And that’s not it either.
Maybe it’s God.
I’m Church of England but the fact is vicars make me uncomfortable. Whenever I go—which is rare—I go to see society, to hear the choir and watch the gentlemen and gawk as they hand their ladies into and out of the carriages. (It’s where I first spotted Squire.) I mean I don’t belong. (And maybe it’s queer for a Mills to make this admission. It was Greatest Grandfather, after all, who was the indirect deputy of the King himself when he went on that First Crusade. And didn’t I come here myself in the first place at George IV’s request?) So I’m supposed to be Church of England, though I might be more at home as a chapel-meeting Methodist or even as a dissenter, one of the sects. But I’ve been in even fewer chapels than churches, for if vicars and services make me uncomfortable, ministers and everything low church embarrass me. I’m not religious or even much of a believer so much as this snob of God. If there is a God He’s an aristocrat. He’d have gone to the best schools and He’d speak in low tones this absolutely correct accent. He’d sound like the vicar and never shout or even raise His voice like all those others with their full lungs and loud, harsh words prole as low company. So maybe it’s God, their version of Him, makes them so wild, more exotic than gypsies. So maybe it’s God, some pierced-eared, heterodox, heresiarchical, zealous, piratical avatar.
And that’s not it either.
Nor their fierce, rumpus-raveled history, incoherent as rout, mob, high wind.
It’s pride!
I came to Constantinople with a king’s courier, a tall lad named Peterson, not much older than myself, and though we shared the same table on shipboard during the first seating, he was a subdued, taciturn fellow and didn’t enter into conversation easily. I thought at first it was because he was queasy, for I often saw him with his head hanging over the stern rail and caught him throwing up as I returned to my cabin after dessert and coffee and perhaps a brandy. I was nauseous as the courier but had never tasted such fine rare food and was determined not to lose it.
He sometimes summoned me to his cabin or occasionally came to mine, never to chat but to rehearse me in the protocols, my small, silly performance that seemed hardly worthy, even to me, of such expense, so long a voyage. When I questioned him he cut me off and asked me to demonstrate yet again my polished, practiced salaam.
“You’ve seen me do the thing a hundred times.”
“Show me.”
“You know I’ve got it pat.”
“Mahmud II runs a tight court. Show me.”
“Oh very well.” I began the gyrations with my hand, bowed low and ended the fruity salutation with my right palm pressed to my forehead. “There you have it, my sultan.” I thought he was going to be sick.
“Your right palm? Your right?”
“I’m teasing.”
“This is serious. No teasing. Show me.”
I did it again, this time finishing as he’d instructed me.
“You pull something like that before Mahmud …”
“Whoosis, what’shisname, is five years old already. I don’t get it.”
“Abdulmecid. The boy’s name is Abdulmecid.”
“I don’t get it. Abdulmecid’s over five years old. He’s almost gone on six. George IV’s his godfather. Why’d the King wait so long to send him his gift?”
“How often do I have to explain?” the King’s man said with some exasperation. “Islam’s different. The godchild must thank the emissary personally. He has to be able to speak.”
“It’s queer.”
“Excuse me,” Peterson said and rushed from the cabin. Through my porthole I could see him being sick.
My own collywobbles, determined as I was not to lose the unaccustomed delicacies, I still managed to suppress, by an act of the will transforming nausea into a noxious diarrhea, the magnificent broths, gorgeous fowls, grand game and exquisite sweets and pastries metamorphosed into a yellowish, stenchy paste.
Now, when I saw Peterson, I tried to commiserate. “Rough trip,” I’d say.
“It’s not a rough trip,” he’d shoot back. “The sea’s gentle as a lap.”
“It appears calm today,” I’d say, “but there are swells.”
“In your brains,” he’d manage, and vomit violently into the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Often, after my salaams, there would be additional exercises, “the Walk of Prostration,” a difficult, almost acrobatic negotiation in which the one approaching the throne has somehow to give off a full-blown ceremony of obsequious, barehead awe, an impression that he hats-in-hand for all mankind, for everything in fact, for whatever life there might be on other planets as well as all there is on this one, the whole while making his salutations and progressing a corridor the length, could be, of two or three good-sized tennis courts at angles of humility which defy gravity. (Not, at that, too difficult a maneuver for a Mills.)
But our cabins were too small and Peterson sometimes insisted that we go up on deck where I might better practice the movement, the suspirant motion of the ship making everything even more difficult, much to the amusement of the sailors and the other passengers. Peterson would stand fifteen or twenty feet in front of me, walking backward, drawing me on.
