The African, now sharing some of his hidden rhythm with me under his breath, saw me couched on a pile of pillows and rugs within the cubicle. He swaddled me as any infant in yet more towels, these holding the delicious warmth of sitting by the furnace still in their tiny pockets of nap. He then proceeded to wick the wet from my body by pressing his long, black, pink-tipped fingers gently up and down the toweling.
I found the sensation quite pleasant but had no desire to be handled in any way by any man, I didn’t care whose chore it was. I gestured him away, refusing likewise the signs I took to mean “Massage?” and “Narghile?” I did take the offer of “Coffee,” a word novel to Turkish that I did understand.
Two similar thimbles full of the sweet, thick, frothy, muddy Arabic stuff went next door as well. And I supposed it was the tilemaker who was smoking that medicinal, relaxing weed first discovered by the savages in the New World but lately cultivated in the lands around the Black Sea. The warm, dark, tangy balsamic odor filled the air, one of the first times I ever smelled burning tobacco. Such was the latest fashion in that drain of all the world’s indulgences, Constantinople.
I’ve heard it said the seduction of tobacco can also affect others in the room besides the smoker. Certainly combined with the purgative of heat and water, the sweetness of the coffee, and the emotional storms I’d been through that day, it had its consequences. I found I could no longer stave off a gradually enveloping and voluptuous drowsiness. I suppose I did doze, and perhaps for quite some time as the interminable and soporific asking after health and welfare droned on in the next cubicle.
I could not at first determine what it was that brought me awake until I heard it again. I heard the slats of a packing crate creaking open, the nestle of straw. Even more to the point were the words I heard. In sharp relief, as foreign words always are when they tumble into the otherwise smooth stream of native speech, I heard Husayn pronounce the names of Filippo and Bernardo Serena.
Venetians. Not just any Venetians, either. These were two brothers, now deceased and succeeded by their sons. Close to thirty years ago the Serena brothers had patented the almost magical process by which canes of opaque glass— usually white but sometimes the very skillful managed blue as well—could be imbedded in otherwise clear crystal. The masterpieces the Serena factory had been turning out—goblets, jugs, plates—continued to amaze the world. And shortly it was not just Serena but the entire glass-making lair of Murano that worked the magic. Venice set little store by patents when there was city wide profit to be made.
Letting the profits go beyond the Republic, however, was a different matter altogether.
I had imagined there might be a few of these pieces among Husayn’s imports. It was only natural, as there was never enough supply to fill the Turks’ luxuriant demand. My suspicions were confirmed when I heard the tilemaker’s husky exclamation as the straw parted to reveal its contents followed by Husayn’s pronunciation of the Italian term for the technique, “vetro a filigrana.”
So Husayn has found a buyer. That is well, I thought as I drifted back toward oblivion. Just at the edge, however, I suddenly burst into wakefulness.
This was not just any wealthy buyer. This was a man who had a certain technical skill, a certain vested interest. This was a man who could turn a little knowledge into a going concern. He would not just buy a vase, and he would pay much, much better than vase price. He would buy an industry— and undermine the wealth-producing monopoly of another.
Somehow, somewhere, Husayn in the guise of a Venetian merchant must have learned the secret of vetro a filigrana and was about to sell it. Venice was ruined.
I was up off the stupefying rugs in a moment, finding that without pattens the marble under my feet shot cold up into the cocoon of my swaddling along my staggering legs. Towels dropped from me like puddles of water as I groped for at least the dignity of my chemise. My skin that had been scrubbed down to the shine shrank from the dirty linen and my own smell crinkled my nose as it had never offended before. The shirt was stiff and rank with sweat and salt. I gritted my teeth and ignored the sensation. Indeed, I felt that with the shirt, I was reclaiming the birthright that had been scrubbed from me.
Still struggling with the points of my hose, I burst into the neighboring cubicle.
I knew I was not mistaken in my appraisal of the situation when I saw Husayn look up at my arrival. His hands were frozen in the act of describing the glassblowers’ mold and showing how the opaque canes alternated with the clear ones in lining that mold—more than even I knew of the secret process before that moment. I didn’t need Turkish to understand.
And neither did the tilemaker.
The tilemaker had risen out of his cocoon of towels with the excitement of what he was learning. In his hands he held the archetype of all his future profits: an exquisite tazza spun with sugar-like decoration from the heart of the deep-petaled lobes around its bowl to the foot of its finger-thin pedestal.
I said something. I’m not certain what it was—doubtless the blackest curse I could bring to my lips—but the roar of anger in my head made me deaf to the rationality of any language. In one moment, I whipped the doublet off my shoulder and through the tilemaker’s hands, bringing the
