“I would take a chance on it at a higher sum,” Saul remarked.
“How much higher?”
“Substantially so. What if I lose on it? My father and I have done good business with the Mohammedans, and Haran-din’s soul might be troubled if he’s promised something he can’t deliver. Let us subtract the amount of my estimation from yours and divide the remainder. I’ll pay seven hundred and fifty.”
“That’s very generous, Saul ben Simon,” Mustapha said with a deep breath.
“Shall I accept it, master?” I asked.
Mustapha Sheik hesitated longer than I expected. His lips had moved to say yes when the patriarch spoke again.
“Saul, my son, I am struck with the international character of this dealing. Haran-din was a Mussulman, so is Mustapha Sheik, you and I are Jews, and Marco Polo is a Christian.”
“It is true, my father.”
“Mohammedans are like us Jews in being aliens in Venice. They are not spat upon, as we are, but they are hated greatly. Yet Mustapha arranged for a Christian to serve his tribesman Haran-din in his need—a service so great that Haran-din thought to reward him with a thousand pieces of gold.”
Saul had turned so white that his black beard looked false.
“My father, shall I buy back this pearl with a thousand gold pieces?”
“Paying twice its worth? What kind of business is that?”
“I would have his name and acknowledged satisfaction on this document.”
“Saul, my son, I fear you have committed the very sin against which the letter warns, and coveted a jewel that’s not yours.”
“What would you have me do?”
“I would have you hold from taking advantage of the unintentional ambiguity of a letter written in terror and the shadow of death. I would bid you not fail the trust Haran-din placed in us, to read between the lines of his letter.”
“You’ve shamed me, O Father, before a Christian.”
“You have shamed both of us, and our nation. Now send for the pearl whose name is Miranda, meaning Admirable.”
2
Mustapha moved closer to me and spoke in an undertone.
“I should have anticipated this development,” he said. “Haran-din dealt in slaves, supplying the shahs and sultans of the Transcaucasus. Many traders owed him moneys or goods when he was captured, and like good Mussulmans have paid the debts since. Also, I was quite sure there was no such thing as a female or a male pearl.”
I could not reply nor would I let the others see me watching the door, so I turned my back on it and gazed through a barred casement into a flower garden. When I heard it open, I turned slowly, and my first sensation was of surprise.
I expected to see a very fine Circassian. These bright blondes from the Caucasus brought the highest prices of any girls sold in Venice, and were used almost altogether as concubines. A good many belonged to the Greek Church, but had been forced to renounce Christianity so they could be bought and sold by Christians—a queer way to beat the devil around the bush. Quite often the girls forswore themselves willingly, to have a better life. One glance, however, proved my guess wrong. Her face and form had not the Circassian molding, her hair was of different dress, and instead of a bright blonde, she was a pale blonde.
By now I was sharply alert, hard to fool. I was surprised by her appearance, but not with pleasure; considering the lengths Saul had gone to keep her, I had expected a great treat for my eyes. Instead they took in a rather odd-looking—as far as their experience went—blonde young girl. At most I would call her pretty. I could not think of her as either beautiful or gorgeous.
She might be as tall as most Circassians—perhaps as much as four inches over five feet, far taller than most Venetian girls—but she did not look it, because of her slight figure. Circassians had voluptuous figures—big white round breasts, round white arms, and boldly curved thighs. They looked at you and took your breath. This girl did not weigh much more than a hundred pounds. Her hair, instead of a bright gold, was about the color of wheat straw. She wore it in two long plaits that looked like new hemp ropes. Her eyebrows and long eyelashes were the same pale color and not very noticeable in this light, but to do her justice—and I was hunting hungrily for her every asset—they drew the attention more and more as you looked at her. Her eyes, very long for their width and set wide apart, appeared to be rather darker than I would expect to go with her pale tints—I thought that they were light brown.
The faces of Circassian and Greek girls, generally golden-haired or redheads, are almost always long and markedly aquiline with thin, high Roman noses and strong chins. Miranda’s face was rather short, and in profile appeared somewhat incurved. I could call it that. An artist about to paint her picture, and keeping his heart cold until he could draft the outlines of her face, would note that her forehead was high, curved, and set forward, her cheekbones were delicate but prominent, the bridge of her nose was slightly concave rather than convex, her upper lip short and deeply incurved, and her chin nicely fitted to the swift slope of her jaws. No doubt that kind of analysis would aid his brush. Warming to his work, he would observe that her forehead was very pure and white, and her nose the most beautiful he had ever seen.
I had never seen a beautiful nose before. Some with very high bridges had been noble-looking on highborn men and on old ladies, but on most people’s faces and on pretty girls especially, the less you need observe them, the better. Going children one better, noses should be neither seen nor heard. I could not imagine why this one was beautiful, unless it had to do with its delicacy.
The general effect was not at all spectacular. It was of wistfulness and shyness and very-youngness. However, I kept finding aspects of her face and body that quickened my thoughts and feelings. The spare flesh over her facial bones was delicately molded, and under the eyes had a lustrous appearance. Her mouth had a property that is supposed to be common but which really is rather rare. I, like I am sure almost every lover of woman, wanted to kiss it. It was not voluptuous or very full or very beautiful, and its little smile was somehow sad, yet I felt that to kiss it would be an experience of great beauty and bliss.
Quite possibly Saul had kissed it. This was not a certainty—merchant citizens of Venice had found they must never underestimate the steadfastness of a Jew in keeping patriarchal law—and the Jews of Christendom rarely owned or dealt in slaves, although girls of their own nation were bonded servants in their houses and, in many cases, virtually concubines. However, Saul certainly craved to do so, and as tricky a man as he might find a lawful loophole to keep her for his own. If so, I was sure he would pay more for her than I could get from any slave dealer in the city.
Too well I remembered a saying of their trade: “Unlike a diamond, which can be weighed and graded, unlike a rug, whose stitches can be reckoned, unlike a horse, which can be put through paces, a two-legged filly is worth no more nor less than some fool will pay.”
As I was thinking this, the maiden stood there in the kind of long sleeveless smock in which slave girls were usually offered for sale. Her eyes were cast down, her hands were folded on her breast, the lamplight glossed her pale-gold plaits and her small bare arms. And I found it best not to look at her as I schemed the best way of turning her into gold. This was not from any wanting her myself. It was a feeling, very hard to pin down, of self-distaste, almost of self-disgust. It was as though I were committing some vulgarism in the presence of great folk.
“What do you think of her, Marco Polo?” Saul asked. His voice betrayed a good deal of anxiety, but whether for me to rejoice or be disappointed in her I could not guess.
“I take it she is the ‘pearl’ that Haran-din calls Miranda,” I answered, to gain a little more time.
“You heard my father order her summoning.”
“Haran-din valued her at a thousand pieces of gold. That is a large sum for any slave girl.”