The handsome stranger laughed coarsely at that. Nostril sniffled and muttered, “Master Marco, as a devout Muslim I must object to being likened to a swine.”
“I hope you would also balk at coupling with a sow,” I said. “But I doubt it.”
“Please, young master. I am devoutly keeping Ramazan, which prohibits intercourse between Muslim men and women. I must also admit that, even in the permissible months, women are sometimes hard for me to come by, ever since my pretty face was disfigured by my nose’s misfortune.”
“Oh, do not exaggerate,” I said. “There is always somewhere a woman desperate enough for anything. In my lifetime, I have seen a Slavic woman couple with a black man and an Arab woman couple with an actual ape.”
Nostril said loftily, “I hope you do not suppose that I would condescend to a woman as ugly as I am. Ah, but Jafar here—Jafar is as comely as the comeliest woman.”
I growled, “Tell your comely wretch to hurry with his dressing and get out of here, or I will feed him to the camels.”
The comely wretch glared at me, then gave a melting look of entreaty to Nostril, who immediately insulted me with an impertinent question: “You would not like to try him yourself, Master Marco? The experience might broaden your mind.”
“I will broaden your one nose-hole!” I snarled, taking the dagger from my belt. “I will open it all the way around your ugly head! How dare you speak so to a master? What do you take me for?”
“For a young man with much yet to learn,” he said. “You are a journeyer now, Master Marco, and before you get home again you will have traveled much farther yet, and seen and experienced much more. When you do arrive home at last, you will be rightfully scornful of men there who call mountains high and swamps deep, without their ever having scaled a mountain or plumbed a swamp—men who have never ventured beyond their narrow streets and their commonplace routines and their cautious pastimes and their pinched little lives.”
“Perhaps so. But what has that to do with your galineta whore?”
“There are other journeys that can take a man beyond the ordinary, Master Marco, not in distance of travel but in breadth of understanding. Consider. You have reviled this young man as a whore, when he is only what he was bred and developed and trained and expected to be.”
“A Sodomite, then, if you prefer. To a Christian, that is a sinful thing to be—a sinner and a sin to be abhorred.”
“I ask you, Master Marco, to make only a short journey into the world of this young man.” Before I could object, he said, “Jafar, tell the foreigner of your upbringing.”
Still clutching his lower garment in his hand, and glancing uneasily at me, Jafar began. “Oh, young Mirza, reflection of the light of Allah—”
“Never mind that,” said Nostril. “Just tell of your body’s preparation for sexual commerce.”
“Oh, blessing of the world,” Jafar began again. “From the earliest years I can remember, always while I slept I wore inserted into my nether aperture a golulè, which is an implement made of kashi ceramic, a sort of small tapered cone. Every time my bedtime toilet was completed, the golulè was put into me, well greased with some drug to stimulate the development of my badàm. My mother or nurse would at intervals ease it farther inside me, and when I could accommodate it all, a larger golulè was substituted. Thus my opening gradually grew more ample, but without impairing the muscle of closure which surrounds it.”
“Thank you for the story,” I said to him, but coldly, and to Nostril I said, “Born so or made so, a Sodomite is still an abomination.”
“I think his story is not finished,” said Nostril. “Bear with the journey only a little farther.”
“When I was perhaps five or six years old,” Jafar went on, “I was relieved of having to wear the golulè, and instead my next older brother was encouraged to use me whenever he had an urge and an erected organ.”
“Adrìo de vu!” I gasped, compassion getting the better of my revulsion. “What a horrible childhood!”
“It could have been worse,” said Nostril. “When a bandit or slave-taker captures a boy, and that boy has not been thus carefully prepared, the captor brutally impales him there with a tent peg, to make the opening fit for subsequent use. But that tears the encircling muscle, and the boy can never thereafter contain himself, but excretes incontinently. Also, he cannot thereafter utilize that muscle to give pleasurable contractions during the act. Go on, Jafar.”
“When I had got accustomed to that brother’s usage, my next older and better-equipped brother helped my further development. And when my badàm was mature enough to let me begin to enjoy the act, then my father …”
“Adrìo de vu!” I exclaimed again. But now curiosity had got the better of both my revulsion and my compassion. “What do you mean about the badàm?” I could not comprehend that detail, for the word badàm means an almond.
“You did not know of it?” said Nostril with surprise. “Why, you have one yourself. Every male does. We call it the almond because of its shape and size, but physicians sometimes refer to it as the third testicle. It is situated behind the other two, not in the bag, but hidden up inside your groin. A finger or, ahem, any other object inserted far enough into your anus rubs against that almond and stimulates it to a pleasurable excitement.”
“Ah,” I said, enlightened. “So that is why, just now, Jafar made spruzzo seemingly without any caress or provocation.”
“We call that spurt the almond milk,” Nostril said primly. He added, “Some women of talent and experience know of that invisible male gland. In one way or another, they tickle it while they are coupling with a man, so that when he ejaculates the almond milk his enjoyment is blissfully heightened.”
I wagged my head wonderingly, and said, “You are right, Nostril. A man can learn new things from journeying.” I slid my dagger back into its sheath. “This time at least, I forgive the brash way you spoke to me.”
He replied smugly, “A good slave puts utility before humility. And now, Master Marco, perhaps you would like to slip your other weapon into another sheath? Observe Jafar’s splendid scabbard—”
“Scagaròn!” I snapped. “I may tolerate such customs of others while I am in these regions, but I will not partake of them. Even if Sodomy were not a vile sin, I should still prefer the love of women.”
“Love, master?” echoed Nostril, and Jafar laughed in his coarse way, and one of the camels belched. “No one spoke of love. The love between a man and a man is another thing entirely, and I believe that only we warmhearted warrior Muslims can know that most sublime of all emotions. I doubt that any cold-blooded and peace-preaching Christian could be capable of that love. No, master, I was suggesting merely a matter of convenient release and relief and satisfaction. For that, what difference what sex?”
