“Ah, Mr. Peterson,” the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire said, “fillink better?”
“Yes, thank you, sir.”
“Dot’s nice. Dot’s terrific.”
In the morning he accompanied George and the courier to the government carriage that had been sent for them. Peterson climbed in first and George handed the golden package in to him to hold for a moment before he got in beside him.
Just as he was about to do so, as he was raising one foot onto the carriage’s metal stirrup, the ambassador briefly embraced him and almost imperceptibly slipped something into his jacket pockets. It was halvah wrapped in two of the fine linen napkins from the embassy service.
So it was the height even more than the length.
“Well, old buns, it was more than eiver acherly. Dere I was den, weren’t I? A great green nineteen-year-old gawm what never got no closer to de movers an’ shakers ’n a trooper’s widow to de mighty King of Spine. What never till dat day in Putney”—Mills telling a small circle of his intimates in a corner of the kitchen, near the tripe barrels and offal buckets, speaking their language, the broken brogue of barracks and parade ground, a sort of Ottoman-Persian-Yiddish he’d picked up from his mates in the year to year and a half he’d been there, a dialect (and of course it would be low, bits and pieces of what the locals had brought with them from Tripoli and the Crimea, from Hungary and Mesopotamia, from Crete and the Balkans, from Thrace——places, some of them, Mills would not have been able to locate on a map, not because he was such a poor geographer but because, except for his thoroughgoing knowledge of his own antecedents, he was such a rotten historian, the nations and kingdoms having changed hands and names since the great days of the Ottoman Empire, the Empire itself having rearranged if not the lands themselves then their borders, so that what he spoke, had learned to speak, was a lingo of the disinherited and misbegotten, a patois which finally proved tougher than those old arbitrary state lines of demarcation themselves, the nations and kingdoms having been reabsorbed elsewhere, restaked, changed like partners in a dance, taken like trumps in bridge) which still retained neologisms centuries after the countries that originally contributed them were no longer required (some of the more gung-ho among them would have said “permitted”) to serve. He couldn’t have held up his end of a conversation either in Turkic (the official language of the Court) or in Farsi (the language spoken by most of the people). What he spoke, if poorly, was an elitist tongue: Janissary. A language (which he would actually attempt to render, if a sworn celibate like himself ever got the chance to get them, to his progeny in a chipped pidgin, some bent bloopered, crooked Cockney) the now greatly reduced but still fierce force shared (perhaps five thousand men could speak it), no matter their mother tongue, only among themselves——a grammar like a password, a syntax like a signal—“ ’ad never e’er even seen a king much less haddressed one. Who now ’ad saw not only ’is first king but a certificated courier too, as well as a hambassador in a hembassy and most of ’is hoficial ’ouse’old staff an’ not only dat but a first secretary to a grand vizier (an’ you may throw in too, if you’d haccount for my toney turnout, a Savile fooking Row tailor). An’ caught a glimpse in de far off, an’ just as I was bending to my Prostration Walk, of de Hemporer of de Hottoman Hempire an’, by ’is side, Abdulmecid, de godkid, de Hemporer in Whiting. It was ever so much more den a poor boy could bear.
