Текст книги "The Journeyer"

Автор книги: Gary Jennings

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THE GREAT SALT

1

KASHAN was the last city we came to in the habitable green part of Persia; eastward beyond it lay the empty wasteland called the Dasht-e-Kavir, or Great Salt Desert. On the day before we arrived in that city, the slave Nostril said:

“Observe, my masters, the pack camel has begun to limp. I believe he has suffered a stone bruise. Unless it is relieved, that could cause us bad trouble when we get into the desert.”

“You are the camel-puller,” said my uncle. “What is your professional advice?”

“The cure is simple enough, Master Mafio. A few days of rest for the animal. Three days should do it.”

“Very well,” said my father. “We will put up in Kashan, and we can make use of the delay. Replenish our traveling rations. Get our clothes cleaned, and so on.”

During the journey from Baghdad to this point, Nostril had behaved so efficiently and submissively that we had quite forgotten his penchant for devilry. But soon I, at least, had reason to suspect that the slave had deliberately inflicted the camel’s minor injury just to provide himself with a holiday.

Kashan’s foremost industry (and the source of the city’s name) has for centuries been the manufacture of kashi, or what we would call mosaic, those artfully glazed tiles which are used throughout Islam for the decoration of masjid temples, palaces and other fine buildings. The kashi manufacture is done inside enclosed workshops, but Kashan’s second most valuable article of commerce was more immediately visible to us as we rode into the city: its beautiful boys and young men.

While the girls and women to be seen on the streets—as well as could be seen through their chador veils—were of the usual mix, ranging from plain to pretty, with here and there one really worth noticing, allthe young males were of strikingly handsome face and physique and bearing. I do not know why that should have been so. Kashan’s climate and foods and water did not differ from those we had encountered elsewhere in Persia, and I could see nothing extraordinary in those local folk who were of an age to be mothers and fathers. So I have no least idea why their male offspring should have been so superior to the boys and young men of other localities—but they undeniably were.

Of course, being a young male myself, I should have preferred to be riding into Kashan’s counterpart city, Shiraz, reportedly just as full of beautiful females. Nevertheless, even my uncaring eye had to admire what it saw in Kashan. The boys and youths were not dirty or pimply or spotty; they were immaculately clean, with glossy hair, brilliant eyes, clear and almost translucent complexions. They were not sullen of demeanor or slouching of posture; they stood straight and proud, and their gaze was forthright. They were not mumbly and slovenly of speech; they spoke articulately and intelligently. One and all, and of whatever class, they were as comely and attractive as girls—and girls of high birth, well cared for, well brought up and well mannered. The smaller boys were like the exquisite little Cupids drawn by Alexandrian artists. The larger lads were like the angels pictured in the panels of the San Marco Basilica. Though I was honestly impressed, and even a little envious of them, I made no vocal acknowledgment of that. After all, I flattered myself that Iwas no inferior specimen of my sex and age. But my three companions did exclaim.

“Non persiani, ma prezioni,” my uncle said admiringly.

“A precious sight, yes,” said my father.

“Veritable jewels,” said Nostril, casting a leer about.

“Are they all young eunuchs?” asked my uncle. “Or fated to be?”

“Oh, no, Master Maf o,” said Nostril. “They can give as good as they get, if you take my meaning. Far from being impaired in their virile parts, they are improvedin their other nether region. Made more accessible and hospitable, if you take my meaning. Do you comprehend the words fa‘il and mafa’ul? Well, al-fa‘il means ‘the doer’ and al-mafa’ul means ‘the done-to.’ These Kashan boys are bred to be beautiful and trained to be obedient and they are physically, er, modified—so that they perform equally delightfully as fa‘il or mafa’ul.”

“You make them sound far less angelic than they look,” said my father, with distaste. “But the Shah Zaman said it was from Kashan that he procures virgin boys to distribute as gifts to other monarchs.”

“Ah, the virgins, now, they are something else. You will not see the virgin boys on the streets, Master Nicolò. They are kept confined in pardah as strict as that of virgin Princesses. For they are reserved to become the concubines of those Princes and other rich men who maintain not just one anderun but two: one of women and one of boys. Until the virgin lads are ripe for presentation, their parents keep them in perpetual indolence. The boys do nothing but loll about on daiwan cushions, while they are force-fed on boiled chestnuts.”

