‘I know the name,’ Byron replied.
‘François Bonnivard rebelled against the rule of a cruel count in the 15th century. The count had him locked up in basement of his castle at Chillon, in a small room, where the prisoner paced back and forth day after day, month after month, and year after year. From that walking, my lord, there were indeed tracks that remained in the stone,’ Isak related. After a pensive pause he went on: ‘Sometimes I think that the East and the West are not all that different.’
‘So maybe we’ll be able to woo Zuleiha then,’ Byron countered merrily.
‘Maybe is the right word, my lord. Maybe.’ Isak was still very thoughtful. ‘Visit Chillon sometime, my lord, when you have the opportunity; there you can see with your own eyes how small a space is required for the human mind to preserve its freedom.’
‘The mind is a beautiful thing,’ said Byron, ‘but I am hungry.’
‘Then let’s go downstairs, my lord,’ said Isak.
They dressed in silence.
‘May I give you a piece of advice, my lord,’ asked Isak, before they left for the dining hall. Byron nodded.
‘Do not mention the courtship and Zuleiha in front of your countrymen. At least not until we have asked for her hand. They say that brings bad luck,’ he added. ‘But even casting superstition aside, I believe it’s better for you for as few people as possible to know about this.’
‘I was thinking the same thing,’ Byron said.
As Isak opened the door, he whispered: ‘First we go to eat breakfast, and then we will marry you off.’
* * *
At the table everyone sat together: Isak, Byron, Hobhouse, the other Englishmen, and their two Albanian escorts. Everyone was in excellent spirits. The rain was abating, and one could sense that the journey would continue shortly. There was a bustle of activity in front of the han, because several of the guests were clearly intending to be on their way that very day. Byron gave Isak a worried look. Surely she won’t be departing, was the thought one could read in his eyes.
‘Who is it that’s in such a hurry?’ Isak asked the innkeeper. ‘Who doesn’t have the patience to wait for the rain to cease altogether?’
‘Ah, it’s some merchants from the area’, replied the innkeeper, and Isak translated his words for Byron. ‘Little people in a big hurry – they’d brave hell itself for a bit of money.’ Byron chuckled with relief, and the innkeeper beamed with pleasure; he apparently believed that the foreigner was laughing at his joke.
After breakfast, the men split up and returned to their rooms. Almost as soon as he entered his own chamber, Byron took a seat on the bed, but Isak remained standing next to him.
‘The best way to do this is for us to take ourselves to Selim Beg just after noon.’
‘That was my idea, too,’ Byron said. ‘The sooner the better, because impatience is beginning to gnaw at me.’
‘Don’t let that happen, my lord. Sabur,’ said Isak.
Sabur – once again a mysterious word had crept into Isak’s English. Byron was already compiling a little glossary in his head. He knew what besa meant, and what giaour, dert, and sevdah were, but he wasn’t yet familiar with sabur. Isak seemed to have suspected as much.
‘Sabur, my lord, is in essence “patience,” but not of the usual sort. It is,’ he went on, ‘A type of metaphysical patience. In China they have a proverb: “if you sit for long enough next to a river, you will eventually see the corpses of your enemies float past.” Sabur is like that, my lord, only not quite as harsh. Everything falls into place when its time comes, and if that doesn’t happen, then it’s all the same, because so much time has already passed. That is sabur, my lord,’ Isak repeated, ‘it is that and much more. But you and I would need far more sabur than we have at our disposal for me to be able to explain to you even partially, but in rich and beautiful detail, what the word means. Therefore this must suffice for now.’
And with that, Isak stopped talking.
‘I believe I understand,’ Byron added softly; ‘at least in part, at least as much as I understand of besa.’
‘That’s enough,’ Isak replied. ‘Now we should get dressed for your courtship. I recommend that you put on the garments that Mahmut Pasha gave you. You’re going to be a stranger to them in such a degree that something recognizably local would be appropriate, sort of like a cake that conceals the bitterness of poison.’
‘My English uniform is dirty anyway, so that is the most beautiful and most proper set of clothes that I have with me.’
