“And to think I left you on your own with my harem all those years—what was it? Four or more?” He laughed, then sobered. “Well, it’s easy to see my confidence could not have been better placed. All these years, you have served me well. I hope I may count on you to look out for my interests in years to come.”
He had dropped his hand, but now, as I gave some clumsy words of promise to do my best, it returned. His hand seemed to have become some tender creature, a dove or petal-like butterfly. It landed on my shoulder and, though I grew stiff with its presence, I did not dare to shrug it off for fear I might do it harm.
“When I was a boy,” Sokolli Pasha said, “growing up in the Enclosed School, I learned to find release in the love of men rather than the love of women. It took less time than climbing harem walls, caused less trouble, and although I may be biased in this, was less nerve-wracking while being more satisfying.
“I was steeling myself to change all that and marry Selim’s daughter—she was my first and is still my only woman—when I saw you. I saw you there in the courtyard. And suddenly, I was excited about being married. Many a time I came to the harem—to her, yes, but mostly to see you. I didn’t notice there was a lack of eunuchs in my household because you seemed more than enough for my needs...”
As he spoke, I became aware of a very strange sensation. In my parts I’d thought dead and gone for so many years, I felt a strange stirring. I had strolled through the bathhouses full of naked women and felt nothing. But no one had suggested the possibility of my enjoying the throes of love before—before this.
That was just my first reaction. It was the reverse of the old proverb: the flesh, indeed, was willing, but the spirit was weak. Twenty years among the Turks where such things were natural could not overcome my earlier years where the thought had turned my stomach rotten. Stammering, I tried to explain the dilemma to him.
“I know,” he stopped my self-torment with a word. “I have known you could not feel as I do ever since I learned about—about my wife and the other man. You took her part against mine, even in such a case. I have known since then you could not love me. And perhaps that hurt more than being a cuckold. Still, I will not force you—I will not even ask you, if you cannot. My dreams are happier this way.”
The force of his passion brought me, helpless, to my knees before him. I bowed before the greatness of his soul, all it bore, and the vast-ness of the lonely abyss through which he carried it. Even at this hour, when every friend in the world had been taken from him, he was a gentleman still, and perfect in honor. I bent over his hands and kissed them for their honor.
I performed this obeisance against my will, and as soon as rationality caught up with me, I panicked: Now he thinks I have capitulated and will submit to his caresses. Even as this thought formed, one of his hands stirred to touch me ever-so-slightly on the cheek.
I raised my head with a jerk as much to escape that touch as to look with fear into his face. There I saw tears, fresher and more copious than he had shed when his daughter left him. But I also saw, through them, that he was resigned to my departure, too. I was free to go.
I managed one final, deep salaam to his greatness at the door, then I fled, like a woman, to the safety of the harem.
XLVI
My earlier plans to go at once to Gul Ruh and promise her I’d thwart her marriage moved me only in fits and starts. I did look in her room and found it dark. I took a tour of all the usual places, although my mind was so occupied I sometimes forgot why I was there.
I even tried the shutters on the windows over the roof. One where the nail had worked loose I opened, not so much with anger at the shoddy workmanship but with gratitude. It gave me a chance to look out over the tiles, slick with an icing of night rain, to clear my head with the cool, dark air. Had there been signs of Gul Ruh going out there, I certainly wasn’t so distracted I wouldn’t have panicked for her safety. She was no longer the little monkey she had been even one year before. Her limbs were now long and, though graceful while walking and dancing, she would be ungainly on all fours. And on those slippery tiles!
But there were no signs, and the panic that overcame me then was for myself instead. My future in this house stretched out below in a treacherous, endless abyss as deep and friendless as my master’s loneliness. How long I sat on the dark stairs down from the roof and brooded over this I could not say. At last, some noise below (like someone approaching, but it was not) brought my thoughts into cohesion and myself to my feet and to the matter at hand.
My path to the next place I’d thought to look for Gul Ruh took me past her room again. It was still dark as before, but some sense of presence drew me in this time. As my eyes were more used to the dark by now, I was soon able to make out figures on the floor, then the slow and gentle breathing of
