***
“But now, as midday prayers will soon be upon us, we must hurry and finish the business for which Nur Banu Kadin sent me to you in the first place,” the Quince said. “We must perform an engrafting, child.”
The charwoman had no idea how to translate the word into Italian. She interpreted the word with long, detailed explanations and gestures. She even brought Sofia to a grilled window on the second floor. Here they watched a number of gardeners, recognizable by their tall cylindrical hats of red felt, busy in a potting section of the grounds. Among heaps of manure and cabbage seedlings, the gardeners moved with stubby, curved blades and balls of string along a row of saplings. All Sofia could learn was that they managed to put new twigs into young trunks where there were none before.
“This is engrafting,” the charwoman said.
“But surely you don’t mean to put a—a new limb on me!” Sofia exclaimed.
Everyone laughed at the preposterousness of the idea, Sofia a little more hesitant than the other two. Who knew what the Turks had in mind to do to her? They were barbarians, after all. She was in their power; her search for power had brought her to this and there was no doubt power could be dangerous as well as attractive.
“Let me try another tack.” The charwoman gestured to the Quince and then turned to speak her own words to Sofia, for the first time that day and with an earnestness Baffo’s daughter could not ignore.
XXVI
“When I was a child,” the charwoman began, “a long, long time ago, I lived, like you, among an ignorant people.”
Sofia did not believe the Serene Republic to be a den of ignorance and the thought must have registered in her face, for Faridah’s earnestness increased until it brought tears to her eyes.
“No, no. They were ignorant. Ignorant of a great means of health that merciful Allah has vouchsafed to the people who worship Him. If this were not true, would I wear the scars of ignorance in my face?”
“Smallpox?”
“Yes. I had it as a child. Most of my family died of it and I was left, left like this. Ruined.”
“I’m sorry.” Sofia didn’t know what else to say to such intensity and pain.
“You have never had smallpox.”
“No, thank San Rocco.”
“Thank Allah, not a saint. It reads in your beautiful face.”
“I have been lucky.”
“Allah has preserved you. Until you could come to know the Quince. The Quince, in her wisdom, will engraft a bit of smallpox into you.”
“What? You mean give me smallpox?”
“Yes.”
“Make me sick?”
“Yes, a little.”
“No!”
Sofia looked to the hairy, slightly greenish face with horror. She saw her world on its shaky pillars of good luck crumbling around her into unredeemable ugliness and along with it, powerlessness.
“I’ve no desire to come anywhere near that plague,” she reiterated when she could find more words.
What were these people, jealous? Did they crush any threat to them with such ferocity? Is this how they ruled the world?
“I have been fortunate enough to avoid smallpox until now.” Sofia took a few steps backwards. “I intend to do everything in my power to avoid it in the future.”
“The Quince will make you sick, but only a little sick. After that, you will be immune. Like me.”
“But my face—”
“Yes, some pustules may grow on your face, but they will scab and then fall off without scars. The Quince does this to preserve your health and your beauty, Madonna. Trust her. You don’t want to run any risk of ending up like me. Such beauty is too great a gift of Allah not to put it under His protection. The girls we get, from all over the world. Who knows where they come from, what diseases they bring? All are engrafted when they first arrive, even—no, especially those who are destined for the honor of the Sultan’s presence. They are engrafted to prevent what could only be the worst of disasters among these, the most beautiful women in the world, living so on top of one another and confined as we do.”
Sofia looked from the charwoman to the midwife now in wonder. The Quince had been listening to this tirade of words she couldn’t understand with complacency, her hands folded quietly across the girdle at her waist.
“You—she can do this?” Sofia asked, her voice echoing with awe.
“She can,” Faridah said.
The Quince nodded after her with the same quiet confidence.
“Nur Banu Kadin wants me to have it done?”
“Yes. Please, you must undergo it.”
“I suppose you would force me if I disagreed.”
“We would, but it needn’t be that way. Please. Do not be afraid. For your beauty’s sake.”
“Very well. Very well, I will undergo the—the engrafting ; “
“Mashallah! That’s good, Safiye.” The charwoman couldn’t contain herself and reached out to press Sofia’s arm.
“Sofia,” Baffo’s daughter said. “My name’s Sofia. With an o.
“No. Safiye,” the charwoman insisted with all the intensity of which her already intense face was capable. “Safiye. It means ‘the fair one.’ And fair you will stay. I promise you, as Allah is Merciful.”
“Come then, to my infirmary,” the midwife said.
She led the way down a hall of a dozen doorways that must all be opened at once to catch a glimpse of trees in their first green haze of spring at the end. Under the trees, as the women made a right turn at the end of the hall, Sofia caught a brief look at the freshly shooting perennials in a carefully tended and well-stocked herb garden.
The bellies of row upon row of Chinese porcelain, Japan-ware, and blue Persian jars leaned in upon the patient from the walls
