Raphael (18 page)

“Or I will have my husband, Rashiid ben Rashiid, make her do it. He likes Djoura, I think. I don't think I do. Do you?”

Raphael opened his mouth to reply, but it was not necessary, for Ama went on, “It is funny, isn't it, that my husband's name is Rashiid ben Rashiid, when his father's name is Pablo? He comes to visit us sometimes and then they speak Spanish. I can speak a little Spanish: Fatima's maid taught me. Until Rashiid bought Djoura I didn't have a maid. Because I am the second wife. In fact, I was almost Fatima's maid, until I got—until we knew I was going to have a baby. That made almost ALL the difference. Now, Fatima might as well be MY maid—but don't tell her I said so or she'll pull my hair for me!

“Sometimes I say bad things in Spanish to surprise the servants. Then I can pretend I didn't understand what I said. I do, of course. Don't tell anybody. Do you speak Spanish?”

In the time it took to draw the next lungful of air, Ama forgot what she had been saying. “Play for me.”

Raphael had been attempting to play ever since Ama had joined him on the bench by the fish pool. Now he was given at least a moment to start. The wooden instrument keened under his fingers. He sang, and the words went:

My father is a sparrow in the leaves, in the tangle of leaves.
I hear him in the winter in the bare trees. He calls me.
But I—I have forgotten the language of flight.

By dint of great effort, Ama stayed quiet so far. Then she interrupted. “That sounds classical. It doesn't rhyme. I know what it means, though, because I listen to songs a lot. When you say your father is a sparrow you mean you don't have a father, or that he does not admit to you. And when you say you don't remember how to fly, you mean you are a slave.”

Raphael looked startled. His left eyebrow shot up, and it seemed he was about to contradict his young mistress. But instead he replied, “Everyone must take his own meaning from a song, or it would not be a song.”

“But I'm glad you are a slave,” continued Ama, after pausing to examine his answer and finally throwing it away as a bird will throw away a prize it finds inedible. “I'm especially glad you are a… a boy, and not a man. Or else I would not be able to sit here with you with my veil off and show you my hair. With men, everything is all very difl&cult. They are strange beasts—men, don't you think? All they think about is leaping on you like a bull on a cow—or I have never seen a bull and a cow, but I'm told it is the same. And so we have to stay hidden all our lives, lest we be disgraced.

“Disgraced!” she repeated, frowning solemnly and dabbling one pretty toe in the water.

“Rashiid, my husband, of course, is not like that. Not exactly like that. He is almost human. But all THAT, you know, is not very much fun.” Ama's eyes roved uncertainly from a bronze-backed carp to Raphael's attentive face. “Is it?”

Raphael laid the ud in his lap. He did not pretend to misunderstand her. “I do not know,” he replied seriously. “About men with women.” Ama snickered.

“Of course you don't.”

Her slave's expression did not lighten. “But as life comes from Allah, every part of it must have some beauty in it.”

Ama gave a tiny sniff. “Don't talk like a book!”

Then, in the next moment, a spark appeared in her brown eyes.

Assuring herself that the garden court was empty except for Raphael and herself, she said, “Let me sit on your lap.”

Dutifully the slave put his instrument aside, and little Ama snuggled up to him. Raphael stroked her as one would stroke a cat, and suddenly, for no perceivable reason, he laughed out loud.

Justly he could call himself Rashiid ben Rashiid, for he was a self-made man, come far from his father's mule stud. He had left Granada early, having a dislike for livestock and mules in particular, and made his money in lower Egypt, coming home with a regular income and a new name. Once home he bought a house and planted orange trees (whose fruit was forbidden by law to the infidel) everywhere. But Rashiid had not completely buried Paolo, son of Pablo. For one thing Pablo himself still lived, and for another it was much more profitable to do business with the
giaour
—the Christians. They were less likely to complain to the Hajib when affairs went badly. Therefore the household of Rashiid lived by compromise.