Isak nodded, satisfied. ‘I will go with you, as your interpreter and friend, but you are the wooer. It is important for you to look Selim Beg straight in the eye while you speak, and also while he speaks to you. It’s unimportant whether he understands your words or you his. It seems to me,’ Isak continued thoughtfully, ‘that it is not words, anyway, that will decide the fate of this courtship.’
Then they both sat there quietly for a time, until Isak suddenly clapped his hands and said: ‘Time to start getting ready, my lord. Meanwhile I am going outside to get some fresh air.’
As Isak left the room, the door shut loudly behind him; but when he returned the movement of the handle was barely audible. He had not remained outdoors for very long, but Byron was ready. Isak looked him up and down and did not conceal his satisfaction. ‘Splendid,’ he said under his breath. ‘You look splendid, my lord, not at all like a Westerner.’
Byron stood in the middle of the room as Isak circled slowly around him, so he could view him from all angles. Byron, clad in sumptuous silk and velvet, cut a profile that looked both menacing and meditative. He resembled the figures in Persian miniatures. ‘Do you want to know something, my lord?’ Isak asked, approaching him again from the front after sizing him up from all sides. ‘You should have been born a Turk.’
‘Perhaps I was,’ Byron offered, ‘but now we want to see to it at least that I get a Turk as a wife.’
They said nothing more until they were standing at the door behind which Zuleiha was hidden away. Byron knocked. The door was quickly opened. Isak said something to the young man who had appeared in the doorway – Byron made out the names Selim Beg and Ali Pasha – and the boy then withdrew into the interior. He returned swiftly and led them inside. These lodgings were, as far as they could tell, spacious. Selim Beg had probably requisitioned about a quarter of the entire building for his entourage. Byron and Isak were led into a large room devoid of other people. They sat down on a smooth bench and waited.
‘So far so good,’ Isak whispered. ‘I had feared that they might not receive us at all.’ Byron was just about to respond, when another door opened and a tall man of striking appearance walked in. He was bearded and dressed all in black, except that on his head he wore a white turban. With a stony but composed expression on his face, he greeted the two visitors with an ever so slight nod of the head and sat down opposite them. Byron said to Isak: ‘Greet him, kindly but not obsequiously.’
Isak uttered two or three sentences in a theatrical voice. Selim Beg nodded again and said a few ill-tempered words. In a low voice, Isak translated them for Byron: ‘He is asking what we want.’
Byron sensed that this directness was somewhat unusual; there had been no rituals of hospitality, no polite inquiries, no overtures of any kind. Byron was certain that the man knew why they had come.
‘Tell him,’ he said to Isak, ‘that I wish to marry Zuleiha and that I’m asking him for her hand in marriage. Say it all with carefully chosen words, as if you were wooing her yourself, I beg you.’
Now Isak spoke for much longer, and Selim Beg acknowledged his words several times with a dip of his head. But the expression on his face remained nothing if not icy. When Isak had finished, Selim Beg sat there in silence for a moment. Then, in a cryptic, low voice he pronounced a few sentences.
‘Selim Beg is grateful for your polite approach. It is very much the way courtships were conducted in the old days; it is a courtship according to the tabiat. Th
ose are his exact words. A courtship that makes it clear you are of noble lineage, my lord, although that is also evident by virtue of your appearance. You have small ears, curly hair, small white hands, and an attractive face – and you look handsome in those vestments. That is literally what he said, and that all of these things are attributes of a man of aristocratic pedigree. For all of these reasons, he regrets that he must reject your suit. Zuleiha is already spoken for, but he also says that he must be forthright and let you know, that his reply would have to be negative, even if this she were not promised to someone already. You are a giaour. That, my lord, is precisely how he put it, and he will not give his sister away to an unbeliever. He said that, a few years ago, her father fell in a battle against infidels in Serbia, and that he would be spitting on his father’s grave if he now gave her over to a giaour, regardless of his status. Since the death of their father, he has been both father and brother to her. That’s all, my lord,’ Isak concluded.
But Byron had barely heard his last words. The door behind Selim Beg’s back was, alas, slightly ajar, and Byron was able to catch sight of Zuleiha herself for just a moment, when she peeked into the room.
