Balthasar's Odyssey (30 page)

As I was going back to the monastery, I caught a distant glimpse of the minaret in the Turkish quarter, and had a fleeting impulse to go there, rush up the stairs to the top, and jump off. But you don't kill yourself on a fleeting impulse. I'm neither a soldier nor a murderer, and I've never got used to the idea of death. I've never had that kind of courage. I'm afraid. Afraid of the unknown, afraid of being afraid when I'm about to jump, afraid of the pain when my head hits the ground and my bones break. And I wouldn't have wanted my family to be humiliated while Sayyaf was celebrating, drinking, dancing and making Marta clap in time to the music.

No, I shan't kill myself, I muttered. My life's not over yet. But my journey is.
The Hundredth Name
is lost and so is Marta. I've no longer any reason, nor have I the strength, to go on roving round the world. I'll go and pick up my nephews in Smyrna and then go straight home to Gibelet and wait there patiently, in my dear old curiosity shop, for this cursed year to end.

I told my clerk, who'd come out of the guest-house to meet me, of my intentions, and asked him to be ready to leave before the end of the day. We'd spend the night in Chios town and set sail for Smyrna tomorrow. There, after saying goodbye to Maïmoun, pastor Coenen and a few others, we'd embark on the first ship leaving for Tripoli.

Hatem ought to have been delighted, instead of which he looked absolutely terrified. I didn't have time to ask why.

“Hey, you, the Genoese!” a voice cried out behind me.

Turning round, I saw the officer and his men. He beckoned me over. I went.

“Down on your knees!” he yelled.

There? In the middle of the street? With all those people already gathering behind walls and tree-trunks and in windows so as not to miss the show?

“You've made me lose face, you dog of a Genoese, and now it's my turn to humiliate you! You lied to me, and made use of me and my men!”

“I believed every word I said to you, I swear!”

“Silence! You and your like think you can do anything you please and get away with it, because at the last minute your consul will come and save you. Well, not this time! No consul in the world is going to save you from me! When will you people realise this island doesn't belong to you any more? It belongs, now and for ever, to the Sultan Padishah, our master. Take off your shoes, sling them over your shoulders, and follow me!”

The road was lined with sniggering beggars and loafers. Our wretched procession set off in a circus atmosphere that seemed to entertain everyone including the janissaries, though not Hatem. Quips, ululations, more laughter. I tried to console myself by thinking I was lucky all this wasn't taking place in the streets of Gibelet: no one here knew me, and I'd never have to meet the eyes of somebody who'd seen me being humiliated in this way.

When we reached the janissaries' headquarters my hands were tied behind my back and I was put into a sort of shallow pit hollowed out in the floor. It was so small I couldn't have moved even if they hadn't tied me up.

After an hour or two I was sent for, my hands were untied, and I was taken before the officer. He seemed to have calmed down by now, though he was still pleased at the trick he'd played on me. He lost no time in hinting that we might strike a bargain.

“I'm not sure what I ought to do with you,” he said. “I should really have you charged with false accusation of murder. That would mean flogging, prison, and even worse if we add adultery.”

He paused, and I was silent too. My protestations of innocence wouldn't have convinced anyone, even my own sister. I
was
guilty of false accusation of murder, and of adultery. But the officer had said he hadn't yet made up his mind what to do with me. I waited for him to go on.

“I
could
have pity on you, turn a blind eye to all you've done, and just deport you to your own country...”

“I'd be very grateful.”

I really meant I was prepared to do a deal. The officer was venal, but I needed to behave as if I myself were the goods for which the price had to be assessed. I won't deny that I felt better when things reached this stage. Confronted with the law, whether of men or of Heaven, I was helpless. But when it came to fixing a price I had words and to spare. God had made me wealthy in a land of injustice: if I made the powerful envious, I also had the wherewithal to satisfy their greed.

We agreed on a price, though I'm not sure “agreed” is the word. In fact, the officer asked me to put my purse on the table. I did so without demur, and held out my hand as merchants usually do when they want to seal a bargain. He hesitated for a moment, then shook my hand, wearing a lofty smile. Immediately afterwards he left the room, and his men came in, tied me up again, and took me back to my cell.

