A Stolen Tongue

by Sheri Holman

  NINTH ARTICLE: Let pilgrims beware of jesting with Saracen boys, for much mischief arises from it.

  TENTH ARTICLE: Let pilgrims beware of gazing on any Saracen women, for their husbands are exceedingly jealous and apt to do harm.

  ELEVENTH ARTICLE: Should any Saracen woman beckon to a pilgrim and invite him into her house, on no account go.

  TWELFTH ARTICLE: Let every pilgrim beware of giving a Saracen wine when he asks for a drink, for after one draught he will straightaway become mad, and the first to be attacked will be the pilgrim who gave him the drink.

  THIRTEENTH ARTICLE: No pilgrim may wear knives slung about him.

  FOURTEENTH ARTICLE: Should a pilgrim form a friendship with any Saracen, he must especially beware of laying his hand on his beard in jest or touching his turban, even lightly and in jest; for this is a disgrace among them, and all friendships are forgotten.

  FIFTEENTH ARTICLE: When pilgrims make covenants with Saracens, let them not dispute with them or swear at them or grow angry, for Saracens know that such things are contrary to the Christian religion and will straightaway cry, “O, thou bad Christian!” which phrase they can say in either Italian or German.

  SIXTEENTH ARTICLE: Let no pilgrim laugh at Saracens who are praying in the postures of their faith, for they refrain from laughing at us when we are at our prayers.

  i

  THE PORT OF JOPPA, PALESTINE JUNE 1483

  How Pilgrims Are Welcomed to the Holy Land

  “Name?”

  “Lord John Tucher.”

  “From where do you come?”

  “Swabia, beyond the Alps.”

  “What is your father’s name?”

  “Peter Tucher.”

  “So it is written. You may pass.”

  “Name?”

  “Ursus Tucher.”

  “From where do you come?”

  “The same place as my father, Christian Swabia.”

  “What is your father’s name?”

  “He just gave it to you.”

  “What is your father’s name?”

  “Ow!”

  “Ursus!”

  “Let go! Lord John Tucher.”

  “So it is written. You may pass.”

  “Name?”

  “Constantine Kallistos.”

  “From where do you come?”

  “I come from Candia in Crete. I am a merchant there.”

  “What is your father’s name?”

  Pause.

  “Stavros?”

  Pause.

  “So it is written. You may pass.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Friar Felix Fabri of the Preaching Brothers in Ulm.”

  “Failix Fabri—”

  “No, no. Felix. Fee-lix.”

  “Faaailix—”

  “No, no diphthong. Fee-lix.”

  “Fiiaalix—”

  “Fee-lix, Fee-lix Fabri. With an e.”

  “Faielix Fabri.”

  “Oh, forget it.”

  They arranged themselves in two lines and herded us through single file. One by one, they grabbed us and studied us narrowly, recording our names in their book with long plumed pens. The Saracen who gurgled my name, substituting some word I cannot pronounce in lieu thereof, searched for something in my name, something in my father’s name, that would provide him with an excuse to put me back on the boat and shove me off to Germany. I had nothing to hide, and still I blushed under that wicked man’s gaze.

  From our galley, we had watched these Saracens bustle in and out of two caves cut into the cliff face, assuming they were making these chambers ready for our landing. How we longed to take our rest there and kiss the very stones, for these caves are known as Saint Peter’s Cellars, brothers, and it is from here that our Blessed Rock converted the port town of Joppa.

  But what malodor! What putrid summer stable stink was this? When we were at last through the lists and thrust inside, my eyes confirmed what my nose already suspected: The Saracens had suspended their hairy asses over this hallowed floor; they had turned Saint Peter’s Cellars into a latrine.

  Imagine the dismay, brothers. Imagine the stench.

  “I will not live this way!” screamed Emelia Priuli, snatching her dress off the floor. “Where is the captain?”

  “Felix, over here! It’s awful.”

  Not an inch of the cave’s floor was left unbesmirched. I tried to dodge the larger piles and make my way to the back of the enormous cave where our pilgrims had pressed themselves against the wall. Lord Tucher and his son glowed eerily in the skidding green sunlight.

