So they were feeling pretty good, Mills and Bufesqueu. Splendid, in fact. Two reluctant recruits who not only had conquered a major world capital but in the act of conquering it had turned round and conquered by way of ricochet the very force in whose name they had done it. And if five thousand men had died in the Sultan’s surprise bombardment — if, indeed, a week after the event, perhaps a couple of hundred of their former comrades were still smoldering — it was nothing either of the condemned men cared to take on his conscience. Bufesqueu because he genuinely believed the other Janissaries had repudiated women, Mills because he had not once chosen in all the time he had lived.
Fatima came in for towels and looked, in passing, in the direction of Mills’s crotch. She shook her head sadly. “Please stop that,” Mills said, and Fatima stared at him, clapping her hands to her mouth in astonishment.
“It’s grown back?” asked the superstitious woman.
“Sure,” George said, “you think they can keep a good man down?”
So, though he didn’t know it, among certain of the staff at least, he continued to be a living legend.
Bufesqueu, of course, was in seventh heaven. “In the country of the blind,” he liked to say, patting his pants and winking, “the one-eyed man is king.”
But so far neither Bufesqueu nor George had come within even hailing distance of the Sultan’s harem girls, let alone seen one. If this was a torment to the former, to the latter it was something of a comfort. George had not so far forgotten his danger as to lose respect for it entirely. He complimented himself on his Millsian ability to appreciate and honor a taboo. If he had swallowed whole whatever guidelines his Janissary superiors had laid down for him, if his credulity had kept him down range of the black marketeers who Bufesqueu said visited their fort almost daily to take orders for the cold comforts they dispensed for bribegold and a portion of a Janissary’s small pay, he had at least managed, if innocently, if ignorantly, to abide by the rules, to live within the letter, to the last crossed t, to the last dotted i, of the laws of appearance. This, Mills thought, was what preserved them. To view things otherwise was subversive not only to those who held power over them, and not only to their own sort, but more importantly to themselves, to one another, to every Mills who’d ever lived under the curse of kind. He understood what was permitted and behaved himself.
Now a sultan’s harem, Mills thought, a sultan’s harem was just the last place on earth one should think about running amok. And if that sultan also happens to be one of your emperor sultans, as this one is, with sway not only over entire countries and populations but over entire climates as well, from deserty Africa to the frozen Kush, then that sultan is one hell of an important man; and if, without batting an eyelash, he can cannonade a complete elite corps off the face of the world simply because it was rumored that they might have spilled some soup, and if he’s gone to the trouble of becoming a sultan emperor in the first place with all the expense of men and materiel that takes just so he can have dibs on two or three hundred of the prettiest girls in all those respective countries, populations and climates, and if he’s taken the additional pains to house them all in one place where he can keep his eye on them, and in a style like this where the girls themselves don’t do a thing, not wash a bowl, dry a dish, make a bed, fix a meal, rinse something out in the sink of an evening or even just pick out their own clothes, what they think suits them best, shows off their color or makes them less hippy; and if he’s gone to the further bother of training up specialist surgeons who have nothing better to do than cut the nuts off fellows who themselves have nothing better to do than see to it that the two or three hundred girls don’t either, then that sultan is not only one hell of an important man but one hell of a jealous one, too. And I for one, Mills thought, who changed my life and sealed the fates of maybe five thousand others because I happened to throw him a salute with the wrong hand, I for one, who already have, don’t want any part of him. I already took those vows to stay on the wagon. What harm will it do me to keep them? No sir. It don’t bother me that I may be losing Bufesqueu’s respect, or that old Fatima used to think of me as just one more steer around this place. I don’t want no part of him, and I don’t want no part of them.
What he didn’t know was that he was more a living legend than ever.
Alib Hakali asked to see them, and he and Bufesqueu left the laundry where for almost a month now their official assignment had been to fold sheets for the harem. “Maybe he wants to put us to work doing something else. After all we’re trained Janissaries. We’re wasted in that laundry. Maybe he wants to try us out guarding the ladies. Wouldn’t that be something?” Bufesqueu said, patting his pants and nudging him. “I mean there’s nothing wrong with the nig-nog slave broads, but those harem women must be wondrous. I tell you, George, in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.”
Mills forbore to answer. He said nothing in response to Bufesqueu’s rhapsodies as his friend went on about their possible new duties.
A eunuch stepped stolidly in front of them, barring their way.
“Bufesqueu and Mills to see the Kislar Agha as ordered,” Bufesqueu told him and the man moved aside.
It was the first time either of them had seen the Chief Eunuch since Bufesqueu had asked for sanctuary. Even reclining, fat and sassy as some Sumo Santa Claus, his black bulk spilling over the pillows he pressed against on his heavily reinforced litter, he was as large as Mills remembered him. He sucked on a hookah and watched benignly as first Bufesqueu and then Mills offered their deferential salaams. Without bothering to remove his water pipe he absently returned their greeting, a huge hand briefly flickering from black to pink like flash cards turned in a stadium.
“If you’re worried about the guards,” he said, setting the hookah back on its stand and exhaling a thick steam of sweet smoke, “they’re gone. The Overland has been burned. I took care of the guards.”
“The guards, Kislar Agha?” Bufesqueu said.
“Chief Eunuch. We won’t mince words. Call me Chief Eunuch. At the gate, the guards at the gate. I pulled the tongues out of their necks personally. I broke their bones in my torture chambers. I tore their equipment off with my hands.”
Mills flinched.
“Why do you pale? They were bad guards. You’d never have gotten past good ones.”
“Torture chambers, Chief Eunuch?” Bufesqueu said.
“This is the best-equipped seraglio in the world,” he said. “We have fourteen mosques on the grounds. We have two hospitals and an arsenal with the latest weapons. We’ve kitchens and bakeries and the finest schools. We’ve sports fields and stables, conference rooms and hospitality suites. We’re centrally located and close to a major body of water. Why shouldn’t we have torture chambers too?” He sat up abruptly, effortlessly, showing none of the strain heavy people reveal when they move in furniture. He leaned forward conspiratorially. “The torture chambers bother you? Relax please. You think I’d send two incompetent guards to a torture chamber? Of course not. That’s for the big fish.” He held out his right hand. “This,” he said, and extended the left, “and this. These are my torture chambers.”
Bufesqueu nodded and Mills stared. The Chief Eunuch laughed merrily. “No,” he said, “you don’t understand. You think I’m trying to intimidate you, to threaten obliquely like some fat Mex bandit with silver teeth. I didn’t call you here to threaten you. I called you here to comfort you. That about the guards should have taken a load off. They’d have talked. Your whereabouts would have gotten back to the Sultan. Oh, Lawd, dis nigger be misunderstood sho ’nuff.