The Necessary Beggar (18 page)

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Authors: Susan Palwick

BOOK: The Necessary Beggar
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And if she did, Darroti? If she came back to thank you with Timbor there, how then would you explain yourself, eh? And how should the daughter of a noble family love a merchant, who is a merchant's son? Know simply that there is such beauty in the world, and be content.
How be content, without tasting more of it? I could marry such a one.
Marry! You, marry, who have never thought to marry? And marry that one? How would her family allow it? You overreach yourself, Darroti.
And yet I love her. And indeed, all desire for whores has been removed from his limbs, although, with a kind of superstitious dread, he does not yet allow himself to imagine the curves under Gallicina's robes.
She cannot love you, fool. She will forget you before the week is out.
So he torments himself, arguing back and forth, painfully conscious for the first time of how much less he is than he could wish to be. He tells himself that for Gallicina's sake he will be better, nobler, even if he never sees her again; her memory will be his shrine. And then, despairing, he answers himself that if he never sees her again—as is most certain—all his life will be a waste, for the universe cannot contain two such women.
He falls asleep in this feverish debate, and wakes, near dawn, befuddled and ill, seized with a great thirst. Wine. He must have wine. He has never felt such a craving before, and under its impetus he sneaks, trembling and unthinking, into the kitchen, and finds a bottle and drinks, until his shaking hands have steadied and his head is clear again.
Fine work you have made of ennobling yourself, Darroti.
He blinks, standing there, holding the half-empty bottle in the gray light of dawn, and remembers his thoughts of the night before, and is ashamed. Now he must hope that Gallicina does not remember him, if he is so weak.
Nay, nay! You were thirsty, that is all. You awoke surprised out of sleep. Perhaps you are ill, as Timbor thought, and your body needs the wine as medicine; you will be better soon, and governed by your waking mind.
More cheerful now, he puts the bottle away and goes back to bed, and sleeps for another hour, until it is time to get up and go back to Market. Again business is brisk, but today he bargains badly; he is distracted, constantly scanning the crowds for a slight figure in gray silk.
He does not see her. She does not come. Wretched, he once more follows his father home at the end of the day, and allows himself to be pulled into a game with the children in the garden, until Harani calls them to supper.
There are potatoes on the table, and a roast fowl, tossed greens, and a pitcher of juice. Next to the pitcher sits the half-empty bottle of wine Darroti drank that morning.
He stops, stares, feels himself growing ridiculously red. “If you must drink it,” Harani tells him quietly, “have it at the table, in the open. Drink it with us, Darroti, with your family.”
“I'm sorry. I'll pay you for it. I'll—”
“What nonsense!” Her voice is sharper now, and she is frowning. “Pay for refreshment from your own kin? What are you saying? This is your home, Darroti, not a bawdy house.”
Stung, he sits and eats, but finds none of the comfort he found the night before. All the food tastes flat; the voices of his family buzz around him like
gnats; even the sweet children do nothing but annoy him. The walls of the house are closing in on him. He cannot stay here.
And so he excuses himself after supper and goes out, trying to ignore Harani's frown, Macsofo's knowing and disgusted look, Timbor's quiet disappointment. He goes to his favorite wine hall and sits with his friends for a while, but although he drinks, he cannot become happy, cannot attend to his fellows' cheerful chatter about dice and women.
There is only one woman. There is only Gallicina.
You will never see her again, fool. Forget her.
It has only been one day. She may still return. I cannot forget her.
“Darroti, attend your betters!” one of his friends says, laughing, and smacks him lightly in the head. A throbbing ache begins inside Darroti's skull, and he finds himself unreasonably angry.
“Nay,” he says, “I am not in the mood for this talk tonight,” and excuses himself from his friends as he did from his family. They jeer and jest, careless and callow, but he escapes out onto the street, cool now in the darkness, where he can breathe.
He can breathe, yes, but where will he go? To the whorehouse? Nay: the thought turns his stomach, for none of those women is Gallicina. Nor does he wish to go home, to face his family's questions.
Temple: of course. He has not been to Temple in too long, and prayer will help settle his mind. And so he sneaks home, climbing unseen through the window of his room, and grabs his prayer carpet where it lies, neatly rolled and dusty, by the wall, and flees again, going to the Temple in the center of the city. It is always open, lit now by candles. The most devout, who come here every day, pay for niches in which they keep their carpets, so they will not have to carry them from home. Because it is an unusual hour and not a feast day, only the most devout are here now: a few dim figures, rocking on their prayer carpets, their lips moving silently.
Darroti unrolls his carpet and places it on the floor. He kneels and dutifully studies it, the dull brown and white surrounded by a ring of fire. He does not really expect anything to happen, but something does: vertigo seizes him, the same dizziness he felt when he first beheld the carpet after his year as a Mendicant, when it seemed to him that his little life was surrounded by a doom. Now he knows that doom's name. It is Gallicina.
Gallicina, Gallicina. He closes his eyes and tries to pray, but all he can see is the pattern of her carpet, not his own. He opens his eyes again to fix them upon his own carpet, and there is the ring of fire, which is her soul, and he imagines her surrounding him, embracing him, containing him. And so his
meditation becomes a prayer of fervent and lustful thanks to the Elements, for creating Gallicina.
This is not proper practice. Prayer is meant to remind the supplicant of his proper place in the dance of all things; prayer is meant to bring perspective, not obsession. Darroti knows that.
And so he tries to meditate on his own pattern. He tries very hard, but always he finds himself remembering Gallicina's instead, and praying that her desire may be granted, that her family may allow her to be a Mendicant. That part of his prayer, at least, is noble.
At last, exhausted, he sneaks back home, through the window again, and goes to sleep. The rest of the family is long abed. Perhaps he will see her tomorrow. There is still hope; it has only been two days.