“Boiled chestnuts! Whatever for?”

“That diet makes their flesh get immensely plump and pale and so soft you can dent it with a fingertip. Boys of that maggot appearance are especially esteemed by the anderun procurers. There is no accounting for taste. I myself prefer a boy who is sinewy and sinuous and athletic in the act, not a sulky lump of suet that—”

“There is evidently lewdness enough here,” my father said. “Spare us yours.”

“As you command, master. I will only remark further that the virgin boys are vastly expensive to buy, and cannot be hired. On the other hand, observe! Even the street urchins here are beautiful. They can be cheaply bought for keeping, or even more cheaply hired for a quick—”

“I said be silent!” snapped my father. “Now, where shall we seek lodging?”

“Is there such a thing as a Jewish karwansarai?” said my uncle. “I should like to eat properly for a change.”

I must explain that remark. During the past weeks, we had found most of the wayside inns run by Muslims, of course, but several of them had been the property of Nestorian Christians. And the degenerate Eastern Church foolishly observes so many fast days and feast days that everyday is one or the other. So in those places we were either piously starved or piously glutted. Also, we were now in the month the Persian Muslims call Ramazan. That word means “the hot month,” but, because the Islamic calendar follows the moon, its Hot Month occurs variously in each year, and can fall in August or January or any other time, and this year it came in late autumn. Whenever it comes, it is the month ordained for Muslims to fast. On each of the thirty days of Ramazan, from that morning hour when there is light enough to distinguish a white thread from a black one, a Muslim cannot partake of food or drink—or sex between man and woman—until the fall of night. Neither can he serve any comestible to his guests, whatever their religion. So in the daytimes we journeyers had not been able to beg even a dipper of well water from any Muslim establishment, while in every one of them, every day after sundown, we were absolutely gorged to stupefaction. For some time, then, we had all been suffering miseries of indigestion, and Uncle Maf o’s suggestion was no expression of idle whim.

I need hardly remark that Jews in the East seldom engage in such an occupation as renting bed and board to passing strangers—any more than they do in the West—no doubt because it is less profitable and more laborious than moneylending and other such forms of usury. However, our slave Nostril was a most resourceful person. After only a little inquiry of passersby, he learned of an elderly Jewish widow whose house adjoined a stable which she no longer used. Nostril led us there, and got himself admitted to audience with the widow, and proved himself to be also a most persuasive envoy. He came out of her house to report that she would let us house our camels in her stable and ourselves in the hayloft above it.

“Furthermore,” he said, as we towed the beasts in there and began to unload them, “since all the household servants are Kashan Persians and therefore bound by the strictures of Ramazan, the Almauna Esther has agreed to prepare and serve you gentlemen your meals with her own hands. So again you will be eating at your accustomed hours, and she assures me she is a good cook. The payment she asks for our stay is also most reasonable.”

My uncle frankly gaped at the slave, and said in awe, “You are a Muslim, the thing most despised by a Jew, and we are Christians, the next-most despised things. If that were not enough to make this Widow Esther spurn us from her door, you must be the most repulsive creature she has ever set eyes on. How in God’s name did you accomplish all this?”

“I am only a Sindi and a slave, master, but I am not ignorant or lacking in initiative. Also I can read and I can observe.”

“I congratulate you. But that does not answer my question or lessen your ugliness.”

Nostril scratched thoughtfully in his meager beard. “Master Mafio, in the holy books of your religion and of mine and of the Almauna Esther’s religion, you will find the word beauty often mentioned, but never the word ugliness, not in any of those scriptures. Perhaps our several gods are not offended by the physical ugliness of mere mortals, and perhaps the Almauna Esther is a godly woman. Anyway, before those holy books were written, we were of one religion—my ancestors, the almauna’s, perhaps yours as well—all were of the old Babylonian religion that is now abhorred as pagan and demonic.”

“Impertinent upstart! How dare you suggest such a thing?” my father demanded.