“De courier ’ad goon to stan’ next old Mahmud ’imself—may Halla ’crease ’is camels an’ rise de horanges in ’is hoāses—an’ on an preharranged sidgnal, winkies me for’d oo, ’igh church dat was, on’y now begins to take hin wot ’igh church ’mounts to, in dis wool. Usin’ de goldern packadge for balance, sendin’ it hout hinches afore me as a man down de mine might send de rays huv ’is lampern. Like some bloke on an ’igh wire I was. Feelin’ me way an’ doin’ dis piecemeal shuffle. Bloody ridiclus. Me eyes on de groun’, on de runner, de Horiental carpet wif its dizzy spaghetti an’ red rose geometrics till I were sick at stomk an’ might ’ave thrown up my own self if I thunk it wouldink show. Acherly thinkink: Yar. Dat’s wot dese flower arrandgements is——vomit, tummy rosettes, barf bouquets. An’ navigatink by de acheral pull a gravity oo ’ad wanted to guide carriages, to ’ave the tug of bits, an’ make my ’ands felt in an ’orse’s mouf. The gravities loose, flowink like wind thoo a draughty house. Feelink it. Hin my nauseated stomk, hup my ’eavy leggings, hon my ’ands wot ’eld de goldern package. Hall at once. Goin’ thoo me like ha dose a salts. Oo ’ad wanted de control of reins an’ ’ad dem now, but transformed, see? Redistribted like. Oo pulled ’isself alorng dat runner of decorated rug by reaction, resistance to the hints of heaving, falling, dropping. So dat I was like some long, deep, earthboundried hanimal, er snake say, hor a worm, dealink with space by constankly making dese adjustments of muscle, forever ’itching me pants so to speak. Wot all der time felt de high weight of de complicated ceilink threaten my neck like a guillotine.
“An’ knew I was close when I could ear ’em whisperink. De Hottoman Hemperor. De Hottoman Hemporer hin Whiting.
“Peterson ‘eld my packadge whilst I did my salaam.
“Startink at me belly an’ brinkink it hever ’igher, I spun me left hand habout an’ brung it to rest wit me palm on me fore’ead.
“The two potentates, ’im wot was in power an’ ’im wot was in whiting suddenly silent. Wartching me close now oo before ’ad barely give me de odd ogle. I haccepted de box from Peterson wot we’d brought all de way from Blighty an’ shoved it toward Abdulmecid, oo proved to be a strapping tall spotty-faced lad, much holder in happearance dan de five years ’e was reported to be. An’ me thinkin’ to meself, If ’is gardfather was on’y whiting for ’im to get big ernough to be tanked for ’is gift in Hinglish instead oov Islam ’e might ’ave sent it years ago. ’e’s big ernough now, God bless ’im, to say ‘Thank you so very very much’ in Hinglish, German, or Chinese eiver.
“When ’e’d taken it from me I repeated me salaam as Peterson ’ad hinstructed me ter do, an’ now de Hemperor was growling in Hottoman Hempirese.
“Peterson spoke up in wot must ’ave been the same language an’ turns to me.
“ ‘You,’ ’e shouts, ‘what are you on about then, you great scummy gonad? You press your left hand to your forehead? Your left? You salute His Majesty with the same hand with which you wipe your arse?!’
“By dis time Abdulmecid has got ’is packadge hopen an’ is lookin’ at me wif murther in ’is ’eart, an I don’ ’ave to see no Court records to know ’e ain’t been five years old for nine or ten years now, do I?
“ ‘What?’ says Peterson. ‘What?’
“ ‘It’s nappies,’ Abdulmecid says, standin’ arn de goldfoil wrappings. “It’s bloody fucking nappies,’ says Abdulmecid bin ’is perfect Hinglish.
“ ‘Seize him!’ roars ’is dad hin ’is. ‘Seize him and send him for a Janissary!’
“I look to Peterson for an hexplanation, but all ’e can do is shake ’is ’ead real sad like. ’e’s got dat same look on ’is dial wot I’ve seen when ’e’s about to come down wif the sicks.
“ ‘Wot?’ I arsk all confused like, ‘wot?’
“But I can see de guards comink. It’s just the job, i’n’t it? Dey grab me an’ start ter ’ustle me orf ter de flowery dell.
“Peterson wot ’as run orf quick as dammit ’oldink ’is sweet linen snotrag in front of ’is mouf turns an’ lifts ’is duster long ernough ter sing out ‘ ’is Majesty’s bidness! ’is Majesty’s bidness!’ an’ ’e’s doin’ twenny in a ten-mile zone ergain. But de Hemperor’s lads ain’t exactually takin’ their time eiver, are they, an’ pretty soon we’ve caught up wif ’im, an’ I think uh oh, e’s for it too, is Peterson, but dey don’ evern try ter stop ’im. ‘Wot?’ I arsk again as they’re bum’s rushin’ me past ’im. ‘Wot, for Gard’s sake?’
“ ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are all dead, kid,’ Peterson says in a white whisper an’ goes all sick on th
e carpet.”
3
“You, Mills!” cries the Meat Cut.
“Mills? Who shouted Mills?” calls the Latrine Scrub.
“Sir, I did,” the Meat Cut admits.
The Soup Man watched his junior officers.
Mills was reluctant to approach the Meat Cut with the Soup Man so visible, but Paradise Dispatchers were all about the yard and had heard what amounted to a direct order. If he did not respond, one of the more eager among them might well have taken it into his head to do something about it. They resented him for a Christian, and though Mills had formally repudiated his religion over a year before and had become, if not for all the world then for all his comrades to see, a practicing Muslim, he could not, however hard he tried, keep the disgust from his face whenever he and his brothers-in-arms—an odd term, since it was the boast of the special service into which he’d been impressed by Mahmud II that they never used anything as effete as weapons, that their killing scrimmages were conducted with nothing more elaborate in the way of tools than might be found on the ordinary strangler or murderer——garotte collars and neckwrings, daggers and slingstones, brass knucks and brickbats, throwsticks and coshes, matches, fuel, the rocks in one’s tunic, the hangman’s fat hemps—prostrated themselves for sunrise, morning, midday, afternoon and evening prayers. The fecal stench that came through the soiled, thin clothing in the tightly formed ranks of worshippers was terrific, and, if his expression was hidden by his earth-pressed face, he could never suppress the sound of his gagging.
Bufesqueu, a not unsympathetic Balkanese of approximately his own age and tenure in the Corps, had chided him for it.
“We’re most of us converts, Mills. I myself was a very devout Greek Orthodox. You know what I miss most?”
“No,” Mills said.
“The incense.”
“I miss everything,” Mills said gloomily.
“It’s a good thing we’re buddies, Mills. Talk like that could be construed as treasonous. Anyway it would be better for you if you got into the spirit of things. When we’re stretched out nose to arsehole on the prayer rugs, pretend it’s incense.”
“Incense,” Mills said.
“Sure incense. Certainly incense. Of a sort. Of a kind. Raging candlesticks of bowel. The guts’ aromatics. Fart fragrance. The piss perfumes and come colognes, all the body’s musks and effluents. It makes it easier.”
“Easier.”
“The celibacy. Sometimes I whiff the great poisoned cloud of dirt and intimacy we make and I imagine myself among women, entire overwhelming harems of them, hordes, their menstrual smell, their stinky mystery. It’s deep I am, deep and lost down salty holes. Down and dirty. I bite the ground I lie upon and chew the earth until it turns to mud in my mouth. And they put me down for a religious zealot because the others have risen and I’m still praying. Oh yes. Not to lose my hard-on till I’ve come.”
“Bufesqueu!”
“Why, Trooper, you’re blushing! You’re actually blushing.”
“You’re bloody outrageous you are.”
“Oh, am I?” said his friend. “You’d best brush up on those vows you took, mate. You know what they mean in this outfit by celibacy? They mean the pure, true pukka gen. Pope, Patriarch, Ayatollah and Lord Swami Guru Indian Chief. Not only can’t you get it off with a woman, you can’t get it off with a man or animal either. You can’t pull pud or touch yourself downtown or even think dirty jokes much less tell them. They hang for wet dreams here, and all that’s left for a lad is to make them think he gets off on God. That’s why I’m sopping when I rise from the rug. Incense, think incense, and make a wish, Mills.”
