The Jewel Trader Of Pegu (6 page)

When she saw me, she bowed her head. Win smiled and gave me evening greetings in his language.

—
Are you ready to take this bride?
he said.

—
Take her where?
I asked in ignorance and innocence.

—
She has come humbly for you to take her maidenhead.

I said nothing, and Win frowned like a stepmother at my silence, thinking I did not understand his words. My confusion and displeasure clear, he said—
This is the custom in Pegu. Her husband waits for
her return.

I stammered and, speaking Italian in my anger, could only repeat

—
What is this… what is this?
Peguans feel it impolite to show one’s temper, and Win, seeing my face redden, motioned for me to go inside. He bowed to the bride’s father and mother and followed quickly behind me, almost stepping on my heels.

—
Abraham, I beg your pardon for not having told you earlier of the
family’s arrival.

—
How could you ask me to deflower this young girl?

Now it was his turn to be confused.
—It is our custom that brides from good families have a foreigner take their maidenhead. It is an honor
to both. The Genoese performed this service for many. He was gentle and kind. He was “uncle” to many brides in Pegu. Brides who passed through
this house have borne their husbands healthy sons. The spirits protect this
house and bring prosperity to those who dwell here.

—I am not a Christian, I am not like the Genoese. He was moved by
lust. I am bound by the Law. My God forbids it.

—He was not a bad man. You foreigners are protected from the dangers of first blood. You will bring good fortune to this marriage—your god too
must think it a meritorious deed.
I raised my hand in front of my lips so he would not blaspheme the Holy One, blessed be He, any further.

—
Am I to send her away? That will shame her and her family.

—This will bring me shame,
I said, both my voice and hands trembling.
—Is there no one else who will do this for her?

Win told me there were two other merchants, a Portuguese and a Dutchman, who performed this role. The Portuguese had a reputation for roughness. The Dutchman drank so much he often fell asleep in a drunken stupor, and the bride would have to stay until midmorning when he was sober enough to perform.

—I do not want to see the girl ill-treated, but I cannot do this… act.

I almost said “barbaric” but held my tongue not to insult Win further.

Seeing that I could not be moved, Win took several steps back.

—
I will tell them that you are ill and cannot perform
. Before I could argue with this lie, he turned and was gone.

I may have been slow to rise in the morning and never made early-morning hymns like the blessed Watchers of the Morning. But how could I do this barbaric act? You know when Ruth of blessed memory died, I cursed God for the pain He brought me. But I never denied Him. How could I lie with another man’s wife? How could I lie with a woman for whom I had no love, not one gram of feeling? Win said after the act was consummated, the girl would quietly leave my bed in the morning, and Khaing would attend to her. What would that matter? I still would be no better than an adulterer, a lecher in the eyes of God. Gentiles may think nothing of taking a temporary wife while they are here, even sanctifying their lust with ceremony and promises of faithfulness. The Peguans think this is a fine arrangement for their daughters, who are left with jewels and good cloth for their dowries and carry no shame in the eyes of future suitors. I am a man, but this is something I will not do. There may be no other Israelites to shame me for this transgression, but God sees all and judges me in this distant land though I be hidden behind cane and palm.

Can you imagine me doing what Win asked? Even if God did not forbid it, even if these women with their powdered faces and blackened teeth held for me a sliver of attraction, I could not be a lecher and open my bed like a fishmonger to every woman passing by.

I slept alone last night, as all other nights, as the Law commands.

But, Joseph, I awoke this morning to find that I had shamed myself. Lilith had seduced me while I slept. I rose quickly and washed my seed from my body with rainwater from a large jar Khaing keeps in the garden. I could not remember all of the psalms I was supposed to read to protect myself, but read the ones that I could remember.

I told Khaing that my stomach was upset and ate no breakfast. I fasted all day and told Win, when he asked, that it was a special day and my faith required it.

I cannot remember the last time this happened—it was many years ago. It troubles me. Did a part of me want to deflower that bride, and did Lilith come to me in the night because she smelled the sin of my desire? Maybe I do not know myself as well as I think.