“The almauna’s name is Esther,” said Nostril, “and there are Christian ladies also of that name, and it derives from the demon goddess Ishtar. The almauna’s late husband, she tells me, was named Mordecai, which name comes from the demon god Marduk. But long before those gods existed in Babylon, there existed Noah and his son Shem, and the almauna and I are Shem’s descendants. Only the later difference of our religions divides us Semites, and that should not have been too severely divisive. Muslims and Jews, we both eschew certain foods, we both seal our sons in the Faith with circumcision, we both believe in heavenly angels and loathe the same adversary, whether he is called Satan or Shaitan. We both revere the holy city of Jerusalem. Perhaps you did not know that the Prophet (may peace and blessing be upon him) originally bade us Muslims bow to Jerusalem, not to Mecca, when we make our devotions. The language originally spoken by the Jews and that spoken by the Prophet (all blessing and peace be his) were not greatly dissimilar, and—”

“And Muslims and Jews alike,” my father said drily, “have tongues hinged in the middle, to wag at both ends. Come, Mafio, Marco. Let us go and pay our own respects to our hostess. Nostril, you finish unloading the animals and then procure feed for them.”

The Widow Esther was a white-haired and sweet-faced little woman, and she greeted us as graciously as if we had not been Christians. She insisted that we sit down and drink what she called her “restorative for travelers,” which turned out to be hot milk flavored with cardamom. The lady prepared it herself, since it was not yet sundown and none of her Muslim servants could do so much as heat the milk or pulverize the seeds.

It seemed that the Jew lady did have, as my father had supposed, a tongue hinged in the middle, for she kept us in conversation for some while. Rather, my father and uncle conversed with her; I looked about me. The house clearly had been a fine one, and richly appointed, but—after the death of its Master Mordecai, I guessed—had got somewhat dilapidated and its furnishings threadbare. There was still a full staff of servants, but I got the impression that they remained not for wages but out of loyalty to their Mistress Esther and, unbeknownst to her, took in washing at the back door, or through some such genteel subterfuge supported themselves and her as well.

Two or three of the servants were as old and unremarkable as the mistress, but three or four others were the supernally handsome Kashan boys and young men. And one servant, I was pleased to note, was a female as pretty as any of the males, a young woman with dark-red hair and a voluptuous body. To pass the time while the Widow Esther prattled on, I made the cascamorto at that maidservant, giving her languishing looks and suggestive winks. And she, when her mistress was not observing, smiled encouragingly back at me.

The next day, while the lame camel rested, and so did the other four, we travelers all went separately out into the city. My father went seeking a kashi workshop, expressing a wish to learn something about the manufacture of those tiles, for he deemed it a useful industry that he might introduce to the artisans of Kithai. Our camel-puller Nostril went out to buy some kind of salve for the camel’s bruised foot, and Uncle Mafio went to get a new supply of the mumum depilatory. As it turned out, none of them found what he sought, because no one in Kashan was working during Ramazan. Having no errands of my own, I simply strolled and observed.

As I was to see in every city from there eastward, the sky over Kashan was constantly awhirl with the big, dark, fork-tailed scavenger kites circling and swooping. As also in every city from there eastward, the other most prevalent bird seemed to spend all its time scavenging on the ground. That was the mynah, which strutted aggressively about with its lower beak puffed out like the pugnacious underjaw of a little man looking for a quarrel. And of course the next most visible denizens of Kashan were the pretty boys at play in the streets. They chanted their ball-bouncing songs and their hide-and-seek songs and their whirling-dance songs, just as Venetian children do, except that these songs were of the cat-screech variety. So was the music played by the street entertainers soliciting bakhshish. They seemed to own no instruments except the changal, which is nothing but a guimbarde or Jew’s harp, and the chimta, which is nothing but iron kitchen tongs, so their music was nothing but a horrid cacophony of twang and clatter. I think the passerby who tossed them a coin or two did so not out of thanks for the entertainment but to interrupt it, however briefly.

I did not wander far that morning, for my stroll brought me around through the streets in a circle, and I soon found myself again approaching the widow’s house. From a window the pretty maidservant beckoned, as if she had been waiting there just to see me pass. She let me into the house, into a room furnished with slightly shabby qali and daiwan pillows, and confided to me that her mistress was occupied elsewhere, and told me that her name was Sitare, which means Star.

We sat down together on a pile of pillows. Being no longer a callow and inexperienced stripling, I did not set upon her with clumsy juvenile avidity. I began with soft words and sweet compliments, and only gradually moved closer until my whispers tickled her dainty ear and made her wriggle and giggle, and only then raised her chador veil and moved my lips to hers and tenderly kissed her.

