White Moon Black Sea (29 page)

She punched him playfully on the arm, then added, “You’ve got it all, haven’t you?”

“A fair amount of it, yes. It takes only courage to live by your own inner truth to get it all.” He began to laugh at his own words. “And luck, and hard work. And inherited wealth to start you off with. And great parents. And, and, and.”

“Oh shit, he’s parading some of those inner truths of his. A slice of the Adam Corey philosophy. I can’t keep up with the intellectual runaround,” said Marlo teasingly, coming up in back of them.

“I can’t stay, I’m on the run. I’ve a million things to do before I leave for London,” she continued as she lured Adam away from Mirella and entwined her arms around his neck to kiss him.

A friendly kiss. A teasing kiss. It still made Mirella bristle, and her jealousy almost flare into a flame, until Marlo turned to her and whispered in her ear as she went to kiss Mirella on the cheek, “Don’t be a ninny, I only do it to see you bristle.” As she looked Mirella in the eyes, the two women laughed.

They had become good friends, in spite of Mirella’s still believing that Marlo Channing, the Katharine Hepburn of the photo-journalist world, was still the only woman as close to Adam as she was. She watched and listened to her now, and she saw a light come into Adam’s eyes that was never there for anyone but Marlo. The romance between them, the frenetic sexual relationship, was long since gone, but the love lingered. That was perhaps the most remarkable thing about all Adam’s former mistresses who lived in his
yali
. The love was still there, on their side and his. And that was what Marlo was talking to Adam about just then.

The three walked past the pavilion and waved to the Princess and Rashid and the others inside, Adam excusing himself for a few minutes longer. They sat on a white marble bench and Mirella listened to Marlo, the sophisticated Marlo who preferred war to peace, the passion of the moment to love. The Marlo Channing whom the world’s newspapers and magazines labeled “trouble” and pursued for coverage of the stories she chose. The beautiful, aggressive, clever Marlo, who wore out men as most women wear out shoes, and discarded them without a thought, was winning Mirella’s heart, yet again, with her plea to Adam. Even more so when Mirella tried discreetly to leave the pair of them, lest she intrude on their privacy.

“No, don’t leave, Mirella. This concerns you as well as all of us in the
yali
. It’s about life after Adam. Life after Adam has taken a wife, had another baby, a legitimate one in the eyes of the law. It’s about us women in Adam’s unusual household who have lived as in a modern-day harem for so many years, and happily.”

“All my children are legitimate and my heirs, I’ve seen to that, and you know it, Marlo.”

“That’s not what this is about, Adam. This is about you and your wife, the way you live and love each other, your marriage. It’s touched us deeply and changed the lives of everyone around you. Because you are no longer terrified of the power of that kind of love, you’ve matured and added more to yourself, and consequently to those closest to you — to us the women in your life, and our children.

“The whole point of what I am trying to say is, that Muhsine, Guiliana, Aysha, and I in these last two years have begun to understand that we owe our own maturity not only to ourselves but to you as well. You loved and cared for us, and in a sense we all grew up together, and you love us still. There’s a lot to be said for that. Not much on my part, because you know how ungrateful I can be. But the others, well, they have worn me down pointing out that life after Adam does not necessarily mean we cannot remain an extended family.

“They all have plans for their futures outside the
yali
, me included. But we have all agreed we want to add our
outside lives, our after-Adam lives, into the family. That is, of course, if you and Mirella agree to have us.

“I never thought about it much, but since you and Mirella have married, I have come to realize that the pair of you are dynasty builders. I myself think dynasties are trouble and bullshit. But I have a daughter that I love, and, Adam, you are her father. I want her to grow up as part of your dynasty, yours and Mirella’s and our extended family’s, until she is ready to think and choose for herself. Maybe Alice will grow up with the same belief in continuity, and the necessity for family and roots, that the pair of you have. Me, I’m not ashamed to say I want to be able to sponge off it. Be a part of it on my terms, whatever those terms may be, or however they may change and be. That’s all I have to say. Except that I expect my future to be no different from my past. So you know what to expect from me. As for the others, I agreed to do the groundwork for them to come and discuss their future plans with you, each of them on her own. In the end, all we really want is to stay as we are always, and bring our futures home, and have them integrated into the Corey dynasty.

