Balthasar's Odyssey (29 page)

A Starless Sky

Genoa, 3 April 1666

Almost every day for five months I recorded the events of my journey, and now I don't possess the slightest trace of what I wrote. One notebook is still at Barinelli's place in Constantinople, and the other is in the monastery in Chios — I left it in my room there at daybreak, still open at the last page for the ink to dry. I intended to go back to it before the evening to set down what happened in the course of that crucial day. But I never did get back to it.

Alas, the day turned out to be even more decisive than I expected, and in a way quite different to what I'd hoped. I'm now separated from all the people I love, away from all my family, and ill. But thank God, though Fortune abandoned me with one hand she picked me up again with the other.

I may be stripped of everything, but if I'm naked it's in the way a newborn infant is naked on its mother's bosom. For I'm reunited with my mother-land, my mother-shore, my mother-city.

Genoa.

Every day since I got here I've meant to start writing again, to tell the story of my journey and to describe my feelings, which alternate all the time between despondency and optimism. If I haven't written anything before today it's mainly because of having lost my notebooks. I know my words are bound to end up in oblivion. Our whole existence borders on oblivion. But we need at least a semblance, an illusion of permanence if we are to do anything at all. How can I fill these pages, how can I go on searching for the right words to describe events and emotions, if I can't come back in ten or twenty years to revisit my past? And yet I still am writing, and shall go on doing so. Perhaps the honour of mortals resides in their inconsistency.

But to get back to my story. That morning in Chios, after a night of waiting, I resolved to go and find Marta at all costs. As I write that, I feel as if I'm talking of a previous life: since the woman I love went away, I've drifted into a kind of tainted after-life. Her pregnancy must have developed, I suppose, but I wonder if I shall ever see the child that will be born of my seed. But I must stop complaining and pull myself together. I want the words I write to cure my melancholy, not make it worse, so that I can tell my tale calmly, as I've vowed I would.

Well then, after dozing for less than an hour in the guest-house run by the monks in Katarraktis, I woke with a start and decided to go to Marta's husband's place. Hateb saw it was no use arguing with me, so he came too.

A guard opened the door when I knocked — a huge fellow with a shaven head but a bushy beard and moustache, who asked us what we wanted without letting us in. He spoke to us in a kind of pirate's Greek, without any of the usual politenesses, unsmiling, and fingering the handle of a curved dagger. A few paces behind him stood two other characters cast in the same mould, not so tall as he but with equally fierce expressions. I thundered at them in no uncertain manner, while Hatem remained cool in the background. Then with, in my opinion, more smiling and bowing and scraping than such louts deserved, he explained that we were from Gibelet, in their master's native country, and that he would no doubt be glad to know we were visiting his island.

“He's not here!” growled the one who'd opened the door, getting ready to shut it again. But Hatem persisted.

“If he's away, perhaps we could pay our respects to his wife, who's a relation of ours —” he began.

“His wife doesn't see anyone when he's not here!”

And this time the door slammed shut. We just had time to jump out of the way.

Brutish behaviour, but in the eyes of the law it was I, the respectable merchant, who was in a false position, and the guard and his henchmen who were acting within their rights. Marta married this man, and as he hadn't been obliging enough to make her a widow, she was still his wife. I had no right to take her away from him, nor even to see her again if he didn't want me to. I should never have let her go and put herself in his power. But I still felt guilty however often I told myself she was only doing as she wished, and there was nothing I could say to stop her. Even if I had made an error of judgement, though, and did feel I had to expiate it, that didn't mean I was resigned. I was prepared to pay for my mistake, but the price must be a reasonable one! There was never any question of abandoning Marta to that scoundrel's tender mercies for ever. I'd got her into this trouble, and I must find a way to get her out of it.

But how? With my thinking blurred by an almost sleepless night, I could see only one chink in my enemy's armour: his second marriage. That had been my first idea. Scare Sayyaf with the threat that his rich and influential father-in-law might learn the truth, and so force him to come to terms.

I could spend whole pages describing all the possible solutions I dreamed up, only to conclude that nothing would work. But I'm still too weak, and I'm afraid of depressing myself again.

