Beyond the Gate of Worlds, Page 3

  “Michael? ’ Sir Anthony called. “Is anything wrong? ’ ’

  “Coming, sir. Coming!”

  The reception hall was long and dark and cavernous, lit only by wax tapers that emitted a smoky amber light and a peculiar odor, something like that of leaves decomposing on a forest floor. Along the walls were bowers of interwoven ostrich and peacock plumes, and great elephant tusks set on brass pedestals rose from the earthen floor like obelisks at seemingly random intervals. Songhayans who might have been servants or just as easily high officials of the court moved among the visiting diplomats bearing trays of cool lime-flavored drinks, musty wine, and little delicacies fashioned from a bittersweet red nut.

  The prince, in whose name the invitations had gone forth, was nowhere in sight so far as any of the foreigners could tell. The apparent host of the reception was a burly jet-black man of regal bearing clad in a splendid tawny robe that might actually have been made of woven lion skins. He had introduced himself as Ali Pasha, vizier to the prince. The prince, he explained, was at his father’s bedside, but would be there shortly.

  The prince was deeply devoted to his father, said Ali Pasha; he visited the failing Emir constantly.

  “I saw that man in the marketplace this afternoon,” Selima said. “He was wearing a purple and yellow robe then. Down at the far side, beyond the dancers, for just a moment. He was looking at us. I thought he was magnificent, somebody of great importance. And he is.”

  A little indignantly Michael said, “These blacks all look alike to me. How can you be sure that’s the one

  you saw?”

  “Because I’m sure. Do all Tiirks look alike to you too? ’ ’

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “All English look alike to us, you know. We can just about distinguish between the red-haired ones and the yellow-haired ones. And that’s as far as it goes.”

  “You aren’t serious, Selima.”

  “No. No, I’m not. I actually can tell one of you from another most of the time. At least I can tell the handsome ones from the ugly ones.”

  Michael flushed violently, so that his already sunburned face turned flaming scarlet and emanated great waves of heat. Everyone had been telling him how handsome he was since his boyhood. It was as if there was nothing to him at all except regularly formed features and pale flawless skin and long athletic limbs. The notion made him profoundly uncomfortable.

  She laughed. “You should cover your face when you’re out in the sun. You’re starting to get cooked. Does it hurt very much?”

  “Not at all. Can I get you a drink?”

  “You know that alcohol is forbidden to—”

  “The other kind, I mean. The green soda. It’s very good, actually. Boy! Boy!”

  “I’d rather have the nut thing,” she said. She stretched forth one hand—her hand was very small, and the fingers were pale and perfect—and made the tiniest of languid gestures. Two of the black men with trays came toward her at once, and, laughing prettily, she scooped a couple of the nutcakes from the nearer of the trays. She handed one to Michael, who fumbled it and let it fall. Calmly she gave him the other. He looked at it as though she had handed him an asp.

  “Are you afraid I’ve arranged to have you poisoned?” she asked. “Go on. Eat it! It’s good! Oh, you’re so absurd, Michael! But I do like you.”

  “We aren’t supposed to like each other, you know,” he said bleakly.

  “I know that. We’re enemies, aren’t we?”

  “Not any more, actually. Not officially.”

  “Yes, I know. The Empire recognized English independence a good many years ago. ’ ’

  The way she said it, it was like a slap. Michael’s reddened cheeks blazed fiercely.

  In anguish he crammed the nutcake into his mouth with both hands.

  She went on, “I can remember the time when I was a girl and King Richard came to Istanbul to sign the treaty with the Sultan. There was a parade.”

  “Yes. Yes. A great occasion.”

  “But there’s still bad blood between the Empire and England. We haven’t forgiven you for some of the things you did to our people in your country in Sultan Abdul’s time, when we were evacuating.”

  “You haven’t forgiven us"

  “When you burned the bazaar. When you bombed that mosque. The broken shopwindows. We were going away voluntarily, you know. You were much more violent toward us than you had any right to be. ”

  “You speak very directly, don’t you?”

