by Amin Maalouf
Night’s starting to fall, and I go on writing without a light. The boat is moving cautiously towards the island, though it’s still some way off. Domenico has stationed a sailor called Ramadane, from Alexandria, at the top of the mast. He has the keenest eyes of all the crew, and it’s his job to watch the beach and signal anything suspicious. It’s because of me that everyone has to take excessive risks, but none of them shows any resentment. I haven’t caught a single look of reproach or sigh of irritation. How on earth can I ever repay them?
We’re getting nearer the coast, but the lights on the island still seem as faint as the furthest stars in the sky. Of course, we can’t light any candles or lamps on board ship. I can hardly see the paper I’m writing on, but I go on all the same. But tonight writing doesn’t give me as much pleasure as usual. On other days I write to record events, or to explain myself, or to clear my mind in the same way as one clears one’s throat, or so as not to forget, or even just because I promised myself I would. But tonight I cling to the pages as if to a buoy. I haven’t anything to tell them, but I need them near me.
My pen holds my hand. What does it matter if I dip it just in the black of the night?
Off Katarraktis, 30 November 1666
I didn’t think our reunion would be like this.
I, eyes screwed up, on the boat; she, the dim glow of a lantern at midnight, on a beach.
When the lantern started moving from right to left to right like the pendulum of a clock, Domenico ordered three men to launch the dinghy. They were to use no lights and be very careful, scanning the coast to make sure there were no traps or ambushes.
The sea was rough and noisy, but not raging. The wind was from the north, and already typical of December.
On my cold lips, salt and prayers.
Marta.
How near she was, and yet how far still. The dinghy took a lifetime to reach the beach, and then stayed there for another lifetime. What were they doing? What could they be talking about? It’s not difficult to take a person on board and then come back again! Why didn’t I go with them? No, Domenico wouldn’t have let me. And he’d have been right. I haven’t got the practical experience that his men possess, nor their equanimity.
Then the dinghy did come back towards us. The lantern could be seen on board.
“God! I said no lights!” Domenico muttered.
As if they’d heard, they put out the flame. Domenico heaved a loud sigh and patted me on the arm. “By my ancestors!” Then he ordered his men to get ready to head out to sea as soon as we’d picked up the dinghy and its occupants.
Marta was hauled on board in a highly unceremonious manner — with the aid of a rope to which a plank was attached for her to stand on. When she’d been hoisted up far enough, I helped her step over the rail. She’d given me her hand as if to a stranger, but as soon as she was safely on deck she began to look round, and although it was dark I could tell she was looking for me. I said one word. Her name. And she took my hand again, clasping it quite differently now. She’d obviously known I was there, though I’m still not sure whether it was her husband’s henchman who told her or the sailors who picked her up from the beach. I’ll find out when I have a chance to speak to her. No, no point — we’ll have so many other things to talk about.
I’d imagined that when we were reunited I’d take her in my arms and hold her tight for a long, long time. But with all those bold mariners round us, and her husband still on board, waiting to be tried by our court of pirates, it would have been in bad taste to seem too intimate or eager. So the surreptitious pressure of her hand on mine, in the dark, was the only evidence of our closeness.
Then she felt unwell, so I told her to cool her face by holding it in the spray. But she began to shiver, and the sailors said she ought to stretch out on a mattress in the hold, under some warm blankets.
Domenico would have liked to summon her straight away, to find out what had become of the child she’d been carrying, to pronounce judgement and then sail back to his home port.
But she looked ready to give up the ghost, so he resigned himself to letting her rest till the morning.
As soon as she was lying down, she fell asleep — so fast I thought she’d fainted. I shook her a bit to make her open her eyes and say something. Then I felt ashamed of myself and came away.
I spent last night propped on some bags of mastic, trying without much success to get to sleep. I may have managed to drop off for a few minutes just before dawn.
During this seemingly endless night, while I was neither fully awake nor fully asleep, I was assailed by the most horrible thoughts. They terrify me so much I hardly dare write them down. But they arose out of my greatest joy.
I found myself wondering what I ought to do to Sayyaf if I found out he’d done Marta, let alone the child she’d been carrying, any harm.
Could I just let him escape unpunished? Shouldn’t I make him pay for his crime?
Anyhow, I thought, even if Marta’s husband had had nothing to do with the child’s death, how could I go off and live with her in Gibelet, leaving Sayyaf behind to keep mulling over his revenge and return one day to haunt us?
Could I sleep easy in my bed knowing he was still alive?
Could I sleep easy in my bed if I —
Should I kill him?
I, kill?
I, Baldassare, kill? Kill a man, whoever he is?
And to start with, how does one set about it?
Me, creep up to someone with a knife in my hand and stab him through the heart? Or wait till he’s asleep for fear he might look at me? No! God, no!
What about paying someone else to …
What am I thinking? What am I writing? Lord, let this cup pass from me!
It seems to me I shall never sleep again, either tonight or any of the nights that remain to me!
