Mika Waltari - The Wanderer

In the hall of pillars with its starry roof, Sultan Suleiman received Khaireddin, first allowing him to kiss his foot, which rested on a cushion covered with diamonds, and then stretching forth his hand in token of special favor. It was certainly the proudest moment in the life of the erstwhile potter, the spahi’s son from the island of Mytilene. When first he spoke he stammered and shed tears of joy, but the Sultan smilingly encouraged him, bidding him tell of Algeria and other African lands-of Sicily, Italy, and Spain, and above all of ships, seafaring, and the sea. Khaireddin needed no second bidding and spoke in bolder and bolder fashion, not forgetting to mention that he had brought with him the Prince of Tunis, Rashid ben-Hafs, who had fled from his bloodthirsty brother Muley-Hassan and come under Khaireddin’s protection to seek comfort and help from the Refuge of all Nations.

To my way of thinking Khaireddin acted unwisely in so promptly revealing his own selfish aims. He would have done better to speak of Doria and his big guns, the carrack of the Knights of St. John, and such things as had won him the honor of an audience with the Sultan. I believe that his childish boasting did him more harm than the slander of his bitterest enemies; in the middle of the ceremony Isken- der -tseleb’s scornful laugh was plainly heard. Khaireddin, drunk with

good fortune, responded only by a broad smile, but the Sultan frowned.

Despite the princely gifts he brought with him, Khaireddin therefore made by no means so good an impression as he fancied. The Sultan allotted him a house to live in, as the custom was, but let him wait in vain for the three horsetail switches that had been promised him. Meanwhile Zey-pasha and Himeral-pasha vied with one another in spreading tales of his unseemly way of life, his conceit, untrust- worthiness, cruelty, and greed. These stories were the more dangerous in that they contained a grain of truth. Yet Khaireddin’s greatest error had been to stay too long at sea, for when at last he came to Istanbul, Grand Vizier Ibrahim had already started for Aleppo to open the Persian campaign, whereby Khaireddin lost his strongest support in the Divan.

But my account of Khaireddin has led me to anticipate. Between the dispatch of his invitation and his arrival, negotiations with Vienna were brought to a favorable conclusion, and having thus secured a lasting peace and permanent frontiers in the West, the Grand Vizier set his face toward the East. Many Persian noblemen who had sought the protection of the Porte accompanied him to Aleppo, the assembly point for the campaign.

I should mention that Khaireddin ignored me in a most ungrateful manner, and in his blindness seemed to think that he now needed neither my help nor the Grand Vizier’s. Hurt though I was, however, I knew the Seraglio and bided my time. Only a few days later I observed-and not without a certain malicious pleasure-that his house stood unvisited and that silence had fallen upon his name, while the townspeople began uttering ever louder complaints of his seamen. For these renegades, Moors, and Negroes, who during the summer had fought and plundered afloat and in the winter roistered and brawled in Algiers, knew nothing of the well-mannered customs of the Sultan’s capital and assumed that they could behave there as they did in their own harbors. They even went so far as to stab two Armenians who did not get out of their way quickly enough-an unheard-of occurrence in the Sultan’s city where even to bear arms was an offense and where the janissaries who kept order carried nothing but light bamboo canes. At first Khaireddin would not hear of executing the culprits, explaining that Armenians were Christians, to slay whom was an act pleasing to Allah. Only when he found that his reputation suffered and that the Sultan remained inaccessible and silent within the Seraglio did he climb down and have three men hanged and ten flogged.

But it was too late. With growing dismay he noted how abrupt were the turns of fortune in this city, and he took to dictating childish letters to the Sultan in which he alternately groveled and threatened to leave his service for that of the Emperor. Fortunately Khaireddin’s tseleb was intelligent enough to destroy these letters at once.

As a last resort, the puffed-up sea captain humbled himself and sent for me to discuss certain matters. To make clear to him my rank and standing I sent him word again that my door stood open if he wished to consult me, but that I could not spare the time to go running all round the harbor looking for him. After tugging his beard for three days he came, bringing with him my old friends Torgut and Sinan the Jew, who were as shocked as himself at the Sultan’s behavior. He looked about him with wonder at the marble steps of my landing stage and at my splendid house that rose dreamlike from terraces ablaze with flowers, though the autumn was far advanced.

“What a city!” he exclaimed. “Slaves live in gilded mansions and wear kaftans of honor, while a poor old man whose whole life has been devoted to increasing the Sultan’s honor on the high seas must creep in rags to the throne without winning so much as a kind word for all his labors.”

To give outward expression to his injured feelings he had put on a plain camlet kaftan, with only a little diamond crescent in his turban in token of his dignity. I attended him with all due honor into the house and bade him be seated. Then I set the cooks to work and summoned Abu el-Kasim and Mustafa ben-Nakir, that we might all confer together as in the old days in Algiers. They came promptly. Khaireddin sent for the wares he had brought from his ship and lavished on us presents of ivory, ostrich feathers, flowered gold brocade, and silver vessels adorned with Italian coats of arms. Sighing heavily he followed these up with a purse of gold for each of us.

“Let all discord between us be forgotten,” he said. “After bestowing these presents I’m a poor man and hardly know where my next meal is to come from. Forgive me for failing to recognize you when you came aboard my ship to greet me. I was already dazed by all the rejoicings-and then you’ve grown so much handsomer!”

When we had all eaten and drunk, Khaireddin at last came to the point and asked the meaning of the Sultan’s silence. I therefore told him frankly all I had heard in the Seraglio and reminded him that he had needlessly aroused the resentment of the sea pashas and offended even the gentle Piri-reis by deriding his model ships and his sandbox. And he had come too late, I said: the Grand Vizier was in Aleppo and in his absence the pashas gave the Sultan no peace. They told him he stained his honor by taking into his service a ruffianly pirate, when in the arsenal and Seraglio there were many experienced pashas who had served him long and faithfully without thought of reward. Khaireddin ought not to be trusted with war galleys, for he would only make off with them as his brother had done and fight less for the glory of Islam than for his own temporal profit.

I enlarged upon this and did my best to mimic the whining tones of the pashas until Khaireddin flushed, tore his beard, and sprang up exclaiming, “What foolish and wicked accusations! I have never done anything but labor for the greater glory of Islam. These raises in their silken kaftans who sit on dry land and play at battles with their maps and compasses and sandboxes! It would do them good to smell powder and burning pitch now and then. But thanklessness is all our reward in this world.”

At this point Giulia drew aside the curtain and stepped in, wearing her lovely golden-brown velvet dress and a pearl-sewn net over her hair. She feigned alarm, made as if to draw her diaphanous veil across her face, and exclaimed, “Oh, Michael, how you all startled me! Why did you not tell me we had guests-and such welcome guests, too! I couldn’t help overhearing something of what you were saying, and I shall therefore give you a piece of advice. Why do you not appeal to a certain exalted and sympathetic lady who has the Sultan’s ear? If you wish I can speak a word to her on your behalf, provided Khaireddin will beg forgiveness of her for his most wounding and inconsiderate behavior.”