Or perhaps it was not God but something more magical— perhaps a kiss planted on my infant forehead by my mother as a talisman when she knew she would soon die and leave me without her kind protection. I do not remember such a kiss, but I did feel some power watching over me that night and I am certain that, had I backed down any time before those hinges came loose, I could have made it back to the guest room in Husayn’s house with no punishment at all.
Indeed, my immunity may have extended beyond that point. I have rehearsed these events over in my mind a thousand times every day since that night, searching for the precise step I took that was one step too far. At one exact moment, I believe, I gave up the freedom to act of my own will, to retreat, to retrace my steps, to have my life tumble on in a different, happier vein. Where was that moment when my will abandoned me, when a fate was kicked loose to tumble down upon me in a landslide that cannot be stopped and still dumps its debris on me even now? I have been unable to answer this satisfactorily. Husayn, I know, thinks it was the very moment I left his care. But I am convinced I could have gone even further than the removal of that shutter with no permanent damage done.
Madonna Baffo, as it happened, slept alone in that great room that night. She had heard me scrambling about in the dry grapevines and was awake and aware of who I was even before moonlight poured through the open window into her room. She did not, therefore, scream to betray me. She stood waiting, looking in the brazier-smoked moonlight like a costly icon in a wash of exotic incense. She gave me a hand as I let myself down through the window and smiled with pleasure as she greeted me in a whisper.
“How nice to see you, Signor Veniero.”
I did not take time to plead with her that she call me Giorgio. I had greater demands of her. “I have come to rescue you,” I said.
To my surprise, she turned and walked a few steps away, toying with me.
“But...but this is impossible,” she said.
“It’s not. I’ve found the perfect place for us to hide. An old cistern quite near here where you can wait.”
“I’ve no desire to be damp and cold in a cistern.”
“It’ll be just for a short while, just until I manage to get across to Pera and get one of our countrymen to bring a boat and—”
“But Signor Veniero, I can’t. I can’t climb walls like you can—like a fly. Like you have been doing, so it seems, since the very first day I met you.”
To be likened to a fly was not what praise I had expected for my feat, but I ignored it.
“You can,” I insisted. I was offering her what she had most
coveted of me at our first meeting, after all. “I will help you. You can do it. You must do it.”
“I don’t know.” she said. Not that she was afraid, not that she mistrusted me—simply that she did not know.
I did know. I grabbed her quickly and firmly about the waist—(that waist, my God! the touch of it made my arms fall into weak spasms)—and carried her to the window.
Sofia gave a little squeal—of delight? of fear? of protest?— and fought against my arms until I was forced to set her down lest someone overhear us.
“Signor Veniero,” she said, having come, it seemed, to a sudden decision. “First sit down and let me tell you something. Let me tell you what happened to me today.”
“Tell me later.” I was pleading, not ordering. “When you are safe and there is time.”
“Oh, no, please.” Her decision gained momentum and insistence in response to my weakness. “I simply must tell you. I’ve been bursting with it all day and I’ve had no one to tell. I wanted to tell my maid Maria, but it seems they’ve already sold her.”
“They’ve sold Maria?” I asked, and a curious premonition passed over me. You should have bought that woman Maria while you had the chance, it seemed to say. Such a chance will never come again. Perhaps this was a warning that the point of no return was rapidly approaching, but I refused to understand it. “Where have they sold her?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sofia said. “To some old man who wanted kitchen help. I don’t know. I can’t understand a word of what they say. I do think it was rather inconsiderate of them to leave me without a confidante on this, of all days. When I have seen—oh, such wonders! Please, please sit down and let me tell you before I burst.”
There. This is the point where my fate was decided. I think I even felt it. As Baffo’s daughter spoke her last request, her beauty and her presence got the better of me. I felt the energy that had spurred me forth all night drain and leave me weak, clumsy, and stupid. Perhaps it was indeed the departure of God’s pleasure or the charm of a mother’s kiss. My knees gave way and I had to sit, lulled by the spell of her voice and the wonders she described with it as if it were a powerful Anatolian leach.
“This morning, just shortly after you left, they put me in a closed sedan chair and carried me off—nay, I know not where. All I can say is, there is no place like it in all the earth. I am almost constrained to say that it was not earth at all, but that those porters were angels and I was carried for some few hours into heaven itself.
“At first I felt and heard the crowds pressing all about and I did not dare to peek out,