  “Do you want to hear my first prayer in the Holy Land, Friar Felix?” Ursus asked miserably, his thin voice slicking the vault of the cave. “It goes like this:

  “O Lord Jesu, with what strange courtesy have You received Your guests, men who have traveled many months, even from beyond the Alps, to visit You? Ought not Thou to have granted to those who are footsore from such wanderings, who are hungry and tired, some couch better than the steaming shit of the Infidel? Ought Thou to have welcomed us so grotesquely—”

  “Ursus, let me stop you, before ingratitude is added to your burgeoning list of sins,” I interrupted. “Remember you are reproaching a Host who first entered this world in a foul cow sty; whose first pillow was a stone manger smeared with regurgitated cud. Our Host could find no bed even in the rich royal city of Jerusalem, save only the gibbet of the splintery cross.”

  “And remember, Ursus,” said Archdeacon John, newly arrived with Conrad and the madwoman Arsinoë, “the noble Job sat upon a dunghill, eaten raw with ulcers, and by his patience won twice his former glory. For as Gregory tells us, ‘In the dunghill lies hid the pearl of God. Do thou then, pilgrim, search for this pearl whilst thou sittest on the dunghill.’”

  The rebel Ursus was silenced, but what were we to do, brothers? We could not sit without befouling ourselves, nor could we leave, as the Saracens had posted men at the cavern’s mouth. Congratulate Conrad, our practical barber, who first assailed the dung! He lifted his robe and, with the side of his shoe, pushed a pile of ordure into the center of the cave. I resolutely took up his labor, and before long all of us were clearing paths, breaking ground, erecting miniature Mounts of Venus at the cave’s heart. While we were engaged in this loathsome activity, the guard admitted a handful of Saracens, poor men who had gathered rushes and the branches of trees for us to spread over our wet floor. They charged us one Venetian penny for an armful of grasses, and we happily paid it.

  And lo, even while we were bargaining with these vendors, a whole different lot of Saracens entered our cave. Oh, they cried, what a foul stench! By coincidence we have here incense to burn, gum Arabic, and distilled perfumes. We have on our persons rare balsam, musk, some soap, and the whitest muslin for sheets. The pilgrims ran to these men, begging them to part with their goods. As the merchants came and went in our cave, the filth clung to their shoes and was carried outside, so that within an hour, our abode, which had heretofore been an abomination, was rendered wholesome and fit for mankind.

  This is only the first degradation we have experienced at the hands of Christ’s enemies, brothers; there shall be many more, and we must each learn to endure their tricks humbly, as befits an honest pilgrim.

  I record this account of our landing from far down the beach, where I have wandered away from Saint Peter’s Cellars and its neighboring Saracen camp, down past the rock in the sea upon which unlearned men claim Saint Peter fished and Christ called to him, saying, I will make you a fisher of men, etc., which thing we know from Scripture occurred at the Sea of Galilee and not here. I sit upon the highest hump in a low spine of rocks that has been bleached by sun and bird dung, just above the glistening pebble beach, from where, if I squint, I can make out our galley still listing at sea. I would wager, brothers, that there is no worse port in the entire Mediterranean than this port of Joppa. Thwarted by rugged outcroppings of stone, no boat of any size may pass through to the harbor but, i
nstead, is forced to drop anchor beyond the infamous Andromeda’s Rocks. These rocks, according to Saint Jerome in his On the Distances of Places, acquired their name when the hero Perseus flew over Joppa on his Pegasus and spotted a young virgin chained between two rocks in the harbor, about to be devoured by a sea monster. With a single stroke of his sword, he dispatched the feared leviathan, asked for the virgin Andromeda’s hand in marriage, and flew off to conquer the land of Persia, which forever after bore his name. The Ocean now rages ceaselessly between Andromeda’s Rocks, dashing broken water upon the heads of anxious pilgrims when they are rowed ashore from their galleys. Even when the rest of the sea is quiet, the water between these rocks flies high into the air in explosive, helical flumes.

