The Wanderer (24 page)

When at length I lay resting, my swollen cheek on her breast, reason twoke and I said, “Giulia, we must think of the future. If you want ne as I want you, it will be best for me to free you from slavery and narry you according to the law of Islam. Thereafter you’ll be a free voman and at no one’s orders, even should I become the Sultan’s lave.”
 

Giulia sighed deeply, and this sigh was even more enchanting to ny ears than the quick, passionate breaths of approaching ecstasy. She cissed my cheek with her soft lips and said, “Ah, Michael, in my heart. always meant to make you marry me, at least according to the law >f Islam. But you can’t know what joy you give me by saying this of ‘our own free will. Beloved Michael, my whole heart flows out to
wu.
Yes, I will be your wife—as good a wife as I can, though I’m a leceitful woman with a poisonous tongue at times. Let us be married :arly tomorrow, before anyone can stop us.”
 

She went on talking, but I slept, with her soft hair over my face. \fext morning all went as planned. In the presence of the cadi and bur approved witnesses I first gave Giulia her freedom and then de- :lared that I took her to wife, repeating the first sura to confirm both tcts. Cadi and witnesses received lavish gifts, and Abu el-Kasim gave t banquet to which both known and unknown guests were bidden—is many as could find room in house and courtyard.
 

“Eat till you choke,” was Abu’s constant exhortation. “Eat till you jurst, and take no thought for a poor old man without even a child to ;are for him in his old age.”
 

I ignored this customary lamentation, knowing that he could well ifford the entertainment and spare something for the poor as well, ind in my overflowing joy I sent some of the good food to the Spanish prisoners toiling at the demolition of Penjon fortress. Giulia received nany presents; Khaireddin himself sent her a golden comb with ivory :eeth and Andy gave her ten gold pieces. Looking at me doubtfully with his round gray eyes he said, “I wonder whether you’ve been wise n marrying this wayward woman? Her eyes alone are a warning, and [ should be afraid lest my son inherit them.”
 

I thought he was envious of my happiness and perhaps even jealous }f Giulia, so I clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Have no fear, ny dear brother Andy. I’ve made my bed and will lie on it, and you mustn’t think that my marriage will part us. We shall be brothers as jefore. My house shall be your home always and I shall never be ashamed of having a simple fellow like yourself for a friend, even should my intelligence and learning raise me to a loftier position than you can ever reach.”
 

In my present gentle mood I was moved to tears by my own speech, and putting my arms about his broad shoulders I assured him of my friendship, until Giulia found me and caught me by the elbow. To the sound of drums and tambourines we walked together into the bridal chamber. But when I would have caught her in my arms she pushed me away telling me not to crush her lovely wedding dress. She then began to finger all the presents and count the givers until I was thoroughly weary, and only then did she let me kiss her and help her to undress. But her body was now known to me and could no longer give me the same joy. My head ached from the heavy incense, and once we were in bed I was content to lie with my hand on her breast and listen silently to her endless chatter.

It seemed to me that all this had happened before, and half in a dream I began wondering who she really was, and what it was that linked me to her. She came of an alien race whose language and way of thinking were different from mine. So immersed was I in my somber mood that I failed to notice when she ceased talking. But suddenly she raised herself in bed and stared at me with a look of fear.

“What are you thinking of, Michael?” she asked in a low voice. “Something unpleasant about me, no doubt.”

I could not lie to her, and answered with a shudder, “Giulia, I was remembering my first wife, Barbara—remembering how even dead stones came to life when we were together. And then she was burned as a witch, and so I feel very lonely in the world in spite of lying here beside you with your lovely breast under my hand.”

Giulia was not angry as I had expected; she stared at me curiously and her face took on an unfamiliar look. With a faint sigh she said, “Look into my eyes, Michael!”

If I had wanted to I could not have freed myself from those eyes, gazing at me under their lowered lids. She spoke in a low voice, and although I hardly listened to her I knew what she said, “You’ve doubted my ability to see things in sand, Michael, but as a child I could do the same with water. Perhaps I hardly know myself how much of it is genuine and how much pretense and imagination. But now look deep into my eyes as if into a bottomless well. Then answer me. Which lives in you now, your dead wife or I?”

