“I would be doing zina anyway, what we call surata, because I like to. Getting paid for making surata is an extra bounty, but I like that, too. Would you refuse a wage, if it were offered, for every time you have the pleasure of making water?”
Well, I thought, Chiv might not be a girl of flowery sentiments, but she was honest. I even gave her a dirham that she would not have to share with the Jew. And, on my way out through the grinding shop, I was pleased to be able to make a snide remark to that person:
“You were mistaken, old Shimon. As I have found you to be on other occasions. The girl is of the Romm.”
“Romm, Domm, those wretched people call themselves anything they take a mind to,” he said uncaringly. But he went on, more amiably talkative than he had been when I came in. “They were originally the Dhoma, one of the lowest classes of all the Hindu jati of India. The Dhoma are among the untouchables, the loathed and detested. So they are continually seeping out of India to seek better situations elsewhere. God knows how, since they have no trades but dancing and whoring and tinkering and thieving. And dissimulation. When they call themselves Romm, it is to pretend descent from the Western Caesars. When they call themselves Atzigàn, it is to pretend descent from the conqueror Alexander. When they call themselves Egypsies, it is to pretend descent from the ancient Pharaones.” He laughed. “They descended only from the swinish Dhoma, but they are descending on all the lands of the earth.”
I said, “You Jews have also dispersed widely about the world. Who are you to look down on others for doing the same?”
He gave me a look, but he answered with deliberation, as if I had not spoken spitefully. “True, we Jews adapt to the circumstances in which our dispersal puts us. But one thing the Domm do which we never will. And that is to seek acceptance by cravenly adopting the prevailing local religion.” He laughed again. “You see? Any despised people can always discern some more lowly people to look down on and despise.”
I sniffed and said, “It follows, then, that the Domm also have someone to look down on.”
“Oh, yes. Everyone else in creation. To them, you and I and all others are the Gazhi. Which means only ‘the dupes, the victims,’ those who are to be cheated and swindled and deceived.”
“Surely a pretty girl, like your Chiv yonder, need not deceive—”
He gave an impatient shake of his head. “You walked in here yammering about beauty as a basis for suspicion. Were you carrying any valuables when you came?”
“Do you take me for an ass, to carry anything of worth into a whorehouse? I brought only a few coins and my belt knife. Where is my knife?”
Shimon smiled pityingly. I brushed past him, stormed into the back room and found Chiv happily counting a handful of coppers.
“Your knife? I already sold it, was that not quick of me?” she said, as I stood over her, fuming. “I did not expect you to miss it so soon. I sold it to a Tazhik herdsman just now passing at the back door, so it is gone. But do not be angry with me. I will steal a better blade from someone else, and keep it until you come again, and give it to you. This I will do—out of my great esteem for your handsomeness and your generosity and your exceptional prowess at surata.”
Being so liberally praised, I of course stopped being angry, and said I would look forward to visiting her soon again. Nevertheless, in making my second departure from the place, I slunk past Shimon at his wheel, much as I had slunk from another brothel at another time in female raiment.
2
I think Nostril could have produced for us, if we had required it, a fish in a desert. When my father asked him to seek out a physician to give us an opinion on the seeming improvement of Uncle Mafìo’s tisichezza, Nostril had no trouble in finding one, even on the Roof of the World. And the elderly, bald Hakim Mimdad impressed us as being a competent doctor. He was a Persian, and that alone certified him as a civilized man. He was traveling as karwan keeper-of-the-health in a train of Persian qali merchants. In just his general conversation, he gave evidence of having more than just routine knowledge of his profession. I remember his telling us:
“Myself, I prefer to prevent afflictions, rather than have to cure them, even though prevention puts no money in my purse. For example, I instruct all the mothers here in this encampment to boil the milk they give their children. Whether it be yak milk, camel milk, whatever, I urge that it first be boiled, and in a vessel of iron. As is known to all people, the nastier jinn and other sorts of demons are repelled by iron. And I have determined by experiment that the boiling of milk liberates from the vessel its iron juice, and mixes that into the milk, and thereby fends off any jinni that might lurk in readiness to inflict some childhood disease.”
“It sounds reasonable,” said my father.
“I am a strong advocate of experiment,” the old hakim went on. “Medicine’s accepted rules and recipes are all very well, but I have often found by experiment new cures which do not accord with the old rules. Sea salt, for one. Not even the greatest of all healers, the sage ibn Sina, seems ever to have noticed that there is some subtle difference between sea salt and that obtained from inland salt flats. From none of the ancient treatises can I divine any reason for there being such a difference. But something about sea salt prevents and cures goiters and other such tumorous swellings of the body. Experiment has proven it to me.”
I made a private resolve to go and apologize to the little Chola salt merchants I had laughed at.
“Well, come then, Dotòr Balanzòn!” my uncle boomed, mischievously calling him by the name of that Venetian comic personage. “Let us get this over with, so you can tell me which you prescribe for my damned tisichezza—the sea salt or the boiled milk.”
So the hakim proceeded to his examination diagnostic, probing here and there at Uncle Mafio and asking him questions. After some while he said:
“I cannot know how bad was the coughing before. But, as you say, it is not very bad now, and I hear little crepitation inside the chest. Do you have any pain there?”
“Only now and then,” said my uncle. “Understandable, I suppose, after all the hard coughing I have done.”
“But allow me a guess,” said Hakim Mimdad. “You feel it only in one place. Under your left breastbone.”
“Why, yes. Yes, that is so.”
“Also, your skin is quite warm. Is this fever constant?”
“It comes and goes. It comes, I sweat, it goes away.”
“Open your mouth, please.” He peered inside it, then lifted the lips away to look at the gums. “Now hold out your hands.” He looked at them front and back. “Now, if I may pluck just one hair of your head?” He did, and Uncle Mafio did not wince, and the physician scrutinized the hair, bending it in his fingers. Then he asked, “Do you feel a frequent need to make kut?”
My uncle laughed and rolled his eyes bawdily. “I feel many needs, and frequently. How does one make kut?”
The hakim, looking tolerant, as if he were dealing with a child, significantly patted a hand on his own backside.
“Ah, kut is merda!” roared my uncle, still laughing. “Yes, I have to make it frequently. Ever since that earlier hakim gave me his damned purgative, I have been afflicted with the cagasangue. It keeps me trotting. But what does all this have to do with a lung ailment?”