The other game was similar, in that it was played by many men on horseback. But in that sport it did not matter how many, for there were no teams; each rider played for himself, against all the others. It was called bous-kashia, and I think that is a Tazhik term, but the game was not the specialty of any one people or tribe, and all the men joined in it on one occasion or another. Instead of a pulu, the central object in bous-kashia was the cadaver of a goat from which the head had just been severed.
The newly dead thing was simply tossed onto the ground among the horses’ legs, and the many riders all spurred close around it and wrestled and shoved and pummeled one another, each striving to reach down and snatch up the goat from the ground. He who finally succeeded in that, next had to gallop and carry it across a line at the end of the field. But of course he was pursued by all the others, snatching at his trophy and trying to trip or swerve his horse or knock him out of the saddle. And whoever did seize the contested cadaver himself became the prey of all the other riders. So the game really amounted to not much more than a wrestling and grabbing match on horseback and at the gallop. It was furious and exciting, and few players emerged from it in good health, and many a spectator got trodden on by the herd of horses, or got knocked insensible by a flying goat, or a ripped-loose bloody haunch of it.
During those long winter months on the Roof of the World, besides the time I spent watching games and dances, and in the hindora bed with Chiv, and in other diversions, I also spent some less frivolous whiles in conversation with the Hakim Mimdad.
Uncle Mafìo invited no comment on his ailment or the other troubles it had brought upon him. He was taking the powdered stibium as prescribed, and we could see that he was putting on the weight he had lost, and getting stronger day by day, but we restrained any curiosity we might have had as to exactly when the medicine turned him into a eunuch, and he did not volunteer the information. Since I never encountered him in company with a boy or any other sort of partner while we stayed in Buzai Gumbad, I could not say when he may finally have desisted from such partnerships. Anyway, the hakim still called on us at regular intervals, to make a routine examination of Uncle Mafio’s progress and to increase or decrease by minute amounts the stibium he was taking. After the physician’s sessions with the patient, he and I would often sit and talk together, for I found him to be a most interesting old fellow.
Like every other mèdego I have ever known, Mimdad regarded his everyday medical practice only as a necessary drudgery by which he had to earn his living, and preferred to concentrate most of his energies and devotions on his private studies. Like every other mèdego, he dreamed of discovering something new and medically miraculous, to astound the world and to enshrine his name forever alongside those of physician deities like Asklepios and Hippocrates and ibn Sina. However, most doctors of my acquaintance—in Venice, anyway—pursue studies sanctioned or at least tolerated by Mother Church, such as the seeking of new ways to expel or expunge the demons of disease. Mimdad’s studies and experiments, I learned, were less in the realm of the healing arts than in the realm of Hermes Trismegistus, which arts verge on sorcery.
Because the Hermetic arts were originally and for so long practiced by pagans like Greeks and Arabs and Alexandrians, Christians are naturally forbidden to delve into them. But every Christian has heard of them. I, for one, knew that the Hermetics ancient and modern—the adepts, as they like to be called—have almost always and to a man been seeking to discover one of two arcane secrets: the Elixir of Life or the Universal Touchstone that will change base metals into gold. So I was surprised when the Hakim Mimdad scoffed at both of those aims as “unrealistic prospects.”
He admitted that yes, he too was an adept of the age-old and occult art. He called it al-kimia, and claimed that Allah had first taught it to the prophets Musa and Haroun, meaning Moses and Aaron, whence it had been passed down through the years to such other famous experimenters as the great Arab sage Jabir. And Mimdad admitted that yes, like every other adept, he was chasing an elusive quarry, but one less grandiose than immortality or untold wealth. All he hoped to discover—or rediscover, rather—was what he called “the philter of Majnun and Laila.” One day when the upland winter had begun to ease its clamp, and the karwan leaders were studying the sky to decide when they would start downhill from the Roof of the World, Mimdad told me the history of that remarkable philter.
