Time had been when such feelings had made me stumble in the dance when I took our sheikh’s hand, too. Our present sheikh had once been called Andrea Barbarigo and had pulled down a nobleman’s mask to stare at me with scorn.
In both cases I recovered my steps, however, by the power and mercy of God. Murad and I became no longer sovereign and subject nor rivals for a mundane affection that had limits and conditions. Our feet moved as one, our hands melded. We were equals, partners, at peace before the One.
Later I overheard this conversation:
“And what made you a Seeker, Brother?”
“Another search, a profane search, was consuming all my life away. It brought me eventually to this Search, the Good Search, the Search which is the archetype of all others.”
“Yes. It is even so with me.”
The two speakers were none other than the Sultan and Andrea Barbarigo, talking together as if they were no more than two strangers in beggars’ clothes, meeting one another for the first time on some deserted back road. Before the night was over, even I forgot to have that little ache in the back of my neck, that knot of tension that reminded me the Caliph of all the Faithful and my particular master was present. I did not think of it nor wonder again until the midst of the next day’s fast when the weight of material creation was heavy upon me.
* * *
Muslim, formerly Andrea Barbarigo, was the last to leave the tekke that night. He had stayed long hours listening to the sheikh expound on the mysteries. Others grumbled that the old man just liked to hear himself talk. But Andrea stayed. It was true: He never did get to express himself. But here was someone who cared if he came or went.
He should have accepted the invitation to stay overnight, he chided himself. What was at home? A tiny room in the corner of a poor shopkeeper’s home. The shopkeeper’s colicky kids at night, shrewish wife by day...
He entered the empty street with dread, but that dread suddenly exploded into a terror. A huge figure came upon him out of the deep shadows like a blow to the head. He thought for an instant that he was going to die. Another instant would have resigned him to the fact.
But then he recognized the figure. Not that it was any less frightening then: the huge, tortured figure of Sofia Baffo’s head eunuch. By Allah, it had been years since he’d seen the creature!
A salaam. Stiff. But maybe it was only from waiting in the cold. Then no word, but one fur-cuffed arm motioned for him to follow.
“I have business, khadim—”Andrea began, then stopped himself.
Idiocy! Ghazanfer could break his neck right there in a moment if he wanted to. Best do as he asks.
Around a corner, down a blind alley. Then Andrea stopped short. So would any other Muslim have done, finding himself confronted by a woman’s sedan chair. Still the eunuch waved him on. He took one tentative step toward the vehicle and jumped when a ghost-white hand appeared from the deep shadows, sliding the grille to one side.
“Hello, Andrea.”
It was Italian. But of course he had guessed it would be. Knotted around that hand and its wrist—creepers around a ruin of old Roman statuary—was the chain of his mother’s mosaic locket.
“Do you sometimes find it hard to sleep, Andrea?” the voice asked.
Andrea was still having difficulty imagining the sedan as holding a live person. It was like a jewelry box and now he found it had some wonderful mechanism that could make it talk. No more.
But she took his silence as an affirmative. “I do, too.
“Perhaps,” the voice said then. “Perhaps we can help one another.”
The grille slid shut, the hand disappeared. Bearers were called from their huddle at the end of the alley. He was not quite sure how, but Andrea knew he had been given orders to follow. He did, up one street and down another and finally in through a courtyard door to a place he’d never been before, nor did he think he could find it again. There was a strangely familiar smell, however. Fish, was it?
* * *
Dawn hung in the sky like panels of mother-of-pearl. Andrea found himself in the street again and he stopped short. Had he dreamed it all then? A night vision sent by the Evil One to make him think he had come to the end of the Search? No, there was that smell again. It was too real. He also remembered now where he had smelled it before. In the brothel where he’d gotten the welt on his face so long ago.
Thoughtfully fingering the scar a well-tended beard usually covered, Andrea turned around to look back at the door. But he found the great monster of a eunuch standing there, dour as ever. He turned at once to leave, but just to show he was not too terribly intimidated by this symbol of Muslim virtue, he began to whistle. It was an old Italian song. He and Sofia had sung it together, quite astounding one another with how well they remembered the words after all those years. It was called “Come to the Budding Grove, My Love.”
* * *
Ghazanfer watched the man go. He thought: He thinks I am angry. Well, what has he given my mistress this night, after all? He thinks it is himself. It always does that. Inflates one’s self-worth when most one should be humbled, at least before the majesty of Allah. No, fellow. Whistle on your way. It’s not you. You are but a minor character. This—this is between me. Me and her.
LXV
We should thank Allah that in his last days Sultan Murad found comfort in the art that seeks not praise in
