Turning her gaze full upon me, she said, “The Oily Man possesses little will of his own.” Her eyes seemed to be thickly lined with kohl. “He must be directed—summoned from the strange place where he lives, given instruction, a target. The most he may do of his own volition is refuse, if he finds the prey … unsuitable.” She lowered, then raised heavy lids, then looked away again. “Use the tungs soap or not, as you choose. I must go.”
“Wait,” I said. “Unsuitable?”
“Not a virgin,” she said precisely, and left.
Cool water still flowed over my shoulders but now it felt chill. I believed I understood Mefao’s amusement: for a man of twenty years to be virginal was ludicrous, shameful. Equally chilling, if I was to believe the ladyboy, my dragoman’s recommendation of a perfume that would encourage the Oily Man’s attentions. Then I shivered in earnest as a third understanding took shape in my mind: somebody, some enemy, had meant the Oily Man to seduce me.
Or a friend? Somebody who believed (as surely I did, somehow) I was incomplete, crippled, so long as I had never acted on my desires?
In Folau I had neither enemies or friends. Even my sister was little more than an acquaintance.
Unprecedentedly crafty, I chose not to use the ladyboy’s basil-oil soap. Mefao expected me to return from my bath reeking of clove. I did not know her motives, nor the ladyboy’s—which was lying, which wished the Oily Man back in my bed. I was uncertain enough whether I myself desired another meeting with him.
Meaning to hide it for future use, I placed the tungs soap at the shadowed back of the shelf by the door, then attempted to rinse its odor off my hands. My nose drugged by the other soap’s smell, I was unsure if I succeeded. Then I dried and dressed myself and left the cool refuge of my alcove, climbing upward into the heat of the day.
Somehow after only a month out of the habit, I found the day dress of a Trebter haut-bourgeois insupportable: too many pieces, too many buttons and laces, too much and too heavy fabric that swaddled and bound me up too tightly as if it meant me not to breathe. It all smelled stiflingly of cedar. My feet and lower legs in stockings resembled overcooked sausages aching to burst their skins. Buckled shoes were lighter on my feet than wood-soled pattens but tight, and the fashionable heels threw off my stride. Yet it would not be seemly to attend my elder sister, veritably a stranger, in less formal attire. I could not but expect to be on display for a representative of the queen’s court.
Resigned, I shouldered on the skirted coat that matched the long waistcoat. Brocade Haisn silk was lightweight but stiffened into shape with starched linen and lined with vegetable-wool, bulky and balky. I imagined I must be red faced and goggle eyed and did not wish to see it so forbore from glancing in the glass, but clapped on my tall hat and stepped out onto the veranda.
Mefao set aside her contemplation and stood. “You are ready, sir?” I felt I did not imagine the flare of her nostrils that acknowledged my clove and cedar stink, the compression of her lips she prevented becoming a smile. “Very good.”
Following her toward the canton’s gate, I envied her easy, unconstricting costume. No doubt, born to this heat, she did not feel it as I did, either. Having emerged from the subcontinental enclave, we boarded the waiting sampan and were borne away along the canal. Downstream lay the anchorage—I could see the tall masts of subcontinental roundships and junques of Haisn, the lateen rig of a small coaster from nearby Dothe or U pulling out into the channel—and beyond, the quarantine isle of Ekada-fo and the open sea, but we travelled upstream.
On the bank opposite the foreigners’ canton rose the gold-spired stupas and pagodas of the Bodo monastery built on foreign profits by the previous queen. When I admired its splendor aloud, Mefao smirked. The monks and nuns dedicated to Father Bodo, she told me, kept up an unceasing prayer meant to keep us contained and tractable. She glanced aside. Not merely the foreign merchants, she went on: Folau’s own burghers and merchants were less biddable than the queen’s government wished. Scarcely a century before, Folau had been its own nation, spoken a different language.
“Truly?” I asked, for my own city, Trebt, professed fealty to the distant Great King while busily going its own way, taking little account of his vicereine, a woman who spoke our language less well than Mefao.
