizade, that the
way the women had been showing off their bodies to him and the relentless sequence of fuckings and floggings… it seemed to him as if the Harem had been conjured up out of the fantasies of the Princes in the Cage. It was as if the Harem was built of nothing more substantial than sexual dreams of the men who were its prisoners.

  They came to the Alleyway of the Dwarfs, a double row of kennel-like dwellings for the court dwarfs. Anadil stuck her head in a few of the kennels to see if any of the dwarf families were at home, but their rooms too were deserted and there was no one around to give them directions. Although Perizade had been in this place before, she could not remember how to get from there to the hammam. By now it was perfectly apparent that they were hopelessly lost and Orkhan could not disguise his impatience.

  ‘If I were you, I would not be in such a hurry to reach your destination,’ said Perizade sadly.

  ‘Perizade is right,’ said Anadil. ‘Enjoy the air and the changing scenery. It is a nice walk we are having’.

  But they had only taken a few more steps along the Alleyway when they found their passage blocked by a giant figure, black in a black robe and turban, who carried a scimitar and towered over the dwarf-kennels. He favoured them with an enormous smile,

  ‘Anadil, darling!’

  ‘We are saved!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s Emerald.’

  ‘Have you any chocolates for me?’ asked Emerald.

  ‘Not today, Emerald. Let us not talk about that now. This is your new master, the Sultan Orkhan, and this is my washerwoman, Perizade. We are all on the way to the hammam, Emerald. You can show us the way.’

  He bowed his head,

  ‘To hear is to obey. But first, perhaps, you will honour me by joining me in my rooms for coffee.’

  The suite of the Kislar Agha, or Chief Black Eunuch, was attractively furnished. They sat on low padded benches and drank coffee. The shelves above their heads were crowded with goldfish bowls. A bluish-grey cat appeared and leapt onto Emerald’s lap.

  ‘Azrael, named after his grandfather, the Angel of Death.’

  Emerald got a hookah alight and puffed at it, in between sips of coffee and conversation. But after a while, he put the mouthpiece of the hookah down and turned to look thoughtfully at Orkhan,

  ‘I was not born a eunuch,’ he said.

  Orkhan indicated that he had surmised as much.

  ‘I grew up a prince in the heart of Africa. Any of the women in our tribe were mine for the asking. Only my brother, who was king of the tribe took precedence over me. In particular, there was a beautiful woman called Rasya. I recall that she had haunches to match the finest specimens of our cattle. I used to lie awake sleepless, envying him his nights with Rasya. But one day the elders of the tribe presented themselves before my brother and accused him of being so besotted with this woman that he was neglecting affairs of state. A lesser man might have been angry at being so admonished by his councillors, but my brother was a great king. So he had slaves summon Rasya. Then she came hurrying to him, swaying and all glorious in her finery and she stood before my brother looking at him with loving eyes. He asked the elders to admire her and, one by one, they each admitted that they too would be neglecting affairs of state, if they had been blest with such a beautiful bedmate. Then my brother, the king, nodded and asked Rasya to come closer. She did as she was told and he swiftly cut her throat with his dagger, soaking himself in her blood as he did so. “I am master of myself, just as I am master of my tribe,” he said and with that he dismissed the elders.’

  ‘Naturally, this scene made a great impression on me. But soon there was another very beautiful woman installed in Rasya’s place. Makala, I think she was called. She lasted only a few months. This time the councillors did not even have to complain, before my brother, fearing that he was becoming too dependent on her, killed her. But then there was another woman… and another. I went away and thought. I was very like my brother and I too feared that I might become obsessed with a woman — or women. And the problem was one not just for me and my brother. All the men in our tribe went about maddened by sex. Moreover, there were not enough desirable women to go around. Things had got to the point that the men of our tribe would go to the river in the hope of sex with crocodiles. (It seems foolish now, but we were all young then.) You know that the female crocodile when she is preparing to mate turns over on her back so that the male may mount her. Whenever they saw that happening, the men of my tribe would rush out and kill or at least drive off the male. The female finds it very difficult to get back to her normal position, so then we would take it in turns to mount her, while she thrashed helplessly about. I had sex with crocodiles twice. I recall how foolish they looked as I caressed their throats. It was supposed to be lucky to do so — an augury of success in one’s future career and so it has proved for me, for now I am Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem.’

