Unfortunately for him, Sabiha regarded all three practices with the utmost repugnance. She had grown up in the palace. Even as an eight-year-old she had observed men in their cups and spoke often of how the sight had filled her with nausea, without ever being more specific. Who knows what she saw or experienced as a child in the palace where the Caliphs of our faith held sway, or how deeply it affected her? It was said that her father’s decision to marry a Japanese courtesan had upset her greatly. In the conflicts that followed her father always backed his new wife against his children. Sabiha felt abandoned and it coloured her attitude to men and the power they possessed, but this is not what she told her friends.
They were informed casually that Mahmut Pasha was not a real man, that she derived no pleasure through coupling with him. That he was less effective than a dog and that after his children were born he had, Allah be praised, become impotent. However hard she tried, his little radish refused to stir. In fact she did not try at all. She never permitted him in her bed again.
Mahmut Pasha, self-loving and pleasure-seeking as ever, was enraged by these slurs on his manhood. He responded characteristically by lifting a Circassian serving wench from the kitchen and transporting her to a chamber near his bedroom. She became his mistress. Petrossian’s grandfather was the Sultan of our kitchen at the time. He, too, had a soft spot for the woman, but bowed before the superior will of his master.
The Circassian — to this day I have never heard her real name mentioned — was illiterate. As a young girl, she had been bought for the household from a passing trader in Istanbul and trained as a kitchen maid. They say she possessed a natural intelligence. They say she made Mahmut Pasha laugh a great deal and, most important of all, she rejuvenated him between his legs. It was not long before news of her existence began to spread outside the family.
She began to accompany Mahmut Pasha on his hunting trips. Her presence compelled him to reverse the order of his pleasures. Now he could not hunt until he had been pleasured by the Circassian and only after the sport was over did they both share a cup of wine. He should have married her, but Mahmut Pasha was a coward. He was cowed by three fears. He feared the Sultan’s displeasure. He feared a decline in his own social status. He feared the wrath of his father.
None the less he frustrated all Sabiha’s attempts to have her Circassian rival removed from the scene. Why did Sabiha care so much about this particular concubine? The practice was as common then as it is now. I think it was the public humiliation that upset her. If my grandfather had remained discreet she would not have felt insulted, but Mahmut Shah was angry with Sabiha for impugning his virility. And so he refused to hide his wench from the public gaze. He liked her to dress in the fashion of a lady so that he could show her to his friends. Halil’s mother once found a carefully preserved, beautiful, though faded, Parisian gown in a small box in this house. It had belonged to the Circassian.
One day, she disappeared from our house in Istanbul. At first Sabiha was delighted, but a month passed and she noticed that her rival’s absence, far from affecting Mahmut Pasha adversely, appeared to have improved his humour. Sabiha realised that something was being hidden from her. She sent for Petrossian’s grandfather, but he denied all knowledge of anything related to his master’s passion.
I think it must have been one of the maids who, jealous of the social ascent achieved by her Circassian peer, told her mistress the truth. The Circassian was carrying Mahmut Pasha’s child and had been sent here for the period of her confinement. Who knows but that the child was intended to be born in this very room and in this very bed where Iskander Pasha now lies, unable to speak, but frowning at me because he disapproves of this story? Forgive me, dear brother. But every beginning needs an end. You disagree?’
My father was writing a note on his pad that I took to my uncle, who smiled.
“Iskander says there was no ending. That everything else is supposition. That evil tongues in the servants’ quarters manufactured tales that were untrue. He is tired and wants to sleep and suggests we continue tomorrow. We must respect his wishes, but the end will not take long.
“There was an ending, and it was of a tragic nature. Mahmut Pasha’s Circassian disappeared with the unborn child. She was never seen again. When I was little the servants used to frighten me with stories of a baby ghost whose screams were often heard outside this balcony. Ask Petrossian and he will tell you that Sabiha had her murdered. He claims he heard the story from his father. So there was an ending, even though Mahmut Pasha, like his descendant Iskander, preferred to believe that she had run away. He offered a big reward to anyone who brought him news of her, but it was never claimed.”
With these words the Baron and Uncle Memed rose, bowed graciously in the direction of my father, who had shut his eyes in disapproval, and left the room. We followed in silence.
FOUR
The Circassian tells her truth to the Stone Woman and bemoans her fate; how the rich cancel the love of the poor
‘WILL YOU LISTEN TO my tale of woe, Stone Woman, or do your ears welcome only the voice of the Pasha and his family? I’ve been in this house for over three months. I’m well looked after and fed by the caretaker and his wife and I’m happy to be away from Istanbul, but in my solitude, I miss Hikmet more than ever before. I wake up every day long before the birds. It is still not light and the stars have yet to fade. I can’t sleep. Hikmet’s face and his voice fill my dreams and make me miserable. Look at me. I am eight months pregnant with Mahmut Pasha’s child but my heart is still heavier than my stomach.
In my dreams I see Hikmet in his soldier’s uniform. He is looking at me with bitterness in his grey eyes. They speak to me: “We trusted you, but you would not wait. You betrayed our love for a rich man’s comfort.” I plead forgiveness. I beg for mercy, but inside myself I know that his eyes are speaking the truth. I was pledged to him. I was even preparing to ask the mistress for permission to marry him, when the cursed day arrived and our lord, Mahmut Pasha, catching sight of me, began to twirl his moustache. It was the fatal sign of which I had first been warned when I was a girl of ten, and now, eight years later, it had happened. My heart sank straight to my feet.
The house maids still warn any new addition to the household that there is a longstanding tradition in this family. When the master looks at any one of them and begins to play with his moustache, it is a sign that the call to his bed will come for that night. And it always did, Stone Woman. It always did. And not just for the maids. There were a few young coachmen who received the summons. One of them ran away and was never seen again. The maids spoke often of Mahmut Pasha’s habits, but their crudeness offended my ears. I preferred to forget their stories.
I was, after all, only a kitchen maid, not even permitted near the other rooms of the house. My task was to help the cooks and make sure they had all the ingredients they needed for their dishes. When I was much younger, I never thought of myself as a person whom the master even noticed and so I was never worried like some of the other maids, those who carried their breasts like over-ripe melons.
He saw me from the window one day as I was sitting on a bench near the vegetable garden and washing cucumbers. I averted my glance from his, but he rushed down and passed in front of me. I stood up and covered my head. He smiled and fondled his moustache. O cruel fate, Stone Woman. I knew I was doomed. I wanted to run away before the night came. As luck would have it, my clean-shaven Hikmet with his dark red hair, who stood daily on guard duty outside the house, had gone back to his village to attend his mother’s funeral. I was alone. I swear in Allah’s name that if Hikmet had been there that day I would have run away with him, but it was not to be. The call came in the shape of the oldest maidservant in the house. She, who boasted of how she had warmed the bed of Mahmut Pasha as well as his father and grandfather, was now approaching her fiftieth year. In the past she had used her privileged position to lord it over the other servants. They had despised and feared her, but that was some time ago. Now she had been reduced to the status of the Pasha’s procuress, but this had made her warm-hearted. I think, deep in herself, she understood the humiliation. To try and make it easier for us she would say: “I have known three generations of this family,” she used to tell us, “and this young master is the kindest of them all. He will not be violent with you. He will not hurt you in any way as his grandfather did when his lust was aroused.”