I gazed and could no longer turn away my head. Giulia’s strange eyes seemed to grow to the size and depth of pools; I could feel my inner self open out and flow into their darkness. Time seemed to halt and then roll backward until all was one engulfing vortex. I seemed to be looking into the green eyes of my wife Barbara and to see her face full of ineffable, mournful tenderness. So real did she appear that I felt I might have touched her cheek. But I would not try.

I stared long at this face, while yet aware that Barbara had been dead many years and that her body had been burned to ashes in the market place of a German city. I was aware of pain—a pain so intense as to seem an ecstasy surpassing any bodily joy. For in seeing again one who had been reft from me by force and whom I had long mourned and missed, I perceived with agonized clarity that her face had nothing more to say to me—that it belonged to another world and another existence—and that I was no longer the man who had shared those two short years with her. My experiences and mistakes, my good and evil actions had raised an insurmountable wall between us, and she would not even have recognized me now. It was useless to recall her among the living. In my heart I had lost her, and forever.

I neither spoke her name nor put out my hand to touch her, and after a little time her yearning face faded into the grave countenance of Giulia. At this singular point in time something happened in my heart that made me feel I understood Giulia better than before, and I believed I really knew her. Then the mist faded; I lay once more in the familiar room and raised my hand to stroke her face. She closed her eyes and drew her brows together with a sigh.

“Where were you, Michael?” she whispered, but I could not answer her. Without a word I took her in my arms and in the warmth of her I knew the boundless solitude of the human heart. My anguish of soul was too keen for me to feel tenderness or desire. I shivered, comfortless. Passing my hand over that lovely body I thought how one day it would grow old, how the soft smooth skin would wither, the round neck shrivel, and the perfumed hair turn dull and gray. So also my desire would fade and dissolve into nothingness. If I loved her, I must love her simply for being the only creature in the world who was near to me, though even this might be a cruel illusion.

As summer neared its end, Khaireddin was satisfied that he had at last consolidated his position in Algeria, and he began to prepare the long-planned embassy to Sultan Suleiman. For as long as confirmation from the High Porte was lacking, the title of beylerbey, which he had already assumed, was worthless; he was shrewd enough to see that he could not found a kingdom of his own on the Algerian coast without becoming the Sultan’s vassal.

When the ships were taking the last of the cargo aboard, Khaireddin ordered me and the other slaves to make ready. He presented me with a kaftan of honor and a copper pen case, and explained to me the maps, charts, and notes that I was to offer as a gift from him to the cartographers of the Seraglio. He gave me also two hundred and fifty gold pieces to distribute among minor court officials who, though without great influence, were able from time to time to gain the ear of their masters. He advised me to squander rather than hoard this money, and promised to replenish my funds should the seed I sowed fall on good soil. But if I stole more than fifty gold pieces of it, he vowed, he would flay me alive with his own hands.

Not more than a fortnight after our wedding I began to notice that Giulia could not bear my dog Rael. She forbade him to sleep by me and chased him into the courtyard, saying that he had fleas and left hairs on the rugs. I was astonished at her fickleness, for before our marriage she enjoyed feeding the dog and talking to him, and never drove him out. Rael, however, had always treated her with reserve, and on her approach would withdraw to a corner with his hackles up, ready to snap, though he never attacked anyone else.

After our marriage he began to grow thin and his coat became rusty. Often he would sit whining softly in the yard, and I noticed his unwillingness to eat the good food which Giulia threw so impatiently into his bowl, though from my hand he eagerly took the hardest bone or the driest crust. I was really sad on poor Rael’s account and took to feeding him myself in secret, and keeping him company in the yard. I continued to confide my troubles to him as of old, but now I had no joys to share.

Giulia’s behavior to Andy too was very arrogant. She respected his physical strength and his skill in the casting of cannon, but for the rest she regarded him as a simpleton with a bad influence on me, for she had noticed that when in his company I was often irritable with her. She did all she could to bring about a rift between us.

