The Abyssinian Proof

11

“May I come in, my dear?”

“Of course, Mama.”

Saba’s room was furnished with a low cushioned divan below the window, a Persian carpet on the floor, a wardrobe, and a narrow wrought-iron bed. Shelves held books, stacks of papers, and manuscripts. A cluttered table was pushed against the wall. It didn’t look like the room of a young girl. Certainly not the room of a woman thinking about marriage. There was not a single piece of embroidery or tatting.

Saba sat on the divan by the open window.

“You’ll catch a cold.” Balkis went over and closed the window. Then she stood, wondering what to say next. She was glad Saba hadn’t witnessed that last scene with Kamil and Amida. It was her own fault. Balkis had let her emotions rule her, something she had promised herself years ago never to do again. Kamil’s resemblance to his father had overwhelmed her. Every detail Kamil revealed about his family had brought her closer to them. It had been irresistible, foolish, and painful.

“Do sit, Mama. You look tired.”

Balkis slumped down beside her, her belly pushing against her breasts. She bit down the pain that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

Saba arranged the cushions behind her mother’s back. “You’re ill, Mama. Can I do anything?”

“I want to talk to you about Courtidis.”

“Mother, please. I don’t want to talk about him. I know you rely on him and I know he’s helped all of us a great deal. You don’t have to worry that I’ll say something to put him off, but I don’t want to marry him.”

“Why not, my dear? He wants to marry you. He’s a good, generous man and he’ll treat you well.”

“Why the sudden rush to marry me off?”

Balkis heard the querulous tone and cautioned herself to tread carefully. “You know that you and Amida are the last of the line.”

“But we’re still young. There’s no hurry.”

Balkis’s stomach turned at the thought of Gudit’s circumcision knife wavering over her daughter’s tender flesh. What was the point of this tradition now when it was more important than ever for the priestess to bear children? Balkis knew she could never allow it. She would have to make this clear to Gudit, who would take Balkis’s forbidding of the ritual as one more betrayal.

“My mother told me that in her mother’s time, there were lots of candidates for priestess and caretaker. There was even rivalry between siblings and cousins. Whole groups of boys went to the monastery together. But by the time Mother was chosen to be priestess, there were only three eligible people.”

“What happened to everyone?”

“The plague hit the last generation very hard, dear. Who knows what else there was? All I know is that we’re at a bad turning. If you and Amida don’t have children, the line comes to an end.”

“Why didn’t Uncle Malik have children?”

“You know him. He’s never shown any interest in that sort of thing.”

“He doesn’t have to be celibate?”

“No. That’s his choice.”

“May I ask you something, Mama?”

“What, dear?”

“Why didn’t you remarry? You could have had more children.”

Balkis sighed. How could she explain without revealing the savagery of the ritual? “After my initiation as priestess, I, well, I wasn’t interested in that sort of thing anymore.”

“What is the initiation like?” Saba asked cautiously.

She wanted to tell Saba, to lift her caftan and show her what had been done to her. Balkis realized at that moment why a young girl must be brought to the ritual like a ewe to the sacrificial stone. She would never have agreed to go through with it if she had known. Why were women willing to spill the blood of their daughters, knowing what it felt like themselves? She had a sudden image of bullnecked Gudit as executioner. A hundred Gudits down the generations, knives in hand, ready to splice the priestess to her faith. And it had worked. She herself had been made priestess against her will, but after the circumcision she had had no choice but to clothe herself in all the power the Holy of Holies and the community bestowed. There was nothing else.

Balkis looked at her daughter. She didn’t need to be sacrificed to the sect in order to rise as its priestess. Saba had faith, something she lacked. The blood rite was for the faithless. That was the secret of four hundred years of continuity.

“Does something happen during the initiation?” Saba asked worriedly.

“Yes, my dear. But it’s not something you need to worry about. We’ll talk about it later. We have time.” She gave her what she hoped was an encouraging smile.

Saba didn’t look reassured. “Is there some reason you want me to have a child now? There’s something you’re not telling me, Mama.”

Balkis patted her on the arm. “I told you not to worry. I simply want you to be settled. It’s time. And Courtidis is a very good candidate.”

“But he’s a Christian.”

“That’s immaterial as long as he agrees to live here and your children are raised as Melisites.”

“Why would he want to live here? He’s not even Habesh.”

“I think the good surgeon will live wherever you ask him to. Why don’t you like him?”

“It’s not that I don’t like him, Mama. I’m not attracted to him like…”

“Are you in love with someone else?”

Saba flushed. “Kamil Pasha.” She said it so softly Balkis wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly.

“Who?”

“I’d like to marry Kamil Pasha.”

Balkis froze. “Pashas make mistresses of the likes of us,” she snapped. “They don’t marry girls from Charshamba.”

“I can make him love me.”

“You’ve only just met him. You have no idea who he is. Perhaps he already has a wife. Have you considered that?”

“He’s not married. Uncle Malik told me all about him.”

“What did he tell you?” Balkis asked warily.

“He said Kamil Pasha would always be there for me and that I could rely on him. Why else would Uncle Malik have said that if he didn’t mean for us to be together?”