She nodded toward the shallows below the monastery, where countless bamboo staves displayed topknots of vivid ribbons. The queen’s Father Bodo dwelled in the waters of his namesake river, she said, two weeks’ sea voyage north and east or three by road: he was not Folau’s god. “Of course we honor him,” she said. “It would be foolish, impolitic, not to. The Kandadal himself had no quarrel with any god.” Then she looked away.
I meant to say I had understood the Kandadal, whose ribbons they were, eleven colors symbolizing his eleven precepts, to be more foreign still, but did not. Born, raised, educated, enlightened in the remote mountain realm of Sfothem, north and west of Folau a good many more than three weeks, the mad philosopher was not as foreign as I.
The oarsman was strong. Soon enough, we slid past the parklands surrounding the monastery. Here against the banks stood the city dwellings of prosperous merchant families, built of lacquered and painted wood atop warehouses and counting houses of glazed brick. Until I saw the tall gold-haired woman in a gown of outdated Trebter cut standing on the water stairs between staves fluttering the Kandadal’s ribbons, I did not know which was our destination.
My elder sister handed her infant daughter to the waiting nurse and came down the stairs. She acknowledged Mefao with a nod. To me, she said, “Brother. Welcome,” and turned to lead me up. She retrieved the baby and introduced me. The woman I had taken for a nurse, a servant, was another of the household’s mothers, thus of the same or higher rank as Therzin. It had somehow not occurred to me that, taking a local husband, my sister had married into a local family—her husband was not solely hers, this woman had become, in effect, at once Therzin’s sister and her wife. One of her wives, as the husband, too, was but one of several.
I tried to hide my dizzy revelation with fulsome praise of the baby’s beauty, but knew Mefao saw it and was amused. Doubtless Therzin saw it as well. We went in. I met the household’s fathers—it was not made clear to me which slight, pretty man had sired Therzin’s pretty daughter—the mothers presently at home, charming children. Mefao and Therzin translated flying compliments and banter. I was presented to another foreigner, a woman of the Sjolussene delegation garbed as inappropriately for the climate as my sister and I.
At home in the subcontinent on the far side of the world, Sjolussa was at protracted war with the Great King to whom Trebt and Kevvel owed fealty, but here I felt I was meant to be polite. She was very beautiful—more beautiful than Therzin, more beautiful than I—and when then I was introduced to a peculiarly unpleasing person from Defre-ua-Bodo, the queen’s capital, I understood the Sjolussene and I were rivals. The queen’s representative (a eunuch, I tardily realized) would find one or the other—or neither?—sufficiently decorative and intriguing to merit the queen’s attention.
When we settled to the banquet, scooping strange, pungent foods with our fingers from broad green leaves, my sister confirmed my suspicion, speaking in low tones at my side. Sjolussa was desperate for the queen’s favor and concessions, for that landlocked town had only recently joined the eastern sea trade. Sjolussene merchants (more accurately, merchants of Fejz and Dinsey, seaports annexed a decade earlier) were restricted to Ekada-fo offshore: to the paltry leavings of those subcontinental nations established in the canton. Her ancient wealth founded on caravans from the east, Sjolussa took the insult hard. That insignificant vassals of her old enemy the Great King took precedence made the insult more dire.
My next mouthful, unexpectedly, contained several whole basil leaves. As I tasted the tungs flavor and inhaled the tungs fragrance, I happened to notice the Sjolussene beauty regarding me, her expression blank as she chewed. The tengs fragrance of clove still clinging to me combined with the
basil to make a scent for a moment sickening, so that I lowered my hand and held my breath. Then it was a different odor altogether, luxuriously rich and corrupt, as if the Oily Man had returned. I felt a hot flush on my cheeks and chest. The eunuch seemed to smile. I found myself interested in my cup of harsh arrack.
In addition to the arrack, there was mother-of-arrack—a sweet wine fermented from the sap of palm trees—and a kind of still beer brewed from rice. The eunuch did not carry his liquor as well as I, becoming vague and morose. When he had departed, followed after a short interval by the Sjolussene and her party, one of my sister’s husbands served around a thick, bitter tisane which he called coffee and which Therzin said would clear my head.