I snorted like a supercilious camel. “Easy for you to say, slave, since to you it makes no difference what
animal.
As for me, I am happy to say that as long as there are women in the world I shall have no yearning for men to couple with. I am a man myself, and I am too familiar with my own body to have the least interest in that of any other male. But women—ah, women! They are so magnificently different from me, and each so exquisitely different from another—I can never value them enough!”
“Value them, master?” He sounded amused.
“Yes.” I paused, then said with due solemnity, “I once killed a man, Nostril, but I could never bring myself to kill a woman.”
“You are young yet.”
“Now, Jafar,” I said to the young man, “put on the rest of your clothes and go, before my father and uncle get back here.”
“I saw them arrive just now, Master Marco,” said Nostril. “They went with the Almauna Esther into her house.”
So I went over there, too, and was again waylaid by the maidservant Sitarè, as she let me in the door. I would have gone on by her unheeding, but she took me by the arm and whispered, “Do not speak loudly.”
I said, not whispering, “I have nothing to speak to you about.”
“Hush. The mistress is inside, and your father and uncle are with her. So do not let them hear, but answer me. My brother Aziz and I have discussed the matter of you and—”
“I am not a matter!” I said testily. “I do not much like my being discussed.”
“Oh, do please hush. Are you aware that the day after tomorrow is the Eid-al-Fitr?”
“No. I do not even know what that is.”
“Tomorrow at sundown Ramazan ends. At that moment begins the month of Shawal, and its first day is the Feast of Fast-Broken, when we Muslims are released from abstinence and restriction. Any time after sundown tomorrow, you and I can licitly make zina.”
“Except that you are a virgin,” I reminded her. “And must stay that way, for your brother’s sake.”
“That is what Aziz and I discussed. We have a small favor to ask of you, Mirza Marco. If you will consent to it, I will consent—and I have my brother’s consent—to make zina with you. Of course, you can have him too, if you like.”
I said suspiciously, “Your offer sounds like a considerable return for a small favor. And your beloved brother sounds brotherly indeed. I can hardly wait to meet this pimping and simpering lout.”
“You have met him. He is the kitchen scullion, with hair dark red like mine, and—”
“I do not remember.” But I could imagine him: the twin to Nostril’s stable mate Jafar, a muscular and handsome hulk of a man, with the orifice of a woman, the wits of a camel and the morals of a jack weasel.
“When I say a small favor,” Sitarè went on, “I mean a small one for me and Aziz. For yourself it will be a greater favor, since you will profit by it. Actually earn money from it.”
Here was a beautiful chestnut-haired maiden, offering me herself and her maidenhead and a monetary return as well—plus, if I wanted him, her reputedly even more beautiful brother into the bargain. Naturally this brought to my recollection the phrase I had several times heard, “the bloodthirstiness of beauty.” And naturally that made me cautious, but not so cautious that I would flatly refuse the offer without hearing more.
“Tell me more,” I said.
“Not now. Here comes your uncle. Hush.”
“Well, well!” boomed Uncle Mafìo, approaching us from the darker interior of the house. “Collecting
fiame,
are we?” And his black beard split in a bright white grin, as he shouldered past us and went out the door toward the stable.
The remark was a play on the word fiame, since in Venice “flames” can mean—in addition to fire—either red-headed persons or secret lovers. So I assumed that my uncle was jocosely twitting what he took to be a boy-and-girl flirtation.
As soon as he was out of hearing, Sitarè said to me, “Tomorrow. At the kitchen door, where I let you in before. At this same hour.” And then she too was gone, somewhere into the back parts of the house.
I strolled on along the front passage, into the room from which I heard the voices of my father and the Widow Esther. As I entered, he was saying, in a muted and serious tone, “I know it was your good heart that proposed it. I only wish you had asked me first, and me alone.”
“I never would have suspected,” she said, also in a hushed tone. “And if, as you say, he has nobly exerted himself to reform, I would not wish to be the provocation of a relapse.”
“No, no,” said my father. “No blame can be laid to you, even if the good deed should turn out ill. We will talk it over, and I will ask flatly whether this would be an irresistible temptation, and on that basis we will decide.”
Then they noticed my presence, and abruptly dropped whatever it was they were privily discussing, and my father said, “Yes, it was as well that we stopped these few days. There are several items we need which are unobtainable in the bazàr during this holy month. When the month ends tomorrow, they will be purchasable, and by then the lame camel will be healed, and we will aim at departure the day after. We cannot thank you enough for the hospitality you have shown us during our stay.”
“Which reminds me,” she said. “I have your evening meal almost done. I will bring it out to your quarters as soon as it is.”
My father and I went together to the hayloft, where we found Uncle Mafio perusing the pages of our Kitab. He looked up from it and said, “Our next destination, Mashhad, is no easy one to get to. Desert all the way, and the very widest extent of that desert. We will be dried and shriveled like a bacalà.” He broke off to scratch vigorously at the inside of his left elbow. “Some damned bug has bitten me, and I itch.”
I said, “The widow told me that this city is infested with scorpions.”
My uncle gave me a scornful look. “If you ever get stung by one, asenazzo, you will learn that scorpions do not
bite
. No, this was a tiny fly, perfectly triangular in shape. It was so tiny that I cannot believe this tormenting itch it left.”
The Widow Esther made several crossings of the yard, bringing out the dishes of our meal, and we three ate while bent together over the Kitab. Nostril ate apart, in the stable below, among the camels, but he ate almost as audibly as a camel eats. I tried to disregard his noises and concentrate on the maps.