Free Garden of Venus by Eva Stachniak Page A

whites of which will be rubbed with
shebba
to make the thick lumpy mass that will cleanse the skin. For it is with the skin, they say, that you touch the world.
    The women, their faces covered with gooey masks, sit patiently and talk. Things have to be done right, the way they were done before. Only the conceited believe one could discover a better way than the one practised for generations. A better way of embroidering or preparing a face mask. A better way of dancing or making coffee. A better way to live.
    But there is other talk too. Of slaves whose beauty caught the eye of the Master, of these moments for whichone prepares one’s whole life. A moment in which a man’s eye can change the woman’s fate; when a slave can become an odalisque; and then, if Allah wills that, maybe even a mother of a Sultan’s child. Unless, of course, one day, in the
hammam
, such a woman finds the doors locked, and the heat and the steam take her breath away. Why?
    The women shrug their shoulders. Doesn’t she know how easy it is to cause envy? To make a false step, say one word too many. Doesn’t she know anything?
    Every night it seems to Sophie that she can hear the locking of many doors. There is a restlessness in her. A force sets upon her as soon as she opens her eyes and does not leave her until she falls asleep under the heavy arm of her mistress. The same restlessness that makes a fox caught in a snare chew off its leg.
    To stop it Sophie thinks of the black eunuch. His black skin has a warm tone, and he smells of sandalwood.
Hadim Effendi
, a learned one, the Princess sometimes calls him, laughing. He was but a boy when he was first brought to the Palace. A boy who cried and cried until one of the slave women had the presence of mind to sing to him. Now he is
kislar aghasi
, master of the maidens. Unlike the white eunuchs who guard the gates of the Seraglio, he is allowed to enter the chamber of the women. He is fond of bright embroidered patterns, of jackets trimmed with gold.
    Hadim Effendi likes her. She has discovered that on one of the restless nights when her mistress sent her for a pearl necklace, and she got lost in the corridors of the Seraglio. To silence the clanking bells, she stopped by the latticed window and looked outside. A beautiful moon, milky white, illuminated the sleeping city. It was difficult to believe that people lived there, in these dimly lit streets. That they loved, worked, slept, died there. That there was anyone else there besides
Bekjih
, the night watchman, hisfeet tapping on the cobbled stones as if he came from the kingdom of the dead.
    ‘Do you know the rules?’ Hadim asked, startling her with his presence.
    ‘Yes,’ she said, emboldened by the moon. ‘The rules do not allow holding any woman in the Palace against her will.’
    ‘The same rules also allow for killing anyone who has left. You should remember that.’
    He was looking at her. There was much softness in his eyes, beside the sadness she had noticed before. She smiled.
    ‘The secrets of the Palace may not be shared among the living.’
    Slowly, as if she were asleep, she opened her shirt and bared her breasts. He did not stop her. He did not touch her either, but stood there looking at her for a long time. She didn’t move.
    She removes the clanking bells from her arms and knocks on the door to his room.
    ‘Come in,’ the master of the maidens says, lifting his eyes from a thick leather-bound volume.
    ‘I’ll die here if you don’t help me,’ she says and holds her breath. With one word he could have her flogged. With one word he could have her begging for her life.
    He closes the book and motions to her to come closer.
    ‘You won’t die,’ he says. ‘Your eyes have nothing but life in them.’
    He hands her a cup of coffee and motions to her to drink. She takes a sip, then another, but he shakes his head. ‘Drink it all up,’ he says.
    In her coffee grounds he reads her future. He doesn’t talk of death