by Amin Maalouf
That incident is the only topic of conversation this evening. All of our travellers pretend they never believed the story. But the fact is, when the other travellers approached us, everyone went pale and no one dared speak to them.
4 October
Today I was treated to another fable, but this one doesn’t make me smile.
At breakfast time a man came to see me, shouting and waving his arms. He claimed my nephew had been making up to his daughter, and he threatened to settle the matter in blood. Hatem and Maïmoun tried to calm him down, and the caravaneer added his efforts to theirs, though he must really have been delighted to see me embarrassed in this way.
I looked round for Habib, but he’d disappeared. I saw this as an admission of guilt, and cursed him for having put me in such a situation.
Meanwhile the man kept shouting louder and louder, saying he’d cut the culprit’s throat and sprinkle his blood on the ground in front of the whole caravan to show everyone how tarnished honour is made clean.
A growing crowd gathered around us. This was different from the quarrel the other day with the caravaneer. Now I could not hold my head high, nor did I wish to emerge victorious. All I wanted was to nip the scandal in the bud, so as to be able to complete the journey without endangering the life of any of my party.
So I lowered myself so far as to go over to the fellow, tap him on the arm, smile, and promise him he’d be given satisfaction, and his honour would emerge from this business as unsullied as a gold sultanin. I should say in passing that a sultanin is not a paragon of purity: the emptier the Ottoman treasury becomes, the more the coin is debased. Even so, I made the comparison deliberately. I wanted the fellow to hear the word “gold” and realise I was ready to pay the price for his honour. He went on bellowing for a little longer, though not so loudly, as if emitting only the echoes of his last rantings.
Then I took his arm and drew him aside from the rest. Once we were out of earshot, I proffered more apologies and and told him in so many words that I was prepared to pay compensation.
While I was entering into this sordid bargaining, Hatem came and tugged at my sleeve, begging me not to let myself be duped. Seeing this, the other fellow resumed his lamentations, and I had to tell my clerk to let me settle the business in my own way.
So I paid up. One sultanin, together with a solemn promise to chastise my nephew severely and prevent him from ever hanging around the young woman again.
It wasn’t until the evening that Habib presented himself, accompanied by Hatem and another traveller I’d seen them about with before. All three assured me I’d been swindled. According to them, the man to whom I’d given the gold piece was not a grieving father, and the girl that was with him was not his daughter at all, but a trollop well-known as such to the whole caravan.
Habib claimed he’d never visited her, but that’s a lie — I even wonder if Hatem didn’t go with him. But I think they were telling the truth about the rest. I gave each of them a good box on the ears, just the same.
So there’s a travelling brothel in this caravan, frequented by my own nephew — and I didn’t even notice!
I’ve been in business all these years, and I still can’t tell a pimp from an outraged father!
What is the use of my scrutinising the universe if I’m incapable of seeing what’s under my very nose?
What a misfortune, to be made of such fragile clay!
5 October
I’m more shaken than I’d have imagined by what happened yesterday.
I feel weak and tired and dizzy; my eyes are permanently misty and I hurt all over. Perhaps I’m suffering from travel sickness again. Every step is painful, and the whole journey is getting me down. I’m sorry I ever embarked on it.
All my people try to comfort and reason with me, but whatever they say or do is lost in a deepening fog. These lines, too, blur as I write, and my fingers grow slack.
Oh God!
Scutari, Friday 30 October 1665
I haven’t written a line for twenty-four days. True, I’ve been at death’s door. Now I take up my pen again at an inn in Scutari, the day before we cross the Bosphorus and reach Constantinople at last.
It was shortly after we left Konya that I noticed the first symptoms. At first I put my dizziness down to the fatigues of the journey, and then I blamed the upset over my nephew’s misbehaviour and my own credulity. But my discomfort was not unbearable, and I didn’t mention it to my companions or even in these pages. And then one day I suddenly couldn’t hold a pen, and had to go apart from the rest twice in order to vomit.
My own people and a few of the other travellers had gathered round, proffering various bits of good advice, when the caravaneer and three of his henchmen came up. The fellow declared I’d caught the plague, no less. He said I must have been infected somewhere in or near Konya, and ordered me to isolate myself from the rest of the caravan without delay. From then on I must tag along behind, more than 600 paces from my nearest fellow-traveller. If I recovered he would take me back again; if I had to halt he wouldn’t wait for me, but consign me to God and go on without me.
Martha protested, as did my nephews, my clerk, Maïmoun, and a few of the other travellers. But there was nothing to be done. The argument went on for a good half-hour, but I didn’t say a word. I felt that if I opened my mouth I’d be ill again. So I assumed an air of wounded dignity, though all the time I was silently rehearsing all the Genoese oaths I could think of and wishing the caravaneer a painful death!
I remained in quarantine for four whole days, until we reached Afyonkarahisar, the Opium Citadel, a small town with a sinister name, overlooked by the sombre shape of an ancient fort. As soon as we were installed in the local khan, the caravaneer came to see me. To say he’d been wrong, I obviously hadn’t got the plague, he’d noticed I was better and I could rejoin the caravan next morning. My nephews started to quarrel with him, but I made them stop. I don’t like to see someone checked when he’s trying to improve. Any reproaches he deserved should have been delivered before. So I answered politely and accepted his invitation to come back and travel with the others again.