As we approached the monastery guest-house after our brief expedition, we caught sight in the distance of Drago's green shirt. He seemed to be waiting for us, hidden in the shadow of a wall. But when Hatem beckoned him over, he turned round and took to his heels. We were so surprised we made no attempt to follow him. We'd never have found him in the maze of village streets, anyway.

Suddenly everything became clear to me. There'd never been any second wife or influential father-in-law; Marta's husband had been manipulating us all the time. As soon as he found out we were looking for him he'd sent Drago, one of his followers, to bait the hook, lulling our suspicions by hinting at the possibility of an arrangement that would suit our purposes perfectly. So I'd let Marta go to see him, believing it wouldn't take her too long to get him to agree to her claiming that their marriage was never consummated, and asking for it to be annulled.

When he heard about this, one of the monks in the guest-house, to whom we'd said nothing before so that our plans shouldn't leak out, roared with laughter. It was public knowledge that his neighbour from Gibelet lived with a trollop he'd picked up in some port in Candia. No resemblance whatever to any daughter of a local worthy in Chios.

Now what could I do? I remember spending the rest of that cursed day and part of the night not moving or eating, pretending to cudgel my Genoese merchant's brain for some supreme challenge to misfortune, while all I was really doing was mope and torture myself with self-reproach.

At one point, towards dusk, my clerk came to me and said in a voice at once apologetic and firm that it was time I faced the facts. There was nothing more to be done. Any fresh move would only make Marta's situation and our own more awkward and dangerous still.

“Hatem,” I said, not even looking up, “have I ever beaten you?”

“My master has always been too kind!”

“Well, if you dare advise me just one more time to go away and leave Marta to her fate, I'll give you such a beating you'll forget I was ever kind!”

“In that case my master had better beat me here and now, for until he stops defying Providence I shan't stop trying to caution him.”

“Get out of my sight!”

Anger sometimes acts as midwife to ideas. While I was huffing and puffing at Hatem and trying to silence him, a spark was suddenly kindled in my mind. Before long it would confirm my clerk's worst prophecies, but at the time it struck me as very ingenious.

My plan was to go and see the commanding officer of the janissaries and tell him I was worried about certain matters. Sayyaf's wife was my cousin, I'd say, and I'd heard rumours that he'd strangled her. I know that was piling it on a bit, but murder was the only thing that would make the authorities intervene. And my fears weren't feigned, either. I really was afraid Marta might have come to some harm. Otherwise, why weren't we allowed to enter the house?

The officer listened to my explanations, which were all the more convoluted for being expressed in a mixture of bad Greek and bad Turkish, with a few words of Italian and Arabic thrown in. When I mentioned murder he asked if it was only a rumour or if I was sure of what I alleged. I said I wouldn't have come and disturbed him unless I was sure. Then he asked if I'd be ready to stake my head on it. That scared me, of course. But I was determined to carry the thing through. So instead of answering his dangerous question, I opened my purse, took out three hefty coins, and put them down on the table in front of him. He pocketed them with a practised hand, put on his plumed hat, and ordered two of his men to accompany him.

“May I come too?” I asked.

I'd hesitated before asking. On the one hand I didn't want to show Sayyaf how interested I was in what might happen to his wife, lest he find out what already had happened between her and me. But on the other hand the officer didn't know Marta, and they could have shown him any woman and told him that it was her and that she was perfectly well. And Marta wouldn't dare say anything if I wasn't there.

“I oughtn't to take you with me,” said the officer. “It might get me into trouble.”

He hadn't said no. And he was smiling meaningly, and eyeing the spot on the table where I'd put the crucial coins. I undid my purse-strings again, and passed the additional present straight into his hand. His men, looking on, seemed neither surprised nor perturbed.

The squad — three soldiers and me — set off. On the way, I saw Hatem making signs at me from behind a wall, but I pretended I hadn't noticed him. As we passed the guest-house I thought I saw a couple of the monks, together with their elderly maidservant, standing at one of the windows and apparently enjoying the show.

