She thinks about it for a while. About jealousy that can kill. About a knife plunged into a woman’s heart.
‘The art of conversation,’ he says, ‘is the most powerful of arts. It alone can open the doors of palaces.’
‘What did they talk about, these ancient haetteras.’
‘Philosophy, art, literature. They enjoyed exchanging arguments, civilised dispute. Things, my little Dou-Dou, you have no idea of and never will. Things far too complicated for you.’
‘Tell me,’ she asks.
‘Tell you what,’ he laughs at her eagerness, but he is not displeased. Clearing his throat he says: ‘La Mettrie contends that all we imagine comes from our senses: no senses, no thoughts; a few sensations of the body—a few notions in the mind. Do you understand?’
She thinks she does, but shakes her head. He laughs again.
‘If there is no soul, and if the essence of life can only be found in separate parts of the body, where would most of you be, Dou-Dou.’
She smiles and waits for what might follow, but he gets tired of his own game.
‘You have to learn French,’ he declares. ‘One cannot have an intelligent conversation in any other language. French is the language of polite company, the language of the courts and salons.’
‘Teach me,’ she asks.
‘La chambre, la cocotte, meux beaux oeils.’
He likes when she pours oil on his skin and massages it the way Mana has taught her. Gently at first, then deeper and deeper until she reaches the knots and dissolves them under her fingers. She is proud when he groans with pleasure.
Sans Vous je ne peux pas vivre.
Je suis Votre esclave.
In the Sultan’s palace, she tells him, beautiful slave women serve the Princess on their knees. Their breaths are sweet and their eyes deep and soft. The Sultan’s every order is obeyed instantly, for punishment is swift. She has seen a room where whips of black leather hang on the wall. A whole row of them, with knots and little hooks tied to their ends. She has seen burlap sacks filled with stones, ready for the death by drowning.
He is listening.
‘At the Seraglio, dinners are long. They can last for hours. Dishes are brought one by one.’
‘Everyone knows that,’ he says yawning.
‘Does everyone know the eunuchs make sure that all cucumbers are served sliced?’
His belly shakes when he laughs. One of his front teeth is longer than the other. It gives him a slightly lopsided look. His brows are thick, bushy, forming a straight line over his nose. Such brows, Mana has said, are a good sign in a man. This and a hairy chest.
He wants to know about the Princess. Is she really as ugly as Dou-Dou swears she is? With pimply skin and black fuzz on her upper lip? Or perhaps this is just another lie? Perhaps there was something about the Sultana’s strength that wasn’t all together unpleasant? Is she indeed what the Turks call a cibukli, well equipped to play the role of both sexes? Are the women in the hammam at the Seraglio really not allowed to touch one another?
But most of all he wants the stories of punishment. Of whips and satin belts. Of deep dungeons from which only groans are heard. Of purple bruises on milky white skin. Stories that grow as she tells them, twist in new directions, each measured by the intensity of his attention. Stories that astonish even her.
‘These,’ she whispers to him, ‘are the secrets of the Palace for which I was to pay with my life, had I not managed to escape. You may be the only Frank to know them.’
The girl from Galata, her predecessor, has sent words of venom. You viper, you dirty whore, she had scribbled on a piece of paper. I’ll scratch your eyes out. I’ll make you lick the floor of the room that used to be mine.
‘I didn’t even know the frumpy creature could write,’ the internuncio says, reading it, crumpling the paper into a ball and tossing it into the fire. ‘Now, I know what to do if you do not please me the way I want it.’
She doesn’t like it when he says things like that. The girl from Galata is younger than she is and was sent back to her mother without warning, just because Carlo brought her round, a new toy, a new distraction.
There are days when her internuncio does not come at all. The walls of the apartment he has rented for her seem to close on her. She dresses herself in her new clothes; pins up her hair; forces the maid to clean her room once again; arranges fresh flowers beside the mirror, so that the blooms are reflected in it. Fusses with the throw on the bed, the pillows, until everything is pleasing to the eye. Then she waits and waits, watching through the window how other people, free, walk in the streets. She envies them sometimes. Even the servants carrying big baskets of fish, or leading donkeys. She envies the dogs that roam the streets in packs, or lie basking in the sun knowing no one will disturb them.
His life at the Polish mission is busy, the internuncio tells her. He has important duties to attend to. A delicate position to maintain. ‘The art of observation, my little Dou-Dou,’ he tells her. ‘Of knowing what you are not supposed to know.’
A very useful art. Indispensable in politics, for politics is the art of knowing. Of predicting. Of turning your enemies against each other and making sure your friends stay loyal out of self-interest. An art Charles Boscamp, Esquire, excels at.
As soon as he comes in, she helps him remove his coat and his shoes. In her company, he is emptying himself, clearing his mind, softening himself for pleasure. She should be like the sound of a waterfall, the soothing distraction. Like a garden where he can find respite.
‘I would like politics,’ she says.
‘I’m sure you would.’ He laughs when he says that, pinching her cheeks. He likes when he senses the want in her, the desire for his world. Sometimes she thinks that he doesn’t really want anything any more, that in his mouth sweetness is not as vivid as in hers. That his pleasure is not real until he sees it in her first.
‘Divide et impera,’ he says, wiping his hands on a towel she is holding for him. ‘The Sultan’s counsels are vying for power. There is no consistency in the Porte.’
His caresses are short and fleeting; his hands touch her as if she were a pillow or a thick blanket meant for comfort. He likes when she kneels in front of him. He never stops talking when he pushes her head down between his legs. ‘My jewel,’ he has taught her to say. She has learnt that release comes quickly, and she is grateful for it. Sometimes she thinks he prefers a massage to the act itself, for then he can close his eyes and forget about her altogether. His presence leaves her hungry, filled with longings. She has taken to touching herself when he leaves, imagining that it is his hand that slowly rubs the sweet spot between her legs.
The internuncio likes to talk. He has met the Emperor of Prussia and the King of Poland. He tells her that the Polish King became king only because the Russian Empress wanted it. She has sent her troops to Warsaw, to the election field. Some people say that she ordered her own husband murdered. Suffocated with his pillow.
Men tremble at the sight of her, he says. Handsome Russian boys are groomed to catch the eye of the Empress, coached by their mothers in ways to please a woman, the whole family making plans for its illustrious future. His wise friend, Count Vronsky, always bows to all handsome valets de chambre and calls them brother. He knows that a day may come when one of them would be elevated above him by the whim of his Empress.
‘This is not natural,’ the internuncio says. ‘Not right. It is against the order of things.’
She closes her eyes and imagines the Russian Empress pointing at a