This is not proper practice. Prayer is meant to remind the supplicant of his proper place in the dance of all things; prayer is meant to bring perspective, not obsession. Darroti knows that.
And so he tries to meditate on his own pattern. He tries very hard, but always he finds himself remembering Gallicina’s instead, and praying that her desire may be granted, that her family may allow her to be a Mendicant. That part of his prayer, at least, is noble.
At last, exhausted, he sneaks back home, through the window again, and goes to sleep. The rest of the family is long abed. Perhaps he will see her tomorrow. There is still hope; it has only been two days.
But she does not come to the Market the next day, either, and Darroti finds himself descending into a black pit. He bargains well enough, for his brain seems detached from the rest of him, but he takes no joy in the sales, or in the beauty of the day, or in the hearty lentil salad, usually his favorite, that Harani has packed as his lunch. By the end of the day, all of his limbs feel weighted with rocks. She is gone. Gallicina is gone. He will never see her again.
That evening he does not go home at all. He goes to the wine hall, makes small talk with his friends, gets drunk. He does what he used to do, what used to give him pleasure, but he feels no pleasure now. When he leaves the wine hall he goes to the brothel, where the women greet him cheerfully and tease him about his absence. The whore it is his turn to see tonight is his favorite, the oldest and most skilled, but tonight even buxom, supple Stini cannot rouse him.
“Darroti,” she says, frowning, after half an hour of dextrous manipulation which has done no good; he lies as limp as a dead fish. She rocks back on her heels and looks at him soberly. “Darroti, dear, what ails you? Are you ill?”
“I am sorry, Stini. I am weary—”
“Your mind is elsewhere,” she says. “Your body is here, but your spirit is somewhere else, and so even your body is distant. Where are you, Darroti?”
“In the Great Market,” he says dully. “Three days ago.”
Stini frowns again. “I have never heard you speak of business.”
“Not business,” he says. “I—I met someone—a woman—she is far above me, Stini, and—”
“Do not tell me her name, then.” Whores are expert at discretion, which is their honor, but something tells Darroti that Stini is right, that he must not speak Gallicina’s name here. “You may be able to win her love; these things are not unheard of. But then you should not come here, Darroti.”
“I will never see her again. I despair of the thing. That is why I came here. I thought—I thought I must forget—”
“But you cannot,” she says briskly. “Your flesh remembers very well, and knows that I am not your beloved, and so for all your youth and vigor”—she grins, and trails a finger over his normally sprightly member—“your body will have none of it. And three days is not so very long. Go, Darroti. I will only charge you half the fee tonight. Go, and do not despair.”
He goes, despairing. His old ways are closed to him, and the new way, the way of love and hope, has been withdrawn. He goes home and once again recalls each word of his encounter with Gallicina. He weeps. He has played the fool for a girl who tricked from him the best thing in his stall; she is in her mansion or her palace now, laughing, if she remembers him at all. He has cheated his father and dishonored himself, and all his life will be a waste from this day on.
But the next day at noon, bargaining with a customer over a green and yellow room carpet, he glimpses over the old woman’s shoulder a flash of a slender figure in gray silk. He freezes, feels his heart leap, loses the sense of his sentence. There: standing five stalls away, pretending to examine a display of pots. It is Gallicina. She is gesturing to him! He nods at her as imperceptibly as he can, and turns back to the old woman, who suddenly finds herself with a new carpet for a far lower price than she expected. She waddles off, gloating. Darroti turns back to the pots. Gallicina is still there: his heart, his soul. She is coming toward him now, pretending to look at the wares in the other stalls.
Where is Timbor? There, by the pile of sleeping mats, haggling with a man and wife. Darroti moves to the other end of the stall, towards Gallicina, and begins neatening a set of outdoor mats. She stops a few feet away from him, idly flipping through a pile of mats in rust-colored reed. He can smell the clean scent of her hair. He fears he will faint from joy.
“Lady,” he whispers.
“Good merchant, Darroti—I need your help.” Her voice is very low, and troubled; he thrills to it, even as his pulse races with horror at the thought that she is in any kind of danger. “I would not ask, and yet you have been kind—more than kind—and there is no one—”
“Lady,” he says, “Gallicina, I would do anything for you.”
And so he would; he would cut off his right hand, if it would spare her any trouble. But he should not have said so, should not have used her name. He has overstepped himself; she will think him an impertinent fool, and flee in disgust. He stands trembling, his head down, for the three beats of silence before she answers, even softer than before, “You have already given me my soul. How could you do more than that?”
He takes courage, then, and looks up at her face, and finds it tracked with tears. The sight slays him: he cannot move. What pain is she in, to weep in public? “Lady! What—”
“Can you speak freely here?”
“No.” He gestures at Timbor, still arguing amiably with the couple; they are all grinning broadly, their protests of poverty becoming increasingly more florid. They are enjoying themselves. “My father, he must not know—he must not find out—”
“About the carpet you gave me. Because you did not sell it as you should have.”
He nods, too grateful to speak. In the midst of her own troubles, she has thought about him, has entered the world of the carpet merchant, so far below her own, enough to grasp his situation. How quick she is, how compassionate! His hopes soar. “Yes,” he says hoarsely. “It is delicate—”
“Indeed. Darroti, can you meet me after the Market closes?”