  “There were atrocities. I studied them in school.” “And when you people conquered us in 1490? Were you gentle then?” For a moment Michael’s eyes were hot with fury, the easily triggered anger of the good Englishman for the bestial Turk. Appalled, he tried to stem the rising surge of patriotic fervor before it ruined everything. He signaled frantically to one of the tray-wielders, as though another round of nutcakes might serve to get the conversation into a less disagreeable track. “But never mind all that, Selima. We mustn’t be quarreling over ancient history like this.” Somehow he mastered himself, swallowing, breathing deeply, managing an earnest smile. “You say you like me.”

  “Yes. And you like me. I can tell.”

  “Is that all right?”

  “Of course it is, silly. Although I shouldn’t allow it. We don’t even think of you English as completely civilized.” Her eyes glowed. He began to tremble, and tried to conceal it from her. She was playing with him, he knew, playing a game whose rules she herself had defined and would not share with him. “Are you a Christian?” she asked.

  “You know I am.”

  “Yes, you must be. You used the Christian date for the year of the conquest of England. But your ancestors were Moslem, right?”

  “Outwardly, during the time of the occupation. Most of us were. But for all those centuries we secretly continued to maintain our faith in—” She was definitely going to get him going again. Already his head was beginning to pound. Her beauty was unnerving enough; but this roguishness was more than he could take. He wondered how old she was. Eighteen? Nineteen? No more than that, surely. Very likely she had a fiancee back in Istanbul, some swarthy mustachioed fez-wearing Ottoman princeling, with whom she indulged in unimaginable Oriental perversions and to whom she confessed every little flirtation she undertook while traveling with her father. It was humiliating to think of becoming an item of gossip in some perfumed boudoir on the banks of the Bosporus. A sigh escaped him. She gave him a startled look, as though he had mooed at her. Perhaps he had. Desperately he sought for something, anything, that would rescue him from this increasingly tortured moment of impossible intimacy; and, looking across the room, he was astounded to find his eyes suddenly locked on those of the heir apparent to the throne of Songhay. “Ah, there he is,” Michael said in vast relief. “The prince has arrived.”

  “Which one? Where?”

  “The slender man. The red velvet tunic.”

  “Oh. Oh, yes. Him. I saw him in the marketplace too, with Ali Pasha. Now I understand. They came to check us out before we knew who they were.” Selima smiled disingenuously. “He’s very attractive, isn’t he? Rather like an Arab, I’d say. And not nearly as dissolute looking as I was led to expect. Is it all right if I go over and say hello to him? Or should I wait for a proper diplomatic introduction? I’ll ask my father, I think. Do you see him? Oh, yes, there he is over there, talking to Prince Itzcoatl—” She began to move away without a backward look.

  Michael felt a sword probing in his vitals.

  “Boy!” he called, and one of the blacks turned to him with a somber grin. “Some of that wine, if you please!”

  On the far side of the room Little Father smiled and signaled for a drink also—not the miserable palm wine, which he abhorred and which as a good Moslem he should abjure anyway, but the clear fiery brandy that the caravans brought him from Tbnis, and which to an outsider’s eyes would appear to be mere water. His personal cupbearer, who served no one else in the room, poured until he
nodded, and slipped back into the shadows to await the prince’s next call.

