The Journeyer

by Gary Jennings

  The Ostikan’s name was Hampig Bagratunian, but his name was the only wonderful thing about him. He was small and wizened and, like all Armeniyans, he had no back to his head. It was flat there, as if his head had been designed to hang on a wall. He did not look at all like a governor of anything, and he was as clerkly as his clerks in tongue-clucking fussiness. Unlike an Arab or a Jew, who obey their religions’ injunctions to entertain strangers with a good grace, the Christian Armeniyan received us with unconcealed annoyance.

  When he had read the letter, he said in Sabir, “Just because I am a fellow monarch”—casually inflating his rank to regality—“any other prince seems to think he can rid himself of a bother by shunting it on to me.”

  We politely said nothing. A toenail went thwack, whiz, click.

  Ostikan Hampig continued, “Here you arrive on the very eve of my son’s wedding”—he indicated the toenail cutter—“when I have countless other things to attend to, and guests coming from all over the Levant, trying not to get themselves slaughtered by the Mamluks on their way, and all the festivities to arrange, and …” He went on listing the botherations to which our arrival had added another.

  His son carved off a final clamorous toenail, then looked up and said, “Wait, Father.”

  The Ostikan, interrupted in his recital, said, “Yes, Kagig?”

  Kagig got up from where he sat, but did not quite rise erect. Instead, he began to roam about the room, bent over, as if to give us a good view of the flat back of his head. He picked up something, and I realized that he was for some reason retrieving his pared bits of toenail. While he worked, he said over his shoulder to the Ostikan, “These strangers brought two churchmen with them.”

  “Yes, so they did,” his father said impatiently. “What of it?”

  One of the toenail crescents had landed near my own foot; I picked it up and gave it to Kagig. He nodded and, seeming satisfied that he had all the bits, he sat down beside his father on the daiwan, brushing the horny scraps from his hand into the brazier. “There,” he said. “No sorcerer will use those to conjure against me.” The toenails seemed still determined not to die quietly: they sizzled and popped among the coals.

  “What about these churchmen, my boy?” Hampig inquired again, paternally stroking his son’s backless head.

  “Well, we have old Dimirjian to conduct my nuptial mass,” Kagig said languidly. “But every common peasant has one priest to do the marrying of him. Suppose I had three …”

  “Hm,” said his father, turning his eyes to the Brothers Nicolò and Guglielmo; they stared haughtily back at him. “Yes, that would add to the pomp of the occasion.” To my father and uncle he said, “You may not be unwelcome, after all. Are these clerics empowered to confer the sacrament of matrimony?”

  “Yes, Your Excellency,” said my father. “These are Friars Preachers.”

  “They could serve the mass as acolytes suffragan to the Metropolitan Dimirjian. And they should feel honored to participate. My son is marrying a pshi—a Princess—of the Adighei. What you call the Circassians.”

  “A people famous for their beauty,” said Uncle Mafìo. “But … Christian?”

  “My son’s betrothed has taken instruction from the Metropolitan Dimirjian himself, and Confirmation and First Communion. The Princess Seosseres is now a Christian.”

  “And a beautiful Christian indeed,” said Kagig, smacking his liver-like lips. “People stop in their footsteps when they see her—even Muslims and other infidels—and bow their heads and thank the Creator for having created the Pshi Seosseres.”

  “Well?” Hampig said to us. “The wedding is tomorrow.”

  My father said, “I am sure the frati will be honored to participate. Your Excellency has only to bid me, and I will bid them serve.”

  The two frati looked somewhat indignant at not having been personally consulted during the conversation, but they raised no objection.

  “Good,” said the Ostikan. “We shall have three ecclesiastics at the nuptials, and two of them foreigners from afar. Yes, that will impress my guests and my subjects. On that condition, then, messieurs, you will—”

  “We will remain here in Suvediye for the royal wedding,” said Uncle Mafìo, smoothly dropping in the adjective. “Of course, we will desire to continue our journey immediately afterward. And so, of course, Your Excellency will meantime have helped to expedite our procurement of mounts and supplies.”

  “Er … yes … of course,” said Hampig, looking fussed at having been given some conditions in return. He rang a bell by his hand, and one of the under-officials entered. “This is my palace steward, messieurs. Arpad, you will show these gentlemen to quarters here in the palace, then introduce the friars to the Metropolitan, then accompany the gentlemen to the market and render whatever assistance they may require.” He turned again to us. “Very well, then. I welcome you to Suvediye, messieurs, and I formally invite you to the royal wedding and all the attendant festivities.”

  So Arpad led us to two chambers on the upper floor, one for us and one for the friars. As soon as we had unpacked enough of our belongings for a brief stay, we went downstairs again and handed the Brothers over to the Metropolitan Dimirjian. He was a large old man, the backlessness of whose head was less remarkable than what could be seen on the forward side of it: a massive nose, a weighty underslung jaw, overslung eyebrows and long fleshy ears. When he had taken the friars off to rehearse them in the morrow’s ritual, my father, my uncle and I went with Steward Arpad to the Suvediye marketplace.