“Now is it on, or is it off? Because if it’s on, we need another
yali
close to ours. For the lovers and husbands and more babies. Not any more of mine, thank you, I’ll never do that again. But for the others, who
will
do that again, if the right man or husband is found.”

Mirella began to laugh. Marlo and Adam looked at her and were puzzled. Marlo interrupted her laughter. “You don’t want us.”

“No, no, you misunderstand. Less than an hour ago I walked out of my study and down the stairs into the great hall. I’d just taken on the fight of a lifetime to get back every last vestige of the Oujie estate for our daughter. Me, who had all my life worked for the good of humanity, I was for the first time ready to fight for family and heritage. I looked around, eagerly waiting for you all to arrive from the
yali
, and thrilled to the excitement of being part of all this,” she waved her arm to encompass everyone in the pavilion and sitting in the garden, “and a part of me worried what would happen if I didn’t have you all to share
in the burden and responsibility of raising Kadin. Not want you? I don’t think I could live without you.”

Both women then trained their attention on Adam. His face had become flushed. He had listened almost without reaction to Marlo’s plea and Mirella’s words. He had never had any intention of doing anything about the women and the children in the
yali
other than what had just now been asked of him by Marlo on their behalf. He had so many times hoped that they would want to stay within their unorthodox family and add to it. He had never expressed that wish, wanting it to come from them. Now that it had, he was overwhelmed with joy at what had happened and Mirella’s more than generous consent. The only words he could find to say were, “As it happens, I bought the two wooden palaces on either side of the one we have years ago. For our privacy and protection, and — who knows? — maybe in the hope that one day we would expand into them. Which, it seems, is what is going to happen.”

He rose from the bench and excused himself. The two women watched him walk through the garden, collecting by the hand Muhsine, Aysha, and Guiliana.

“Christ. Some guy. No wonder we love him,” said Marlo. There was a look of sadness in her eyes, its sound in her voice.

“Yes, no wonder,” echoed Mirella.

At last everyone was gone and the house was quiet. But the excitement was still there. Mirella changed into a black chiffon dress with a halter top that plunged between her breasts to the waist, where a wide sash of the same material was wound tightly. The dress flared out over her hips and fell softly and voluptuously to just above her knees. She wore diamonds in her ears and pinned to just above her left breasts, diamond cuff bracelets, and she slung an evening bag of black satin over her shoulder. She grabbed her black mink coat from the closet.

Mirella hurried from her bedroom, through the great hall and the garden to the boathouse on the dock and picked up a large flashlight. Rashid’s motor launch and one of the sailors she recognized from his schooner the
Aziz
, were waiting for her at the wheel, another on the dock.
One of the men took her by the waist and swung her over the side and lowered her slowly into the arms of the other. Then he leapt after her, before she could even slip her arms into the sleeves of her coat. The pilot revved the motors and slammed his foot on the accelerator. The sleek black-and-silver launch shot forward and carved a deep arc in the water as it swung away from the house.

The night was very black; a sliver of white moon looked as though it had been pasted on the night sky. They bumped and bounced through the waves up the Bosporus. Mirella was nervous about this first time with Rashid since the baby had been born. She could see just faintly, on top of the hill through the trees, the lights of the love pavilion. He was there waiting for her. Her heart raced, she was consumed by anticipation of violent sexual intercourse. She felt a rush of warmth through her. She took her shoes off and walked as fast as she could up toward her
rendez-vous
with her lover. A third of the way up the path that wound through the trees, she abandoned her coat on a bench, finding it easier to climb the steep hill without it. She hurried, faster and faster.

Rashid saw her flashlight bobbing and weaving through the trees. He was hungry for her, desperate to feel himself buried deep inside her. He had been filled with sexual tension for her since the afternoon. When he had held Kadin in his arms and played with her, he had been barely able to put out of his mind the thrill of his last encounter with Mirella, having the breast in his mouth and drinking her milk. Not that he wanted more of that, but it had given an edge to his half-jaded sexual appetite; that a man like him should drink like a baby from the woman he longed to subdue totally by way of his every erotic fantasy. And there was something else. Giving Mirella sexual satisfaction as no other man could, and holding back from the still-drugged sleeping Tana Dabra, was all part of his excitement. Time had run out for her game playing. If she wanted him she would have to answer his demands to marry him, and soon.

