The light went out of Abdulla’s eyes.
‘What?’ he asked in a faint voice.
‘Visit a whore.’
Abdulla raised his hand in protest.
‘Never mind that,’ the doctor said, climbing the ladder. ‘My suggestion would fix it, dead sure.’
Abdulla watched the heels of the doctor’s shoes follow each other up the ladder. Those first nights had been endless hours of torture. ‘Don’t worry,’ the doctor had told him. ‘It’s all in the mind.’ Abdulla held his breath, not wanting to miss a word of what he said. ‘Desire becomes so strong,’ the doctor continued, ‘that at first it chokes itself.’ His words had swirled round Abdulla’s head for the rest of the day. At times they seemed convincing, but still they were strange. Why should strong desire choke itself? And why did such a thing have to happen to him? He wondered if this were a punishment for some past sin. Should he perhaps not have pleasured himself, imagining his own aunt as he had once seen her in the bathroom through the keyhole?
The fourth night of his marriage had been a particular torture. The entire empire was on holiday celebrating the Night of Power. On that night, according to a centuries-old tradition, the sultan-emperor slept with a virgin. The capital city glittered with lights. Late in the evening, cannons were fired on the Tower of Drums, from the fortress of the prison and from the Admiralty, to mark the start of the Night of Power. Abdulla lay stretched out alongside his young bride in the carefully warmed bedroom. Both were covered in cold sweat. The cannons resounded with increasingly horrific booms. Their barrels, the smoke, the gunpowder, the fire they spewed – all symbolised the manly vigour of the sultan, represented in iron and uproar. This earthquake shook the entire world, on which Abdulla crawled like a snail. He peered out of the corner of his eye at his bride’s neck, which, stretched inertly over the pillow, so strangely tormented him, and he felt a faint throb of jealousy, bitter and sweet at the same time, that had recently become familiar. It was jealousy of the heads in the stone niche. Their lifeless eyes seemed to mock him. Bugrahan Pasha, the vizier of Trebizond, had had thirty-eight women in his harem, and his face was said to have turned yellow from endless orgies. Ali Pasha’s second wife Vasiliqia was twenty-two years old, while the rebel vizier had been over eighty. They had all had so many wives, while he himself …
He felt betrayed. His body was slowly failing, about to give up. But the brunt of his anger was directed towards what had previously been his greatest joy: his cock. He could not forgive it. When he was not with his bride, when he was in the street or the café or even at the site of his sacred duty, it would unexpectedly swell and be ready for any exploit, but when he was with his wife it became flabby, shrank, and retreated like a puppy faced with a tiger. And so he cursed it for its treachery.
The doctor was clairvoyant. On the first day when Abdulla had confided his anxiety, the doctor had asked appalling questions. Their second conversation had gone further still; Abdulla had never imagined that the day would come when someone would ask him if he’d ever seen a woman’s private parts. He blushed in shame. ‘Listen,’ the doctor had said sternly, ‘if you want to get out of this mess, listen carefully to what I say. Otherwise go to those silly old women and have them undo the spell that’s supposedly been laid on you. They’ll make you swallow powdered ants and snake piss and crocodile balls and God knows what else, until you really do keel over.’
The doctor had fixed his eyes upon him like a seer, until Abdulla admitted secrets that he had been sure he would carry to the grave. Yes, he had indeed seen a woman’s private parts when he was a child, looking at his aunt through a keyhole. Strangely, this made no impression on the doctor, and it even struck him as totally normal. ‘Hmm, so you saw your aunt. Hmm, very good, very good. And now, tell me exactly, what was it like, or rather, what do you remember most?’
God forbid, Abdulla wanted to retort. How dare you talk about my aunt like this? But his tongue would not obey him, and betrayed him again. The overwhelming, most arresting impression was of a black bush … ‘Wait,’ interrupted the doctor. ‘Stop just there. Your bride, before her wedding night, no doubt shaved her little bush?’