It was daybreak, though I hadn't slept, when they came and blindfolded me, wrapped me up in a sort of canvas shroud, loaded me into a wheelbarrow, and pushed it and me along what felt like steep paths to a place where they unceremoniously tipped me out on to the ground. I guessed I must be on the beach because the ground was soft and I could hear the sound of waves. Then I was hoisted on to a man's back and put on a boat, as if I were a bale or a trunk.

Genoa, 4 April

I'm preparing to take up the thread of my story again, sitting on the terrace of a friendly house, breathing in the scents of spring, lending an ear to the gentle noises of the city, and to the honeyed tongue that is the language of my heart. And yet in the midst of this paradise I weep when I think of her, far away, a prisoner, heavy with child, guilty of having wanted to be free and of having loved me.

It wasn't until some time after I was on board the ship that I found out where I was going. I'd been laid down deep in the hold, and the captain had been ordered to keep me blindfolded until the coast of Chios was out of sight. He obeyed his orders to the letter, or almost, for when he allowed me up on deck you could still make out the tops of the mountains. Some sailors even pointed out to me the outline of a castle in the distance, saying it was called Polienou or Apolienou. Anyhow, we were a long way away from Katarraktis, and heading west.

Strangely enough, the way in which the authorities had deported me won me the sympathy of the captain, a Calabrian of about sixty with long white hair, whose name was Domenico. He was as thin as a stray dog and always swearing (“By my ancestors!”) or threatening to hang his crew or throw them to the fishes. But he took such a fancy to me that he told me about his misdeeds.

His ship — a brigantine — is called the
Charybdis.
He'd put in at Katarraktis, where the creek is used mainly by fishing boats, because he's engaged in a highly lucrative form of smuggling. I guessed straight away that what was involved was mastic: Chios is the only place in the world where it's produced, and the Turkish authorities allow it to be used only in the Sultan's harem, where it's fashionable for the noble ladies to chew it from morn till night to whiten their teeth and perfume their breath. The farmers on the island who grow the precious tree
(Pistacia lentiscus)
, which is very like the pistachio tree we have in Aleppo, have to hand the mastic over to the authorities for a fixed price, but those who produce a surplus try to sell it on their own account, though if they're found out they may spend a long time in prison or in the galleys or even be put to death. Despite this, the desire for profit has led to a flourishing contraband trade, in which customs officers and other representatives of the law often dabble.

Captain Domenico boasted to me that that he was the wiliest and boldest of all the smugglers. In the course of the last ten years, he said, he'd been to Chios no fewer than thirty times to take on the forbidden cargo, and never once been caught. He told me plainly that he rewarded the janissaries generously for looking the other way, which didn't surprise me after the way they'd deported me.

For the Calabrian, to defy the Sultan in his own territory and deprive him of the dainties intended for his favourites was not only a source of income but also an act of bravura, almost a sacred duty. In the course of our long evenings at sea he regaled me with detailed accounts of all his adventures, especially those during which he had almost been caught — these made him laugh more than the others. As he spoke he took sips of brandy to help him remember how frightened he'd been. I was amused by the way he drank: straight out of a skin flask that he kept within arm's reach, first holding it poised high in the air with his mouth clamped to the opening, like someone about to play the oboe.

Sometimes, as when he spoke of the countless tricks the farmers got up to evade the Ottoman laws, he taught me something I didn't know before. At other times he told me nothing I didn't know already. I forget if I mentioned earlier that our family, before going back to Gibelet, had settled in Chios and gone in for the mastic trade. All that ended in my great-great-grandfather's time, but the memory of it has survived. The Embriaci forget nothing and deny nothing: their lives, made up variously of military exploits and trade, distinctions and misfortunes, add up as the rings do year by year in the trunk of an oak tree. The leaves die every autumn, and occasionally a branch is broken, but the oak remains itself. My grandfather used to tell me about the mastic in the same way as he told me about the crusades, explaining how the bark of the mastic tree is tapped to extract the precious drops, and reproducing for my benefit, though he had never seen a
Pistacia lentiscus
himself, the motions his own grandfather had taught him.

