“It’s better that you take a glance at the guests before meeting them.”
He spoke the advice in a smug and irritating tone, so irritating that I immediately wanted to leave off this spying game. But I rested my forehead against the wall and counted four people, composed and elegant, conversing in front of a big clock. The clock’s face, framed in a tall, narrow case, was filled with numbers, letters and smaller squares, above which needles of various lengths rotated, quickly or slowly — some so slowly that they looked as if they weren’t moving at all. Charon spoke close to my ear.
“They are impressed, and they’re quite right to be. That machine is a genuine marvel. Besides the hour, it shows the day of the year according to the Christian calendar, the Hejira, and the Jewish calendar. It arrived from Egypt a few days ago, a precious gift from its maker, the famous Takiyuddin.”
I had never heard his name, but then again, I wasn’t here to talk about clocks.
“Let me guess what’s about to happen,” I said. “I’m going to ask you who these gentlemen are, and you’re going to explain. Or do we have to talk about pinions and gear-wheels?”
The man maintained his dreamy tone. “Don’t underestimate machines, Senyor. Not even as a topic of idle conversation.” Then he settled himself more comfortably on the bench and began to describe the people there for my benefit.
“The thin gentleman all dressed in yellow is the French ambassador, Guillaume de Grandchamp, Monsieur de Grantrie.” The color of the Frenchman’s clothes, together with his build, made me think of a canary.
“An agreeable conversationalist, but also an unscrupulous businessman, when it comes to drawing up agreements with the Grand Vizier to the detriment of rival powers. Next to him, the great blond bear being strangled by his collar is the Voivode of Sandomir, the envoy of the king of Poland. A good fellow, but with the unforgivable defect of preferring beer to wine. He has it sent from home in barrels.” He touched my shoulder with a hand. I instinctively shrank away.
“The man sipping tea is Solomon Ashkenazi, secretary to the Grand Vizier Sokollu and personal physician to the Venetian ambassador.” I spotted a lean man with an alert expression, busy having his cup filled by a servant. “He came to Constantinople three years ago, when Selim ascended the throne. He likes to call himself a subject of La Serenissima, and he was actually born and bred in the territories of Venice.”
An increasingly bizarre picture was forming in my mind. Not only was Nasi the Sultan’s favorite, not only did the Grand Vizier have a Jewish secretary, but that secretary called himself a citizen of Venice. In Constantinople the world was turned upside down.
“He’s famous for his memory,” the voice went on. “They say he can recite the whole Torah from memory. Anything said in his presence might as well have been written down.”
I still had to examine the last guest, sitting slightly apart from the others, absorbed in studying a book. A young man with reddish hair, in simple, dark clothes without aristocratic furbelows.
“Mr. Ralph Fitch, a subject of the English queen. He arrived a few days ago. He traveled here from London to consult the book he is holding in his hand, an extremely rare and precious text written in the time of Tamerlane. But come, now, we’ve kept you waiting long enough. The conversation will be in Italian, which is the lingua franca among the Europeans, but you don’t have to speak it if you don’t want to.”
I followed him out of the little room. The drawing room seemed even bigger now. At the bottom of the staircase we reached the door to the library, but before he opened it I stopped. “Where is the master of the house?” I asked impatiently. “Doesn’t Nasi receive his guests?”
“Normally he does, yes. But on this occasion he went and brought the most important guest to his own lodgings.”
I was quite exhausted by the way this man had of posing as a great friend. “And who might that be? The Grand Turk in person?”
He smiled, not at all bothered by my sarcasm. “It’s you,” he said, before throwing open the door, ignoring my amazement.
I watched Giuseppe Nasi enter the library and display himself in an act of reverence toward his guests.
“Shalom aleichem, gentlemen. Welcome to my house.”
2
Nasi didn’t introduce me to my fellow guests, and throughout our meal he behaved as if I didn’t exist, except to show me to the seat to his right, where I was to sit. I didn’t say a word, but simply observed the others, and gradually, as the courses followed one another, I realized it was precisely what Nasi wanted. I was the enigma.
I saw the glances the others were darting at me, unsettled and doubtful, and I imagined how satisfied he would be. Fish was served, then game, sweets with mint, oranges and fruits I had never seen before. All washed down with wine from Naxos.
I ate and drank without much of an appetite. I felt acid in my throat and my stomach squeezed in a vise. I was sitting less than three feet from Venice’s greatest enemy, and rather than killing him I was listening to him like an old friend.
“On the feast of Hanukkah, the children of Israel celebrate the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucids and the new consecration of the Temple of Jerusalem. I wanted to take this opportunity to welcome Master Ralph Fitch, hoping that his stay here will be both lucrative and pleasurable.”
The Englishman thanked Nasi with a nod of his head. The Grand Vizier’s secretary reclaimed his attention with a little coughing fit.
“May I ask you what struck you most when you arrived in Constantinople, Signore? Sometimes first impressions contain immediate truths.”
We turned toward the Englishman, who took his time, wiping his mustache with his napkin. Then he replied, with the air of someone who is sure of himself but doesn’t want to make a great show of it, “Not so much an impression; more of an observation. It seems incredible that so many people and faiths can live together in the same place without coming into conflict.”
Ashkenazi smiled sardonically. “That’s an answer worthy of a diplomat.”
At that moment Nasi cut in. “If you stay here long enough, as I hope you will, you will discover that the secret is called tolerance.”
Fitch seemed really curious. “Do you think we could draw a universal rule from that? When Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, wanted to show tolerance to her Catholic subjects, they rewarded her with a conspiracy, and England flowed with rivers of blood.”
The French ambassador’s mirthless chuckle was chilling. His cheeks colored for a moment. “Unicuique suum, monsieur.” The voice was a croak. “The same thing is happening in France, to the Huguenots, and, I assure you, in the Ottoman empire too. Don’t be deceived by our magnificent host’s fine words. I am aware that in Yemen the Sultan’s troops have just crushed a rebellion by Muslim heretics.” He turned toward the Grand Vizier’s secretary and received a nod of confirmation. “A tolerant sovereign is a weak sovereign. What keeps states united is the exercise of terror. The Ottoman peace is due more to the fact that subjects live under the vigilant eye of a single limitless power, that of the Sultan, without an aristocracy competing for titles and the throne. You have to agree, Don Yossef: Tolerance is nothing; power is everything.”
The master of the house raised a hand in an enigmatic gesture, while he had his glass filled by a servant. “My lords, I sense that we are giving the same name to different concepts. You speak of sovereign power and its exercise. I am referring to the life of the subjects. To what in Turkish we call tahammül.”