We had no trouble entering Sayyaf's house. The officer hammered on the door and shouted an order. The bald giant opened the door and stood aside silently to let him in. After a moment Sayyaf rushed up, all smiles and as anxious to please as if his dearest friends were paying him an unexpected visit. Instead of asking why we'd come, he lavished words of welcome on us — first on the Turk and then on me. He said he was delighted to see me again and called me friend and cousin and brother, showing nothing of any anger he might feel towards me.

Since I'd last seen him, in Gibelet, he'd put on weight without acquiring dignity. He was a now a gross bewhiskered pig in Turkish slippers — I'd never have recognised, beneath his greasy fat, his ample robes and his gold jewellery, the barefoot urchin who used to roam the streets in Gibelet.

Partly out of politeness and partly to carry off my role satisfactorily, I pretended to enjoy the reunion, submitting to his embraces and even ostentatiously reciprocating his cousinly greetings. This allowed me, as soon as we were installed in the sitting room, to ask for news of “our cousin and his wife, Marta khanum”. I'd made the effort to speak in Turkish so that the officer would understand our conversation. Sayyaf answered that she was well despite the fatigues of the journey — explaining to the Turk that as a devoted wife she'd crossed seas and mountains to be with the husband on whom Heaven had bestowed her.

“I hope she's not too tired,” said I, “to come and say hallo to her cousin.”

The husband looked embarrassed, and I could see in his eyes that he'd done something wrong. This impression was confirmed when he said, “If she feels better now, she'll get up and come to see you — yesterday evening she couldn't hold up her head.”

I was so furious, anxious and desperate that I leapt up, ready to seize the wretch by the throat. Only the sight of the official, the representative of law and order, held me back. But if it restrained my actions it didn't moderate my words: I told Sayyaf and his crew just what I thought of them. I called the fellow himself all the names he deserved: lout, criminal, brigand, pirate, highwayman, cut-purse, cut-throat, runaway husband unworthy to dust the shoes of the woman who'd entrusted herself to him. And I hoped he'd die impaled.

He let me have my say, without answering or protesting his innocence. But while I was working myself up I saw him sign to one of his henchmen, who then disappeared. At the time I paid no attention and went on even more loudly with my diatribe, mixing up the various languages and eventually getting so heated that the officer lost patience and told me to stop. He waited for me to obey and sit down again, then said to Sayyaf:

“Where is your wife? I want to see her. Call her!”

“Here she is,” replied the other.

And Marta made her entrance, followed by the man who'd just left the room. It was then that I realised that her husband had tricked me yet again. He hadn't wanted her to appear until it suited
him —
that is, after I'd made a fool of myself and given myself away.

Of all the mistakes I've made, that's the one I still regret the most today; I think I'll rue it for the rest of my life. To tell the truth, I don't really know how far I gave myself away — myself, her, our love and our relationship. I don't remember all I may have said in my wrath. I was sure that this villain had killed her, everything about his behaviour seemed to prove it, and I no longer even heard the words streaming out of my mouth. He on the other hand listened to them calmly and haughtily, like a judge listening to the confessions of an adulteress.

Forgive me, Marta, for all the harm I've done you! I'll never forgive myself. I can see you now, your eyes lowered, not daring to look either at your husband or at the man who'd been your lover. Penitent, distant, resigned, sacrificed. No longer thinking, I imagine, of the child you are carrying, just wishing this masquerade would end and your husband would take you back into his bed as soon as possible so that in a few months' time you can persuade him the child is his. I'll have been in your life for only one fatal moment, a moment of illusion and deceit and shame, but by God, woman, I loved you and I shall go on loving you until my dying day. And I'll find no peace in this world or the next until I've atoned for the sins I've committed. At the time, in that house, that trap I'd gone to as a dispenser of justice only to find I was a culprit myself, I'd have liked to take back what I'd said somehow, so that you, Marta, wouldn't have to pay for my ranting. But I didn't say any more. I was afraid that if I tried to vindicate you I'd only make matters worse. So I stood up and tottered out like an automaton, without saying a word to you, without a farewell glance.