I never saw the wife, of course, but a small son was sent out of the haremlik to greet the father he couldn’t remember and who frightened him with his loud greeting and flash of golden teeth. The little fellow cried, staining the red silk of his new little shirt, and had to be quickly removed. It was the reverend old gentleman Husayn had married, after all, and the two met anew with tender affection and respect such as I have seen between few husbands and wives.
The house had a private bath and the first order of business for these fastidious Turks was to use it. Husayn and his father-in-law invited me to join them in a communal wash, but I declined, enduring the time alone with my thoughts as best I could. Then they retreated together to evening prayers and left me to make my ablutions alone.
The small room had an awful lot of water in it, in basins and tubs, all uncomfortably hot. I took off my doublet and chemise, poured a bowl of water over my head and rubbed it into my scalp to rid my hair of the salt spray’s stiffness. I sloshed a little up under each armpit. Then I noticed a stack of clean Turkish garments on a low stool: a pair of shah ar. shirt, vest, sash, and the long-sleeved jacket to go on top. I refused their lure and put on my own clothes, stiff with my own smell and sweat again. I would not be made an effeminate Turk so easily.
Husayn and his father-in-law exchanged glances when I rejoined them. I guess I did smell a bit. But, swimming in politeness, they said nothing, and turned to their conversation once more.
My two hosts conversed easily and at length and, in true Turkish fashion, were in no hurry to come to any topic in particular. It was nighttime, long after supper and the rest of the house was still, before my friend even began to recite the adventures of our voyage. (What had they been discussing all the time before then?) And, anxious as I was to come to the subject of slaves and slave-taking, I nodded off while Husayn was still tied on the Knights’ sinking carrack to the singsong of his father-in-law’s exclamations, “Allah preserve you!” and “Allah give only your enemies such a fate!”
***
I awoke while it was yet night, but I found myself alone in the guestroom and the lamps dowsed. The chilling moisture of a winter wind blowing steadily off the Black Sea had found its way even in here.
Husayn, I supposed, had gone at last to beget another son if Allah willed, and the old man had his own room, too. Without the lullaby of voices about me, my mind and nerves grew taut with tension and sleep could not return to such a hard bed. Rather than sit in the dark, I began to fumble about for a lamp, but without luck.
Suddenly I heard a sound in the room at no great distance from where I was crouching. Rats, was my first thought. Having a sailor’s natural aversion to those rope- and store-destroying creatures, I froze lest I inadvertently touch one.
I hoped they would find the crumbs they sought apace and then leave.
But presently, to my wonder, I saw a lamp kindled and knew rats light no fires. Imagine my surprise to find first the hands, then the face, then the entire figure of an attractive young black girl illuminated by that light.
“Good evening, master,” she said, bowing with her hands crossed on her breast, and she smiled. Her teeth were perfect and her eyes like the flames of her lamp, yet kinder.
“Good evening,” I replied.
She wore nothing but a chemise, although the room was anything but warm. Beneath the sheer fabrics her flesh was like well-salted black olives in color and texture and, before I could stop it, an image of biting into it with great appetite flashed across my mind.
It was clear why she was there. It was a supreme act of hospitality on the part of my hosts. And she did not seem to mind being presented thus, like the numerous plates of dainty cakes and pastries that had preceded her in that same service that evening. It was easy to see why. She was a nubile young woman in a house where the mistress had first claim upon the often-absent young master and the old master was gray beyond lust. Of course she shared the ambition of all slave girls to get a son of a free male, for then her child must be freeborn, and no freeman, grown of age, will long see his mother a slave.
Before I had quite sorted out all of her motives, these motives had already brought her to my side where she began to croon and then to fondle me. I thank heaven for my codpiece, a mystery she had never seen before, else I might have been lost at once.
Of course my true love, which had become something akin to instinct by that time, refused to let me spend my virginity thus. I began to try and explain this state of affairs to the girl, but alas, each of us came to Turkish from a different direction; we never quite met. My speech was further hampered by the fact that I had never heard the language used to speak to women before and it does make quite a difference. Those of my phrases the girl did understand only made her tumble into fits of giggles because they