  We’ve seen no sign of Contarini’s ship, which to my mind is both a blessing and a curse. Happy are we, certainly, to have attained Palestine first; even now, Captain Lando, loaded with presents, waits in the Saracen camp, hoping his bribes will convince the Governor to lock Contarini out. I, of course, have my own reasons for not wanting Lando to succeed. Not only is it uncharitable to wish upon other pilgrims a misfortune we could scarce have endured, had things been reversed but, more to the point, only when Contarini’s pilgrims dock may the burden of Saint Katherine’s Tongue be lifted from our shoulders.

  The woman Arsinoë has taken no food since the night of the storm, brothers, and has drunk nothing but a little water. John has in no way been able to persuade her to sample the delicious puddings concocted by the Saracen merchants, nor has he been able to tempt her with grapes or sesame bread or eggs fried in oil. All of these I tested and assured her were wholesome, but to no use. She fears her enemies will use the Saracens to poison her.

  Can you blame me for walking away, brothers? Have I not waited a lifetime to attain this shore, and should I be stuck inside a feculent cave, surrounded by the noisy mercantile Infidel, because of another’s madness? Arsinoë has the bewitched John Lazinus to care for her, who, I believe mistakenly, looks for redemption in her folly. Sixty nuns under his charge were violated and burned alive the night the Turks took his town; John, I fear, fights the Turk once more, through her.

  The sun is high in the sky above me, and the water looks cool and inviting. When was the last time I had a real bath, brothers, Venice? With soap, Ulm? Could there be a more fitting salutation to the Holy Land than to take off one’s sandals, lift the hem of one’s robe to one’s bony knees, and recapture for a moment what it is to be clean?

  I wade out, stepping gingerly over the sharp rocks on the harbor’s floor, and lean forward until the perfectly transparent pane of water suspends me like a figure in stained glass. As I break the surface tension, my robes float up like a rounded fin; I swim with my eyes open, brushing small pink pebbles, furry rocks, the sharp hairballs of sea urchins. I feel purer than I have in months, brothers, pushing through this rippled world, and for the first time understand why the Jews consider unclean anything lucky enough to live in the sea that then choses to walk on land.

  When the Tongue is safely restored to her brother, all will be like this water, clear and untroubled. John and I will once more take up that ease of friendship that we set aside when Arsinoë arrived; he will once more want to accompany me on outings like this, undivided in mind and loyalty. Once the Tongue is gone, I will have the energy to reclaim my patron from that snare of flesh Emelia Priuli and set his straying feet back on the path of pilgrimage. I will be kinder to Ursus; I will converse with Conrad, who speaks no language but German and thus has found few friends among our international party of pilgrims. Most important, I will have my wife back. When the Tongue is restored to her brother.

  Can my pilgrimage be salvaged, brothers? I come up for air across from where the ruins of ancient Joppa start on the beach and collapse back into the desert, a sad end to this eighth city built after the flood. Joppa has been destoyed and rebuilt too many times; Judas Maccabeus leveled it when its perfidious citizens slaughtered the town’s Jews; the Saracens dug under its foundations after the Christians restored it. Now Joppa’s city walls are sown into arid fields, and cinnamon-colored goats roam the foundations of what were once Roman baths and echoing Hebrew temples. The dismantled city has become like John the Baptist’s bones, its remains flung farther and farther apart in an attempt to weaken its formidable power. And yet, brothers, here lies the difference between a saint and a city: The Baptist may be divided a hundred times over, and still each new mote will contain his impregnable essence; Joppa, like any mortal undertaking, may be shaken only so much before it dissolves away into dust.

  I stumble awkwardly out of the water, dragging sand and oyster shells in the hem of my wet robe, and climb up to the carcass of dead Joppa. You can sit upon felled Corinthian columns that once supported great courts of law; you can spread out your clothes to dry on a marble slab that once shaded a Platonic academy. To what indignities a city may be put, once it has expired, brothers: suffering, among other insults, the wet curiosity of a modern German monk. I find a long shallow marble trough and lay myself down to dry. Cicero received a letter on the death of his beloved daughter Tullia; a friend chided him out of his grief by asking what one woman’s passing mattered compared to the death of Corinth. How can we manikins wax indignant, ephemeral creatures that we are, when the corpses of so many towns lie abandoned in a single spot? Worse even than abandonment, Cicero’s friend would have wept to see how the Saracens dismember the original buildings and drag Joppa’s marble away to pave their mosques. The eternal transference continues; nothing, in the end, retains its original meaning.

