“It’s those eyes of hers.”
“‘Almonds dredged in poison,’ didn’t you once say?”
“And that hair.”
“Butter.”
“That picks up the odor of whatever onion of a man handles her.”
“Abdullah, you know she’s perfectly faithful to my brother Murad.”
I snorted without comment and flung myself to the divan next to her. I know it is not proper form for eunuchs to sit in their ladies’ presence, but ours was not the usual mistress-slave relationship. Since my refusal to go by the ridiculous name she’d always wanted to give her first eunuch—”Lulu”—Esmikhan had never tried to mold or even order me. She was too used to being molded herself; there was no older woman, as a harem usually has, to take me in hand. And I had come too late, too recently to my slavery and sexlessness to accept the pinch of their molds about me. So rather than being her gossipy khadim and a talemonger, I knew it was no use—and no kindness—disabusing Esmikhan’s innocence with the truth.
My lady laughed, let the kitten rip the feather away, and took my face gently between her hands so I’d look at her. I closed my eyes against the shame that not all the smoothness I felt was her plump little palms. In the past year it had become clear that I would never grow more beard than I had. I would always smart under this charcoal smudge which had so mortified me when I first met Safiye—Sofia Baffo then—so long ago and far away.
“Ah, sweet lady,” I said with my eyes still closed. “You refuse to see malice in anyone.”
I caught one hand just before she pulled it away and held it there, to my spayed, stripling cheek.
She declared: “I think your squabbles give you great pleasure.”
“You laugh out loud and clap for joy at our antics as if we were baby kittens play-fighting for your amusement.”
“Aren’t you?” She tugged at her hand and I let it go. “At least, if you must squabble, I wish you’d stop slipping into Venetian all the time, you two. I always feel I’m missing something.”
“So you should let me teach you my native language as I’ve been longing to.”
“Perhaps, yes. After the baby...” She let one more button out of her yelek. “I’ll bet even if I knew Italian, I’d be missing something.”
I looked away. “I assure you, lady, you are not.”
“I get jealous.”
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t ever be jealous of Sofia Baffo.”
“Does Safiye ever get the best of you in Venetian?”
“Never.”
“Even when she prepares her comments in advance?”
“Does she do that?”
“I think so.”
“Never,” I said doughtily. “She never gets the better of me.”
“That’s good.”
“Still, I wish...”
“You wish what?” Esmikhan urged, resting her little round chin on my shoulder. “That I wouldn’t invite her at all? Safiye, who is my dearest friend in the world?”
“No, I don’t wish that.”
“I can’t not invite her.” My lady removed her chin and looked away. “Even for your sake, dearest Abdullah.”
“I will never say her presence is unstimulating. I always take care not to drowse, no matter how late the hour, when she is here. I’m certain to find myself the brunt of cruel jokes while my eyes are closed.”
“But she has lost the ability to consume your every waking thought?”
“Sofia Baffo never consumed my every waking...”
I stopped because Esmikhan’s glance, gone sideways with perception, made me sound ridiculous.
“She does not make you miserable anymore?” my lady asked.
“That, I thank Allah, is no small victory.”
“I hate to think of you miserable, for any reason.”
“For that, my lady, I thank you.”
“So please, please, treat Safiye with the utmost tenderness.”
“For your sake, I will try.”
“For her sake, Abdullah. It grieves me so much to have this child, this wonderful child, growing within me while she, who has been with my brother months longer than I’ve been with the Pasha, should have none.”
“Ah, so that’s what this is all about.” I laughed.
“And why shouldn’t it be?”
“My dear, tender-hearted little lady.” I slipped a hand under the head scarf at her neck and rubbed the tension there.
As I turned her face to me with the pressure of my hand, I could see Safiye’s condition pained my lady to speechlessness. How could I let Esmikhan’s features—and especially her soul—grow mundane to me?
I changed the subject and turned away as if admiring the room for the first time. Actually I’d been consulted and reconsulted on every chip of mother-of-pearl and ivory inlaid in the olive wood wainscoting.
“Even without the braziers, you were right to be proud to show it to your sisters and friends,” I said. “You can be proud of what you’ve done.”
“What we’ve done, Abdullah. I am sensible that I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“In any case, it’s a vast improvement over what we found here on our arrival,” I agreed.
“Oh, yes. Do you remember that first night, Abdullah? ‘A palace built by the great architect Sinan,’ you promised me.”
“Well, it is, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but the plaster wasn’t even dry. And no furnishings at all. That first night we slept on rolled up rugs in the smell of damp and empty echoes.”
“It was an adventure.”
“I’ve been having adventures ever since I met you.”
I turned from her look as from a brazier that had grown too warm. “Progress has been made.”
“And now that Safiye’s gone for the summer...” My lady’s thought lost itself in a sigh.
“You will miss your family and friends, won’t you?”
Esmikhan let out yet another button on her yelek—then fastened it back up again. “But I will have the Quince. The baby, inshallah. And you.”
“Inshallah,” I repeated, more because she always said it than because I believed, “If Allah wills.” And I smiled at, but didn’t provoke, her naive faith. I thought, but didn’t say, how my protecting her ability to say “Inshallah” ‘til death overtook me had very little to do with any will but my own.
IV
And the Quince, too, put little faith in anything outside herself. I knew this because several days previous, I’d helped her to set up a whole
