By the time Petra had read the letter for the fourth time, many of the letters and words had been smudged with what poured from her eyes.
It was early morning and, despite the season, quite chilly. The wind blew sometimes from the east, sometimes from the north. Wrapped in his janissary's field cloak, Hans shivered.
God, what a shitty world,
he thought, as the five condemned writhed and struggled for breath on their crosses. They moaned now but seldom cried out. For this Hans gave full credit to the priest who spoke up, encouraging his charges to rejoice at their martyrdom and to bear up under their pain. They sang hymns, sometimes, when their strength allowed.
I should do as well, under the circumstances.
The boy, for he was still a boy, sat on a grassy slope, chewing his lip and watching the priest slowly expire.
I'd help if I could,
Hans thought.
"Boy? You . . . boy? What's your name?" the priest asked. His head lolled to one side with weakness. His steel-gray hair moved with the breeze.
"Hans, Father." He'd not forgotten how to address a priest, despite three years of indoctrination.
"You were . . . Catholic . . . Hans?"
"Yes, Father."
"Tell me how they convinced you to change?"
Hans opened his mouth to answer and then realized,
I don't really know how. We were just all in pain and . . .
The boy poured out the story to the priest.
The priest laughed and, though the laugh was strained, it was still an amazing thing from a man dying on the cross. "Didn't you find it a little odd that they claim 'no compulsion in religion' and then compelled you and your friends?"
"I—" Hans changed the subject. "How did you end up here, Father?"
The priest laughed, then went into a fit of violent coughing. "I was sold out by another priest."
When he saw Hans' eyes go wide at that, the priest explained, "Many of the clergy
like
having the masters in charge, Hans. How else, after all, could they enforce support for the church among Catholics and Protestants? How else could they have the religious laws
they
believe in enforced, except by the will of the masters?
"What of your mother and father, Hans?" the priest asked, changing the subject. "Are they still Catholic?"
"Yes, Father."
"Does the Koran teach to honor them?"
"Yes, Father, in Sura 17, 23 and 24."
"As does the Christian Bible?"
"The words are different but, I think, the intent is the same."
"Do you honor them by casting off their faith? Don't answer, Hans. It's just something for you to think about."
The priest stood upon the spikes passing through his heels and moaned with the effort and the pain. After breathing heavily several times, and coughing forth great quantities of phlegm, he let his body down again.
"Not too much longer now, I think," the priest said. "And that's the truth. Tell me Hans, what does the Koran say about lying to unbelievers?"
"That it's permissible, when necessary, Father."
"Then let me leave you with this thought, Hans: Turnabout is fair play. Oh, and one other thought. If you ever have the chance: Look up 'Skanderbeg.' Go now, before they punish you. I will pray for you, my son."
The word "houri" meant, among other things, "having lovely eyes." It did not necessarily mean, nor was it related to, the English word
"whore" or its Teutonic antecedents. Notwithstanding, the girls at the castle were all called "houris" by the staff and the management, even though they were just whores.
After Latif had turned Petra over to a member of the staff, the first day had been taken up with inoculations and other medical treatment. The houris had value, it was explained to her and a dozen other new girls, most of them of about her age, and so it was worth while taking better care of them than it was with the usual filthy
Nazrani
.
Fortunately, Petra had had little opportunity to experience candy in her life and so she was spared more than the most cursory dental treatment. Some girls were not so lucky.
Each of the new girls was then assigned to an experienced, older houri for training. There was something about the idea of a line of a bakers' dozen kneeling twelve-year-olds, practicing fellatio in cadence, under the supervision of a washed-up whore, that offended even Latif's atrophied sensibilities.
Petra's teacher was called Zheng Ling and Petra thought she had the most beautiful, exotic eyes she'd ever seen, almond shaped but very large.
"I've never seen anyone like you," Petra said, in wonder, as Ling showed her around the castle.
"I'm an import," Ling said. "Bred in a brothel in Shanghai and sold here when I was four."
"
Four!
"
"I was a maid for five years before they ever put me to 'work,'" Ling said. "Even that pederast, Latif, has some scruples. He was my first.
"What did he pay for you, by the way?" Ling asked.
"About three hundred dinar," Petra answered.
"That's a
lot
!" Ling said admiringly. "No wonder they assigned you to me; they always give me the best girls to train."
"Train me,
how,
exactly?" Petra asked.
"There are many things to learn," Ling answered. "To clothe yourself, to wear make up to make yourself beautiful, to use your mind and your body to please men—"
"My body was already used to please men," Petra said, her face wrinkling and her eyes lowering. She shivered with the vile memory.
Ling chewed at her lower lip. The way this new girl had said it she assumed her first experience with men had been a bitter one. Should she ask about it?
Perhaps not, but
. . . "You can talk to me about it if it will help. Now or later."
