White Moon Black Sea (17 page)

“We’ve decided business is not entirely ‘common’ now. What quaint words you colonials use,” Brindley said. “Mind. I all but say a little prayer of thanks. You might have married an American football player, or joined the Salvation Army and cheered for them.”

“Not possible. It’s just as hard for a Jewish princess to crack the Salvation Army as it is to break into the ranks of the cheerleader brigade.”

The banter continued until they opened the thermoses of chilled dry martinis, malt whiskey, hot beef broth, cold vichyssoise, coffee, and tea. They uncorked bottles of chilled Chablis and several of a perfect claret that were waiting for them on a low table near the fire. It groaned with the weight of covered silver dishes containing thick sirloin steaks, lamb cutlets, poussins. All of which had been prepared in several different marinades and were ready to throw onto the fire to be barbecued on request, for serving charred on the outside and bright pink on the inside. Set in the embers and gently bubbling away was a pot of chili. There was garlic bread made from long French sticks, whole wheat rolls, loaves of rye, soft white English cottage loaves, cakes, and pastries. There were baskets of
crudités beautifully arranged, every raw vegetable that was in season scrubbed and cut to a perfect size for eating there and on the run. Which was the way the entire buffet was designed, so that the men could still tend to their fishing rods stuck in the sand, dashing back and forth from the water’s edge to grab Moses’ tasty morsels.

The scent of the beach mingled with woodsmoke, herbs, spices, and the sizzling of the roasting meat. In the afternoon the sun came out. A haze of heat settled over the beach and sapped the women of their energy. They did little more than gossip and tease the men, when they left their rods long enough to rest and sit in the sand at the women’s feet. After the gifts had been opened and admired, Mirella and Deena sat together and watched the men surf casting. For a long time they said nothing, just watched and listened to the roar of the ocean and dozed in their chairs.

In the late afternoon it was still hot. The heat and humidity were beginning to take their toll on Mirella. She stood up and shed the attractive cotton caftan she was wearing, then she spoke to Deena, who was roused from her lethargy by Mirella’s announcement. “I must go for a swim. This is the moment of truth. A cliché, maybe, but fairly apt.”

Deena tried to raise herself from her chair, but she was so dozy she slipped back and fell into a deep sleep, barely hearing Mirella say, “Don’t bother, Deeny. Adam or Rashid will come with me.”

Deena had no idea how long she had been sleeping when she woke up with a start. Her first thoughts were of Mirella, and Mirella wasn’t there. Suddenly Mirella’s last words returned to her like a ringing in the ears. Deena jumped out of the chair and ran, panicked, across the hot sand and down to the water’s edge. The ocean seemed if anything rougher. She raised her hand to her forehead to create a shade for her eyes the better to scan the waves for her friend. A large wave crashed and rolled on to the beach and over Deena’s feet. She felt the receding water suck the smooth wet sand from under her toes. And then she
spotted them floating on the waves quite far out. Adam, Mirella, and Rashid.

It had been five days since that day on the beach. Five glorious and happy days for Mirella and Deena, alone in the East Hampton house except for the staff and Moses. He remained with the women at all times, or at least within shouting distance of them, by order of Adam, his only request before he had left for Istanbul. He had gone when Mirella asked that she be allowed to have her baby and bring the infant to him in Istanbul. He had understood perfectly and had raised no anxiety in her by objecting. He merely had gone the following day.

Not so Rashid. He had acquiesced to Mirella’s wishes reluctantly and left her side in East Hampton, but he remained in his Southampton house, making her nervous by being so close. They had two erotic encounters in his house before the baby was born. With each visit she made to him, she was aware of Rashid’s anger, born of being thwarted. She assumed one source of his anger was her decision not to have him present during and after the birth of the baby, or to allow him to see either of them until she returned to Istanbul. Her acknowledgment of his takeover of her holdings had certainly been another. But she knew him well. There was something more that had escaped him. Something else he wanted that he could not get, and of which she was sure he was still in hard pursuit. What was it? Or who? Those questions troubled her.

She had a kind of answer on the first day she arrived at his Southampton compound. Humayun had been sent for and was discreetly in residence. The swiftness with which Rashid replaced Mirella in his erotic life always smarted a bit, and this particular time more so than ever. The manner in which he subtly but nevertheless tauntingly made her aware of Humayun’s presence always incited her to greater passion in their erotic games. She knew he had brought Humayun over to exhibit his power over her whether or not she called the shots. She wanted to say, “Isn’t every young, middle-aged, or old beauty on Long Island enough for you?” But she couldn’t because she knew they were
not. So she said nothing. After their long and passionate afternoon of lovemaking, lying on his side with her in bed, creating a pattern on top of her domed belly with a selection of Leonidas white chocolates from a small pedestal dish, he surprised her by saying, “Mirella, I want you to do something for me. I want you to speak to Moses on my behalf.”

