Flocks of pigeons, however, seemed to find this rarified light the perfect mating medium. By some birdish alchemy, they had divvied up their usual anonymous masses into perfect pairs, though there was as yet no breeding going on. Each darker, generally more purple male pursued with incessant coos and low, scraping bows, oblivious to anything in the world but his chosen one. This groveling courtship also included dragging the tails along the flagstones until I wondered that the feathers weren’t worn away, whether the poor besotted fellows would ever manage to fly again. I came to recognize the scraping. I would turn at the sound—and never fail to find yet another poor sap cooing deep in his throat and bobbing up and down convulsively along the peaked rib of a tomb or up and over the cramped roots of a tree.
All the while the females couldn’t care less. They avoided the males all together, intent on their customary waddle from crumb to crumb. Whenever possible, they flew off, only to be pursued relentlessly from tomb to fountain and back again by the fruitless, tedious—even I could see it was tedious—bowing and scraping. I was unnerved to find myself divided from all other males except these featherheads by the rise and fall, the droning surf of recited Arabic ebbing between the mosque’s arches.
But before I had time to embrace the ramifications of this thought, prayers were over. The mosque disgorged. Husayn rejoined me and led me to the western side of the square, where the baths were.
“Also built by Sinan and Bayazid,” he told me.
“But on Christian backs.”
Accusingly I thrust a palm in the direction of the pillars that flanked the bath’s entrance. They were carved with repeating curves and ovals representing peacock-feather eyes, obviously reused, and obviously of Byzantine origin.
Husayn forgave my tone with a “Mashallah.”
It—even the fall of Constantinople into infidel hands— was God’s will. I might have been more agreeable to the sentiment had it not been said exactly the way Uncle Jacopo used to say Che sarà sarà when considering the limits God had placed on his life. I remembered the final limit, and grieved, refusing to accept.
“Remember, too,” Husayn said, “that the Christian Romans rifled many of Constantinople’s treasures off conquered pagan temples first.”
My friend then proceeded to give more of our precious aspers to the bath attendant.
XIX
The first obstacle to overcome in our visit to Sultan Bayazid’s gift to clean posterity was a continuous stream of slaves bent under the weight of the wood required to stoke the bath’s furnace. A single furnace served both sides of the establishment, both the men’s and the women’s around the far end of the building of which I had caught no glimpse. This efficiency did little to ease the straining of these men, some of whom were past their prime.
I grimaced. What similar heavy labors would Sofia Baffo’s young, lithe body be forced to undertake if Husayn’s vague plan did not work out? It hardly bore thinking of, but I couldn’t help myself.
Husayn read my thoughts and steered me deeper into the edifice with an arm meant for comfort about my shoulders. “Trust me, trust Allah,” he said. “And trust Abu Isa. Abu Isa will not do anything to damage his own goods.”
The first room into which he ushered me was divided into many small cubicles. Marble—water-stained, mildewed in the pores, dilapidated with age—covered the low dividing walls. Clearly it, too, had served in previous buildings.
We each laid claim to an empty cubicle as Husayn tried more diversion. “I must say, my friend, you have a very curious notion of slavery. You seem to think it some great moral wrong, while all the time you Venetians are among the greatest slavers on the seas.”
More male slaves, bare-chested, with only red-and-white-striped towels about their loins, paraded here and there between the cubicles with stacks of other towels on their heads. One remarkably tall African—who could see over the division of my cubicle with no difficulty—shoved one of his stack at me. It was of a very thick fabric, cotton made plush by leaving the loops of the pile uncut. Stringy fringe as long as my hand trimmed the raw edges to prevent unraveling.
Husayn continued chatting over the partition. “Your uncle, mercy on his soul, kept old black Piero.”
My exploration of the towel—indeed, everything about his station, not just me—seemed to entertain the towering African. His full purplish lips were set in something of a smirk. I understood that I was to strip down until my costume matched his. I didn’t know if I was prepared to do this among strangers, infidel strangers at that. All these men in the neighboring cubicles, I realized, would be circumcised, as the Turks’ barbarous custom was. Probably even the African had undergone the rite. This realization made me very uneasy: I shrank perceptibly under the weight of my codpiece.
I must say modesty prevailed throughout the bathing ordinance, even in the case of the African, who could have looked over the partition but, after one final smirk, did not. Modesty is, Husayn informed me, a tenant of religion with Muslims, even among the same sex and in the bath. But I could hardly keep from recoiling at the thought of identical mutilation under identical towels and irrationally feared that if I took the towel, I might likewise lose what was under it. This made me very slow to carry through what was expected.
All the while, Husayn kept encouraging, not in so many words, but with his continuous prattle. This was meant to assure me that he was not far away, but it only served to make me realize that he, too, was alien.
“I know your father had four or five purchased servants in his household while he yet lived.”
Husayn was right, but I wouldn’t admit it.