‘My lord,’ Isak said again, in a somewhat louder voice. But Byron just said: ‘Ask him what Zuleiha’s wish is.’
‘That would not be appropriate,’ Isak whispered.
But Byron merely raised his voice: ‘Just ask him.’
Isak complied, and Selim Beg’s upper lip gave an almost invisible twitch. Once again his answer was laconic.
‘She is a woman, and her wish is what I wish. She has no wishes of her own,’ Isak translated.
Byron was quiet for a moment as he ruminated. ‘Ask him, if it would alter anything if I were to convert to Islam, if I were to become a Turk.’
Isak was, apparently, not surprised by this question, but the expression on Selim Beg’s face grew even darker in response. He added something in a voice that was tinged with disgust.
‘What it would change, my lord – and these are his words – is his regard for you. As it is, he esteems you, but in the eventuality you describe, he would despise you. What kind of man changes his faith on account of a woman? Selim Beg asked.’
But now Byron was on his feet and almost shouting: ‘What should I do?’
Isak looked at him, bewildered, but said nothing. Meanwhile, Selim Beg did utter something.
‘What’s he saying?’ Byron asked.
‘You can only win her over his dead body,’ replied Isak.
Byron gave Selim Beg a caustic look and gripped the handle of his sabre. At that, Selim Beg also stood up and blared a few angry words.
‘A duel with sabres, tomorrow morning at dawn,’ Isak reported to Byron, who looked back at Selim Beg and nodded. The young man who had led them into the room came over to them once more, in order to escort them out. But first Selim Beg said something else. It was only when they were back in their room that Isak translated that final sentence. ‘He said it would give him particular pleasure to kill you, my lord.’
* * *
The rain grew lighter and lighter until nightfall, but then it seemed to intensify once more with the increasing darkness. Byron and Isak had scarcely said a word the entire afternoon. In the evening, when they went down to eat supper, they were reunited with everyone, but the mood was nothing at all as it had been at breakfast. The mealtime passed in tortured silence, and the only thing that disturbed the deathly stillness at the table was the chewing of food in various mouths. It seemed that everyone was waiting to be able to take leave of each other. When they returned to their murky room, Isak prepared to light a candle, but Byron put a hand on his shoulder.
‘Wait a bit,’ he said.
A weak beam of dreary moonlight had managed to penetrate both the clouds and the windowpane, so that the room was not in complete blackness. Confused, Isak looked at Byron, who was pulling his sword out of its sheath with a solemn gesture. The sharp edge of its blade shone in the darkness. In the deep obscurity of night, the weapon appeared miraculous and powerful, like a magic lamp or a ray of white light from a star. They were both spellbound and stared at the blade, until Byron lowered it and slid it back into the sheath. Isak then immediately lit a candle. They sat down on their respective beds and the room once more descended into silence.
‘You have a splendid sabre, my lord,’ Isak said at last. ‘But how is your arm? How are you at handling a weapon?’
‘Never have I faced anyone better than I,’ said Byron, in voice low and even, the way one speaks of blasé and indisputable facts. It was a voice from which any trace of arrogance was absent. Isak nodded.
‘Selim Beg is very skilled,’ he added after a moment.
‘I would not have assumed any less,’ Byron rejoined.
‘Do you know, my lord, that when people praise Selim Beg as a singer, they usually say that he uses his voice as well as he does his sword. I myself have never seen him make use of it, but I have heard the way he sings. If his sword fighting is indeed like his singing, you will be lucky to escape with your life tomorrow,’ Isak said in hushed tones. Byron made no answer.
Isak spoke up again: ‘And people say that his sword is a force of nature, the blade as thin as wire, as sharp as a tusk, and as hard and lustrous as a diamond. It was forged in Damascus, my lord, and Selim Beg is supposed to have said of it once: it is as beautiful as my sister. There are swords, my lord, that are bloodthirsty. Believe me: his is one. Word is that he has killed many men with it.’
Byron again said nothing right away. ‘Tomorrow blood is going to flow, and we shall see whose it is.’
‘Now I will extinguish the light, my lord. Tomorrow we will rise before daybreak and the sabah.’