Abdulla could not believe his ears. A stranger, in the middle of the café, after asking about his aunt’s private parts, was now prying into his wife’s. And he himself, her husband, instead of flying into a rage, striking him with the first implement that came to hand, sinking his teeth into his throat and skinning him alive, was sitting and listening like some ninny. In his imagination he carried out all these acts of retaliation, and dragged the doctor through the square, in front of the appalled tourists, as far as the Obelisk of Tokmakhan or even to the entrance to the bank. But while he fantasised, from his mouth there came a lifeless ‘yes’.
‘Ah,’ the doctor said, and banged the table so loudly that the old city news-criers sitting nearby turned to him in reproach. ‘Just what I thought. That’s the answer to this riddle. Yes, it’s just what I expected.’
Before he offered his explanation, he mumbled some curses against the traditions of the country.
‘It’s a barbarous habit, Abdulla, don’t you see? To shave a woman’s bush is, I don’t know what to say … it’s like stealing the turban of the Sheikh-ul-Islam … do you understand? A black bush gives that little shrine all its attraction. It’s the mystery, the darkness, the power of the night that drives us wild. It’s what makes us truly mortal … don’t you see?’
The doctor muttered to himself for a long time and then ordered a second coffee.
‘Never mind,’ he said, brightening up. ‘There is some hope now. In your mind, a woman’s private parts take the shape of a black patch. This is normal for any man. But on your wedding night, you were suddenly up against something bare and smooth, a sort of featherless bird, as you might call it. You poor soul, it’s not your fault. In your position, I’m sure the same would have happened to me. I would have been totally unmanned. But now we have the key to this problem, and we can solve it. First thing, wait for her patch to grow again.’
The doctor reckoned to himself: ‘Three weeks, an inch … five weeks … hmm … to put it briefly, in two months your marital shrine will be beautifully adorned … Why are you looking at me like that? Perhaps you’re thinking, as our old saying goes, that it’s like telling the goat to wait for the grass to grow. But there’s nothing else you can do, Abdulla. It takes patience. Just wait, just wait.’
He rubbed his hands, as if he too would be joining the celebration. Abdulla had never felt so spineless. Fortunately, the next time when the doctor had cheerfully asked him, ‘How’s it going, Abdulla, is the forest growing?’ he had looked so dejected that the doctor had not dared to tease him again.
Several weeks had passed since then. The place below his bride’s belly grew dark, but instead of blossoming, Abdulla’s hopes had almost entirely withered. The blind rage that seized him increasingly often was directed against his entire body. If this was how matters stood, and if the fire of his passion could never be lit again, wouldn’t it be better to leave behind his body entirely? Cast aside forever his arms, legs and wretched belly? Just as the defenders of a besieged fortress take vain refuge in its highest tower, shouldn’t he retreat to his final hiding place, his head? If he were reduced merely to a head, his bride would have no reason to expect anything from him. Perhaps she would kiss him on the lips, with the real kiss of a woman, in the same way that the wife of the ‘blond pasha’ had kissed her husband’s head when it was brought to her. Abdulla thought he felt the slow movement of blood through his veins. To be only a head, in the stone niche. A sun that has set, with a never-ending aureole round his neck. Alone, facing the horror of the endless crowds of the capital city. A tyrant striking terror in the square, stared at by thousands of feverishly inflamed eyes. The centre of the empire’s attention. An extinguished star.
The murmuring in the square changed its tone. Abdulla raised his head and watched as the doctor descended and then steadied
himself at the foot of the ladder, looking up pensively at the niche. All around them the crowd, which until then had followed the doctor’s every movement with petrified attention, began to hum again. The Council of Ministers was in session once more, someone said. A cold wind blew round the square. The doctor kept staring at the niche. The white locks of the head fluttered and lay still. The honey must have frozen, Abdulla thought. The doctor shook his head two or three times. ‘Why?’ he murmured as if in a dream. This head had tried to curl its lip at the entire empire, Abdulla thought wearily. He was slightly dizzy. The head’s white hair seemed like mist. It occurred to Abdulla that only a few days ago a vizier’s terrible pronouncements, with the power of life and death, had emerged from under these soft curls. When this beard had bristled, the empire had trembled. Now nothing was left but gentle wisps as soft as sheepskin. Abdulla thought of his bride’s private parts, now also asleep. He had been unable to rouse them.