“Moses?” Puzzled, she attempted to rise. He stopped her with gentle hands, and she let herself fall back among the pillows propped up behind her. The chocolates hardly moved.

He placed the empty pedestal dish on the nightstand, then turned back to her and said, “You wouldn’t want to upset my chocolates, would you?” He chose one and fed half of it to her before popping the other half in his own mouth. While she was still chewing he placed his lips over hers and licked them with his tongue, casually caressing her nakedness with roving hands. He took another of the while chocolates and ate it, and the delight the chocolate gave him appeared in his eyes. His caresses grew more daring between her legs and, while exciting her with his fingers spontaneously probing within her, he said, “Moses is in love with Humayun. He wants to marry her.”

She reacted with such surprise that she found herself speechless. Rashid took advantage of the moment to bend his head to hers and kiss her again on the lips. He pressed his advantage.

“Let me tell you about it before you say anything. You knew ages ago about my giving Humayun to him as a gift for a couple of weeks. Well, what you didn’t know is that the poor devil flowered erotically under her guidance. And, for what it’s worth, she learned to have deep feelings for him. When she came to me and asked me to rescind the order I had given her to make herself available to him, she told me the affair was getting out of hand. I instructed her to let him down gently. The last thing I wanted was to upset Moses. I like the man, and I could see a hell of a lot of sexual power in him trying to find a way to get out. As a gesture of thanks for all his kindnesses to me, I wanted to help him find sexual ecstasy, not hurt him.”

Rashid ate another chocolate. Then he snuggled closer to her and, placing an arm around her shoulder while he pressed ever deeper with embedded fingers now covered with her come, he was delighted by the look of lust he was teasing from her.

“He is, I am informed, a very well endowed and imaginative lover. Got a great deal of stamina.”

“I don’t want to hear about that, Rashid,” Mirella said, some anger now slipping into her voice. “I am just so happy he has found someone that he loves and wants for himself. He deserves the best. I would have wished it were someone other than Humayun, because of the life she has led in the past, but love chooses without looking forward or backward.”

“As true, no doubt, as it is sentimental. But you had better hear the rest.”

There had been something in his tone, a warning. Mirella was alerted at once to the fact that Moses, her good and dear Moses, was in trouble, whether he knew it or not. She scooped the remaining chocolates off her stomach. She took Rashid’s hand by the wrist and wrenched it from between her legs and dropped the sweets into the moistened palm, clumsily scrambling away from him.

He hurled the chocolates across the room and grabbed her before she could get off the bed. She didn’t fight him; she simply sat with her back to him while he squatted on his haunches and fiercely caressed her naked shoulders and kissed the nape of her neck.

“I knew you would be angry and unrealistic about this. But no one could be sorrier than I am. And that’s why we must do what we can to save the situation. Just hear me out.”

She took one of his hands from her shoulder and kissed it. She knew very well he meant what he was saying. And there was no point in getting angry, either with him or the situation. She slowly rose from the bed and stood to face him. For nearly a minute neither said anything. They were too busy looking at each other. Mirella was yet again taken aback by her tireless lust for the handsome man naked on his knees before her. She marveled that this beautiful man,
this inveterate seducer of women, should be so much a part of her life, and that she could hand herself over to him erotically to do with as he wanted. Because whatever he wanted stimulated the search for more, always much more, the quest for a sexual oblivion. Standing naked before him in her present condition she could not but love him for the sexual excesses he shared with her. It was he who had destroyed sexual shame in her forever, accorded her sensual freedom.

“Okay, Rashid. Tell me about it while I dress.”

“It’s quite simple. He fell in love with one of the world’s most remarkable whores, who happens to be my sexual slave, but whom I will not free — not only because I want her, but because she would never be happy any where but where she is, with me. She may toy with the idea that she could love Moses enough to marry him and play the good wife, but that’s a fantasy. Humayun is a sexual adventuress with bizarre sexual appetites, and she lives the life of the most coveted sexual slave in the world. She is a famous and rare oddity, and in love with her life and me, and no one else. If Moses pursues this any further, it will be disastrous for both of them.

