The Wanderer (62 page)

I suspected deceit, having learned to mistrust everyone and especially Giulia. But next day Sultana Khurrem sent her pleasure barge to fetch me to the Seraglio, where she received me in her own porphyry chamber in the Court of Bliss. At first she spoke from behind a curtain, but later she drew it aside and revealed her face to me. Her immodest behavior showed how customs here had changed in a few years. At the time when I became the Sultan’s slave certain death awaited every man who beheld a woman of the harem unveiled, even by accident.

The Sultana spoke to me in a playful, teasing tone and gurgled with laughter as if someone were tickling her. Yet her eyes were cold and hard, and at length she ordered me to tell her openly and without reserve all that I had seen and done in Tunis and what had happened afterward. I at once admitted Khaireddin’s reverses, but in his defense went on to speak of his success in the later part of the summer, and assured her that with my own eyes I had seen eighteen big galleys under construction at Algiers, so that by the spring Khaireddin’s fleet would be ready to rule the seas once more.

Khurrem held her head a little sideways as she listened, and a smile played continually over her beautiful lips. It seemed to me that she was paying more attention to my appearance than to what I was saying, and at last she remarked absently, “Khaireddin Barbarossa is a devout and valiant man and a faithful servant of the Sultan. The Prophet himself appears to him in dreams and when he shakes his long beard he looks like a lion with a luxuriant mane. He needs no one to speak in his defense, for I know best how to win my lord’s favor for him. But still you have not told me everything, Michael el-Hakim. Why did you go to Tunis in the first place ? And what message was it that the malignant Grand Vizier sent by you to Khaireddin and dared not put into writing?”

I stared at her, disconcerted, unable to guess at her meaning. Then I licked my lips and mumbled something. She encouraged me laughingly, “Michael el-Hakim, you’re a great rogue. Confess honestly that Seraskier Ibrahim sent you to Tunis to inquire secretly whether Khaireddin would acknowledge the Grand Vizier’s title of Seraskier-sultan. If he said yes, you were to bid him to take his fleet to the Sea of Marmara and await further orders. But the Emperor’s unexpected attack foiled these ugly schemes and Khaireddin was saved from making a negative reply, which would have brought down upon him the Grand Vizier’s wrath.”
 

“Allah is Allah!” I exclaimed in dismay. “That is nonsense—base lies from beginning to end. The Grand Vizier sent me to warn Khaireddin against the Emperor’s false promises, for Charles had offered to make him king of Africa.”
 

“Quite so,” assented Khurrem hastily. “Then the Grand Vizier ordered you to tell Khaireddin that it lay in
his
power to make him king of Africa with the right to appoint his own heirs. Then with the Emperor as ruler of Europe and the Seraskier-sultan as ruler of Asia, Khaireddin would take his place as the third of the world’s sovereigns.”
 

“What do you mean by that foolish title Seraskier-sultan?” I demanded, so exasperated that I forgot my lowly position. “You turn everything upsidedown. I had no such mission and my only object has been to serve the Sultan loyally. Neither Khaireddin nor I can be blamed for the defeat and I have nothing to add, since you will persist in distorting the truth.”
 

The smile faded from the Sultana’s lips and her plump face became a chalky mask. Her eyes took on an icy blue glint, and for a moment I seemed to be face to face with a monster in human form. Yet this singular expression vanished so quickly that I fancied I must have dreamed it or been bewitched by her look.
 

Presently she said in her usual cooing tones, “Perhaps you are speaking the truth and my informant was mistaken. I can only rejoice that all serve the Sultan so loyally and faithfully. You have greatly relieved my mind, Michael el-Hakim; you deserve liberal reward, and I shall not forget to put in a good word for you with the Sultan. Perhaps I am foolish to imagine that so gifted a
man as the Grand Vizier would do anything behind his lord’s back. We must wait and see. All will turn out for the best and you and I will be silent about the whole distressing affair.”
 

She smiled at me again in her bewitching manner, but the cold glint remained in her eye as she repeated the words that seemed to veil a stern warning: “All will turn out for the best, and you and I will be silent about the whole distressing affair.”

With this she made a sign with her plump hand and a slave girl dropped the curtain between us.

