He almost did, too. Anyway, he began sniffling pitifully. He sank down on a bench and whimpered, “If you are fortunate enough to enjoy whole banquets of love, do not ridicule those of us who must make do with the leavings and droppings from the table.”
“Love again, is it?” I said, with a scathing laugh. “Look, uncle, I grant that I am the last man qualified to lecture on bedroom morality and propriety. But have you no sense of discrimination? Surely you know how vile and wicked that man Achmad is, outside the bedroom.”
“Oh, I know, I know.” He flapped his hands like a woman in distress, and gave a sort of womanish squirm. It was ghastly to see. And it was ghastly to hear him gibber, like a woman agitated beyond coherence, “Achmad is not the best of men. Moody. Fearsome temper. Unpredictable. Not admirable in all his behavior, public or private. I have realized that, yes.”
“And did nothing?”
“Can the wife of a drunkard stop him drinking? What could I do?”
“You could have ceased whatever it is that you have been doing.”
“What? Loving? Can the wife of a drunkard cease loving him just because he is a drunkard?”
“She can refuse submission to his embrace. Or whatever you two—never mind. Please do not try to tell me. I do not want even to imagine it.”
“Marco, be reasonable,” he whined. “Would you give up a lover, a loving mistress, simply because others found her unlovable?”
“Per dio, I hope I would, uncle, if her unlovable characteristics included a penchant for cold-blooded murder.”
He appeared not to hear that, or veered away from it. “All other considerations aside, nephew, Achmad is the Chief Minister, and the Finance Minister, hence he is head of the mercantile Ortaq, and on his permission has depended our success as traders here in Kithai.”
“Was that permission contingent on your crawling like a worm? Demeaning and debasing yourself? Dressing up like the world’s largest and least beautiful whore? Having to flit through back halls and back doors in that ridiculous garb? Uncle, I will not excuse depravity as good business.”
“No, no!” he said, squirming some more. “Oh, it was far more than that to me! I swear it, though I can hardly expect you to understand.”
“Sacro, I do not. If it were only the casual experiment in curiosity, yes, I have done some such things myself. But I know how long you have persisted in this folly. How could you?”
“He wanted me to. And after a time, even degradation becomes habitual.”
“You never felt the least impulse to break the habit?”
“He would not let me.”
“Not let you! Oh, uncle!”
“He is a … wicked man, perhaps … but a masterful one.”
“So were you, once. Caro Gèsu, how far you have fallen. However, since you spoke of this as a business affair—tell me, I must know—has my father been aware of this development? This entanglement?”
“No. Not this one. Not this time. No one knows, except you. And I wish you would put it out of your mind.”
“Be sure I will,” I said acidly, “when I am dead. I trust you know that Achmad is bent on my destruction. Have you known it all this time?”
“No, I have not, Marco. That, too, I swear.”
Then, in the manner of a woman—who, in any conversation, is always eager to turn it down some avenue where she can run without check or hindrance or contradiction—he began to prattle most fluently:
“I know it now, yes, because tonight when you came there and I fled from the room, I put my ear to the door. But only once before was I in his chambers when you and he had words, and that time I took mannerly pains not to overhear. He never otherwise disclosed to me the full extent of his animosity toward you, or the clandestine moves he was making to harm you. Oh, I did know—I confess this much—that he was no friend of yours. He often made disparaging remarks to me about ‘that pestiferous nephew of yours,’ and sometimes facetious references to ‘that pretty nephew of yours,’ and sometimes, when we were every close, he would even say ‘that provocative nephew of ours.’ And lately, after a messenger from Xan-du confided to him that Kubilai had rewarded your war service by letting you play stud to a string of Mongol mares, Achmad began speaking of you as ‘our wayward warrior nephew’ and ‘our misguided voluptuary nephew.’ And recently, in our most intimate moments, when we were … when he was … well, he would do it uncommonly hard and deep, as if to hurt, and he would moan, ‘Take that, nephew, and that!’ And at the surge, he would almost shriek, saying—”
He stopped, for I had clapped my hands over my ears. Sounds can sicken, as well as sights. And I felt nearly as nauseated as I had felt earlier, when I had to look upon the flayed and limbless meat that had been Mar-Janah.
“But no,” he said, when I would listen again, “I did not know until tonight how much he really hates you. How he has been impelled by that passion to do so many dreadful things—and how he still seeks to discredit and destroy you. Of course, I knew him to be a passionate man … .” And the nausea rose in me again, as he once more lapsed into broken sniveling. “But to threaten to use even me … the paintings of us … .”
I barked harshly at him, “Well, then? It was some while ago that you heard those threats. What have you been doing since? Did you linger in his company—I devoutly hope—to kill the son of a bitch shaqàl ?”
“Kill my—kill the Chief Minister of the Khanate? Come, come, Marco. You had as much opportunity as I, and more reason, but you did not. Would you have your poor old uncle do the deed instead, and doom him to the fondling of the Fondler?”
“Adrìo de vu! I have known you to kill before, and without such womanly compunction. In this instance, you would have had at least more chance than I to escape undetected. I presume Achmad has a back door for sneaking through, as you do.”
“Whatever else he is, Marco, he is the Chief Minister of this realm. Can you imagine the hue and cry? Can you believe that his slayer would go undiscovered? How long would it have been before I was revealed, not only as his murderer but—but—so much else revealed besides?”
“There. You almost said it. It is not the murder that you shy from, nor the penalty for it. Well, neither do I fear killing or death. So this I promise you: I will get Achmad before he gets me. You can tell him so, next time you cuddle together.”
“Marco, I beg you—as I begged him—consider! He at least told you the truth. There exists no single witness or slightest evidence with which to impugn him, and his word will carry more weight than yours. If you contend with him, you are bound to lose.”
“And if I do not, I lose. So the only matter still in doubt—and all you care about—is whether you lose your unnatural lover. Whoever is with him is against me. You and I are of a blood, Mafìo Polo, but if you can forget that, so can I.”
“Marco, Marco. Let us discuss this like rational men.”
“Men?” My voice cracked on the word, out of sheer fatigue and confusion and grief. I had been used to feeling, in the presence of my uncle, that I had grown up not at all from the boy I was when we first began our journeying together. Now suddenly, in the presence of this travesty of him, I felt much older than he was, and much the stronger of us two. But I was not sure that I was strong enough to endure this new conflict of feelings—in addition to all the other emotions that had been provoked in me this day—and I feared that I might myself break down into sobs and snivelings. To avert that, I raised my voice to a shout again. “Men? Here!” I seized up a shiny brass hand mirror from his bedside table. “Look at yourself, man!” I flung it into his silken and matronly lap. “I will converse no more with a painted drab. If you would speak again, let it be tomorrow—and come to me with a clean face. I am going to bed now. This has been the hardest day of all my life.”