“I know that you don’t want to hear this, Mirella, but already he is in trouble. She is turning him into her sexual slave, slowly destroying the man he is. It must be stopped, and soon, so that he too is saved. Of the three of us, he is the most vulnerable.”

The telephone began to ring. It put an end to their conversation. Unimpressed by Rashid’s apparent altruism, Mirella now knew a third thing that was making Rashid unhappy. He wasn’t getting his way in breaking up Moses and Humayun. She would have to think about how to handle that, and talk to Deena when she met up with her in town, perhaps even call Adam and ask his advice. She was very sad for both of them, mostly for her dear Moses.

She could not help overhearing Rashid’s conversation.

“It’s been weeks since you were hired to find her. I told you to be subtle, but not ineffectual, man. I thought you were the best in the business. At least, that’s what Interpol made me think.”

Mirella watched Rashid’s face change expression several times while the person on the other end of the line spoke.

“Were you at least able to trace the call she made to me three days ago?”

Again Rashid listened and Mirella, now dressed, walked past him and through the sliding glass wall to stand outside near his swimming pool, not wanting to work herself into a jealous curiosity as to who the new woman was he was chasing.

“Look, my patience is running out. There is a bonus of twenty-five thousand dollars if you find her in the next three days. If not, you’re fired.”

She heard him bang down the receiver and noted a fourth frustration generating the undercurrent of anger she sensed in Rashid.

9

M
oses swung Adam’s 1937, cream-colored Mercedes Benz convertible into Gin Lane. Throughout the drive from East Hampton the extraordinary events of the last few days kept tumbling through his mind.

Mirella’s baby had been born as she wished in the East Hampton house and with the least possible fuss. She had had a long and hard labor, thirty-eight hours. The infant, a girl, was particularly beautiful for a newborn baby. Masses of blond hair. Eyes that kept changing from emerald-green to deep violet, so that no one was quite sure what color they were. Long, dark brown lashes. Unlike some, this baby came out of her mother’s womb with hardly a blemish on her creamy skin. Mirella tried to tell herself that the aura of light and specialness she sensed around her baby girl was what every mother imagined. But perhaps any descendant of the Kadin Roxelana Oujie was special, right down to her tiny slender fingertips.
Neither doctor nor midwife, nurse nor nanny could help admiring her unusual beauty, or resist touching her seductive baby lips with the tips of their fingers. A plump — dare Mirella admit, erotic looking? — happy and healthy baby, who won her mother’s heart from the moment she was born. A seductress from birth. Both Moses and Deena found it almost impossible to stay away from her. And Adam in Istanbul, Rashid in Paris, seemed never to be off the telephone. Deena announced she wanted a baby. No, not one baby, many babies. Mirella opted for no more.

Moses’ obligation to stay with Mirella until her baby was born had left him with no time to see Humayun. She was available to him because Rashid had left the Hamptons suddenly, almost at a minute’s notice, after assuring Mirella he would be on the telephone to her every day. He had rattled off a series of telephone numbers to call as soon as she went into labor.

His departure and the knowledge of what was going on between Moses and Humayun had prompted Mirella and Deena to have a talk with Moses about the affair. That had all taken place the day before Mirella had gone into labor. She had not been feeling very well and a strange depression seemed to have overtaken her. Deena and Moses had put it down to her worry that the baby was more than three weeks late, and the doctor insisted she would have to go into the hospital and have a cesarean delivery if labor didn’t start within three days.

Having made up their minds to talk with Moses in a ruthlessly honest manner about his friendship with Humayun, the two women had invited him to join them as their guest for lunch, just the three of them in the East Hampton kitchen. Moses had sensed something was in the air when they announced that Deena was assuming the role of chef. Deena, though a gourmet, was not a happy cook. He got a whiff of real trouble when he found the kitchen as neat as a pin, because Deena was not just a bad cook; she was a slob as well and had been known to leave a kitchen as if she had strafed it with a full clip from a machine gun.

The large rectangular pine table had been dressed beautifully. The massive display of the last-of-the-summer flowers — a mélange of faded pinks, purples, mauves,
yellows, and whites mixed with poppy heads and long grasses in a low bowl — which had filled the center of the table most handsomely, was set at one end for the three of them. Moses had been placed at the head of the table, the women on either side of him. The various parts of their one-course meal, Peking duck, were laid out before them. On crisp, white linen place mats, edged with an inch of indigo-blue Brussels lace, were several different blue-and-white, eighteenth-century Nanking dishes containing a stack of paper-thin pancakes, soy and bean paste, pieces of crispy duck, slivers of cucumber, and transparently thin rings of spring onion, all ready for all of them to fill their own pancakes as they liked. Ivory chopsticks lay neatly across the weeping-cherry- and lotus-flower-patterned plates. Large champagne glasses of fine crystal with delicate long stems waited to be filled from two silver ice buckets proffering the best Krug champagne from the cellars of the East Hampton house. It was one of Moses’ favorite meals.