  In the first moments of his presence at the reception Little Father had taken in the entire scene, sorting and analyzing and comprehending. The TUrkish ambassador’s daughter was even more beautiful than Ali Pasha had led him to think, and there was an agreeable slyness about her that Little Father was able to detect even at a distance. Lust awoke in him at once and he allowed himself a little smile as he savored its familiar throbbing along the insides of his thighs. The Turkish girl was very fine. The tall fair-haired young man, probably some sort of subsidiary English official, was obviously and stupidly in love with her. He should be advised to keep out of the sun. The Aztec prince, all done up in feathers and gold, was arrogant and brutal and smart, as Aztecs usually were. The Turk, the girl’s father, looked soft and effete and decadent, which he probably found to be a useful pose. The older Englishman, the little one with the red hair who most likely was the official envoy, seemed tough and dangerous. And over there was another one who hadn’t been at the marketplace to see the dancing, the Russian, no doubt, a big man, strong and haughty, flat face and flat sea-green eyes and a dense little black beard through which a glint of gold teeth occasionally showed. He too seemed dangerous, physically dangerous, a man who might pick things up and smash them for amusement, but in him all the danger was on the outside, and with the little Englishman it was the other way around. Little Father wondered how much trouble these people would manage to create for him before the funeral was over and done with. It was every nation’s ambition to create trouble in the empires of Africa, after all: there was too much cheap labor here, too much in the way of raw materials, for the pale jealous folk of the overseas lands to ignore, and they were forever dreaming dreams of conquest. But no one had ever managed it. Africa had kept itself independent of the great overseas powers. The Pasha of Egypt still held his place by the Nile, in i:he far south the Mambo of Zimbabwe maintained his domain amidst enough gold to make even an Aztec feel envy, and the Bey of Marrakesh was unchallenged in the north. And the strong western empires flourished as ever, Ghana, Mali, Kongo, Songhay—no, no, Africa had never let itself be eaten by Thrks or Russians or even the Moors, though they had all given it a good try. Nor would it ever. Still, as he wandered among these outlanders Little Father felt contempt for him and his people drifting through the air about him like smoke. He wished that he could have made a properly royal entrance, coming upon the foreigners in style, with drums and trumpets and bugles. Preceded as he entered by musicians carrying gold and silver guitars, and followed by a hundred armed slaves. But those were royal prerogatives, and he was not yet Emir. Besides, this was a solemn time in Songhay, and such pomp was unbefitting. And the foreigners would very likely look upon it as the vulgarity of a barbarian, anyway, or the quaint grandiosity of a primitive.

  Little Father downed his brandy in three quick gulps and held out the cup for more. It was beginning to restore his spirit. He felt a sense of deep well-being, of ease and assurance.

  But just then came a stir and a hubbub at the north door of the reception hall. In amazement and fury he saw Serene Glory entering, Big Father’s main wife, surrounded by her full retinue. Her hair was done up in the elaborate great curving homs of the scorpion style, and she wore astonishing festoons of jewelry, necklaces of gold and amber, bracelets of silver and ebony and beads, rings of stone, earrings of shining ivory.

  To Ali Pasha the prince said, hissing, “What’s she doing here?”

  “You invited her yourself, Little Father.”

  Little Father stared into his cup.

  “I did?”

  “There is no question of that, sir.”

  “Yes. Yes, I did.” Littie Father shook his head. “I must have been drunk. What was I thinking of?” Big Father’s main wife was young and beautiful, younger, indeed, than Little Father himself, and she was an immense annoyance. Big Father had had six wives in his time, or possibly seven—Little Father was not sure, and he had never dared to ask—of whom all of the earliest ones were now dead, including Little Father’s own mother. Of the three that remained, one was an elderly woman who lived in retirement in Gao, and one was a mere child, the old man’s final toy; and then there was this one, this witch, this vampire, who placed no bounds on her ambitions. Only six months before, when Big Father had still been more or less healthy, Serene Glory had dared to offer herself to Little Father as they returned together from the Great Mosque. Of course he desired her; who would not desire her? But the idea was monstrous. Little Father would no more lay a hand on one of Big Father’s wives than he would lie down with a crocodile. Clearly this woman, suspecting that the father was approaching his end, had had some dream of beguiling the son. That would not happen. Once Big Father was safely interred in the royal cemetery Serene Glory would go into chaste retirement, however beautiful she might be.

  “Get her out of here, fast!” Little Father whispered.

  “But she has every right—she is the wife of the imir—

  “Then keep her away from me, at least. If she comes within five feet of me tonight, you’ll be tending camels tomorrow, do you hear? Within ten feet. See to it.”

  “She will come nowhere near you, Little Father.”

  There was an odd look on Ali Pasha’s face.

  “Why are you smiling?” Little Father asked.

  “Smiling? I am not smiling, Little Father.”

  “No. No, of course not.”

