in the living room with her embroidery hoop. In her heavy dress, plaited hair arranged into a tight bun, she looked the embodiment of domesticity. She offered him tea, but he made a lame excuse and rushed up the stairs to his rooms.
Upstairs, he poured cold water from the jug into a porcelain basin, took off his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He didn’t think of himself as handsome or well-built, in spite of Minou’s protestations to the contrary. She liked his ruddy skin and brown eyes, and, with an air of fake ease, swore that his nose was ‘aquiline’. Where did she get a word like this, he wondered. In the mirror he could see that his hair was thinning already. He was not as tall as Ignacy and far thinner, but his body had the sturdiness of generations of peasants, and could carry him in the saddle for hours.
He lay down on the hard, narrow bed and closed his eyes. He thought of a young woman, a girl he healed once, at la Charité. She was not older than fifteen, with red, lush curls and little freckles all over her face. She was writhing in pain, her lips livid and bleeding from the pressure of her crooked teeth biting into flesh. He had ascertained that the patient was brought by a young man who had left as soon as he could, without leaving his name or address. When he examined the girl, he found a pig’s tail pushed into her anus. The nun who had helped him undress her, averted her eyes. Someone had tried to remove it, but the hair on the tail had got stuck in her flesh. The girl was bleeding and her anus was filled with pus.
Thomas inserted a small tube around the tail and extracted it. He didn’t take the girl’s money. He didn’t warn her against continuing her trade. He didn’t tell her how often he saw women with their private parts torn, with broken glass stuck in their vaginas. He figured she knew all that. She cried and thanked him in her thick, Breton accent. He kept her at la Charité for a few days until her wound began to show the signs of healing. Then he let her go.
Sophie
The plague is stalking the streets of Istanbul, this city of golden towers, of mosques and minarets, of crescents, kiosks, palaces and bazaars. At street corners bodies of the diseased are being burnt, together with all their possessions. The smoke has already filled the air, spilled into every street, lodged deep into the fibres of everyone’s clothes. Whole sections of Istanbul have been cordoned off, though people say that well-placed bakshish can do wonders. Announcements in Turkish and in Greek forbid all contacts with foreigners, especially visits to the foreign missions. Any Greek woman caught with a foreigner would be beaten in public. Forty lashes to the heels of her feet.
Maria Glavani is carrying cloves of garlic in a sash around her neck and blue beads to ward off the evil eye. She never leaves the house without the holy picture of St Nicholas to whom she prays until her knees turn red and sore. In the mornings, when she comes back home smelling of liquor and men, she washes her hands and face with water to which she adds a few spoonfuls of vinegar.
‘You stay inside!’
Mana’s voice is harsh, impatient. The lines on her face are deepening, no matter how diligently she massages them every day. Sophie does not like these frenzied preparations, the ironing of dresses, the pinning of hair. The slaps when she is too slow or clumsy; when a hem is ripped; a pin misplaced; a line of kohl smudged. But after Mana leaves, the silence of their small house chokes Sophie. In her empty bed she hugs herself. What comes back to her is the smell of smoke and vinegar mixed with her own sweat. Everything that has happened in her life so far seems to have curled up in her, poised and waiting for release.
Death does not frighten her. In the street she does not turn her eyes away from the burning bodies. This is not the way she will die. She knows that. A fortune-teller told her once that she would die after a long life, without pain. Far away from home, but among those who loved her.
Mana’s black crêpe mourning dress is folded at the bottom of her coffer. In Bursa Maria Glavani would have been the talk of the town. Here, no one remembers Konstantin, the unlucky Greek with greying hair, or his widow. If only she knew what life had in store when she looked into his black eyes for that first time. If only she listened to her own mother who pointed out the threadbare clothes and the chaffed shoes of this man who talked incessantly of diamonds big as walnuts, of herds of cattle, of silk and gold lace. Such is the fault of love. Love that brings a woman down and leaves her at the mercy of strangers.
Mana no longer talks of Christian duties, of sin and honour and the good name. They are eating meat again, and fresh fruit Mana buys at the market herself. The days are still cool. To keep warm, they put hot ashes into the tandir and sit with their feet on it. The warmth stays in their bodies for a long time. They need to be strong and round off their hips. By the time a fat man gets thin, a thin man dies.
‘I want the best for you,’ Mana says, and Sophie believes that. Her thoughts fold and refold around the promises of the future. She knows her mother has been making enquiries. Do any of the foreign diplomats in Istanbul show the first signs of boredom with their current mistresses? A Frank, rich and powerful, and refined. A man who would not slap her daughter around and then leave her without means to lead an honest life. The girl, she hears her mother’s whisper, is an unspoiled virgin, worthy of a king’s bed.
When she hears this, Sophie thinks of Diamandi’s hand on her breasts, his body crushing her to the ground, his hot tongue parting her teeth, its earthy, lingering taste. She thinks of his strong, smooth legs, the man’s hair on the boy’s chest. The sharp pain of his love, and the blood on her legs.
An innocent girl, her mother says, with a good heart who could be grateful, who would be so grateful for a nice home, a carriage, beautiful dresses that would show off her skin and her hair. Dresses that would add glitter to these beautiful black eyes in which some have already seen the moon and the stars.
Dou-Dou. A virgin. Unspoiled. Innocent. Naïve to the highest degree, and with a good heart.
Yes, Dou-Dou can be grateful and funny and good at pleasing. Skilful, too, in the art of massage. Her touch is light, her skin is warm and dry. The girl is no weakling, she can press what needs to be pressed, knead what needs to be kneaded.
A foreign diplomat, her mother whispers, would leave one day. But, as any honest man would do in such a situation, he would provide a dowry for his girl. Sweeten the nibbled goods for his successor, a merchant or a shopkeeper. Someone solid, honest. Someone who would want children and a beautiful wife with a handsome dowry, even if he had to close his eyes and take a jewel from the second floor.
Why is Mana hiding all these schemes from me, Sophie thinks. Why the charades, the pretence, the games. I’m no longer a child. I know no one will marry me without a dowry. In bed at night she lets her fingers run down her neck, over her breasts, down to her belly. There is a moment in which a touch turns into a caress. A sweet moment of pleasure. She likes the thought of a rich man of the world who would tell her what lies behind Istanbul and Bursa. A man who would teach her the dances of the Frank courts, tell her what the ladies do to hold their hair so high. A man who would teach her to speak French. She is quick with languages, has always been. Greek, Turkish and Armenian come to her naturally like breath. She has already picked quite a few French words from her aunt, and some Russian ones too: Bonjour mon cherie. Spassiba. Slichnotka.
Aunt Helena, a frequent guest at the Russian mission’s balls and soirees, has promised to keep her eyes open. She has always liked the Russians whom she calls ‘the fair race from the North’, and ‘the people who know the meaning of pleasure’. She has always liked their caviar from Astrakhan, their clear vodka that goes right to your veins. Liked their dances until dawn, as if there were no tomorrow, as if the world would end that very day. Glasses, she tells her niece, get smashed against the wall so that they could not hold another drink at an inferior time. There is one more thing that pleases Aunt Helena. The Russian
