Barry Unsworth - The Ruby In Her Navel

"Why is that?" I asked. I wanted to prolong the talk we were having, in my position of rest, with the pillows at my back, absorbed in watching the quick glances of her eyes, the small frowns that marred her brow when words would not come easily, the movements of her mouth as she spoke.

"Well," she said, "it is not possible, the time is not long enough to build a boat so big." When she found the Greek word she felt to be the right one she would emphasise it with a small air of triumph. "We must remember, it is only one family," she said.

"And who is the God of the Yazidis?" I asked.

"He who rules is Malak Tavus. This name has two parts. Malak is angel.

Tavus is bird. He is the bird that spread the tail behind and very proud." Here, still sitting where she was at the edge of the bed, shifting her haunches from side to side, she danced for me, shoulders back and arms spread out, turning her head to look proudly behind her.

"Very beautiful tail."

The dance itself had been greatly beautiful too. Also, whether by intention or not, very alluring, throwing her breasts into prominence.

Returning her gaze to me she must have seen some look in my eyes, for she nodded a little and said, "your health getting better, I notice, Thurstan Bey."

"You mean a peacock," I said, in some confusion.

"Yes, tavus."

"So the God of the Yazidis is a peacock."

She made a face of pity and patience. "Not god. Malak Tavus is the Peacock Angel, he is not peacock but has form of peacock. Is difficult to understand?"

"No," I said, "no."

"He has six angels to help him, they go here and there, they have many tasks. But he is not god, god is above him, we do not know the form of god, how can a person know the form of one who made the world and the sun and the stars?" She made a quick gesture as if flicking a fly away.

"He made them just like that, for a game. He had joy to make them but after he does not care, he leaves everything to the Peacock Angel. He never judge, he never punish anybody. He forgave Shaitan and took him back to be chief of the angels. So there is no wrong. Well, there is wrong, but it is not to do with Shaitan, as you Christians believe, because he is not Shaitan, he is chief of the angels now. I do not know the word for this kind of wrong."

"You mean, there is no sin?"

"Yes, I mean that. There is wrong but there is no sin."

She was very clear about this difference and convinced, as I could see from her face. It was hard for me to think of a god who did not judge, hard to imagine a religion without promise of reward and threat of punishment, though glimpsing the freedom there might be in such a view.

But I said nothing of this at the time. She was confiding her beliefs and I felt it brought us closer in understanding.

"If you do much wrong," she said, "you will be less in your next life."

She left soon afterwards saying she would return later. I remember sitting there, still propped up in bed, and looking round the room she had just left. For a while her voice and movements still seemed to stir in the air. Then it was as if the room darkened.

When I no longer kept to my bed she did not come any more. For three days, as my strength returned, I sought to see my room in its own light and not somehow dimmed. The light of day that entered by my window – the window I had valued so much, which have made me want the room in the first place – fell short of the glory that was desired. And the knowledge grew that this lack would continue so long as I was alone there: the light that was missing could only return with her, with the shrug of her shoulders, the toss of her head, the proud carriage of her body.

During these three days I considered my prospects and possessions; the latter were soon counted, but the former took on lustre as I thought of sharing them with Nesrin. I had the title of knighthood that had been bestowed upon me, though in circumstances very far from those I would have wished. I was in royal vassalage and could count on the King's good will so long I was no danger to him. My fief lay across the water in Calabria, distant enough from this island of Sicily that had brought me to ignominy and shame.

On the fourth day I went on foot to seek her. Where she lodged had been told me by Stefanos and was present in every detail to my mind. I was in via San Cataldo and approaching the shop of the saddler-maker, which was half-way along, when she came out into the street and turned towards me.

I saw recognition come to her face, saw her smile, and I was swept with happiness at this chance meeting, a joy that came as revelation: I had wanted her in my room, to bring back the light, as if it could dwell only there, but here in the open, under the sky, she was clothed with it. And it came to me, as I walked towards her and hoped for other meetings life might give us, that I could be a bearer of light for her also.

Something of this should be said, I felt, as I drew near to her, something to mark the happy chance of this encounter, which had depended so much on the timing of our steps. But no words came to me; I could only gaze at her. She, on the other hand, had something immediately to impart to me, I saw it on her face – I was to learn that she always gave voice, in the first moments of meeting, to what was uppermost in her mind.

"I forgot to tell you," she said. "We Yazidis do not come from seed of Adam."

"Do you not?"

"No, God turned aside from Adam to make the Yazidis. He made us separate."

I looked at her for a moment in silence. The eagerness with which she had spoken was still on her face. She was dressed very lightly in the Arab style, and wore no under-shift – her cotton bliau, slashed at the sides, allowed a glimpse of brown skin beneath. She had blackened her eyelids with kohl and wore small rings of copper in her ears.

"I well believe it," I said, and the fervour in my voice made her smile.

"Why did you not come back."

"I did not think you need me."

"Not need you?"

"When you are sick, yes. But when you are not sick you are the big lord of the Diwan."

Under my guidance, without saying much more, we walked together to the church of San Giovanni degli Eremiti and sat there on a marble bench, close to where, in another life as it seemed now, I had watched Gerbert and Atenulf talking closely together.

"I was not such a big lord," I said. "And I am not a lord of any kind now. All that is finished."

I told her then of my knighting, though not the true reasons for it, only that I had earned the gratitude of the King. In truth I could not bring myself to tell her of the tangled courses that had led me to confront Spaventa in the Royal Chapel, all the ugly tale of my weakness and folly, the traitor's part I had played, the ruined world I had wept for, Yusuf's, my father's, my own. All that lay behind me now, or so I wanted to believe, removed by sickness and delirium and corrupted vision, in another land, another life, there where the King had a changing face and hands that hesitated.

"I cannot stay here in Sicily," I said. "I cannot stay at the Diwan, after what has happened. It would not be fitting in any case, now that I am made a knight. But the King rules also in Calabria and he has made me a grant of land there that I would be lord of. We could live away from the court."

"We?"

"I want you to come with me. I do not want to go anywhere without you.

Life without you is like my room when you have left it."

I would have said more but she stayed me, raising a hand with great gentleness and laying it for a moment against my cheek. She was silent for a time, looking before her. And this silence disconcerted me, when I was offering my life to her.

"I would go with you anywhere in the world," she said at last. "My heart says so. But I was already in Calabria."