He flung the door of the pavilion open and ran down the
hill to meet Mirella. He took no flashlight. The sliver of white moon, the lights from the pavilion, and the yellow beam of her flashlight showed him the way. Then at last he had her in his arms.

15

T
ana Dabra fought her way out of a fog of sleep. Before she opened her eyes she knew she had been drugged. Her tongue felt woolly, her mouth dry. The first thing she did was to move her hands. No handcuffs. Then her feet. Not bound either. The sheets were soft and silky: She had not been kidnapped by enemies. Her mind became clear and rational and she had no headache. Having taken this inventory, she thought of two things simultaneously: To sit up, open her eyes, and make sure she wasn’t dead; and of Rashid Lala Mustapha.

She did sit up like a shot and open her eyes, surprising the huge Turkish wrestler standing at attention against the door opposite the bed. He turned his head to one side and covered his eyes, in an almost delicate manner. This seemed strange in a man with a neck as thick as a bull’s and straining with muscles, with a head as big and smooth as a marble basketball, and with one ear missing.

Tana Dabra ran her hand across her chest. She was naked. She pulled the sheet and the white cashmere blanket up to cover her nudity. She tried to ask him where she was, in French, English, and Italian, but there was no response. He did, though, look back at her and bow his head subserviently. And when he looked at her again he had a broad, sweet smile which made him look even uglier. He raised his hand as if he were giving her a signal to wait. Then he turned around, unlocked the bedroom door, and left the room, locking it behind him.

The room was impressively large. But she couldn’t take
it in for the moment. She was too thirsty to think of anything but liquid. It was there waiting for her. A carafe of springwater, two glasses, and a Baccarat pitcher of fresh peach juice. She drank all the water and three fourths of the juice before she sat back and looked at the room.

Of course, it had to be Rashid’s — it was masculine and elegant. It was all white, different shades of white and different textures: raw and gossamer silk, taffeta and damask from the handlooms of Lyons. The Biedermeier furniture was of museum quality. But what she was dazzled and enchanted by were the early eighteenth-century Qajar paintings. Portraits of Persian princes, dark and rich in jewellike colors.

She found the bathroom, which was no less magnificent even in its details: the toothbrushes, unguents, and bath oils, the perfumes and soaps, and the robe of ivory-colored silk velvet embroidered all over with flowers of rose-cut diamonds, its elegant wide sleeves cuffed in rows of moonstones. Two diminutive maids appeared to help her into the marble tub. They bathed and massaged her with oil of bluebell and jasmine. She tried to speak to them, but they said nothing. When she stood up and they showered her with clear fresh rosewater, she found their hands searching and trained to excite. Oh yes, only Rashid’s handiwork could be behind this.

She took her time at the dressing table and arranged her hair in a coronet on top of her head. The maids, delighted with what they saw, produced tiny diamond birds on springs which trembled on the end of pins and arranged them in her hair. She found her jewels in a case in one of the dressing table drawers and clasped her beloved ruby around her neck.

He was waiting for her at the bottom of the staircase. She looked down on the large oval-shaped white marble hall, at the ancient statue of the god Apollo poised on a pedestal of black volcanic rock. She waited for him to say something. He didn’t, not until she was halfway down the curved staircase.

“You look especially lovely this afternoon. I knew you would grace this house as no other woman ever has.”

“Then why didn’t you invite me instead of kidnapping me? What demon put it into your head to do such a stupid thing? Am I to want to marry a man capable of such erratic behavior?”

“Of course you are. So stop playing that kind of ‘I will, I won’t’ game.”

They were standing face to face now. Tana Dabra felt her anger growing stronger with each exchange. There was a glint of hardness and an arrogance in his eye that infuriated her even further. His handsomeness seemed to draw her to him in spite of her anger. She found him irresistibly sexy. The sequence of erotic sensations his very presence set off in her only added to her anger, because it confirmed what they both knew: He could do what he wanted with her and she would have to forgive him; they were already each a part of the other’s being. Wanting to reach out and touch him, wanting him to take her in his arms as she did, she had to summon great strength to stand her ground and slap him across the face. Without a moment’s hesitation he slapped her right back, smart and hard. He caught her off balance. She began to fall. He grabbed her in his arms and kissed her with a ferocity so intense it frightened her as much as the violence she had felt in his slap. She struggled to tear herself away from him.

