by Amin Maalouf
And then we found ourselves entwined together. The house was still silent, the outside world farther and farther away.
We’d slept side by side three times, but I hadn’t encountered her body nor she mine. In Abbas the tailor’s village I’d held her hand all night out of bravado, and in Tarsus she’d spread her black tresses over my arm. Two long months of timid attempts and gestures, with both of us looking forward to this moment with a mixture of hope and fear. Did I say earlier on how beautiful the barber’s daughter was? She’s still just as lovely as ever and has increased in affection without losing any of her freshness. It must be said that she has increased in passion too. But every act of love is different. Before, her love-making must have been greedy and fleeting, bold and reckless. I didn’t experience it, but you can tell how a woman makes love by looking at her and her arms. Now she’s both tender and passionate. Her arms enfold you like those of someone swimming for dear life; she breathes as if her head had been underwater till now; but any recklessness is just a pretence.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked her when we’d got our breath back and were calmer again.
“Our host and his maid. They ought to have nothing in common, yet it seems to me they’re the happiest people in the world.”
“We could be that too.”
“Perhaps!” she said, looking away.
“Why only ‘perhaps’?”
She bent over me as if to look more closely into my eyes and my thoughts. Then she smiled, and dropped a kiss between my eyebrows.
“Don’t say any more. Gome here!”
She lay on her back again and pulled me to her. I’m the size of a buffalo, but she made me feel as light as a newborn infant on her breast.
“Closer!”
Her body seemed as familiar to me as a man’s native country, with its hills and gorges and pastures and shady lanes — a land that’s vast and generous and yet suddenly very tiny. I held her tight, she held me tight, her nails digging into my back and leaving sizeable marks.
“I want you!” I panted again in my own language. “My love!” she answered in hers, almost weeping as she breathed the word “love”. And then I called her my wife.
But she’s still the wife of another, damn him!
8 November
I’d sworn not to go back to the palace, and to leave Hatem to work out his schemes in his own way. But today I decided to go with him and Marta as far as the High Gate and wait for them all morning at the same coffee shop as before. My presence may not have any effect on the proceedings, but it does have a new meaning now. Getting hold of the document that will make Marta a free woman is no longer a minor consideration for me amid all the other concerns arising out of the journey — in particular, the search for Marmontel and The Hundredth Name. The Chevalier is dead, and I now see Mazandarani’s book as a mirage that I should never have pursued. But Marta is really here, no longer an outsider but the closest and dearest to me of all my companions — how could I just leave her to manage as best she can amid all these Ottoman complexities? I wouldn’t dream of going home without her. And, for her part, she could never return to Gibelet and face her family without a document from the Sultan establishing her as a free woman again. She’d have her throat cut the very next day. No, her fate is bound up with mine now. And since I’m a man of honour, my fate is just as much bound up with hers.
There I go, talking about it as if it were an obligation. It isn’t that, but it does involve a kind of obligation which it would be misleading to deny. Marta and I didn’t come together by accident or sudden impulse. I nurtured my desire for a long while, letting the wisdom that comes with time work upon it; and then one day, that blessed Friday, I stood up, took her in my arms and told her I wanted her with all my being. And she gave herself to me. What sort of person would I be if I abandoned her after that? What would be the good of bearing a venerable name like mine if I let Barinelli, the son of an innkeeper, behave more nobly than I?
But if I’m so sure of what I should do, why am I arguing about it, why am I reasoning with myself as if I needed to be persuaded? It’s because the choice I’m in the process of making is of much greater consequence than I thought. If Marta doesn’t get what she wants, if they won’t give her a certificate saying her husband is dead, she can never go back home again, and if so, I can’t either. What would I do then? Would I be prepared, in order not to forsake her, to abandon everything I possess, everything my ancestors worked to build up, and wander around the world?
The thought of it makes my head spin. It would probably be wiser to wait and take each day as it comes.
Hatem and Marta emerged from the palace at lunch time, exhausted and desperate. They’d been obliged to pay out every aspre they had, and to promise more, and still they’d got nothing to show for it.
The clerk in the Armoury told them at once he’d been able to consult the second ledger containing the names of people who’d been hanged, but he demanded more money before he would tell what he’d found in it. Once he’d pocketed the cash, he informed them that Sayyaf’s name wasn’t there. But he added in a whisper that he’d learned there was a third list covering the most serious crimes, though two very highly placed officials would have to be bribed in order to gain access to it. He demanded a deposit of 150 aspres for this purpose, but magnanimously agreed to take 148, which was all his visitors had left on them. He threatened he wouldn’t go on seeing them if ever they were so improvident again.
9 November
What happened today makes me want to leave this city as soon as possible, and Marta herself begs me to do so. But where could we go? Without that accursed firman she can’t go back to Gibelet, and it’s only here in Constantinople that she can hope to get it.