The three had just taken their seats and Moses was opening the wine. He looked at the two women with great affection and popped the question, “What’s this all about?”

“You and Humayun. Please don’t be angry with us for wanting to talk with you about it. We feel as family toward you. We care about your happiness. Rashid does too. He has asked me to speak to you about your relationship with Humayun.” Mirella’s embarrassment showed, but she struggled on under it. “We don’t intend to do that, Moses. Not unless you want us to. All Deena and I care about is that you know we are here for you, as friends, ready to lend an ear. And not only to listen. We want to share in your happiness, help you, if it’s help that you need.”

Then Deena had added, “Listen, Mose, you can tell us to mind our own business. We can live with that. But we can live better if you would take us into your confidence, because that’s the only way we’ll ever know all is well with you. And that, Mose, is important to us.”

A hundred yards before the entrance to Rashid’s Southampton compound, Moses suddenly swerved off the road to one side, pulled up the hand brake, and shut off the
engine. His thoughts harked back to that lunch, and the relief and gratitude he had felt by the genuine concern and support Deena and Mirella and — as he was to learn later — Adam and Brindley were giving him. He had been overwhelmed by the understanding the women showed of him and Humayun. They had been very straightforward with their conviction that he and Humayun would be unable to sustain a happy and constructive life together. Over and over during their four-hour lunch, as they sat together drinking champagne and filling, rolling, and eating their pancakes, Moses opened up to himself and the two women as he had never allowed himself to do before. It was a scene that would be forever etched in his mind — the loving care these two women had shown in discussing his feelings, his relationship with Humayun, and the most shocking and intimate facts they knew about the woman he loved — and their loving declaration that their homes would always be open and ready to receive him and Humayun at any time.

Now he sat in the quiet of Gin Lane, thinking about the things that had been said at lunch.

“I love her,” he had said to them. “And I’m relieved that you know about it. I can see by the look on your faces what you’re thinking: ‘But does she love Moses?’ Yes, I believe she does. How much? I can’t answer that because I don’t know. I can only hope enough to marry me.”

“Moses, can we ask more? Will you allow us to talk about this with you?” That had been Mirella.

“Yes. Why not? There are no other two people I feel closer to. And when Humayun agrees to marry me, I hope that won’t change. Or my job either, for that matter.”

“We should hope not,” answered Mirella, shocked by the very idea that he might leave them.

To Moses she had looked uncomfortable, so pregnant sitting on the dining chair. So he had put the champagne bottle down and gone and got a chintz-covered, soft club chair and ottoman for her, which always was by the open fireplace in the kitchen.

Then he had returned to his place at the head of the table, filled the glasses, and, still standing, had addressed the women.

“Why are you looking sad for me? I am happier than I have ever been in my life. Until I met Humayun, I had no idea that there was something missing in my life, that I was a lonely man. Be happy for me. After all, we’re not Romeo and Juliet. This is not the tragic unquestioning love of youth. Believe me, because in those first weeks together with Humayun I was constantly questioning, ‘Is this love or infatuation? Is this intense happiness you feel, this bubbling over in sheer delight, is it nothing more than a moment of peak experience? What other woman has ever inspired in you the deep trust you feel? What other woman has inspired you to see yourself and accept yourself for what and who you are, no more, no less?’ Loving Humayun has restored that essential courage in me to open myself up to whatever life throws at me, and experience it. She has reminded me to keep open to whatever comes up next, not to get scared and enclosed and want to sweep it away. She has made me give up not wanting to be hurt anymore. You know, she is a remarkable woman. She deserves more in life than being indentured to Rashid Lala Mustapha. I love her and I want to set her free, show her another kind of love that has nothing to do with being anyone’s sexual slave.”

Deena’s response smoldered in his mind. “Maybe,” Deena had said, “she doesn’t want to be free. Her whole life has been mastering the role of sexual slave to Rashid. I have seen her. She
is
erotic love, and she is passionately happy in that role. Moses, if you love her, then love her in only that way, because that’s her life. And it just may be possible that the kind of love and freedom you want to give Humayun could destroy her.”