As I returned through the splendid courtyards of the Seraglio I was overcome by a sense of unreality. This was like a story, or a dream, and I seemed to have been through it all before. I looked at the countless slaves who from the highest to the lowest turned their backs on me, and they no longer appeared to me as living people. It was as if they had no faces of their own, and only by their clothes, headdresses, sticks, whips, ladles, and other tokens of rank could I tell their position and occupation. They looked like nothing so much as brilliant beetles. Any one of them could have changed places with any other without altering the pattern. All would go on in the same empty way and with the same senseless and outmoded customs as before.

I seemed tQ stand outside. I no longer brooded over myself or my fate. I felt only an unspeakable weariness and depression, and the vanity of it all was like a raw December day in my heart.

At the beginning of January, 1536, Sultan Suleiman arrived at Scutari on the opposite shore of the Marmara, and allowed members of the Divan to help him from the saddle as a sign that the Persian campaign was at an end. The Grand Vizier had secretly ordered the building of a splendid barge, well able to compare with the fabled “Bucentoro” of the Doge of Venice, so that in a manner worthy of the conquerer of Persia the Sultan might glide over to Istanbul amid the thunder of salutes.

Once more the names of captured fortresses and cities were proclaimed to the populace. Once more the bonfires blazed for nights on end and the people roared their acclamations of the returning spahis and janissaries. But this time the joy was forced, as if evil forebodings had poisoned the mood of triumph. Moreover, the army had suffered very severe losses on the retreat, on account of both the Persian cavalry attacks and the bad weather, and many wives bitterly mourned their dead husbands, though they might do this only in solitude and within the four walls of their homes.

After the days of jubilation, life in the capital resumed its normal course, and no foreigner would have noticed any change. King Francis I’s representative, who had attended the Sultan from Bagdad to Tabriz and back to Istanbul, was rewarded for his trouble by the Sultan’s consent to a commercial treaty with France. Slaves of French birth in the Sultan’s dominions were given their freedom and all things pointed to the fact that King Francis, having learned nothing from former failures, was preparing for another war against the Emperor. Khaireddin did not fall into disgrace as many had hoped; on the contrary, the treaty was drawn up in his name and he was designated therein as king of Algeria. Without this, ill feeling would have been aroused among both Moslems and Christians. As it was, many otherwise shrewd Moslems blamed the Grand Vizier for secretly favoring the Christians, just as he had been blamed for protecting the Shiite heretics at the Ottoman army’s expense. But by this time all evil that occurred was laid at his door, to blacken his face and undermine his position, while all good was credited to the Sultan.

In the course of that spring the people’s senseless and unreasoning hatred for the Grand Vizier became so evident that he preferred not to appear in public, and remained either in his palace beyond the Atmeidan or among the buildings of the third courtyard of the Seraglio. Janissaries exercising on the Atmeidan would yell insults and make faces at his palace, and one night some drunken wrestlers broke into it, tore the trophies from the walls and smashed them, and befouled the corners of his rooms. Yet to avoid all troublesome publicity the Grand Vizier made no inquiry and summoned none of the culprits to answer for the outrage.

After his return from Persia the Grand Vizier was compelled first of all to deal with matters that had arisen during his absence and that the pashas had refused to handle for fear of making mistakes. Negotiations in preparation for the French treaty also occupied his time, so that with the best will in the world he could not receive me. The winter days went by without hope of a personal interview, although I longed to warn him of dangers that I did not dare to hint at in a letter. Now and then he sent me word that he would attend to me all in good time.

In response to my continual pestering, the Grand Vizier sent me two hundred gold pieces in a silken bag. This was intended as a proof of his favor, but never did a present sadden and hurt me so much. It showed that in his heart he despised me and believed that I served him only for money—and how could I blame him for that? The fault was mine. Too long I had thought only of presents and rewards. But now as I stood idly among the slender pillars of the Grand Vizier’s entrance hall with that embroidered purse in my hand, I perceived with agonizing clarity that not all the gold in the world could deaden the pain now gnawing at my heart.

Yet I will not seek to appear better than I am, for my object in writing this story is to be as honest as it is possible for imperfect human nature to be. Therefore I admit freely that since sharing the Tunisian diamonds with Andy I felt—though without any great pleasure—that my future was financially secure.

