Altai: A Novel (19 page)

25.

The midday sun erased the shadows from the dock at Uskudar and scattered drops of gold in the puddles left by the nighttime rain. The reflections dazzled the eye. It was hot, perhaps for the first time since I had come to the city, and the sea’s bright hues spoke of summer. Men and goods crowded the big open space on the Bosphorus; products from Asia and Europe went up and down between carts and holds, unloaded from the backs of stevedores and the humps of camels. Nothing seemed to stop for as long as a breath.

We took shelter from the light and the crowd beneath the big loggia of the mosque, which loomed over the slipway from the top of a platform.

I had grown used to asking the names of Muslim temples, because in Constantinople they tend to be named not after saints and prophets, but instead after the people who financed their construction, powerful men and women—the more influential, the more remarkable the architecture. Knowing the
kulliye
of the city is a way of knowing the personalities of the empire, whether past or present.

Ismail told me that the person responsible for this particular mosque was Mihrimah Sultan, a name famous even in Venice, where I had heard various rumors about her. Some said that her father, Suleyman the Magnificent, had besieged Malta just to make her happy, and they hinted at incestuous love. Some maintained that Mihrimah was an odalisque, an unscrupulous concubine, whose beauty had so bewitched Suleyman that he was impelled into that ruinous military campaign.

I asked Ismail if he knew which of those stories was true, and he laughed. “None,” he replied. “The princess herself financed the expedition against Malta.” He added that Mihrimah, Selim II’s big sister, was the oldest woman in the Sultan’s family. The siblings’ mother, the legendary Roxelana, had in fact been dead for some time. So, along with Nurbanu, Mihrimah was one of the most powerful women in the empire.

“In Europe, no one can imagine the women of the harem capable of moving money, fleets, armies. This demonstrates how little we know about what’s happening here.” He shrugged. “Besides, the matter is reciprocal.”

The boat that awaited us, a felucca with a lateen sail, was now ready to set off. Ali beckoned us over. We climbed on board and the sailors hurried to pick up their oars. The boat bore us off, away from the hubbub of the port. Soon we found ourselves on the open sea, heading south.

As evening fell, I realized that I hadn’t exchanged a word with a living soul since we had weighed anchor. The sun set slow and red. Everyone stopped to pray. After that, each of us returned to his own place, waiting.

All but Mukhtar. The young woman traced a geometrical figure on the planks of the deck with a piece of white chalk, then aligned her feet with some of the marks and began to move in a dance that appeared to be simulating an act of combat. Her body seemed that of a reptile, or a lynx. I had seen great fighters and fencers practicing their movements bare-handed, and although the girl’s were much more graceful and less direct, her limbs seemed to contain a strength not unlike that of a coiled spring, or a serpent ready to strike.

Ali must have noticed my puzzlement and imagined my reflections. He came over and said in a low voice, “In the land from which she comes, it is not unusual for girls to be sent to fight. They are trained in places like convents, under the direction of a sheik who also understands medicine and astrology. It is a skill practiced by idolaters, but also by those who have embraced the true religion. You see the figure she has drawn on the floor? In their language, that is called
kalam
. It conveys the precise steps and effective angles of attack and defense. In the language of the Book
, kalam
means ‘the word of God.’”

“So Mukhtar’s movements run through the word of God?” I asked him.

Ali thought for a moment before replying, “Yes, I think you could say that. But you could say it about any one of our movements, because everything that happens is the fruit of His creative will.”

The figure danced on, with the sea all around and the sunset in the background.

That night, beneath a sky with stars clustered thick as cherry blossoms, I struggled to fall asleep. The placid rhythm of the boat would have encouraged rest had I not been enchanted by that dangling moment. We were far from land, in perfect equilibrium between the vast mass of water and the dark blue vault of the sky, sometimes barely distinguishable from one another. The two young Indians had recited their prayers along with Ali and were now sitting back to back, they, too, enchanted by the spectacle of the night, while the other lay down on his mat.

Ismail crouched downwind, in the prow. I studied his dark silhouette and thought of Tuota. Who knew what had become of him. It was fate that put the men in my way who led me out on the sea. I went and sat next to Ismail, and we said nothing for a while, as if we were afraid to disturb the silence of the night. It was he who spoke first.

“There’s something you want to ask me and something that’s keeping you from it.”

His insight made me smile. “You know what I used to do for a living. I don’t know how you would interpret my curiosity.” He in turn gave me an amused glance.

“You were a policeman. Who’s to say that I haven’t done even worse things than that?” He was right. I knew little or nothing about him, and that was precisely the reason for my curiosity.

“You told the Great Falconer that the causes of the war are an impenetrable tangle. Have you fought?”

He stared at the dark expanse ahead of us. “In Germany, many years ago.”

“Were you a soldier?”

I thought he wasn’t going to reply, and sat counting my breaths. As I drew the fifth, he spoke: “Have you ever heard of the city of Münster, in Westphalia? I was there, in the year of our Lord 1534. And before that I was with the insurgent German peasants, at the battle of Frankenhausen.”

