Part 4 (1/2)
Hakiim glanced covertly at his partners disgusted face. The Moor could no longer restrain himself. ”I quite agree! My friend, tell me; why did you accept the creature? Even for free he would have cost too much...”
Perfecto's fingers pierced holes in the arid Andalusian earth. Sand dribbled out of his balled fists and his eyes were like little beads of bra.s.s.
Hakiim relapsed into silence.
At the far end of the line the black woman began to chant a Berber chant, in the tight-throated, ornate, ululating fas.h.i.+on of the desert. Every time the little company stopped, the black had to do something strange: throwing pebbles at a tree, or covering herself with sand, or swinging her chain back and forth. Otherwise she ignored everyone in the * party, slave and slave merchant alike, except when they got in her way.
Perfecto's lips drew back. Now all he needed was trouble from that b.i.t.c.h, who was unfortunately too valuable to bruise, Hakiim, too, lifted his head. He had more tolerance for the chanting than Perfecto had, for it wasfamiliar music to him. But because it was in the Berber tradition, it unsettled him. The Berber tribes had swept the length and breadth of Islamic Spain a handful of times. They out-Arabed the Bedouin tribes with their narrow-minded asceticism and xenophobia. Even now, under the more urbane rule of Muhammad V of the Nasrid dynasty, Berber warriors made up a goodly number of the forces of the Alhambra. Berbers were not to be found on the end of a chain.
Perhaps it was not only on account of her temperament that Djoura had sold so cheap...
Hakiim forced this worry out of his mind. After all-who in the State of Granada knew or cared with what accents a black slave sang her songs? ”There's our lovely she-a.s.s again,” he sighed instead.
”Making her presence known.” Then he shrugged.
In Granada they would sell the black. None of the upstart Muwalladun would care what she called herself; to them, all blacks were Nubian, just as all blonds were Saqalibah. Being young, sound, and well-proportioned, she'd bring a good price. In Granada they'd get rid of the entire chain of slaves Except, perhaps...
But as his glance fell on the eunuch, who lay within two yards of the rug the merchants had spread for themselves to sit on, Hakiim started and did a clear double take.
For the imbecile had lifted himself up by his hands, and he sat bolt upright, his ludicrously fine face filled with wonder as his deep blue eyes sought along the length of chain, until they rested on the ebony face of the singer. He stared intently, swaying side to side with the beat of the chant.
Hakiim almost choked with amus.e.m.e.nt. Perfecto followed his partner's eye and a grin stretched his features. The imbecile's parody of emotion was just too perfect.
”Look,” giggled the Spaniard. ”Our eunuch is in love. With Djoura the Nubian, no less.
”At least he can sit up,” Perfecto continued. ”Maybe by tomorrow he'll be able to walk, and then we can move again.”
”He'll walk,” retorted Hakiim. ”Just let the Nubian lead him, like a goat leads the sheep.”
And that quip called forth an idea. ”The fellow is a b.l.o.o.d.y mess and must eventually be cleaned up.
Let's give him a real treat in the process. We can bring Djoura to take care of him.”
Perfecto looked less than satisfied by this idea. ”What if she kills him? What if he kills her? The investment!”
”If she kills him,” answered Hakiim, rising to his feet, ”then I'll cover whatever he cost you out of my own pocket, and I'll buy her a box of sweets as well. If he kills her-well, I'll crawl to Mecca on my knees.”
Then the swarthy Moor turned and grimaced pleasantly down at his partner. ”Or do you want the privilege of was.h.i.+ng the half-wit yourself?”
Perfecto waved his acquiescence to Hakiim's plan.
Since the black was at one end of the long chain and the only place where the eunuch's collar could be attached was on the other, bringing them together occasioned much s.h.i.+fting, curses, and complaints.
None of the women wanted to squat in the sun, so the displaced slaves bickered and poked at one another over a few square inches of shadow, until the chain was folded in the middle, and the unhappy slaves were crowded together with exactly half the elbowroom they'd had before.
Hakiim sat the woman down with a rag and a pot of water. Beside the pot he placed a small lump of lard soap.
”You see that big baby there,” he said to her in Arabic, pointing at Raphael. ”You pretend he's your baby. Wash him all over. And don't waste soap.”
She glared not at Raphael (who had greeted her arrival like the coming of springtime) but at the sky.