“Majnun was a poet and Laila a poetess, and they lived long ago and far away. No one knows where or when. Except for the poems that have survived them, all that is known about Majnun and Laila is this: they had the power of changing their forms at will. They could become younger or older, more handsome or more ugly, and of whichever sex they chose. Or they could change their persons entirely, becoming giant rukh birds or mighty lions or terrible mardkhora. Or, in a lighter mood, they could become gentle deer or beautiful horses or pretty butterflies … .”
“A useful talent,” I said. “Their poetry then could depict those alien ways of life more accurately than any other poet had done.”
“No doubt,” said Mimdad. “But they never sought to make capital or renown of their peculiar power. They used it only for sport—and their favorite sport was love. The physical act of making love.”
“Dio me varda! They liked making love to horses and such? Why, our slave must have the blood of a poet in his veins!”
“No, no, no. Majnun and Laila made love only to each other. Consider, Marco. What need had they of anyone or anything else?”
“Hm … yes,” I mused.
“Imagine the variety of experiences available to them. She could become the male and he the female. Or she could be Laila and he could mount her as a lion. Or he could be Majnun and she a delicate qazèl. Or they could both be other people entirely. Or they could both be dewy children, or both men, or both women, or one an adult and the other a child. Or both of them freaks of grotesque configuration.”
“Gèsu …”
“When they tired of making human love, however various or capricious, they could sample the even more different pleasures that must be known to beasts and serpents and the demon jinn and the fair peri. They could be two birds, doing it in midair, or two butterflies, doing it within the embrace of a fragrant flower.”
“What a pleasant thought.”
“Or they could even take the form of hermaphrodite humans, and both Majnun and Laila could be simultaneously al-fa‘il and al-mafa’ul to each other. The possibilities would have been infinite, and they must have tried every one, for that was their lifelong occupation—except when they were momentarily sated, and paused to write a poem or two.”
“And you hope to emulate them.”
“I? Oh, no, I am old, and long past all venereal yearning. Also, an adept must not do al-kimia for his own advantage. I hope to make the philter and its power accessible to all men and women.”
“How do you know it was a philter they employed? Suppose it was a spell or a poem they recited before each change.”
“In that case, I am confounded. I cannot write a poem, or even recite one with any eloquence. Please do not make discouraging suggestions, Marco. A philter I can concoct, with liquids and powders and incantations.”
It sounded to me a slim hope, seeking the power in a philter because a philter was all he could make. But I asked, “Well? Have you had any success?”
“Some, yes. Back home in Mosul. One of my wives died after trying one of my preparations, but she died with a blissful smile on her lips. A variant of that preparation gave another of my wives an eminently vivid dream. In her sleep she began fondling and pawing and even clawing at her private parts, and that was a good many years ago, and she has not left off yet, for she has never awakened from that dream. She lives now in a cloth-walled room at Mosul’s House of Delusion, and every time I travel there to inquire of her condition, my hakim colleague there tells me she is still interminably performing her interminable self-arousal. I wish I could know what she is dreaming.”
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“Gesu. You call that success?”
“Any experiment is a success when one learns something from it. So I have since deleted the heavy metallic salts from my recipe, having concluded that those are what cause the deep coma or death. Now I lean to the postulates of Anaxagoras, and employ only organic and homoeomeric ingredients. Yohimbinum, cantharis, the phalloid mushroom, things like that. Oysters pulv., Nux v., Onosm., Pip. nig., Squilla … There is no longer any danger of the subjects’ not awakening.”
“I rejoice to hear it. And now?”
“Well, there was a childless couple, who had given up all hope of a family. They now have four or five fine boys, and I think they never counted the number of girl progeny.”
“That does sound like success of a sort.”
“Of a sort, yes. But all the children are human. And normal. They must have been conceived in the ordinary way.”
“I see what you mean.”
