Altai: A Novel (10 page)
Authors: Wu Ming
When I woke up, light was flooding in through the window. It must have been late morning. Someone had stirred the fire. By the brazier there was a wooden tub full of steaming water—an explicit invitation. My last bath had been in Salonika, two weeks before.
I pricked up my ears, but the house was entirely silent. I threw open the shutter and an enchanted picture presented itself to my view. A fabulous city stretched out before me. Houses, trees, boats, streets, domes, minarets were the warp and weft of a big sheet of white silk lace shot with threads of silver and gold, glittering under the sun, so bright it almost hurt the eyes.
The warmth of the bathwater made all thoughts evaporate. I stayed motionless, eyes closed, lulled by the crackle of the fire and the scent of burnt resin, until a voice made me start. “
Buenos dias
.”
I turned around sharply. The new arrival leaped backward to avoid being splashed. We stared at one another, bewildered, and then the other man smiled and addressed me in Italian.
“I hope it’s still hot. I was careful to see that it was boiling, so that it would be the right heat when you woke up. But I hadn’t thought you would sleep so long. The journey must have been very tiring.”
I guessed that he must be about fifty. He had a thin moustache and a pointed beard. The fox-skin robe that reached to his knees opened over a leather waistcoat and a belt with an engraved buckle. On his feet he wore fur-lined boots. On his head was a black velvet hat with a blue feather. Of course, Nasi’s men never skimped on clothing.
“Who are you?”
“Your Charon,” the other man replied with apparent amusement. “I’m here to take you to Palazzo Belvedere.” He took a package from under his arm and set it down on the bed. “But not before dressing you appropriately.” He untied the strings, revealing the contents: new clothes. He handed me a towel to dry myself with and stood waiting for me to put them on. They were well made, heavy and warm. “Are you ready?”
“So Nasi’s very keen to meet me? I’m sure he isn’t worried that I’ll escape, given that I’m a pistol shot away from him now.”
He was silent for a few moments. Then he said, “The answer to the question is yes, you are expected at the palace for luncheon. It would be discourteous to keep the other guests waiting. As to fears that you might escape, we trust that you made your decision in Salonika. Efrem Del Burgo has given us a detailed account of your stay with him. But now come, we must hurry.”
Outside the house, three men wrapped in heavy cloaks waited to escort us to a little jetty. We climbed on board a slender boat, and the helmsman issued an order to the oarsmen, who propelled the boat into the middle of the current. My eyes were lost again among the whitened domes of the big mosques. There was something sensual in those shapes, and in their clear contrast to the minarets, erect toward the sky. Instinct called Arianna to mind, her smooth and sinuous body. Blasphemous thought, but since my coarse humiliation at the brothel in Salonika I hadn’t touched a woman, and desire chooses strange ways to manifest itself.
Our boat slipped by the hills of Pera, below the sumptuous villas of the foreign noblemen. One in particular drew my attention with the richness of its facade.
“The residence of the Venetian bailiff,” my companion said, winking, without adding anything else.
We made quickly for the opposite bank, aiming toward a large building, one both magnificent and menacing. Thinking about it again, I see in my mind the image of a many-eyed monster, squatting on the strait preparing to grab the vessels as they crossed. Hard to forget that all goods between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea passed before its jaws.
The boat reached a flight of stairs that descended from the garden of the palace and plunged into the water. The submerged steps were covered with dark weeds, stirred by the waves like sirens’ tresses.
“Welcome to Palazzo Belvedere.”
My guide walked ahead, past snowy flower beds and cypress trees, until he reached a second entrance. We went in, walking down a short corridor, then climbed a flight of steps and emerged into a loggia that led to a big drawing room dominated by a white marble menorah that rose from a pool full of water-lilies. Jets of water representing flames spouted from its seven branches. Then another loggia like the one that had welcomed us opened up before us, this one punctuated at regular intervals by a large number of doors. Wooden panels carved with floral motifs decorated the walls.
The floor of the drawing room was decorated with a mosaic depicting the Mediterranean surrounded by the shores of Europe, Africa and Asia.
