The Stone Woman (33 page)

Quanti dolci pensier, quanto disio

menò costoro al doloroso passo!”

Poi mi rivolsi a loro e parla’ io,

E cominciai: “Francesca, i tuoi martiri

A lagrimar mi fanno tristo e pio.

Ma dimmi: al tempo d’i dolci sospiri

a che e come concedetti amore

che conosceste i dubbiosi disiri?”

E quella a me: “Nessun maggior dolore

Che ricordarsi del tempo felice

Ne la miseria; e ciò sa ’l tuo dottore.

Ma s’a conoscer la prima radice

Del nostro amor tu hai cotanto affetto,

Dirò come colui che piange e dice.

Noi leggiavamo un giorno per diletto

Di Lancialotto come amor lo strinse;

Soli eravamo e sanza alcun sospetto.

Per più fïate liocchi ci sospinse

quella lettura, e scolorocci il viso;

ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse.

Quando leggemmo il disïato riso

Esser basciato da cotanto amante,

Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,

La bocca mi basciò tutto tremante.

Galeotto fu ’l libro e chi lo scrisse:

quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante.”

Mentre che l’uno spirto questo disse,

l’altro piangëa; sì che di pietade

io venni men così com’ io morisse.

E caddi come corpo mono cade.
*

The Baron’s histrionic performance had exhausted him and he fell back in his chair, his hand groping for the non-existent glass of champagne. Since I could not understand a word I had looked at the faces of those who could, and while Salman had remained attentive, Uncle Memed’s features were filled with tenderness throughout the performance. He spoke to his friend in a soft voice.

“I first read that passage to you, Jakob. Remember? Venezia?” It was the first time anyone in our household had spoken the Baron’s name.

The Baron had recovered himself. He never liked displays of public affection and ignored Uncle Memed’s question.

“Well, Salman?”

My brother looked at the Prussian with a raised eyebrow.

“Dear Baron, surely you will agree that it would be impertinent for either of us to compare these two poets. Each wrote in his own time and, as a result, each has his own special qualities. Would you compare Machiavelli to Hegel?”

“Ridiculous idea.”

“Exactly. It serves no function. Likewise Dante and Verlaine.”

“I disagree.” The Baron was beginning to show signs of irritation. “The Florentine was a genius. The Frenchman was a poet of a high quality.”

Salman was now getting annoyed. He shrugged his shoulders, but remained silent. We were beginning to wonder whether the discussion was over when Salman spoke.

“One thing puzzles me Baron. I am familiar with the extract you read from Canto V. What always puzzled me was why Dante had to spoil the effect of the passage in which the depth of emotion is truly profound by insisting that the book they were reading was the story of Lancelot, a legend which usually appeals to the soft-headed. Do you think this was deliberate on this poet’s part? A way of warning the reader, perhaps, that love can make one undiscriminating?”

The Baron was livid. “The question you pose is so profound that I will think it over tonight and give you a reply tomorrow.”

Salman and I began to giggle and my father intervened.

“That is enough poetry for one day. Orhan asked me a question today for which I had no answer. I told him to ask Selim and Halil to their faces. Come here, Orhan.”

Orhan moved to where Iskander Pasha was seated.

“I asked Grandfather: when the Sultan is gone and my Uncle Halil and Selim and the men who visited our house take over the Empire, will the ruffians who killed my father be punished?”

Selim covered his face with his hands. Halil looked pensive and simply nodded at the question. Salman was the one who replied.

“Both of them would like to say ‘yes’ to you, Orhan, because they love you dearly, but because they love you they do not wish to lie. Some of the men who killed your father because he was Greek are the people who want to topple the Sultan. So the answer is ‘no’, Orhan. They will probably never be punished.”

Orhan’s eyes filled with tears and Emineh looked out of the window. My parents took them out of the room without another word. Memed, too, rose as if to depart.

“We must make sure everything we need is packed, Baron. We leave early tomorrow morning.”

I had no idea their departure was so imminent. “You are deserting us in our hour of need, Baron.”

“Old empires fall and new ones take their place, Nilofer. You are lucky. You will have friends in both.”

Memed sat down again. “Berlin as the heart of a new Empire, Baron? I don’t think the British, French and Russians are going to permit the birth of this empire.”

“They are not invincible, Memed.”

“We shall see.”

“Let me put it to you another way, Memed. Any power which is strong enough to defeat Germany will one day rule the world.”

“On that deeply mystical Wagnerian note, Baron, I think we should retire for the day.”

“Good,” said the Baron, “but not before inviting Salman, Nilofer and Selim to my family’s New Year’s Eve Ball in Berlin. It will be very grand this year. If you like, Selim, I can ask my friend Urning to get a couple of tickets for you to attend the ball being planned by the German Social Democrats. They plan everything well in advance. It is their nature.”

“That would really encourage me to visit Berlin,” replied Selim.

“Good. It’s settled, but you will be my guests.”

Selim accompanied them out of the room, leaving me alone with Salman.

“Are you looking forward to working with Uncle Kemal again?”

He looked at me and gently stroked my cheeks.