“That is nice, Mirza Marco,” she said. “But you need not waste time.”

“I count it no waste,” I said. “I enjoy the preliminaries as much as the fulfillment. We can take the whole day if—”

“I mean you need not do anything with me.”

“You are a considerate girl, Sitarè, and kind. But I must tell you that I am not a Muslim. I do not abstain during Ramazan.”

“Oh, your being an infidel does not matter.”

“I rejoice to hear it. Then let us proceed.”

“Very well. Loose your embrace of me and I will fetch him.”

“What?”

“I told you. There is no need to continue in pretense with me. He is already waiting to come in.”

“Who is waiting?”

“My brother Aziz.”

“Why the devil would we want your brother in here with us?”

“Not we. You. I will go away.”

I loosed my hold on her, and sat up and looked at her. “Excuse me, Sitarè,” I said warily, not knowing any better way to ask it than to ask it: “Are you perhaps, er, divanè?” Divanè means crazy.

She looked genuinely puzzled. “I assumed you took notice of our resemblance when you were here last evening. Aziz is the boy who looks like me, and has red hair like mine, but is much prettier. His name means Beloved. Surely that was why you winked and leered at me?”

Now I was the one puzzled. “Even if he were as pretty as a peri, why would I wink at you—except that you were the one I—?”

“I tell you no pretext is necessary. Aziz saw you also, and was also instantly enthralled, and he already is waiting and eager.”

“I do not care if Aziz is eternally adrift in Purgatory!” I cried in exasperation. “Let me put this as plainly as I know how. I am at this moment trying to seduce you into letting me have my way with you.”

“Me? You wish to make zina with me? Not with my brother Aziz?”

I briefly pounded my fists on an unoffending pillow, and then said, “Tell me something, Sitarè. Does every girl in all of Persia misspend her energies in acting as procurer for someone else?”

She thought about that. “All of Persia? I do not know. But here in Kashan, yes, that is often the case. It is the result of established custom. A man sees another man, or a boy, and is smitten with him. But he cannot pay court to him outright, for that is against the law laid down by the Prophet.”

“Peace and blessing be upon him,” I muttered.

“Yes. So the man pays court to the other man’s nearest woman relative. He will even marry her, if necessary. So that then he has excuse to be near his true heart’s desire—the woman’s brother perhaps, or maybe her son if she is a widow, or even her father—and has every opportunity to make zina with him. That way, you see, the proprieties are not openly flouted.”

“Gèsu.”

“That is why I supposed you were paying court to me. But of course, if you do not want my brother, you cannot have me.”

“Whyever not? You seemed pleased to learn that I wanted you and not him.”

“Yes, I am. Both surprised and pleased. That is an unusual preference; a Christian eccentricity, I daresay. But I am a virgin, and I must remain so, for my brother’s sake. You have by now crossed many Muslim lands; surely you have comprehended. That is why a family keeps its maiden daughters and sisters in strict pardah, and jealously guards their virtue. Only if a maiden remains intact or a widow chaste can she hope to make a good marriage. At least, so it is here in Kashan.”

“Well, it is the same where I come from … ,” I had to admit.

“Yes, I shall seek to make a good marriage to a good man who will be a good provider and a good lover to us both, for my brother Aziz is all the family I have.”

“Wait a moment,” I said, scandalized. “A Venetian female’s chastity is often an item of barter, yes, and often traded for a good marriage, yes. But only for the commercial or social advancement of her whole family. Do you mean the women here willingly endorse and connive in the lust of one man for another? You would deliberately become the wife of a man just so you could share him with your brother?”

“Oh, not just any man who comes along,” she said airily. “You should feel flattered that both Aziz and I found you to our liking.”

“Gèsu.”

“To couple with Aziz commits you to nothing, you see, since a male has no sangar membrane. But if you wish to be the breaker of mine, you must wed me and take us both.”

“Gèsu.” I got up from the daiwan.

“You are going? Then you do not want me? But what of Aziz? You will not have him even once?”

“I think not, thank you, Sitarè.” I slouched toward the door. “I simply was ignorant of local custom.”

“He will be desolated. Especially if I have to tell him it was me you desired.”

“Then do not,” I mumbled. “Just tell him I was ignorant of local custom.” And I went on out the door.

