Sofia (14 page)

“Now, for two hundred ghrush, I would be glad to sell you her companion here. She is also of European origin and equally fair-skinned. No, for you, my friends-—one hundred and fifty. No? You are not interested? Come, do not take offense, my friends. I am a man, after all. A man who must, with the help of Allah, make a living. The golden-haired one is a virgin, my friends. I had the midwives certify. I shall not see another such prize—no, as Allah is my witness, not in a hundred years.”

I was ready to bolt to my feet and grab the old man by his greasy neck, but Husayn constrained me.

“Your concern is most understandable, sir,” Husayn said. “She is a prize indeed. But tell me, would you allow us just to see her?”

“Fifty ghrush” the merchant said, stroking his chin. “That is my price. And usually I bring such merchandise to the privacy of your own house. This is most irregular.”

Irregular or not, Husayn had now found something he could bargain on. I balked at spending a quarter of our money that must somehow grow to four hundred ghrush in the next few days on nothing but an interview. But I underestimated the power of my friend’s golden smile. He persisted and, finally, with a double lie that first, we had no real interest in her purchase, and second, that I was the young lady’s brother and it would be an act of charity sure to bring heaven’s blessings, he got us in for nothing.

“Very well. For you. Because you are my friends,” the merchant concluded the deal.

The merchant led us back through a small shop room which seemed to be used for nothing besides the mixing of sherbet and the storage of a pair of narghiles. On the back wall of this room was a bell which the merchant rang loudly and then waited for a few minutes to give any woman in the rooms beyond time to disappear before we entered. When at last he threw back a curtain, we found ourselves in a long, deserted passageway lined with heavy doors, many of which were bolted. Those that were ajar led into small but, I had to admit, not uncomfortable cells. Those that were closed but not locked hid, I supposed, the man’s womenfolk and their work and sitting rooms.

A door at the very end of the passage was still locked. This the merchant opened with a key worn round his neck and then he stepped aside to allow us to enter first.

We found ourselves in a large room, wanting in neither air nor light, for it enjoyed a row of windows near the ceiling. The windows, I noticed, were large enough for a man to crawl through, and the gentle sounds of women about their daily tasks came in through them. The room was appointed as pleasantly as any Turkish sitting room I had ever seen. The rugs and cushions on the divan were of bright, tasteful design and perhaps more luxurious than those in Husayn’s house.

It was upon these cushions that I saw her. Baffo’s daughter had thrown herself across the divan in an attitude—belly down, legs swung up in the air behind her—one often associates with sobbing fits. But she was not crying. She had before her a silver tray of dainties and was enjoying the luxury of a late breakfast.

She did not start and cower at the sound of the opening door as one would who was used to the visits of a cruel master. She continued with the business of breakfast and only stirred when she saw for certain that it was Husayn and I. Then she made the effort to roll on one side the better to regard us. She propped her head on one arm and let the other rest upon her hip, from which that hand dangled idly. The straight line of that arm accented the curves of a small waist and firm, round hips. I felt that I should be reduced to tears if she continued to show no overwhelming relief to see me. And she did not—anything but.

“Why, Veniero!” she said—not “Giorgio”, not “my love”—and her tone was light and easy as if I were a casual, everyday visitor. “How nice of you to come today.”

My earnest questions, “How are you? How are you treated?” fell somehow short of the long distance that had to be maintained between us with the merchant on guard.

“Just fine,” she answered easily. “Just couldn’t be better.”

The awkward void that followed left me speechless, but Baffo’s daughter was induced to fill it with anything that came to hand. “Look!” she exclaimed. “Just look at what they have given me to wear!” And she jumped to her feet to give us a better view.

The major portion of her costume consisted of a jacket made of red and orange patterned velvet with trapunto work in gold thread. Its sleeves were wrist-length and ended in stylish points. The waist cinched in skintight, closing with a row of tiny pearls before it flared out to the ground. Above the waist fastening, the jacket was cut away, allowing for the natural swelling of the breasts which were covered by only an underbodice of the lightest gauze.

Conscious of this detail, Sofia shifted the bodice and giggled. “I used to be grateful I was not so big so I wouldn’t have to suffer the agonies other women went through to appear chestless as Venetian fashion prescribes. Now I have to pray I may yet grow a little.”