The Strait of Gibraltar was covered by a long low table, where at least fifty people, squatting in the Turkish manner, waited with empty bowls for their food. There were old men, their faces weary and bewildered, and children, who bit into loaves of bread and munched handfuls of dried fruit. Around them stood the women, passing the bowls back and forth, dishing out soup, dipping their spoons into copper pots.
The smell of coriander and artichokes rose thickly to our nostrils.
“During the feast of Sukkoth,” the guide explained to me, “the oldest Jewish quarter in the city caught fire. It was opposite Galata, on the shore of the Golden Horn.”
I thought of the blackened ruins I had seen from the sea on the first day. A big fire in the Jewish quarter, opposite the Frankish city, in the capital of the Great Turk: It all suggested an act of revenge on the part of La Serenissima for the damage done to the Arsenal, but thinking about the dates, I realized this couldn’t be so.
On the day of the explosion, the Jews of Venice had been celebrating. Many people had accused them of gloating over the ruin of the Republic, but they were only celebrating the Jewish New Year. There were just two weeks between Rosh Hashana and Sukkoth—too short an interval for any news, however urgent, to get from Venice to Constantinople.
“Hundreds of families,” the voice beside me continued, “lost all their belongings: houses, beds, clothing. We put them in all possible shelters, but some of them remained outside, and with winter at the gates we couldn’t let that happen.”
I watched an old woman wiping the bottom of her bowl with a piece of bread. The accurate and meticulous gesture reminded me of old Abecassi, forever shouting at me not to waste my food. The woman got to her feet and hobbled across the drawing room. Before disappearing from view, she stood in the doorway of the internal courtyard, her eyes turned upward and her hands joined as though in prayer. Her eyes were staring at a painting, just above the architrave. A full-length portrait of a woman, seated, her opulent robes falling softly to her feet, her hand resting on a desk. Her eye proud, her brow wide, her hair arranged in an elaborate style.
“Donna Gracia Nasi,” said my companion, as if introducing me to a flesh-and-blood person. “I imagine that in Venice she is still known by the name of Beatriz de Luna Miquez.”
Although merely a painting, the woman was awe-inspiring, like certain portraits of saints or emperors. Our Senyora of the Sephardim. I had heard Jews invoking her name under torture, and recommending their souls to her before being executed. She was the matriarch of the family, the widow of a wealthy Jewish banker from Portugal. She had lived in Antwerp and had escaped the designs of the emperor before taking refuge in Venice. Her nephew João was her most trusted servant. The one who, in Constantinople, had assumed his own Jewish name: Yossef Nasi.
Some months previously, news had reached Venice that Donna Gracia Nasi was dead. Consigliere Nordio had been delighted.
“We are still in mourning. We all loved her very much. She was our beacon. Our queen.” The man lowered his head and sighed. “The past year has been very unhappy. Two months before Donna Gracia, from one day to the next, Samuel passed away.”
He didn’t explain who that was, nor did I ask. He must have been Nasi’s younger brother, known in Venice by the name of Bernardo.
The woman in the painting attracted my attention again. Now a devout little procession passed below her. Men and women bowed in front of her image before they left. Only the children lingered in front of the sumptuously laid table. I let my eye wander around the vast sitting-room. To me, this soup kitchen for the poor looked like the palace halls where European aristocrats display their trophies of war and the hunt. It wasn’t possible that there wasn’t another place in the whole building in which to give food to the evacuees. Nasi wanted his guests to see how great and good his heart was. He was like those Pharisees criticized in the Gospels, the ones who strike their chests in front of everyone when doing penance and ostentatiously give generous alms in order to be admired.
The guide took two steps back and reached the wall behind us. With a mechanical click, he released a wooden panel that covered it, revealing a concealed opening.
“This way, please.”
I entered a narrow, dark room, smelling of dust and wood shavings. There was just enough space to accommodate a bench, and we sat down side by side, facing the wall. My companion lifted a strip of wood and a blade of light struck my face. He beckoned to me to peer through the crack, just wide enough for the eyes.
A big hall opened up below us, the walls occupied by hundreds of bound volumes. We were in a secret chamber, built so that a watcher might observe the library without being seen.
“It’s better that you take a glance at the guests before meeting them.”
