CHAPTER 38
It was unprecedented; no kadin belonging to a dead sultan had ever been allowed to remain in Topkapi Palace after her Lord and Master died. The whole palace was in an uproar. Malicious tongues began to wag about Selim and me. Senieperver threw a magnificent tantrum. She descended from her litter and refused to budge and ordered her servants to take her things back inside. If I was staying with Mahmoud, she must be allowed to stay with her son too. Mustafa needed her, she said, as much as Mahmoud needed me. Selim, cowed by her fury, and in the spirit of fairness, allowed it; he could think of no justifiable reason to refuse. And it didn’t really matter where she was. Senieperver would never stop plotting against him; it would be easier to watch her under the same roof.
Selim immediately set to work changing our world. He began with books. The full French Encyclopédie must be translated into Turkish so the people could reap the benefits of its knowledge. This was followed by volumes on mathematics and military tactics, scientific treatises, poetry, plays, philosophy, and novels. And there should be new schools and the system of taxation must be improved; the people’s backs were breaking under the strain of the sums they must suffer to pay, and the tortures the Janissaries doled out when they couldn’t pay. Turkey’s fortifications must be strengthened, the navy was a travesty, the ships lumbering and antiquated, and something really must be done about the pirates; the Barbary Corsairs were a terror and menace to every soul who sailed upon the sea.
The turmoil in France had begun to subside, the Revolution was over, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were amongst the thousands who had died, their heads stricken off by a killing machine known as the guillotine, royalty had been abolished, and a body of government called The Directory ruled the Republic of France now. Selim sent the Directors letters, proclaiming admiration and friendship and requesting that a capable and clever officer be sent to evaluate and help retool the Turkish army; everything must be made new and modern.
While he waited for an answer, Selim began to pay awkward court to me. Though he had a brand-new harem, he had yet to make use of it.
He despised the ceremonial visits to the harem, but they were a tradition, a ritual, as old as his bloodline. So reluctantly Selim would go forth, with the Kizlar Aga walking ahead of him, ringing a golden bell to alert the women to his presence and announcing: “Behold our Sovereign, Emperor of the True Believers, Shadow of Allah upon Earth, The Prophet’s Successor, The Master of Masters, Chosen amongst the Chosen, our Padishah, the Sultan, Selim III! Long live our sultan! Let us admire him who is the glory of the house of Osman!”
The women would be thrown into a frenzy of preparation. Though they sat around all day, devoting themselves to looking their best in case the Sultan came, there was always some last little thing to be done, another touch of cochineal, an adjustment to the hair, a pair of slippers or a vest changed for another, as no odalisque ever appeared before her Lord and Master in the same costume twice. They would assemble in two long rows and the Sultan would walk between them, like a general reviewing his troops. As he passed, every woman hoped he would pause before her and drop his handkerchief. After this inspection, he would be invited to sit upon a divan and plied with sweetmeats and sherbets, a savory snack, or coffee or tea if such was his pleasure, and the newest or most promising women, handpicked by the Sultana Valide, if there was one, or the Kizlar Aga if there was none, would be brought before him for a closer look. When he saw the one who pleased him best, if he had not already done so he was supposed to drop his handkerchief. But Selim never did. Every time he took out his handkerchief the women’s hopes rose, only to crash when he only made use of it to blot his brow or blow his nose. He never even put on his spectacles during these visits, so all the odalisques, their beauties and charms, and the toil they had taken over their toilettes, passed by him in a blur. Selim could not see clearly more than three inches past the end of his nose. He would sit and nibble comfits uncomfortably and then he would stand up and leave.
The women were puzzled and miffed. There they were, three hundred beauties all brought in fresh for his pleasure; how could he not want even one of them? Two rumors were current: One said that Selim preferred boys; where women were concerned he was still a virgin.