“Anywhere. Where?”
She names a quiet public square at the edge of the city, near the district where the wealthy live. She names a time. Darroti agrees at once, although the place is distant; he would meet her on the surface of the sun, if she commanded it. He spends the rest of the day in a delirium, scarcely aware of where he is or of what he is doing. He feels himself shining, transformed, transmuted by the alchemy of love. He has been lit by Gallicina’s flame, all his grossness purified and precious now.
The hours are an agony until their meeting, but at last the time comes and he hurries there; he wears his best clothing, fine costly linen, having told his family that he is going to a feast in honor of a friend. He navigates the unfamiliar streets near the square Gallicina has named, ecstasy alternating with terror. What if she is not there? What if her cruel father has kept her at home? What if—
But here he is, in the square, and there she is, sitting quietly on a bench with a book. Several other people are in the square, and this is Gallicina’s neighborhood: they may know her. He forces his steps into a stately walk, trying to look as if he belongs here, and goes to sit beside her, but not too close. “Lady,” he breathes.
“You were good to come,” she says quietly, and he trembles.
“You are in trouble—”
“My mother found the carpet,” she says bitterly. “I hid it behind my summer robes, and she—well, no matter how she found it. She did, and she told my father, and he is furious. He thinks I have shamed myself.” She looks down, blushing. “He demands that I return it. And he demands that I demand back the money I paid for it.” She looks up again, smiling grimly. “You see my difficulty.”
“Where is it now, lady?”
She bends her head. “I hid it in an alley, not far from here. This morning. I told my father I would take it back to the Market, for he stormed and raged and threatened to disown me.” She has begun
to cry; it is all Darroti can do not to reach out and wipe the tears from her cheeks. Instead he pulls a cloth from his pocket and passes it to her; their hands touch as she takes it, and Darroti’s flesh thrills. Dare he hope that hers does also? “My father threatened to disown me,” Gallicina goes on, her voice thick, “and then he went to meet with the other men who own land east of the city, to talk rents and tithes. He will be back tonight, with money on his mind. He will demand the price of the carpet, as if I am a farmer who owes him bushels of corn.”
Darroti reaches back into his pocket. He always carries quite a bit of money, and he has more than usual now, because Stini remitted half her fee last night. “Here, lady. Here are two hundred alaris. Will—”
“No! I did not come here to take your money!” She is clutching the cloth he gave her, her knuckles white. “This is wrong! You are a merchant and I steal your livelihood—”
“Hush,” he tells her, for the other people in the square have glanced over at them. “Lower your voice, lady. You steal nothing from me. I give it to you. Lady—Gallicina—I am not a good man. I give you what in a week, or less than that, I would spend on wine and whores.” He takes a deep breath; there. She cannot think him better than he is, now. “And now I will not have that money to spend on those things, and so you see, you make me better. You help me. It is an honor for me to give you this.”
She stares at him. Those eyes! She shakes her head. “You are a good man. I know you are a good man. You—”
“Take the money,” he says quietly, and dares to take her hand to press the alaris into it. Her hand is very warm. He folds her slender fingers over the gift, holds her hand in both of his own for a moment, and then releases her, his skin burning from her touch. Her free hand still holds his cloth. “The money is the least of it. There are larger problems than that to solve. You cannot keep your soul in an alley, lady.”
“No.” She looks away. Is that a flush on her cheeks, in the dim light of dusk? “I cannot. But where then shall I keep it?”
The answer comes to him at once, but he hesitates. “I—I want to help you. I have a way to help you. But I do not wish you to believe yourself beholden. I do not wish to place you under any obligation. Gallicina, do you understand? I would not poison your soul. I would help you keep it.”
“How?” Her voice is taut.
“I can rent an alcove in the Temple for my own prayer carpet. And I can buy a bag with straps, which many people use, and put yours in it, and tell my family it is mine. They will not look. And then—”
“And then,” she says, “and then we will have to meet, for me to study my carpet.” Her voice has a new, odd note in it, which he cannot read. Is she happy, or reluctant? “But where, Darroti? I cannot go to Temple.”
“Do you have friends you can take into your confidence? You could go to someone’s house, perhaps? You would—you would never have to see me, if you did not wish to. I could meet your friend, or your friend’s servant, and give that person the bag—or meet you only for a moment to give it to you, or—”
“I have no friends whom I would willingly expose to my father’s wrath,” she says. “Most servants gossip. No, that way is not safe, Darroti.”
He understands at once. She can expose Darroti to her father’s wrath because he is a merchant. “Very well, then,” he says. “There are inns—”
She shudders. “No. That involves more money, and I cannot pay and do not wish you to pay—”
“I have friends,” he says. “I will find some other way. We will find a way. But Gallicina, tell me this, now: if it took you two years to save fifty alaris, how will you tell your father you saved two hundred? Especially if he thinks that you, that you—”
“Sold myself,” she finishes flatly. She puts her chin in her hand and ponders. “I will tell him I sold some jewelry, some trinkets an aunt gave me. He dislikes that aunt. He would not be angry that I sold her gifts.”