On my return Giulia laid her white arms about my neck and said coaxingly, “Dear Michael, while you were out I searched your medicine chest for a remedy for stomach trouble. The Greek gardener is ill. But I dared not take the African drug that you brought from Tunis, for you told me that an overdose might be dangerous. I don’t want to harm the man through ignorance.”

I disliked her habit of ransacking my chests while I was out, and I told her so. But my mind was on other things and I gave her a drug that Abu el-Kasim had warmly recommended, warning her against administering too much at a time. The same evening I was attacked by pains in the stomach after eating fruit, and Giulia told me that besides the gardener, one of the boatmen had also fallen sick. Such disorders were common in Istanbul and I paid no heed to my own pains. I took a dose of aloes and opium before going to bed and in the morning was fully recovered.

Next day I learned that the Sultan had suffered the same thing after an evening meal taken with the Grand Vizier. Suleiman at once succumbed to a mood of depression—a common enough thing among those suffering from stomach disorders.

As a result of the Sultan’s sickness the Grand Vizier at last had his evenings to himself, and at sunset after the prayer he sent for me. I hastened at once to his palace, but that lovely building, usually brilliant with countless lamps and surrounded by crowds, now stood dark, empty, and silent, like a house of mourning. Only a few pale slaves stood idly in the great hall, which was lit by a few faintly burning lamps, but between the slender columns of the audience chamber the German clockmaker came hurrying toward me. With him, to my surprise, was the Sultan’s French clockmaker, whom King Francis had sent to Suleiman after hearing of his weakness for clocks. Both these masters were examining with solemn physicians’ airs the unevenly ticking clock, made by Niimberg’s most famous horologist, that should have indicated unerringly the hour, date, month, year, and even the position of the planets. The German fell on his knees, kissed my hand, and said, “Ah, Master Michael, I am lost—I have forgotten my cunning. Thanks to my skilled repairs this unlucky timepiece has gone perfectly for six years, and now it has begun to lose. I cannot find what is wrong, and have had to beg the excellent Master Francois to help me.”

The clock ticked heavily, its hand pointed to seven, and the little figure of the smith came out and began jerkily striking the silver belL But he managed only three feeble strokes, the clock resumed its uneven ticking and the smith, his hammer still raised to strike, turned and disappeared. I looked searchingly at the two men and noted that the Frenchman guiltily thrust a wine jar behind the clock with his foot. Both men averted their eyes in some embarrassment, and then Master Francois said boastfully, “All clocks have their little ways, or we clockmakers would be out of work. I know this one inside out and to take apart so complicated a mechanism would be laborious and risky. So we have been content to refresh our memories and compare our pre-eminent knowledge, and so perhaps discover what the fault may be. It is not worth dismantling so costly a toy without good reason. The Grand Vizier is—forgive my candor—somewhat eccentric to regard this little irregularity as a bad omen.”

In his drunkenness he continued to speak so slightingly of the Grand Vizier that I grew angry and raised my hand to strike him—though I doubt whether I would have done so as he held a hammer in his hand and had the look of a testy man. But the German flung himself between us and said, “If the clock is sick, the noble Grand Vizier is more so. No man in his senses keeps his eyes constantly on a clock and loses sleep because of it. At night he often gets up to look at it and in the daytime he will break off in the middle of a sentence before the assembled Divan and stand staring at the dial. Each time he holds his head in his hand and says, ‘My clock is losing. Allah be gracious to me, my clock runs slow.’ Is that the talk of a sensible man?”

I left the fellow and hurried to the brightly lit chamber where the Grand Vizier was sitting cross legged on a triple cushion with a reading stand before him. I am not sure whether he was really reading or pretending to do so; at any rate, he turned a page calmly before raising his eyes to mine. I prostrated myself to kiss the ground before him, stammering for joy and calling down blessings upon him on his happy return from the war. He silenced me with a gesture of his thin hand and looked me straight in the eyes, while a shadow of ineffable sorrow stole over his face. His skin had lost its youthful glow and the roses of his cheeks were faded. His soft black beard made his face seem ghostly pale in the lamplight, and as he had removed his turban no diamonds sparkled over his brow. He had grown so thin that the rings hung loose upon his fingers and seemed too heavy for them.