“As I recall, your nursemaid—the very woman who suckled you—she was not a freeborn woman, was she? Yet you do not love her any less for that.”
I could avoid the inevitable no longer. I presented myself outside the cubicle; the safety of my clothes remained behind. The sight of Husayn exposed in near nakedness quite startled me. His flesh was fish-pale, hairless as a woman’s, with woman-like breasts and an ample belly. Most startling of all was his head. I’d never seen him without either a Venetian cap or Turkish turban. The entire dome of his cranium save a single knot at the top was shaved as naked as a boccie ball. This was a ball that had seen hard use in the alleys, however, for the bumps and seams of a human head are as graceless as most bodies are unrobed.
The intimidating African reappeared to provide each of us with a pair of pattens for our feet. These shoes were inlaid with mother-of-pearl on the in-step straps. The delicacy of the work belied the clomping weight that suddenly overcame the foot once it slipped into the clog. Each sole was elevated off the floor by chunks of wood as large as the blocks on the Santa Lucia’s banner pulley. I felt like a courtesan crossing the Piazza in her chopines.
“They keep your feet up off the cold marble, the spills of dirty water on the floor. They prevent slips and falls,” Husayn assured me.
Husayn gave a tightening tug, meaning to be helpful, on the clumsy knot of my towel. Besides almost unfooting me as I tried to get the knack of the shoes, he otherwise gave no sign that I looked as out of place as I felt other than to amend his assurances to “These pattens do take some getting used to.”
He must not have found my appearance as distasteful as I found his—or that of most of the other men in the room.
Of course his lack of criticism might be due to the fact that my host was occupied at the moment. A slave from Husayn’s house had just arrived, no doubt at the bidding of the urchin paid off earlier. The menial brought a small crate with him, and I was distracted from my awkwardness to recognize it as a straw-packed crate of Venetian glass the Santa Lucia had taken into her hold over a month ago.
“I suppose you mean to find a buyer for that here in the baths?” I asked.
Husayn smiled but didn’t exactly commit himself one way or another. He told the slave to set the crate down in his cubicle and then to join us. The baths would certainly be the strangest of bazaars if haggling was to go on dressed the way we were. A haggler needs to hide much of his intent in order to be successful; layers of clothing can only help in his efforts.
Still, I appreciated the fact that Husayn might be willing to put up his profits from such a sale toward my cause. The costliest goblet would, with luck, bring perhaps only half of the price we were looking at, but I couldn’t ignore the gesture. I determined to be more gracious to my generous host.
As we waited for his man to join us, Husayn chatted on.
“The life of a galley slave is not so enviable, granted.”
“Or one of those out in the forecourt hauling wood.”
“Those are free Turks we saw out in the forecourt hauling wood. Wood-haulers’ guild.”
“I see. But why were they so—so—”
“Desperate?”
“Yes, desperate.”
“A free man is not assured food for his family at night. The slave is—unless his master is bent on ruining his patrimony. The free man works against hunger, the hunger of his children, the illness of his parents, old age, the crippling effects of his work. The slave doesn’t have these at his back.”
I happened to catch another glimpse of the tall African. He was swinging his way through the room as if to some heavy African rhythm only he could hear. He still smirked superiorly and I realized the small heap of towels he wore like a janissary headdress was not calculated either to wear him out or make his master rich. I had a flash of the shrine to Saint Gummarus in Venice, always full, rich with offerings. Saint Gummarus was the patron of ruptures, much frequented by the porter’s guild, the zannis we called them, when a life of desperate freedom had come to the end of its usefulness—
“But yes, I will agree. To be but a nameless body in a nameless mass of power-production—like one stick in the baker’s fire—that is no life for a man, black or white, Muslim or Christian. Slave or free, I may add. Therefore I approve of using only criminals in the galleys—men who for some act against society have forfeited their right to be counted in that society. The same does not apply to domestic slaves, who are always taken into the master’s home and treated with dignity.” The household slave did appear now and I gave Husayn, at least, credit for practicing what he preached as we went on to the bath’s next phase, all three together.
The next room, like the first, smelled of dominant male. A dome pierced by numerous star-shaped windows sieved down drifting sunbeams. Four fountains of cold water tumbled out of lions’ mouths—these must have been of Byzantine origin as well—into marble basins before running off in little channels set into the floor. A slave attendant was fast asleep on a pile of more red and white in a corner, giving some credence to Husayn’s words. These words, along with every clomp of clog or touch of mussel shell to marble, echoed achingly off wall and crisp water.
“It is quite common, my friend, for poor families in the wild hills of Caucasia for example to sell their sons and especially their daughters to Constantinople-bound merchants. Not only