Her loveliness and our shared delights could always dispel my ill humor and my doubts, however, and I had only to gaze into her strange eyes, shining like blue and brown jewels in her beautifully painted face, to forget all else; I would think myself a fool to trouble about a poor soulless wretch of a dog, or the simple Andy. At other times as I sat dejectedly in the courtyard with my faithful Rael’s head in my arms, I saw with startling clarity the emptiness of sensual pleasure, and was aware of Giulia as a stranger doing her utmost to part me from my one true friend.

It was already October when, with straining oars and spread sails, we glided upstream through the fortified straits leading into the Sea of Marmara. The hazy yellow heights to the eastward rose fom the Asiatic mainland, while to the west lay that part of Europe which in bygone days had belonged to Greece, but which the Ottomans afterward conquered. Somewhere in this region lay the ruins of Troy, the city of which Homer sang, and here, too, Alexander the Great was buried. I stood on deck and surveyed the gliding shores, thinking of old tales and of the many peoples who had sailed through this channel between the two halves of the world, in search of fortune.

Giulia complained of the hardships of the voyage, and expressed a longing for fresh water and fruit and a proper bath. And indeed after our long period at sea a most abominable stench prevailed aboard our handsomely painted vessel. We put in at a little place near the mouth of the straits and lay there for two days and nights, while we cleansed ourselves and our ship. Long pennants floated in the wind and rich carpets hung over the rail as, to the sound of drums and tambourines, we weighed anchor and with long oar strokes headed toward Turkish Istanbul—once Constantinople, the fabled city of Byzantium.

The weather next day was glorious. The blue hills of the Prince’s Islands rose from the embrace of the sea, while far in the distance the city of the emperors shone toward us like a dream of white and gold. As oars and sails brought us ever nearer to our goal, more prosaic details emerged. We saw the high, gray walls lining the shore, and the colorful houses seemingly fused together in masses on the slopes. When we had passed the Fort of the Seven Towers our eyes fell upon the Sophia mosque, once the most wonderful church in Christendom, whose mighty dome and minarets still dominated the great city. Behind it on the point, surrounded by the lush green of gardens, lay the numberless dazzling buildings of the Seraglio, marked by the towers that flanked the Gateway of Peace. Opposite the Seraglio, on the other side of the Golden Horn, were the slopes of Pera and the foreigners’ quarter beneath the tower of Galata, with its floating standard—the Lion of St. Mark.

As we glided past Seraglio Point and the Sultan’s marble quay we fired a salute, but the din of it was borne away by the wind. We had sent word of our coming, however, and our salvo was acknowledged by three shots from the cannon on the point. A French vessel anchored in the roads also fired hastily in reply, from which we concluded that King Francis must indeed be in trouble, or his ships would not have deigned to salute a vessel belonging to the pirate king Khaireddin. Our reception was nevertheless devoid of ceremony, and I think that all of us, whatever our rank, were oppressed by a sense of our own insignificance here in the Sultan’s capital.

The turbaned dock laborers cursed and swore at their toil. Only very slowly could we ease our way through the dense shipping to our own berth, where we hove out the anchor astern and made fast by the bows. Before us rose countless warehouses, and beyond them the high, crenelated walls of the harbor quarter. No one heeded us or bade us welcome, and I felt like a rustic come to town for the first time. Captain Torgut evidently felt as I did, for when he had donned his best clothes and a jeweled sword, and had waited for a long time on the quarterdeck, his face darkened and without a word he retired into his cabin.

To my regret Khaireddin had chosen Torgut-reis as his emissary to the High Porte, for Torgut was the youngest and handsomest of his officers; his proud manhood and his taciturnity made a strong impression on those who met him for the first time and knew nothing of his limitations. He was the son of an Anatolian robber and therefore of purely Turkish origin. Khaireddin knew he could trust him, for there was no room in his head for anything but ships and seafaring, fighting and fine clothes. To advise him in matters connected with court intrigue Khaireddin had sent with him an experienced eunuch who had belonged to Selim ben-Hafs. The fellow was corrupt and untrustworthy, but Torgut had been authorized to behead him if necessary, and in these circumstances Khaireddin considered he might be useful; he hoped he might gather information from the eunuchs of the Seraglio, since these persons readily make one another’s acquaintance and confide in one another more freely than they do in uncastrated men.