by Robert Irwin
For a while Balian stared blankly up at him, then he began to think. Two people had warned him against Vane, but they were both at least partially insane, so perhaps their warnings amounted to recommendations. Besides, if Vane were a spy and if he had had some responsibility for the arrest of Giancristoforo, Balian wanted to know him better.
Michael Vane’s appearance certainly provoked curiosity. In his early fifties, he was quite tall but tended to conceal his tallness by walking with a stoop. His head was shaven almost bald like a Muslim hajji, his nose was broken, his skin porous and greasy and slightly scarred, yet his face was blasted with a sort of melancholy which made it seem almost attractive. Most extraordinary, he wore in the Cairo summer a coat made of what seemed to be old rat skins and carried a broad-brimmed felt hat. He looked, Balian decided, clever enough and tough enough to be captain of a mercenary company or a king of thieves.
Vane had obviously taken Balian’s assent for granted. ‘On your feet and be ready to leave very shortly. I for one do not intend to miss the Prince’s circumcision this afternoon.’
Balian struggled up and washed himself at the pump, trying to clear his mouth of the unpleasantly dry taste of stale blood. Presently they set out together.
Vane, forging ahead through the crowds, suddenly turned. ‘Stick close to me. Even in the daytime some quarters are not safe to cross alone; some are controlled by robbers’ guilds and they often work hand in glove with Mamluke guards. It’s particularly dangerous for cross-worshipping infidels from overseas.’
Foolhardily, Balian decided to try Vane. ‘I know. You have heard doubtless of how the Italian I was having breakfast with yesterday was taken away by the Mamlukes, presumably to prison?’
Vane’s grin was positively wolfish. ‘Oh, I know. I had him arrested.’ He let this sink in. ‘I thought I recognized him during the journey down from Alexandria. Then I knew where I had seen him before. It was at the late Sultan Mehmet’s court at Constantinople, where he was employed to paint the Sultan’s harem. But there were grounds for thinking that the Serene Republic had sent him to the Ottoman court to do more than paint obscene portraits. It was obvious that he had become very friendly with the then prince, now Sultan Baja-zet. Now Venice wishes to consolidate its understanding with the Ottoman Sultan, and it hopes for a joint Turkish-Venetian expedition against Egypt. The time is right for them. Egypt is very vulnerable. Qaitbay is old and sick, whether in the head or body is not clear. Perhaps he would not even be able to lead his army into Syria to encounter the Ottomans. So, believing the painter to be a spy, I informed the Dawadar of my suspicions. My hope is that I have successfully foiled another Venetian plot against the Sultan. But don’t tell the others, will you, lad? Because if you do, you and I will both have cause to regret it.’
Although what Vane said was unpleasant and the manner in which he said it was blunt, Balian still gained the impression that Vane was lying. When Balian spoke, he kept his voice low and concealed his anger. ‘But isn’t the fall of the Sultanate something every Christian must pray for? How else can the Holy Places be redeemed from its control?’
‘The Holy Places, the Holy Places! Where are your eyes, lad? The Ottomans threaten Belgrade. After Belgrade, Vienna, then Salzburg and Milan and the call of the muezzin from the rooftops of Paris. The Crusade for the Holy Places is the dream of chivalry, yet it is also a masquerade for the designs of secret people. Don’t let yourself be used by the dream and deceived by the masquerade. Nothing is simple, but think on this: who but the Mamlukes can save Christendom from the Ottomans?’
There was silence for a while, as they elbowed and shoved their way through knots of people. Then he spoke again. ‘The only pity is that it is such a weak and feeble ally. The Sultan is old. Prices rise and there are bread riots. A man called the Nightingale moves through the city, stirring up trouble, and there are rumours of revolt—of the slaves, or the Copts, or the Bedouin of Upper Egypt—rumours too of a new Messiah. You may feel sorry for the painter, but the situation is much too fragile to run risks.’
By now they were deep in a labyrinth of small streets.
Balian was as much confused by Vane’s speech as he was by the geography of the city. His head felt tight with unresolved questions. How was it that an English alchemist had become so involved in Levantine politics? How close were his connections with the Citadel and the Mamluke government? What had he been doing in Constantinople? Why was he taking such an interest in what might be no more than a nosebleed? But Balian asked none of these. Instead, ‘What is the Arabian Nightmare?’