“Very good. And how will you explain that you did not tell him that before?”
“Ah. You have a quick mind; thank you. I will tell him that I was too hurt by his accusations even to answer them, which is only the truth.”
Darroti nods. “And where does your family think you are now, while you speak to me?”
She smiles. “They think I am napping in my room before dinner, as I have done every day since I was small.”
He shakes his head. “If they looked in on you—”
“I would be undone. But they will not; they never have. And I think I will take Adda into my confidence, for I would trust her with my life, although she is a servant.”
He shakes his head again. “If your father is as cruel as you say, would she not forfeit her own life, if the ruse were discovered?”
She laughs now. “No, he would not kill her! She might lose her job, but she would get another, and my mother would fight to keep her. Adda runs the house while my mother plays at cards. No, the punishment would fall on me. And that is how it should be. And I promise you that even so, I will not tell her your name, lest my father learn it. You will meet me here tomorrow, Darroti, at the same time, and tell me what is to be done?”
“Of course,” he says. He is both delighted, delirious with joy, and afraid: they are weaving a complicated pattern indeed, and it may trap them. “But should we pick another place? If we are seen here too often—”
“Very good,” she says, smiling, and names another square, not too far away. “Farewell, good Darroti, until tomorrow. And thank you.” She gives him back his cloth; it is all he can do not to press it to his face, to inhale any lingering aroma she has left there.
“Bring the carpet tomorrow,” he tells her. “And I will bring the bag for it.”
By the next evening, he has arranged everything, having gone straight from his meeting with Gallicina to the whorehouse, where Stini has agreed—for a fee—to grant him the use of her private apartment for two hours every early evening, when she is at work. Her apartment is in a quiet, respectable part of the city, neither too wealthy nor too poor, and not so far from where Gallicina lives that all the time will be taken up in travel. He will not tell Gallicina it is a whore’s apartment; she knows now that he has been with women he had to pay, but he does not wish her to know that he is paying for the space. He remembers what she said when he suggested an inn. He will tell her that he is borrowing the place from a friend, which is also true enough.
“I have let others use it for lovers’ assignations,” Stini tells him in satisfaction, “and most of them are married now. It is a place of good omen. I wish you luck and joy, Darroti. Here are two keys.”
“It will be used for prayer.”
“Oh, indeed!” Stini says, and laughs until her belly shakes.
“Truly,” Darroti says, patient. He cannot blame Stini for not believing him. “May she keep her prayer bag there?”
“She may keep there anything she wishes,” Stini says, grinning, “as long as it fits neatly upon the wall. Prayer carpets are fine for making love, Darroti, although sleeping mats are thicker. I have done so myself, many times.”
And so he meets Gallicina; she has the carpet, which he puts into the bag, and then he leads her to Stini’s apartment, a small, neat place, surprisingly spare, looking out onto a courtyard with a pomegranate tree. He takes Gallicina into the apartment, and hands her the prayer bag, and hands her a key. “Lady, you may keep the prayer bag here; my friend agrees. Now you have what you need, and you can come here every day if you so choose, to learn the pattern of your soul.”
“Where is your friend?”
“Working. Will you pray now, Gallicina?”
“In a moment.” Gallicina wanders restlessly around the room; she has thrown back her hood, for the first time since Darroti has known her, and he can see the silky mass of her hair, drawn back into a bun, the clean line of her neck below it. “Darroti, how can I come here if you are not here too? It is your friend who has given me the place. It would feel too strange.”
“Ah!” She has stopped in front of a mirror and removed something that is hanging on it. “A hairband. And here are earrings. Now I understand. This is a woman’s apartment. You have a—a lover, it must be, if she is not your wife, you—”
“No,” he says, and quickly spins a lie. “She is an old family friend, old enough to be my mother.” That part, at least, is true. “She has been fond of me since I was a child; she wishes to help me.”
“Why?”
The question startles him. “Because I asked her to.”
“Why?” She turns from the mirror, comes now to stand in front of him, her small fists clenched. “She knows who I am, and wishes to further your suit with a noble’s daughter?”
“No,” he says, stung. “No, Gallicina! I have no dishonorable intentions, I swear to you, and she does not know your name. I have not told her that!” He makes the slashing X, the symbol for silence and secrecy, but before he can complete the gesture, Gallicina has put both of her hands on his, to keep it still.
“Kind friend,” she says softly, “I did not speak of dishonor.” And then she raises his hand and kisses it.
They are both trembling. Darroti’s veins are full of fire. He forces himself to be calm, to be rational. “Gallicina—lady, I have only known you a handful of days. I have spent less than three hours with you. I have helped you because you raise me above myself, but I would not presume—”
“To give me my soul? To help me hide it? To help me keep secrets from my father? All that you have presumed, Darroti.” She kisses his hand again, more fervently this time; again he forces himself to remain still, although it is an agony. He must be very careful here. He reminds himself that he does not really know this girl: if she claimed rape, she could ruin him and his family. But then she says, “Darroti, tell the truth: do you love me?”
The Necessary Beggar Page 16