The Moor stood above them both with arms folded. He scowled, but he was rather more curious than annoyed.
Raphael smiled at Djoura, and he sighed. He put his hand out toward her neck, awkwardly, and when she flinched away he touched his own throat.”He likes your singing,” explained the patient Hakiim.
”Does he?” replied the black dubiously, for no one else in the slave chain had expressed similar feelings. (She addressed her master without respect, indeed without civility, but Hakiim had expected no different.) But then Djoura, like Hakiim, had to laugh at Raphael's eloquent expression. ”Well, then, he must be a person of very good taste.”
She soaked the rag, wrung it out, and soaped it. ”Close your eyes,” she barked at Raphael and she touched the rag to his cheek.
He started with surprise at the cold contact and Djoura laughed again. She proceeded to lather his puzzled face.
”Hah! You poor sieve-head! How pink you are, underneath the dirt!” she chortled. ”We'll see just how pink we can make you. We'll get that hair too. Maybe it's pink as well, when all the sand is out of it.”
But when she dribbled water onto the blond head, he sputtered and shook like a dog. Perfecto cursed from his spot on the square of carpet, and Hakiim backed off. Both the merchants retreated some yards away.
”Good,” growled the black. ”Being stupid has its uses. You got rid of them, and if I'd done it, they'd beat me. Or they'd try!
”I don't like them,” she whispered, pouting furiously. ”And I most especially don't like the Spaniard.
They can crawl in with any of the girls they like, they think-it's their natural right, they think.
”Until they met ME! I showed them, you can tell the world.”
Raphael's head and face ran with thin lather. He squinted his eyes against the sting of soap. Djoura gave him a careful rinse, using as little water as possible. ”Sand is better for was.h.i.+ng,” she instructed him.
”It doesn't crack the skin like soap, and doesn't waste good water. We had sand yesterday and I gave myself a good scrub. Hah! You should have seen these ignorant ones look at me, like baby owls along a branch, blinking. They know nothing, being content to stink.
”But here there is not sand, but only dirt. Who can wash herself in dirt, I ask?”
Looking slyly around first, she dabbed the soapy rag at her own face and hands, and then thrust her arm with the rag down the front of her many-layered clothing. As the cool rag swabbed her skin, she sighed in ecstasy. Raphael watched every move with interest.
Having washed down to the fellow's neck and up each arm, Djoura sat back and announced, ”Now you have to get up off your hams, eunuch, so we can pull that s.h.i.+rt off you.”
But she had no real hope of being understood. She scuttled around behind the fellow and yanked on the garment, but there was too much of it, and his legs were tangled in its folds. ”Curse you!” she growled, but without real rancor, for was.h.i.+ng the eunuch was the first interesting thing for her since being sold to Hakiim in Tunis. ”How you stare at me with those big blue eyes of yours-just like a white cat! I wonder you can even see through them. Well, the s.h.i.+rt's all stuck to your back with blood. We'll have to soak it off ”
When the water hit Raphael's back, he stiffened and gasped. Djoura put a hand on his shoulder. ”It's all right. It won't hurt forever,” she whispered, adding soap. She examined the length and number of the scourge marks with a kind of respect. ”Pinkie, you must have done something pretty terrible to deserve THIS!.
”I, too, cannot be broken,” she hissed into his ear, ”though maybe they will make me a sieve-head in the end, like you.”
She smiled grimly at the thought. ”Or maybe I'll only pretend to be one, and amuse myself laughing at them all.” There were long openings in the back of the eunuch's gown-not whip slices, for they were parallel and neatly hemmed. She wondered at them while she reached her hand through and worried the cloth from the wounds. Perhaps some kind of iron chain or body-collar had pa.s.sed through these. If so, this eunuch must have been a handful when he still had his senses. Her approval of him grew by leaps and bounds.”You may not know it,” she whispered (as though the hills were full of spies), ”but I am a Berber!
People think I am not, because I am black, but Berbers are really of all colors.” Then she giggled.
”Maybe even pink!
”To be a Berber, it is only necessary that you live like a Berber and follow the ways of the Prophet,”
she added with hauteur, and she crawled back in front of him to glare deep into his eyes. ”To be a Berber is to be free!” she hissed, with no thought of the irony of her words.