“Looking for you.”
“Perhaps. In the bazaar in Pera I saw my friend Husayn talking business with some fellow merchant, and though I had longed and cried out for him so during my time of pain, now I immediately turned and fled. The priest in my old parish church in Venice would have liked the image—the sinner flees from the face of God and His final judgment, and cries out for the very mountains to fall on him and hide his shame.
“But it was too late. Husayn had seen me, and he called out my name. The catch of emotion in his voice tripped up my feet. I turned clumsily, helplessly, and, when the little round man flung himself at me like a ball shot from a cannon, he forced the breath from me in a sob.
“At first Husayn wanted me to come home with him. He said that he would find my captor and pay any price, call down the law, petition the Sublime Porte itself for redress.
“I said, ‘I can’t spare the time.’
“‘You are content with your life? The young lady—that was one thing. But you, my friend, content with such a life—?’
“‘What life is left to me? My time is no longer my own.’
“He said, I noticed, no word of Venetian glass.”
“Venetian glass?” My lady asked, but I didn’t answer her directly.
“He gave no apology but settled for a pair of seats under the nearest grape arbor. He paid for our sampling of the strong black brew called coffee.”
“Coffee? I have not heard of such a drink.”
“No. It is new in Constantinople. Very popular among some circles, but frowned upon by the most pious. Let me tell you, lady, it is not worth the trouble in my opinion. And that day it curdled my stomach.
“Anyway, over this coffee, Husayn’s friendliness and joy was matched only by his delicacy. ‘How I worried for you,’ he said. ‘I went to the slave market the very next morning, and they pretended never to have heard of you. It was then that I assumed something like this must have happened. Our laws forbid it, and raids are made almost monthly, but the practice cannot be stopped, to our great shame. It is too profitable.’
“Husayn would have been willing to stop all mention of my condition here, and speak on as man and man. But I found myself unable to do so. It was I who persisted, weeping, ‘My friend, O my friend. Why didn’t you seek me out? Why didn’t you come to find me? You can’t imagine the pain I have suffered.’
“‘I knew I would find you sooner or later,’ Husayn replied. ‘If Allah were willing.’
“‘What about me? Your Allah showed no mercy to me at all.’
“‘True, it may not seem so. But when your apprenticeship is over, you may be purchased by a great man, a great master. Who can say what doors may be open for you if you please him in your service? Allah willing, you will become a greater man with him than you could ever become with me.’
“I choked with sobs on his word ‘man,’ but I said no more. What was the use? Husayn had not changed at all since I’d seen him last, whereas I myself had stepped from a world of light into utter darkness and was groping, helplessly trying to find my way.”
As if heaven itself suddenly took a hand in the telling, the lamp over our heads now sputtered itself out, and I finished my tale in darkness. “I cut our meeting short and left feeling it would be the last I ever wanted. Husayn might seek me out again, but I would have difficulty trusting that friendship. No doubt he will only bother if he thinks my position in Sokolli Pasha’s household could win him some favor.”
“You are being hard on your friend,” Esmikhan said. “A friend who was more than a father to you? How can you value him so cheaply?”
In the dark she was disembodied, like a voice of the spirits. But I ignored her optimism and finished the tale in two short, hard lines. “‘Do you realize,’ Husayn said as a parting offering, ‘You have been speaking Turkish all this time? You have learned it remarkably well.’
“‘I am forced to,’ I replied, and walked on toward my master’s house.”
XLII
Baffo’s daughter thrust out her lower lip in a luscious, round pout. Had we been in the company of men, its effect would have been devastating. All resolve, will, and concentration would vanish before the passion of slaking their appetites upon that fruit. One would gladly give one’s throat to the ax just to have the sweet, cool juice trickle down it. The effect of that lip on women, too, was not negligible. Esmikhan stammered in confusion at the sight and could only repeat lamely, “But I gave that necklace to charity, O sweetest Safiye.” She knew before she said them that her words would not be accepted but, by her life, in her simplicity, she was incapable of understanding why not.
“Then you must go back to Inonu and get it.” Again the words curled like fruit syrup over that pout.
“I can’t do that.”
“Of course you can. If charity really means so much to you, you can give them some other trinket, but that silver chain goes too well with my blue jacket for me to allow you to throw it away on peasants. As I’ve said, I mean to wear the blue tonight—for your brother, Esmikhan. I’ve all but promised him. You must go back and get it.”
“How...how can I do that?” Esmikhan asked. She had to ask, for the very thought was unthinkable to her. But she said it as if apologizing for her stupidity. She knew no way around the matter which to Safiye, with her superhuman powers, seemed so easy.
“You simply open your mouth and tell your khadim where
