Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

And that will be their only setting, because the one who puts his thumb on the pieces and sets them into the bed will tilt them just a little, this way or that; no one can ever repeat the thumb print, no one can ever catch again the same effects of light, not even the one who set them. Who can remember all the marks of his thumb?"

It was on this note we parted, amicably enough, though without my being able to utter the words of reconciliation I think he was hoping for. He was like Yusuf, he wanted always to be teaching, and to hear the thanks of the student. Muhammed also. Perhaps there was something about me, something of which I was not aware, that brought this out in them. I promised to come to the chapel again soon to see the progress that was made on the tower of Babel. Some of the things he had said that afternoon seemed unnatural and perverse to me, and even contradictory: he too served an exacting master, more exacting than the King. But his words about form and light and the look of his face as he poured the silver pieces from his palm, these lodged in my mind. They are there still.

The King's departure meant that the Anatolians I had brought from Calabria had to be kept longer than expected – we were to have asked permission for them to perform as soon as the clothes were ready. In fact, the King stayed away from Palermo for almost a month, journeying on from Troina to Messina and after some days taking ship for Salerno, where a long-running dispute as to the status of the Papal Enclave there and the prerogatives of the Pope in ecclesiastical appointments had now broken out more violently. Relations between King Roger and the Roman Curia were far from cordial at this time. Our King was insisting on his right to appoint bishops and so questioning the pope's ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Sicily. Until this issue was settled, there was no hope that pope Eugenius would give his formal recognition of Roger's kingship.

During this time of the King's absence, I saw little of the troupe, either the men or the women; in fact I saw them only twice. They had been given leave to go out into the town, but strictly forbidden to dance or play in public: it was essential that the court should be the first to see them, essential that the element of newness should be kept.

This I made clear to them. Unthinkable, I said, that our King Roger should come second to some idle, gaping folk at a street corner. They had money enough, they could come and go as they pleased, with only this one condition; if they disobeyed in this they would be sent packing and this great opportunity lost to them for ever.

In making this speech I took good care to keep my eyes turned away from Nesrin, feeling sure she would seek to undermine my words in some way.

Still on my mind was the discomfiture of the previous occasion, the dance of the measurements, the way the men had laughed together, something steady and noticing in the regard of the two women. All this confirmed me in the belief that there had been talk of me among them, talk of a certain kind. And this in its turn made me feel sure that my weakness had been noticed, that my face had given me away.

If true it was a serious laps on my part, or so at least I regarded it, not just a weakness of the flesh. It had been my training, and it was required in much of the work I did, to remain impassive in my dealings with people, not to give any indication of feeling. This principle of concealment Yusuf had patiently schooled me in – he was himself a perfect example of it. In his kindness he had persisted, though I was not a good pupil, I was too quick-tempered, it was always too easy to read my feelings by the look of my eyes and mouth. It was a fault in me, and I was conscious of it, and I felt that my composure had not been proof against that triple assault, the mockery, the seducing movements, the scrutiny of the others. And besides, whatever my face may have shown, certain it was that I had stayed there, I had watched her…

The truth was that the girl still ran in my mind, as she had done from the beginning, not just the movements of her body in the dance, but the look of her face, the cheekbones that lay so close below the skin, the narrow eyes with their upward slant, the suffering of the mouth, a suffering dissolved in mischief when she smiled. And this despite all my hope in Alicia, the wonder of our meeting, my resolve to prove worthy of her and of the regard in which she had once held me. But owing to some defect of nature in me, the higher thought did not cast out the lower.

It may be as Guilbert of Nogent somewhere asserts, that the reviewing of our faults, an activity we feel to be virtuous, can sometimes be a snare laid for us by the Evil One, who tempts us to think we are resolving to make amends when what we are really doing, under cover of piety, is dwelling upon the pleasure of the sin.

All this was very present to my mind as I spoke to them, as I avoided meeting Nesrin's eyes. I repeated everything several times, speaking slowly and emphasising the words. They could go out and see the wonders of Palermo – and wonders they would be, I told them, after the wretched places they had seen up to now. They must keep together as far as they could and they must promise not to dance or make music – I kept coming back to this. To my mind they were primitive people, living the days as they came, not looking far ahead; I was afraid they would yield to the passing lure of coin.

"Naturally," I said, "we will trust your word. But to make sure you do not forget, you will be accompanied by a man of trust from our Diwan. Do not try to elude him, because we would take that to mean that you have broken your promise, and in that case you would not be allowed to perform before the King, you would not receive the gold dinars, you would not be permitted to keep the new clothes."

"This one with us is man or woman?"

"Why, a man of course," I said, finally obliged to meet her eyes.

"And he follow us everywhere?"

"Yes. Well, of course, not when -"

"He follow us into the bushes?"

Everyone laughed at this. Seeing this laughter, and Nesrin's falsely serious face, I had a sudden strong impulse to laughter myself, which I overcame for the sake of dignity, but only in precarious fashion – so much so that I judged it better to retire without adding more words.

But on the following day something happened that drove all other thoughts out of my mind. It was mid-morning when Yusuf sent for me, at a time when Stefanos and I were engaged together on the tax registers of the royal demesne in western Sicily. It was a secretary of Yusuf's who came with the summons, a palace eunuch named Ibrahim. I found Yusuf in his private cabinet at a littered desk, and he motioned me to be seated across from him.

"We have had a request of an unusual kind," he said, and he looked at me with his head tilted a little to one side, as if he were considering me in some new light altogether. "It has come from the Diwan of the Lord Chancellor. They have asked that you be given leave to join a hunting party at Favara."

"But how can that be?" I said, made stupid by amazement. "It must be a mistake." Favara! It was a place of resort for the King himself, or those in his favour, or for visitors he wished to please, not for servants of his administration. I had ridden past the gates of the palace of Favara, but I had never set foot inside.

"I do not know how it can be," Yusuf said. "I thought it possible you might know. But there is no mistake, the invitation has been confirmed.

It is for the middle days of July." He was looking at me intently and rather coldly, as I thought. The dark eyes, luminous and unblinking in that narrow face, had long been trained to note and question; they were difficult to meet with composure now, because in this brief interval of time it had come to me like a shaft of light who it was that might have brought this invitation about. "But the King is away from Palermo," I said, more to gain time than for any other reason, so as to master my quickened breathing and keep it from his notice.