“Yeah,” he said, “and don’t know their size. I can’t help it,” Sanbanna said, “I believe in my products. I’m this progress ambassador.”
A king, Mills thought, a sultan. Princes and princesses. A progress ambassador.
“He folds sheets, Guzo.”
“Well the question is sheets. Sheets are what’s under discussion. Look, I’ll lay my cards on the table. What are we talking about? Two or three hundred box springs and mattresses? My foot we are! We’re talking revolution! A sleep revolution! Sure, I want to sell you the box springs and mattresses. And of course it would be a feather in my cap to bring two hundred sets on line in Yildiz Palace Seraglio. But the real feather in the cap would be to get my box spring and mattress under the Sultan’s ass!
“Think! Who does the fucking? Those two hundred or so girls? The Sultan does the fucking. Those favored ladies are lucky if they see him three or four times a year. The mothers of those kids got stretch marks on them like lines on rulers. Maybe they have relations twice a year. As for the novices … Well, I don’t have to tell you. So it’s the Sultan. This is the man with the smile on his face! That’s the direction of my thinking. The box spring and mattress under his back! If I could tell the world its greatest lover only trusts his body to one of these babies — well, I don’t have to tell you! That’s where the plumage in the millinery is!”
“Guzo,” the Chief Eunuch said, “our seraglio is not a test kitchen.”
“So I asked myself, I asked myself, ‘Sanbanna, you got a problem. How does a person like yourself, less than a commoner, get next to the sultan of the Ottoman Empire? How do you advise such a person?’ ‘Good will. Word of mouth, Guzo,’ I told myself. ‘That’s the way to handle it. Let the broads do the job.’ ” He was staring directly into Mills’s eyes.
“He folds sheets, Guzo,” the Kislar said.
“Forgive me, Kislar, haven’t we been talking about sheets? Didn’t I ask him sheet dimensions? Ain’t that what our whole deal hinges on? Ain’t that why we called Laundry in for consultations?”
“But, Guzo, he doesn’t know.”
“Maybe because it never came up. Maybe because Laundry’s too conscientious for idle speculations. Maybe because he was never bored enough to say to some co-worker, ‘Hey, pal, for the hell of it, why don’t we get a tape and measure the goddamn things?’ ”
“They won’t fit,” George Mills said. “They’re only forty by sixty.”
“You shouldn’t listen to crap, George,” Sanbanna said.
“They won’t fit your whatchamacallits. They’re five inches too narrow in the width.”
“Why did you want to see me?”
George looked at him closely. “It’s not important,” he said.
“Sure it’s important,” Sanbanna said.
“No,” Mills said. Suddenly he was very tired. “I thought maybe I ought to talk to the man who’s making these women so fat.”
“Sure,” Sanbanna said.
George studied him a moment. He went on, keeping his voice flat, draining all curiosity from it. “They, you know, nibble.”
“They gorge.”
“Probably when, you know, the eunuchs aren’t around.”
“They cram it down.”
“Not that, you know, I’ve ever actually seen them.”
“They pack it away,” Sanbanna said. “They wolf the stuff!”
“Even Fatima. Even Fatima’s, you know, put on a few pounds since I’ve been here.”
“She’s a guzzle gut. She’s a gourmand glut gobble.”
“She lives high,” Mills said.
“Not because it’s contraband,” Sanbanna said, “not even because it’s cheap or plentiful.”
“It’s strange,” Mills said, almost to himself. “He’s a sultan. Any race you can think of.”
“Yes,” Sanbanna said.
“Every body type. Women with bones under their faces like fine welts, women with bone structures like log cabins.”
“Yes.”
“And their hair,” Mills said. “My God, their hair soft as down or rough as the stuffing in bad furniture.”
“That’s right.”
“He’s the fucking Sultan. He wants girls, he invades countries with armies, for Christ’s sake. He sends generals out with glass slippers. He has an entire empire to choose from. There’s pageants and beauty contests. Miss African Village, Miss Sand Dunes. Miss Off-Shore Islands.”
“Yes,” Sanbanna said.
“They’re all fat!”
“Not even to get out of it,” Sanbanna said, “not even to make themselves unattractive or too heavy to handle.”
“No,” Mills said.
“Not even because they’re bored,” Sanbanna said. “But because halvah and the delicatessen I’m able to bring in are the only things still available to them that tickle their palates. Who knows? Maybe the palate is the only organ they have that’s still alive. Maybe that’s what burns out last. Everything mortified but the nerves of the mouth, the sweet and sour synapses.”
Suddenly Mills shuddered with questions. “Cheap?” he said. “Plentiful?”
Sanbanna looked at him. “Fatima shook you down?”
“I gave her my bribegold,” he said and could have bitten his tongue in half. The man didn’t seem to have heard. “Listen,” Mills said, “I’ve seen them giggling, I’ve watched them carry on.”
“Eunuchs,” Sanbanna said contemptuously.
“Not the eunuchs, the women.”
“I’m talking about the women,” Sanbanna said.
“The women?”
“Didn’t I already tell you it’s a company town?”
“All right,” Mills said, “good will, word of mouth. You get on their bright side. They talk up the merchandise to the Kislar Agha. They say swell things about the dry goods. Then what?”
“Come on, Mills,” Sanbanna snapped, “you said it yourself. Forty by sixty. They don’t even fit. What do you suppose just a contract for new sheets would be worth in this place? Wouldn’t I be jumping up and down if I was who you think I am? Or are you some eunuch too? Big time Paradise Dispatcher!”
“Hey,” Mills said.
“Hey yourself. Why not? Why wouldn’t you be? Everyone else around here is. The prickless princes and parched princesses. The favorites and novices and slaves. Who ain’t a eunuch? Your pal Bufesqueu? Come on, he’s spoony as the rest of them. They’re a loony, loopy, lovelorn lot, Mills. All the screw-loose steers, all the hindered heifers. What a picture!”
“Eunuchs in love,” Mills said.
“Who said anything about love? Lovesick ness! Sentiment. Rapture and craziness. Doting. Dottiness. Fan mail and fantasy. Coquetry, swoon, languish and yearning. Ogle. Intrigue and eye contact. The heart’s round robin. Who mentioned love? There ain’t enough love in this place to wet a dream.”
And Mills thinking maybe it was a part of adventure when perfect strangers told you things, when they took trouble with you. Or perhaps straight talk was only a kind of condescension. Sanbanna would never have spoken this way to the Kislar.
“Well?” said the halvah trader.
“Gee, Guzo,” Mills said, “you know the part I don’t get?”
“You? You don’t get any of it.”
“Who made you candy man?”
“George Fourth,” Sanbanna said.