His strength seemed to double. He wrestled her down and pinned her onto the marble floor with his body, his hands fixing her outstretched arms by the wrists, pressing, always pressing, his kisses upon her until she could resist no longer. Against her will, her body obeyed his passion for her and she relaxed into them. Then the moment came that he was waiting for; she was lying limp and submissive underneath him, and slowly she came to life. She kissed him lovingly before her own passion and anger, both for what he had done and for her unquenchable attraction to him, took hold of her once again. Tears of anger and frustration at her weakness for him filled her eyes as her body gave in and reveled in sensual delight. She tensed her body, her heart, and her whole being under him. Then, for several seconds, she was lost somewhere in another world, and ecstasy flowed for her.

He listened to her whimper and whisper, “Ohhh yes, yes, dear God. God, yes, yes,” and whimper again from the sheer pain of such tremendous pleasure. Rashid placed his cheek against hers. Her face was hot; she was burning under her dusky-colored skin.

“I feel as if crucified by your strength and your passion for me. Why are you doing this to me?” she asked, barely above a whisper.

“Why are we doing it to each other?”

“Fear of love?”

“And commitment. It has to stop and now, right now, this fear of ours. Yes, ours. Yes, I am just as frightened as you are, but my fear is of losing you. That’s why I kidnapped you, to show you how desperate I am. To prove to you that what we feel for each other is irreplaceable. Neither one of us is stupid. We aren’t going to look a miracle in the face and run away from it. Because that’s what our meeting was. Try and think what your life would be if I suddenly disappeared from it. Maybe you could bear it. Whether I could or not is questionable. And irrelevant, because I don’t intend to. Nor do I intend you ever to leave me. I will make you accept what we truly are to each other, and you will be my wife. Now,” he said, “you can get up.”

He then very cautiously released the pressure on her wrists. Rising to his feet he pulled her up with him, and then lovingly rubbed her wrists to bring the circulation back into them. He helped her to rearrange her robe.

She had not said a word. What was there to say? He had spoken his heart. And she believed he was being totally honest with her.

They gazed into each other’s eyes and both were taken aback by the emotion they saw there. This moment of truth was strangely embarrassing to them. Tana Dabra made that small, swift movement with her chin and her nose and her eyes that transformed her into the royal being she was. His empress. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, trying to still the excitement he felt. He readied himself for what he was certain fate had in store for him.

“Rashid, I would like us to marry as soon as we can,
please. Maybe in no more than five days’ time. If that suits you.”

A smile crept across his lips and then spread over his face. “Tana Dabra Ras Magdala Makoum, you’re looking at an awfully happy man.”

She smiled back at him and said, “I know, Rashid. I’m very happy myself.”

“We’ll make a good life together, I promise you that.”

“Yes, I know, I have no doubts that we will.”

He began to laugh and, slipping his arm through hers, he kissed her. A lover’s kiss. “Where, when, how shall we do it?” He led her to a Queen Anne sofa against one of the walls.

Suddenly Tana Dabra was aware of the marble Apollo. The monumental beauty of it awed her. It distracted her from Rashid’s question. “That is the most beautiful sculpture I have ever seen. It surpasses Michelangelo’s David in Florence, the Praxiteles Hermes at Olympia.”

She studied it for a minute or two in silence and then she spoke, “After I saw the Apollo in the center of the west pediment of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, I dreamed that one day I would have a man like that in marble or in flesh, and then my life would soar into the realms of greatness. What is he? Who is he? Where am I?”

Rashid was delighted by her reaction to the statue, the treasure of his collection, and answered her proudly, “He is another Greek Olympian masterpiece and dates from the same period as that temple pediment. Sometime around four-sixty. Created by one of the unknown masters of that time. He is Apollo. And where are you? In my house in Istanbul, soon to be our house in Istanbul.”

“Istanbul. You really did kidnap me! I knew it when I woke up. But, good heavens, Rashid, what a risk you took. I think the reality of it is just hitting me.”

“Oh, but I did take some precautions. If you remember, the last morning we were together in the Carlyle, I brought you a cup of tea and I asked you to answer two questions, and whatever your answers were to remember them, no matter what happened between us. The questions were, Do you love me enough to forgive me anything? and
Are you courageous enough to follow the dictates of your heart?”