It was apparent she was as disappointed in me as our distant sisters and brothers. I owned a certain cleverness, I was sure, but it had never been a merchant’s or courtier’s cleverness. My cleverness saw that Therzin’s loyalty was divided between her families, Trebter and Avengi, and that this caused her to feel guilt. A reaction that made no sense to me. I would serve the Great Eastern Company as I might, but not out of loyalty to the family that exiled and pitied me. Because I had no life of my own—because it was less irksome to go along with the family’s schemes, however ineptly, than any other course of action I could imagine.
After showing me through the warehouse and listing off its contents—sacks of pungent spices, bales of vegetable-wool, stacks of dye-wood, and casks of already rendered dyes, a great fortune of other goods—my sister sent me and Mefao back to the canton. I was no use to her unless the queen’s eunuch recommended me over the Sjolussene woman.
In the sampan punting along the canal, I reflected. I had no understanding of the qualities that would impress the eunuch or his queen, no guesses as to whom he would choose. I felt I had not displayed any particular wit … but the Sjolussene had spoken less than I. I believed she was more beautiful than I … but my standards were not Avengi. The queen’s last foreign pet (my sister) had been a woman … perhaps for novelty she would prefer a man for her next.
I had no say in the matter, whatever the case. I realized—this bothered me only a moment—I did not care. I could only accept what was offered. When I had tried to take what I wanted, what I wanted was taken from the world.
Mefao on the low seat opposite was not looking at me. I closed my eyes, leaned back, raised my face to the sky, breathed. Little as they thought of me, my sisters and brothers would not allow me to starve or suffer gravely. If I was not chosen to entertain the queen in Defre, some other small task would be found for me. I was incapable of causing disaster (just once), only annoyance and disappointment.
At the canton gate, I dismissed the dragoman, retreating to the relative dimness and cool of my bungalow. I stripped off my confining, stifling Trebter clothes, for some moments contemplated donning a sarong and retreating again to the baths. It seemed I had become accustomed to the odor of cloves on my skin. The stretched muslin over the bungalow windows wicked up water from troughs on the floor, cooling the breezes that passed through. Weary, replete after the heavy meal, I locked my door and retreated to my bed. It seemed to me later I had forgotten the ladyboy’s advice regarding tengs and tungs, the likelihood—the inevitability—the desirousness, the yearning—of the ekeksengek’s return.
I know I slept, but not for long. I was lying on my belly when I smelled again the Oily Man’s fragrance and felt his heated weight on my back. “Please,” I said. The windows still glowed white.
He did not drug me, except with pleasure.
When I woke again, I was alone in the dark. Unpleasantly still, the humid air reeked with mingled odors: incense, sweat, cloves, spilled seed, the ekeksengek’s tuberose. He as well as I had spilled seed—it was painted, films and crusts, on my chest and face—but his smelled of him, intoxicating, not like salt and curdling milk. I tried to speak, to call him back, but uttered only a small, sad croak.
There had been light during this second visitation, light enough. I had seen the Oily Man—he had displayed himself to be admired—but I could not now call to mind his form or features. I remembered only the acts we had performed as if for the first time in all the history of the world. I remembered the homely face and heroic body of my lost love and imagined that if Rosecq had but once permitted me to make love to him as the ekeksengek had made love to me, he should be mine and I still safe in Trebt.
I could not recall the Oily Man’s appearance but I knew very well he did not resemble Rosecq, as well as I knew Rosecq could never have loved me.
From a distance outside my windows came a series of reports like rapid gunfire. Flinching, I scrambled off the bed. A filmy wisp of something plastered itself to my sweating face. Even as I flailed, I knew what it was—simply a rag of torn pest-netting—and then I heard the deep voice of a brass gong booming under the sounds of pistol shots. A native fête or ceremony outside the canton’s walls, the noise I interpreted as guns being tiny black-powder bombs strung in chains, hazardous only if one stood right over them as they flared and popped in the street.
Such a fête seemed to occur every third night. Other merchants in the compound darkly believed they were meant to unnerve us, sponsored by noble factions regretting extension of the capitulations to the mainland, to Folau’s canton. They in turn presumed to be funded by the quarantined Sjolussene Adventurers’ Company, jealous of our privileges. The conspiracies imagined by my fellow foreigners were nothing if not complex.
