Michael Chabon - Gentlemen of the Road

When Sukkot ended, he declined to dismantle the booth and, after a one-sided consultation with the grand rabbi, took his wife and three daughters to dwell there with him. Whispers began that a guilty conscience was preventing the new bek from taking up residence in the royal apartments, and even that the ghost of his murdered predecessor in phantom rags had been seen in the donjon's upper windows. But the truth was that Buljan found comfort in the sukkah, in this open-air proof of the affinity between his own fathers and those of the people (by the account of their own book once a wandering horde of tent dwellers and cattle raiders) whose faith they had adopted. The new bek's great-grandfather had passed every night of his life under the sky, on the back of a pony or in the felt walls of a ger, and Buljan retained the ancestral contempt for cities and city dwellers. He could not contemplate the move indoors without experiencing a panic in his skin. “The fate of the Khazars appears to have become curiously knit up with the fate of its elephants,” he said to the strange Radanite agent, who sat on the carpet, crosslegged, under the interlaced rushes of the roof Buljan himself perched on the tripod of his office, formed from gilded elks’ antlers, with his bekun beside him nursing his infant and his twins playing in the corner with colored beads and some squirrels’ tails. The girls, not yet fluent in the holy tongue, looked up at the word elephants. “We must therefore be grateful to you for having helped us begin to restore our herd. I am personally very pleased.”

“Then we have fulfilled our sole ambition,” the Radanite replied, having apologized for the insufficiency of his Khazari. “An animal, by the way, of excellent character.”

Buljan reached toward the shatranj board at his right hand, picked up one of the alfils of dark green stone, then set the jade elephant down again. He expected at any moment to receive, via armed guard, the response of the prisoner in the south bastion to his most recent move. The bek's position looked strong but in his belly he felt the clutch of a fist and knew that he was in trouble from some quarter of the board. He had the kind of bravery-the most effective kind-that derives from playing only when one is assured of victory He anticipated arrival of the armed guard with unwonted dread.

“Character?” he said, signaling to the Sorb slave who waited, shivering, outside the booth. The day was bright and the sky as blue as the beard of his greatgrandfather's God, but the wind was cold and had a smell of rusty iron. “In this town that will be an anomaly”

Head bowed, silenced forever at the root of the tongue by the bek's own dagger, the Sorb entered the booth bearing a steaming copper pot and poured into the bek's cup more of the infusion of dried camellia leaves, imported from Khitai at great expense, on which Buljan depended to keep up his spirits in the city. “Find me one more honest creature living in Atil and I will have myself a pair.”

The agent only nodded his head and smiled a Radanite smile, which was not a smile at all but rather a promissory note to deliver one at some unspecified future date. He was a bony-faced fellow with light eyes, younger than the usual old rug dealer, the jet of his mustache and skimpy beard plaits contrasting starkly with his fair skin.

“People saw the deaths of the previous elephants as an ill omen for their custodian,” Buljan continued, lowering the brim of his hat over his eyes. The hat was a fine piece of workmanship, also from Khitai, yak felt covered in panels of ultramarine silk embroidered in black and silver, but, crippled by headaches that made him sensitive to light, Buljan prized it chiefly for its wide brim. “One that proved accurate, which in my experience does not often happen with omens.”

The Radanite was peering at the board, and though he quickly returned his gaze to Buljan, the latter did not fail to remark the scintilla of understanding in the merchant's eyes. Whatever fate awaited Buljan on the shatranj board, this Radanite saw it.

“We of course had heard nothing about the recent changes in your government,” he said. “When we arrived and learned of the precarious situation, particularly here in the Qomr, our anxiety on your behalf was considerable.”

“I should imagine so,” Buljan said, taking the infant from the bekun so that she might cover her breast. “And I look forward to perusing your stock.”

As if this were a signal, the Radanite started to rise, more willing than most of his kind to show that he was eager to conclude business. Buljan glanced at his wife, who raised an eyebrow at this atypical display of haste.

“I can spare you very little time,” Buljan said, rocking the baby with an audible slosh of the milk in its belly, resisting an urge to question the Radanite about his predicament on the shatranj board. Since wresting control of the bek's tripod, a measure he took only after concluding that a coup was not just necessary and advantageous to himself and his clan but also likely to succeed, he had experienced only doubt, rumor and rebellion. His solace, apart from sleeping in the tent of leaves, had been a strict policy of playing shatranj with opponents he knew he could defeat. “But surely not so little as that.”

“Please,” the bekun said, holding out a silver plate on whose border running horses were chased in gold. She was a Rus, with copper hair and golden eyelashes. “Another sweet?”

The Radanite lowered himself back to the carpet and took another little pellet of the paste of honey, roses and almond oil.

“The premises are rather full, I imagine,” the Radanite said, glancing back at the inlaid board.

“To the rafters,” the bek said. “Thanks to the recent foolishness.”

“No doubt it was foolish, even demented, to unite behind the banner of an untried female, my lord. But one can hardly have expected the Muhammadans to enjoy the treatment they received at the hands of the Rus.”

“Nor did I so intend,” Buljan said. “This empire is only as strong as its neighbors are weak. My predecessor coddled our Muhammadans, granting them so many privileges that they grew too strong, encouraging the caliph's northern hopes. And he all but ceded the Crimea to the Rus. He was mistaken in nearly all his policies, while the only mistake I made was failing to clean house properly. That has now been remedied. The common rebels I will permit to return to their homes and vineyards-or what remains of them. The mutinous Arsiyah will be dealt with appropriately.”

“How sad,” the Radanite said. “That really is, if I may say, my lord, a remarkable hat.”

Buljan stared at the Radanite, wondering what it was, aside from the madness of power, that had persuaded him that his destiny lay not on the open steppe but amid the meshes of the shatranj board that was city life.

“It pains my uncle greatly that he is unable to treat with you in person, my lord,” the Radanite said. “But it was felt that I should come in his stead as soon as possible.” He glanced at the board again, and hesitated. “One hears rumors of a giant African.”

“An enormous fellow,” Buljan said, understanding now “A prodigy Powerful. Well favored. Intelligent too.” He felt relief as the nature and mission of his interlocutor became clear to him. “It is a long time since we have had any slave-dealing Radanites in Atil. We heard your people had forsworn the trade in men.”

“News can be slow to diffuse among my people,” the Radanite said apologetically, crinkling the corners of his eyes in a show of slyness.

“How fortunate for you.”

“May I-would it be possible, I wonder, to see this prodigy for oneself?”

Before Buljan could reply, a guard entered and bowed, his face expressionless, having no understanding of, or interest in, the words he was about to pronounce.