“And those were my last volunteers to try the philter. I think the hakim of that House of Delusion has perhaps been spreading gossip around Mosul, in violation of the physicians’ oath. So my chief difficulty is not in making new variants of the philter, it is the finding of test subjects. I am too old for the purpose, and my two remaining wives would refuse, anyway, to join me in the experiments. As you must appreciate, it is best to try the philter on a man and a woman at the same time. Preferably a young and vital man and woman.”
“Yes, clearly. A Majnun and a Laila, so to speak.”
There was a long silence.
Then he said quietly, shyly, tentatively, hopefully, “Marco, do you perchance have access to a complaisant Laila?”
The beauty of danger.
4
THE danger of beauty.
“I suggest you leave your knife out here,” said Shimon, as I came through his shop. “That Domm female is in a vile humor today. But perhaps you would like one of the others this time? Now that the camp is starting to break up, I suppose your party too will soon be gone. Now at the last, perhaps you would like a change? A girl other than the Domm?”
No, I wanted Chiv for the playing of Laila to my Majnun. However, considering the unpredictable nature of that play, I did take the Jew’s advice and left my squeeze knife on his counter. I also left there a small stack of dirhams, to pay for however long I might stay, and avert his interrupting us to say my time was up. Then I went on into Chiv’s room, saying as I entered:
“I have something for you, my girl.”
“I have something for you, too,” she said. She was sitting naked on the hindora, and she was making the bed sway slightly on its ropes as she rubbed oil onto her round dark-brown breasts and her flat dark-brown belly to make them shine. “Or I will have something, before too long.”
“Another knife?” I asked idly, starting to undress.
“No. Have you lost the other already? It appears that you have. No, this will be something you cannot disown so easily. I am going to have a baby.”
I stopped moving, standing stockstill and probably looking silly, for I was half out of my pai-jamah and standing like a stork on one leg. “What do you mean, I cannot disown? Why tell me?”
“Whom else should I tell?”
“Why not that Hunzuk mountain man? To mention just one other.”
“I would, if it were another’s doing. It is not.”
I had weathered the first astonishment by now and was again in command of my faculties. I resumed my undressing, but not so eagerly as before, and I said reasonably, “I have been coming here for only three months or so. How could you possibly know?”
“I know. I am a Romni juvel. We of the Romm have ways of knowing such things.”
“Then you also ought to know how to prevent such things.”
“I do. I usually insert beforehand a plug made of sea salt moistened with walnut oil. If I neglected the precaution, it was because I was overwhelmed by your vyadhi, your impetuous desire.”
“Do not blame me, or flatter me, whichever you think will win me over. I do not want any dark-brown offspring.”
“Oh?” was all she said to that, but she narrowed her eyes as she regarded me.
“Anyway, I refuse to believe you, Chiv. I see absolutely no change in your body. It is still very nice and trim.”
“It is, yes, and my occupation depends on my keeping it that way. Not deformed by pregnancy and useless for surata. So why do you not believe me?”
“I think you are only pretending. To keep me by you. Or to make me take you along when I leave Buzai Gumbad.”
Quietly, “You are so desirable.”
“I am at least not a simpleton. I am surprised that you would think me gullible by such an old and common woman’s trick.”
Quietly, “Common woman, is it?”
“Anyway, if you are with child, surely an experienced—surely a clever Romni juvel knows how to get rid of it.”
“Oh, yes. There are various ways. I only thought you ought to have some say in the matter of disowning it.”
“Then what are we quarreling about? We are in complete accord. Now, in the meantime, I have something for you. For both of us.”
As I dropped the last of my garments, I tossed onto the hindora a paper-wrapped packet and a small clay phial.
She opened the paper and said, “This is only common bhang. What is in the little bottle?”
“Chiv, have you ever heard of Majnun the poet and Laila the poetess?”
I sat down beside her and related to her what the Hakim Mimdad had told me about the long-ago lovers and their facility at being so many other kinds of lovers. I did not, however, repeat what the hakim had said when I volunteered myself and Chiv as test subjects for his latest version of the philter. He had looked dubious and he had muttered, “A girl of the Romm? Those people claim to know sorceries of their own. It could conflict with al-kimia.” I concluded my account with the instructions he had given me. “We share the drink from the phial. Then, while we wait for it to take effect, we set the hashish burning. The bhang, as you call it. We inhale the smoke and that exhilarates us and suspends our wills, and makes us more receptive to the powers of the philter.”
She smiled, as if quietly amused. “You would try a Gazho magic on a Romni? There is a saying, Marco. About a fool’s taking the trouble to lay sticks on the devil’s fire.”
“This is not some foolish magic. This is al-kimia, carefully concocted by a sage and studious physician.”
The smile stayed on her face, but it lost its amusement. “You said you saw no change in my body, but now you would change both our bodies. You scolded me for what you called pretending, but now you would have us both pretend.”
“This is not a pretense, this is an experiment. Look, I do not expect a mere—I do not expect you to comprehend Hermetic philosophy. Just take my word that this is something much loftier and finer than any barbaric superstition.”
She unstopped the phial and sniffed at it. “This smells sick-making.”
“The hakim said that the hashish fumes will quell any nausea. And he told me all the ingredients of the philter. Fern seed, dodder leaves, the chob-i-kot root, powdered antler, goat wine—other innocuous things, none of them noxious. I certainly would not swallow the stuff myself, or ask you to, if it were otherwise.”
“Very well,” she said, her smile becoming a rather wicked grin, and she tilted the phial and took a sip. “I will spread the bhang on the brazier.”
She had left most of the philter for me—“Your body is larger than mine, perhaps harder to change”—and I drank it down. The little room quickly filled with the thick, blue, cloyingly sweet smoke of the hashish, as Chiv stirred it into the brazier coals, meanwhile muttering to herself in what I took to be her native tongue. I lay back at full length on the hindora, and closed my eyes, the better to be surprised when I opened them to see what I had changed into.
Maybe I fell into a hashish-drugged sleep, but I do not think so. The last time I had done that, the d
ream occurrences had been mixed and swimmy and confused. This time, all the consequent events seemed very real and sharp-edged and happening.
I lay with my eyes closed, feeling all over my naked body the heat from the stirred brazier, and I vigorously inhaled its sweet smoke, and I waited to feel some difference in myself. I do not know what I expected: perhaps the unfolding at my shoulder blades of bird wings or butterfly wings or peri wings; or perhaps the unfurling of my virile member, which was already erect in anticipation, to the massive size of a bull’s. But all I felt was a gradual and unpleasant increase of the room’s thick heat, and then a definite need to void my bladder. It was like that common morning phenomenon, when you wake with your member in candelòto stiffness, but only gorged by vulgar urine, which makes it an embarrassment for employment in either of its normal functions. You do not then want to utilize it sexually, but you also dislike to disengorge it by urination, because in that erection it always pees upward and you usually make a mess.
This was not at all a promising beginning to my amatory expectations, so I continued to lie still, with my eyes closed, and hoped the sensation would go away. It did not. It increased, and so did the room’s heat, until I was annoyed and uncomfortable. Then a pain suddenly went through my groin, as it sometimes does when micturition is too long withheld, but so intensely hurtfully that, not meaning to, I let at least a brief spurt of urine. For another moment, I only lay there feeling ashamed of myself and hoping that Chiv had not noticed. But then I realized that I had felt no sprinkle on my bare belly, as I should have done if my erect organ had peed into the air. Instead, I felt the wetness down the inside of my legs. Unusual. A small puzzlement. I opened my eyes. All around me there was nothing but the blue smoke haze; the walls of the room, the brazier, the girl, all were invisible in it. I cast my glance downward, to see why my candelòto had behaved so oddly, but my view of it was impeded by my breasts.