Such a thing was not unknown or uncommon. The white eunuchs who served as the Sultan’s body servants, dressing and bathing him and serving his meals, were always lovely young creatures with slim, pale, smooth bodies smothered in attar of roses. Christians like me, taken by pirates or as the spoils of war while they were still in early childhood, they were often gilt or red haired. It was not at all unusual for them to stir a man’s lust; their beauty rivaled most women’s. It was only when—if—they grew older, faded and flabby, bitter, bored, that they lost their allure and were sent to serve elsewhere in the palace while new fresh and beautiful ones were brought in to replace them, in and out of the sultan’s bed. The white eunuchs’ lives were likened to the brief span allotted a butterfly; they did not tolerate the operation that deprived them of their manhood as well as the black eunuchs did and many remained frail creatures and died young. A white eunuch who attained the age of twenty was considered old. Only one retained lifelong power, for however long he lived and was fit to serve, the Chief White Eunuch, the Kapi Aga. As the Kizlar Aga ruled the harem, he ruled the Selâmlik, the men’s domain.
The other rumor pointed the finger of blame directly at me. Everyone had seen Selim pluck me from my litter and countermand centuries of tradition by commanding my continued presence in Topkapi Palace. Many ears had heard him say “Your place is here, with Mahmoud, and with me.”
We were both young and attractive; it was hard not to believe that attraction, not altruism, was the reason he had insisted upon my staying. Whenever I went to Selim’s library, to read and talk with him, everyone suspected the worst of us: that conversation was just a cloak to conceal lovemaking. Lâle, conveniently forgetting the damage done to my womb, worried endlessly that I would conceive a son by Selim. My protestations that we were not lovers fell on deaf ears. No one believed me. Maybe that was because Selim wanted us to be and it showed in his eyes every time he looked at me.
* * *
Time passed and the gossip continued, Selim still ignored his harem, and no new heirs were born to the Osman dynasty. He was busy with his reforms, and I occupied myself with my son’s education and took my pleasures where I found them. It was a quiet life, and a peaceful one, I was content. Selim and I remained friends and I did my earnest best to ignore the yearning in his eyes that told me that he wanted more.
* * *
One night he sent Lâle to me with my old trunk. Out came the pink taffeta ball gown, and all its accessories. I was amazed to see it; I had thought it long gone, if I had even thought of it at all. I suppose it must have been sitting in a storeroom somewhere. Selim wanted me to put it on. Lâle clearly disapproved, but he was the Sultan’s servant; he couldn’t very well advise me to refuse.
It was funny how foreign the petticoats, stays, silk stockings, and high-heeled shoes, fancier versions of the clothing I used to wear every day, now seemed. I had become so accustomed to Turkish clothes I felt like I was looking at a stranger when I stood before my mirror in protruding panniers and pink taffeta flounces with my hair caught up in mounds of curls garnished with silk roses, gold tassels, and pink plumes. My figure had grown fuller in the years since I had come to Topkapi Palace and the stays bit much tighter, the laces straining to hold me inside this lavish pink confection. I wanted nothing more than to take it right back off so I could breathe freely again.
“Shall we?” Disapprovingly Lâle held out his hand to me. My white fingertips and his black ones barely touched across my jutting panniers as he accompanied me, for the first time since Abdul Hamid had died, down the Golden Path we used to walk together almost every night and again the morning after.
Kuvetti, as always, followed silently several steps behind me.
Selim’s eyes lit up at the sight of me. His hands reached out to touch me, then hesitated and fell down at his sides.
“This is the first time I have seen your face unveiled since the night you first wore this.” His fingers shyly caressed a pink taffeta flounce.
“I have changed much since then,” I said.
“You are even more beautiful now!” he breathed, and then he lowered his eyes and blushed.
He said that he had a gift for me. He led me back out into the corridor and down another where I had never been before.
“This is for you, all for you,” he said as he stopped before a certain door and handed a gilded key to me.
Opening that door and crossing that threshold was like entering another world—a vanished world that no longer existed for me as anything but a memory and, sometimes, a dream. With walls papered in apple green and white stripes painted with delicate pink rosebuds, a carpet abloom with pink roses, sofas and armchairs and footstools upholstered in pink-and-white-striped silk, their gilded woodwork carved with elaborate bouquets of roses held by cherubs, rosewood cabinets and tables, gilt-framed mirrors crowned with cupids, a great golden harp in one corner, and a white harpsichord painted with pink roses and golden flourishes in another, this might have been Marie Antoinette’s very own sitting room. Vases of Sèvres porcelain, painted and filled with pink roses, sat on the rose marble mantel, flanked by porcelain shepherdesses. There was even a porcelain clock painted with delicate pink rosebuds. A sideboard was filled with silver and crystal; I hadn’t eaten with a spoon or a fork or clasped the delicate stem of a wineglass between my fingers since I sailed away from Paris. Paintings by Fragonard adorned the walls. A lady in peach, swung high in a swing, exuberantly kicked off one shoe, exposing her plump thighs above her white stocking tops, and lovers met in leafy bowers, secluded vestibules, or the privacy of bedrooms with rumpled white sheets thrown wide and inviting, like the sheets of the pink four-poster bed I glimpsed through another door.