Sunday, 5 December 1666
I shan’t re-read the last few pages — I might be tempted to tear them up. I wrote them, but I’m not proud of them. I’m not proud of having contemplated sullying my hands and my soul. And I’m not proud of having decided against it, either.
While Marta was still asleep, and to assuage my impatience, I wrote down the thoughts that visited me before dawn on Tuesday. Then, for the next five days, I wrote nothing. I even considered, once again, abandoning my journal. Yet here I am again, pen in hand, perhaps because of the rash promise I made myself at the start of my journey.
I’ve had three attacks of mental disarray, one after the other, in the last week. The first came when Marta and I were reunited. The next, in the confusion that followed. And after that, the fury, the spiritual storm that’s raging in me now, shaking and battering me as if I were on deck in a gale with nothing to cling on to, lifting me up every so often, only to throw me down harder.
Neither Domenico nor Marta can help me now. Nor anyone else, present or absent; nor any memory. Everything that comes into my mind adds to my confusion. And so does everything around me, everything I can see and everything I can manage to remember. And of course this year itself, this accursed year. Only four weeks of it are left, but those four weeks seem simply insurmountable — an ocean without sun or moon or stars, just wave after wave after wave as far as the horizon.
No, I’m still in no fit state to write.
10 December
Our boat has left Chios behind, and my mind too is beginning to distance itself from all that happened to me there. It will take more time yet for the wound to heal, but after ten days I can at last think of something else sometimes. Perhaps I ought to try to go on with my journal…
Up till now I haven’t been able to give a proper account of what happened. But it’s time I did so, even if, when I come to the most painful moments, I have to confine myself to words devoid of feeling — “he said”, “he asked”, “she said”, “seeing that”, “it was agreed”.
When Marta came on board the Charybdis, Domenico would have liked to send for her during the night and find out what had becom
e of the child she’d been carrying, deliver his verdict, and set out straight away back to Italy. But as she could scarcely stand, he resigned himself, as I’ve already said, to letting her sleep for a while. Everyone on the boat had a few hours’ rest, apart from the look-outs — in case some Ottoman ship should decide to intercept us. But the sea was so rough that night we must have been the only vessel there.
In the morning we met again in the captain’s quarters. Demetrios and Yannis were there too, making five of us in all. Domenico solemnly asked Marta if she preferred to be questioned in her husband’s presence or without him. I translated the question for her, into the Arabic that’s spoken in Gibelet, and she said at once, almost imploringly:
“Without him!”
Her expression, and the way she wrung her hands, made it unnecessary for me to translate her answer.
So Domenico went on:
“Signor Baldassare has told us you were pregnant when you came to Chios last January. But your husband maintains you’ve never had a child.”
Marta looked stricken. She turned to me for a moment, then hid her face in her hands and began to sob. I took a step towards her, but Domenico — taking his role as judge seriously — signed to me to stay where I was. He also signed to the others not to say or do anything; just to wait. When he thought he’d given the witness enough time to collect herself, he said:
“Go on.”
I translated, adding:
“Speak. There’s nothing to be afraid of. No one’s going to hurt you.”
But my words, instead of reassuring her, seemed to upset her even more. Her sobs grew louder. Domenico told me not to add anything to what he asked me to translate. I promised I wouldn’t.
A few seconds went by. Marta’s sobbing died down, and Domenico, with a tinge of impatience, repeated his question. Then Marta looked up and said:
“I’ve never had a child!”
“What do you mean?”
I’d cried it out aloud. Domenico called me to order. I apologised again, then translated just what Marta had said.
Then she said, in a steady voice:
“There never was a child. I never was pregnant.”
“But you told me you were!”
“Yes, because I thought I was. But I was mistaken.”
I looked at her for a long, long time, but couldn’t once catch her eye. I wanted to see something that resembled the truth in her look; at least to understand whether she’d lied to me all along; if she’d lied to me only about the child, to make me take her back as fast as possible to her scoundrel of a husband; or if she was lying to me now. She only raised her eyes two or three times, furtively, probably to see if I was still looking at her, and if I believed her.
Then Domenico asked her, in a fatherly manner:
“Tell us, Marta — do you want to go ashore, back to your husband, or to come with us?”
I translated it as “come back with me”. But she answered clearly, pointing, that she wanted to go back to Katarraktis.
With the man she hates? I didn’t understand. Then suddenly it struck me.
“Wait, Domenico,” I said. “I think I understand what’s going on. Her son must be on the island, and she’s afraid something would happen to him if she said anything against her husband. Tell her that if that’s what she’s afraid of, we’ll make her husband send for the child, just as we made him send for her. Only she will go for the child, and we’ll hold on to her husband until she comes back. Then he won’t be able to do anything to her!”
“Calm down!” said the Calabrian. “I think all that may just be make-believe. But if you have the slightest doubt, I want you to say to her what you’ve just said to me. And you can promise her, in my name, that no harm will come either to her or to her son.”
