The Journeyer

by Gary Jennings

  They would chop the red legs off those birds, keep the flesh for the pot, and burn the legs to a fine ash, which came out of the fire as a purple powder. That powder they used, as other Eastern women use al-kohl, as a cosmetic for ringing and enhancing their eyes. The Kalash women also painted their faces all over with a cream made from the yellow seeds of flowers called bechu, and I can attest that a woman with a face entirely bright yellow, except for the great, purple-masked eyes, is a sight to see. No doubt the women deemed that it made them sexually attractive, because their other favorite ornamentation was a cap or hood and a cape made of innumerable little shells called kauri, and a kauri shell is easily seen as a perfect human female sex organ in miniature.

  Speaking of which, I was pleased to hear that Buzai Gumbad offered a sexual outlet other than drunken rape, Sodomy and hideously punishable adultery. It was Nostril who nosed it out, when we had been in the community only a day or two, and again he sidled up to me as he had done in Balkh, pretending disgust at the discovery:

  “A foul Jew this time, Master Marco. He has taken the small karwansarai building farthest from the lake. In front, it pretends to be a grinding shop for the sharpening of knives and swords and tools. But in the rear he keeps a variety of females of varied race and color. As a good Muslim, I should denounce this carrion bird perched on the Roof of the World, but I will not unless you bid me to, after you have cast a Christian eye upon the establishment.”

  I told him I would, and I did, a few days later, after we were unpacked and well settled in residence. In the shop at the front of the building, a man sat hunched, holding a scythe blade to a grinding wheel that he was turning with a foot treadle. Except that he wore a skullcap, he would have resembled a khers bear, for he was very hairy of face, and those locks and whiskers seemed to merge into the great furry coat he wore. I took note that the coat was of costly karakul, an elegant garment for the mere knife grinder he pretended to be. I waited for a pause in the gritty whir of the spinning stone wheel and the rain of sparks it was spraying all about.

  Then I said, as Nostril had instructed, “I have a special tool I wish pointed and greased.”

  The man raised his head, and I blinked. His hair and eyebrows and beard were like a curly red fungus going gray, and his eyes were like blackberries, and his nose like a shimshir blade.

  “One dirham,” he said, “or twenty shahis or a hundred kauri shells. Strangers coming for the first time pay in advance.”

  “I am no stranger,” I said warmly. “Do you not know me?”

  Less than warmly, he said, “I know no one. That is how I stay in business in a place rife with contradictory laws.”

  “But I am Marco!”

  “Here, you drop your name when you drop your lower garment. If I am questioned by some meddling mufti, I can say truthfully that I know no names except my own, which is Shimon.”

  “The Tzaddik Shimon?” I asked impudently. “One of the Lamed-vav? Or all thirty-six of them?”

  He looked either alarmed or suspicious. “You speak the Ivrit? You are no Jew! What do you know of the Lamed-vav?”

  “Only that I seem to keep meeting them.” I sighed. “A woman named Esther told me what they are called and what they do.”

  He said disgustedly, “She could not have told you very accurately, if you can mistake a brothel keeper for a tzaddik.”

  “She said the tzaddikim do good for men. So does a brothel, in my opinion. Now—are you not going to warn me, as always before?”

  “I just did. The karwan muftis can often be meddlesome. Do not go braying your name around here.”

  “I mean about the bloodthirstiness of beauty.”

  He snorted. “If at your age, Nameless, you have not yet learned the danger of beauty, I will not attempt to instruct a fool. Now, one dirham or the equivalent, or begone.”

  I dropped the coin into his callused palm and said, “I should like a woman who is not Muslim. Or at least not tabzir in her parts. Also, if possible, I should like one I can talk to for a change.”

  “Take the Domm girl,” he grunted. “She never stops talking. Through that door, second room on the right.” He bent again to the scythe and the wheel, and the rasping noise and the flying sparks again filled the shop.