“Yes, my Nilofer. I’m ready for something new. I have tried the East and it failed me. I would like to visit America and see Chicago and New York. It is such a big country that one could lose oneself in its vastness. I’m looking forward to getting lost again. The steamship company will need to be set up on every coast.”

“Father will miss you very much now. You know that, don’t you? I think out of all of us he feels the closest to you. You should have seen the look on his face when you were reading Verlaine. He loves you dearly, Salman. As children we hated him for punishing you, but he loved you even then. We were too young too realise it at the time.”

“It’s true, and I feel very close to him as well, which I never did when I was growing up here. Don’t worry. I wasn’t planning on leaving just yet, Sister. I will spend a lot of time with Father.”

I was in bed waiting for Selim to undress and join me. Everyone was leaving now, but he would always be with me, with his strange and obstinate gaze and his pride. He had come to me from nowhere and rescued me from loneliness at a time when I was unhappy and my life with Dmitri had come to an end. I did not wish to think about love or passion or betrayal.

Selim got into the bed and looked at me and smiled.

“I do not wish to discuss our love for each other, tonight. I do not want to know whether it has grown, deepened or which of us loves the other more. Not tonight.”

I began to laugh. “Why do we always do this, Selim? Anyway, what I want to discuss is not our love, but our weaknesses. It is the knowledge of each other’s weaknesses that creates what the Baron would refer to as an emotional equilibrium.”

He began to rub himself against me.

“No words tonight, princess. Just passion. Passion. Passion. Passion.”

*
For English translation see
Appendix

I
WOKE UP VERY
early this morning. I wanted to be completely on my own. I dressed silently and left the house from a side entrance.

Outside the lawn was still bathed in the light of the full moon.

I walked to the top of a little hill which stood just behind the Stone Woman, not far from where we had buried Hasan Baba. I had done this once before when I was sixteen years old and dreaming of the prince who would come from nowhere one day, lift me off the ground, place me firmly in front on his horse and ride away with me for ever.

Here it was, the full moon. I had not seen it so big and so close over the sea for many years. I embraced it from this hill and a mysterious strength poured into my body.

I had come to see it set in the west as the sun of the new day rose in the east. It was a very large and languid moon, to which I bade an emotional farewell from this hill behind Yusuf Pasha’s summer house. How many dreams had been born here. How many others had been stored during hundreds of blissful summers, to be recovered later.

I turned eastwards. There were a few wispy clouds on the horizon. The hidden sun first lit them a glorious pink, which slowly began to turn red. It was a young beauty, visible only for a short time. I knew that any minute the sun would pierce the clouds and burn my eyes. I turned away just in time and as I walked down I saw something that had often been talked about, but never seen by any of us.

As the first rays of the sun hit the Stone Woman, they created a shadow in the shape of a giant prehistoric whale. It only lasted a minute. I had barely time to gasp in awe when it was gone. I stopped to look at the rock that was our Stone Woman and whispered my farewell, just as we used to do when we were children.

My breasts have been feeling very tender for the last few weeks and this is the second month in a row that I have not menstruated. I am pregnant once again. Selim’s child will be born in seven months’ time. It will be as old as the next century.

Summer is over. Tomorrow we return to Istanbul.

When those offended souls had told their story,

I bowed my head and kept it bowed until

the poet said, “What are you thinking of?”

When finally I spoke, I sighed, “Alas,

all those sweet thoughts, and oh, how much desiring

brought these two down into this agony.”

And then I turned to them and tried to speak;

I said, “Francesca, the torment that you suffer

brings painful tears of pity to my eyes.

But tell me, in that time of your sweet sighing

how, and by what signs, did love allow you

to recognise your dubious desires?”

And she to me: “There is no greater pain

than to remember, in our present grief,

past happiness (as well your teacher knows)!

But if your great desire is to learn

the very root of such a love as ours,

I shall tell you, but in words of flowing tears.

One day we read, to pass the time away,

of Lancelot, of how he fell in love;

we were alone, innocent of suspicion.

Time and again our eyes were brought together

by the book we read; our faces flushed and paled.

To the moment of one line alone we yielded:

it was when we read about those longed-for lips

now being kissed by such a famous lover,

that this one (who shall never leave my side)

then kissed my mouth, and trembled as he did.

Our Galehot was that book and he who wrote it.

That day we read no further.” And all the while

the one of the two spirits spoke these words,

the other wept, in such a way that pity

blurred my senses; I swooned as though to die,

and fell to Hell’s floor as a body, dead, falls.

Translation by Mark Musa from

The Divine Comedy,
courtesy of Penguin Books

Tariq Ali is a novelist, journalist, and filmmaker. His many books include
The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity
;
Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq
;
Conversations with Edward Said
;
Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties
; and the novels of the Islam Quintet. He is the coauthor of
On History: Tariq Ali and Oliver Stone in Conversation
and an editor of the
New Left Review
, and he writes for the
London Review of Books
and the
Guardian
. Ali lives in London.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Islam Quintet

T
HE FIRST SENTENCE IS
crucial. He knew that from instinct and his study of old manuscripts. How well the ancients understood this, how carefully they chose their beginnings, how easily their work must have progressed after that decision had been made. Where to begin? How to begin? He envied them the choices their world had made possible, their ability to search for knowledge wherever it might be found.