What I didn’t say, either to him or to my people, was that in spite of appearances I was by no means cured. Deep down inside I could feel a sort of generalised fever burning like a brazier. I was amazed that no one seemed to notice how flushed my face was.
The following night was dreadful. I kept shivering and tossing and panting for breath, and the sheets I lay in and the clothes I wore were drenched with sweat. Amid the confusion of voices and echoes that rang through my deranged head I could hear the “widow” whispering at my bedside:
“He must not set out again tomorrow. If he takes to the road again in the state he’s in now he’ll die before he gets to Listana.”
Listana was one of the many names which the people of Gibelet used to refer to Istambul, or Byzantium, the Porte, Costantiniyé and so on.
And indeed, next morning I made no attempt to get up. I’d probably exhausted my strength in the course of the last few days, and my body needed time to mend.
But I was still far from convalescent. I have only the most shadowy remembrance of the three days that followed. It seems to me I must have been very close to death: some of my joints are still as stiff as those of Lazarus must have been after he was brought back to life. In my struggle with illness I lost a few pounds of flesh to it, the way one throws a joint of meat at a wild beast to assuage its hunger. I can hardly find words to speak of it: my soul must still be rather stiff too.
But what remains in my memory about the enforced halt at Afyonkarahisar is not suffering or distress. I may have been abandoned by the rest of the caravan, and death may have cast covetous eyes on me, but whenever I opened my eyes I saw Marta sitting at my side with her feet drawn up under her, gazing at me with a smile of relief. And when I closed my eyes again, my left hand still lay grasped in both of hers — the lower one with its palm against mine, the other from time to time strok
ing my fingers in a gesture of comfort and infinite patience.
Marta didn’t send for a healer or an apothecary — they would have finished me off more surely than the fever. She took care of me just by being there, just with a few sips of cold water and with her two hands, preventing me from going on with my journey. So I stayed, and for three days, as I’ve said, death lurked around me and I seemed its destined prey. Then on the fourth day it left, as if tired of waiting, or perhaps overcome with pity.
I don’t want to give the impression that my nephews and my clerk neglected me. Hatem was never far away, and between strolls around the town the two young men would come and ask how I was, looking worried and apologetic: you couldn’t expect much more from them at their age. God save them, I don’t blame them for anything, except having dragged me into this expedition. But it’s Marta I’m really grateful to, though grateful isn’t the right word, and for me to think it adequate would be the height of ingratitude. Something that cost tears can’t be repaid with mere salt water.
I’m still not sure how much those few days shook me up. For any man the end of the world is first and foremost his own end, and mine had suddenly seemed imminent. Without waiting for the fateful year itself, I was in the process of slipping out of the world when two hands held me back. Two hands, a face and a heart — a heart I knew to be capable of impulsive love and obstinate rebellion, but perhaps not of so powerful and perfect a tenderness. From the time when through a misunderstanding we found ourselves in the same bed, seemingly man and wife, I’d thought that one night, through the inescapable logic of the senses, I’d manage to disguise desire as passion and take matters to their natural conclusion, even though I might regret it next morning. But now I believe that Marta is much more my wife in reality than in appearance, and that, when the day comes that I’m united with her, it won’t be for fun or because I’m drunk or my senses have got the better of me — it will be the most heartfelt and proper of acts. And this whether or not, when the day comes, she’s free from the oath that once linked her to her blackguard of a husband.
But that day is not yet come. I’m sure she hopes for it as much as I do, but the occasion hasn’t yet presented itself. If we were still on the way to Tarsus, and about to spend the next night in Maïmoun’s cousin’s house, we’d emerge as united in our bodies as we already are in our souls. But what’s the good of looking back? I’m here, almost at the gates of Constantinople, alive in spite of all, and Marta is not far off. Love feeds on patience as well as on desire. Isn’t that the lesson I learned from her at Afyonkarahisar?
A week had passed by the time we set out again, joining a caravan from Damascus in which by a strange chance there were a couple of people I knew — a perfumer and a priest. We halted one day at Kutahya, and another at Izmit, and reached Scutari today in the early afternoon. Some of our fellow-travellers decided to press on and take ship straight away, but I preferred to be careful and give myself time for a healing siesta, so as to be readier to confront the last stage of the journey tomorrow, Saturday. We’ll have been on our way for fifty-four days since leaving Aleppo — instead of the forty expected : sixty-nine days since we first set out from Gibelet. I only hope Marmontel hasn’t already gone back to France, taking The Hundredth Name with him!
Constantinople, 31 October 1665
Today Marta has stopped being “my wife”. From now on, appearances are in accordance with reality, until the time comes when reality is in accordance with appearances.
This is not because I decided, after bitter reflection, to put an end to a confusion that had lasted two months and become a little more familiar to me at every halt. But today things worked out in such a way that to keep up the fiction I’d have had to deceive everyone in the most brazen fashion.