  The brothel consisted, like the one in Balkh, of a number of rooms that would better have been called cubicles, opening off a corridor. The Domm girl’s cubicle was sketchily furnished: a dung-fired brazier for warmth and light—and smoke and smell—and, for the business transaction, the sort of bed called a hindora. This is a pallet that does not stand on legs, but is hung from a ceiling beam by four ropes, and adds some movement of its own to the movements that go on in it.

  Never having heard the word Domm before, I did not know what sort of girl to expect. The one sitting and swinging idly on the hindora turned out to be something new in my experience, a girl so dark-brown she was almost black. Apart from that, though, she was sufficiently pleasing of face and figure. Her features were finely shaped, not Ethiope gross, and her body was small and slight but well formed. She spoke several languages, among them Farsi, so we were able to converse. Her name, she told me, was Chiv, which in her native Romm tongue meant Blade.

  “Romm? The Jew said you were Domm.”

  “Not the Domm!” she protested fiercely. “I am a Romni! I am a juvel, a young woman, of the Romm!”

  Since I had no idea what either a Domm or a Romm was, I avoided argument by getting on with what I had come for. And I soon discovered that, whatever else the juvel Chiv might be—and she claimed to be of the Muslim religion—she was anyhow a complete juvel, not Muslimly deprived of any of her female parts. And those parts, once I got past the dark-brown entryway, were as prettily pink as those of any other female. Also, I could tell that Chiv was not feigning delight, but truly did enjoy the frolic as much as I did. When, afterward, I lazily inquired how she had come to this brothel occupation, she did not spin me any tale of having been brought low by woe, but said blithely:

  “I would be doing zina anyway, what we call surata, because I like to. Getting paid for making surata is an extra bounty, but I like that, too. Would you refuse a wage, if it were offered, for every time you have the pleasure of making water?”

  Well, I thought, Chiv might not be a girl of flowery sentiments, but she was honest. I even gave her a dirham that she would not have to share with the Jew. And, on my way out through the grinding shop, I was pleased to be able to make a snide remark to that person:

  “You were mistaken, old Shimon. As I have found you to be on other occasions. The girl is of the Romm.”

  “Romm, Domm, those wretched people call themselves anything they take a mind to,” he said uncaringly. But he went on, more amiably talkative than he had been when I came in. “They were originally the Dhoma, one of the lowest classes of all the Hindu jati of India. The Dhoma are among the untouchables, the loathed and detested. So they are continually seeping out of India to seek better situations elsewhere. God knows how, since they have no trades but dancing and whoring and tinkering and thieving. And dissimulation. When they call themselves Romm, it is to pretend descent from the Western Caesars. When they call themselves Atzigàn, it is to pretend descent from the conqueror Alexander. When they call themselves Egypsies, it is to pretend descent from the ancient Pharaones.” He laughed. “They descended only from the swinish Dhoma, but they are descending on all the lands of the earth.”

  I said, “You Jews have also dispersed widely about the world. Who are you to look down on others for doing the same?”

  He gave me a look, but he answered with deliberation, as if I had not spoken spitefully. “True, we Jews adapt to the circumstances in which our dispersal puts us. But one thing the Domm do which we never will. And that is to seek acceptance by cravenly adopting the prevailing local religion.” He laughed again. “You see? Any despised people can always discern some more lowly people to look down on and despise.”

  I sniffed and said, “It follo
ws, then, that the Domm also have someone to look down on.”

  “Oh, yes. Everyone else in creation. To them, you and I and all others are the Gazhi. Which means only ‘the dupes, the victims,’ those who are to be cheated and swindled and deceived.”

  “Surely a pretty girl, like your Chiv yonder, need not deceive—”

  He gave an impatient shake of his head. “You walked in here yammering about beauty as a basis for suspicion. Were you carrying any valuables when you came?”

  “Do you take me for an ass, to carry anything of worth into a whorehouse? I brought only a few coins and my belt knife. Where is my knife?”

  Shimon smiled pityingly. I brushed past him, stormed into the back room and found Chiv happily counting a handful of coppers.