‘The state hasn’t seen an upheaval like this for years,’ the doctor said, pointing to the niche.
Abdulla didn’t know how to answer. All the official statements had avoided the word ‘upheaval’. He could not tear his eyes from the niche. In what corner of this skull, he wondered, had the idea of rising up against this state first been born? It occurred to Abdulla that he had never rebelled against anything in this world, not even against his own self.
‘See you soon, Abdulla,’ the doctor said, turning his eyes away from the niche.
Abdulla bowed. After a few steps, the doctor looked back.
‘About that business, do as I told you,’ he called out, winking.
Abdulla felt himself blush.
A new wave of humanity flowed across the square. Parties of schoolchildren and members of religious communities came swarming down the Street of the Arms of Islam. No newspaper of the capital city could spread news as fast as the murmuring crowd. Phrases that Abdulla overheard became lodged in his memory like headlines, some in bold, others in small type. A state of emergency would be imposed not only in Albania but across a whole swathe of the Balkans. The search for Ali Pasha’s treasure was continuing. Horrific discoveries were expected in the terrible dungeons of his castle. The next imperial courier would soon escort the rebel’s widow Vasiliqia to the capital. The foreign minister, the Reiz Efendi …
Abdulla thought that the Fourth Directorate must have its agents dotted among the crowds in this square. You could hear the most astounding comments. Now, just a few paces away, under the very noses of the guards, two people were talking about what would happen to Albania. It would lose its privileges forever. ‘There’s no doubt of that,’ one said, ‘but I’m curious to know, will they pronounce it a defiled land?’ ‘I don’t think so,’ the other man replied. ‘That’s the slippery slope to hell.’ ‘And why don’t you think so? Everyone is furious at the Albanians. Have you seen the newspapers? They say the Albanians have been indulged for long enough. Now they will drown in blood.’ ‘Everyone is against them now, I believe that,’ the second man said. ‘They were masters of the Balkans but now they’ve come to a bad end. All the rest who envied them their favours will have their chance for revenge now, that’s understandable. Yet I still don’t believe Albania will be destroyed. It’s one of the most important defences against the pressure of the Slavs. You’ll see how they’ll find a middle way, so that the Albanians will feel the state’s anger but won’t be totally wiped off the map. You said it yourself just now: the state takes a long view.’
These fools again, thought Abdulla. Did they have nothing else to do but prattle on about the state’s business? He didn’t want to hear any more, but the voices were very close and forced their way into his ears. ‘What do you say – who will be appointed in Ali Pasha’s place?’ ‘That depends on the decree on the country’s status. If it’s declared a defiled land, then Hurshid Pasha might remain there. He’s young and energetic. Or else …’ ‘Or else what?’ asked the first voice. ‘Or else, if the decree orders a milder regime, as I think it will, old Karadja Pasha might be posted there.’
They went on talking about appointments, and it struck Abdulla that the busiest of the state ministries these days would surely be the Palace of Seals and Decrees. The fates of three thousand or so senior officials, of the state’s one million employees, depended directly on this palace, whose heavy columns appeared dusted with old gold.
This palace appointed viziers, the two commanders-in-chief of the European and Asian divisions of the army, the pashas of the land and the pashas of the sea. All we need are pashas of the air, Abdulla thought anxiously, but confident all the same that human greed would not extend to envying the angels their place in heaven. Important and dramatic decrees issued from the palace, like beasts with claws and manes leaping out of a thundery black sky: the Decree of Defilement, the Decree of Caw-caw, the Decree of War, the Black Decree that left your name as filthy as soot, the Decree of Clemency that left you with your head, and the Decree of Death, which took it away. Compared to these, all other decrees seemed gentler, like cats beside lions. Strangely, the decrees on taxes, land rent, water, salt, customs and the devaluation of the currency were issued from the same gate, as were other orders, instructions and rulings on individual salaries, perquisites and internments, and on the place of each person in the Council of State, at celebrations, at official dinners, and finally in the state cemetery.
