Sofia (13 page)

The small room had an awful lot of water in it, in basins and tubs, all uncomfortably hot. I took off my doublet and chemise, poured a bowl of water over my head and rubbed it into my scalp to rid my hair of the salt spray’s stiffness. I sloshed a little up under each armpit. Then I noticed a stack of clean Turkish garments on a low stool: a pair of shah ar. shirt, vest, sash, and the long-sleeved jacket to go on top. I refused their lure and put on my own clothes, stiff with my own smell and sweat again. I would not be made an effeminate Turk so easily.

Husayn and his father-in-law exchanged glances when I rejoined them. I guess I did smell a bit. But, swimming in politeness, they said nothing, and turned to their conversation once more.

My two hosts conversed easily and at length and, in true Turkish fashion, were in no hurry to come to any topic in particular. It was nighttime, long after supper and the rest of the house was still, before my friend even began to recite the adventures of our voyage. (What had they been discussing all the time before then?) And, anxious as I was to come to the subject of slaves and slave-taking, I nodded off while Husayn was still tied on the Knights’ sinking carrack to the singsong of his father-in-law’s exclamations, “Allah preserve you!” and “Allah give only your enemies such a fate!”

***

I awoke while it was yet night, but I found myself alone in the guestroom and the lamps dowsed. The chilling moisture of a winter wind blowing steadily off the Black Sea had found its way even in here.

Husayn, I supposed, had gone at last to beget another son if Allah willed, and the old man had his own room, too. Without the lullaby of voices about me, my mind and nerves grew taut with tension and sleep could not return to such a hard bed. Rather than sit in the dark, I began to fumble about for a lamp, but without luck.

Suddenly I heard a sound in the room at no great distance from where I was crouching. Rats, was my first thought. Having a sailor’s natural aversion to those rope- and store-destroying creatures, I froze lest I inadvertently touch one.

I hoped they would find the crumbs they sought apace and then leave.

But presently, to my wonder, I saw a lamp kindled and knew rats light no fires. Imagine my surprise to find first the hands, then the face, then the entire figure of an attractive young black girl illuminated by that light.

“Good evening, master,” she said, bowing with her hands crossed on her breast, and she smiled. Her teeth were perfect and her eyes like the flames of her lamp, yet kinder.

“Good evening,” I replied.

She wore nothing but a chemise, although the room was anything but warm. Beneath the sheer fabrics her flesh was like well-salted black olives in color and texture and, before I could stop it, an image of biting into it with great appetite flashed across my mind.

It was clear why she was there. It was a supreme act of hospitality on the part of my hosts. And she did not seem to mind being presented thus, like the numerous plates of dainty cakes and pastries that had preceded her in that same service that evening. It was easy to see why. She was a nubile young woman in a house where the mistress had first claim upon the often-absent young master and the old master was gray beyond lust. Of course she shared the ambition of all slave girls to get a son of a free male, for then her child must be freeborn, and no freeman, grown of age, will long see his mother a slave.

Before I had quite sorted out all of her motives, these motives had already brought her to my side where she began to croon and then to fondle me. I thank heaven for my codpiece, a mystery she had never seen before, else I might have been lost at once.

Of course my true love, which had become something akin to instinct by that time, refused to let me spend my virginity thus. I began to try and explain this state of affairs to the girl, but alas, each of us came to Turkish from a different direction; we never quite met. My speech was further hampered by the fact that I had never heard the language used to speak to women before and it does make quite a difference. Those of my phrases the girl did understand only made her tumble into fits of giggles because they were said in merchants’ and sea captains’ speech. To speak thus to a slave girl was to attribute a power to her that was truly ridiculous. The girl could not help but think that I was toying with her as lovers sometimes do, and she did not take me in earnest even when I pushed her physically away. I actually had to slap her—quite hard—across the face before the lights in her eyes were flooded out by tears.

“No!” I said. “No!”

The girl crept off to a corner of the rooms shaking with sobs that my offer of a blanket could not still. I did not try to hush her more than that, for the sound of a slave girl weeping in the night was the perfect pathetic accompaniment to my thoughts, which would have kept me awake anyway. The girl wept and wept, fearing the wrath of her master in the morning because she had not made a satisfactory gift.

