Chapter One
In the day’s last light the glowing lake below the-palace-city looked like a
sea of molten gold. A traveler coming this way at sunset-this traveler, coming
this way, now, along the lakeshore road-might believe himself to be approaching
the throne of a monarch so fabulously wealthy that he could allow a portion of
his treasure to be poured into a giant hollow in the earth to dazzle and awe his
guests. And as big as the lake of gold was, it must be only a drop drawn from
the sea of the larger fortune-the traveler’s imagination could not begin to
grasp the size of that -mother-ocean! Nor were there guards at the golden
water’s edge; was the king so generous, then, that he allowed all his subjects,
and perhaps even strangers and visitors like the traveler himself, without
hindrance to draw up liquid bounty from the lake? That would indeed be a prince
among men, a veritable Prester John, whose lost kingdom of song and fable
contained impossible wonders. Perhaps (the traveler surmised) the fountain of
eternal youth lay within the city walls-perhaps even the legendary doorway to
Paradise on Earth was somewhere close at hand? But then the sun fell below the
horizon, the gold sank beneath the water’s surface, and was lost. Mermaids and
serpents would guard it until the return of daylight. Until then, water itself
would be the only treasure on offer, a gift the thirsty traveler gratefully
accepted.
The stranger rode in a -bullock-cart, but instead of being seated on the rough
cushions therein he stood up like a god, holding on to the rail of the cart’s
latticework wooden frame with one insouciant hand. A -bullock-cart ride was far
from smooth, the -two-wheeled cart tossing and jerking to the rhythm of the
animal’s hoofs, and subject, too, to the vagaries of the highway beneath its
wheels. A standing man might easily fall and break his neck. Nevertheless the
traveler stood, looking careless and content. The driver had long ago given up
shouting at him, at first taking the foreigner for a fool-if he wanted to die on
the road, let him do so, for no man in this country would be sorry! Quickly,
however, the driver’s scorn had given way to a grudging admiration. The man
might indeed be foolish, one could go so far as to say that he had a fool’s
overly pretty face and wore a fool’s unsuitable clothes-a coat of colored
leather lozenges, in such heat!-but his balance was immaculate, to be wondered
at. The bullock plodded forward, the cart’s wheels hit potholes and rocks, yet
the standing man barely swayed, and managed, somehow, to be graceful. A graceful
fool, the driver thought, or perhaps no fool at all. Perhaps someone to be
reckoned with. If he had a fault, it was that of ostentation, of seeking to be
not only himself but a performance of himself as well, and, the driver thought,
around here everybody is a little bit that way too, so maybe this man is not so
foreign to us after all. When the passenger mentioned his thirst the driver
found himself going to the water’s edge to fetch the fellow a drink in a cup
made of a hollowed and varnished gourd, and holding it up for the stranger to
take, for all the world as if he were an aristocrat worthy of service.
“You just stand there like a grandee and I jump and scurry at your bidding,” the
driver said, frowning. “I don’t know why I’m treating you so well. Who gave you
the right to command me? What are you, anyway? Not a nobleman, that’s for sure,
or you wouldn’t be in this cart. And yet you have airs about you. So you’re
probably some kind of a rogue.” The other drank deeply from the gourd. The water
ran down from the edges of his mouth and hung on his shaven chin like a liquid
beard. At length he handed back the empty gourd, gave a sigh of satisfaction,
and wiped the beard away. “What am I?” he said, as if speaking to himself, but
using the driver’s own language. “I’m a man with a secret, that’s what-a secret
which only the emperor’s ears may hear.” The driver felt reassured: the fellow
was a fool after all. There was no need to treat him with respect. “Keep your
secret,” he said. “Secrets are for children, and spies.” The stranger got down
from the cart outside the caravanserai, where all journeys ended and began. He
was surprisingly tall and carried a carpetbag. “And for sorcerers,” he told the
driver of the bullock-cart. “And for lovers too. And kings.”
In the caravanserai all was bustle and hum. Animals were cared for, horses,
camels, bullocks, asses, goats, while other, untamable animals ran wild:
screechy monkeys, dogs that were no man’s pets. Shrieking parrots exploded like
green fireworks in the sky. Blacksmiths were at work, and carpenters, and in
chandleries on all four sides of the enormous square men planned their journeys,
stocking up on groceries, candles, oil, soap, and ropes. Turbaned coolies in red
shirts and dhotis ran ceaselessly hither and yon with bundles of improbable size
and weight upon their heads. There was, in general, much loading and unloading
of goods. Beds for the night were to be cheaply had here, -wood-frame rope beds
covered with spiky horsehair mattresses, standing in military ranks upon the
roofs of the -single-story buildings surrounding the enormous courtyard of the
caravanserai, beds where a man might lie and look up at the heavens and imagine
himself divine. Beyond, to the west, lay the murmuring camps of the emperor’s
regiments, lately returned from the wars. The army was not permitted to enter
the zone of the palaces but had to stay here at the foot of the royal hill. An
unemployed army, recently home from battle, was to be treated with caution. The
stranger thought of ancient Rome. An emperor trusted no soldiers except his
praetorian guard. The traveler knew that the question of trust was one he would
have to answer convincingly. If he did not he would quickly die.
Not far from the caravanserai, a tower studded with elephant tusks marked the
way to the palace gate. All elephants belonged to the emperor, and by spiking a
tower with their teeth he was demonstrating his power. Beware! the tower said.