Your cousin,

Abraham

26 November 1598

Dear Joseph,

The Dutchman took from the young bride what can be taken only once. Win heard from her mother that it was a night of tears. He would not let her leave until he had his way with her a second time.

He might well have kept her until past noon, but he fell into a deep sleep from wine and exhaustion, and she escaped from under his hairy bulk and now sleeps wanted in the arms of her husband. I am sorry for the young woman’s discomfort, but I had no choice.

Win has not said anything more, but I can tell by his eyes he wishes me to reconsider. He has several times praised my house as a safe haven from evil spirits that seem numerous as motes of dust in this place. Every tree, hill, rice field, and house has its own spirit that must be kept happy. These spirits are constantly hungry (perhaps you with your ravenous appetite are one of these spirits who has wandered far from his jungle home). These idolaters are always feeding them: coconuts, bananas, a sweet sticky rice, and even chicken. Khaing hangs a coconut in a corner to appease the spirit she believes protects this house. Since I am a guest in this house and she looks after me well, I humor her idolatry.

Win is as superstitious as all his countrymen. He told me last year a whole family—parents and two children—in the village where his cousin lives had died because they had cut down a banyan tree without making an offering to the tree spirits. A few days after I arrived, Win summoned a friend to paint a magic design above the door to protect me in my new home. You see these designs everywhere—on gates and arches, on the shields and banners of the king’s soldiers. This painter is a quiet fellow who speaks in a whisper. I think he is afraid of awakening the demons and dark spirits Peguans believe hide under eaves, in dim, damp corners, and at the bottoms of wells. The nails of his thumb and small finger on his left hand looked as if they had never been cut—they were several inches long and had begun to curl toward his palm. I am sure he caught me staring. I thought this was some heathen custom to pierce the invisible bodies of malicious spirits, but Win said long nails showed that he did not do the rough work of a slave or a commoner. Before he painted the magic squares that now greet my arrival and send me safely on my daily way, he asked the date and time of my birth.

Though more conjecture than certainty in the minds of Auntie and Uncle, I remembered my supposed early-morning arrival, since our friend Leon, who wished to see what fate the stars held in store for me on my journey, had asked me the same question before I left.

How such a prodigious, learned mind can play among the stars confounds me. If all is ordained by birth—by some auspicious star—then what need have we to study the Torah? What right would the Holy One, blessed be He, have to punish or reward us puppets of the stars? But there is no hope in arguing with Leon and his charts and pages of scribbling that only he can decipher.

—Don’t tell me I am going on a long journey, I already know that,
I told Leon. —
Tell me if I will see your face again
.

—God forbid your eyes should be robbed of such beauty,
he laughed that high-pitched cackle that sounds like a cat screeching in an alley.

—
God forbid you should die among the idolaters. But if that is your sad
fate, take comfort—I will write you an epitaph fit for the Assembly presi-dent or the Messiah himself.
I thanked him for his reassuring words and left my fate in the hands of God.

I find Win’s faith an incomprehensible jumble—the more he speaks of it, the more confused and puzzled I become. I put my hand over my mouth and chin to appear a serious student of his words, while actually I am smiling, bemused by this stew of blasphemy, fantasy, and folly. You would think every man here was a Talmudic scholar, the way they carry on. Men who cannot write their names love to talk about their Buddha, his teachings, and subjects so eso-teric that the Rambam and Aristotle would scratch their heads in exasperation.

Last night I asked Win to tell me about his Lord.

—
King Nandabayin, what do you wish to know?

—No, the Buddha, your god, the lord you talk about.

—I have no god.

—But you call him lord.

—As the king is my lord. Buddha is only a good guide pointing the way to a land of safety. He is not like Massimo’s god. A very strange god.

Dying for everyone—what good is that? Only a man can save himself,
not another man, not even a god, not even our Buddha. If you are lost, the
Buddha can give you a map, but it is you who must follow it and walk
with your two feet out of the jungle.