Münster. All kinds of stories were associated with that name. It was a kind of curse: “Münster” summed up the madness of the world. It was said that the Anabaptist heretics had abolished all the sacraments there, all traces of religion, of human and divine order. It was said that they were guided by the devil himself, in the false guise of a new David. It seemed impossible that I found myself in the presence of a witness of such far-off events. This man came from another world, the horrors of which I had heard talked about in Venice.

I stirred myself and tried to resume the thread of my questions. “You wanted to found the kingdom of God on earth, didn’t you?”

He looked into the distance again, drawn by the darkness, as his fingers slipped along his chest and rummaged under his shirt. “We wanted justice. And a reason to live and die. I had the good fortune to come out of it alive and meet people who explained something about the world to me. Something you don’t find written in the Bible or the Koran, but in account books and registers.” He fell silent. The weight of his memories couldn’t have been easy to bear.

“I suppose that one of those people, the ones who opened your eyes, was Yossef Nasi.”

He nodded, running his fingers through his beard. “I met him in Venice, after lengthy peregrinations, and when the Inquisition forced us to leave Europe, we chose Constantinople, where Yossef and Beatriz, or Donna Gracia, obtained an audience with Suleyman the Magnificent and offered him their services. I was there too that day, at the Seraglio. A heretic in the presence of the Sultan.” He turned to look at me. “Satisfied?” Then he wrapped himself up in his cloak, stretched his legs, leaned his back against the wall and closed his eyes.

“That was only the prelude,” I pressed him. “And after that? You left the capital, your allies . . .” I paused for a second, before finishing the sentence. “The woman you loved.”

“You’re not one for letting things go, are you? You must have been very good at your job. If we’d met somewhere else, at some other time, I wouldn’t have hesitated to cut your throat.” The unexpected words chilled my blood. “I have spent my life fighting alongside the humble folk,” he continued. “That is my vocation. The vocation of people like Nasi, on the other hand, is to do business with princes and emperors. My place is not at Palazzo Belvedere. I sensed as much that day, after meeting Suleyman, but I chose to wait, to put myself to the test. At my age it’s difficult to give up the love of a woman, to give up having her beside you on the last stretch of your life. And when you decide to do it, you have to put a great distance between you.”

“You’ve talked to me about what you’ve lost. What do you have left?”

My words, spoken on impulse, must have penetrated the shell that protected him, touching him at a sensitive spot. The old man turned to look at the others. Two of them were already sound asleep, but Mukhtar was standing as straight as a figurehead, defying the sea to unbalance her. Or perhaps it was Hafiz.

“Just them.”

“Why do they always go with you?”

The night breeze hissed among the sails, made the joints creak, and together with the breaking of the waves against the keel it seemed to be composing a tune.

“I bought Hafiz and Mukhtar from a Portuguese slave trader who wanted to be rid of them. He thought he’d found a stable boy and a concubine, but when he worked out what kind of warriors they were, he took fright. I gave them their freedom, and since then they’ve called me ‘Baba,’ as if they were the children I never had.” He paused, as if to keep a hint of emotion at bay, and again I thought of the man I had for years called father, even though he wasn’t. “Ali came back to Mokha five years ago, after being away for a long time. His sheik died in Mecca while on the pilgrimage, and he headed south. He is a dervish, a Sufi. He was a great help to us during the rebellion last year. Perhaps you have heard that the rebels were heretics. They say that about all rebels. The truth is that they were peasants who were weary of being robbed by Turkish officials, and those religious men gave them a voice. Thanks to Ali, I was able to go on buying coffee from the insurgent tribes. Between us, we convinced the Zaydis to leave the city just before the Sultan’s fleet arrived. We avoided a bloodbath in Mokha.”

Far from appeasing my curiosity, his stories aroused it still more, if possible, but now the old man began preparing for sleep, adjusting the mat he was sitting on and arranging his traveling bag as a pillow. I had just enough time for one last question, and decided to come out with it.

“The other day, at your house, I understood that you disapproved of Don Yossef’s project. So why did you decide to help him?”

“I don’t really disapprove of it,” he said, resting his head on his bag. “But, you see, if you want to catch a hare, whether you hunt it with hounds or with a falcon, on foot or on horseback, it will always be a hare. Freedom, on the other hand, never remains the same; it changes according to the way you hunt. And if you train dogs to catch it for you, you may just bring back a doggy kind of freedom.”

I thought I understood what he was getting at, and tried to cloak my understanding under the authority of a famous piece of writing, one that the Consigliere had wanted all his subordinates to know by heart: “Machiavelli wrote that you must keep your eye on the end, not the means.”

“Yes, Yossef often used to say the same thing.” He closed his eyes and arranged himself on his side. “Over the years, I’ve learned that the means change the end.”

He wished me a good night’s sleep. I watched him drifting off, then, exhausted, I decided to lie down as well. Before closing my eyes, I looked up. The silhouette of Mukhtar, or perhaps Hafiz, was still there, watching motionlessly over everyone’s dreams.

26.

