Up The Line

55.

Dismally I wandered in a southeasterly way along the Golden Horn until I came to the maze of shops, marketplaces, and taverns near the place where there would one day be the Galata Bridge, and where today there is still a maze of shops, marketplaces, and taverns. Through those narrow, interweaving, chaotic streets I marched like a zombie, having no destination. I saw not, neither did I think; I just put one foot ahead of the other one and kept going until, early in the afternoon, kismet once more seized me by the privates.

I stumbled randomly into a tavern, a two-story structure of unpainted boards. A few merchants were downing their midday wine. I dropped down heavily at a warped and wobbly table in an unoccupied corner of the room and sat staring at the wall, thinking about Leo Ducas’ pregnant wife Euprepia.

A comely tavern-slut appeared and said, “Some wine?”

“Yes. The stronger the better.”

“A little roast lamb too?”

“I’m not hungry, thanks.”

“We make very good lamb here.”

“I’m not hungry,” I said. I stared somberly at her ankles. They were very good ankles. I looked up at her calves, and then her legs vanished within the folds of her simple cloth wrap. She strode away and came back with a flask of wine. As she set it before me, the front of her wrap fell away at her throat, and I peered in at the two pale, full, rosy-tipped breasts that swung freely there. Then at last I looked at her face.

She could have been Pulcheria’s twin sister.

Same dark, mischievous eyes. Same flawless olive skin. Same full lips and aquiline nose. Same age, about seventeen. The differences between this girl and my Pulcheria were differences of dress, of posture, and of expression. This girl was coarsely clad; she lacked Pulcheria’s aristocratic elegance of bearing; and there was a certain pouting sullenness about her, the look of a girl who is living below her station in life and is angry about it.

I said, “You could almost be Pulcheria!”

She laughed harshly. “What kind of nonsensical talk is that?”

“A girl I know, who resembles you closely — Pulcheria, her name is—”

“Are you insane, or only drunk? I am Pulcheria. Your little game isn’t pleasing to me, stranger.”

“You — Pulcheria?”

“Certainly.”

“Pulcheria Ducas?”

She cackled in my face. “Ducas, you say? Now I know you’re crazy. Pulcheria Photis, wife of Heracles Photis the innkeeper!”

“Pulcheria — Photis—” I repeated numbly. “Pulcheria — Photis — wife — of — Heracles — Photis—”

She leaned close over me, giving me a second view of her miraculous breasts. Not haughty now but worried, she said in a low voice, “I can tell by your clothes that you’re someone important. What do you want here? Has Heracles done something wrong?”

“I’m here just for wine,” I said. “But listen, tell me this one thing: are you the Pulcheria who was born Botaniates?”

She looked stunned. “You know that!”

“It’s true?”

“Yes,” said my adored Pulcheria, and sank down next to me on the bench. “But I am a Botaniates no longer. For five years now — ever since Heracles — the filthy Heracles — ever since he—” She took some of my wine in her agitation. “Who are you, stranger?”

“George Markezinis of Epirus.”

The name meant nothing to her.

“Cousin to Themistoklis Metaxas.”

She gasped. “I knew you were someone important! I knew!” Trembling prettily, she said, “What do you want with me?”

The other patrons in the tavern were beginning to stare at us. I said, “Can we go somewhere to talk? Someplace private?”

Her eyes took on a cool, knowing look. “Just a moment,” she said, and went out of the tavern. I heard her calling to someone, shouting like any fishwife, and after a moment a ragged girl of about fifteen came into the room. Pulcheria said, “Look after things, Anna. I’m going to be busy.” To me she said, “We can go upstairs.”

She led me to a bedchamber on the second floor of the building and carefully bolted the door behind us.

“My husband,” she said, “has gone to Galata to buy meat, and will not be back for two hours. While the loath-some pig is away, I don’t mind earning a bezant or two from a handsome stranger.”

Her clothing fell away and she stood incandescently nude before me. Her smile was a defiant one, a smile that said that she retained her inner self no matter what stains of degration others inflicted on her. Her eyes flashed with lusty zeal.

I stood dazzled before those high, heavy breasts, whose nipples were visibly hardening, and before that flat, taut belly with its dark, mounded bush, and before those firm muscular thighs and before those outstretched, beckoning arms.

She tumbled down onto the rough cot. She flexed her knees and drew her legs apart.

“Two bezants?” she suggested.

Pulcheria transformed into a tavern whore? My goddess? My adored one?

“Why do you hesitate?” she asked. “Come, climb aboard, give the fat dog Heracles another pair of horns. What’s wrong? Do I seem ugly to you?”

“Pulcheria — Pulcheria — I love you, Pulcheria—”

She giggled, shrill in her delight. She waved her heels at me.

“Come on, then!”

“You were Leo Ducas’ wife,” I murmured. “You lived in a marble palace, and wore silk robes, and went about the city escorted by a watchful duenna. And the emperor was at your party, and just before dawn you came to me, and gave yourself to me, and it was all a dream, Pulcheria, all a dream, eh?”

“You are a madman,” she said. “But a handsome madman, and I yearn to have you between my legs, and I yearn also for your bezants. Come close. Are you shy? Look, put your hand here, feel how hot Pulcheria grows, how she throbs—”

I was rigid with desire, but I knew I couldn’t touch her. Not this Pulcheria, this coarse, shameless, wanton, sluttish wench, this gorgeous creature who capered and pumped and writhed impatiently on the cot before me.

I pulled out my pouch and emptied it over her nakedness, dumping golden bezants into her navel, her loins, spilling them across her breasts. Pulcheria shrieked in astonishment. She sat up, clutching at the money, scrambling for it, her breasts heaving and swaying, her eyes bright.

I fled.