A shift in light allowed us to see that the gauze was translucent and I blushed with heartache as her nipples appeared through it like a pair of round, sugared comfits.

“And look!” she cried with sheer delight, the bodice and its lack of modesty quite forgotten now. “Just look! Pants! Pants like a man’s!”

The over-jacket split at the center to reveal a pair of red silk trousers. For all that they were luxuriously full, caught tightly at her small ankles and with a crotch no higher than her knees, when she kicked her legs up in them they seemed very immodest to me.

“
Shalvar
, they call them,” she explained and looked to the merchant for a confirmation of her pronunciation.

The old man nodded and smiled with pure pleasure at his merchandise’s performance. He couldn’t have whipped better from her. A pair of crimson slippers and a jaunty little round cap fitted with a veil completed the costume.

“And just look what I am given to eat!” Sofia said next, returning to the tray on the divan. “Such dainties! Here’s a sort of compote made with quince and honey and yogurt. Here are dates stuffed with almonds, this sort of cheese with a strong, salty flavor. And such curious flat pancakes for bread, sprinkled with fennel and caraway seeds! But these here are my favorites—these little pastries. What are they called?” she looked to her master.

“
Taratir at-turkman
.”He smiled.

“And that means ‘little bonnets of the Turks.’ His wife makes them, deep-fried and I dip them in clotted cream— oh, they are really too heavenly. Here, Veniero. Won’t you try one?”

But I declined and soon made excuse to leave. I hardly had patience to bid the slave merchant a decent farewell, wanting only to escape that place.

“From the palace,” Husayn mused as soon as we were out of earshot.

“What?” I asked.

“That eunuch is from the Sultan’s palace,” he elaborated. “You can tell by the tall white hat and the fur-trimmed robes.”

“Which eunuch is this?” I asked, for there was more than one for sale in that exclusive bazaar.

“The one sitting now at Abu Isa’s table. Didn’t you see him? We walked right by him on our way out. Abu Isa’s son has brought him out a narghile and he is smoking.”

I confessed my mind had been elsewhere. I turned now to take a look and found nothing much to be impressed by. Beneath the towering white hat was a man with skin that seemed as white and pasty as unbaked bread dough set to rise by the heat of his narghile. It looked as if one careless touch could deflate him.

Of what interest is an old eunuch to me? I thought as I hurried my friend along.

“The young lady is clearly content with her new life,” Husayn insisted to me.

“It was a show she put on so her master wouldn’t beat her.”

“Abu Isa is one of the most exclusive slave dealers in all the lands of Islam. He is not such a fool as to go about injuring his merchandise.”

Husayn had paused in our progress away from the slave market in a small public square with a fountain. The square sat awkwardly on a slope and the stones paving it were so uneven that they must have been laid in the days of the Roman emperors and had no attention since.

Besides the water-bearing slaves, sweetmeat sellers, and tumbles of rowdy boys such places attract the world over, there was also a gypsy with his bear on a chain. The animal seemed a thin, torpid creature, his pelt yellow and mangy, probably whip-driven out of his natural hibernation to this spot where he blinked at the world of men in a stupefied haze. The gypsy managed—by his own strength, not the bear’s— to get the brute to sit up. But that appeared to be the only trick they knew, and for the bear this was a signal to start licking his own lurid pink genitals in a most embarrassing manner. This attracted the shrieks and hollers of the watching boys but no gain to the gypsy’s cup.

I suspect Husayn lingered so long before the spectacle hoping it would distract me. It did nothing of the sort, only increased my agitation and impatience. When my friend finally turned to lead us elsewhere and stopped to donate the first coin of the day, I slapped back his hand.

“Please,” I said, apologizing for the roughness of my action but not for the action itself. “Don’t squander a single asper of the purse that must double in size before tomorrow.”

Husayn opened his mouth to speak, but what he meant to say I never heard. Instead I saw a little brown hand slip back around the smooth cordon of his waistband, the cut strings of my friend’s purse clutched in its knobby, thin fingers.

“Stop! Thief!” I cried.