But she does not come to the Market the next day, either, and Darroti finds himself descending into a black pit. He bargains well enough, for his brain seems detached from the rest of him, but he takes no joy in the sales, or in the beauty of the day, or in the hearty lentil salad, usually his favorite, that Harani has packed as his lunch. By the end of the day, all of his limbs feel weighted with rocks. She is gone. Gallicina is gone. He will never see her again.
That evening he does not go home at all. He goes to the wine hall, makes small talk with his friends, gets drunk. He does what he used to do, what used to give him pleasure, but he feels no pleasure now. When he leaves the wine hall he goes to the brothel, where the women greet him cheerfully and tease him about his absence. The whore it is his turn to see tonight is his favorite, the oldest and most skilled, but tonight even buxom, supple Stini cannot rouse him.
“Darroti,” she says, frowning, after half an hour of dextrous manipulation which has done no good; he lies as limp as a dead fish. She rocks back on her heels and looks at him soberly. “Darroti, dear, what ails you? Are you ill?”
“I am sorry, Stini. I am weary—”
“Your mind is elsewhere,” she says. “Your body is here, but your spirit is somewhere else, and so even your body is distant. Where are you, Darroti?”
“In the Great Market,” he says dully. “Three days ago.”
Stini frowns again. “I have never heard you speak of business.”
“Not business,” he says. “I—I met someone—a woman—she is far above me, Stini, and—”
“Do not tell me her name, then.” Whores are expert at discretion, which is their honor, but something tells Darroti that Stini is right, that he
must not speak Gallicina's name here. “You may be able to win her love; these things are not unheard of. But then you should not come here, Darroti.”
“I will never see her again. I despair of the thing. That is why I came here. I thought—I thought I must forget—”
“But you cannot,” she says briskly. “Your flesh remembers very well, and knows that I am not your beloved, and so for all your youth and vigor”—she grins, and trails a finger over his normally sprightly member—“your body will have none of it. And three days is not so very long. Go, Darroti. I will only charge you half the fee tonight. Go, and do not despair.”
He goes, despairing. His old ways are closed to him, and the new way, the way of love and hope, has been withdrawn. He goes home and once again recalls each word of his encounter with Gallicina. He weeps. He has played the fool for a girl who tricked from him the best thing in his stall; she is in her mansion or her palace now, laughing, if she remembers him at all. He has cheated his father and dishonored himself, and all his life will be a waste from this day on.
But the next day at noon, bargaining with a customer over a green and yellow room carpet, he glimpses over the old woman's shoulder a flash of a slender figure in gray silk. He freezes, feels his heart leap, loses the sense of his sentence. There: standing five stalls away, pretending to examine a display of pots. It is Gallicina. She is gesturing to him! He nods at her as imperceptibly as he can, and turns back to the old woman, who suddenly finds herself with a new carpet for a far lower price than she expected. She waddles off, gloating. Darroti turns back to the pots. Gallicina is still there: his heart, his soul. She is coming toward him now, pretending to look at the wares in the other stalls.
Where is Timbor? There, by the pile of sleeping mats, haggling with a man and wife. Darroti moves to the other end of the stall, towards Gallicina, and begins neatening a set of outdoor mats. She stops a few feet away from him, idly flipping through a pile of mats in rust-colored reed. He can smell the clean scent of her hair. He fears he will faint from joy.
“Lady,” he whispers.
“Good merchant, Darroti—I need your help.” Her voice is very low, and troubled; he thrills to it, even as his pulse races with horror at the thought that she is in any kind of danger. “I would not ask, and yet you have been kind—more than kind—and there is no one—”
“Lady,” he says, “Gallicina, I would do anything for you.”
And so he would; he would cut off his right hand, if it would spare her any trouble. But he should not have said so, should not have used her name. He has overstepped himself; she will think him an impertinent fool, and flee
in disgust. He stands trembling, his head down, for the three beats of silence before she answers, even softer than before, “You have already given me my soul. How could you do more than that?”
He takes courage, then, and looks up at her face, and finds it tracked with tears. The sight slays him: he cannot move. What pain is she in, to weep in public? “Lady! What—”
“Can you speak freely here?”
“No.” He gestures at Timbor, still arguing amiably with the couple; they are all grinning broadly, their protests of poverty becoming increasingly more florid. They are enjoying themselves. “My father, he must not know—he must not find out—”
“About the carpet you gave me. Because you did not sell it as you should have.”
He nods, too grateful to speak. In the midst of her own troubles, she has thought about him, has entered the world of the carpet merchant, so far below her own, enough to grasp his situation. How quick she is, how compassionate! His hopes soar. “Yes,” he says hoarsely. “It is delicate—”
“Indeed. Darroti, can you meet me after the Market closes?”
“Anywhere. Where?”
She names a quiet public square at the edge of the city, near the district where the wealthy live. She names a time. Darroti agrees at once, although the place is distant; he would meet her on the surface of the sun, if she commanded it. He spends the rest of the day in a delirium, scarcely aware of where he is or of what he is doing. He feels himself shining, transformed, transmuted by the alchemy of love. He has been lit by Gallicina's flame, all his grossness purified and precious now.
The hours are an agony until their meeting, but at last the time comes and he hurries there; he wears his best clothing, fine costly linen, having told his family that he is going to a feast in honor of a friend. He navigates the unfamiliar streets near the square Gallicina has named, ecstasy alternating with terror. What if she is not there? What if her cruel father has kept her at home? What if—
But here he is, in the square, and there she is, sitting quietly on a bench with a book. Several other people are in the square, and this is Gallicina's neighborhood: they may know her. He forces his steps into a stately walk, trying to look as if he belongs here, and goes to sit beside her, but not too close. “Lady,” he breathes.

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