There was a featureless white wall with tile eaves peeping over, which in size suggested a building of Moorish type—facing inward over its central court—and palatial dimension. This was an illusion, however, for most of what was visible from the street was the wall of the enclosed garden, decked out to look like house frontage, with arches, doorways, and little stone steps. The house itself, while sizable, sat huddled in one corner of the lot, revealing its peasant origins in every squat line.

To make up for the limits of the house proper, the garden was scattered with little round and thatched outbuildings which resembled mushrooms springing from the irrigated soil. These, though necessary, looked terribly native.

There were no separate women's quarters, because there was no room for such, and also because Granada (being half Christian) tended to be lax in the observance of the Islamic proprieties. But because Rashiid ben Rashiid did not want to be known as lax in observance, it was necessary for his wives to pretend occasionally that they were not about when they WERE about. For this purpose were maintained certain hidey-holes in various parts of the house to which they could escape in the event of orthodox visitors.

These provisions made life a bit difficult for Fatima and Ama, not to mention the Spanish maids. But the two Islamic women consoled themselves with the knowledge that though they were married to a convert, the very inconvenience they were put to proved that they themselves were still persons of quality.

Djoura (though possessing proprieties of an entirely different nature), put the closets into similar use. She would retire to them and pretend she was not there, especially when she heard Ama's piping, querulous call. There was one retreat at the end of one of the inside walls of the house which she preferred, for it had a rough, dimpled window through which she could see everything within the walls, from the bondsmen's barrack (very small) to the stable which housed Rashiid's one horse: an immaculately kept Egyptian gray which he never rode. Between these two outposts lay the garden itself, where the orange trees bloomed and perfumed vines twined around the fish pond. This little body of water was perfectly round and sat like a pockmark in the dusty skin of the garden. It had no natural source and had to be topped off daily with water brought in on donkeys (never mules).

It was there that Djoura's eyes were bent, as her chin rested on the thumb side of her fist, which pressed in turn on the clay windowsill. The coins above her forehead rustled like leaves in the day's airs. The white muslin costume which had become Djoura so well had somehow disappeared from the wash, and she was back to wearing her traditional fusty black. With stony, set face she watched Raphael dandle his little mistress on his lap.

Ama was an irritation: a spoiled little fluttering thing and a stumbling block toward certain long-range goals. It was part Djoura's intention to gain a reputation for trust and biddability, and to that end she acted her role before Rashiid very effectively.

Her very contempt for the man—pompous, damp, and fleshy as he was—lent her zest for the part, and the knowledge that he desired her lent her confidence. Yet Rashiid's lust was a danger, too, which Djoura did not underestimate. He was in all ways disgusting.

Ama—curious and willful as she was—could not be dismissed with the same sniff and a sneer. The little woman was ubiquitous, and enough like the black Berber in mind that she could not be readily cozened. Djoura could not feel contempt for Ama. But she could hate her. And she could be jealous.

Look at the little chicken, bouncing on Pinkie's knee—bold as a child on an aged donkey. Wouldn't she get a big surprise if she could see the fellow without his trousers. If she kept behaving so shamelessly, she might get a surprise some day: every man had his limits.

Even Pinkie. Djoura bit her Up, for Pinkie worried her more than Ama did: more than anything else did in this place of rich food and sloth. Ever since she realized that the fellow was no more a half-wit than a eunuch, her concern for him had grown heavier and heavier.

More and more she doubted he was a Berber at all, despite his knowledge of both tongue and music. He sang other songs besides the desert chants, with what seemed to Djoura equal facility: songs in Spanish and songs in languages of which the woman knew not even the name. And the placidity with which he had sunk into this life of captivity was dreadful. What Berber could seem so content wearing the iron collar?

Djoura had never asked Pinkie directly where he had been born or who his people were; first, because it was rare she found the time and privacy for such conversation, and secondly, because she didn't like such questions herself. When the woman closed her eyes at night she would still often see her father's mare scrabbling up the mountain trail toward camp, dragging his headless body by one stirrup. Behind the horse had come the riders of the Bedouin Arif Yusuf, following the bloody trace through the sand.

And then Djoura would be visited by an image of her mother, with veil thrown back, swinging a grass scythe in deadly circles around her head, wearing an arrow through her cheek like an ornament.