“Palace architecture was at least partially designed for just this purpose,” he’d explain, “its long throne rooms, the slight pitch of its slippery marble floors. It fair delights a potentate to see men bellyflop.”
“Why do you do these things?” a fellow passenger might ask.
And before I could respond Peterson would answer, “His Majesty’s business.” And rush to the rail, where he would be sick again.
We never took the goldfoil-wrapped gift out on deck with us for fear the wind would knock it from my hands and soil the handsome package with its golden cords. Indeed, when I made my salaams and practiced “the Walk of Prostration,” I always used a box which replicated in size and weight the one that Peterson kept locked safe in his courier’s diplomatic pouch.
He had shown me the splendid original once or twice and I was more than a little curious as to what it contained. His Royal Highness’s descriptions of a prince’s playthings had piqued my interest.
“What’s in it, Peterson?”
“I don’t know I’m sure.”
“Well let’s open it up then and see what the King got the little guy.”
“We can’t do that, Mills.”
“Why can’t we then? Ain’t I one of Nature’s true-born shipping clerks? I could pop that parcel open, toss its contents about and button it all up again as if the gift, box, foil, gold string and all were part of the same single piece of material, like a doll carved from driftwood say, or a bench from stone.”
“His Majesty’s business. Against all diplomatic procedure.”
“You removed it from the pouch. Ain’t that against all His Majesty’s messenger boy diplomatic procedure too?”
His face was whiter than the canvas sails which drove the ship through the Aegean and toward the Dardanelles.
“Hey,” I said, “not to worry. I’m no blurt tattle.” But he had run to the rail to pitch his insides. “Hey,” I tried to reassure him, “hey, do I look like some blab squeak? You think I’d peach on a pal? I ain’t no snitchwhisper, what do you think?” But he was retching now something beyond the contents of his stomach, something beyond digestion itself. “We’ll forget about what the King sent whoosis—Abdulmecid. It’s none of my business. I shouldn’t have asked. If even one person knows it can ruin the surprise.”
They’re called Janissaries.
They’re called Janissaries and they’re this elite corps, very famous, very feared.
For their cruelty.
They’ve existed as a fighting force since the second half of the fourteenth century and were originally recruited from among young Balkan Christians, often made over to the Ottoman Empire by the parents themselves according to a policy known as devshirme, a human payment collected in lieu of taxes. These “tribute child
ren,” as they were known, were dispersed among Muslim families, who instructed them in the ways of Islam. When the local mullahs were convinced they were ready, they were converted and formally sworn to repudiate their parents, a ceremony which involved a vow to take, if the state required it, the lives of everyone in their family, from a mother or father to a distant cousin. If they were considered fit enough for the rigorous life of a Janissary, they were sent to Constantinople and received into the Corps. This was not actually a formal induction. There was no formal induction; no loyalty oath was ever sworn to the Sultan or any representative of the Empire, only a pledge of celibacy. Then the recruit simply began his training. If he survived he was a Janissary. If he died, as many did, during the course of his preparations, his corpse was used to help train the others.
They were—we are—slaves.
Because the King knew his man, understood to his giblets and neckbones not just the proximate character and quality of each royal counterpart and political analogue throughout Europe and the Orient, but the taste and aroma of his very soul. Because he knew him as a cordon bleu chef knows vegetables, meat.
It wasn’t the length finally, it was the height. Slender pillars, high as trees, vaulting into heavy blocks of shrewd color faceted as gem which supported a great fanned ceiling like some Persian rug in stone. The height, the weight of the height.
Peterson presented his letters to the Grand Vizier’s secretary, who started to call for a translator. The courier shook his head vigorously. “No,” he said. “They’re in Turkic. In Turkic.”
The secretary looked up. “Eh?”
“In Turkic,” Peterson repeated, and made a great show of writing in the air. “Turkic.”
The man smiled and duplicated Peterson’s gesture. He held up the letters. “Turkic?”
Peterson nodded and I looked at His Majesty’s courier.
We were told to return to the embassy and wait for instructions.
As Christians are distrusted and are discouraged from having official, long-term connections with the Ottoman government, the British ambassador to the Court of Mahmud II is a Jew.
“I am Moses Magaziner,” the ambassador said, a shaggy-bearded, great hook-nosed old fellow with long curling earlocks and a shiny black skullcap that seemed cut from the same bolt of gabardine as his jacket and trousers. “Is His Majesty vell?”
