The Ruby In Her Navel

by Barry Unsworth

  The wind was favourable, the sea untroubled; we made good time, arriving at the harbour of Paola as dusk was falling. There was only one inn, very ill-kept. I was given the best room in it, or so the innkeeper told me, but a foul and damp room it proved to be, the bed aswarm with creatures eager for my blood – I could see the lively stirrings of them as I stood there, talking of the price. He asked three times what the room was worth – naturally, since I was a stranger and he knew the errand I was on. We haggled, I brought the price down; this was the King's money, I would not be wasteful with it, I would not overspend by a single follaris – it was a point of honour with me, a mark of my devotion. The result of this haggling was that the innkeeper grew surly.

  However, the lentil soup they served us with in the room below was welcome enough, as were the sardines, freshly caught and fried with black olives.

  After supper, since it was still early, I walked for a while among the steep streets of the town, my two guards following close behind. Higher up it was pleasant, a light breeze was coming off the sea and the moon was near the full, giving light enough to see by. It was a question of passing some few hours. The people of the marshes would know of my arrival, word had been sent; next day the bird-catchers would come down to the harbour, having walked through the night with their caged herons.

  We would agree the price, I would make the payment and see the birds carried on board. I would send my escort back with the ship; their presence was oppressive to me, and once I had paid over the money there would be no more need of them. With the departure of the ship I would be free to continue my journey to Bari.

  I descended again to the harbour and walked there for a while. I was restless, my nerves were tense, there seemed some edge of promise in the night. I was unwilling to return to my cramped and windowless room at the inn, the scrape of rats behind the walls, the verminous tribe in the bedclothes. This last was a particularly disagreeable thought to me. In Palermo I nagged at Caterina and paid her a monthly sum additional to the rent to keep my sleeping room aired and swept, to strip the bed and hang the sheets in the sun and scrub the bed frame with vinegar and water. Thinking of this made me wish I were home again. It came suddenly to my mind to sleep that night on the deck of the ship, where at least there was air and space enough. I told my guards of this decision and if they were displeased at the idea they knew better than to show it.

  I returned to the inn to tell them that after all I would not be staying there. But they had made the room ready, after a fashion, and I had agreed on the price with the landlord; it seemed to me now that this would have to be paid; I was the King's pursebearer, I saw it as my equal duty to save him from cheats and to preserve his name for justice and fair dealing. But when I arrived I found only the wife, a slatternly woman with tangled black hair and a look of discontent. He had gone to Passo di Lupo, she said, to see the new dancers.

  "What is new about them?" I asked her.

  "Why," she said, "they are the ones that are travelling here and there in the country." And she looked at me as if there must be something sadly lacking in a person who did not know even this much.

  "Woman," I said, as patiently as possible, "that they are travelling about is nothing to the point. It is what dancers very often do. I was enquiring into what is new about them."

  "They come from far, it is dancing not seen before."

  "Will they not come here?"

  "No, it is why he is gone. People say they will go next to Melfi, but nobody can know, they go here and there wherever the fancy takes them.

  They sleep by the roadside."

  She spoke sourly – perhaps in her heart she envied this freedom. "The women are whores," she said. "They have demons in the belly – and in what lies below. That is why he has gone there, the pig, along with all the others – the town is empty of men tonight, only the priest is left.

  They are whores and pagans, no one can understand their speech."

  "Demons in the belly?" I said, but she made no answer. Suddenly it came to me that these might be the dancers that the Greek trader had spoken of and at once I formed the intention of going to see if this was indeed so. It was a diversion that made strong appeal to me in my restless mood; it would take up some of the slack time of waiting.

  Are there horses here," I asked her.

  "No, he has taken the horse. There are mules that can be hired in the town."

  I sent Mario to conduct this business, while I waited with the other in the inn yard. He returned after not much time, leading three mules in a train. The money I had given him, he said, had proved exactly enough for the hire. He affected to admire me for my judgement in giving him just the right amount, but I did not believe his words, feeling sure that he had kept back some of the coin. However, it would have been difficult to prove and I did not want the delay. There was something displeasing to me about this Mario, he was too eager to ingratiate himself. He was a thick-shouldered, tow-headed fellow with small eyes that did not rest long on anything, and there was a pale knife scar across his cheekbone on the left side. The other man, Sigismond, was taller, raw-boned and taciturn, with slow blue eyes.

  The boy who served there came forward, offering to go with us and show us the way. The moon was high as we set off. Our guide went in front with a lantern, but the moonlight was enough to see by, glinting on the stones of the track. The memory of that moonlit journey often comes to me now, and I still find it strange that but for the coincidence of the dancers being close by when I had already heard mention of them, and the fact that I had felt some sort of promise in the night, I would have done the safer thing and waited in the town to finish the task I was saddled with, and so my life would have taken a different course and I would not be the same person as the one who is writing this. Certain things about myself I would not have discovered, and what is not discovered can never truly belong to us; it is only that knowledge of itself the soul knows how to summon that can truly be said to dwell within the soul. It is Boethius who says this in his 'Consolation of Philosophy' – I believe it is to be found there.