We went back to the Sultan’s palace, as we did yesterday, to try to advance Marta’s case, and again I stationed myself in the coffee shop while my clerk and “the widow”, swathed in black, disappeared amid a crowd of other petitioners into the outer courtyard, known as the Courtyard of the Janissaries. I was resigned to the prospect of waiting for three or four hours, as I had done yesterday, but the shopkeeper makes me so welcome now that I didn’t mind. He’s a Greek from Candia, and keeps telling me how glad he is to be able to talk to someone from Genoa about how much we both dislike the Venetians. They’ve never done me any harm, but my father always said people ought to despise them, so I owe it to his memory to do so. The owner of the coffee shop has more serious reasons to hate them. He hasn’t said it in so many words, but from various allusions I gather one of them seduced and then abandoned his mother, and he was brought up to hate his own blood. He speaks Greek interspersed with snatches of Italian and Turkish, and we manage to have long conversations, punctuated by orders from his customers. These are often young janissaries who drink their coffee in the saddle and then throw the empty cups at the shopkeeper for him to try to catch them. He pretends to join in their laughter, but as soon as they have ridden away he crosses his fingers and curses them in Greek.
I didn’t have much time to talk to him today. After half an hour Hatem and Marta returned, pale and trembling. I had to make them sit down and drink several glasses of water before they were able to tell me of their misadventures.
They went through the first courtyard and were making their way to the second and their interlocutor “under the cupola”, when they noticed a crowd had gathered around the gate of Salvation separating the two courtyards. A severed head was lying there on a stone. Marta averted her eyes, but Hatem went up close.
“Look,” he said to her. “Do you recognise him?”
She forced herself to look. It was the clerk from the Tower of the Law, the one they’d been to see last Thursday “under the cupola”, and who’d made an appointment to meet them again next Thursday! They’d have liked to find out why he’d been punished in this way, but they didn’t dare ask. Instead they helped one another to totter away, hiding their faces lest their expressions of horror be taken as a sign o
f complicity with the victim!
“I’ll never set foot in the palace again,” Marta told me on the boat taking us back to Galata.
I didn’t say anything, so as not to upset her further. But she’ll have to get that cursed paper somehow!
10 November
I took Marta for a trip across the city to drive the images of the severed head out of her mind’s eye. When he left Afyonkarahisar with the caravan, Maïmoun left me the address of a cousin of his with whom he intended to stay, and I thought this might be a good time to go and inquire after him. I had some trouble finding the house, though it is in Galata, only a few streets away from where we are staying. I was kept waiting for a moment after I knocked at the door; then a man came and asked us a number of questions before inviting us in. By the time he finally stood aside, with a few cold words of formal welcome, I’d made up my mind not to set foot in his house. He pressed us a little, but for me the matter was settled. All I learned from him was that Maïmoun had stayed only a few days in Constantinople, and left again without saying where he was going — unless his cousin considered me unworthy of knowing his destination. I left my, or rather Barinelli’s, address, in case Maïmoun should come back before we left, and so that I shouldn’t have to come and ask for news again from this unfriendly fellow.
Then we crossed the Golden Horn and returned to the city, where Marta, urged on by me, bought two beautiful lengths of cloth, one black with silver threads in it, the other of raw silk with a pattern of sky-blue stars. “You have given me night and dawn,” she said, and if we hadn’t been surrounded by other people I’d have taken her in my arms.
In the new spice market I met a Genoese man who set himself up there a few months ago and already has one of the finest perfumeries in Constantinople. I may never have set foot in the city of my ancestors, but I can’t help feeling proud when I meet a fellow-countryman who is respected, bold and prosperous. I asked him to make up a perfume for Marta — the subtlest scent a lady ever wore. I let it be understood she was my wife or fiancée, without actually saying so. The man closeted himself in the depths of his shop and came back with a splendid dark green bottle as round as a pasha after lunch. It smelled of aloes, violets, opium and both kinds of amber.
When I asked him how much I owed him he pretended not to want any money, but this was just a merchant’s empty ploy. He soon murmured a price I’d have considered exorbitant if I hadn’t seen the wonder in Marta’s eyes when she sampled her latest present.
Is it vain of me to play the generous fiancé, spending money in a lordly fashion and ordering things without even asking the price? But what does it matter? I’m happy, she’s happy. If I’m vain, I’m not ashamed of it!
On our way home we stopped at a seamstress’s in Galata for her to take Marta’s measurements. And again at a cobbler’s shop with a display of elegant ladies’ shoes. Marta protested every time, and then gave way, knowing I was determined. I may not be her lawful husband, but already I’m more her husband than the other one was, and I regard the duties of my situation as privileges. It is up to a man to dress the woman he undresses and to perfume the woman he embraces. Just as it is up to him to defend with his life the fragile step that shadows his own.
I’m starting to sound like an amorous pageboy. Time to lay down my pen for this evening, and blow the skittish, sparkling ink dry.
14 November
For four days I’ve been pressing Marta to set aside her fears and go to the palace again. Only today did she finally agree. So, taking Hatem with us, we set out to cross the water, using an umbrella to keep off occasional showers of rain. To distract Marta I chatted gaily to her about this and that, pointing out especially fine houses and the strange attire of some of the passers-by. We exchanged glances to hold back our laughter. Until we got to the palace. Then her face clouded over and I could no longer make her smile.