  “Your knife? I already sold it, was that not quick of me?” she said, as I stood over her, fuming. “I did not expect you to miss it so soon. I sold it to a Tazhik herdsman just now passing at the back door, so it is gone. But do not be angry with me. I will steal a better blade from someone else, and keep it until you come again, and give it to you. This I will do—out of my great esteem for your handsomeness and your generosity and your exceptional prowess at surata.”

  Being so liberally praised, I of course stopped being angry, and said I would look forward to visiting her soon again. Nevertheless, in making my second departure from the place, I slunk past Shimon at his wheel, much as I had slunk from another brothel at another time in female raiment.

  2

  I think Nostril could have produced for us, if we had required it, a fish in a desert. When my father asked him to seek out a physician to give us an opinion on the seeming improvement of Uncle Mafìo’s tisichezza, Nostril had no trouble in finding one, even on the Roof of the World. And the elderly, bald Hakim Mimdad impressed us as being a competent doctor. He was a Persian, and that alone certified him as a civilized man. He was traveling as karwan keeper-of-the-health in a train of Persian qali merchants. In just his general conversation, he gave evidence of having more than just routine knowledge of his profession. I remember his telling us:

  “Myself, I prefer to prevent afflictions, rather than have to cure them, even though prevention puts no money in my purse. For example, I instruct all the mothers here in this encampment to boil the milk they give their children. Whether it be yak milk, camel milk, whatever, I urge that it first be boiled, and in a vessel of iron. As is known to all people, the nastier jinn and other sorts of demons are repelled by iron. And I have determined by experiment that the boiling of milk liberates from the vessel its iron juice, and mixes that into the milk, and thereby fends off any jinni that might lurk in readiness to inflict some childhood disease.”

  “It sounds reasonable,” said my father.

  “I am a strong advocate of experiment,” the old hakim went on. “Medicine’s accepted rules and recipes are all very well, but I have often found by experiment new cures which do not accord with the old rules. Sea salt, for one. Not even the greatest of all healers, the sage ibn Sina, seems ever to have noticed that there is some subtle difference between sea salt and that obtained from inland salt flats. From none of the ancient treatises can I divine any reason for there being such a difference. But something about sea salt prevents and cures goiters and other such tumorous swellings of the body. Experiment has proven it to me.”

  I made a private resolve to go and apologize to the little Chola salt merchants I had laughed at.

  “Well, come then, Dotòr Balanzòn!” my uncle boomed, mischievously calling him by the name of that Venetian comic personage. “Let us get this over with, so you can tell me which you prescribe for my damned tisichezza—the sea salt or the boiled milk.”

  So the hakim proceeded to his examination diagnostic, probing here and there at Uncle Mafio and asking him questions. After some while he said:

  “I cannot know how bad was the coughing before. But, as you say, it is not very bad now, and I hear little crepitation inside the chest. Do you have any pain there?”

  “Only now and then,” said my uncle. “Understandable, I suppose, after all the hard coughing I have done.”

  “But allow me a guess,” said Hakim Mimdad. “You feel it only in one place. Under your left breastbone.”

  “Why, yes. Yes, that is so.”

  “Also, your skin is quite warm. Is this fever constant?”

  “It comes and goes. It comes, I sweat, it goes away.”

  “Open your mouth, please.” He peered inside it, then lifted the lips away to look at the gums. “Now hold out your hands.” He looked at them front and back. “Now, if I may pluck just one hair of your head?” He did, and Uncle Mafio did not wince, and the physician scrutinized the hair, bending it in his fingers. Then he asked, “Do you feel a frequent need to make kut?”

  My uncle laughed and rolled his eyes bawdily. “I feel many needs, and frequently. How does one make kut?”

  The hakim, looking tolerant, as if he were dealing with a child, significantly patted a hand on his own backside.

  “Ah, kut is merda!” roared my uncle, still laughing. “Yes, I have to make it frequently. Ever since that earlier hakim gave me his damned purgative, I have been afflicted with the cagasangue. It keeps me trotting. But what does all this have to do with a lung ailment?”

  “I think you do not have the hasht nafri.”

  “Not the tisichezza?” my father spoke up, surprised. “But he was coughing blood at one time.”

  “Not from the lungs,” said Hakim Mimdad. “It is his gums exuding blood.”