Abdulla had learned all these things piecemeal, day after day, on the square by the Traitor’s Niche. At first, such information had been jumbled in the confused muttering of the crowd, like stone and debris on a construction site. Then a clear outline had slowly emerged, creating in Abdulla’s mind an image of the whole edifice of the state.
But after the initial shock of amazement, when he thought that nothing more perfect than this magnificent structure could exist on earth or in heaven, Abdulla had sensed perpetual squabbling within it. This discovery had grieved him, but later he had recognised that the state had been inured to this bickering for centuries. Neither the rivalry between the secular and religious powers, nor the struggles among castes and provinces, whose echo barely reached him, nor the rumours and grudges, nor even the secret plots that were discovered time and again, did anything to diminish the majesty of the state. This was because the terrible sultan-emperor, Allah’s regent on earth, stood over everything, above the two branches of power and above all the castes, and listened. Abdulla was reassured to some degree by this, but still wondered why there were such bitter quarrels. But whenever he asked this question, his thoughts stopped short as if on the brink of a precipice. His mental resources stretched only this far. Nor did the murmuring on the square, which covered every possible topic, provide any answer. At such times, Abdulla imagined the mechanisms of the state as huge mill wheels turning with a muffled creak in the darkness, dripping black water from the empire’s eight-centuries-old foundations. It was impossible to make out anything in this gloom.
The word ‘bronze’ caught Abdulla’s ear amidst the din and seemed to cast a ray of light on the mystery, but its gleam was so pale that it expired instantly. Sometimes things that had once seemed totally innocent awoke his mistrust. Ordinary words to do with the price of salt, customs duties and the new law on the banks and interest rates troubled his conscience. Sometimes he went so far as to suspect that the decrees that seemed as gentle as kittens were like drops of water eroding rock, or a wife’s whispering that sparks her husband’s jealousy, and in fact prepared for those other decrees, weighty, majestic and bloody, whose promulgation made the whole world tremble.
This chilled Abdulla’s soul more than anything, and he silently cursed the strangers whose voices had planted in him these doubts. What bastards they were, what demons with their mad ranting. Then he cursed his own imagination and quickly thought of calm and stately things: the procession of official carriages on feast days, the little lights on the four minarets of Hagia Sophia, the marble tombs of high dignitaries and the bathhouses where their wives wash
ed their abdomens, no doubt adorned with precious gems, and especially these grandees’ heavy testicles, hanging like cheeses in muslin, with their rigid cocks in between.
High-level officials in particular spurred Abdulla’s imagination. He couldn’t tell if he was frightened or allured. Probably both.
And now one of them, Ali Tepelena, had died, and this entire caste was shaken as if by an earthquake. Lights would surely blaze until midnight in the Palace of Seals and Decrees. That was where everything was decided. There would be transfers of officials in all the remotest corners of this immense empire. These men would fight like wolves, stripping the richest provinces of their wealth, clawing at each other for official posts, writing anonymous letters.
Whereas Abdulla, a lowly civil servant whose misfortune had been to learn the taste of power here on the edge of this square, like someone who gets drunk from the mere smell of the brandy still, would never have any dealings with this palace. The only kind of decree for him would be a death sentence. Here in the Traitor’s Niche would be placed … the head of Black Abdulla, who rebelled against the state.
Abdulla shook himself and straightened his back. The roar of the square grew louder. Fragments again reached his ears like headlines. The whole western part of the Balkans was on military alert. Greece had taken advantage of Ali Tepelena’s uprising, and made its own moves. In high circles it was whispered that V. V., the minister of finance, the new guardian of Black Ali’s young widow, intended to seek her hand in marriage. Others said that the senior official Halet, whose wife had died of breast cancer two months before, would do this. There were rumours that the Qyprili family would fall, alongside Albania. A magnificent welcome was predicted for the victorious Hurshid Pasha, the hero of the hour, on his return to the capital next week. His career would surely soar to dizzy heights. He might even become grand vizier. The bronze price would subside again by midday … and Abdulla’s member too.