Sofia
did not replace that face with any other.For want of another face with which to fill my thoughts, I let my mind linger over the sight of the two girls sleeping in a slant of early morning sunlight and in each other’s arms. As she slept, Esmikhan lost the pinch of worry and cold, and her features sank back into their pleasant, blooming, almost infantile roundness which even now she only half unveiled. And Sofia Baffo—she took all the sun to herself, veilless, and remained as cool as alabaster. Sofia Baffo was still beautiful, still as chillingly beautiful as moonlight, still, after all—I shook my head and stood up. I’ve heard it said that men who’ve lost an arm or leg are sometimes tormented by an itch in the missing limb, an itch they cannot scratch. My discomfort was like that. But more a need to empty my bladder. The mutilation tended to confuse sensations in that area. I walked past the fire, adding the last of our gathered wood to it as I did, and then out and on to a copse of oak.
Luminescent, hard-shelled beetles rattled across stone and gravel about their autumn business. White snails buttoned up every blade of grass and twig of bush. When I raised my eyes above these creatures, the copse offered a grand view of the countryside. No habitation or sign of humanity interrupted the wildness of the place, but below, a ribbon of water spangled like new-polished sequins on a woman’s scarf and promised to lead the way. The aching brilliance and clarity of the world after a storm collapsed distances. And as the mist rose before the rising sweep of the sun, I found it strange that I could not hear the plash of the stream over the silence when I saw every ripple.
The vista remained rocky and steep in places. What herbage there was clung to the cracks of precipices and stunted in clumps: goat country, though so far I’d seen none. The rocks, for all their daunting untamed faces, were fragrant when the sun hit their soaked skins, the pools their pock-marks caught, and set them steaming.
Two birds soared high above through the gorge gap—a bar of sapphire—wing to wing. In my mind I called them hawks, although I knew only too well that hawks rarely hunted in pairs. I didn’t like to think of them as vultures. A swift cloud of smaller birds skirted the threat. South, I thought, watching where they disappeared over the mountain behind me. I confirmed that observation by the angle of the sun.
Then I saw that the low, scrubby part of the copse was mulberry. Many of the bushes’ leaves had blown away in the storm, but numerous berries still hung among the tangled branches. They were overripe and black, but a handful in my mouth brought all the sweetness of those last autumn days on the Brenta River lands when I was a lad. My mother, my nurse, the maids, would all be busy packing for the return to Venice for the winter and I was left to wander, find mulberries and eat to my heart’s content until they called for me. They called all together, at once, and frantically at sunset, like a chorus of maenads. “Birichino! Birichino!” My pet name.
When I felt my heart grow discontent with its loss, I comforted it with another handful. At least I can still know the pleasure of mulberries, I thought, and set my mind instead on how the girls could eat these when they awoke. Then we could walk all afternoon. We could make good time in such brisk weather, downhill, even on foot. Certainly nightfall would find us among some humanity.
With such thoughts, I shifted my stance a bit so as not to splatter on breakfast and reached up into my turban for my catheter.
“Abdullah!”
In my start, the catheter dropped from my hand.
“Oh, there you are.”
“My lady.”
“I sensed, even in my sleep, that you had gone, and I was afraid. I—I dreamed that awful brigand was—”
“Yes, lady. I had a nightmare, too.”
“Did you?”
“It’s all right. The brigands are dead and can’t hurt you anymore. And I am just here.”
“Answering nature.”
“Yes.”
“As any man must from time to time.” She smiled, reassured.
“Yes, lady.” The safety of formalities again.
“Excuse me.”
“Go on back to the fire.” My breath smoked like the damp stones. The dampness of the whole world around me was agony on my bladder. “I’ll be back soon.”
The instant she was gone, I dropped to my hands and knees, shuffling wildly through the damp oak leaves, staining my fingers, making them sticky and clumsy with crushed mulberry. The rain showering down on me from the oak twigs seemed to send my brain into my bladder and my pelvis was ready to burst with the strain. I couldn’t find the damned catheter.
“Abdullah? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Go back to the fire.”
“But what are you looking for?” I blurted it: “My catheter. I dropped it—here—somewhere .”
“I don’t know what that is. A catheter.”
“And may you never have to know, lady.”
“But how can I help you look if I don’t know what we’re looking for?”
“I don’t want Your—”
Esmikhan Sultan reeled back from my words as from a physical blow and I regretted my tone as much as I was able to regret anything beyond my own need.
With a deep breath, I said: “It’s a thin brass tube about so long.” I was so full of urgency and dread that my forefingers and thumb shook as I expressed the size between them.
Esmikhan dropped to her hands and knees beside me. “Ustadh, ustadh, slowly, slowly. You move so wildly you’re bound to knock it away from us. Let’s go calmly and slowly and we’ll find it.”
Her plump little hand found mine under the leaves and pressed it until it stopped shaking.
“I...I might have a fever,” I suggested rashly. “The damp and all.”
“No, I don’t think so.” She swept my slipped turban back up out of my eyes with her other