Sofia (19 page)

But this time it returned empty.

Within the belly, as she called it, of the marble beast, Sofia did not find herself back in the glittering presence of the woman with the dark, piercing eyes. The eunuch showed her, instead, to a narrow string bed at the far end of a dark, dank dormitory two flights up. A thin mattress covered the bedstrings and, when she sat upon it to get her bearings, it jolted her hard, for it was crushed by much use.

Nine forlorn, dusty-looking girls stared back at her from their own hard pallets. A few chirps of greeting revealed a multitude of foreign tongues among which she could not exchange a single word.

Only the eunuch had something to say. On his way out he stopped to verbally lash one of the girls, for what offense it was impossible to say. The girl, a mousy little thing, didn’t reply, even if she was able. The eunuch then grabbed her thin arm with one meat-like hand. She gasped and then shrieked, pain mixed with terror, as the eunuch shoved her out of the room in front of him. Sofia saw the girl pause and scratch something into the wood of the door frame against which his first bad aim flung her.

Later, when the girl’s shrieks had been swallowed in the marble bowels of the place like heartburn chased by the parsley of gathering night, Sofia got up and went to look at the door frame. Ostensibly she went to help herself to the saucer of oil and a floating wick which was the cheap source of the room’s only illumination. She needed it to ensure that her bed was free of the worst sorts of vermin.

But she did not fail to take the opportunity to investigate the doorpost. She saw a scratch of shallow, raw wood. It seemed unlikely that the girl could have made such a mark in such hard wood without drawing her own blood or at least breaking a nail. But all Sofia could make out was the shape of a cross, a desperate but silent sign to say: “I was here. The world does not heed my short and miserable passing. But, witness God, I was here.”

Sofia turned back to the others in the room to tell them— To tell them what? Those who had not already buried their faces in a pretense of sleep did so now. No words had place in this oblivion.

More than once Sofia felt inclined to join those girls who dissolved to tears when the light went out and safe anonymity came. Tears, at least, were universal communication. But somehow she refrained, telling herself all the while, “Be strong. Be patient. Come morning, things will be better. Prove to that great woman that you are worthy of her.” Somehow she had gotten the notion that that woman, like God, would have those piercing eyes on her even in the dark. Lulled by such thoughts, she managed to sleep.

Come morning, however, Sofia woke to find herself lying in a pool of blood.

“Oh, God’s wounds!” she blurted out. “Not the curse!”

Her words drew the attention of the others in the room, just waking, and attention was the last thing she wanted. Sofia pulled the quilt over her head and wished she could vanish off the face of the earth.

Why does this have to happen to me?
she moaned to the dark quilt. “Be strong. Be patient,” seemed absurd advice when utter weakness had her in its grip. Her hopes were dashed. The wonderful woman who had so admired her the day before would want nothing to do with her now, messy as she was. For surely the woman herself never succumbed to such weakness. Never. She was too controlled, too beautiful and gracious, too powerful, one might almost say too male to ever, ever be so burdened.

And there was that between us which let her know I was not such a silly female, either.
But the continuing warmth between her legs told Sofia all control had vanished.

Sofia had never quite believed Saint Mark truly reposed in the golden reliquary her aunt made her go up and kiss on high holy days. What did it matter that the heist of the body, hidden in a barrel of pickled pork, from the indolent and heretical Alexandrians was well documented: in glimmering frescoes to either side of the chapel, in the preserved and sanctified slats of barrel displayed nearby?

Sofia had seen—and smelled—enough week-old corpses displayed by beggars in the Piazza to have her doubts. If that lumber pile encased in gold really was the reverend limbs of the Apostle, she couldn’t help suspecting that, beyond pickle brine, somebody was helping heaven along with a little coating of “incorruptible” arsenic and wax. And if heaven really was working a miracle of preservation here, she would never believe beyond that. This deity’s conjuring trick could never have any efficacy for anyone else. Not for the distasteful bulk of the blind and lame and palsied who had contaminated the reliquary with their lips before her. And certainly not for Sofia Baffo who actually, most days of the month, scorned the idea that heaven could do anything she couldn’t do very well by herself, thank you.

