The Snake Stone

40

“ C’est bizarre, Yashim. As he gets older, my son grows more and more infatuated by the European style-yet I, who was born to it, find that I prefer the comforts of oriental tradition. He hardly comes here anymore, only to see me. His new palace delights him. I find it looks like a manufactory.”

Yashim inclined his head. The Queen Mother was propped up on her sofa against a cloud of cushions, with the light as ever artfully arranged behind her head, a blind drawn across the little side window, and a shawl across her legs. She walked rarely now, if at all; yet her figure was still graceful and the shadows on her face revealed the beauty she had once been and still, in a sense, remained. Beneath a kaftan of silk velvet she wore a fine chiffon robe whose collar and sleeves were embellished with the most delicate Transylvanian lace; the lace, Yashim recalled, was made by nuns. The swirl of her turban was fixed in place by a diamond and emerald aigrette. Her hands were white and delicate. Did the valide not know that her son was dying at Besiktas?

“I am very old, Yashim, as you well know. Topkapi has been my home-some would say my prison-for sixty years. It, too, is old. Well, the world has moved on from us both. By now, I like to think, we understand each other. We share memories. I intend to die here, Yashim, fully dressed. At the sultan’s palace at Besiktas I’d be popped into a nightgown and tucked up in a French bed, and that would be an end of it.”

Yashim nodded. She was perfectly right. So many years had passed since a young woman, the captive of Algerian corsairs, had been delivered here, to the harem quarters of the aged sultan Abdul Hamit, that it was easy to forget how well the valide knew the European style. Aimee Dubucq du Riviery, a planter’s daughter on the French island of Martinique: she was a Frenchwoman. The same inscrutable law of destiny that had taken her to the sultan’s seraglio, where she had finally emerged as valide, had led her childhood friend, little Rose, to the throne of France, as Josephine, Napoleon’s own empress.

A nightgown. A tight French bed. Yashim knew how the Europeans lived, with their mania for divisions. They parceled up their homes the way they segregated their actions. The Franks had special rooms for sleeping in, with fussy contraptions created for performing the act itself, and all day long these bedrooms sat vacant and desolate, consoled by the dust rising in the sunlight-unless they belonged to an invalid. In which case the invalid herself shared the loneliness and desolation, far away from the household activity.

The Franks had dining rooms for dining in, and sitting rooms for sitting in, and drawing rooms for withdrawing into-as if their whole lives were not a series of withdrawals anyway, tiptoeing from one room and one function to the next, changing and dressing all over again, forever on the run from engagement with real life. Whereas in an Ottoman home-even here, in the harem-everyone was allowed to float on the currents of life as they sped by. People divided their lives between what was public and what was reserved for the family, between selamlik, the men’s quarters, and haremlik: in the poorest homes, they were divided only by a curtain. If you were hungry, food was brought in. If you wished to sleep, you unfolded your legs, reclined, and twitched a shawl over yourself. If you were moody, someone was sure to drop in to cheer you up; ill, and someone noticed; tired, and nobody minded if you dozed.

The valide took the book and raised an eyebrow.

“I may seem terribly old to you, Yashim, but I do hope you aren’t wondering whether I knew the author.”

Yashim giggled. The valide reached for a pair of spectacles and put them on. She glanced warningly at Yashim over the rims. “I have my vanities, quand meme,” she said.

Yet Yashim was too delighted with the novelty of seeing a woman in spectacles to consider their effect on the valide’s beauty. He knew her for a reader, of course; but the spectacles made her seem, well, magnificently wise.

She examined the brown leather cover of the little book at some length, turning it this way and that. She ran a slim finger behind the boards and opened the first page. She tilted her head.

“I do not think,” she said, “it is the sort of book which would interest us. For a start, it’s not in French. De Aedificio et antiquitae Constantinopolii,” she read slowly. The hand holding the book sank to the cushions. “Dancing. Deportment. The interminable tragedies of Monsieur Racine.” She paused. “It was a long time ago, Yashim, and we were educated-to adorn, not to be scholars. I think it’s Latin,” she added with a little shiver.

Yashim, who had already guessed as much, tried to conceal his disappointment. “I thought-perhaps-you would be familiar with it.”

“Latin, Yashim?” The valide gave a bright little laugh. “But no, you are right. I’m sorry, it is so long ago.” She ran a finger beneath an eyelid, to wipe away a tear. “How silly of me. I was thinking of my mother. A very clever woman. Not in my way, of course. She was a dreamer, idealiste. Father wanted us to be pretty. But my mother-she did try to teach us something, beyond dancing and the use of our fans. Even Latin.” She smiled sadly. “I think it was always too hot.”

She looked up almost shyly. “I have not spoken of them for many years,” she said. She removed her glasses and set them down on the carpet beside her. “The edifices and antiquities of Constantinople,” she said, handing the book back. “I’m not much help. You probably already know when it was published.”

“In Rome, in 1560.”

The valide gave Yashim a long look. “There is something going on between you and your friend Palewski, n’est-ce pas?”

“Valide?”

She tut-tutted and wagged a finger. “Tsk-tsk-tsk-tsk. Palewski is a well-educated man, and he was brought up in a Catholic country. A cold country, where it is easy to learn Latin, among other things. I think his Latin would be better than mine. Why do you not consult him? He is your friend.”

Yashim looked away. “Monsieur Palewski has put me in an awkward situation,” he said stiffly.

“I see. It was his intention to do so?”

Yashim shook his head. “No.”

The valide cocked her head to one side. “Friendship is an opportunity, Yashim, and our lives are short. Have you spoken to him?”

“I have not.”

“ Flute! Don’t be such a fool, young man. Take this book to your friend.” She smoothed the shawl around her shoulders. “Now I am tired.”

She closed her eyes and let out a great sigh.

“Latin!”