I was somewhat encouraged by this gesture of sympathy. Husayn had not forgotten my plight in the joy of his homecoming, after all. He had sent this girl hoping to divert me from my true love. Well, her tears in the morning would assure him that I remained unmoved.

My guess concerning Husayn’s motives proved correct. When he came from his prayers to rouse me that morning, he brought the glad news that between the two of them, he and his father-in-law had decided they could put up fifty
ghrush
toward the purchase of Sofia Baffo from the slave merchants.

A trip across the Golden Horn that morning won promissory notes for another hundred and fifty
ghrush
. Here in the suburb of Galata, where merchants of my homeland lived in a tight little colony, the Venetian ambassador and other kind-hearted souls who knew either Governor Baffo or my family were glad to help out.

From previous experience with my uncle, I knew that anybody’s coins were legal tender in Constantinople: the familiar Venetian zecchino, Dutch ducats, German groschen. Even Turks tended to favor these European mints to their own because the many sites throughout the vast empire where coins were struck did not maintain much unity among themselves as to weight and alloy.

Also, according to Muslim religious prejudice against drawing figures, the Sultan Suleiman would only distinguish his coinage in Arabic script. Besides being difficult for most Europeans to decipher, it was much simpler to alter a few tendrils of script than it was to deface the entire figure of Saint Mark blessing the standard of Venice. I knew the dealer among the Turks must be constantly on guard not to accept as legal tender disks of base metal stamped in back alleys with meaningless curlicues and crosshatches. But this was easier said than done for one who didn’t read Arabic.

Every transaction, therefore, demanded a separate adjustment. The transaction depended on the known variations in the different currencies one happened to have in his pocket at the moment. It depended on each individual’s judgment as to how many times a curl of silver had been shaved off the edge of each individual coin. It also depended on whether the partners in this present deal would decide to line their own pockets with this roundabout way of charging usury in a land that otherwise forbade it. I realized the details would have to be haggled out with the slaver when the time came.

At the moment, I was content to know that we had a sizable purse full of zecchini, ducats, and groschen that could be figured roughly and generally as two hundred Turkish
ghrush
. Uncle Jacopo had always told me to equate
ghrush
with
grosso
—“those big silver coins”—to distinguish them from plain “silvers,” the little aspers, of which there were one hundred twenty in a
ghrush
. I knew that the chief cook at the Sultan’s palace, with fifty cooks under him, could brag that he earned forty aspers a day. It would take him three days to earn one
ghrush
, nearly two years with very few holidays to earn what we had in that purse. How much more could a slave possibly cost? A master had to feed and clothe his purchase after all, all those things, Husayn reminded me, a poor orphaned sailor would be hard pressed to provide for a wife like Sofia Baffo.

Husayn advised that we should wait a day or two for other men to consolidate their funds and raise perhaps another fifty
ghrush
or so, but I could not wait. The figuring of such a sum could only fill me with confidence.

A second night with the black slave girl passed much as the first—only just fast enough to keep my impatience from turning to distraction—then, armed with the two hundred
ghrush
, I made Husayn take me to the slave market the very next day. We were there when the great wooden doors opened.

There are several places one can go in Constantinople to look for slaves. Rowers change masters on the quayside so they are never free from the sound and smell of the sea. If one is looking for a good strong Ethiopian to be his man-of-all-work or a docile Sudanese woman to help in the kitchen, one goes to a tumble of buildings a stone’s throw from the Haseki caravanserai.

Husayn took me, however, to the exclusive courtyard no great distance from the Sublime Porte itself. We had to pass through a district of pearl merchants to reach it. Such an array of gems of every hue and size, displayed in so many shop-windows on velvet cushions that set off their luster, served perhaps as a probation. If the sight were too rich, one was warned away from the treasures that lay in the courtyard of the slaves beyond.