He spoke the advice in a smug and irritating tone, so irritating that I immediately wanted to leave off this spying game. But I rested my forehead against the wall and counted four people, composed and elegant, conversing in front of a big clock. The clock’s face, framed in a tall, narrow case, was filled with numbers, letters and smaller squares, above which needles of various lengths rotated, quickly or slowly—some so slowly that they looked as if they weren’t moving at all. Charon spoke close to my ear.
“They are impressed, and they’re quite right to be. That machine is a genuine marvel. Besides the hour, it shows the day of the year according to the Christian calendar, the Hejira, and the Jewish calendar. It arrived from Egypt a few days ago, a precious gift from its maker, the famous Takiyuddin.”
I had never heard his name, but then again, I wasn’t here to talk about clocks.
“Let me guess what’s about to happen,” I said. “I’m going to ask you who these gentlemen are, and you’re going to explain. Or do we have to talk about pinions and gear-wheels?”
The man maintained his dreamy tone. “Don’t underestimate machines, Senyor. Not even as a topic of idle conversation.” Then he settled himself more comfortably on the bench and began to describe the people there for my benefit.
“The thin gentleman all dressed in yellow is the French ambassador, Guillaume de Grandchamp, Monsieur de Grantrie.” The color of the Frenchman’s clothes, together with his build, made me think of a canary.
“An agreeable conversationalist, but also an unscrupulous businessman, when it comes to drawing up agreements with the Grand Vizier to the detriment of rival powers. Next to him, the great blond bear being strangled by his collar is the Voivode of Sandomir, the envoy of the king of Poland. A good fellow, but with the unforgivable defect of preferring beer to wine. He has it sent from home in barrels.” He touched my shoulder with a hand. I instinctively shrank away.
“The man sipping tea is Solomon Ashkenazi, secretary to the Grand Vizier Sokollu and personal physician to the Venetian ambassador.” I spotted a lean man with an alert expression, busy having his cup filled by a servant. “He came to Constantinople three years ago, when Selim ascended the throne. He likes to call himself a subject of La Serenissima, and he was actually born and bred in the territories of Venice.”
An increasingly bizarre picture was forming in my mind. Not only was Nasi the Sultan’s favorite, not only did the Grand Vizier have a Jewish secretary, but that secretary called himself a citizen of Venice. In Constantinople the world was turned upside down.
“He’s famous for his memory,” the voice went on. “They say he can recite the whole Torah from memory. Anything said in his presence might as well have been written down.”
I still had to examine the last guest, sitting slightly apart from the others, absorbed in studying a book. A young man with reddish hair, in simple, dark clothes without aristocratic furbelows.
“Mr. Ralph Fitch, a subject of the English queen. He arrived a few days ago. He traveled here from London to consult the book he is holding in his hand, an extremely rare and precious text written in the time of Tamerlane. But come, now, we’ve kept you waiting long enough. The conversation will be in Italian, which is the lingua franca among the Europeans, but you don’t have to speak it if you don’t want to.”
I followed him out of the little room. The drawing room seemed even bigger now. At the bottom of the staircase we reached the door to the library, but before he opened it I stopped. “Where is the master of the house?” I asked impatiently. “Doesn’t Nasi receive his guests?”
“Normally he does, yes. But on this occasion he went and brought the most important guest to his own lodgings.”
I was quite exhausted by the way this man had of posing as a great friend. “And who might that be? The Grand Turk in person?”
He smiled, not at all bothered by my sarcasm. “It’s you,” he said, before throwing open the door, ignoring my amazement.
I watched Giuseppe Nasi enter the library and display himself in an act of reverence toward his guests.
“
Shalom aleichem
, gentlemen. Welcome to my house.”
Nasi didn’t introduce me to my fellow guests, and throughout our meal he behaved as if I didn’t exist, except to show me to the seat to his right, where I was to sit. I didn’t say a word, but simply observed the others, and gradually, as the courses followed one another, I realized it was precisely what Nasi wanted. I was the enigma.
I saw the glances the others were darting at me, unsettled and doubtful, and I imagined how satisfied he would be. Fish was served, then game, sweets with mint, oranges and fruits I had never seen before. All washed down with wine from Naxos.