We put in at a teeming little town. The ships en route for the Aegean, toward Smyrna, often moored at those docks. When storms lashed the White Sea, the boats and their cargoes sought refuge there. From the inland regions of Mysia and Anatolia came foodstuffs on their way to the capital. Judging by what Ismail said, the man we were looking for was a spider in the middle of this web, and the town, Bandirma, was his nest.

A unit of janissaries stood guard by the lighthouse, amid the fishermen’s stalls and the cases and barrels ready for lading. Their feathered hats were visible above the heads of the crowd. And as we walked along the quay, I saw their eyes watching our every step.

“Stop!” the captain ordered us.

Above his bushy mustache his expression was icy. A scar furrowed his face. Instinctively, our company closed ranks. The janissaries came closer. The captain narrowed his eyes. “Who are you and where do you come from?”

“I’m a coffee merchant and these are my colleagues. My name is Ismail al-Mokhawi.”

“Mokhawi?” The captain’s piggy eyes fixed on Ali. “Are you Yemenis?”

“Damned dogs, get back to your homeland!” muttered someone behind him.

Ismail remained impassive. “We are all subjects of the Sultan, God have mercy on him, and we are under his protection.”

The captain of the janissaries clicked his tongue and said, “He looks like a renegade Frank to me, and as to your friend,” he pointed at Ali, “we’ve seen plenty like him, down in Yemen. Heretic dogs, ready to cut your throat while you sleep.”

I noticed that the activity in the port had ceased. The people had formed a sort of circle, roping off the arena where the cocks were about to fight. I noticed Ali slipping his fingers around the hilt of his scimitar. Hafiz and Mukhtar had their hands on their belts. Ismail raised a hand, asking for calm. “These men aren’t rebels. If the Sultan’s standard is flying over Mokha again, it’s down to me. It was I who ensured that you could come in without paying a blood price.”

The captain didn’t seem very interested. He spat on the ground, as the onlookers pressed in behind the janissaries, who struggled to contain them. A leg appeared out of the scuffling crowd and kicked at the old man’s stick. Ismail managed not to fall. Mukhtar stepped to his side, shielding him.

The soldiers were irresolute, torn between their duty to contain the crowd and their desire to settle their scores with those whom they perceived as enemies. The captain of the janissaries drew his sword and spun about, threatening all the people around them. Meanwhile we retreated. Hafiz and I now faced the janissaries, while Mukhtar clung to Ismail and Ali, her hand on the hilt of her sword, opening up a path behind us. The captain barked at us not to move, while the people, who continued to rage at us, seemed ready to overwhelm his men. Then Mukhtar put her hand to her belt and drew a weapon that I had never seen before: a hilt from which long strips of steel protruded, supple and twisting. These, when whirled in the air above our heads, gave off sparks and a sound that chilled the blood. The crowd fell silent, and the captain of the janissaries froze where he stood. Ismail rested his hand on his pistol. Time seemed to stop.

Then the captain moved toward us, breaking the spell. The crowd roared. Ismail leveled his weapon, and the Indian girl prepared to bring hers down so that the steel blades first shredded the soldier’s hat, then did more serious damage below. I waited for the tragedy to happen.

Suddenly I heard an agitated voice calling out a name that must have been the captain’s. Another group of janissaries appeared, this one more tightly organized, and began to move the crowd back with more conviction.

A squat man, dressed in the Turkish style, pushed his way through with short but certain steps, accompanied by a janissary, who seemed to be a high-ranking officer, followed by other soldiers. They came straight toward the middle of the arena and interposed themselves between Ismail and the captain.

“
As-Salaam ’Alaykum
,” said the senior officer.

“
Wa ’Alaykum As-Salaam
,” the captain replied, without taking his eyes off us.

“You were about to commit an unpardonable error. Luckily Mimi Reis, here, requested that I intervene. This man,” he said, pointing to Ismail, “enjoys the esteem of illustrious people. He even knew Suleyman the Magnificent. Many in Istanbul respect him like a father. Touching a hair on his head, or the heads of his companions, would mean finding yourself on the Persian border in a very short time, and for a very long time.”

The squat man interjected, “May that never transpire, Captain. We want you here to defend us and ensure the safety of our trade.”

The captain decided to take his eye off Ismail. He took his leave politely, and retreated quietly with his janissaries in the direction of the lighthouse. The senior official turned back to Ismail. “I would like to have you as my guest, Ismail al-Mokhawi, but I know you are traveling on important business. I hope that God may allow us to meet again.”

“If God so wills.”

Then those Turks took their leave as well, in a more formal and courteous way, and we were left on our own with the short man. He turned toward Ismail. “It’s really you!
I thought you’d been dead for ages,” he said.

“I wasn’t far off it.”

They smiled, hugged, and kissed each other’s beards.

“But I see that your habits have not changed. You’re still in trouble. Yes, but you travel under a lucky star. That star, today, is Mimi,” he said, patting his chest with his open palm. “Come, all of you come to my house. You are my guests.”

We had come in search of a man, and he had found us.

So it was that I met Mimi Reis.