“Quite well, thank you, Mr. Ambassador,” Peterson said.
“Oy, tenks God,” the ambassador said. “His veight, he’s vatching his veight?”
Peterson frowned. “No one can know for certain, sir, but his intimates estimate he’s above twenty-two stone by now.”
“Tventy-two stone. A good eater. He vas alvays a good eater.”
“Indeed,” Peterson said.
“Vell,” the ambassador said, rubbing his hands together, “you boys come a lung vay. You’re ready a little lunch?”
“I know I am, Mr. Ambassador,” I said.
“Dot’s nice,” Moses Magaziner said affably. He indicated Peterson. “Your mate, the langer locksh, the skinny merink, he’s also ready a nibble grub?”
“At your convenience, sir,” Peterson said.
The strange diplomat shrugged the large, fringed prayer shawl that fell like a scarf about his arms and shoulders and clapped his hands twice. “Mrs. Zemlick,” he told the maternal-looking woman who appeared in the doorway, “tell Gelfer lunch for three. The state dining room.” The woman smiled at us, nodded and left. “Very pleasant, very refined. A doll,” Magaziner said when she’d gone, “a regular baleboste. I vish only the best for Yetta Zemlick.” He sighed. “Listen,” he said, “a heppy steff is a busy steff.”
“She seems quite cheery,” I said.
His Highness’s representative shrugged. “A vidow. A vidow voman finf years. I vould like to arrange maybe a shiddech vit her and the tchef. Don’t be shy, hev a fig.” Magaziner held a bowl out to us. I accepted but Peterson declined. “You don’t like figs?” Magaziner said, “try a date. Sveet like sugar.”
“I’m afraid I should ruin my appetite,” Peterson said coolly and Magaziner looked as if he were surprised to discover that Peterson possessed one.
“He’s had a rough time with his stomach, Mr. Ambassador,” I said. “The voyage.”
“Oh yes,” he said, “the woyage.” Mrs. Zemlick reappeared in the doorway and waited till she caught the ambassador’s eye. “Lunch, Mrs. Zemlick?” He turned to us. “Vell gents,” he said, rising, “soup’s on.”
In the state dining room Moses Magaziner recited Hebrew prayers over each course that the servant, Eli Nudel, set before us. Peterson and I looked down at our laps.
“You don’t got an eppetite for brisket, Mr. Peterson? You hardly touched.”
Peterson mumbled something that was difficult to hear.
“He says he filled up on soup,” Eli Nudel said. “He says he’s all shtupt from cholleh.”
“Eli,” Magaziner said, “bring me vat Mr. Peterson don’t finish, Gelfer Moonshine’s feelings shouldn’t be hurt.” Then he turned to us as he sopped up gravy with his bread. “Don’t feel bad, young man,” he told Peterson. “If you ken’t you ken’t. Oy, everybody’s a prima donna. I’m not referring to you, Mr. Peterson. I can tell, you are an angelface. It’s Gelfer Moonshine, my tchef. He’s a pick-of-the-litter, vorld-cless, A-number-vun tchef but he gets depressed if a person don’t eat up everyting on his plate. I tell him, ‘Gelfer, it’s not you. Sometimes ve got a guest his stomach ain’t accustomed to traditional cooking.’ I tell him, ‘Gelfer, cheer yourself, sometimes a fella’s hed a woyage didn’t agree mit him.’ ” Eli Nudel had been serving the coffee and was standing now beside Peterson, who seemed oblivious to the man.
Magaziner went on. “I tell him, ‘Gelfer, all right, maybe she’s too old to hev any more children, and all right, maybe she ain’t a beauty, but nobody could deny Yetta got a smile on her punim could light up the shabbes candles. And what about you, Gelfer Moonshine? You got it in your head you’re the Supreme Being’s gift to the ladies? You’re fifty-one years old, your bek aches, your feet get sore, you got a constipation could choke a horse. A nice person like Yetta could be a comfort to you. That time her son and son-in-law came to the embassy mit the grendbabies ven the mumsers ver making a pogrom, you saw for yourself. Like horses they ate, may the Lord, blessed be His name, make His countenance to shine upon them.’ Two tiny little girls, Mr. Mills, Mr. Peterson, couldn’t be seven years old, eight tops, and they ate for a regiment. Vat dey couldn’t finish Gelfer made up to shlep in a beg. You’ll take a cup coffee, Mr. Peterson?”