  “Well,” said Uncle Mafio, “a man can hardly be displeased to hear that his lungs are not failing. But I gather that you suspect some other ailment.”

  “I will ask you to make water into this little jar. I can tell you more after I have inspected the urine for signs diagnostic.”

  “Experiments,” my uncle muttered.

  “Exactly. In the meantime, if the innkeeper Iqbal will bring me some egg yolks, I would have you allow the application of more of the little Quran papers.”

  “Do they do any good?”

  “They do no harm. Much of medicine consists of precisely that: not doing harm.”

  When the hakim departed, carrying the small jar of urine with his hand capping it to prevent any contamination, I also left the karwansarai. I went first to the tents of the Tamil Cholas and said words of apology and wished those men all prosperity—which seemed to make them even more nervous than they always were anyway—and then wended my way to the establishment of the Jew Shimon.

  I asked again to have my tool greased, and asked to have Chiv do it again, and I got her, and as she had promised, she did present me with a fine new knife, and to show my gratitude I tried to outdo my former prowess in the performance of surata. Afterward, on my way out, I paused to chide old Shimon yet again:

  “You and your nasty mind. You said all those belittling things about the Romm people, but look what a splendid gift the girl just gave me in exchange for my old blade.”

  He humphed indifferently and said, “Be glad she has not yet given you one between your ribs.”

  I showed him the knife. “I never saw one like this before. It resembles any ordinary dagger, yes? A single wide blade. But watch. When I have stabbed it into some prey, I squeeze the handle: so. And that wide blade separates into two, and they spring apart, and this third, hidden, inner blade darts out from between them, to pierce the prey even more deeply. Is it not a marvelous contrivance?”

  “Yes. I recognize it now. I gave it a good sharpening not long ago. And I suggest, if you keep it, that you keep it handy. It formerly belonged to a very large Hunzuk mountain man who drops in here occasionally. I do not know his name, for everyone calls him simply the Squeeze Knife Man, because of his proficiency with it and his ready employment of it when his temper is … . Must you dash off?”

  “My uncle is ailing,” I said, as I went out the door. “I really should not stay away too long at a time.”

  I did
not know if the Jew was just making a crude jest, but I was not confronted by any large and ill-tempered Hunzik man between Shimon’s place and the karwansarai. To avoid any such confrontation, I stayed prudently close to the inn’s main building for the next few days, listening, in company with my father or uncle, to the various bits of advice dispensed by the landlord Iqbal.

  When we loudly praised the good milk given by the cow yaks, and loudly marveled at the bravery of the Bho who dared to milk those monsters, Iqbal told us, “There is a simple trick to milking a cow yak without hazard. Only give her a calf to lick and nuzzle, and she will stand still and serene while it is being done.”

  But not all the information we got at that time was welcome. The Hakim Mimdad came again to confer with Uncle Mafio, and began by suggesting gravely that it be done in private. My father and Nostril and I were present, and we got up to leave the chamber, but my uncle stopped us with a peremptory flap of his hand.

  “I do not keep secret any matters that may eventually concern my karwan partners. Whatever you have to tell, you may tell us all.”

  The hakim shrugged. “Then, if you will drop your pai-jamah …”

  My uncle did, and the hakim eyed his bare crotch and big zab. “The hairlessness, is that natural or do you shave yourself there?”

  “I take it off with a salve called mumum. Why?”

  “Without the hair, the discoloration is easy to see,” said the hakim, pointing. “Look down at your abdomen. You see that metallic gray tinge to the skin there?”

  My uncle looked, and so did all of us. He asked, “Caused by the mumum?”

  “No,” said Hakim Mimdad. “I noticed the lividity also on the skin of your hands. When next you remove your chamus boots, you will see it on your feet as well. These manifestations tend to confirm what I suspected from my earlier examination and from observation of your urine. Here, I have poured it into a white jar so you may observe for yourself. The smoky color of it.”

  “So?” said Uncle Mafio, as he reclothed himself. “Perhaps I had been dining on the colored pilaf that day. I do not remember.”