American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [37]
There was a house on the ceiling and it was swinging.
I see, she said.
Then: What was I saying?
Something about the Bosphorus, a tipping boat, a pavilion carved out of jewels. I’ve just been sitting here holding your hand. Then you pulled away and I put my hand on your arm. That’s when you started talking. When I touched your arm the story changed.
He was back now, sitting up. He shook the hair from his eyes. His face had been filling out again. He looked healthier, stronger.
There was something about cymbals coming from Turkey, wasn’t there? The beginning of everything, the origin of all this music and mess. If we understand how all of this got started, even if it’s just a myth, a story that isn’t true, maybe we can make some sense out of what went on with Vivian and Joe, what’s going on with us. That older guy from Constantinople, the cymbal maker, was I talking about him?
I don’t think so. It seemed like you were talking about a woman, a girl really. It seemed like you were the girl, talking through her.
Where was it that you put your hand?
She pointed to a spot on his arm below his shoulder where the muscle twisted, and he grabbed her wrist.
Keep it there, he said.
1623
In the orchard, on her way to the New Palace, the girl tried to jump out of the carriage, but the eunuch stopped her with his hand on her arm. It was a touch that did not so much hurt her as communicate a desire to keep her alive.
Later, she had a bruise, which the Sultan found charming. Turning back to sit solemnly in the midst of four escorts, she found herself frightened by the sight of sunlight licking the small tough leaves on the fruit trees. She didn’t know what to expect—the stories of what lay ahead for her were so strange they seemed impossible to believe—but she knew that without the force of that hand on her arm her fear would have made her run straight to her death.
They had bathed her and rubbed rose oil on her body before swathing her in layers of colored silk. Her veil panted above her mouth. She could smell the sea. At one point on the ride they crossed a garden and looking out of the carriage she saw hundreds of flowers, vivid yellows and pinks and reds that smeared across her vision and made her want to vomit. The carriage itself was festooned with roses and tulips and carnations. The perfume was overpowering, poisonous. The carriage stopped at the Gate of Felicity.
Flanked by two escorts on either side, she entered the Third Court. She was not taken to the White Eunuchs’ Quarters or to the Throne Room or to the Library, but instead accompanied directly to the Royal Chamber. In her confusion, she thought the grapes depicted in the shimmering mosaic that confronted her when she entered were real, and she sensed her mouth watering, instinctively. The luxury and almost disgusting beauty of the room were familiar to her from having seen the Valide Sultan’s suite, but what she witnessed here was of another magnitude. It was a terrifying sumptuousness, and she felt an ache of pleasure in the midst of her fear. When the eunuchs left her, she tried to meet the eyes of the one who had stopped her from jumping, but he held his gaze steadily in front of him, his lips firmly set, his long black lashes only slightly darker than his skin, and seemed as unreachable as the grapes in the mosaic.
She was waiting, for many hours, on heaps of pillows and embroidered sheets. Women had come to attend to her, but she had not been fed, and as her hunger and anxiety escalated, she passed her hands nervously over the fabrics surrounding her, and felt every gold thread like a needle in her skin. An old woman named Kaya was mainly responsible for her, and had brought her water. In a moment of desperation she had blurted out, “My name is Parvin.” “Farvin,” Kaya repeated, because she had no front teeth.
She was waiting to be raped. She knew it and Kaya knew it. But it was not called rape and it was not thought of that way. It would have been considered treasonous, or demented, to have such a thought.
In her state of increasing panic, she imagined