I stopped off, as usual, at my friend from Candia’s coffee shop, while “the widow” set out for the High Gate, casting farewell looks back at me at almost every step, as if we were never going to see one another again. Heartbreaking as this was, she had to get the wretched firman if we were to be free and able to love one another! So I pretended to be firmer than I felt, and signed to her to go on and pass through the gate. But she couldn’t. She trembled and slowed down more at every step. Hatem, stout fellow, supported her and whispered encouragement, but her legs simply wouldn’t carry her. He had to give up and practically drag her back to me, weeping, grief-stricken, apologising between her sobs for having been so weak.
“As soon as I get near the gate I seem to see the severed head. And then I can’t breathe or swallow.”
I comforted her as best I could. Hatem asked if he should go on anyway. On reflection I told him just to see the clerk in the Armoury and ask him what he’d found in the third ledger, then come back at once. He did so, and the answer from the official was as I’d feared: “There’s nothing in the third ledger. But I found out there’s a fourth one.” He asked for another four piastres for his trouble. Our misfortune is providing this wretch with a regular income.
We set out for home so depressed and downcast that we didn’t exchange three words the whole way.
So now what are we to do? I’d better let night soothe my worries. If I can manage to get to sleep.
15 November
Night having failed to come up with any solution to my problem, I tried to calm my anxieties with religion. But I already rather regret it. You can no more suddenly turn yourself into a believer than into an infidel. Even the Almighty must be tired of my mood swings.
I went to church in Pera this Sunday morning, and after mass asked Father Thomas if he would hear my confession. Assuming the matter must be urgent, he apologised to the members of the congregation gathered round him and led the way to the confessional, where I told him, very awkwardly, about Marta and myself. Before giving me absolution he made me promise not to approach “the person in question” until she was my wife, though he included among his admonitions some words of comfort. I shall remember these, but I’m not sure I shall keep my promise.
Before the service began I had no intention of going to confession. I was kneeling in the shadow, mulling over my troubles amid a cloud of incense and beneath the majestic vaulting, when the urge seized me. I think I was motivated more by a fit of anxiety than by an access of piety. My nephews, my clerk and Marta had all come to church with me, and they had to wait some time. If I’d stopped to think I’d have put off my confession till later, when I was on my own. I don’t go to confession often, as everyone in Gibelet knows. To keep the priest happy I occasionally give him some old prayer book, and he pretends to think I don’t sin very much. So what I did today is almost tantamount to a public confession, as I could tell from the attitude of my companions afterwards. Hatem was laughing, and his eyes twinkled. My nephews alternately glared at me and refused to meet my glance. Above all, Marta’s eyes accused me of treachery. As far as I know, she hasn’t confessed.
When we got home I decided it was necessary for me to gather them all around me and solemnly announce that I intended to marry Marta as soon as she was quit of her first alliance, and that I had just spoken to the priest to that effect. I added, without much conviction, that if by chance she was declared a widow in the next few days, we’d get married here in Constantinople.
“I feel for you as if you were my children,” I said, “and I want you to love Marta and respect her as if she were your own mother.”
Hatem bent over first my hand and then that of my future wife. Habib embraced us both with a warmth that was balm to my heart. Marta clasped him to her, and this time, I swear, I didn’t feel a single twinge of jealousy. I’m sure they never held one another so close before. As for Boumeh, he too came over and embraced us in his own more furtive and enigmatic way, apparently deep in reflections we’ll never know anything about. Perhaps he was thinking that this unexpected turn of events was yet another sign, one of the countless spiri
tual upheavals that precede the end of the world.
This evening, as I write these lines alone in my room, I feel a pang of remorse. If I could have today over again I’d act differently. There’d be neither confession nor solemn announcement. But never mind. What’s done is done. One can never be impartial about oneself!
16 November
I still felt the same regrets when I woke up this morning. To lessen them I told myself my confession had relieved me of a burden. But that’s not really true. I wasn’t troubled by the act of the flesh until I knelt down in church. Before, I didn’t think of what happened on Friday as a sin. And I’m angry with myself now for speaking of it as such. I may have thought I was casting off a weight in the confessional, but in fact I was making it heavier.
What’s more, the same questions still assail me. Where am I to go? Where should I take the people for whom I’m responsible? What should I advise Marta to do? Yes, what on earth is to be done?
Hatem came and told me that in his view the solution with the fewest drawbacks would be to pay some official handsomely to issue a false certificate stating that Marta’s husband really was executed. I didn’t turn the idea down as indignantly as an honest man should have done. I’ve acquired too many grey hairs in this world to go on believing in purity, justice and innocence. To tell the truth, I’m inclined to have more respect for a false certificate that sets someone free than for a genuine one, that imprisons somebody. But on reflection I said no: Hatem’s solution didn’t really strike me as feasible. How could I go back to Gibelet and get married in church on the strength of a document I knew to be a forgery? How could I spend the rest of my life waiting for my door to be flung open by the man I’d prematurely buried so as to live with his wife? I simply couldn’t resign myelf to that!
