The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi (33 page)

Why didn’t you tell me it would be like this? To which you have every right to respond, “Why didn’t you ask?”

After almost a week I have yet to catch a glimpse of the Sultan. Nor have I been told what is expected of me, what my duties are, or indeed why I am here at all. According to the official camp roster, I am a member of the highest
oda
of the Sultan’s senior pages — the ones who dress him, shave him, bathe him, feed him, and on campaign stand guard over him and fight for him. They are his guard of honor. I eat with them and sleep with them, but they have made it clear that I am not one of them. In fact, they call me the Jew Page, not with malice, more to distinguish me from them. They are all Christian-born boys, taken as the spoils of conquest, enslaved, converted to Islam, and selected to be members of the Sultan’s personal and governing caste, his
cul
. That is their pedigree, and to them no one without it could ever be a true member of the Fourth
Oda
of the Sultan’s pages.

They even exclude Ibrahim the Greek from their brotherhood. He may be the Grand Vizier, but they refer to him as the Greek. Although he was one of the tribute boys like them, and born a Christian like them, he, being Greek, is not their kind of Christian.

So far, what little instruction I have received has come from my official superior officer, the Sultan’s Chief Foreign Language Interpreter, Ahmed Pasha. But, truth to tell, I don’t think Ahmed knows what my duties are any more than I do. Or why I am designated as his assistant, since he has nothing for me to do. It was he who informed me that I am prohibited from working on Saturday since it is my Sabbath. And from eating pork on any day of the week. And forbidden to shoulder a weapon. Too bad, since my talent with the
gerit
might win me some friends among the Sultan’s senior pages. But I suppose I must be grateful that, even if I do not know what I am meant to do here, at least I do know what I may not do.

Lest you think that I am unhappy on the march, I rush to assure you that I am safe and warm and well fed. I have a champion horse of my own to ride on the march, a mule to transport my books and papers, and assigned stalls in the stable to house my animals. So, you see, I am far from suffering. Nor am I, God knows, in danger. The Persian king is still a thousand miles away, and the people that wave to us as we pass through the provinces of Anatolia seem very glad to see us. Why should they not be? The Sultan has packed up his entire treasury to keep him company, so we travel with wagon-loads of gold and pay cash for everything we buy. What a difference this is from my memory of Bourbon’s Imperial Army that sacked Rome, his troops forced to snatch food out of the mouths of starving people so as not to starve themselves. Since we pick up most supplies as needed, we are spared the constant search for food and forage that bedevil European armies on the march. And since we are known to buy what we need at a fair price, we are welcomed everywhere with flags and smiles.

Of course, this is only the beginning of a long march, and we are still well within the bounds of the Ottoman Empire. Once we reach the border of Mesopotamia, we will have to engage Tahmasp’s army and besiege Persian cities. But at least we will arrive fresh and well fed. I know that you, Papa, have suffered untold hardship during many sieges, most recently at Vienna. And I do not minimize the possibility of hard times ahead for this campaign. But at the moment, I feel much more like a member of some vast triumphal procession than a soldier enduring the privations of war.

I do not know when this letter will reach you, Papa. It is my plan to take advantage of the couriers who ride back and forth to Istanbul on the Sultan’s business. Since you stand so high in his esteem, I may work up the courage to ask his permission to send my letters to you in his pouch. That is, if I ever get to see him. I hope this finds you in good health.

D.

From: Danilo del Medigo at Maltepe

To: Judah del Medigo at Topkapi Palace

Date: June 14, 1534

Dear Papa:

Just when I had begun to believe that I was doomed to spend my campaign days studying like a schoolboy for a test that I would never be required to take, a summons arrived for me to report to the Sultan’s tent after the final prayer tonight.

I will not hide from you, Papa, that I was already trembling when I began to prepare for my first reading session with the Sultan. This I did by reviewing the passages about Alexander that you sent to help me with my translating tasks. But I was so nervous that when I reached for the pages, they dropped from my hand and went flying all over the tent. Lucky for me these tents are carpeted, and no harm was done to your precious manuscript.

When I arrived at the Sultan’s tent, still shaking, he was seated on a throne of cushions beside a small desk piled high with papers and did not look up. Is that how he treated you, Papa? No greeting? No smile? Was I expected to announce myself? I thought not. How does one behave in the presence of princes? How does one find one’s place as a small cog in this vast wheel that is rolling over Anatolia? Oh, how I wish that I had asked you more questions when I had the chance. Because I once visited a military camp — and a European one at that — I foolishly believed that I knew all about campaigning. Now I find that I do not even know how to ask permission to use the latrine, much less whether or not to open my mouth.

So there I stood in the Sultan’s presence at last, waiting for a sign. And, to be sure, after several uncomfortable minutes, the Sultan did look up. But he never greeted me. Nor did he smile. He is not a smiling kind of man. He simply put down the last of his papers, withdrew from under his pillow my mother’s translation of Arrian’s
Anabasis
that you gave to him, and passed it over to me. I am pleased to tell you that he keeps the manuscript in a gold-embroidered bag. And that he takes great care with it. And that, in spite of my shattered nerves, I did not drop it.

Finally came the curt order: “You may begin.”

And so I began with the anecdote of Alexander’s taming of the wild horse, Bucephalus. But I hardly had the first words out when the royal hand went up.

“I wish to hear the Greek’s version of īskender’s landing on the shores of Asia. It is a tale I heard as a child from my blessed mother, may she rest in eternal peace.”

To which I added, “Amen.”

