The Snake Stone

47

The curtains of muslin and silk brushed together, stirred like a breath by the night air. Sometimes he could see a tiny diadem of stars through a chink close up by the rail, and it came and went, came and went, the way people did when you were dying, looking in to observe the progress of death, to render a report on the invisible struggle; all that was left. The sultan wondered if this was the way all men died, alone, in doubt, troubled by memories.

He listened to the breath in the room, the woman’s breathing, the shush of the muslin against the silk. This would, of course, go on: the world would breathe without him. His own breath was less; it made no sound; he barely moved. Now that a great sleep was drawing close, he no longer needed sleep. The rehearsals were over.

Out on the water, something splashed. The Bosphorus was full of fish. He imagined himself gliding with them, their cool, metallic bodies holding level, the moonlight refracted through the surface of the water, cold and silvery, and the fish glinting like the stars.

He swam with them easily, borne along by the current and an effort that was minute, imperceptible. Hadn’t they always been there, too? Waiting for him-or perhaps not him, especially: for anyone who was ready to come, that night, any night.

He looked ahead; it seemed that his eye skimmed like a shearwater across the dark ripples, zigzagging between the headlands where the hill ridges dropped to the water’s edge.

On to where the straits opened out into the restless sea.