Similarly, against all evidence, Governor Baffo’s daughter continued to refuse to believe in her menses. If some mistake—like getting overheated and catching a cold when all the nuns did, too—had made it happen once, her greater sense would prohibit it happening again. And when it came a second time, she would surely not let it happen a third.

How long had it been now? This was not something with which she liked to clutter her head. Only when
it
rudely imposed
it
self on her being did she think about
it
. Now was one of those inescapable times. A year. Maybe more. To the best of her calculation. Every month, as regular as a full moon. As regular as fish on Friday—which she hated.

Sometimes she had thought
it
, like so many other unpleasant, stifling things, was a consequence of convent life. If she once escaped her aunt’s scrutiny...the long arm of her father’s law... But now it was clear
it
had pursued her even beyond Christendom.
It
was with her to stay, no failure of circumstance or of those fools she was forced to suffer around her, but an integral part of her own being. A curse indeed.

Part of her ability to deny this unpleasant state of affairs was due to the fact that always when she had bled before, her aunt had taken responsibility. The first time it came, unannounced, unprepared, the very scriptural thief in the night, Sofia had taken to her bed, convinced she was going to die from this terrible and unnatural thing her body was doing to her. After two days and no sign of returning health, she had finally confided to the chap-faced nun, for whom two days missing matins was cause for third degrees of inquisition. Sofia had used her most contrite voice to speak the dreadful words, steeling herself for the barriers they would make her jump before they’d let her get to heaven.

Her aunt had slapped her across the face. Well, what else had Sofia expected to the confession of “blood” and “down there”? It was the sermon that came afterward that had taken her by surprise.

“Where is your head, wicked girl, whenever Genesis is read? Have you never heard of Eve’s wickedness? The curse, girl. The curse upon all daughters of Eve for our Mother’s sinfulness. Every moon, we are thus reminded of our fallen state and must pray to all-merciful God to release us from it quickly by His Grace.”

Sofia had only ever heard “in pain shalt thou bear” and “thy desire toward thy husband,” both clauses which she was determined
she
at least could thwart heaven and avoid. She had heard nothing about
this
. But of course she had only ever believed in a paradisiacal Eden about as much as she believed in Saint Mark: for people who needed that pabulum, not for her.

So every month thereafter she’d endured the slap and the sermon. It was the bleeding, in fact, that had started the flurry of letters between Venice and her father in Corfu that had eventually culminated in his ultimatum of marriage. And every month, as soon as they got up off their knees after asking forgiveness, Sofia gave the responsibility for her state up to her aunt in every way possible in such an intimate matter. Her aunt provided the clean linen rags, took the soiled ones away so her niece didn’t even have the bother of looking at them. Well, the nun enjoyed feeling sinful. Let her have her fill.

Sofia could see now that her long denial had left her singularly unprepared now that her aunt was gone. She was more helpless even than the curse gave cause to be, but there was nothing she could do about it but lie there in that strange bed and bleed.

The foreign smell of the inside of a rusting, copper kettle left carelessly damp swept up her body to her nostrils, violating her. There was pressure on her bladder and in her bowels. These comforts she had strength to deny and forestall, but not the orifice between. She had faced pirates and Turks, slavers and eunuchs, but before none of these had she felt dirtier, more a victim, more shamed, exposed, invalid, impotent, violated—and alone.

And she felt even more so with every drop that trickled uncontrollably down to ruin her shalvar —the beautiful silk
shalvar
she had loved so much because they made her feel so masculine. She could see now there was a reason why women wore skirts with nothing in between the legs. Her memory that the
shalvar
were red provided little comfort.

Turkish women must not be subject to the curse of Eve, she decided, if this is what they were allowed to wear. If this was so, she envied them all the more but was certain now she could never attain to their power.

In spite of herself, the poet might have said, she began to weep. But Sofia felt she had precious little self left at this point to spite. Anything that might have been self was slowly but surely bleeding from her. But weep, indeed, she did, hot, silent, choking tears in rhythm to her flow.

