“I wanted to die,” the ragged, gaunt woman protested as Zangi-Ragozh dismounted and held out his hand to help her to her feet; she winced and let out a little shriek, and he released her at once, seeing that her arm was badly injured and only partially healed, with yellowish bruises marking her skin. “What are you doing? You should have killed me.” Her eyes were dazed and she swayed in her effort to remain upright; around her the Kokand market did its utmost to appear busy and prosperous, but like the woman herself, it was struggling just to stay alive.
“Throwing yourself under the hooves of our ponies would not ensure that; you are more likely to be hurt than killed,” said Zangi-Ragozh with remarkable calm, trying to soothe the woman; his Persian was more elegant than hers, and less mixed with the local tongue, and his manner alone commanded her respect. “If you wanted to do yourself harm, why should you? it appears that you are already in pain.”
“I might have died, if you had kept going. Your cart’s skids might have been enough to break my back or crush my chest.” She folded her arms as a means of unobviously supporting the one that hurt and tried to make out his features with the sun behind him, obscuring his features and dazzling her at once, as if he were more otherworldly than foreign. “You should have gone on. Why did you stop?”
“If we had kept on, we would have run over you—”
“No,” she said. “You didn’t have to stop and talk to me.” She was perplexed and a bit irritated that he had done this.
“I would have had to be indifferent to your plight, and I could not be that, not after you made your attempt at our expense,” he said slowly and carefully, glancing once at Ro-shei, who remained in the saddle, holding the leads of two ponies and both camels. “Surely you understand that?”
“But that is what you should have done, don’t you understand?—run me down and left me,” she protested. “I want to die—I still want to.”
This was more than an impulsive frenzy, Zangi-Ragozh realized, and he scrutinized the woman’s face before saying, “I regret that I have no wish to be your executioner. For that you must look elsewhere.” He signaled to Ro-shei. “Go on to the main square and find an inn for us, if you would.”
“I will,” said Ro-shei, taking the lead for the cart-pony from Zangi-Ragozh as he went past. “I’ll expect you before sundown.”
“I will find you when I am finished,” said Zangi-Ragozh, and turned back to the woman. “Why do you want to die?”
She stared at him blankly and decided to answer him. “You see this place, how it is? Do you see how few merchants have come to trade their goods? This month there should have been many caravans on the Silk Road, but as you see, there are hardly enough to have a market. How am I to earn the money Kasha wants if there are so few merchants in the market, and they are all more interested in finding food than in a woman?” She wrapped her hands across her middle as if to protect herself against more pain. All her talk with this foreigner seemed dreamlike, and she could not rid herself of the impression that she would presently wake up and find herself once again in the small, dark room to which Kasha confined her when she most displeased him. Only her growing discomfort provided her any sense that this was real.
“Kasha is your master?” Zangi-Ragozh asked in a disinterested tone.
“He is,” she said.
“By what right?” Zangi-Ragozh asked, so politely that there was no reason the woman could summon up not to answer. The halo the sun made of his head might not be as brilliant as in years past, but it was enough to overwhelm her reticence; answering him seemed to be the same as speaking to a supernatural spirit at Kokand’s sacred spring.
“He bought me from my parents when I had nine summers, I served as his household’s maid for a time, and then, when my bleeding started, he hired me out, as he does his other women.” She regarded him with sour defiance, as if expecting a rebuke. “Why do you want to know?”
“You put yourself in harm’s way at my expense, and that, according to many traditions, makes you answerable to me. It is apparent that you need care and medicaments, and that being the case, if Kasha is your master, I will need his permission to treat you,” said Zangi-Ragozh. “You have a fever, and it may be from injured bones improperly healed, in which case, you are in grave danger.”
“How can you know that?” Her eyes shone with sudden fright; this encounter was as wholly unlike any she had had in the past that its strangeness was as unnerving as what the foreigner in the black shuba had said about her physical condition. “You cannot know such things.”
“I am something of a physician; in my younger days, I was trained to treat the injured and the ill,” he said, thinking back to his centuries in the Temple of Imhotep. “There is an odor to such inward hurts as you may have that I came to recognize.”
“Are you saying I have those inward hurts?” she asked, staring more urgently.
“I am saying you are not well, and it may be that you have such injuries,” he responded cautiously. “If that is so, then it would explain why you hoped the cart would kill you.”
“Why is that?” she asked, fascinated and repelled at once.
“Many of those who have taken a fever see things others cannot—”
“You mean that are not there?” Her challenge ended with a break in her voice.
“I mean that only the sufferer can see them,” said Zangi-Ragozh at his mildest; he saw that she was upset and would need reassurance before she accepted anything from him other than what she expected. “who can say what is there and is not there?”
“It’s the same thing, if no one can see it but one with a fever,” she declared, attempting to disguise her rising fright and to get away from him by taking a few steps backward.
“No, it is not,” he said, coming after her. “You do need treatment, whatever is the matter with you, especially now, when food is scarce and its quality is bad, for the body cannot heal properly if it is undernourished.”
The woman looked about, her eyes wild. “Are you going to feed me?”
“I am worried that you will do yourself harm, since that was your intention,” said Zangi-Ragozh patiently. “Why do you want to die, and why do you need someone to do it for you?”
She regarded him suspiciously. “Why should you want to know?”
“If you want to die, surely you must have more certain ways than falling under the hooves of a caravan as small as mine. By the look of you, you have been badly beaten more than once.” He nodded to the side of the road and moved toward it, his pony following close behind, the woman lagging back. “You decided to try to die under the skids and the hooves of my caravan. I still want to know why.”