What kind of faith is there without a god, even if he is not the God of our fathers, blessed be He? What kind of world is it that has no creator, no protector, no divine guide to lead us? What good is a map, if we are doomed to suffer such an endless wasteland? Are we all just madmen babbling prayers in an empty room? Their loneliness is something I could not bear. Not even a god against whom to rail, to beat one’s chest? What use is sackcloth and ash, if there is no god to take pity on us, to forgive us, to allow us to redeem ourselves through study and good deeds?

On this morning’s walk, Win dropped coins in the begging bowls of two monks but left empty the outstretched palm of a thin, wretched beggar standing on the corner of the main thoroughfare to the market. When we passed an especially hollow-eyed stick of a man, I asked politely, as one who wished to understand the ways of his people, what marked this man and the other man left empty-handed so unworthy. Win motioned toward him with a turn of his head. —
He was a merchant in a prior life who so loved money that he
cheated even his own kin, and so he earned this life as a beggar.

I wanted to ask if all the beggars crowding the edges of the market had so earned their misfortune but held my tongue. The business of the day turned us from further talk on this matter, but later this afternoon while we drank tea on the porch of Win’s home, he returned to this subject, which is clearly a constant concern. He asked me if I remembered a friend, a perfume maker for the king and his many wives, whom I had met briefly at his home soon after my arrival. He is a small, pockmarked fellow with an equally unattractive wife, who showed her scorn for him with dismissive looks and harsh words that needed no translation. —
Poor man, he has the perfumer’s
power to mix scents and potions that could lure any beauty to his bed
but,
Win lowered his voice, his face scrunched with seriousness,
his
noble organ is small as a baby’s thumb—cruel punishment for his wanton
adultery in a prior life.

Was this just a tale to scare Win’s sons to marital fidelity? I was trying to make sense of this primitive notion of divine retribution, when Win told me a longer tale. His grandfather’s cousin had been a wealthy man who prized his material possessions with overween-ing desire. One day, fire burst out in his house just as he was approaching his gate on his way back from the market. Without paus-ing to listen for the cries of his wife and young son, he rushed into the house to save precious double ikats stored in a camphor chest in his sleeping room. He ran out through the flames, cradling the folded silk like a child. Safe outside, he found his wife, who was visiting a neighbor and, seeing the flames, had rushed back. She screamed that their son, barely three, was asleep in the house. The man rushed back into the burning building and found the boy cow-ering in a corner. He saved his son, but not before the flames had blistered the boy’s tender skin and the foul smoke had weakened his young lungs. A sickly child, he died before he could marry and bear his father a grandson. With a somber voice that matched the dim-ming light of day, Win said this avaricious man was reborn a louse that lived upon the silk he so blindly loved.

—
Ab… ra… ham,
when Win wishes to say something of importance, he speaks my name very slowly.
We all will be punished or
rewarded in our next life for the life we lead now.
He rattled off a chorus of punishments that a man might suffer in his next life for evils done in this one. I cannot remember them all, but a discontented man might be reborn a monkey, a man who in anger hurt others with his words would be reborn a ghost with a mouth burning like a furnace, those full of pride in their own beauty and contemptuous of others would find themselves hunchbacks or dwarves in their next lives, and a lecher who took pleasure in adulterous love affairs would be reborn a woman.

Perhaps his tale of retribution might scare into goodness a child who had not yet attained the natural reason to know the wisdom and righteousness of the mitzvoth. But no man old enough to make a minyan would be frightened by this primitive reckoning of consequences. What a dark faith that denies the soul’s rebirth in this life. Cannot we change and make up for our youthful errors? If not, you are doomed. No marble crypt on the Lido for you: I am afraid, exhausted by your flirting and amorous indiscretions, you too may end up a louse—your home the unwashed hair of some aging courtesan. Or even worse, you will be reborn a woman who will have to ward off the lecherous advances of callow youths.