‘The story—and it is only a story, for those who know it best cannot speak about it—is curious but unclear, leaving one to doubt whether it is a disease or a curse. The Arabian Nightmare is obscene and terrible, monotonous and yet horrific. It comes to its victims every night, yet one of its properties is that it is never remembered in the morning. It is therefore the experiencing of infinite pain without the consciousness that one is doing so. Night after night of apparently endless torment and then in the morning the victim rises and goes about his daily business as if nothing had ever happened, and he looks forward to a good night’s sleep at the end of a hard day’s work. It is pure suffering, suffering that does not ennoble or teach, pointless suffering that changes nothing. The victim never knows that it is he, though he may well know the story and speculate on it, but there will be people in the market place who will know him by certain signs. There will be talk behind his back, for he has been marked—as a sort of idiot Messiah perhaps. That is the Arabian Nightmare.’
Vane spoke with feeling. Balian wondered if Vane’s melancholy was an indication that he believed himself to be a victim of this invisible affliction.
‘But, as I was remarking, that clearly is not your problem. You remember your dream. The heat is very prone to affect the vapours in the head and disorder one’s dreams. It is best dealt with quickly, for a nightmare like yours, with physical after-effects, if not treated quickly may go, as it were, gangrenous.’
The streets they thrust their way through presented an increasingly ruinous appearance. Vane explained that whenever a man died a violent death in this city, his house was usually left untenanted and left to fall into ruins and that this was a very violent part of the city.
At length they reached the house (Vane called it the House of Sleep), a large and rather splendid house that towered over its neighbours in the most ruined part of the city that Balian had yet seen.
Vane spoke to the negro at the door and returned rapidly. ‘He is away—the Father of Cats has gone on pilgrimage to the tomb of Sidi Idris, but he will be back later and we are urged to call again, perhaps tomorrow. We must hope that you are not visited again tonight, or at least that it does not take a more violent form. You should be watched while you sleep. Well it’s a pity, but at least we shall not be late for today’s ceremony. We can cut across from here to the hippodrome.’
The preliminary celebrations had already begun, and the tiers were full. They would not have secured a seat at all but that Vane went up and spoke to the Naib al-Jawkandar, Deputy Polo Mallet Bearer of the Sultan, who had them conducted to the enclosure reserved for privileged foreigners, which directly adjoined the Sultan’s own pavilion and which commanded the head of the hippodrome. Beside them, in the Sultan’s pavilion, a massive baldachin extended itself, capable not only of sheltering the hundreds of courtiers and soldiers who attended the Sultan but also of enclosing within it a small garden of orange trees, rose bushes, fountains and mechanical singing birds in cages.
Qaitbay sat stiffly erect on a raised dais in the centre, a thin, frail old man, sunken-cheeked with wispy hair—incredibly, the source of all power in one of the world’s greatest empires. He sat there stiff with pride. But Balian noted the rings under his eyes. Behind, in a ring on the platform, the élite corps of the khassakiya extended themselves as a sort of bodyguard, yet their heavy armour could not hide the obvious truth that they did not consider themselves on
duty, for all were relaxed; some were fondling one another. Balian had already heard much about the effeminacy of the Turkish Mamluke court and the scandal it gave rise to among the more conservative section of the Arab society in the big cities. To the left of Qaitbay a great screen of pierced wickerwork had been erected, and from there the royal harem could look down upon the games, doubly shielded by the screen and by their veils. Behind the khassakiya the royal enclosure was a multicoloured sea of swaying turbans and conical caps, each denoting some royal office or rank. Vane did his best to identify them—the Dawadar or Bearer of the Royal Inkwell, the Royal Armourer, the Vizier, the Grand Mufti, the Polo Mallet Bearer, the Bearer of the Slipper, the Royal Falconer, the Shaikh of Shaikhs, the Chief Eunuch and so on and on. Among the courtiers flitted willowy pageboys.
In the hippodrome horsemen tilted at the quintain and fired arrows at moving targets. They were followed by dervishes who slashed themselves with swords and ran fiery needles through their cheeks, chanting the names of God all the while, and these were followed in their turn by a team of polo players. It was not until late afternoon, as sunset approached, that the circumcision ceremony proper began. Prince Bahadur, one of Qaitbay’s grandsons, was to be circumcised in the company of no fewer than seventy sons of leading Mamluke emirs.
