Robert Irwin - Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh

‘I will try to describe the fierce delight of being in bed with her. Your hair will stand on end and your eyeballs will pop out of their sockets and you will bite your tongue and she will crack your spine in her embrace and that will only be the beginning of it. Death is the bed on which the lover joins the Beloved. Yet, I promise you, you will not want to resist, for She will seem to you dearer than life itself, and you will yearn only to be melted in Her flames. As you melt with desire, you will experience yourself in a state of liquefaction and it will seem to you that your whole body is being melted into semen, until you are ejaculated out of your own penis in a paradox of ecstasy. Orgasm comes as a flash of white lightning filling the dark horizon of the soul. In a single love-bite the Goddess will devour you, so that you are She and She you, so that you will find yourself shafting yourself.’

The Valide Sultan paused, lost in this vision, before resuming in a steadier voice,

‘After you have been bedded by the Goddess, you will see Her in all other women and experience infinite rapture with them as often as you choose. This is what it means to become the Golden Man and it will be proved when you take Mihrimah to bed, for, after you have been bedded by the Goddess, then straightaway you will take Mihrimah as your second wife and embrace her, and it may be that with the Goddess’s favour Mihrimah will conceive. In such a manner, I shall become the grandmother of a child of the Divinity, something which I have yearned for since girlhood.’

‘Mother, I am not ready for this honour. I think that I need more time for preparation. I should like some time to think about my duties as a bridegroom.’

She smiled reassuringly,

‘I only wish I was a man so that I could take the Goddess to bed. If only I could make you understand how it will be, then you would certainly not still be standing here talking to an old woman like me, for you would be rushing to the bridal chamber, anxious not to delay your meeting with the Beloved by a single minute. You are young and healthy and Anadil, Mihrimah and Roxelana are all good girls. They are appointed handmaidens of the Goddess and they have made you as ready as you will ever be. I know that you are not going to disappoint me, as Barak did. The Goddess made the world in order to be loved by it, so you cannot help but love her when she comes for you. But I should not stand here prattling away like someone who has lost her wits. I will leave Mihrimah here to describe the precise manner of your love-making with the Divinity and what you must do to please your bride. I will now hurry away to the Porcelain Pavilion, where my girls are even now preparing a post-nuptial feast. Beloved son, I will be waiting for you there and anxiously hoping to hear of your emergence from the Chamber of Rapture.’

With that she abruptly kissed Orkhan on the brow and walked away.

Now Mihrimah and Anadil came close to him and Mihrimah began to speak in a low muffled voice,

‘Now you know that your mother glories in the fact that it is one of her sons who is about to become the Golden Man. It now falls upon me to explain the sequence of actions to be followed when we return to the Rapturous Chamber.’

She paused to check that she had all his attention, before insisting,

‘It is most important that you should be fully aware of what you are about to undergo.’

‘It is better to know what is going to happen,’ chimed in Anadil, ‘for the unknown is always frightening, is it not?’

And Mihrimah resumed her speech,

‘This is how it will happen. There will be just the four of us — you, me, Anadil and, of course, Roxelana, for she is one of the strongest of the concubines. Together we four will enter the Rapturous Chamber. We will undress you, and you will assist in my undressing. Next, as you stand in contemplation of me in my lustrous nakedness, Anadil will take your cock in her mouth. Then swiftly — it must be very swift — Roxelana will produce the silken bowstring and throttle you. You will then ejaculate in the ecstasy of the Death of the Just Man and, in so doing, experience the Holy Rapture, which is the gift of the Goddess. Yet you will be dead for an instant only, for Anadil will have collected in her mouth all your semen, which contains the departing life force, and she will swiftly deliver your semen back to you in a loving kiss. Now the dead man drinks of the dead man’s seed and chokes and shudders back into life once more. Thus you will be awakened by the Kiss of Death and so resurrected to a state of perpetual bliss, as the Holy Rapture fills every particle of your body for ever and ever. You will not be as before, for you will have become the Golden Man and the Goddess will dwell within your body and you two will be joined together in a state of perpetual orgasm. Having died and been reborn, you will come to me on the Bed of Rapture which floats on the silver pool and, as you embrace me, I too shall be swept up in ecstasy and I will take your seed in my womb. It is all a tremendous and marvellous mystery.’

Then, seeing the expression on Orkhan’s face, she continued,

‘Do not worry. We know what to do. It is all in The Perfumed Battlefield , in the last chapter which is entitled “How to Give Ultimate Pleasure to your Man”.’

Anadil interrupted,

‘It is true that things went wrong with Barak, but that was because he lost his nerve at the last moment and struggled, so that I could not keep my mouth round his cock, and thus his seed was wasted on the floor. But, if you do not struggle, all shall be well. You have had enough wine though. I think I gave you just the right amount to drink and you should be relaxed.’

‘You have to lose yourself completely to find yourself, according to The Perfumed Battlefield ,’ Mihrimah continued. ‘If our earlier charades have had any purpose, other than beguilement, it was to teach that the one who loses wins and that the one who wins loses. It is always like that in the warfare between the sexes.’

‘Well, I do not really understand such matters,’ replied Orkhan. ‘But I have had enough of talk and I see no path open to me, save the one which leads to the Rapturous Chamber. I suppose the sooner that I reach my predestined end the better it will be for me.’

Hearing this, Mihrimah raised her arms and the concubines and eunuchs who stood outside the hammam began to sing a strange song, which began with the words ‘I have drunk the waters of the Beloved and She has drunk from mine.’

Emerald pointed back to the door of the hammam and Orkhan began to walk towards it. As he did so, concubine after concubine threw herself in front of him, so that he trod upon the spines of Gulanar, Najma, Parvana and others whose names he did not know. He was walking upon a carpet of human flesh. Nevertheless, Orkhan did not glance at the backs of the women he trod upon but instead looked up at the sky overhead.

Passing through the ante-room, Orkhan led them back into the Rapturous Chamber. Anadil and Roxelana stripped him of his white robe and tossed it into the pool. It rested on the bubbling surface a few moments, before abruptly vanishing. Multiple reflections of gold and silver on silver made Orkhan dizzy. Mihrimah waited on the far side of the pool, until he was ready to assist in her undressing. His fingers trembled as he set to work removing the layers of cloth and she had to tell him not to be in such a hurry.

She smiled at what she took to be his lustful impatience,

‘In desiring my body, you have learned to love the transient and that is a good and necessary stage. But it is a stage that you must pass beyond, for, in the end, only the Devil loves what is passing.’

Finally, Mihrimah’s white robe, veil and shawl lay at her ankles and she stood naked and very beautiful. However, he was not suffered to linger at her side. Anadil beckoned him back to the other side of the pool. Beside her stood Roxelana, resplendent in her silver dress. In one hand Roxelana held up the train of the dress, in the other she dangled the silken bowstring.