So Baffo’s daughter lay as the others in the room got up, got dressed and answered the call to prayer. So she lay as the palace around her roused, shook itself and took on its great, world-commanding business. So she lay, alone indeed, and hoping for death.

Presently, someone entered the room. Sofia wanted to remain alone, for that at least was similar to death. But she could not prevent them. Yes, “them,” for there were at least two people. Women. She could hear them talking together, quick, playful banter of which she could not comprehend a word.

One of the voices stopped and called. Sofia knew the call was meant for her, but she couldn’t answer. Concentrating on bringing her sobs under control, she thought that if she could just lie as still as death now, they would not see she was there until death should come to hide her shame.

Hard-soled slippers clicked quick steps across the bare wooden floor. A hand touched her. It touched her again, shaking her. The voices exchanged quizzical comments. A firmer shaking. And then the quilt was yanked from her hands and off her face.

Sofia sat upright instantly, blinking against the morning sunlight that streaked across the room. Of the two faces peering down at her, one was familiar, the one in front, the one in charge. It was not, however, the woman with the piercing eyes as she had hoped—or feared with her worst fear. Instead, it was the woman that the piercing-eyed one had ordered to examine her the day before. A midwife, Sofia might call her, or granny woman.

As she swung her legs to the floor, Sofia immediately recalled her state. She could hardly ignore it. Activity pressed even more blood from her, like wringing did from a damp cloth.
You’ve done it now
, she told herself and then, more hopefully,
If you’re careful and don’t move any more, they’ll never see. Don’t stand up — they can’t make you, two middle-aged women like this — and they’ll never know.

The midwife gave a brusque greeting and a rather sour smile. Sofia nodded and then repeated as best she could the two syllables the woman enunciated while patting her own chest. Baffo’s daughter took those syllables to be the woman’s name. It was a nickname actually, Ayva, which Sofia would learn meant “the Quince.” It was the only name necessary to distinguish the midwife in an inner palace full of women whose health and physical well-being, including and especially their most intimate parts, were in her knotted hands.

That bitter fruit, the Quince, suited the woman better than even the most heartless of mothers would have thought to name a daughter at birth. There was, in fact, something of Sofia’s old aunt about the woman, the aunt having had the aspect of a crab apple, and this one the greener but no less astringent cast of quince. But her aunt’s true nature had been so compressed by the wimple and enforced maidenhood it was hard to tell what she might have been if left to herself. With the Quince, there was no guessing. She was just the way God made her—and she had probably overruled Him on any count that mattered.

Very little gray showed under the woman’s plain, no-nonsense caplet that was tied to her head at an angle more careless than rakish with a silk scarf. The silk was the green of olives. Anyone with any care for appearances would have told her that even a border of gold sequins could not keep this color from accentuating the similar sallow green of her own complexion.

Still, the black of the Quince’s hair declared her to be younger than the acidity in her eyes at first betrayed. No honey of social grace could mask the bite of those eyes. Had she thought about it, Sofia might have realized that such unrelieved tartness came from much unromantic staring death in the face. Death—and life as well, for who was to say which could disabuse a woman sooner?

The Quince smelled of her namesake as well: the vague scent of linens packed for the winter among lavender, cloves, wormwood, and ripening fruit. Her black hair continued down into her face: not only upper lip and chin were covered by a decided brush, but the quince-fuzz made ingress to the cheeks as well.

There were many reasons for harem nicknames. Why should it be not so when each one had been winnowed by a hundred female tongues? But this Sofia had no way of knowing vet, and was not likely to learn as long as the wall of language stood between them.

To the end of breaching that wall, the Quince pushed the second woman forward. Without the push, it was clear, she never would have come forward on her own. The reason for such reticence was evident at first glance. At some point in her early life, this second woman had contracted smallpox. She had survived the disease, making her one of the lucky ones, although the ruin it had made of her face might give her cause to doubt that fortune. The pustules had littered her cheeks with craters, swelled one side grotesquely and eaten up half her nose and as well as every hint of eyelash.