  Emerald sucked in his breath and looked proudly round him, before continuing,

  ‘But I digress. I was about to describe the manner of my becoming a eunuch. I realised that if I was not to remain the emotional prey of any passing woman — or crocodile — a more root-and-branch solution would be necessary. I did not want to pass through life without reflecting. Rather, I wanted to direct my future according to the principles of pure reason. I wanted to use the head that was between my shoulders to guide me in my destiny and I did not want a second head, which was between my legs, telling me to do mad things and countermanding the first head. I needed to escape the prison that my sex had made for me and to be free of the rise and fall of my cock.’

  ‘So I paid to be made a eunuch. It was not cheap and it was not without pain. I had a complete job done. Both the cock and the testicles were removed, so I am one of the sandali, or clean-cut eunuchs. I was buried up to my head in sand for three days to cauterise the wound and I had nothing to drink all that time. But it was worth it. I was not against women, you understand. I liked women. I still do. It was sex I was against — all that ridiculous jigggling up and down and those messy fluids. Even so, things have not quite worked out as I had planned… ’

  ‘Emerald!’ said Anadil warningly.

  ‘Ah no, I was thinking about the time of the peris. That was before your time, Anadil. This was in the days when Bayezit still ruled and before our present Valide Sultan had reached even the rank of Parrot. This was when I entered the Harem, for, once I had had myself castrated, I decided to take advantage of my new state and, thinking to advance myself in life, I thought that I should seek to become one of the Imperial slaves. Things went well for me and it was not long before I was purchased in Cairo by one of Sultan Bayezit’s agents and brought to Istanbul, where I was inducted into the service of the Harem. I was still young, but despite my youth, as a sandali — a clean-cut man — I had a certain status and I commanded respect amongst those eunuchs who had only had their balls cut off. As soon as I arrived, I was put in charge of security, my job being to prevent men from having access to the ladies of the Harem — all men other than the Sultan, of course. However, I soon found that this job of mine was really a sinecure, for anyone foolish enough to make the attempt to smuggle their way into the Harem was easily intercepted long before I could even get a sniff of them. The Janissary guards in the Outer Courtyard of the Palace mounted regular and vigilant patrols to protect the virtue of the ladies within the Harem.’

  ‘It was true that during the reign of Bayezit’s father, a couple of young men had succeeded in penetrating the Harem several times in the disguise of dressmakers. But eventually their imposture was discovered and the whole matter secretly and summarily dealt with. How exactly it was dealt with was not known until some five or six months later, when a diver, one of those who swim in the Bosphorus and make a living from scavenging in the sunken wrecks, was diving off Palace Point. The water there is quite shallow but murky, so it was hard to see in. However, the salvage divers have a trick for this. When they plunge in, they do so with a mouthful of olive oil. Then, when they have made their way
to the bottom, they let out the oil and look through it. The oil is like a lamp in the dark waters. So the diver let out his oil some way below the surface off Palace Point and then, looking through the great golden gob of oil which shook in the currents of the Bosphorus, he saw weighted sacks resting on the sandy bottom and they too undulated in the currents and it was plain to the diver that the forms which filled the sacks were, or at least had been, human. He returned to the surface and advised his fellow swimmers against thinking of salvaging in that particular stretch of water.’

  ‘Those were great and fierce days. But all that was in the past. In my own time, no one has got past the Janissaries — no human being that is. So after a while I began to get complacent and even a little lazy in my job as guardian of the virtue of the Harem. I was young and the girls were young and pleasant. After a few months, however, I started noticing white stains on some of the sheets in the dormitories. I taxed the concubines whose sheets were so suspiciously marked. They were all glib and smirking. Why, they replied, those were nothing but the stains left by egg whites! It was their new passion late at night — to eat raw eggs in bed. Well, I was a young and inexperienced eunuch, but even so I was doubtful. Why, after all, did the yolks of the eggs leave no stains? At about the same time, I was slowly becoming aware of hearing a tinkling sound only just within the limits of the audible. Then my skin would prickle. This did not happen all the time, but it was happening more and more often.’

  ‘I continued to make surprise inspections of the dormitories, but never did I find a concubine in the arms of a young man — nor for that matter did I ever catch them eating raw eggs. I might have let things drop, were it not for the fact that I was noticing that some of the young girls were looking haggard and pale. I would walk in on them unannounced and I would find them, singly or together, softly moaning and writhing about on the floor or on a mattress for no visible reason. As you know, Bayezit used to favour strapping, vital young women and we were at pains only to buy the healthiest specimens in the slave market. But now his Harem seemed drained of all vitality. The girls were not even interested in the dear old Carpet of Mirth any more and those who greeted me on my rounds of inspection were often wild-eyed and sweaty. The Sultan also was in no better state. I noticed that his hands had become clammy and they shook slightly, like leaves in a breeze.’