Conducted by a master of ceremonies, these seventy youths rode slowly across the hippodrome, covered in gold and silver and dressed as little girls. Vane explained, ‘It shields them from the Evil Eye until the operation has been performed.’
Behind them paraded seventy barbers and seventy barbers’ assistants, all chanting praises to the one God. Pageboys ran up and down the length of the procession, bearing strange, unidentifiable objects on long poles. At the far end of the hippodrome tents had been erected, into which the children were conducted. The military orchestra stationed behind the tents began a rhythmic yet halting tune. From the women in the crowds came shrill ululations, which mixed with the rising chants of the dervishes; if the din was intended to drown the screams of the children, it did not succeed. One imagined seventy knives rising and falling, seventy bloody foreskins. The entire hippodrome throbbed and screamed and swayed. The children did not emerge from the tents. From the walls of the Citadel a gun boomed out, a sign that the ceremony was over. The crowds began to disperse.
‘Tomorrow we will visit the Father of Cats. Be sure to be at the caravanserai at around the time of the noon prayer tomorrow.’
Vane raised his hand in farewell and disappeared.
There was a delay at the gate.
‘The guards are checking everyone. They are looking for the Messiah,’ it was explained.
‘But how will they know who he is?’
‘It’s in the book.’
The bony finger pointed and Balian read:
He said, ‘the Messiah will be one who has been purified by infinite suffering. Yet he will also be one who has not been weakened by the consciousness of suffering.’
‘But don’t worry. You are on pilgrimage. We can slip you in by a side gate.’
They passed through and came to the hippodrome. Catherine of Alexandria lay spreadeagled, roped to the great wheel tilted up to face the sun, around her the turbaned and veiled bourgeoisie of Cairo. A Mamluke, whose face was hidden by a chainmail coif, produced a hammer from a sort of metal quiver which he had slung at his waist. He had to watch. An old man was telling him, ‘Only meditation on the extremes of pain will prepare you for your future ordeals.’ A gap-toothed mouth opened and laughed. ‘I usually meditate on being eaten by lions!’
The Mamluke turned to face the Sultan’s pavilion now, the head of his hammer resting in the palm ofhis hand. A trumpet sounded, and the Mamluke wheeled abruptly and brought the hammer down on one of the saint’s knee joints. In the shimmering hot air he could hear unnaturally clearly both the splintering of the bones and the hiss that ran through the crowd. The hammer rose and fell again and again, striking Catherine’s joints with military precision. The wheel began to spin under the guiding hand of the executioner. Balian felt himself dizzy and dripping with sweat and raised his hand to mop his brow. Only when he did so did he become aware that he was manacled to the old man. He heard a voice saying, ‘Now it’s your turn.’ Then something soft and loathsome seized him from behind.
Zuleyka was shaking him. He was in her kiosk. She was kneeling over him, dressed this time in yellow silks. He felt very groggy.
‘A horrid dream.’
‘But you are safe here, if nowhere else. A bad dream is like being buggered by an uninvited stranger. It’s best forgotten.’
A pause. Something was wrong, he knew it. She was asking him his name. What was his name? He panicked, squirmed and awoke on the roof of the caravanserai. At least he supposed it was a true awakening. Blood was everywhere, welling out of his mouth andjetting out of his nostrils. Vane was shaking him awake with one hand and trying to staunch the nosebleed with a handkerchief in the other.
‘It is lucky that you were watched this time. As soon as the bleeding has stopped, we must visit the Father of Cats. I have been sitting over you ever since we got back to the caravanserai.’
Balian struggled to remember.
Vane continued, ‘You will not be disappointed in the Father of Cats; I should tell you that I have been a student of his for some time.’
The Father of Cats received them, reclining back into a pile of cushions on the roof of his house. He was expecting them, but the little pilgrimage of the previous day had exhausted him, and he hardly stirred as Vane described the symptoms but let his eyelids droop lower and lower. Bald and emaciated, with a bushy white beard, he slouched with his arms hanging over his knees and his face flung up towards the sky. The face which he briefly turned to study Balian through slitted lids did not reassure the latter; it was curiously smooth, the skin stretched luxuriously over the planes of the face, as if it were silk sheathing the skull. Well-fed cats crawled over his chest and legs, Egyptian cats with narrow wedge-chinned faces, and one slept on his shoulder.