2

BETWEEN the house and the stable was a little garden plot planted with kitchen herbs, and the Widow Esther was out there. She was wearing only one slipper, her other foot was bare, and she had the removed slipper in her hand, beating with it at the ground. Curious, I approached her, and saw that she was pounding at a large black scorpion. When it was pulped, she moved on and turned over a rock; another scorpion sluggishly crawled into view and she squashed that one, too.

“Only way to get the nasty things,” she said to me. “They do their prowling at night, when they are impossible to see. You have to turn them up in daylight. This city is infested with them. I do not know why. My late dear husband Mordecai (alav ha-sholom) used to grumble that the Lord erred miserably in sending mere locusts upon Egypt, when He could have sent these venomous Kashan scorpions.”

“Your husband must have been a brave man, Mirza Esther, to criticize the Lord God Himself.”

She laughed. “Read your scriptures, young man. The Jews have been giving censure and advice to God ever since Abraham. You can read in the Book of Genesis how Abraham first argued with the Lord and then proceeded to haggle Him into a bargain. My Mordecai was no less hesitant to cavil at God’s doings.”

I said, “I once had a friend—a Jew named Mordecai.”

“A Jew was your friend?” She sounded skeptical, but I could not tell whether she doubted that a Christian would befriend a Jew, or a Jew a Christian.

“Well,” I said, “he was a Jew when I first met him, when he called himself Mordecai. But I seem to keep on meeting him under other names or in other guises. I even saw him once in one of my dreams.”

And I told her of those various encounters and manifestations, each of them evidently intended to impress upon me “the bloodthirstiness of beauty.” The widow stared at me as I talked, and her eyes widened, and when I was done she said:

“Bar mazel, and you a gentile! Whatever he is trying to tell you, I suggest that you take it to heart. Do you know who that is you keep meeting? That must be one of the Lamed-vav. The thirty-six.”

“The thirty-six what?”

“Tzaddikim. Let me see—saints, I suppose a Christian would call them. It is an old Jewish belief. That there are always in the world just thirty-six men of perfect righteousness. No one ever knows who they are, and they themselves do not realize they are tzaddikim—or else, you see, that self-consciousness would impair their perfection. But they go constantly about the world, doing good deeds, for no reward or recognition. Some say the tzaddikim never die. Others say that whenever one tzaddik dies, another good man is appointed by God to that office, without his knowing he has been so honored. Still others say that there is really only one tzaddik, who can be in thirty-six places simultaneously, if he chooses. But all who believe in the legend agree that God will end this world if ever the Lamed-vav should cease doing their good works. I must say, though, that I never heard of one of them extending his good offices to a gentile.”

I said, “The one I met in Baghdad may not even have been a Jew. He was a fardarbab tomorrow-teller. He could have been an Arab.”

She shrugged. “The Arabs have an identical legend. They call the righteous man an abdal. The true identity of each of them is known only to Allah, and it is only on their account that Allah lets the world go on existing. I do not know if the Arabs borrowed the legend of our Lamed-vav, or if it is a belief which they and we have shared ever since the long-ago time when we were mutually the children of Shem. But whichever yours is, young man—an abdal bestowing his favor on an infidel or a tzaddik on a gentile—you are highly favored and you should pay heed.”

I said, “They seem never to speak to me of anything but beauty and bloodthirstiness. I already seek the one and shun the other, insofar as I can. I hardly need further counsel in either of those respects.”

“Those sound to me like the two sides of a single coin,” said the widow, as she slapped with her slipper at another scorpion. “If there is danger in beauty, is there not also beauty in danger? Or why else does a man so gladly go a-journeying?”

“Me? Oh, I journey just out of curiosity, Mirza Esther.”

“Justcuriosity! Listen to him! Young man, do not ever deprecate the passion called curiosity. Where would danger be without it, or beauty either?”

I failed to see much connection among the three things, and again began to wonder if I was talking to someone slightly divanè. I knew that old people could sometimes get wonderfully disjointed in their conversations, and so this one seemed when she said next:

“Shall I tell you the saddest words I ever heard?”

