Sofia (15 page)

Façades of palaces provided a calming respite to the bustle of our path. These façades were, however, mostly left from before the Muslim Conquest, and whether they actually announced the homes of the wealthy or served as an anthill for the hovels of the poor was difficult for the stranger to tell. A wealthy Turk was more likely to situate at the end of some narrow back alley. In this paradoxical world, seclusion, when you managed to see it, was a sign of ostentation.

Never was a town more harnessed for commerce than Constantinople. Under every spare arch huddled some entrepreneur at the city’s expense and halfway up the boulevard, we passed the covered Grand Bazaar. Here, behind its eight iron gates and under its acres of miniature domes, a man could buy anything from chickpeas to gold nuggets by the sackful as well as raise the capital to do so in the Turk’s roundabout manner. For the mercantile arrangements were also remnants of the previous occupants.

I had experience of such matters through Uncle Jacopo and knew that Islam’s Prophet forbad the taking of interest. But even that couldn’t stop commerce in this metropolis. In order to raise the means to cover the risk of any venture, it was customary to make two transactions. The first was the straight loan of interest-free funds. The second, on the side, was the exchange of some item of value, a house, a horse— even a shoe would sometimes serve. The item was sold first to the man interested in the loan and then immediately sold back to his creditor at the agreed percentage of interest higher.

The Grand Bazaar in whose nooks and crannies such metaphysics took place in a score of different currencies seemed the best place for us to go for our purpose. But no. In the Turk’s roundabout way, we went on up the avenue.

We arrived in a square, untidy with tombs and trees and bounded on the north by walls. The walls were impossible to see beyond but, by the red-robed janissaries passing in review before them, I knew they must enclose part of the imperial household. The Grand Signor was promiscuous enough in his habits to fill any number of palaces, scattered about the empire, with his cast-off concubines and bastards.

Such images of venery held no fascination for Husayn. He was more taken by the mosque on our right. We were just in time for the midday call to prayers from the pair of wide-spaced minarets that cluttered the skyline along with numerous domes.

“Built by the architect, Yakup Shah” Husayn told me, for our great Sultan Bayazid, two—three generations ago.”

I hadn’t the slightest interest in the history of the place, and was quite annoyed when Husayn felt he had to join everybody else in answering the rather mournful yet insistent demand for compliant and immediate devotion.

“We haven’t a moment to lose!” I insisted.

“Moments with Allah are not lost,” he replied gently. “Besides, who is there to do business with when the whole world has turned toward Mecca?”

“I guess I hear the bells of Venice instead.”

So I stayed out in the square, the chaos of the place doing little to ease the chaos of my soul.

Over against the palace wall, the janissaries now on guard, I noted, were excused from prayer to maintain their vigilance. The sun had just turned on its minaret pivot and filled the space before the mosque with pale early March light, every gloss of warmth still encasing an inner core of cold.

Flocks of pigeons, however, seemed to find this rarified light the perfect mating medium. By some birdish alchemy, they had divvied up their usual anonymous masses into perfect pairs, though there was as yet no breeding going on. Each darker, generally more purple male pursued with incessant coos and low, scraping bows, oblivious to anything in the world but his chosen one. This groveling courtship also included dragging the tails along the flagstones until I wondered that the feathers weren’t worn away, whether the poor besotted fellows would ever manage to fly again. I came to recognize the scraping. I would turn at the sound—and never fail to find yet another poor sap cooing deep in his throat and bobbing up and down convulsively along the peaked rib of a tomb or up and over the cramped roots of a tree.

All the while the females couldn’t care less. They avoided the males all together, intent on their customary waddle from crumb to crumb. Whenever possible, they flew off, only to be pursued relentlessly from tomb to fountain and back again by the fruitless, tedious—even I could see it was tedious—bowing and scraping. I was unnerved to find myself divided from all other males except these featherheads by the rise and fall, the droning surf of recited Arabic ebbing between the mosque’s arches.

But before I had time to embrace the ramifications of this thought, prayers were over. The mosque disgorged. Husayn rejoined me and led me to the western side of the square, where the baths were.