He began to speak to Vane, and Vane interpreted to Balian in unsteady bursts. Diagnosis was slow and punctuated with many questions about Balian’s manners, customs and beliefs. The old man seemed almost asleep as he gave his judgement. The infection was one that was easily caught in a country as hot as this, but it was not so easy to cure. A little time was necessary.
‘But tomorrow I must see the Dawadar.’
‘The day after tomorrow perhaps. He says that you must spend a night or two in his house. Be his guest and his patient. ’
‘Tomorrow I must go to the Dawadar’s office and get a visa to visit St Catherine’s in Sinai. I cannot wait around in Cairo. ’
‘What do you want to go to St Catherine’s for? There’s nothing there. Dry bones. Dust and sand. Sand and dust and filthy ignorant monks.’
Vane’s insistence only made Balian nervous. ‘I owe to St Catherine that service. She saved my life at the siege of Artois. I have made a vow to her which as a Christian and a gentleman I must fulfil.’
‘Surely there is no need to go to the Dawadar’s office for a visa? You are ill and for your pilgrim’s vow the intention will suffice. You can visit St Catherine in your sleep, or perhaps she will visit you.’
A slow chill spread over Balian’s back. He was now sitting in shadow. The old man had begun to whistle tunelessly to himself, apparently quite withdrawn from the dialogue; his eyeballs were turned upwards, and the whites showed shuddering, the palsied hands shaking before him as if playing an invisible mandolin.
Vane continued, ‘If you bleed like that every night, you will be dead before you reach Mount Sinai. Only in a big city like Cairo can you find a man like the Father of Cats, who specializes in the diseases of sleep. In the desert the caravan will abandon you; for them you would be only a burden as the victim of the Evil Eye. But my friend the Father of Cats’ (and here Vane rather gingerly put his arm round the emaciated shoulders of the old man) ‘is not afraid of the
Evil Eye and is no charlatan, if that is what you are thinking.’ The Father grinned and Balian decided that they were both charlatans.
Vane continued, ‘He knows of, and is master of, recurrent nightmare, insomnia, sleepwalking, catalepsy, catatonia, talking and predicting in one’s sleep, nocturnal emissions, enuresis, blasphemous dreams and the eight classes of dreams proscribed by the Ikhwan al-Safa.’
‘And what is wrong with me?’
‘None of these.’
A studiedly cryptic pair, Vane and the Father were staring at him intently.
‘The Father of Cats has asked if you would like to be shown round his place?’
Balian nodded his assent.
‘Then let us go down.’
At first Balian could not understand why they wanted to show him round, for there seemed nothing of particular interest to see. The house was large certainly; it towered over its neighbours in the quarter, but one empty room with yellowing plaster walls looked very much like another. Vane explained that they all ate and slept more or less where they felt like it. Only a few of the rooms had any furniture at all and that was of the most vestigial kind—low wooden tables, bolsters scattered at random and, once, a Koran stand. They crossed a cool, dark courtyard lined with cypresses, but it smelt of drains. A heavily shrouded servant girl scuttered past. They visited the coffee-maker’s room with its cones of sugar as high as a man; they walked through the great mandara—reception room—with its fountain run dry in the centre of a floor of cracked tiles. As they continued their inspection through empty storerooms and cells of indeterminate purpose, Balian became aware of a faint sense of discomfort; his eyes ached and his heart felt heavy. He thought that he would not like to spend a night in this place. Even in daylight it was a little oppressive. Alabaster windows let in a frowzy, yellowish light which flowed over smoke-stained walls and made faces shimmer and dance in their uncertain illumination. Cockroaches hurried across the floors; the Father of Cats had cast off the appearance he had given at the consultation of being half-dead with exhaustion and took delight in displaying his agility, dancing the insects to death with his bare feet. The harem area they did not see. On the roof herbs were spread out to dry, and an attractive Berber girl padded about, laying out the washing. From the roof Balian was able to look down into the street by which they had entered, and he noted how a man, passing the entrance of the house, spat over his left shoulder; it seemed to be not a gesture of contempt but, perhaps, a ritual of propriation.