  Passo di Lupo was a cluster of low buildings hanging on a hillside, with the castle of the lord above it and the openness of the sea below. There was the light of a fire in an open space below the castle walls. We saw the movements of the flames and heard the swirl of the music before we caught any glimpse of the dancers – a dark mass of bodies blocked our view.

  We tied the mules a little way below and left the boy in charge of them.

  Above us were a beat of drums and a play of shadows, movements that resembled those of a flail when corn is threshed, half obscured by the forms of the people watching. We pressed forward, the three of us forming a wedge to drive a way through to the front.

  My sight was confused at first. The red of the flames contended with the white of the moon to make a light that belonged to neither. Something dipped in pitch had been put in the fire and it made the flames leap and caused a smoke that was black and acrid. There were three dancers, all women, moving in a slow circle, one younger than the other two and a little taller. They were barefoot and they wore bands of copper round their ankles and they were dressed in the same manner, in long skirts worn low on the hips and black girdles with tassels that swung as they moved, and bodices that left the arms bare and came well short of the waist, so that their midriffs would have been exposed had they not worn light-coloured sashes wound about them.

  They stepped in and out of the light and the flames leapt and fell as if the fire itself were dancing with them. The hands of the two men seated beyond them also entered the light and left it as they played, the one tapping with fluttering fingers at both ends of a pot waisted like an hourglass, the other playing on a kind of dulcimer, with a round body and a long neck, such as the trader had described to me; he had exaggerated the length of the bow, but not greatly – it was longer by far than any I had seen. The music they made was wild and plaintive, with trailing notes and halftones and dying falls that then
flared up again, like the fire, a strange mood of music, neither lightness nor despondency but somewhere in between.

  It seemed to me that the music quickened, and the dancing with it, from the moment I appeared at the front of the crowd with my companions flanking me on either side. It was as if some signal had passed among them, though the nature of this I did not perceive. In fact, it was only some time afterwards that I understood the reason for the change, and this may seem strange, that I did not realise at once how apparent it must have been to them that I was a stranger and more prosperous than those I stood among, did not realise how my tallness and my clothes marked me out: I was dressed for travelling and so not richly, and I wore no jewellery or fine brocade, but my pelisse was of black velvet and my hat was one such as the Franks wear, of velvet too, and flat, worn low over the brow. Usually I am very conscious of the figure I make, too much so perhaps, yes certainly too much so, it is vanity. But I had forgotten myself in the excitement of the music and the dancing.

  From what I know of her now I feel sure it was the younger woman who noticed me first, who gave the signal for this conspiracy to secure my pleasure and with it some contribution from my purse.

  It was she, in any event, who marked the change, broke the circle, stepped towards me, raising bare brown arms that gleamed as if oiled in the now softer, steadier light of the fire. She had something fitted on the thumb and the long finger of both hands – small caps, I could not see them but thought they were of wood by the rattle they made when she snapped them together. She stood with feet planted, looking full at me, turning her shoulders slightly from side to side, raising her arms high, and there was something defiant in this that stirred me.

  Still facing me with arms raised, she began to dance, setting her feet within a short compass, very rapidly but carefully too, as if there might be something jagged and dangerous there that would wound her if she made a false step, a prudence belied by the languorous sway of hips and abdomen inside the covering scarves.

  The other two had fallen back and she spoke to them over her shoulder and laughed, and they replied, also laughing, and this was the first time I had ever seen such a thing, dancers laughing and talking among themselves in the midst of the dance, as if they cared little for those watching. Then, a moment after the laughter, her face grew sombre and intent, a fine-boned face, very dark, something sorrowful in its repose, the lines of the mouth looked suffering almost, as if her drink had been bitter. She was beautiful in body, high-breasted and straight-shouldered, with long, slender thighs that showed against the stuff of her skirt as she stepped in the dance. Her hair was tied with a red ribbon, but now, with a quick, impatient movement, she tore the ribbon loose and shook her head and the black hair fell down below her shoulders and swung as she turned away from me.

  The other women came forward, joined the dance, and at the same moment the drummer, without ceasing his finger-tapping, raised his voice in a high nasal chant, lugubrious in its rising and falling, like the song of the wind in some desolate place. The three women danced to this chanting, but they set their feet as they chose, each in her own way, they were possessed by the music but not obedient to it. This will be deemed a contradiction by the reader, but it was so. And it was this, or so I now believe, this way they had of dancing within the music but quite alone, different from anything I had seen, that gave me first the idea of hiring these people if I could and having them shipped back to Palermo along with the herons.

  There was more to come, however. The music of drum and dulcimer ceased.

  The singing lost all melody and variety of pitch, it drew into a wild droning sound, loud, like the lamentation of some vast swarm of bees at the ruin of their hive. The women moved to a slower rhythm, the heavy tresses swinging round their heads. Then their step quickened, they began to revolve, the coloured scarves round their waists unfurled and fell away like streamers, revealing nude abdomens decorated with thin strands of bead chains. In the dimple of the belly, set in the umbilicus itself, each wore a pebble of clear glass that caught the firelight and the moonlight and flashed now paler, now ruddier, as they moved.