And then I had the presence of mind to remember the Turkish word for “cutpurse” and I hollered that, too. This word stuck in my mind because Husayn had told me it was one of the worst names you could call a man. It was saved for only the nastiest of altercations, even when one’s opponent had never intended a robbery.

Cupid made fleet my heels and strong my arms. So would some lyric poet describe what happened when I saw half of Madonna Baffo’s worth—the only half we had in hand—vanishing across the dirty square. I did manage to jostle Husayn out of the way, kick the naked brown feet out from under the little thief and recover the purse not an asper lighter in less time than it takes to tell about it. But the poet would not reckon on the consequence my shout of “cutpurse” had had on a square of half-formed Turks just looking for an excuse to punish the gypsy for bringing his obscenity into their midst.

The youths had swarmed together to effectively cut off the little fellow’s escape before I ever got to him. After I returned triumphant to Husayn, they closed ranks about the cutpurse and took care of the rest of justice. So potent was the sentence that the boy’s own father—I knew they were father and son by the identical gypsy wildness in their black eyes—did not stop to help him. The man slunk from the square as fast as his chain could drag the bear, which was not very fast at all. The bear, the only creature around the fountain that had not understood my “cutpurse” cry, was much too fascinated by his sitting posture to collect his feet again.

Husayn discovered something lyrical in my actions, however, for after he’d thanked me with such Turkish profusion that it cramped his Venetian, he stood considering the purse with its frayed strings for quite some time in silence.

He smoothed the corners of his moustache down into his beard and then at last he said, “You are convinced that purchasing the young lady’s freedom is the thing worth most to you?

“The most important thing in the world.” I panted the words, not because I was still winded by the rescue—though I wouldn’t mind if that’s what he thought—but in an attempt to bridle my impatience. This short, round, domesticated Syrian could not catch the desperation of the case!

“There is a way we might—” he mused.

“Well, why for the love of Saint Mark do you hesitate?”

Saint Mark made no impression on the smoothness of his moustache. “A way I could get quite a lot of money.”

“Two hundred ghrush?”

“Maybe more. Maybe quite a bit more.”

“Quickly?”

“Perhaps, if it’s Allah’s will, before evening.”

“Then we must do it at once. By God, we have no time to lose.”

Husayn dropped his hand from his moustache and nodded with sudden decision. He collared one of the smaller boys dancing excitedly but ineffectively on the outskirts of the little gypsy’s beating. He gave him a few quick directions and one of the smaller coins—one of those crude angularities of ill-stamped metal, as flexible as ribbon, that are the bread and butter of Turkish exchange—from his rescued purse. The boy was off like a shot and, while I nearly gasped at the disappearance ol one ol our precious coppers, I suppressed it, believing with desperation that Husayn could realize his plot.

“Come.” He took my elbow. “Let’s be off.”

I was only too glad to leave that nasty little square, but still I had to ask: “Where are we going?”

“The baths.”

“The baths? You have a private bath at home.”

“We do, and I have already washed the sea from me in it. But the bath at home is not a public bath.”

“So much the better, I should think. We have two hundred ghrush to gain and you plan to sink yourself in the indolence of a Turkish bath?”

“You may be surprised,” Husayn said, smoothing my rudeness. “Many business deals are made in the baths. You Venetians are forever complaining that the Turks are a closed society and have unfair advantage because we will not let you in on our trade secrets. Perhaps if you’d clean yourselves up once in a while, they would not be such secrets.”

He lead me up the great, broad thoroughfare that served in Constantinople much as the Grand Canal does in Venice, providing a viewing ground for the height of local culture. Awnings of the most exclusive coffee shops, catering to the latest fashion, and numerous elegant mosques in tree-planted squares lined our path.

The paying stones were kept meticulously clean by a full-time army of sweepers. When I compared this to the rat-filled heaps of rubbish in every corner of Venice, I saw briefly the image of a garden that hasn’t been dunged in years. How could anything grow here? But fertilizer was clearly no problem as every step brought some new face of the throng to my view. Now it was a face from one corner of the world or the other, now the face of some local Turk or Greek animated with purpose so that even if happiness could not be read there, of life there was no doubt.