A man born a slave had shame in his past. A man enslaved had defeat. It was never good to ask. Yet as Djoura watched Fatima (fat, harmless Fatima, whom even Djoura could not dislike) come puffing out of the middle door of the main house, gesticulating and babbling to Ama in Spanish, she knew she would have to make more certain of Pinkie—since they were going to escape together.

Evidently the first wife didn't like Ama's antics any more than Djoura did, for the two of them were at it now, their shrill, staccato words falling like a shower of stones on the garden.

And here was Pinkie, sent off to the house with a flea in his ear. Now was both time and opportunity. “Hsst! Pinkie!” she called out the window.

He approached, his odd, narrow-featured (to Djoura) face looking as mild as if no one had ever raised her voice to him in his life. “Get in here,” she hissed, backing from the rough clay opening.

“Through the window?” the blond asked, and in reply Djoura snatched his hand and pulled him over the sill. He rose from the floor, looking only slightly surprised.

“I didn't want anyone to see us together,” she explained. “Enough talk goes on already, you can believe!”

Then her voice roughened and she pointed her index finger at him. “You listen to me, Pinkie, when I tell you to leave that nasty little thing alone, if you value your future.”

His eyebrows (and even Djoura had to admit that Pinkie had fine eyebrows) shot up. “Ama? Do you mean…”

“I mean the baby girl who calls herself my mistress, Pinkie. If Rashiid (Allah shrivel his big belly) finds out there's nothing but a pair of cotton trousers between his favorite wife and a man's… whatever… you'll soon be no more than you claim to be!”

His blue eyes shifted uncertainly. “Djoura, what do you mean by what I ‘claim to be'?”

Djoura struck her palm against her forehead. “I think you're simple after all, Pinkie. A boy, is what you seem to be!”

“A boy?” he echoed, looking down at his long legs and well knit body.

“A permanent boy. A eunuch,” Djoura hissed with ferocity.

Understanding awoke for Raphael. “They think I'm a eunuch? Why? Nobody asked me. Nobody even looked.”

She blinked. “Woodenhead! I made sure they didn't! I spent the last week standing in between you and discovery. You can bet I told that oily Hakiim you'd lost your bollucks! Made fun of you for it, too. And I didn't stop flirting with this hog-boweled Rashiid until we were out onto the street.”

“Why?” he pressed, as mildly as ever.

Djoura sat herself down on the only stool in the room. “First of all,” she pronounced very slowly. “Those two dealt in boys— eunuchs. If you hadn't been one before, you would have been as soon as they found out. And even if they didn't for some reason, no one would buy you entire unless they wanted to put you in a mine somewhere, or out in a field with iron burning your neck and wrist.

“No one. NO ONE would have bought you and I together had they known you were entire!”

Two small lines of worry appeared between Raphael's eyes. “But Rashiid has bought me already. If he thinks I am a eunuch, he is wrong, and perhaps I should tell him so.”

Djoura hushed him and looked wildly around. “Never! You must never tell anyone or let them know. Not if you want to escape the knife!”

“That is very awkward,” Raphael said simply. He laced his fingers over his knee and sat with his back against the wall. “It is like a he.”

“Hah!” She swallowed a laugh. “Nothing is a lie, if it helps a Berber win back her freedom!”

“It will help you win back your freedom if I let them believe I am a eunuch?”

She nodded decisively. “And yours too.”

A look of pain and fatigue touched his fair features and he looked away from her face. In that moment Djoura became satisfied that Raphael, too, remembered freedom. “But he does not believe me,” whispered Djoura to herself. “He does not believe I can arrange it.” For a moment her own doubts knocked. But the Berber stiffened her jaw, and her ebony hand reached out and touched his.

“Pinkie,” she said gently. “You must trust me. I am your only friend.”

Raphael looked quickly up. His hand reached down to the hem of his trousers and he felt something that had been inserted between the stitches. “You ARE my dear friend, Djoura, but I have another.”

The woman snorted. “Who's the other, then. Ama?”