In the manner of all old people, she did not wait for me to say yes or no, but went right on:

“They were the last words spoken by my husband Mordecai (alav ha-sholom). It was when he lay dying. The darshan was in attendance, and other members of our little congregation, and of course I was there, weeping and trying to weep with quiet dignity. Mordecai had made all his farewells, and he had said the Shema Yisrael, and he was composed for death. His eyes were closed, his hands folded, and we all thought he was peacefully slipping away. But then, without opening his eyes or addressing anybody in particular, he spoke again, quite clearly and distinctly. And what he said was this …”

The widow pantomimed the deathbed occasion. She closed her eyes and crossed her hands on her bosom, one of them still holding her dirty slipper, and she leaned her head back a little, and she said in a sepulchral voice, “I always wanted to go there … and do that … but I never did.”

Then she stayed in that pose; evidently I was expected to say something. I repeated the dying man’s words, “I always wanted to go there … and do that …” and I asked, “What did he mean? Go where? Do what?”

The widow opened her eyes and shook her slipper at me. “That was what the darshan said, after we had waited for some moments to hear more. He leaned over the bed and said, ‘Go to what place, Mordecai? To do what thing?’ But Mordecai said no more. He was dead.”

I made the only comment I could think to make. “I am sorry, Mirza Esther.”

“So am I. But so was he. Here was a man in the very last flicker of his life, lamenting something that had once piqued his curiosity, but he had neglected to go and see it or do it or have it—and now he never could.”

“Was Mordecai a journeyer?”

“No. He was a cloth merchant, and a very successful one. He never traveled farther from here than to Baghdad and Basra. But who knows what he would have liked to be and do?”

“You think he died unhappy, then?”

“Unfulfilled, at least. I do not know what it was he spoke of, but oh! how I wish he had gone there while he was alive, wherever it was, and done whatever it was.”

I tried tactfully to suggest that it could not matter to him now.

She said firmly, “It mattered to him when it mattered most. When he knew the chance was gone forever.”

Hoping to make her feel better, I said, “But if he had seized the chance, you might be sorrier now. It may have been something—something less than approvable. I have noticed that sinful temptations abound in these lands. In all lands, I suppose. I myself once had to confess to a priest for having too freely followed where my curiosity led me, and—”

“Confess it, if you must, but do not ever abjure it or ignore it. That is what I am trying to tell you. If a man is to have a fault, it should be a passionate one, like insatiable curiosity. It would be a pity to be damned for something paltry.”

“I hope not to be damned, Mirza Esther,” I said piously, “as I trust the Mirza Mordecai was not. It may well have been out of virtue that he let that chance go by, whatever it was. Since you cannot know, you need not weep for—”

“I am not weeping. I did not broach the matter to sniffle over it.”

I wondered why, then, she had bothered to broach it. And, as if in reply to my silent question, she went on:

“I wanted you to know this. When you come at last to die, you may be devoid of all other urges and senses and faculties, but you will still possess your passion of curiosity. It is something that even cloth merchants have, perhaps even clerks and other such drudges. Certainly a journeyer has it. And in those last moments it will make you grieve—as Mordecai did—not for anything you have done in your lifetime, but for the things you never got to do.”

“Mirza Esther,” I protested. “A man cannot live always in dread of missing something. I fully expect never to be Pope, for instance, or Shah of Persia, but I hope that lack will not blight my life. Or my deathbed either.”

“I do not mean things unattainable. Mordecai died lamenting something that had been within his reach, within his capability, within his having, and he let it go by. Imagine yourself pining for the sights and delights and experiences you could have had, but missed—or even just one single small such experience—and pining too late, when it is forever unattainable.”

Obediently, I did try to imagine that. And young though I was, remote though I assumed that prospect to be, I felt a faint chill.

“Imagine going into death,” she went on implacably, “without having tasted everything in this world. The good, the bad, the indifferent even. And to know, at that final moment, that it was no one but you who deprived yourself, through your own careful caution or careless choice or failure to follow where your curiosity led. Tell me, young man, could there be any more hurtful pang on the other side of death? Even damnation itself?”

After the moment it took me to shake off the chill, I said, as cheerfully as I could, “Well, with the help of those thirty-six you spoke of, maybe I can avoid both deprivation in my lifetime and damnation after it.”

“Aleichem sholem,” she said. But, as she was swatting with her slipper at another scorpion at that moment, I was not sure if she was wishing peace to me or to it.

She moved on down the garden, turning over rocks, and I idly ambled into the stable to see if any of our party had returned from wandering about town. One of them had, but not alone, and the sight brought me up short, with a gasp.