“Also built by Sinan and Bayazid,” he told me.

“But on Christian backs.”

Accusingly I thrust a palm in the direction of the pillars that flanked the bath’s entrance. They were carved with repeating curves and ovals representing peacock-feather eyes, obviously reused, and obviously of Byzantine origin.

Husayn forgave my tone with a “
Mashallah
.”

It—even the fall of Constantinople into infidel hands— was God’s will. I might have been more agreeable to the sentiment had it not been said exactly the way Uncle Jacopo used to say
Che sarà sarà
when considering the limits God had placed on his life. I remembered the final limit, and grieved, refusing to accept.

“Remember, too,” Husayn said, “that the Christian Romans rifled many of Constantinople’s treasures off conquered pagan temples first.”

My friend then proceeded to give more of our precious aspers to the bath attendant.

The first obstacle to overcome in our visit to Sultan Bayazid’s gift to clean posterity was a continuous stream of slaves bent under the weight of the wood required to stoke the bath’s furnace. A single furnace served both sides of the establishment, both the men’s and the women’s around the far end of the building of which I had caught no glimpse. This efficiency did little to ease the straining of these men, some of whom were past their prime.

I grimaced. What similar heavy labors would Sofia Baffo’s young, lithe body be forced to undertake if Husayn’s vague plan did not work out? It hardly bore thinking of, but I couldn’t help myself.

Husayn read my thoughts and steered me deeper into the edifice with an arm meant for comfort about my shoulders. “Trust me, trust Allah,” he said. “And trust Abu Isa. Abu Isa will not do anything to damage his own goods.”

The first room into which he ushered me was divided into many small cubicles. Marble—water-stained, mildewed in the pores, dilapidated with age—covered the low dividing walls. Clearly it, too, had served in previous buildings.

We each laid claim to an empty cubicle as Husayn tried more diversion. “I must say, my friend, you have a very curious notion of slavery. You seem to think it some great moral wrong, while all the time you Venetians are among the greatest slavers on the seas.”

More male slaves, bare-chested, with only red-and-white-striped towels about their loins, paraded here and there between the cubicles with stacks of other towels on their heads. One remarkably tall African—who could see over the division of my cubicle with no difficulty—shoved one of his stack at me. It was of a very thick fabric, cotton made plush by leaving the loops of the pile uncut. Stringy fringe as long as my hand trimmed the raw edges to prevent unraveling.

Husayn continued chatting over the partition. “Your uncle, mercy on his soul, kept old black Piero.”

My exploration of the towel—indeed, everything about his station, not just me—seemed to entertain the towering African. His full purplish lips were set in something of a smirk. I understood that I was to strip down until my costume matched his. I didn’t know if I was prepared to do this among strangers, infidel strangers at that. All these men in the neighboring cubicles, I realized, would be circumcised, as the Turks’ barbarous custom was. Probably even the African had undergone the rite. This realization made me very uneasy: I shrank perceptibly under the weight of my codpiece.

I must say modesty prevailed throughout the bathing ordinance, even in the case of the African, who could have looked over the partition but, after one final smirk, did not. Modesty is, Husayn informed me, a tenant of religion with Muslims, even among the same sex and in the bath. But I could hardly keep from recoiling at the thought of identical mutilation under identical towels and irrationally feared that if I took the towel, I might likewise lose what was under it. This made me very slow to carry through what was expected.

All the while, Husayn kept encouraging, not in so many words, but with his continuous prattle. This was meant to assure me that he was not far away, but it only served to make me realize that he, too, was alien.

“I know your father had four or five purchased servants in his household while he yet lived.”

Husayn was right, but I wouldn’t admit it. “It is different when it is someone you know.”

“As I recall, your nursemaid—the very woman who suckled you—she was not a freeborn woman, was she? Yet you do not love her any less for that.”

I could avoid the inevitable no longer. I presented myself outside the cubicle; the safety of my clothes remained behind. The sight of Husayn exposed in near nakedness quite startled me. His flesh was fish-pale, hairless as a woman’s, with woman-like breasts and an ample belly. Most startling of all was his head. I’d never seen him without either a Venetian cap or Turkish turban. The entire dome of his cranium save a single knot at the top was shaved as naked as a boccie ball. This was a ball that had seen hard use in the alleys, however, for the bumps and seams of a human head are as graceless as most bodies are unrobed.