Petra just shook her head, rapidly. She definitely did
not
want to talk about it.
"Okay," Ling answered. "Let me tell you up front, though, that whatever happened to you will not save you from having to use your mind and body to please men now. It is your only reason for existence, from now until you grow too old to earn a fee. At that point, if you've saved any money they may let you buy your freedom. You may be able to get work here, on the staff. But if you're frivolous, if you fail to please your clients so that they do not tip you, you can expect to be tossed out in the cold without so much as a blanket.
"I'll teach you what to do to make men want to tip you and to keep yourself up so you can earn the highest fees."
"But the very idea of it makes me want to throw up," Petra said.
Ling smiled, mostly sadly. "It isn't necessary to
like
it, only to be good at it. For enjoyment, we houris have each other."
The wind had slackened and the rain had come. Hans shivered under his field cloak, still looking up at the priest hanging high on his cross. The others were dead, now, though their bodies would remain for most of another day. The priest, though he was older than his charges, appeared to Hans to have hung on this long through a sheer act of will, through the sheer determination to comfort the others with words, song and prayer until such time as they no longer needed him.
Weakly, the priest's teeth sought the chain of the crucifix about his neck. They found that chain eventually, and the old man's teeth nipped the chain in two, allowing it to fall to the base of the cross. If the hard metal of the chain broke his teeth, the priest gave no sign. Then the priest gave Hans a glare that said, more strongly than any words,
Take up the cross
.
The priest then whispered, "
Deus vult . . . Deus vult.
"
Hans could not imagine the pain the priest had endured. He felt deeply ashamed.
I gave up my faith over a few minutes in the pushup position. He held onto his through all this.
And perhaps
that
is why God might demand that his prophet endure crucifixion
, Hans thought.
And perhaps that is why it had to be his
son
that was crucified.
And perhaps I and my comrades have been lied to.
When no one was looking, and with the priest's breathing reduced to an intermittent and unconscious labor, Hans went to the base of the cross, and took the crucifix by its bitten-through chain.
Mahmoud sat, cross-legged, on a couch in the apartment he shared with Gabrielle. On one thigh sat a copy of the Koran, on the other a Bible, containing both the New Testament and the Old, loaned to him by the priest of St. Vinzenz's. Furiously he flipped pages in each, from one subject to the next, matching, comparing, above all
thinking
.
Gabi sketched Mahmoud as he read and thought, paying particular attention to the varying looks—agreement, doubt, satisfaction, consternation—that crossed his face as he read. Most especially was she trying to capture that rare and fleeting look of intellectual triumph.
She almost wished she could, herself, believe whenever Mahmoud's face assumed that look. Wish as she might though, she was raised with morals and ethics; she was not raised with faith. Leaps of faith were beyond her, she thought.
There's no doubt about it,
Mahmoud thought.
The Old Testament God is a petty, petulant, vindictive, homicidal maniac. Allah, early on, is little different. The destruction of Sodom; the swallowing of Ubar by the Earth and the desert sands . . . what's to choose from? They are
clearly
the same God, even if the message and the law may differ in details.
Yet is the Koran an improvement over the Old Testament? Just as clearly, yes it is, in many ways. In the Old Testament God is for the Jews and the Jews alone. In the Koran, He is for all mankind. This alone would be reason enough to prefer the Koran.
And yet, in the New Testament, God—whether Jesus is a prophet or his son makes no difference to this; he still
speaks
for God—is not only for all mankind, he's
not
a maniac.
Gabi hurried her hand and pencil to catch it—the slight curving smile, the eyes lifted up, even while they squinted slightly—that gave her lover's face an almost beatific look. Quickly she drew in slight lines of compression around the eyes. She could polish those lines later; for now it was important to catch their
feel
.
And then, too, there's the whole question of
people.
If I am a Christian, and I become a Moslem, what happens? Nothing. People yawn, even devout Christians. If I am a Moslem and become a Christian, what happens? Devout Moslems want my
head.
Even reasonable, responsible, kind and
sane
Moslems want me dead. It speaks well of no religion that it is so weak and fragile it must kill to keep people from making individual choices.
Freedom? That's an interesting question, too. Under the Koran, and even in the Old Testament, there is little freedom. And yet God permits great evil, evil He could easily prevent. Why should this be so except that He wants his creations
free
, that even great evil is preferable to the destruction of personal freedom?
God, he's so beautiful when he looks like that
, Gabi thought.
But what if he's serious? What if he becomes a devout Christian? How do I deal with that?
As a "bad" Moslem, Mahmoud could accept me as a "bad" Christian, which is the way he thinks of me. And I suppose I
do
drop expressions like "God," "My God," or "God damn it" into conversations. But that's just an unconscious reflex. I
don't
believe. I
can't
believe. It just isn't in me. But I'm a good person, a kind and caring person, despite that . . . or maybe because of it.