  “You might as well get used to calling it the bazàr,” he said helpfully. “That is the Farsi word used from here to the eastward. You are buying at a good time, for the wedding has attracted vendors from everywhere, hawking every conceivable thing, so you will have ample choice of goods. But I beg that you will let me assist you in the bargaining for your selections. Gods knows the Arab merchants are tricksters and swindlers, but the Armeniyans are so much shiftier that only a fellow Armeniyan dares deal with them. The Arabs would merely cheat you naked. The Armeniyans would flay you of your very skins.”

  “The chief thing we need is riding animals,” said my uncle. “They can carry us and what goods we have, as well.”

  “I suggest horses,” said Arpad. “You may wish to change them later for camels, when you have much desert to cross. But for now, since your next destination is Baghdad, no hard journey, horses will be more speedy, and much more easy to handle than camels. Mules would be even better, but I doubt that you wish to spend what they would cost.”

  In much of the East, as in civilized Europe, the mule, because it is so gentle and amenable and intelligent, is the preferred mount of men and ladies of high degree—meaning the very rich—so a mule breeder unblushingly asks exorbitant prices for his animals. My father and uncle agreed that they did not care to pay such prices, that horses would have to do for us.

  So we visited the several rope corrals set up around the outskirts of the bazàr, where could be bought all sorts of riding and pack animals: mules, asses, horses of every breed from the exquisite Arabian to the heftiest drafter, and also camels and their cousins, the sleek racing dromedaries. After examining many horses, my father and uncle and the steward settled on five—two geldings and three mares—of good appearance and conformation, not so heavy as the draft animals but nowhere near so elegant as the fine-boned Arabians.

  Buying five horses meant five separate dickerings. So there in the Suvediye bazàr, for the first time, I witnessed a procedure that I was eventually to become weary of, for I had to endure it in every bazàr of the East. I mean the curious Eastern manner of transacting a purchase. Although the steward Arpad kindly did it for us that time, it was a prolonged and tedious affair.

  Arpad and the horse trader each extended a hand to the other, letting their long sleeves drape over the meeting hands to make them invisible to anyone looking on—and in any bazàr there are always countless loiterers with nothing better to do than to watch other peo
ple’s business dealings. Then Arpad and the trader each wiggled and tapped his hidden fingers against the other’s hidden hand, the trader signaling the price he wanted, Arpad the price he would give. Although I learned the signals and remember them well, I will not set them out in all their intricacy. Suffice it to say that one man first taps to indicate either single digits or tens or hundreds, and thus, by subsequently tapping thrice, say, indicates either three or thirty or three hundred. And so on. The system allows the signaling even of fractions, and even of the different values when buyer and merchant must deal in different currencies, say dinars and ducats.

  By exchanging the taps, the horse trader gradually reduced his demand, and the steward gradually increased his offer. In this way, they worked their way through all the reasonable prices and unreasonable extortions conceivable. In the East, the various sorts of prices even have names: the great price, the small price, the city price, the beautiful price, the fixed price, the good price—and an infinity of others. When they reached a mutually acceptable deal for the first horse, they had to repeat the process for each of the four others, and in each case the steward had to consult at intervals with us, not to exceed his authority or our purse.

  Any of those sessions could easily have been conducted in spoken words, but that is never done, for the secrecy of the hand-and-sleeve method benefits both buyer and seller, since no one else ever knows the original asking price or the final price agreed on. Thus a buyer sometimes can drive a merchant down to a figure the merchant would be ashamed to speak aloud, but he may finally sell at that price, knowing that any next prospective buyer will not know of it and cannot take advantage of it. Or a buyer, so eager to acquire some item that he will not haggle much over the price, can pay it knowing that he will not be jeered by the bystanders for a spendthrift fool.

  Our five transactions were not completed until the sun was almost down, leaving us not time enough that day even to buy saddles for the horses, not to mention the many other necessities on our lists. We had to return to the palace, to visit its hammam and get thoroughly clean before donning our best clothes for the evening meal. For it was to be a banquet, Arpad told us, the traditional all-male celebration on the eve of a wedding. While we were being rubbed and pummeled in the hammam, my father said anxiously to my uncle:

  “Mafìo, we must present some sort of celebratory gift to the Ostikan or his son or his son’s bride, if not a gift to each of them. I cannot think what might be suitable. Worse, I cannot think what we might afford. Our budget was much depleted by the purchase of those mounts, and we have many other things yet to buy.”

  “No fear. I had already given that some thought,” said my uncle, sounding confident as usual. “I looked into the kitchen where the banquet is being prepared. For color and condiment, the cooks are using what they told me was safflower. I tasted it and—can you imagine?—it is nothing but common càrtamo, bastard zafràn. They have none of the real thing. So we will give the Ostikan a brick of our good golden zafràn, and it should delight him more than the golden trinkets everyone else will be giving.”

