Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh (2 page)

Without preamble, Orkhan began to relate his dream:

‘I was in a desert in which the sand was so compact, so smooth that it was like walking on brass. The night came on and I found myself confronted and my way barred by a dark shape. It rose against me, rearing high above me, but I thrust my sword into it and it fell. Then I lay upon it using it as my pillow and waited for the dawn to come. The stars rolled swiftly over the desert and a little before the sunrise I could make out what it was that I lay upon. In shape it somewhat resembled a foetus. The smoothness of its pinkish-white bulges and curves was here and there broken up by little tufts of hair. The thing had no head, no arms and no legs, but there were fleshy flaps which might have been mouths and which seemed to pucker and breathe open as I prodded at it with my sword. Then, not knowing what to do, I left my dream.

Hamid only paused briefly before replying,

‘The desert stands for continence. The sword is your sexual member. The monster is the place into which your ‘sword’ enters. I believe,’ concluded Hamid cautiously, ‘that the whole of the dream means that you will enjoy sex before sunset.’

Orkhan gave a brief, barking laugh as he gazed up at the roofs of the Cage’s buildings and Hamid shrugged before suggesting a wrestling bout. The princes, as they wrestled, were accustomed to tell each other that they were building up muscle and studying at cunning. They were training to master the Empire, preparing themselves first to lead armies against Vienna and Tabriz and then to ride the ladies of the Harem, but, when Orkhan wrestled, he thought to himself that he was preparing for the terminal fight in the Passageway against the mutes with the bowstring. Orkhan and Hamid now went to the kitchen, where they would not be disturbed by the other princes. A servant sat crouched in one corner of the kitchen, but not only were the servants of the Cage deaf and mute, they were also, as far as the princes were concerned, to all intents and purposes blind and invisible as well.

The two princes stripped and oiled each other, reaching down to a jug on the floor and slapping great handfuls of olive oil onto their bodies, until they seemed to be sheathed in a body armour of gleaming leather. They lowered their heads, like a pair of angry and confronted bulls, and they wrapped their arms around each other’s shoulders. They pressed hard against each other so that their oil and sweat ran together. Still locked together, they turned and turned, each trying to get a leg behind the other’s. Suddenly, Orkhan stepped back and pulled Hamid to him and threw him over his extended leg. Hamid fell, but he kept his grip on Orkhan who followed him in the fall. Then Hamid was on his back slightly winded with Orkhan on top of him. His mouth formed an O of surprise, which Orkhan silenced with a kiss. Raising himself slightly, Orkhan ran his hands down Hamid’s oiled cuirass of a rib-cage and muscled stomach. Pulling away yet more, he felt for Hamid’s testicles and squeezed them. Hamid moaned, not from pain, but apprehension, as Orkhan, kneeling between his legs, reached for the flask of oil and, having poured more onto his left hand, he forced Hamid’s legs upwards, and inserted the oil into the cleft between Hamid’s buttocks. Then, as he was satisfied that the way was now prepared, he brought himself closer, so as to force his cock into the cleft of Hamid’s arse. Even so, though the entry had been prepared, it was still difficult. Orkhan ground his pelvis against Hamid’s body. Hamid moaned crazily. Orkhan was hammering at a door which opened only slowly. Finally he came deep inside his stepbrother.

Victory. He had used Hamid as one might use a lavatory. This was indeed part of the victory. This was the way of the warrior – a hard-fought contest where one conquered and the other played the woman’s role and submitted. It had nothing to do with the love that poets and women played at. He withdrew and contemplated Hamid’s hard and gleaming buttocks. He was relieved to find that he felt no desire for Hamid’s body, for desire of the flesh made one vulnerable, womanish. Victory, yet it was, he knew, only a shadow victory, as sex with a man was reported to be only an adumbration of sex with a woman. It was only a game, an exercise, practice for the real war which was between men and women. On the other hand, it was better than being in bed with a eunuch. As those who have had sex with eunuchs will know, eunuchs are childish, petulant creatures. They are always demanding chocolates or toys for their favours.

Orkhan lay beside Hamid, looking up at the ceiling and thinking of the day which stretched ahead. It would be precisely the same day as yesterday – only it would bear a different date. They were all schooled in boredom. The same day came round again and again and in it they wrestled and engaged in target practice. Some of the princes gardened, measuring out their days against the slow growth of plants. Others raced cockroaches, placed bets on the fall of leaves in the wind, or sat like idiots watching the sunlight climbing up a wall. Orkhan read books on miscellaneous topics – the manners and customs of the inhabitants of the Russian steppes, sex-lives of the eunuchs, how to cook edible clays, conjuring tricks with eggs – whatever literature was procurable through the hole in the wall. Sometimes, he wrote poems or love-letters to the Ladies of the Harem and, having scrolled them round the shafts of arrows, he fired them over the enclosing roofs of the Cage. No arrows ever came back. Now he lay back beside Hamid and poured more oil over his cock which was sore. Hamid, seeing what he was doing, crawled over to suck the cock, working his tongue from the base to the tip until Orkhan came again, this time in Hamid’s mouth. At length, bored with each other’s company, they went next door to the tiny bath-house to wash the oil off.

Hamid limped off back to the dormitory. Orkhan was left alone in the courtyard – apart from a couple of old deaf-mutes that is. He felt his sense of triumph ebb away, for he now asked himself was it to him that Hamid had submitted, or was it to the dream? Destiny, after all, has its own power. Suddenly the wind changed and the women’s voices could be heard. It seemed to him that they sounded unusually excited, like the twittering of exotic birds disturbed by the proximity of a predator. Then the door of the Cage opened. A black hand beckoned and Orkhan walked towards it.

He walked in front of the mutes down the Passage Where the Jinn Consult and stumbled slightly on the uneven flagstones. High bottle-glass windows let in a greenish light. Orkhan’s eyes drank in the details of unfamiliar stonework. As he walked, he kept his arms tense against his sides, for he was waiting for the descent of the bowstring. Yet nothing happened and he kept walking. It seemed that the invisible Jinns who consulted in this corridor had decided on life for Orkhan.

At the end of the passage stood a tiny man.

‘Hail, Sultan Orkhan, Lord of the Empire in the East and in the West. Greetings to my new master, raised from the dead and born again. Squinting my eyes in astonishment, I behold the earthy clods fall away from your body as your august mother, the Valide Sultan, confers on you the shining robe of a second life. Then accept her gift and follow me.’

As the dwarf turned to lead the way, Orkhan saw that the strange little man was also humpbacked. He followed the dwarf out of the passageway and, taken aback at finding himself in such a vast open space, he reeled. Though at first his eyes could not comprehend what it was that they gazed upon, he soon came to understand that he was walking in a large garden.

He reached forward and spun the dwarf round,

‘Who are you?’

‘I am your Vizier for as long as I can behold my shadow in the sunshine of your favour, but God knows that, whatever the angle of the sun, the shadow that a body like mine can cast must always be a short one.’

‘How am I Sultan? Is Selim dead? What has happened to Barak?’

‘Alas for the Sultan Selim. Indeed the parrot of his great spirit, breaking the bonds of its sensual cage is obliged to set out for the eternal city.’

‘You mean that my father is dead?’

‘Even a Sultan must one day step off from the world of being into the abyss of non-existence.’

‘Where is Barak?’

‘You will shortly behold him face to face.’

‘Why have I been freed?’

The Vizier responded impatiently,

‘Who has said that you were free? You are not free. The Sultan is the least free of all mortals, being burdened with the cares of justice and government. The good sultan will always be a slave to his subjects.’

Now the impatient vizier turned and broke into a trot, heading towards a pavilion made of porcelain in the centre of the garden. Orkhan’s brains boiled with unanswered questions, but there was no time to ask them before he followed the dwarf through the door.

A baby gazelle was skittering across the porcelain floor, its legs splaying out as the little creature was unable to find any hold on such a smooth surface. Servant girls knelt around the gazelle trying to catch and calm it. A raddled, older woman sprawled back on a cushioned bench at the far end, laughing at the unavailing efforts of her servants. Orkhan found that he did after all remember her.

‘Mother, don’t you recognise me?’

The Valide Sultan nodded and waved her hands apologetically, yet she could not stop laughing. This was the woman who had let him be taken off to prison and left him to languish there for fifteen years. At last, one of the servant girls caught the gazelle, scooped it up and carried it out of the pavilion. Now the Valide Sultan’s eyes came to rest on Orkhan. Indeed, all the women in the pavilion were slyly watching him from beneath darkened lashes. No one said anything. He for his part stood transfixed, looking at the women. They were not like the women in the picture books he and his brothers used to study in the Cage. The ones in miniature paintings were slender, stick-like figures who gazed out expressionlessly from the pictures. But the real women in the pavilion were heavy, fleshy creatures, who, despite their size, did not seem to have quite outgrown the shapes of babyhood. Orkhan, seeing women for the first time in so many years, experienced pity for them, since all that softness, those fragile wrists, pendulous breasts and heavy bottoms ill-equipped such creatures for survival in a man’s world.

At length, remembering himself and guessing at imperial etiquette, Orkhan bowed to his mother. He came closer to seek her embrace. As he did so, she raised herself from the cushions and placed a finger on his lips.

‘You have been a long time in the Cage. Even so, explanations can wait. After fifteen years in the Cage, you must be impatient for a girl.’ She put on an expression of mock solemnity. ‘Very impatient … The Vizier will find you one.’

And she waved her hand in dismissal.

Outside in the garden, Orkhan told his Vizier that the girl could wait. The first thing he had to do was summon a council of ministers.

The Vizier, however, disagreed,

‘You are master of the Empire from the Euphrates to the Danube and there is certainly much to do, but first you must be master of your Harem, for a man who cannot master his Harem cannot master himself, still less an empire. Besides you need an heir as soon as possible. Now, would you like an ugly concubine or a beautiful one?’

‘What? Why would I choose an ugly one?’

‘Well, they say beauty fades, but that ugliness is eternal. Are you sure you would not prefer an ugly concubine?’

‘I am quite sure. Bring me a beautiful girl.’

‘Aha! You remember that earlier in the garden I told you that you were not free? Now you must see the truth of my words, for you must admit that you are not free, for you are not free to prefer ugliness over beauty. Aha! Caught you there!’

‘I see that I have much to learn,’ replied Orkhan carefully, thinking as he did so that on the following morning he would dismiss his Vizier. ‘Now, find me a beautiful girl. Let us get this over with quickly.’

‘I think I have a good girl for you on your first day. She is a Georgian. Since your Empire is at war with Georgia, she will be good training for you. Learning to ride her is like learning how to conquer Georgia. She will be the horse that will take you into the heart of their lands. Oh! One last thing. Do everything you please with her, except that, whatever you do, on no account should you let the viper drink at the Tavern of the Perfume-Makers.’

After washing and perfuming himself, Orkhan was conducted into a tiny rib-vaulted cell, which was richly hung with velvet embroideries, but yet not so different from the rooms he had been familiar with in the Cage. On the far side of the cell was a raised marble platform. On this platform was a bed and at the foot of the bed there was a lectern which supported a large open book. The place seemed surprisingly cold. Then, as he walked towards the platform, Orkhan looked down and saw that he trod on ice. The bed and the velvet hangings notwithstanding, the place was really just a cellar for the storage of ice. Mystified, Orkhan carefully made his way to the bed and waited. In the Cage he had read about the ice-pits of the sultans and how ice in great blocks was brought by racing camels from Mount Olympus and then packed down and stored in deep pits within the palace – all this merely so that the sultans could enjoy iced drinks throughout the summer. But why should he be here?

Orkhan had not waited long before he saw the door open and something come slithering across the ice towards him. In the half-light it might have been a dog or a jinn. Then the thing raised its head, and he saw that it, or rather, she was a woman who was dragging herself towards him. Her heavy earrings and bracelets jingled as she did so. She knelt on the edge of the marble and kissed his feet, before raising her face to him.