“If I took poison, Kasha would know, and my son would answer for it. If he beat me to death, he would still be angry with me. If I am trampled in the market, he cannot be sure that it was a deliberate act—it could be misadventure, and he might think it was an accident, and my son would not have to suffer on my account,” she told him sullenly, moving with him as if compelled by his dark eyes. “I do not want my child to bear any more burdens than he already has.”
“And what burdens are these?” Zangi-Ragozh asked as he finally moved into the shadow of a stone-fronted building.
“That I am his mother, and that he does not seem to hear well, or, if not that, he is simple and will be sold to someone needing a fool. I have watched him, and I have observed that he is alert to everything if it happens where he can see,” said the woman as if making a shameful admission; she was puzzled that she should speak so openly with a stranger. “Kasha will not make him his son because of what he requires me to do.”
Zangi-Ragozh felt a pang of compassion for this woman. “Your child has a very honorable mother,” he said gently. “As to the other, that is unfortunate.”
“He speaks very little, and I believe it is because he does not hear clearly.” She hunched over as if to conceal a defect.
“That may be a good reason to suppose he is somewhat deaf; simpleness and deafness are often mistaken, each for the other,” said Zangi-Ragozh. “Your son has how many summers?”
“The one that is approaching will be his sixth,” she said, stepping into the protection of a jutting angle of the building.
“It is a bad time,” Zangi-Ragozh agreed, and reached out to pat his cinder-brown pony’s neck. “Tell me about this Kasha,” he prompted. “I will give you silver for your time, so that you will not have to go to Kasha empty-handed.”
She whispered a curse. “You do not want me?”
“Not as you mean,” he said with abiding kindness.
She gaped at him. “What manner of man are you? You are not a eunuch—you haven’t the look of it.” Her face changed, suspicion reasserting itself. “You aren’t one of those Christians, are you? always praising suffering and struggle, and promising perfection in the afterlife?”
“No, I am not a Christian,” said Zangi-Ragozh.
“There seem to be more of them every day, praying and proclaiming their salvation because they are miserable, and pestering everyone about their earthly burdens as if they longed for more of them,” said the woman darkly, and went on, more to herself than him, “They keep to their own and say that they will be richly rewarded for all the hardships they have endured. Some try to add to their misfortunes by giving what little they have to others, thinking they will have more and better recompense in Paradise if they do.”
“But you have no such hope,” he said, seeing the despondency in her expression.
Her countenance lost what little expression it had, as if the question had taken away her last refuge from the ordeal of her life. “I have my hopes for this world and no other, and I would rather be quit of this world than have to die slowly for lack of food, and money.” She spat.
Zangi-Ragozh reached into the sleeve of his sen-cha and brought out a string of silver cash. “Take this. I know it is foreign money, but the silver is high quality, and it will maintain its value anywhere silver is exchanged. Keep half of it for yourself.”
She took the string of cash. “I haven’t brought him so much in a fortnight.” She touched the silver coins gingerly as if she expected them to evaporate.
“What of his other women? Does he make them go with men as he does you?” Zangi-Ragozh asked.
“Two of the others, yes, but not Farna. Farna was his first, and she is permitted to remain true to herself, being a true wife, with a dowry.” She sounded more defeated than bitter. “Amanu, Monshu, and I are the ones who must earn our keep. He is most belligerent with Amanu, because she has no sons.”
“He believes Amanu has affronted him?” Zangi-Ragozh asked.
“He prefers sons. Farna has two left. Her youngest died last year, in the winter.” She looked away. “He dislikes my son.”
“That is a pity; at a time like this, he could find comfort and courage in his living children,” said Zangi-Ragozh.
“He will not own my son, will not even speak his name,” she said, the complaint an inward one.
“And you are: what is your name?” Zangi-Ragozh inquired politely, holding up a cautioning hand before she could answer. “Not the name you use in the market, please,” he went on as he saw her falter, “the name the other members of your household call you.”
She hesitated. “Ourisi,” she said at last. “My son is Rialat, named for my grandfather, not for Kasha’s father, since he is unrecognized.”
“Ourisi,” he repeated. “And Rialat. I am Zangi-Ragozh.”
Her spurt of a giggle surprised him as much as it startled her, rousing her from her deepening reverie. “It is such a funny name,” she almost apologized. “I don’t think I can pronounce it.”
“Would you prefer something less cumbersome?” Zangi-Ragozh asked, thinking of the many names he had had through the centuries.
“If I am to address you beyond
foreigner,”
she said, anticipating derision at best.
He pondered a brief moment. “Then, if you would rather, you may call me Ragoczy Franciscus, as I am known in parts of the West,” he said.
“That is much better,” she said, color rising in her cheeks.
“Then Ragoczy Franciscus it will be.” He stood between her and the street as a small party of Persians made their way down the street, headed for the main square.
She watched the camels and asses pass. “Only nine camels and four asses. Usually the caravans from the south have twenty of each.”
“Perhaps they chose to have fewer animals to feed than to risk all of them starving,” Ragoczy Franciscus suggested.
“Perhaps they did,” said Ourisi. “That is bad enough.”
“Yes, it is,” said Ragoczy Franciscus, and took a chance. “You are in need of treatment of your body: believe this.”
Ourisi glanced away. “Kasha might refuse.”
“For so much silver cash, I would think he could not mind too much,” said Ragoczy Franciscus, a note of world-weariness in his words.
“Yes. He may be persuaded by money,” she said, absently rubbing her arm. “He keeps me for money and swears that if I cannot bring in enough for me and my son, he will throw both of us out of his house.”