“And I answered both with a yes. You really ensnared me.”

“No, I merely protected our future life together.”

Tana Dabra rose from the sofa and walked closer to look at the statue, then she walked slowly around it, absorbing the beauty of Apollo. Rashid followed a few steps behind her. “The Apollo in Olympia that I loved so much was watching a legendary battle between two neighbors. The battle is said to have started among the guests at the wedding of one king to the daughter of another. The drunken centaurs, those horses with human upper parts, tried to ravish the Lapith women. What battles has your Apollo been witness to? Was ours his first? Will it be his last? I somehow doubt it.”

They were standing once more in front of the nearly life-size piece. Tana Dabra studied first the face of the sculpture for a few minutes, silently and thoughtfully. Rashid understood well the thrill and power of such remarkable beauty, and it was a joy to share it with her. She turned to him and pondered his face, ran her finger along the bridge of his nose, touched his chin, traced his lips, and said, “I think my dream was a prophetic one, and it’s come true twice over. I have two Apollos, one of marble, the other of flesh and blood. I am twice blessed.”

“Then you love me?”

“Oh yes. I love you. It may have taken a kidnapping to make me face that, but I have. Tell me, do you feed your former kidnappees? I’m starved.”

“What do you mean ‘former’?” he asked.

“What do you mean ‘What do you mean “former”?’” she asked, more puzzled than worried.

“I mean, until we are wed for all the world to see, you will be my prisoner. After that, we will be as one, so there will be no need for such drastic measures.”

“You’re serious?”

“I’m serious.”

She gazed at him until, unable to hold back, she burst out laughing. “What a man. Well, I had better get on with
plans for our wedding. It might be fun to be your prisoner for a few days. But more, I doubt it.”

“I repeat,” he said, all smiles, kissing her affectionately on the cheek and the lips, then slipping his hand inside her robe and caressing her breasts. “When, where, and how shall we do it?”

He took Tana Dabra’s hand and, while walking together from the hall to his library, she said, “Rashid, let me tell you what I would like most in the world to do about a wedding and afterward. And please, if you hate the idea, say so, and I will understand, and we don’t have to. But it is what would make me a most happy bride.”

In the library she took his hands in hers and she turned to speak to him face to face. “I, as you know, am a Copt. You are a Moslem. I want to be married in Ethiopia by a Coptic priest. It will have to be in secret and we will have to sneak in and out of the country before the authorities find out we have been there. That won’t be too difficult if we pretend until the last minute we are just jet-set lovers. I know exactly how we can do it. We will go in through the Sudan at a remote and relatively safe place. We will pitch camp on Sudanese territory, where it would be illegal for the regime to skip over the border to snatch me, even if they did discover I was there. We’ll marry either in the desert or, if we can, in one of the rock churches in Gondar. We’ll know better once I start making calls to arrange it.

“I know it’s not what you envisaged for a wedding, but I promise I will make it up to you. Once we are married, we’ll return to the Sudan and then fly out to Mecca. You can make a pilgrimage to your holy shrine at this very sacred time of our life. I will wait for you, as close as I am allowed as a supposed infidel. And then you choose where we shall have a Moslem ceremony.”

“You appear to have it all worked out.”

“Actually, I don’t. I’m thinking it all out as I go along. It’s just that I want our nuptials to be precious and very much our own. Not for the newspapers and magazines. Can I go on and tell you the rest of what I would like to do for our ‘public’ marriage?”

He nodded his assent and she continued. “Okay, we take
off for a wedding holiday and we go around the world to places we have always wanted to visit. For four months, we spoil and pamper ourselves and let the whole world know we are married and allow our loved ones and friends to share in it, wherever we may be. What do you say to that? Do you hate my plan?”

Rashid’s images of their walking down the aisle of St. Paul’s, standing among the ruins of Ephesus, at the Madeleine in Paris, St. Peter’s in Rome, the amphitheater in Aspendos, their vows under a full moon in Cappadocia, all vanished. What could he say? He wanted this to be the happiest time of her life, and what made her happy would make him happy. So he said, “What would you like for a wedding present? And then I’ll have the whole picture.”