And the odd thing, Mills thought, was that despite everything—George IV’s tricks and the courier’s treachery, Abdulmecid’s and the Emperor’s misplaced rage, his forced conscription with all its concomitant hardships—he had got into the spirit of things. That he understood the source of his fierce loyalties, could trace them back forty-two or so generations to a strange curse delivered by a pampered young nobleman in a Polish wood who, for the authority to deliver it, had only a fair approximation of his greatest grandfather’s number and none at all, really, of the old man’s descendants (and who, at the time, did not really believe that either of them would live long enough to get out of their scrape in time even to get descendants), mitigated not at all his dumb cheer or caused him a moment’s pang. Cursed were the meek. He knew that. So be it. The last would never be first. He knew that. He knew everything, his low-born essence, his unswerving blue obedience and commissionaire’s style——everything. He could not help himself, would not. He was proud to be a Janissary. Proud of hardship, humiliation, his hardcore elite corps humility. So he had got into the spirit of things. And if he was no model soldier—I’m not, he thought, I’m not even good at it—he understood esprit de corps. None better. And valued most what he’d been forced to put up with. What few men living had had to endure, what most would have rebelled against out of hand, turning them tattles, turning them traitors. But not Mills. A hero of hardship, a big shot of bane and outrage.
There were the free-for-alls, the battles royal construed as preparation, training. The Soup Man’s cynical dictum: “Janissaries are brothers. A true Janissary will lay down his life for his brother as casually as he would stand him a beer or buy him his breakfast. If an enemy slays his colleague, even in the act of self defense, even protecting his family, deflecting a torch, say, from the thatched lean-to where his babes lie sleeping; or wrenching the firebrand from a corpsman’s hands with which he’d have ignited a wife’s pubic hair simply to take the chill out of the air, then the surviving Janissary is obligated by the laws of God and the traditions of his company not only to avenge his fallen comrade but to read that comrade’s original intent and to atrocify and consummate even to the nth degree his chum’s lewd scheme. He must perfect death and touch the bottom of punishment. He must annihilate all the friends of the family and, years later, should he meet someone in a peaceful street who, in a certain cast of light, merely resembles his cohort’s killer or perhaps, by a word or gesture, so much as reminds him of his former teammate, or even only of the incident, then must the veteran Janissary dispatch him at once and with the same concentrate rage and fury at his disposal as had been available to him on the initial occasion of his wrath. If the wrath is not there he must pray for it. If his prayers are unanswered then he must make indifference do, and call on reserves of insouciance and apathy to hone his cruelty and generate out of neutral nonchalance the worst usages of his imagination. We are Janissaries, on the fence, middle of the road in every cause, and patriots only to each other.”
And dropped his handkerchief, the signal on the day of their practical, for the recruits to attack each other. Mills, watching for the handkerchief to fall, touch the actual ground, was distracted for that fraction of a piece of a second it took Khoraghisinian, a friend, a young lad from his own barracks with whom he spoke on fire guard and after lights-out in his newly acquired makeshift Janissary diction of deep things, lost things, of home and absences, loved ones, of plans (mere desires now, simple idle longings, yearnings) and the high mysteries of the starry sky and the pungent, sacred memories of kitchen smells, the breads and sweets and savories of childhood, to drop on his neck from a tree’s low limb and scratch at his eyes with its brittle, leafless, wintry sticks. Before Mills could recover, Khoraghisinian had shoved handfuls of steaming, acidic horse dung into his eyes and nostrils and smeared it across Mills’s astonished mouth and tongue. Blinding George, choking him, leaving him breathless, gagging, gasping. Felling him, turning him over and, still in those split seconds it took Mills to recognize the source of the attack (permitting him to think Khoraghisinian——Khory), driving the twigs up his nose, hammering them home with his fists and frozen turds.
It was his sneezes that saved him. Sudden, furious, reflexive and unwilled. His entire body was behind them, some good immunological angel so repudiate to the foreign matter trapped in his
face that the sneezes brought his neck and head up like the solidest of uppercuts, roundhouses and haymakers, brutally butting Khoraghisinian and catching him, who was already leaning over to receive them, smack in the center of his nose, between his eyes, on each temple and, stretching to evade Mills’s repetitive jackhammer blasts, full in the throat. Khoraghisinian’s neck was broken, the bridge of his nose. His eyes had been pounded deep beneath their sockets and smashed like egg yolks, spread like jelly. Khoraghisinian had been killed instantly.
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