I ate and drank without much of an appetite. I felt acid in my throat and my stomach squeezed in a vise. I was sitting less than three feet from Venice’s greatest enemy, and rather than killing him I was listening to him like an old friend.
“On the feast of Hanukkah, the children of Israel celebrate the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucids and the new consecration of the Temple of Jerusalem. I wanted to take this opportunity to welcome Master Ralph Fitch, hoping that his stay here will be both lucrative and pleasurable.”
The Englishman thanked Nasi with a nod of his head. The Grand Vizier’s secretary reclaimed his attention with a little coughing fit.
“May I ask you what struck you most when you arrived in Constantinople, Signore? Sometimes first impressions contain immediate truths.”
We turned toward the Englishman, who took his time, wiping his mustache with his napkin. Then he replied, with the air of someone who is sure of himself but doesn’t want to make a great show of it, “Not so much an impression; more of an observation. It seems incredible that so many people and faiths can live together in the same place without coming into conflict.”
Ashkenazi smiled sardonically. “That’s an answer worthy of a diplomat.”
At that moment Nasi cut in. “If you stay here long enough, as I hope you will, you will discover that the secret is called tolerance.”
Fitch seemed really curious. “Do you think we could draw a universal rule from that? When Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, wanted to show tolerance to her Catholic subjects, they rewarded her with a conspiracy, and England flowed with rivers of blood.”
The French ambassador’s mirthless chuckle was chilling. His cheeks colored for a moment. “
Unicuique suum, monsieur
.” The voice was a croak. “The same thing is happening in France, to the Huguenots, and, I assure you, in the Ottoman empire too. Don’t be deceived by our magnificent host’s fine words. I am aware that in Yemen the Sultan’s troops have just crushed a rebellion by Muslim heretics.” He turned toward the Grand Vizier’s secretary and received a nod of confirmation. “A tolerant sovereign is a weak sovereign. What keeps states united is the exercise of terror. The Ottoman peace is due more to the fact that subjects live under the vigilant eye of a single limitless power, that of the Sultan, without an aristocracy competing for titles and the throne. You have to agree, Don Yossef: Tolerance is nothing; power is everything.”
The master of the house raised a hand in an enigmatic gesture, while he had his glass filled by a servant. “My lords, I sense that we are giving the same name to different concepts. You speak of sovereign power and its exercise. I am referring to the life of the subjects. To what in Turkish we call
tahammül
.”
Everyone’s eyes were on him. In his youth he must have been very handsome, and that attractiveness hadn’t faded. Nasi was fascinating, there was no point in denying it. It’s not for nothing that Satan is the great charmer.
“You must know that the houses of Constantinople were built by mixed teams of workers. The reason is clear to see. Turkish carpenters are very good at working and sawing wood, but they can’t carve stone. And a house without stone foundations is an unstable house. That’s why we turn to Armenian, Greek, and Arab stonecutters. So some of the people dig a foundation; the others build the upper stories and the roof.”
The French ambassador took advantage of a pause to reply. “I don’t see that masons have anything to do with tolerance.”
“Oh, they do, they do, Excellency . . . Of course you know the Bible story of the Tower of Babel. Well, many people think the Lord scattered the tongues of men to punish them, but it’s exactly the opposite. He saw that uniformity made them proud, dedicated to enterprises as excessive as they were useless. Then he realized that humanity needed a corrective and he made us a gift of differences. So the masons, of different customs and faiths, have to find a modus vivendi that allows them to conclude their construction of the building. And for that you need not a conceded, flaunted tolerance, like the tolerance of the powerful, but an experienced tolerance, lived out every day, lived with the awareness that if it is lost, the house will fall down and you will be left without shelter.
Tahammül
, gentlemen.”
It was Nasi’s turn to address a reverent nod to the Grand Vizier’s secretary, who replied with a forced smile. This new interpretation of the biblical passage mustn’t have been greatly to his liking.
A faint clap of the hands made us turn toward Fitch. The Englishman was paying amused homage to the rhetoric of the master of the house. A moment later, the Polish
voivode
burst out laughing all by himself, at the sight of the pale face of Monsieur de Grantrie.