Rugs, low tables, and smoking braziers were set beneath high, mosaicked colonnades. Here narghiles and sherbets were served with compliments to the prospective buyers who might linger all day over their purchase as if at a party. The merchandise itself seemed the least important thing in the market. It sat discreetly to one side of each shop door-wav, warmed by the sun of an early spring morning.

Impatience, I knew, was one sure way to drive the price up, but I would not let Husayn make even the briefest show of leisure. I drove him up and down the colonnade until I spied a familiar face—Sofia Baffo’s maidservant. The woman sat with a pair of young Circassian children in one particularly fine shop. She had been given a needle and thread and was supposed to be demonstrating her fine stitchery. Unfortunately, tears so shook her form that she found work impossible.

“Foolish woman,” Husayn said with a shake of his head. “She should appear cheerful even if she is not. The sort of master she will find with a face like that will assure her misery for the rest of her days.”

My friend sat down at the table beneath this arcade and waited for sherbet, but I could not constrain myself. I ran to the maidservant immediately.

“Maria, Maria!” I said. “Where is your mistress?”

The woman was startled from her grief and could not speak for a moment or two. This allowed the young salesman to see my interest and to come to my side.

“You are interested in such a slave woman, my friend?” he asked. “You have good taste, indeed. You could not have made a better selection had you spent days combing all of Constantinople—no, not months going throughout all the lands of Islam. She is a bit thin from the long sea voyage, but a few weeks in your generous kitchen, sir, will see her fat and fit. She is skilled. She will work and do your bidding. She is eager to learn any task. She is not yet thirty-five years old and, though married once, it was to some body-hating Christian who gave her but a single child. The child died of the damp climate of her homeland. But you will see that here in our climate, with her health and vigor, she may yet bear you a pair of sons and prove an excellent, loving mother to them. Three or four sons, perhaps, if it is Allah’s will and your major interest, my honored sir. In any respect, she will pay you back the price within the year, I can assure you.”

I wasn’t well enough acquainted with Maria to know if a third of what he said was the truth, nor, if it were, how he had possibly come to know it. My speaking knowledge of Turkish stopped me at, “I was looking for...”

Fortunately, Husayn saw my difficulty and came to my aid. “Actually,” he said, “we were on the ship that brought this woman here and—”

“Praised be Allah! What a happy coincidence!”

“And we were wondering about another woman—one younger than this—with golden hair. We are interested in her.”

The young man pressed his lips together and nodded thoughtfully. Then “Excuse me,” he said and disappeared into the shop. Shortly he returned proceeded by the short, greasy merchant I recognized from the quay. The young man bent his head and spoke in an agitated stream into his elder’s ear.

“I am Kemal Abu Isa,” the older man introduced himself graciously, “and this is my son. Please, you are welcome here.”

Husayn returned the greeting and introduction with profuse confessions of the honor it was for us to be in that shop. They made my flesh creep.

“Please be seated,” the merchant said. “My son will bring you a smoke, a tray of sweets.”

This rigid politeness continued for what seemed like another century. The merchant stroked his greasy chin, Husayn stoically sampled a tray of preserves and made up more pleasantries than I imagined existed in any language. I passed the time bouncing my knees nervously under the low table.

At long last the merchant broached the subject. “My son tells me you are interested in a particularly fine young slave I have recently acquired. Is this slave for yourselves, or are you merely acting as agents for another?”

“We are not agents,” Husayn said.

“Forgive me for being so frank,” the old man said, “but this is business, is it not? A man must make a living, with the help of Allah. So tell me, just how much were you gentlemen expecting to pay?”

Husayn hummed a little note of indecision, but I blurted out, “I have two hundred ghrush.”

“Two hundred ghrush” the merchant repeated. “Again, forgive my frankness. But for such a prize as that fair-haired one—a prize I shall not see again if Allah wills me a hundred years—I expect to get three hundred, maybe more. No, do not try to bargain me down, my friends. I told you this in frankness. If I expected you to bargain, I would have started out at half again so much. I mean no offense, but such a prize—a jewel—is not for common merchants like you and me. Indeed, I am charging a quarter of your price in earnest money of any client I will even allow to see her.