The intimidating African reappeared to provide each of us with a pair of pattens for our feet. These shoes were inlaid with mother-of-pearl on the in-step straps. The delicacy of the work belied the clomping weight that suddenly overcame the foot once it slipped into the clog. Each sole was elevated off the floor by chunks of wood as large as the blocks on the
Santa Lucia’
s banner pulley. I felt like a courtesan crossing the Piazza in her chopines.

“They keep your feet up off the cold marble, the spills of dirty water on the floor. They prevent slips and falls,” Husayn assured me.

Husayn gave a tightening tug, meaning to be helpful, on the clumsy knot of my towel. Besides almost unfooting me as I tried to get the knack of the shoes, he otherwise gave no sign that I looked as out of place as I felt other than to amend his assurances to “These pattens do take some getting used to.”

He must not have found my appearance as distasteful as I found his—or that of most of the other men in the room.

Of course his lack of criticism might be due to the fact that my host was occupied at the moment. A slave from Husayn’s house had just arrived, no doubt at the bidding of the urchin paid off earlier. The menial brought a small crate with him, and I was distracted from my awkwardness to recognize it as a straw-packed crate of Venetian glass the
Santa Lucia
had taken into her hold over a month ago.

“I suppose you mean to find a buyer for that here in the baths?” I asked.

Husayn smiled but didn’t exactly commit himself one way or another. He told the slave to set the crate down in his cubicle and then to join us. The baths would certainly be the strangest of bazaars if haggling was to go on dressed the way we were. A haggler needs to hide much of his intent in order to be successful; layers of clothing can only help in his efforts.

Still, I appreciated the fact that Husayn might be willing to put up his profits from such a sale toward my cause. The costliest goblet would, with luck, bring perhaps only half of the price we were looking at, but I couldn’t ignore the gesture. I determined to be more gracious to my generous host.

As we waited for his man to join us, Husayn chatted on.

“The life of a galley slave is not so enviable, granted.”

“Or one of those out in the forecourt hauling wood.”

“Those are free Turks we saw out in the forecourt hauling wood. Wood-haulers’ guild.”

“I see. But why were they so—so—”

“Desperate?”

“Yes, desperate.”

“A free man is not assured food for his family at night. The slave is—unless his master is bent on ruining his patrimony. The free man works against hunger, the hunger of his children, the illness of his parents, old age, the crippling effects of his work. The slave doesn’t have these at his back.”

I happened to catch another glimpse of the tall African. He was swinging his way through the room as if to some heavy African rhythm only he could hear. He still smirked superiorly and I realized the small heap of towels he wore like a janissary headdress was not calculated either to wear him out or make his master rich. I had a flash of the shrine to Saint Gummarus in Venice, always full, rich with offerings. Saint Gummarus was the patron of ruptures, much frequented by the porter’s guild, the
zannis
we called them, when a life of desperate freedom had come to the end of its usefulness—

“But yes, I will agree. To be but a nameless body in a nameless mass of power-production—like one stick in the baker’s fire—that is no life for a man, black or white, Muslim or Christian. Slave or free, I may add. Therefore I approve of using only criminals in the galleys—men who for some act against society have forfeited their right to be counted in that society. The same does not apply to domestic slaves, who are always taken into the master’s home and treated with dignity.” The household slave did appear now and I gave Husayn, at least, credit for practicing what he preached as we went on to the bath’s next phase, all three together.

The next room, like the first, smelled of dominant male. A dome pierced by numerous star-shaped windows sieved down drifting sunbeams. Four fountains of cold water tumbled out of lions’ mouths—these must have been of Byzantine origin as well—into marble basins before running off in little channels set into the floor. A slave attendant was fast asleep on a pile of more red and white in a corner, giving some credence to Husayn’s words. These words, along with every clomp of clog or touch of mussel shell to marble, echoed achingly off wall and crisp water.