Blackness filled the room, and Byron whispered: ‘before daybreak.’
Chapter Thirteen: October 18, 1809
Byron did not close his eyes the entire night, although he pretended to be sleeping. Actually Isak could not sleep properly either, but Byron wanted to give the impression that he had slept like a stone. It’s stupid, he thought, dreadfully stupid, that what scared him more than the real danger of possible death in a few hours was the possibility that people might account him a coward for not being able to sleep because he was horror-stricken at the thought of an enormous and indescribable nothingness. Nonetheless, the night passed rapidly. To a sleepless man, it often seems that the cosmos and time have conspired against him: the night seems to be stretched and extended, the same way Ulysses claimed that Poseidon had made the sea surge up in order to spite him. But Byron’s night passed in a trice. Maybe it’s because this is my last, he thought bitterly. In the darkness, everything seemed gentle and familiar. Somewhere amidst the canyons of Albania, in a night as black as pitch, under a coarse blanket, he believed that he had finally, for the first time, understood Hamlet’s words about a kingdom in a nutshell. Life and the world had always been out of reach, always somewhere far away, but now everything was here, within reach, in the unprepossessing room of a provincial inn.
This may be what the real poets call inspiration, something that he, as a poser, had never before experienced. Through the gloom blazed the words:
My own pulse I feel in my hot brow,
a sea of darkness concealing the goals of all my desire.
And somewhere beyond those walls are distant wind and rain.
There, where there’s no love, or fear, or shame,
my tired heart reaches true peace,
a silence unmolested by wind or rain.
Hardly had the first harbinger of dawn peeked through the window, when Byron was on his feet. Yes, the rain had ceased. Now morning would come on fast, an almost spring-like morning, but Byron had no idea whether he would see it. Isak tore himself out of a leaden half-sleep and stood up also.
‘No more rain,’ Byron said.
Isak acted surprised; he opened the window, and the heady smell of crisp, fresh air pressed brashly into the room.
‘It smells like J
annah,’ said Isak. From the nearby grove, bird song could be heard. Byron girded himself with his sword.
‘Let’s be on our way, my lord.’
* * *
Selim Beg and his attendant were waiting for them in the clearing between the han and the grove. Selim Beg, like Byron, was wearing the same ceremonial garb as the previous day. Byron and Isak walked over to them. Selim Beg and Byron shook hands, while Isak, along with Osman, Selim Beg’s attendant who was serving as his second, stood aside. A lurid red sun bathed the landscape in the purple of an approaching morning. The long rain had left the earth wet, but, even though the sky was still half dark, there was no longer a single bit of cloud to be seen. In a fleeting moment, the rising sun burst forth with the full radiance of dawn while the reflections of the moon and stars had not yet completely faded from the skies, – it was then that Selim Beg drew his sabre. Byron was immediately spellbound by its blade. He stood there serenely for a moment and then unsheathed his own weapon. The two men stood facing each other, their weapons held at the same angle and height, and only a metre or two away from each other. They took each other’s measure for thirty long seconds.
One could say that the sword-fighters and their swords were both studying each other; and then Selim Beg lunged at Byron. But the Englishman was ready for him, and he easily deflected Selim Beg’s first few blows. Selim Beg returned to his starting position and began slowly circling the Englishman with his sword raised and his eyes locked onto Byron’s. His opponent returned his gaze and turned slowly on the spot. It was clear that the roles had already been assigned. Byron knew from experience that he, on account of his lameness, could not hold his own with an opponent of even average quickness. For that reason he had honed his fighting skills to perfection in a way that barely necessitated his moving from one spot.
Byron is like a spider, his English friends would say, and his enemies even more; he waits patiently in the middle of his net for his prey to fall into his trap, and then he forgives nothing. Now Selim Beg was orbiting around him like a wasp. He kept trying to land, but Byron was able to fend him off without much trouble. Isak and Osman watched the duel breathlessly, at their neutral remove. Isak was banking on Byron’s sabur, but feared Selim Beg’s aggressiveness; Osman was afraid that Selim Beg might tire, yet he was encouraged by Byron’s static position.
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