Stanley Elkin - George Mills

And that’s not it either.

Maybe it’s God.

I’m Church of England but the fact is vicars make me uncomfortable. Whenever I go — which is rare — I go to see society, to hear the choir and watch the gentlemen and gawk as they hand their ladies into and out of the carriages. (It’s where I first spotted Squire.) I mean I don’t belong. (And maybe it’s queer for a Mills to make this admission. It was Greatest Grandfather, after all, who was the indirect deputy of the King himself when he went on that First Crusade. And didn’t I come here myself in the first place at George IV’s request?) So I’m supposed to be Church of England, though I might be more at home as a chapel-meeting Methodist or even as a dissenter, one of the sects. But I’ve been in even fewer chapels than churches, for if vicars and services make me uncomfortable, ministers and everything low church embarrass me. I’m not religious or even much of a believer so much as this snob of God. If there is a God He’s an aristocrat. He’d have gone to the best schools and He’d speak in low tones this absolutely correct accent. He’d sound like the vicar and never shout or even raise His voice like all those others with their full lungs and loud, harsh words prole as low company. So maybe it’s God, their version of Him, makes them so wild, more exotic than gypsies. So maybe it’s God, some pierced-eared, heterodox, heresiarchical, zealous, piratical avatar.

And that’s not it either.

Nor their fierce, rumpus-raveled history, incoherent as rout, mob, high wind.

It’s pride!

I came to Constantinople with a king’s courier, a tall lad named Peterson, not much older than myself, and though we shared the same table on shipboard during the first seating, he was a subdued, taciturn fellow and didn’t enter into conversation easily. I thought at first it was because he was queasy, for I often saw him with his head hanging over the stern rail and caught him throwing up as I returned to my cabin after dessert and coffee and perhaps a brandy. I was nauseous as the courier but had never tasted such fine rare food and was determined not to lose it.

He sometimes summoned me to his cabin or occasionally came to mine, never to chat but to rehearse me in the protocols, my small, silly performance that seemed hardly worthy, even to me, of such expense, so long a voyage. When I questioned him he cut me off and asked me to demonstrate yet again my polished, practiced salaam.

“You’ve seen me do the thing a hundred times.”

“Show me.”

“You know I’ve got it pat.”

“Mahmud II runs a tight court. Show me.”

“Oh very well.” I began the gyrations with my hand, bowed low and ended the fruity salutation with my right palm pressed to my forehead. “There you have it, my sultan.” I thought he was going to be sick.

“Your right palm? Your right? ”

“I’m teasing.”

“This is serious. No teasing. Show me.”

I did it again, this time finishing as he’d instructed me.

“You pull something like that before Mahmud …”

“Whoosis, what’shisname, is five years old already. I don’t get it.”

“Abdulmecid. The boy’s name is Abdulmecid.”

“I don’t get it. Abdulmecid’s over five years old. He’s almost gone on six. George IV’s his godfather. Why’d the King wait so long to send him his gift?”

“How often do I have to explain?” the King’s man said with some exasperation. “Islam’s different. The godchild must thank the emissary personally. He has to be able to speak.”

“It’s queer.”

“Excuse me,” Peterson said and rushed from the cabin. Through my porthole I could see him being sick.

My own collywobbles, determined as I was not to lose the unaccustomed delicacies, I still managed to suppress, by an act of the will transforming nausea into a noxious diarrhea, the magnificent broths, gorgeous fowls, grand game and exquisite sweets and pastries metamorphosed into a yellowish, stenchy paste.

Now, when I saw Peterson, I tried to commiserate. “Rough trip,” I’d say.

“It’s not a rough trip,” he’d shoot back. “The sea’s gentle as a lap.”

“It appears calm today,” I’d say, “but there are swells.”

“In your brains,” he’d manage, and vomit violently into the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Often, after my salaams, there would be additional exercises, “the Walk of Prostration,” a difficult, almost acrobatic negotiation in which the one approaching the throne has somehow to give off a full-blown ceremony of obsequious, barehead awe, an impression that he hats-in-hand for all mankind, for everything in fact, for whatever life there might be on other planets as well as all there is on this one, the whole while making his salutations and progressing a corridor the length, could be, of two or three good-sized tennis courts at angles of humility which defy gravity. (Not, at that, too difficult a maneuver for a Mills.)

But our cabins were too small and Peterson sometimes insisted that we go up on deck where I might better practice the movement, the suspirant motion of the ship making everything even more difficult, much to the amusement of the sailors and the other passengers. Peterson would stand fifteen or twenty feet in front of me, walking backward, drawing me on.

“Palace architecture was at least partially designed for just this purpose,” he’d explain, “its long throne rooms, the slight pitch of its slippery marble floors. It fair delights a potentate to see men bellyflop.”

“Why do you do these things?” a fellow passenger might ask.

And before I could respond Peterson would answer, “His Majesty’s business.” And rush to the rail, where he would be sick again.

We never took the goldfoil-wrapped gift out on deck with us for fear the wind would knock it from my hands and soil the handsome package with its golden cords. Indeed, when I made my salaams and practiced “the Walk of Prostration,” I always used a box which replicated in size and weight the one that Peterson kept locked safe in his courier’s diplomatic pouch.

He had shown me the splendid original once or twice and I was more than a little curious as to what it contained. His Royal Highness’s descriptions of a prince’s playthings had piqued my interest.

“What’s in it, Peterson?”

“I don’t know I’m sure.”

“Well let’s open it up then and see what the King got the little guy.”

“We can’t do that, Mills.”

“Why can’t we then? Ain’t I one of Nature’s true-born shipping clerks? I could pop that parcel open, toss its contents about and button it all up again as if the gift, box, foil, gold string and all were part of the same single piece of material, like a doll carved from driftwood say, or a bench from stone.”

“His Majesty’s business. Against all diplomatic procedure.”

“You removed it from the pouch. Ain’t that against all His Majesty’s messenger boy diplomatic procedure too?”

His face was whiter than the canvas sails which drove the ship through the Aegean and toward the Dardanelles.

“Hey,” I said, “not to worry. I’m no blurt tattle.” But he had run to the rail to pitch his insides. “Hey,” I tried to reassure him, “hey, do I look like some blab squeak? You think I’d peach on a pal? I ain’t no snitchwhisper, what do you think?” But he was retching now something beyond the contents of his stomach, something beyond digestion itself. “We’ll forget about what the King sent whoosis — Abdulmecid. It’s none of my business. I shouldn’t have asked. If even one person knows it can ruin the surprise.”

They’re called Janissaries.

They’re called Janissaries and they’re this elite corps, very famous, very feared.