You are entering the realm of the Elephant King, a sovereign so rich in
pachyderms that he can waste the gnashers of a thousand of the beasts just to
decorate me. In the tower’s display of might the traveler recognized the same
quality of flamboyance that burned upon his own forehead like a flame, or a mark
of the Devil; but the maker of the tower had transformed into strength that
quality which, in the traveler, was often seen as a weakness. Is power the only
justification for an extrovert personality? the traveler asked himself, and
could not answer, but found himself hoping that beauty might be another such
excuse, for he was certainly beautiful, and knew that his looks had a power of
their own.
Beyond the tower of the teeth stood a great well and above it a mass of
incomprehensibly complex waterworks machinery that served the – many-cupolaed
palace on the hill. Without water we are nothing, the traveler thought. Even an
emperor, denied water, would swiftly turn to dust. Water is the real monarch and
we are all its slaves. Once at home in Florence he had met a man who could make
water disappear. The conjuror filled a jug to the brim, muttered magic words,
turned the jug over and, instead of liquid, fabric spilled forth, a torrent of
colored silken scarves. It was a trick, of course, and before that day was done
he, the traveler, had coaxed the fellow’s secret out of him, and had hidden it
among his own mysteries. He was a man of many secrets, but only one was fit for
a king.
The road to the city wall rose quickly up the hillside and as he rose with it he
saw the size of the place at which he had arrived. Plainly it was one of the
grand cities of the world, larger, it seemed to his eye, than Florence or Venice
or Rome, larger than any town the traveler had ever seen. He had visited London
once; it too was a lesser metropolis than this. As the light failed the city
seemed to grow. Dense neighborhoods huddled outside the walls, muezzins called
from their minarets, and in the distance he could see the lights of large
estates. Fires began to burn in the twilight, like warnings. From the black bowl
of the sky came the answering fires of the stars. As if the earth and the
heavens were armies preparing for battle, he thought. As if their encampments
lie quiet at night and await the war of the day to come. And in all these
warrens of streets and in all those houses of the mighty, beyond, on the plains,
there was not one man who had heard his name, not one who would readily believe
the tale he had to tell. Yet he had to tell it. He had crossed the world to do
so, and he would.
He walked with long strides and attracted many curious glances, on account of
his yellow hair as well as his height, his long and admittedly dirty yellow hair
flowing down around his face like the golden water of the lake. The path sloped
upward past the tower of the teeth toward a stone gate upon which two elephants
in -bas- relief stood facing each other. Through this gate, which was open,
came the noises of human beings at play, eating, drinking, carousing. There were
soldiers on duty at the Hatyapul gate but their stances were relaxed. The real
barriers lay ahead. This was a public place, a place for meetings, purchases,
and pleasure. Men hurried past the traveler, driven by hungers and thirsts. On
both sides of the flagstoned road between the outer gate and the inner were
hostelries, saloons, food stalls, and hawkers of all kinds. Here was the eternal
business of buying and being bought. Cloths, utensils, baubles, weapons, rum.
The main market lay beyond the city’s lesser, southern gate. City dwellers
shopped there and avoided this place, which was for ignorant newcomers who did
not know the real price of things. This was the swindlers’ market, the thieves’
market, raucous, overpriced, contemptible. But tired travelers, not knowing the
plan of the city, and reluctant, in any case, to walk all the way around the
outer walls to the larger, fairer bazaar, had little option but to deal with the
merchants by the elephant gate. Their needs were urgent and simple.
Live chickens, noisy with fear, hung upside down, fluttering, their feet tied
together, awaiting the pot. For vegetarians there were other, more silent
-cook-pots; vegetables did not scream. And were those women’s voices the
traveler could hear on the wind, ululating, teasing, enticing, laughing at
unseen men? Were those women he scented upon the evening breeze? It was too late
to go looking for the emperor tonight, in any case. The traveler had money in
his pocket and had made a long, roundabout journey. This way was his way: to
move toward his goal indirectly, with many detours and divagations. Since
landing at Surat he had traveled by way of Burhanpur, Handia, Sironj, Narwar,
Gwalior, and Dholpur to Agra, and from Agra to this, the new capital. Now he
wanted the most comfortable bed that could be had, and a woman, preferably one
without a mustache, and finally a quantity of the oblivion, the escape from
self, that can never be found in a woman’s arms but only in good strong drink.
Later, when his desires had been satisfied, he slept in an odorous whorehouse,
snoring lustily next to an insomniac tart, and dreamed. He could dream in seven
languages: Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Persian, Russian, English, and Portuguese.
He had picked up languages the way most sailors picked up diseases; languages
were his gonorrhea, his syphilis, his scurvy, his ague, his plague. As soon as
he fell asleep half the world started babbling in his brain, telling wondrous
travelers’ tales. In this -half-discovered world every day brought news of
fresh enchantments. The visionary, revelatory -dream-poetry of the quotidian
had not yet been crushed by blinkered, prosy fact. Himself a teller of tales, he
had been driven out of his door by stories of wonder, and by one in particular,
a story which could make his fortune or else cost him his life.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from The Enchantress of Florence
by Salman Rushdie
Copyright © 2008 by Salman Rushdie.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Random House
Copyright © 2008
Salman Rushdie
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-375-50433-4
