Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

The opportunity came sooner than expected. It was growing late, the gathering had been a happy one for all of us, and when we began to bid one another good night it was in friendly and affectionate fashion, both the men and the women reaching to take my hand and the men also patting me on the shoulder.

I do not know exactly how it came about, this was a night of blessings.

I waited for the others to pass first, Nesrin hung back a little, and so it happened that we two found ourselves alone together at the door and standing rather close. The time was very short if I wanted to keep her there – a matter of moments. I wished only to delay her, to delay the parting a little, I had no other thought. The Yazidis would not serve as a topic, this proximity had come by chance, it was not a moment for discussing religion. My slow-wittedness makes the blood rise to my face now, as I remember it and confess it. In my dumbness I nearly lost her, nearly let her leave in silence and rejoin the others, who I thought perhaps might be waiting outside. She herself said nothing. She looked at me briefly then looked away. After a moment she made a movement towards the door…

"How did you become such a marvellous dancer?"

She smiled a little and I had the feeling that she was relieved that I had found some words. "My mother… she also was a dancer. She teach me when I am a child, tall like this." She raised her hand to show me the height from the floor. "I start to dance when I start to walk."

"Your dancing is beautiful." Everything about you is beautiful, I wanted to say, your eyes, your throat, your hair. But I did not find the courage. It was the first time she and I had ever been alone together. I had often wished for this and imagined how it might be. But in that wishing I had always been ready of speech, at my ease, masterful – even lordly. I had not been this present Thurstan, tongue-tied, woefully lacking in address, gazing at a dancing girl with a nude stomach as if she were a princess in a courtly fable.

She waited a moment longer then passed through the door out on to the cobbled space before the gatehouse. There were guards at the gate and two lamplighters with their ladders against the inner wall, but there was no sign at all of the other Anatolians. It was a warm night and the moon was nearly at the full. In the gentler light beyond the range of the lanterns at the gate we paused again. Even more strongly than before I wanted to keep her with me.

"There was moonlight when first I saw you," I said. "Moonlight and firelight together. Why did you take my hand tonight? Why did you want me to stay?"

I saw her shake her head a little as if perplexed. "You do not know? It cannot be one of the men because men do not take the hand that way. It cannot be Yildiz or Havva because they have their men with them, it is not a proper thing for them to take your hand. And so it is left to me because I do not… because there is no one…"

I was obscurely disappointed by this explanation. Was it no more than that? I began to move in the direction of the stables where I had left my horse. "You do not tell me all the truth," I said. "You speak as if all of you had decided on it and you were the one chosen. But that is not so. I was there, I was watching. The others were already dancing and playing. You decided without them to come and take my hand. You decided alone."

She stopped at this and turned to me and tossed her head at me like an impatient pony. "I tell you what is true," she said. "I say what is in my mind. Thurstan Bey, you are important man and pass your days in a palace but there is much you not understand. I do not say who decided, I say why the others could not do it." There seemed to me a lack of logic in this, but her eyes had a light of battle in them and I did not feel equal to drawing her attention to this lack. And there was something else now occupying my mind. Absorbed as I had been in the talk between us, I realised only now that Nesrin was going the wrong way: instead of turning to rejoin her companions she had turned with me towards the stables. Did she know this? It was probably a mistake, she did not know the precincts of the palace very well, she might believe I was accompanying her when in fact she was accompanying me. Immediately I was beset with questions – always a weakness with me. What would a man of honour do? What would a man do who aspired to knighthood? What would Alicia expect of her splendid Thurstan? She would expect him to assume it was a mistake and point the mistake out with utmost promptitude. In that case Nesrin and I would part there and then, a thought I found difficult to endure. Or perhaps I could offer to escort her back to her sleeping quarters. But if it was not a mistake, what then? Nesrin would be wounded. Was it an ideal of knighthood to wound the weak and frail?

It was not easy to think of Nesrin as weak and frail, but I tried hard to do so, and this is an example of how we force our thoughts to suit our wishes. In short, I said not one word. And with every step my hope mounted.

"I tell the truth to you," she said, and stopped again. "Yes, I decide alone. I choose you to stay, because I am free to choose. The other ones that watch me, I do not choose them. If they watch me or not, I do not care. I do not dance for them. But you, I care that you watch me. What is so difficult in that?"

We had started walking again and were drawing near to the stables. My heart was beating in my ears and my chest felt constricted. "I care that you listen to my singing," I said. "I was singing for you, that is the truth." We were close to the stable door now. The mare had heard my voice and step and she whinnied softly.

"That is your horse? She knows you."

"She is waiting to go home. I do not live in the palace, I live in the town."

"I know this. Stefanos told me."

"Did he so? I wanted to ask you… I did not know if you came here with me… if you had mistaken the way."

"Mistake the way?" Her eyes had widened with surprise. "How can I mistake the way? How strange man you are. All this time, while we walk together, you ask yourself does she mistake the way? One would only go with you if she mistake the way?"

"But you did not say anything."

"What should I say? I go with you, where is need to say anything? I wait for you to say if you do not want me."

"Not want you?" I said. "Not want you?"

For a moment she looked solemnly at me, then she gave me a smile that threatened to take away what poor breath I had left. "I do not mistake the way, I know the way," she said, and her voice was softer than I could have thought possible.

As we entered the stable the mare shifted but there was no other sound.

Light from the lamp that hung outside the door fell across some straw bales piled against the far wall. There was the sharp smell of the mare, the smell of beaten earth and pissy straw. Smells of every day, deeply familiar, transformed into strangeness by the clasp of our hands together, the first kisses. I might have been a man at the dawn of creation, sniffing at a new world.

There was a loft above the stable where they kept feed for the horses. A wooden stairway went up to it. There were sacks of grain here and some loose hay. I made a bed with my riding cloak and surcoat and all the rest of my clothes, careless now of the finery I had donned with such care for this court occasion. My hands were impatient and clumsy and I made some wreckage of buttons and stitches as I tore and tugged at myself in the twilight of the loft – the lamplight did not reach here but there was a barred window in the wall and the moonlight came through it.

"I must not hurt my new dress," I heard her saying. She was standing between me and the window and the moonlight fell on her as she undressed. I heard the rustle of her clothes, saw the movements of her arms as she raised the bodice over her head, saw the skirt fall to her knees, saw her step out and away from it. And all this was done with a deliberate grace, as if she was still dancing for me.