After we’d crossed the strait, in such a crush of people and beasts that I really thought the boat would sink, I started looking for an inn kept by a Genoese by the name of Barinelli, where my father and I stayed when we came to Constantinople twenty-four years ago. The man is dead now, and the house is no longer an inn, but it still belongs to the family, and a grandson of the former innkeeper lives there with one maid whom I’ve glimpsed briefly from a distance.
When I presented myself to the young Barinelli and told him my name, he made a moving speech about my glorious Embriaci ancestors and insisted that we stay with him. Then he asked me who my noble companions were, and I answered without too much hesitation that I was travelling with my two nephews; my clerk, who was outside looking after our mules; and a respectable lady from Gibelet, a widow who had come to Constantinople to attend to certain administrative formalities and had made the journey under our protection.
I don’t deny this cost me a pang, but I couldn’t have said anything else. Travel sometimes gives rise to fables, as sleep gives rise to dreams. So long as you see straight when you get back to normal…
For me the awakening has come in Constantinople. Tomorrow, Sunday, I shall put on ceremonial dress and present myself at the embassy of the King of France, or rather at the embassy church, in the hope of finding the Chevalier de Marmontel. I hope he wasn’t too angry with me for charging him so much for the Mazandarani book. If need be I’ll allow him a substantial reduction in exchange for permission to make a copy of it, though no doubt, to persuade him, I’ll have to use all my wiles as a Genoese, a trader in curios and a Levantine.
I shall go to see him on my own — I can’t really be sure of my nephews. A hasty word, or one that’s too ingratiating, or a sign of impatience, and Marmontel, that haughty character, would be put off once and for all.
1 November
Lord, how am I to begin my account of what happened today?
Should I start at the beginning? I awoke with a start, and went to attend mass at the embassy, in the Pera district.
Or at the end? We have made this journey, all the way from Gibelet to Constantinople, for nothing.
The church was crowded. A sombre gathering. Ladies in black; mournful whispers. In vain I looked around for the Chevalier de Marmontel or some other face I knew. I’d hurried in just as the office was about to begin, and only had time to uncover my head, cross myself, and station myself at the back, at the end of a row of worshippers.
Registering how very forlorn the atmosphere was, I cast a few inquiring glances at my nearest neighbour, but he studiously and piously ignored my presence. It wasn’t merely that it was All Saints’ Day — there must also have been a recent bereavement, the death of some important person. I was reduced to conjecture. I knew that the former ambassador, Monsieur de la Haye, had been on the point of death for years. After spending five months imprisoned in the Castle of Seven Towers on the orders of the Sultan, he had emerged suffering from the stone, and so enfeebled that rumours of his death had circulated several times. That must be it, I thought. And as the new ambassador was none other that the former envoy’s son, there was nothing surprising about the consternation I could see around me.
The officiating priest, a Capuchin, began his funeral oration by speaking of a person of noble lineage, a devoted servant of the great king entrusted with the most delicate missions, and when he then went on to make veiled allusions to the dangers incurred by those who performed their distinguished duties in countries not of the faith, I was no longer in any doubt. Relations between France and the Sublime Porte have never been so acrimonious as they are now — so much so that the new ambassador, though appointed four years ago, has still not dared to take up his duties for fear of being subjected to the same vexations as his father.
Every word of the sermon strengthened me in my supposition, until at the end of a lengthy period the name of the deceased was actually mentioned.
I then started so violently that all faces turned towards me, a whisper ran through the congregation, and the preacher himself paused for a second or two, cleared his throat, and craned his neck to see if the person so afflicted wasn’t a near relation of the late Chevalier.
For it was M
armontel who was the subject of the oration.
To think I had come here to speak to him after mass, only to learn that he was dead!
I’d spent two long months on the road, crossing Syria, Cilicia, the Taurus mountains and the Anatolian plain, just in the hope of finding him and borrowing The Hundredth Name for a few days. And now I was told that the man and the book alike were no more — both had been lost at sea!
As soon as the service was over I went to see the priest. He told me he was known as Thomas of Paris. With him was a well-respected French merchant called Master Roboly. I explained why I was so upset, describing how the Chevalier had come to my humble shop several times to make purchases on His Majesty’s behalf. This seemed to impress them, and they inquired with some anxiety about the Chevalier’s visit to Gibelet in August, and about what he’d said on the subject of his last voyage and any premonitions he might have had concerning it.
Father Thomas was very circumspect, unlike Master Roboly, who soon told me that in his opinion the Chevalier’s death was due not to bad weather, as the authorities claimed, but to an attack by pirates, the sea off Smyrna having been quite calm at the time of the incident. He had even started telling me he didn’t believe the pirates were acting on their own initiative, when the priest frowned and said, “We know nothing about it! May God’s will be done, and may Heaven deal with each of us as he deserves!”
It’s true there was no point now in speculating about the true causes of the tragedy, let alone the machinations of the Ottoman authorities. For me, in any case, it was all of no importance whatsoever. Both the man I’d come to see and the book I’d hoped to buy back or borrow from him now reposed in the realm of Neptune, in the bowels of the Aegean Sea or perhaps in those of its fishes.