To tell the truth, Papa, I was more than a little surprised at the Sultan’s lack of interest in Alexander’s early years. Was this Sultan never a boy himself?
Perhaps he is too occupied with the here and now as he walks in the footsteps of Alexander
, I thought. But in the course of reading to him last evening, I began to sense that he does feel a kind of kinship with Alexander (whom they call īskender), but that it is more mystical than historical. I believe he thinks himself to be the reincarnation of īskender, born to assert the power of the True Faith over the heretic Persians.

Lucky for me I was able to render into passable Turkish īskender’s crossing of the Hellespont and the wonderful bit where he leaps off the royal trireme and hurls his spear into the soil of the Persian Empire to claim it as his own. I cannot be certain, but at that point, I believe I heard the Sultan mutter under his breath, “Bravo, īskender!”

This gave me the confidence to plow ahead to Alexander’s capture of Troy and his homage at the tomb of Achilles. Arrian tells us that Alexander and his boon companion, Hephaestion, placed wreaths on the tombs of Achilles and Achilles’ boon companion, Patroclus. As I read, my Sultan nodded approvingly, if not of me at least of Alexander. But when I came to the word “wreaths,” he reared up on his cushions and his face clouded over.

“Wreaths!” He spat out the word like an oath. “What about the naked dance around Achilles’ tomb? What about the perfumed oil and the choir of angels?” He aimed an accusing finger at me. “You must have skipped a page.”

For a moment, I wondered if perhaps I
had
missed a page — this man speaks with such authority that he inclines you to doubt your very self. But a quick perusal of the manuscript told me that I had missed nothing. Further, I assured him that, in all my readings, I had not encountered any mention of Alexander dancing around Achilles’ tomb. This only put him in a worse humor, which, luckily, he chose to take out not on me but on poor old, dead Arrian.

“Who is this Arrian anyway?” he demanded. “I was told that he was the most reliable source on the life of īskender. Now I find that I have better information from Ahmedi’s
Book of İskender
that my mother read to me in the nursery.”

Who indeed was Arrian? And how much did he really know about Alexander? For that matter, how much did I know? And what did I have in my pitiful arsenal of learning to put up against the bedside fables recounted by the Sultan’s sainted mother?

Gathering my wits, I ransacked my memory for everything I had ever learned about Alexander’s life from you and my mother, then proceeded to throw at him a mixed grill of names and dates and scribes and scholars — Arrian, Plutarch, Quintus, Diodorus, Ptolemy, I threw them all in. Each of these biographers, I explained, had his own version of īskender’s story. Yet not one of their original manuscript sources survives. What we have today are retellings, each one with its own gaps and errors. Of the lot, Arrian is judged to be the most complete life of Alexander.

“But we must remember,” I advised him gently, “that Arrian wrote four centuries after īskender’s death, when everyone who ever knew the young king and could attest to the events of his life was long dead.”

We must remember . . .
Had I actually spoken to the Padishah in the imperative? Nobody tells the Sultan what he must do. Even an ignoramus like me knows that.

I sat waiting for the axe to fall. Instead, I got a quite kindly request to think back over my readings in Latin and Greek about what happened to īskender in Troy. Either the Padishah hadn’t heard my lapse of protocol or else he simply couldn’t believe his own ears. That gave me a moment in which to redeem myself.

Think, Danilo. Where could the Sultan’s mother have gotten her story of naked dancing?
Very likely from the Turkish romance of īskender, translated into Arabic from the Persian and before that from the original Greek. How easy it would have been to mistake a word or a phrase — even a whole paragraph — on such a tortuous linguistic journey.

“May I ask a question of you, sire?” I asked.

He nodded his permission.

“Do you by any chance recall the precise wording in the book that was read to you as a child?”

“I do,” he answered, quite affably. “I heard many times how īskender and Hephaestion approached the tomb of Achilles on their knees; how, in a gesture of homage, they stripped themselves bare, anointed themselves with sweet holy oil to purify their bodies, and then performed a traditional dance around the sacred site. I can hear my mother’s voice telling it. Every word.”

His mother’s voice. All in a rush, my own mother’s voice came back to me relating how Alexander made for Troy to honor his hero, Achilles. How he exchanged his own armor for a shield said to have been the one that protected Achilles at Troy. And how, in a traditional act of homage, he and his boon companion, Hephaestion, stripped bare and ran a naked foot race around the tomb of Achilles.

Apparently, somewhere along the tortuous route of translation, the race had become a dance. Race, dance — not too dissimilar. And in any case, who am I to challenge the word of the Sultan’s sainted mother? So, as I retold my mother’s tale, I replaced her word, “race,” with his mother’s term, “dance,” adding a silent prayer to my meticulous mother to forgive the inaccuracy.

And when that was done, I begged the Sultan’s pardon for my error, blaming the translators. In Latin, I explained, the word “cursus”
is usually taken to mean race, as in a running contest. Almost instantly, I saw the clouds beginning to form again above the Sultan’s forehead.

“But it can also mean ‘dance,’” I added hastily. And got a satisfied nod in return.

I had scraped by with my reputation intact. But what about poor Arrian? His name was mud. And on this note, we ended the long evening.

I suppose I can claim to have survived some kind of test. But one thing fills me with trepidation. Not only does this man want me to translate Arrian on the spot, he wants Arrian to have written the romance of īskender that his mother read to him as a child. And I am not certain that I can perform such a miraculous transformation.

What the Sultan requires of me is a romantic tale, and Arrian is neither tale-spinner nor romantic. With his text I see the Sultan’s eyes begin to flicker, then close. Arrian is lulling him to sleep. He is a dry bone, this Greek, with no good bits to chew on. And this causes me to lose hope for my future as the Assistant Foreign Language Interpreter. And to curse the day I ever heard the name īskender.

Your respectful and loving son,

Danilo del Medigo