“I’ll measure my dick against both you young ladies. I’ll put one of my balls on the ball scale and bet you double or nil it’s heavier than all four of yours put together.”
“Big deal,” Bufesqueu said, “you got fat balls.” The second guard laughed and Bufesqueu put a finger to his lip to silence him and jumped down from the driver’s bench. “Sir!” Bufesqueu snapped suddenly. “Yes, sir!”
Mills supposed his friend would be shot before his feet touched the ground, but all that happened was that the Balkanese ran about to the blind side of the carriage, opened the door and stuck his head in. Mills grinned sheepishly at the two guards but both stared quizzically at the drawn black shade on their side of the locked Overland. They appeared to be straining to overhear. Mills strained too and was just able to make out brisk guttural murmurs, and then, seconds later, Bufesqueu’s crisp, military “Sir! Yes, sir!” and the door slam smartly.
When Bufesqueu reappeared the two guards had already lowered their rifles. The Balkanese climbed back beside Mills and turned to the first guard, the man who had challenged them. Bufesqueu glared at him. “Himself wants to know what’s causing the delay. Unlock the gate,” he said.
“Where’s your authorization?”
“Why don’t you stick your face in that carriage and find out yourself where’s my authorization? Then, if we can anybody find the stub of a prick or two whole entire balls between us, we can have that little weigh-in you were so anxious about. Open the gate!”
The first guard glanced anxiously at the carriage’s drawn shade and turned to the second guard. “Go on,” he said. “Better unlock it.”
Mills shook his head when they were safely inside the extensive grounds. “That was a close one. How’d you have the nerve to talk to those fellows like that?”
“Not close.”
“No? Even the horses were getting nervous.”
“Service rivalry,” Bufesqueu said. “Not close.”
“Oh,” Mills said.
“Look, Snowman,” Bufesqueu said sharply, “how long am I going to have to carry you? We’ve been in this chickenshit outfit practically the same time but I’ve got all the answers and you’ve got all the questions. It’s simple. Soldiers and sailors are supposed to hate each other. Every branch of the services is supposed to hold the other branches in contempt. It’s sanctioned. It’s how the mother fuckers induce pride.”
“I don’t hold sailors in contempt.”
“No,” Bufesqueu said. “You don’t hold anyone in contempt. How you ever got to be the cruel Janissary is beyond me.”
“I told you about that,” Mills said softly.
“Yeah,” Bufesqueu said.
He wanted to ask Bufesqueu where they were but he was ashamed. Instead he tried to concentrate on the directions the guard had given Bufesqueu at the gate when he’d asked him how to find the Kislar Agha.
It was like fairyland. Where their own grounds had been barren — except for the tiny patches of cultivated forests and jungles and special terrains used for their training exercises — these were universally lush. Everywhere there were formal gardens with plashing fountains that made an almost sensible music as the water dropped from varying heights back into their basins. There were fabulous mosaic forms, intricate spires and minarets, round arches like giant keyholes, great domes that might have been dull and massive but refracted light in such a way that they seemed more like precious stones than bits of functioning architecture. Domes like crown jewels. Emerald domes, diamond domes, ruby.
Here and there Persian rugs were spread about on the grass. They could have been flying carpets.
Everywhere he looked there were Negro gardeners to tend the arranged landscapes, dark-colored technicians to adjust the fountains, men who might have seemed fat if they had not been so obviously powerful. He saw other blacks, dressed in strange colors, in rich, queer fabrics he’d never seen before. They hurried along pine needle pathways and carried fine silver trays covered with damask cloths toward low-roofed, beautifully tiled buildings. With their pitchy skins against the deep green background of the clipped, splendid lawns they looked almost like the exotic, carved and painted barks of some of the elaborate, topiary trees.
I’ll say one thing, Mills thought, these sailors live well!
“This is it,” Mills said with forced cheer. “Where they said that Kislar Agha is we’re looking for.” He pulled into a long, curved driveway, eased the horses to a gentle stop and brake-locked the Overland, hoping that Bufesqueu had noticed his skill. Bufesqueu said nothing, of course, and Mills leaped down from the bench first. He did not ask his friend what a Kislar Agha was, or where they were, or what they were doing there in the first place.
He was determined to change his friend’s ideas about him and, though he had no notion yet of why they’d come, to beat Bufesqueu and get to the Kislar Agha guy first. He hadn’t a clue what he would tell him, could only imagine his poses, his folded arms and knowing smirk. Perhaps, while waiting for the lightning to strike, he would kibitz the black boys, let the Kislar Agha bloke, and Bufesqueu too, see who they were dealing with.
(Because he’d already forgotten the danger, because this was an adventure, because it had been an adventure since he’d first started out for London to make his way in the world, before: since he’d accepted that letter of introduction which had been obsolete before it was written. Because it was all adventure: his meeting with King George, his — he understood this now — expulsion from England, his journey with the spy, Peterson, and his meeting with the Jew ambassador and the complicated betrayal at Mahmud’s Court; all, all of it adventure; being given over to the mullahs, to the Janissaries, killing Khoraghisinian and becoming a living legend, all of it — being sent down with Bufesqueu to take Constantinople with no more weapons between them than their two full-dress Janissary suits; the confiscation of the Overland and the grand ride they’d had, vulnerable and open-air’d as a Roman triumph; the business with the guards at the gates, even the peaceful drive through this voluptuary candyland. Because it was all adventure and he was an adventurer and an adventurer did not so much forget danger as acknowledge and then ignore it, that only then could he be vouchsafed immunity. Because it was all adventure and he lived now within some rhythm of action and respite which were as much the physical laws of adventure as ebb and flood tides were the governing physics of the seas. And because his feelings had been hurt, and there was no room or way to accommodate fear and sulk in the same place at the same time.)
Mills entered the building.
“The Kislar Agha,” George demanded of a huge fat black fellow in sheer, billowing trousers that tapered tightly at the ankles. He was shirtless and his full, hairless chest was barely covered by a light vest. He glanced at the man’s shoes, smooth and soft and slightly curling at the toes like a jester’s slippers. George lightly touched the Negro’s turban. “Hair not dry yet, darling?” And leaned toward him. “Let the air out of your pants, why don’t you?” he whispered. “Get your toes fixed. You look like some pansy-assed Nancy boy.”
The black man lifted Mills off the floor by the neck and quietly choked him. “Is this the way you address the assistant Chief Eunuch in the Sultan’s harem?” he asked mildly.
Mills’s frightened, high-pitched squeals brought another black man, even larger, into the room.