  For all its decrepitude, the palace had a commendably large dining hall, and that night it needed it, because just the males among the Ostikan’s guests made a tremendous crowd. They were mostly Armeniyans and Arabs—the former including the “royal” Bagratunian family and its relations, from close to remote; plus the palace and government officials; plus what I suppose passed for the nobility of Suvediye; plus legions of visitors from elsewhere in Lesser Armeniya and the rest of the Levant. The Arabs seemed all to be of the Avedi tribe, which must have been a huge tribe, for all the Arabs claimed to be sheikhs of high or lower degree. My father, my uncle, the two Dominicans and myself were not the only foreigners, for all of the bride’s Circassian family had come south from the Caucasus Mountains for the occasion. I might say that they were—as is reputed of all Circassians—a strikingly handsome people, and by far the best looking men in the company that night.

  The banquet actually consisted of two separate meals, served simultaneously, each meal comprising numberless courses. Those courses served to us and the Armeniyan Christians were the most various, because they were not limited by any infidel superstitions. The courses set before the Muslim guests had to exclude the many foods their Quran forbids them to eat—pork, of course, and shellfish, and every meat from every sort of creature that lives in a hole, whether a hole in the ground, a hole in a tree or a hole in the underwater mud.

  I paid no particular attention to what the Arab guests were given to eat, but I recall that our Christian main course was a young camel calf stuffed with a lamb which was stuffed with a goose which was stuffed with minced pork, pistachios, raisins, pine seeds and spices. There were also stuffed aubergines and stuffed marrows and stuffed vine leaves. For drink, there were sharbats made with still-frozen snow, brought from God knows where and by God knows what swift means and at God knows what cost. The sharbats were of different navors—lemon, rose, quince, peach—and all perfumed with nard and frankincense. For sweets, there were pastries rich with butter and honey and as crisp as honeycombs, and a paste called halwah, made of powdered almonds, and lime tarts, and little cakes unbelievably made of rose petals and orange blossoms, and a conserve of dates stuffed with almonds and cloves. There was also the uniquely wonderful qahwah. There were wines of many different colors, and other intoxicating liquors.

  The Christians speedily got drunk on those drinks, and the Arabs and Circassians were not far behind them. It is well known that the Muslims’ Quran forbids them to drink wine, but it is not so well known that many Muslims observe that stricture precisely to the letter of the law. I will explain. Since wine must have been the only intoxicant in the world at the time the Prophet Muhammad wrote the Quran, it did not occur to him to proscribe every inebriating substance that might subsequently be discovered or invented. Thus many Muslims, even the most rigidly religious in other respects, feel at liberty—especially on festive occasions—to drink any intoxicant not, like wine, made from grapes, and also to chew the herb they variously call hashish, banj, bhang and ghanja, which is quite as potently deranging as any wine.

  Since that night’s banquet was well provided with vivacious drinks never dreamed of by the Prophet—a sparkling urine-colored liquid called abijau, which is brewed from grain, and araq, which is wrung from dates, and something called medhu, which is an essence of honey, and also gummy wads of hashish for chewing—the Arabs and Circassians, except for a few elderly holy men among them, became just as addled and jolly and argumentative and lachrymose as did all the Christians. Well, not all the Christians; my uncle got notably bleary and inclined to sing, but my father and I and the friars abstained.

  There was a band of musicians—or acrobats, it was hard to say which, for they did the most astonishing capers and tricks and contortions while they played. Their instruments were bagpipes and drums and long-necked lutes, and I would have called their music a dreadful caterwauling, except that I suppose it was admirable that they could play at all while they were doing somersaults and walking on their hands and bounding on and off each other’s shoulders.

  The guests knelt or squatted or half-reclined on daiwan pillows around the dining cloths which covered every square inch of the floor, except in the narrow aisles where the servers and servants moved about in a sort of crouch. The guests got up, one or a group of them after another, to carry to the Ostikan and his son, who sat on a dais raised a little above the rest of the company, the gifts they had brought for the occasion. They knelt and bowed their heads and raised up in their hands ewers and platters and dishes of gold and silver, and jeweled brooches and tiaras and tulband medallions, and fabrics of silk threaded with gold, and many other fine things.

  I discovered that night that, in the lands of the East, the recipient of a gift must give in return not just thanks but a gift at least as rich as that which he is given. I was to see that exchange take place often and often thereafter, and to see many a do
nor walk away with something incalculably more valuable than what he gave. But that night I was more amused than impressed by the practice. For the Ostikan Hampig, having the soul of a clerk, complied with the custom simply by giving to each new donor some object from the pile of valuables he had been given by earlier givers. It amounted to nothing more than a brisk shuffle of the gifts, so that, in effect, the guests would all go home with the same goods they had brought—only each would go home with someone else’s.

  Hampig made only one departure from that routine, when it came our turn to get up and advance to the dais. As my uncle had predicted, the Ostikan was so overjoyed to receive our brick of zafràn that he bade his son Kagig get up and run to fetch something extraordinary to give in return. Kagig came back with three objects that looked—as a brick of zafràn does at first glance—rather commonplace. They appeared to be merely three small leather purses. But when Hampig handed them reverently to my father, we saw that they were the cods of musk deer, tightly packed with the precious grains of musk obtained from those deer. The three deer scrota were provided with long rawhide strings, for a reason which Hampig explained: