The Blue Hour

Chapter 18: Reshid

In Mrs Elliot's drawing room where tea was served after dinner, the ladies assembled around Reshid.

"Is it true the wife of the Sultan is your student," Jane asked. Contrary to her grim brother, she was the life of the party. Reshid couldn't help notice when she spoke, blond ringlets of hair bounced off her white shoulders.

"The Princess Sultana Peresto, one of many wives of the former Sultan Medjid."

"Such impossible names," another woman said. "Please Mr Vambery, how do you pronounce them?"

Reshid articulated: Medjid, Peresto, Abdulaziz, Hamid. The ladies repeated after him and failed, there was general laughter. Jane put a slender hand on Reshid's arm and declared with great pride, as if it were her own achievement, this was the most remarkable man she had met in a long time. Jane's flowery scent, her hand on his arm, the sparkling eyes of the women directed towards him, and the many glasses of wine, it made him a little flustered.

"How many wives did Sultan Medjid have," a lady asked.

"Twenty. And forty-four children," he said.

"And is Peresto pretty, prettier than we are?" Jane blinked to the other women who all chimed in excitedly.

What could he tell them? That he did not know? That the French lessons with Peresto were held under the strictest supervision. That they were separated by a gold embroidered drapery which only let transpire the rustle of her dress as she moved, a whiff of her perfume, light and fresh like spring flowers, and her soft voice conversing about politics or literature or philosophy in almost perfect French. It seemed like a failure that in all these years, he had, in fact, never set eyes on her. He breathed in, deeply, then breathed out.

"Her eyes are brown," he said, feeling a choking pressure around the heart. The breathless ladies around him dimmed. What was he doing? What was he doing here? He could say anything, it was all beyond his control. He felt daring and reckless. What were those people to him? What was she to him?

In the home of a Frenchman, he had once seen a bright coloured painting of a harem and now he heard himself embark on a story with half-naked, lustfully dancing women and growling, thick lipped eunuchs. There was a naked foot in a tiny slipper, exposed breasts, a delicate headdress over soft curls, the sensual rustle of silks. He put Peresto right in there, in the painting, scantily dressed, yearning, available. Shamelessly, he dragged her through the mud, strung her up for public display, moved from image to image as if she were the subject of a peep show.

In the early days, when he had just stepped off the Danube steamer (when he was still Vambery, posing as a Catholic with a Hungarian sounding name), he had earned a living reciting love-poems in Stamboul coffee-houses. The lounging, pipe-smoking crowd had paid him cheese, bread and coffee, and begged for more. Now, the ladies in Sir Elliot's drawing room spurred him on, pushed and prodded, curious and hungry. When he thought of it afterwards, he knew it was a stab-in-the-back. Not only the way he humiliated Peresto, but how it had made him feel. He wished he were a better man. A nobler man. But in that moment, his wiry body ballooned with importance as he heedlessly pumped it all out. He was out of control. Unable to stop himself. Unplugged. He told an exotic and depraved story, cold and denigrating and untrue.

Mrs Elliot swept into the room and took his arm. "Ladies, ladies," she said. "Let Mr Vambery smoke a cigar with the gentlemen outside."

He lingered on the terrace, too flustered to join the men under the pomegranate tree. The air smelled sweet. Jasmine, perhaps. Away from the ladies' attention, he felt deflated and ashamed. How easy it had been to tell lies about Peresto. He shuddered to think what she might do if she knew. She would never forgive him. She would ban him from the palace.