“What? Oh. Yes please. I don’t seem to see the——Would you have such a thing as cream?”
Moses Magaziner looked at him. “Dairy mit brisket, Peterson?” he asked sharply, then abruptly changed the subject. “Vell,” he said softly, “how’d it go at the pelace? Dey taking good care you boys?”
“We had a preliminary interview this morning with the Grand Vizier’s First Secretary. He told us to await further instructions.”
“Ah,” Moses Magaziner said, “further instructions. You speak the lingo, Mr. Peterson?”
“Sir?”
“Turkic. You hev Turkic?”
“Guidebook Turkic. Nothing more. Nothing as fine as I’m certain yours is, Mr. Ambassador.”
“Me? I talk Yiddish to them.”
Peterson raised his napkin to his lips. For some time now he had been looking quite ill. “I say, would you excuse me, sir? It seems …”
He never finished his sentence. Eli Nudel hurried him away and Magaziner and I were left alone.
“So,” Magaziner said. “So so so.”
Mills grinned at him shyly.
“Yes?” Magaziner said.
“It was delicious,” Mills said.
“My pleasure.”
“I particularly liked the pudding. What did you call it, ‘lucksh and cook’?”
“Kugel. Lockshen kugel.”
“That’s it,” Mil
ls said. “Lockshen kugel. It was delicious. It was all delicious. It was my first state lunch. My friend’s been off his feed.”
“Your friend?”
“Peterson. Mr. Peterson.”
“Oh yes,” Moses Magaziner said, “Mr. Peterson.”
“The halvah was wonderful too. With the coffee. I loved the halvah. Is that right, halvah? I’m very ignorant. I don’t know the names of these aristocrat dishes.”
“Halvah, yes,” the ambassador said. “Tell me again, Mr. Mills. King George sent you as his personal emissary with Abdulmecid’s gift? The letter the courier showed me vas a little unclear.”
“Yes, sir. Queer, ain’t it? Me a boob and all.”
The ambassador waved off George’s self-deprecation and questioned him further. He seemed particularly interested in the circumstances surrounding their meeting, and when Mills began to repeat what the King had told him of his relationship with Maria he stopped him at once. “Skip all that,” he said. George assumed it was because it was gossip with which the man was already familiar and was at a loss as to what else to tell him. “Vat did you say? Vat did you told him?” Mills recounted his reasons for coming to London, mentioned the useless letter of recommendation his squire had sent with him but did not go into detail because he was still ashamed for the proud man he had so conscientiously pursued with respect, waiting each day for the cabriolet (which he still thought of as the squire’s carriage) to pass, planting himself beside the road those two furlongs before it not because he was afraid he’d miss it but because he enjoyed watching it, seeing it come. Not telling Magaziner any of this either, burdened by his queer guilt for the squire’s failed liaisons and associations.
So he told him what he had told the King, blocking out for him a general idea of Millsness, what he had been rehearsing not since he’d first heard it, since what he’d first heard he had no need to rehearse, had remembered, would always remember, but what had happened since, describing the circle, his ring of the wood, the tree, going over it—Magaziner was impatient, waving him quickly through certain passages, slowing him down at others, actually leading Mills’s story like a conductor, directing it like traffic—as even now, speaking to the ambassador, he was at once telling the tale and living some new part of it, the telling, living, remembering and rehearsing additional increments he knew it would have made him dizzy to contemplate if he had dared. (He didn’t need to dare. The strange pressures and weathers of his life had already acclimatized him to conditions and practices that were no longer even second nature but something actually biologically autonomous.) Magaziner stopped him. “Forty-third? He called you Forty-third?” Mills nodded. “Go on.” George backed and filled, telling the story randomly, stumbling a little, not permitted to do it as he’d rehearsed it in his head but forced by Magaziner to improvise, by Magaziner who interrupted him, conducted him, taking him forward to the voyage, the practice sessions in the cabin, Peterson’s silence at table, the courier calmly taking food into his stomach that moments later he would give up to the sea. Redirecting Mills another time to what George had said to the King, what the King to George, but always refusing the gossip, not as much shocked by it as bothered that it should have come up at all, asking George what he’d said, whether he’d encouraged it, Mills swearing he hadn’t, insisting his own embarrassment to Magaziner. “Yes?” Mills nodded. “Go on.” George related some more details. Magaziner raised a finger to his lip. Mills stopped. “ ‘There you are,’ he said? ‘It would seem you’re one of us? It would seem you’re one of us then, George?’
George Mills Page 47