  Little Father made a gesture of dismissal and walked toward the platform of audience. A reception line began to form. The Russian was the first to present his greetings to the prince, and then the Aztec, and then the Englishman. There were ceremonial exchanges of gifts. At last it was the turn of the Tirk. He had brought a splendid set of ornate daggers, inlaid with jewels. Little Father received them politely and, as he had with the other ambassadors, he bestowed an elaborately carved segment of ivory tusk upon Ismet Akif. The girl stood shyly to one side.

  “May I present also my daughter Selima,” said Ismet Akif.

  She was well trained. She made a quick little ceremonial bow, and as she straightened her eyes met Little Father’s, only for a moment, and it was enough. Warmth traveled just beneath his skin nearly the entire length of his body, a signal he knew well. He smiled at her. The smile was a communicative one, and was understood and reciprocated. Even in that busy room those smiles had the force of thunderclaps. Everyone had been watching. Quickly Little Father’s gaze traversed the reception hall, and in a fraction of an instant he took in the sudden flicker of rage on the face of Serene Glory, the sudden knowing look on Ali Pasha’s, the sudden anguished comprehension on that of the tall young Englishman. Only Ismet Akif remained impassive; and yet Little Father had little doubt that he too was in on the transaction. In the wars of love there are rarely any secrets amongst those on the field of combat.

  Every day there was dancing in the marketplace. Some days the dancers kept their heads motionless and put everything else into motion; other days they let their heads oscillate like independent creatures, while scarcely moving a limb. There were days of shouting dances and days of silent dances. Sometimes brilliant robes were wom and sometimes the dancers were all but naked.

  In the beginning the foreign ambassadors went regularly to watch the show. But as time went on, the Emir continued not to die, and the intensity of the heat grew and grew, going beyond the uncomfortable into the implausible and then beyond that to the unimaginable, they tended to stay within the relative coolness of their own compounds despite the temptations of the daily show in the plaza. New ambassadors arrived daily, from the Maori Confederation, from China, from Peru finally, from lesser lands like Korea and Ind and the Teutonic States, and for a time the newcomers went to see the dancing with the same eagerness as their predecessors. Then they too stopped attending.

  The Emir’s longevity was becoming an embarrassment. Weeks were going by and the daily bulletins were a monotonous succession o
f medical ups and downs, with no clear pattern. The special ambassadors, unexpectedly snared in an ungratifying city at a disagreeable time of year, could not leave, but were beginning to find it an agony to stay on. It was evident to everyone now that the news of Big Father’s imminent demise had gone forth to the world in a vastly overanticipatory way.

  “If only the old bastard would simply get up and step out on his balcony and tell us he’s healthy again, and let us all go home,” Sir Anthony said. “Or succumb at last, one or the other. But this suspension, this indefiniteness— "

  “Perhaps the prince will grow weary of the waiting and have him smothered in a pillow,” Prince Itzcoatl suggested.

  The Englishman shook his head. “He’d have done that ten years ago, if he had it in him at all. The time’s long past for him to murder his father. "

  They were on the covered terrace of the Mexican embassy. In the dreadful heat-stricken silence of the day the foreign dignitaries, as they awaited the intolerably deferred news of the Emir’s death, moved in formal rotation from one embassy to another, making ceremonial calls in accordance with strict rules of seniority and precedence.

  “His Excellency the Grand Duke Alexander Petro-vitch,” the Aztec majordomo announced.

  The foreign embassies were all in the same quarter of New Timbuctoo, along the grand boulevard known as the Street of All Nations. In the old days the foreigners had lived in the center of the Old Town, in fine houses in the best native style, palaces of stone and brick covered with mauve or orange clay. But Big Father had persuaded them one by one to move to the New City. It was undignified and uncomfortable, he insisted, for the representatives of the great overseas powers to live in mud houses with earthen floors.

  Having all the foreigners’ dwellings lined up in a row along a single street made it much simpler to keep watch over them, and, in case international difficulties should arise, it would be ever so much more easy to round them all up at once under the guise of “protecting” them. But Big Father had not taken into account that it was also very much easier for the foreigners to mingle with each other, which was not necessarily a good idea. It facilitated conspiracy as well as surveillance.