I stood dazed in the center of it all with Selim at my side, smiling expectantly at me, tentatively holding, and shyly caressing, my hand. Tears pooled in my eyes. He had done all this for me, and I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, and he was clearly expecting joy and gratitude.... Though I would always love and cherish the memory of France, this wasn’t me anymore; it wasn’t who I wanted to be. Aimee Dubucq de Rivery was dead and Nakshidil stood in her stead, inhabiting her skin, doing things that long-lost convent schoolgirl would have blushed at, and maybe even fainted, if she had ever even dared to imagine them.
At last Selim broke the silence. “I can’t let you go back to France, but I can bring France to you, Aimee,” he said.
“Don’t call me that!” I cried.
“Why not?” He frowned. “It is your name.”
I shook my head. “Not anymore.”
He didn’t, he couldn’t, understand. I wanted to help bring Turkey out of the darkness into the light, to bring the best of France to my adopted land, but I didn’t want to go backward, only forward. My future was here, with Mahmoud, in Turkey, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Thank you . . . for all this, for going to such trouble for me,” was all I could really say. I hoped it was enough.
His hand was at my waist, tentative and shy. His lips timidly moved in quest of mine.
“Selim . . . no . . .” I pulled away.
“But Aimee, I love you!” he cried. Now the tears were in his eyes.
“Nakshidil,” I corrected firmly. “I no longer answer to any other name; Aimee died a long time ago, and where she ended, Nakshidil began.”
“As you will.” Selim reached for me again.
“No!” I stepped back from him. “Your harem is full of beautiful women—”
“But they are not you! I don’t want any of them! Only you!” Selim clasped my waist, this time making a manly show of strength, determined to draw me close against his chest, and for his mouth to smother mine with kisses.
I turned my face away, denying him my mouth, as I struggled free.
“You mustn’t say such things again to me; if you do, I will have no choice but to go to the Old Palace and join the others who belonged to Abdul Hamid.”
As I spun around, hurrying toward the door, one of my panniers knocked over a vase, scattering pink roses and porcelain all over the carpet. As I ran out the door I stumbled and almost fell over Kuvetti.
“Come!” I cried as I righted myself, brushed the tears from my eyes, and started off at a clumsy trot. The dress was so heavy, and I was afraid I would end by turning my ankle; my heels felt like they were walking on stilts, making an embarrassingly loud tap-tapping as my pink shoes carried me swiftly back down the Golden Path, all the way back to the harem.
I asked Lâle to help me. Together, we got me out of that clumsy, confining dress and took all the feathers and roses out of my hair. I snatched up the pair of silk trousers nearest to hand and stepped into them, pulled a caftan over my head, and fastened on a veil.
Hugging huge, bulging pink armfuls, Lâle and I went out into the courtyard and lit a bonfire of French vanity.
I felt a sense of relief, contentment and peace, as I watched it all burn. Through the rising smoke, I happened to glance up, and I saw Selim watching from a window. His hands were pressed flat against the gold-latticed glass. There was such a look of pain upon his face that I had to turn away. Maybe I only imagined or felt them, but I was certain I saw tears pouring from his eyes, dripping down from beneath the gold frames of his spectacles.
When there was nothing left but odds and ends of whalebone and steel sitting in piles of ashes, I went to the baths. It was late and there were none about but a few bath attendants. I sat naked on a blue marble slab and took the opium pastille I had begged from Lâle. Since that first terrible experience I usually shied away from opium and hashish as well, but tonight I felt the need of it. I sat and soaked in the dreamy, steamy atmosphere, letting Hatice, an attendant I favored, work her soothing fingers through my hair and ladle perfumed water over me. When she took me to the couch to massage me, I encouraged her to do much more and make love to me. It was just one more way of running away from Selim and the naked desire and need I saw all too often in his eyes.