I then launched into a long tirade, at once passionate, desperate and imploring, begging Marta to tell me the truth. She listened with her eyes downcast. When I’d finished, she looked at Domenico and said:
“There never was a child. I never was pregnant. I can’t have children.”
She’d spoken in Arabic. She repeated what she’d said in faulty Greek, turning to Demetrios. Domenico glanced at him inquiringly.
The sailor, who so far had remained silent, looked embarrassed. His eyes turned first to me, then to Marta, then to me again, and finally to his captain.
“When I went to their house,” he said, “I didn’t get the impression there was a child around.”
“It was the middle of the night — he’d have been asleep!”
“I banged at the door and woke everyone up. There was a great commotion, but I didn’t hear a baby crying.”
I tried to speak, but Domenico stopped me.
“That’ll do! In my opinion the woman’s telling the truth! We must let her and her husband go.”
“Not yet! Wait!”
“No, Baldassare, I won’t wait. The matter’s settled. We’re leaving. We’ve already made ourselves late to please you, and I hope one day you’ll remember to thank all the men who risked great danger for your sake!”
These words hurt me more than Domenico could have imagined. I had been a hero to him, and now he saw me as a jilted lover, whining and making things up. In a few hours, a few minutes or a few words even, the noble and honourable Signor Baldassare had become a nuisance, a troublesome passenger barely tolerated, whom you could tell to be quiet.
If I went to weep in a corner away from everybody, it was as much because of that as because of Marta. She left as soon as the questioning was over. I suppose Domenico apologised to her husband, and I think he offered them the dinghy to take them back to the shore. I didn’t want to be present at the farewells.
My wound has closed a little by now, though it’s still very painful. I still don’t understand Marta’s behaviour. I ask myself questions so strange I don’t like to write them down. I still need to think …
11 December
What if everyone lied to me?
What if this whole expedition was a trick, a deception, designed only to make me give Marta up?
Perhaps this idea is just a delusion arising out of humiliation, loneliness, and several sleepless nights. But it could be the truth.
Gregorio, wanting to make me give Marta up once and for all, could have told Domenico to take me with him and do whatever was necessary to make me never want to see her again.
Didn’t someone tell me one day in Smyrna that Sayyaf was mixed up in smuggling — smuggling mastic? So it’s likely that Domenico knew him, though he pretended he was seeing him for the first time. That may have been why they made me stay behind a partition. So that I couldn’t see their nods and winks, and unmask their conspiracy!
And probably Marta knew Demetrios and Yannis too; she’d have seen them before, in her husband’s house. So she’d have felt obliged to say what she did.
But when we were alone together in the hold, when she was lying down, why didn’t she take the opportunity to speak to me in secret?
I must be deluding myself! Why should all those people have been merely acting a part? Just to deceive me and make me give up that woman? Hadn’t they anything better to do with their lives than risk being hanged or impaled in order to dabble in my amorous intrigues?
My reason is as out of joint as my poor father’s shoulder was once. It needs a good shock to re-set it.
13 December
For twelve days I wandered about on the boat as if I were invisible: everyone had orders to avoid me. If a sailor threw me a word from time to time, it was half-heartedly, and after making sure no one else was looking. I took my meals alone and surreptitiously, as if I had the plague.
But today people started talking to me again. Domenico came up to me and threw his arms round me as if he was just welcoming me on board. That was the signal for all the rest to mix with me again.
I could have sulked, refused the offered hand, let the braggart blood of the Embriaci speak. But no. The truth is, I’m relieved to be back in favou
r. I found it hard to bear, being an outcast.
I’m not one of those people who revel in adversity.
I like to be liked. Loved.
14 December
According to Domenico, I should thank the Almighty for arranging things His way rather than mine. These words, from a smuggler turned spiritual adviser, have made me think. Weigh things up, make comparisons. And in the end I don’t think he’s altogether wrong.
“Suppose she’d said what you hoped she’d say. That her husband ill-treated her, that she’d lost her child because of him, and she’d like to leave him. In that case I imagine you’d have kept her and taken her back to your own country.”
“Of course!”
“What about the husband?”
“To hell with him!”
“Yes, but would you have let him go home, so that one day he might come and knock at your door and ask for his wife back? And what would you have told her family? That he was dead?”
“Do you think I never thought of all that?”
“Oh no, I’m sure you did. But I’d like you to tell me how you proposed to solve those problems.”
We were both silent for a while.
“I don’t want to torture you, Baldassare. I’m your friend, and I’ve done for you what your own father wouldn’t have done. So I’m going to say to you what you yourself don’t like to say to me. You should have killed that swine of a husband. No, don’t make a face and look shocked-I know you thought of it, and so did I. Because if the woman had decided to leave him, neither you nor I would have wanted him to remain alive to come back and haunt us. I’d always have been thinking, every time I went to Chios, that there was someone there waiting to be revenged on me. And you too would have preferred to know he was dead.”