But to return to my smuggler captain and his dangerous trade, his best customers were the ladies of Genoa. Not that they were more concerned about the sweetness of their breath or the whiteness of their teeth than the ladies of Venice, Pisa or Paris. But Chios belonged to Genoa for a long time, habits tend to persist, and although the Turks took the island a hundred years ago, our ladies have never been willing to give up their mastic. Nor have their husbands: it's a point of honour for them to get hold of the stuff, as a sort of revenge on fate and on the Sultan who embodies it. Has moving your jaws up and down really become a demonstration of pride? Given the price the ladies pay for their gum, their munching reveals their rank more surely than the most costly jewels.

How ungrateful of me to be so flippant! When it's because of the ladies and their precious mastic that I'm back on this terrace in Genoa instead of wasting away in a Turkish dungeon. Munch on, ladies; munch on!

The captain didn't want to call in at any of the Greek islands in case the Turkish customs men should take it into their heads to come on board. He made straight for Calabria and an inlet near Catanzaro, his native town, where he told me he'd sworn to make an offering to his patron saint every time he returned from the Levant safe and sound. I went with him to San Domenico's, having even more reason to pray than he. Kneeling there in the dim, cold church amid the smell of incense, I muttered a half-hearted and not too generous prayer: if I got Marta back, together with the child she is carrying, I would name it Domenico if it was a boy and Domenica if it was a girl.

As we sailed up the boot of Italy to Genoa we put in at three more ports, to shelter from storms and to take on water, wine and provisions.

5 April

I'd always thought I'd weep when I first saw Genoa, but the circumstances in which I arrived there were very different from what I'd imagined. I was really born in this city long before I actually came into the world, and the fact that I'd never seen it only made it dearer to me, as if I'd deserted it and must love it better in order to be forgiven.

No one else belongs to Genoa as the Genoese from the East do. No one else can love it as they can. Even if it has fallen, for them it still stands. Even if it has grown ugly, for them it's still beautiful. Even though it be ruined and mocked, they still see it as prosperous and proud. Nothing remains of its empire but Corsica, Corsica and the small coastal republic where every neighbourhood turns its back on the rest, where every family calls down a plague on the others, and where the whole population curses the Catholic king while besieging the ante-rooms of his representatives in search of favour or influence. Yet in the sky above the Genoese in exile such names as Caffa, Tana and Yalta still shine, together with Mavocastro, Famagusta, Tenedos, Phocea, Pera and Galata, Samothrace and Kassandreia, Lesbos, Lemnos, Samos, Ikaria, Chios and Gibelet — like so many stars and galaxies and Milky Ways!

My father always told me our mother country wasn't the Genoa of today but the Genoa of all time. But he quickly added that in the name of the Genoa of all time I must cherish the Genoa of today, no matter how far it had declined. I must even love it in proportion to its distress, like a mother grown old and infirm. Above all he told me not to resent it if when I visited our home city it didn't recognise me. I was still very young then, and didn't really understand what he meant. How could Genoa either recognise or not recognise me? Yet when, at dawn on our last day at sea, I saw the city in the distance amid its hills, its lofty steeples, pointed roofs, narrow windows and most of all its crenellated towers, square or round, one of which I knew still bore our family name, I couldn't help thinking that Genoa was looking back at me. And I did wonder whether it was going to recognise me.

Captain Domenico hadn't recognised me. When I told him my name he showed no reaction. Obviously he'd never heard of the Embriaci, or of the part they played in the Crusades, or of their seigniory in Gibelet. If he trusted me enough to tell me about his smuggling exploits, it's because I'm from Genoa and got myself deported from Chios, where he thinks I'll be careful never to set foot again. But it was different with his Genoese partner, Master Gregorio Mangiavacca, who'd come to take delivery of the cargo. He was a huge red-bearded man dressed in yellow, green and feathers like a parrot, and I'll never forget his reaction when he heard my name.