To the discordant banging of drums and bleating of horns, the erratic rat-rattle of the strings of bombs, I paced about the room, my heart slowing. I lit a lamp. I splashed warm water on my face, scrubbed at the fragrant residue of the Oily Man’s emissions. He would not return this night, I felt, however I longed to rediscover that passion. Nor was I likely to sleep again.
As I glanced about, I noticed the cask of tobacco and my pipe, then a flask of arrack I hardly remembered purchasing on one of my idle explorations of the town beyond the canton’s wall. It was the work of a moment to fill the pipe and twist a paper spill to light it. The first draught of smoke in my lungs began to calm me and I chose to unlock my door and, with pipe and arrack, step onto the verandah.
No cooler, the air was less still, less stifling. It occurred to me that I was nude but not that nudity was a matter of concern. I saw lamps lighting the screened windows of other bungalows but none was nearby and I had not brought out my own lamp. Beyond the canton’s walls the fête went on, banging, bleating, clamoring. Standing at the head of the stair, I stretched, delighting in a peculiar, unfamiliar form of freedom, then puffed and sipped, then moved to sit.
I was not alone on the verandah.
A figure sat in darkness in the chair beyond the one I had chosen. “Tengs,” said the ladyboy. “Still tengs. You wished him to return, the ekeksengek?”
I had started, but immediately it almost seemed I had anticipated her presence. “Yes.” She had already seen me naked, in daylight. I stepped around my chair and sat.
“And so he did.”
“Yes. Will he come again?”
She was silent a moment longer. “Perhaps. He can become … attached.”
“I would like that, I think.”
“Would you?”
I felt I heard a smile in her voice, sarcastic but not unkind. Abruptly shy, I drew on my pipe before beginning: “I have never—”
“You will never,” she said. “He is not fully a person. You know already everything of him there is to know, there is no more to learn.” She rose from her seat. “May I taste your pipe? My patron prefers me not to smoke but I have a fondness for it.”
She moved a step nearer and I blindly extended the pipe for her. When she inhaled, the brightening coal gave shape and form to her face: a man’s face, a young native man. Her sweat was pungent, masculine. Turning her head, she blew smoke away from me, drew from the pipe again, and I realized she wore no upper garment. Her torso was not at all womanly.
I coughed.
The ladyboy inhaled a last time from the pipe, then handed it down to me. She did not step back, return to her seat. Raising both hands to her head, she pulled free the picks that restrained the heavy coils of her hair. As the oiled weight of it tumbled around her naked shoulders and back, she said, “You know that our language makes no distinction between she and he?” Still she had not moved away. “I long for him still, the ekeksengek. He is a potent drug.”
My heart rattled like the tiny bombs on the street beyond the walls. “Am I meant to become like you?”
At last she moved. The fabric of her sarong brushed my knee as she turned toward the verandah’s railing. “You’re meant to become the ekeksengek’s whore, not any man’s or woman’s. You’re meant to lose yourself in his delights and be consumed, as the addict is consumed by opium—to become, as he is, merely an appetite. A tool.”
“Of the Sjolussenes?”
“Does it matter?”
“I’m my family’s tool already.”
“If I knew who had set the ekeksengek on you,” she told the gardens, “I would tell you.”
I believed she was sincere.
“There is a story,” she went on, “a legend of the Kandadal before he became Kandadal, when he was merely a flighty young man of no great account. It’s said he was visited on succeeding nights by the ekeksengek, the Oily Man, and the Oily Woman, nurursengnur. There were two then, who prowled the world of women and men, and both retained full possession of their wills, selecting their prey for their own reasons, obeying no person’s bidding.
“The youth who was not yet Kandadal pleased both so well that they returned on the third night, not together but at the same moment. Jealous, they made to battle over which should have the use of his body, a prospect that dismayed the young man. Even then, disharmony appalled him. He was ready to share himself between them but the single-minded creatures would not have it. They began to wrestle. It was a brutal contest, the two mighty beings straining, oiled hand slipping on oiled flank. The young man found the vision exciting, for he could now and then imagine they indulged in love rather than hatred. His excitement troubled him as much as their rivalry. He closed his eyes.
Handsome Devil: Stories of Sin and Seduction Page 28