And then Moses thought about what Mirella had said. “Moses, you must ask yourself more questions, my dear friend, face truths, deal in realities. Are you so sure the love you feel for Humayun is more than erotic love? Look, I don’t denigrate that kind of love. It’s as powerful as any. But it is what it is, and its demands and goals are anything but selfless. It claims pleasure at any price. And when that’s the rule, true love does not exist. Not the kind I know you to have in you, and to want for others. Do you really want
to pay any price, and fragment your life and your ideals for, well, sex? You have to think about those things, Moses, because love is whole, not to be broken up just because passion and desire take over and crowd out everything else. Obviously at those times there is no love. I should know. That’s why I live with two loves but have bound myself only to the real one I found in myself with Adam.”

Mirella’s had snapped him back to reality, and the reality of his situation confused him. He had said in answer, “I have no conflict of any kind loving Humayun. That would be such a waste of energy.” Now, though, as he sat in the open car, only minutes away from lying in the arms of the woman he loved, he probed his passion and desire for Humayun, as he had not done with Mirella and Deena.

He couldn’t remember which woman had said, “You always believed it was important to know oneself, not according to a formula, or through the eyes of some guru, but out of a natural awareness. You used to say that self-knowledge puts an end to illusions and hypocrisies. Are you so befuddled by carnal love for Humayun that you have forgotten your principles?”

Then he attached a face to the voice that had spoken those words to him. “Believe me, Moses, it’s me, Deena, telling you. I understand, I have been there, where you are now, moving in the dreamworld of what
I
want, what
I
must have. How many formulas and gurus and fads had you teased me out of before I was able to tap into my own self-awareness? More than I want to remember. I can only repay your wise understanding and patience by pointing out to you that Humayun is an extraordinary sexual seductress. She gets men and women who come her way to lose themselves, wallow in self-abandonment. I can understand that that’s why you love her, for that and sexual ecstasy. Oh, but, my old friend, wake up and understand it, and love her for that. Only, remember, no illusions. Don’t be a hypocrite. She is a sexual slave who battens on the dark side of men’s erotic desires and fantasies.”

Mirella had added, “My uncle Hyram always said of
you, ‘Moses has a mind that is rich in its quietness. He is not a man to look beyond what is. He has the only treasure that a man can have, must have: innocence. That’s something he’ll never lose. It’s grounded in his mind and in his soul. Moses, in spite of his thousand experiences, will always see what truth is. He is a learned man, our Moses, devout about his freedom, open in his vulnerability and his fullness of heart. There is innocence in him permitting him to know what truth is without even thinking about it. You can learn a lot from Moses. I have.’”

Moses opened the car door and stepped into the road. He needed to walk. He had no idea when or where it had happened. Perhaps on the last curve in the road, or a thousand miles away, or in East Hampton while filling a Chinese pancake. Truth is really a pathless land. He had kept going on love all these months, unaware that he had lost his way. Now, suddenly, here in the lane, he found it beside him again.

He walked under a bright sky and in the heat of the afternoon down Gin Lane, grateful for every blade of grass or wildflower he saw, grateful for the sun that shone above him and warmed the very marrow of his bones, the whisper of the soft breeze rustling through the boxwood hedge, the song of a small bird. He sucked in the sweet scent of fresh air and let it out slowly. In his servitude he was free. In that moment he realized that Humayun had done to him what Rashid had done to her. The woman he loved had made of him her sexual slave.

With every stride he took, darkness lifted from his soul. His mind was lit by bright memories of the loving care heaped upon him in childhood by a devoted mother and father and their friends.

Mirella Wingfield’s uncle Hyram, and Moses’ father had been close since their days at Harvard when they were both medical students. What bound the two men even closer was their interest and belief in the Theosophical Society, which eventually became a pivot of Hyram Wingfield’s and his black friend’s lives.

Moses’ father was Harding Jefferson, whose mother and father had been educated slaves on Thomas Jefferson’s
estate, Monticello. Once qualified, Harding became a renowned diagnostician. Hyram entered into medical research and became a successful inventor, although he was reclusive and eccentric. But, in Harding Jefferson’s day, Negro doctors, no matter how educated they were, no matter how expert in their chosen field of medicine, found no offices on Park Avenue, or chief residencies in hospitals. Yet, before Dr. Harding Jefferson’s death, there were great medical centers in cities such as Boston, New York, Washington, and Rochester that had tried in vain to woo him from his offices on the fringe of black Harlem. There he started his practice as a young man, and there he remained until his death. Park Avenue came to Harlem, and so did the rich and the famous, their need mingling with that of the poor.