  And is this not my deepest fear, brothers? Do I not mourn for the dying of my pilgrimage and tremble that it is being put to some other use than what I conceived? I feel so out of control, so at the mercy of my patron’s fears and the Tongue’s madness. He keeps us from Sinai; she keeps me in constant confusion about my beloved’s desires. I know she is ill—why can’t I put her from my mind?

  “How can you know they are healed?”

  Hark, brothers! Just above me: a man’s voice, muffled by the marble walls of my trough. We know that voice.

  “Because they are with her now,” replies another, softer voice. “Your nuns. I see a crowd of young women behind Katherine. They wear pure white wimples and carry the slender palm fronds of martyrdom.”

  I ease my chin over the rim of the trough, but they do not notice me, brothers: John and Arsinoë. They take a seat upon a heap of Joppa and stare out over the harbor, past Andromeda’s Rocks.

  “They are not ruined?” John asks, not looking at her.

  “Oh, no!” The Tongue shakes her head vehemently. “They are overjoyed to have stepped out of those bodies. Without skins and muscles and organs to impede them, your nuns can finally achieve true heavenly dispassion. Where there is no passion, there can be no ruin.”

  They sit too closely together, their fingers tracing the shallow flutes of the same fallen column. Arsinoë has dared to take off Constantine’s bonnet, and her profile for the moment appears almost a woman’s. She seeks desperately to comfort my friend, looking upon him with that determined hopefulness I’ve seen too often on the faces of softhearted deathbed confessors. I should reveal myself and put an end to this intimacy. She should not look at him that way.

  John turns to her suddenly. “How did Katherine first come to you?”

  Without thought, I duck back into my trough. Arsinoë takes a long time to answer.

  “We had an icon of her in our family chapel, as big as I was when I was a girl. Saint Katherine painted tall and long-limbed, holding an open book in one hand, a heavy golden sword in the other, her hip resting lightly against her wheel. I used to measure myself against that icon. I fit myself to it as to a grave: Was my hair as long and sable as Saint Katherine’s? Was my foot arched as gracefully? Did my eyes, almond and dark like hers, recall pain so exquisite it read like euphoria?

  “I would press myself against her portrait and imagine us deep in the desert, alone
in a shallow cave, with only icons of ourselves for decoration. She would touch me as a woman touches, not tousling my hair or pinching an arm, but firm and confident, kissing my face before sleep, washing my arms and legs in the stream.”

  John’s eyes stray to her legs, where she has propped them on the column’s pedestal. They are naked and brown in the sun, tight, like those of a distance runner.

  “The night my brother left for university,” she continues, “I took all my sorrow and fear and loneliness to that icon. I worshiped him, you know. My brother taught himself a thousand languages, he understood things, and, as men do, he was leaving me behind. I went to Katherine, begged her to do something, anything to bring him back, when suddenly her eyes began to vibrate, like a rabbit’s or a bird’s. I couldn’t break away from them. She left her frame, Archdeacon. She bent over me, where I had fallen to the ground”—Arsinoë brings her face closer to John’s, until not an inch of sky shows between them—“And she blew into my mouth.”

  John hesitantly licks his lips. He is trembling. Please, John, I pray. Don’t.

  “The Saracens call Christ the Breath of God,” the Tongue whispers. “I became her breath that night, her voice, her sighs, her indignation. I was no longer a little girl in a big house. I was someone important. And no one could prove I wasn’t.”

  Her mouth is so close to his, I am afraid for him to breathe, lest by his inhalation he should draw them together. A woman is more bitter than Death, John; she is a snare, her heart a net, her arms are chains.

  “How can we love a saint who reveals herself to little children”—Arsinoë searches his face—“knowing full well she has perverted us for the rest of the world?”

  John closes his eyes and surrenders to the Tongue. I cannot bear to watch.

  “Look, Archdeacon.” Arsinoë stiffens, sighting something over his left shoulder. “The mast.”

  I glance over, to discover the miracle that has saved my friend from certain damnation, and spy a tiny twig bobbing in the Ocean way beyond Andromeda’s Rocks. Certainly it is Contarini’s ship. Our enemy. My salvation!