  The droning ceased, and in the silence that followed the bodies of the dancers shuddered once and were still again. Then, while the rest of the body remained motionless, the bellies of the women began to roll and gyrate with amazing smoothness. There was no sense of effort or strain; they moved as if at the bidding of a power not their own. I felt some awe at this, and the words of the women at the inn came back to me. They have demons in the belly.

  Indeed it seemed so. More than ever I was determined now to have them dance at Court, where people had seen many things, but not, I thought, dancing like this. I had heard the exclamations of the men around me, felt the pulse of excitement in the crowd; they were rutting with the women in imagination, they were thinking: if they can do this with their bellies what wonderful things might they do with the part lower down. I too, in spite of my higher station, in spite of being there as the King's purveyor, in the interest of truth I will admit to the same thoughts that prevailed in the common folk around me.

  The movements of the dancers came to an end. The fire had died down and contended with the moon no more. The women went with canvas bags among the people there. I noted that, while there were those who turned away, most gave something. The younger woman came first to me. She smiled at me and her teeth were white and she had them all. She held the bag out to me boldly, as if she were offering, not asking. I put a quarter-ducat into the bag, the only silver they would get that night, from such a crowd. As she turned away, I spoke to her in Arabic, a compliment on her dancing, hoping she would understand, but she did not. She was smiling no longer and she moved away.

  With my guards still keeping close I walked over to where the two men were squatting together, their instruments laid aside. I did not know how to talk to them, fearing there was no language we shared. They were sombre in regard and wild-looking, with black, shaggy hair that grew thick over the forehead. Their features were similar, especially in the setting of the eyes, and I wondered if they were brothers. I greeted them in Greek and asked them where they came from, taking care to speak slowly, and was delighted when they replied in the same tongue, though in a slurred and broken version of it. I was to learn later that they had brought their music to Lydia and Cilicia and spent time along the shores there, where the people speak Greek.

  They returned the greeting but they had not understood my question. He who played the drum and sang, and who I took to be the leader, or the spokesman at least, made a swift gesture with his right hand as if throwing something behind him, over his shoulder. "We crossed the water," he said. "We came to Taranto."

  The women approached now, having collected what money they could. They stood close but they did not speak. I could smell the long roads these people had travelled, a compound of sweat and resinous dust and wood-smoke, with something scented in it from the women, like crushed leaves.

  "The places, we do not know their names," the man said. "We make music always in the same way."

  "No," I said, "I wanted to ask where you come from? Where is your home?"

  There was a laugh at this from the youngest of the women and the dulcimer-player looked at her soberly, perhaps in reproof, I could not tell, but she met his eyes boldly – she was not one easily abashed, this I already sensed about her. "She laughs because our home is far," he said, as if to apologise for her, "and because it is many summers since we are there."

  "We come from beyond the Toros," the first man said. He raised one arm to show the height of the mountains. "We are from a town they call Sivas. It is beside a great river." He nodded towards the girl who had laughed. "She comes from a different place, she comes from Niksar. She says she is born on top of the mountain called Ararat. She says that giants live on that mountain."

  There was laughter at this, and I saw that it was an accustomed joke among them. "Giants carry her to Niksar," the other man said. However, the girl
did not join in this laughter but compressed her lips and looked away, and this gave her face a look of obstinacy that I think made them laugh all the more. For my part I was more than ever eager to hire them: not only did the men sing in outlandish accents and play on instruments of a shape not seen before, not only did the women do things with their abdomens that seemed to defy our corporeal nature, but they came from lands that no one knew anything of, and one of them had been born on the peak where the ark had rested on the seventeeth day of the seventh month, when God saved the world from flood! I saw already how I would lay emphasis on these things when I made the announcements. If this did not gain me the King's favour, it was hard to see what would.

  I spoke to the men still, believing – as it turned out mistakenly – that it was they who made the decisions; in fact, decisions were made by all five together, often speaking all at the same time. I think they understood soon, but affected not to, out of caution or cunning.

  Whatever the truth of this, much had to be repeated before they admitted to an understanding of the offer I was making, which was that they should come to Palermo to perform at the royal court, before the King himself and his guests; that they would be housed well all through their stay, given beautiful new clothes to wear and paid in gold. The King's generosity was proverbial, I told them. If they pleased him they would receive presents of great value. In any case, whether they pleased or not, I would guarantee them a fee of eight gold dinars, far more than a year of wandering would bring them. Also, they would see the great city of Palermo.

  They now fell to discussing the matter among themselves, but in a manner far different from the way in which the men had spoken to me, with raised voices and fierce gestures, not waiting for one to finish before another began. I could not tell what was dividing them, not knowing a word of the language they spoke, which had strange nasal inflexions and sounds made far back in the mouth so that the lips drew back in making them. As I say, I could form no idea of why they argued so, whether from distrust of me or some other matter. But I knew already, watching them cluster together and shout with their faces close, that my troubles with these people were just beginning. Loud among them was the younger one, she who claimed Ararat for her birthplace, who had come forward and danced before me, and spoken some laughing words to the others. Suddenly now I wondered if that laughter of hers had concerned me.