The fool, Balkis thought, her mind in turmoil. How dare he introduce her daughter to Kamil without her knowledge or her permission. Now Saba had misunderstood and believed Kamil would marry her. It could never happen.

She grasped her daughter’s hands. “I won’t force you to marry Courtidis. But if you don’t choose him, then you must choose someone else. The village is full of good-looking, ambitious young men. Pick one. In six months, there will be a wedding. If you don’t choose someone, I’ll do it for you. But I forbid you to see Kamil Pasha again.”

Tomorrow, Balkis decided, tomorrow she would tell Saba the real reason she couldn’t marry Kamil. Today she felt too ill and too upset. Meeting Kamil for the first time had struck open a fissure of pain and longing she had thought long healed. She wanted a last chance to dream her own story, before sharing it with others who might dismiss it as nothing more than a sordid affair. Tomorrow, she would start at the beginning and give Saba the gift of her life as she had composed it, before others had come to carve it to their own design. She wanted Saba to love the only part of her mother’s life that she had loved.

Balkis steeled her heart against the broken look on Saba’s face. She recognized it. It had been her own face eighteen years earlier.

Balkis stood on the terrace of the Sultan Selim Mosque, which towered over Sunken Village, watching men leave the mosque after prayer. She could see each man’s face as he emerged from behind the leather curtain that spanned the main door, squinting at the light, then bending down to put on his shoes. The pasha had sought her out, those many years ago, in the Charshamba market. She was eighteen and already married, her baby at home swaddled and asleep in his cradle. He had come up to her in the sweet afternoon light and bought a handful of peaches, telling her, as he bent to count the coins into her hand, that her cheeks put the peaches to shame. They burned even today, those cheeks, when she thought of the timbre of his voice, lush and low, casting everything in gold. She had said nothing at first, but she couldn’t stop herself from hurtling willfully into his life like a basket of peaches overturned. She had never wished it otherwise. All she wanted was for him to return.

She knew he was dead now, yet she continued to stand there every afternoon, hoping to see his face, guarding her emptiness.

Amida pushed Bilal away and sat down heavily on the piano bench. He took a big gulp of whisky. His hands were shaking. Kubalou must have sent Remzi to the magistrate to point the finger at him. There was no other explanation. Did Kubalou think he had squealed about the shipment last night? Someone had told the police, but it hadn’t been him. The image of Remzi stabbing the two young policemen in the heart so efficiently and nonchalantly was etched into his mind. The younger policeman had been about the same age as Amida, no more than twenty, his eyes full of intelligence and yearning. He could have fallen in love with that policeman.

Now there was another policeman missing. Didn’t those fools know that killing policemen would bring retribution raining in upon them from every direction? This couldn’t have been Kubalou’s plan. Remzi must be acting on his own, sheltering under Kubalou’s money and power to play his own sick games. Did Kubalou even know? He should tell him that Remzi’s bloodlust would destroy his operation. Maybe then, Amida allowed himself to think, Kubalou would trust him and give him more responsibility, even his own gang. Then he wouldn’t need to run to his mother for permission for every fart.

They had arrived home near dawn and he had barely slept. Each time he closed his eyes, he saw the blood spurting from the young man’s chest. Bilal had curled himself around Amida. In his fitful sleep, Amida dreamed a hand had reached into Bilal’s chest and torn out his beating heart.

Amida emptied the rest of the decanter into his glass and drank it down. After Kubalou’s man, Ben, had left yesterday evening, Amida had celebrated with his favorite whore, a boy with a harelip whose family had sold him to a brothel. Amida had bought him and kept him in a rented room on the outskirts of Charshamba. The boy kept his face veiled when they did the act. He found it more exciting that way, the satin expanse of his belly, his tight nipples, the gleaming pink snail between his thighs rendered forbidden, vulnerable, even more naked by the black cloth covering his face. He could be anyone.

And then Remzi had come to the door of that rented room with his rough men, smiled knowingly, and demanded that Amida come with them. An initiation, he called it. No Habesh were needed that night, just him. And he had gone, wondering how they had known where to find him. No one in Sunken Village knew about the rented room. He worried about the boy. He wasn’t safe there anymore.

He opened the lid of the piano and let his fingers slide across the keyboard, then looked at the score and began to pick out Mozart’s Fantasia in D minor. He played badly, despite a year of lessons in Cairo, but the cool ivory responding to his fingers soothed him. He played until his arm hurt so much that he could barely move it, then closed the lid and held out his hand to Bilal.

Later, Bilal’s smooth copper-colored flesh hot beneath him, Amida imagined a sleek, blond boy like the ones he had seen on the verandah of Shepheard’s in Cairo, his skin white and taut as the belly of a fish and cool to the touch even in the heat. Afterward, Amida lay in the dark, eyes open, wondering how the future that had been so tantalizingly clear yesterday, had become so murky today. A man had to make himself. He decided to speak directly with Kubalou. He would find a way to bypass Remzi. The wound on his left arm, four slashes from Remzi’s knife, throbbed under its bandage like a second awkward heartbeat grafted onto his body.