American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [44]
In the drama of his recounting his first vision of her dance (again that fateful day), which he couched in quasi-religious terms so as not to threaten or offend the Sultan, Avedis became swept up in his own story. He told his rapt audience about his own past, his apprenticeship as a metalsmith, his developing interest in alchemy, his promotion within the court, his devotion to the Sultan, and he worked his way onto the subject of the great city of Constantinople. A melting pot of cultures! he cried. He spoke now with deep, affecting emotion about the cosmopolitanism of his beloved home, how the Turks, Jews, Armenians, Persians, and so many others lived in harmony together and he paused to look gratefully at Murad. In this incredible melting pot, he said, made possible by the broad-mindedness of our noble leaders—and here the Sultan smiled, because he enjoyed flattery of any flavor and also because he was intelligent enough to appreciate that it was the brilliance of the Ottoman Empire, among many other insights, to recognize the value of many cultures living together in peace, in no small part because different kinds of people were good at and willing to engage in different kinds of work, which when administered wisely hugely benefited the economy. He may himself not have been a peace-loving or intellectual man, but he was not stupid. In this incredible melting pot, Avedis continued, I myself have been moved and softened and changed, like a piece of stone turning to gold in one of my own cauldrons, by so many disparate influences that I have been transformed! Transformed by a vision of beauty! And in the transformation of my own awareness of beauty I have been given the gift of inspiration. I have been inspired and enabled to create a vehicle for reproducing, in all its wondrous complexity, a wild, delicate, mysterious, and utterly simple sound: the sound of love.
And what are the components of this sound? First: Beauty, he said. And he picked up a piece of metal and a silver stick and struck it so that a clear and lovely note rang forth. Next, Desire: and he replaced the first piece of metal he had chosen for a shinier yet darker alloy, which he again struck with the stick. A lower, more deeply reverberating sound was released. And he did the same with the next three attributes: compassion, gentleness, selflessness, each had its own corresponding metal alloy. And then, he said: Freedom. I could go on and on, but let us stop at freedom. Freedom, I realized in my philosophical wanderings toward this sound, freedom is an essential component of love, perhaps the most important. Because in trying to keep, or hold, your beloved, one is acting not of love but possessiveness, need, selfishness. The sound of freedom was the most important sound for love, but where to find it? I pondered the object of my mission, the glorious Parvin, and I watched her dance. Here his eyes misted, and a muscle near his mouth twitched. I studied her spontaneous passionate dancing, and now the Sultan himself shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and I realized that for her freedom only existed in dance, in movement, in the abstract, because, of course, my dear Parvin was not free. A tear slid down his cheek. Parvin felt a chill. She desired to curl up into a tiny ball, but she stayed frozen. She stared at the hem of Avedis’s left sleeve. The Sultan spoke up: Play the damn things! You boring fool!! He laughed, menacingly. Avedis nodded to a young apprentice, who brought over what appeared to be a plate covered by a shawl. Avedis pulled off the silk with a flourish. The Sultan’s four bodyguards put their hands on the ends of their swords. There were two cymbals. He held one in each hand, and, unable to control himself, boldly