A Taste of Honey Read online

  “I do. I cannot claim to understand it, but I know their aim.”

  “Well, our gods of Daluz think they can get it, finally, if your gods will marry in, and make both bloods stronger.”

  Aqib took his hand from the soldier’s hair. “So I’ve heard.” That cowlick just wouldn’t lie flat. “Oh, look. Here we are—the Menagerie.”

  Some way back, the City’s houses and tenements had thinned in favor of lots of urban pasturage and gardens. And there looming on the most humongous of these lots was the Menagerie. The Daluçan made an expansive gesture. “What’s that around it? Vallum aut silva?”

  “Hmm, well . . .” Aqib, seeing that the soldier was staggered by the sight, took in afresh this place he’d known all his life. “I suppose it’s both, rather: fort and forest. Would you like a quick tour?”

  “Yeah! If that’s all right . . .”

  Inwalling the Menagerie was a palisade not possibly built by mortal means. The serried boles of hardwood trees grew impassably close, the green canopies interleaved together high above: this wall wholly alive except for the carpentered gates, over which a godslight floated, its bluish glare harsh enough to vanquish a wide swath of night. Aqib led soldier and cat off the boulevard, into the actinic illumination under the gates.

  And brighter be the light, then deeper the shadows: one errant branch, immensely jutting from a palisade-tree, threw a patch of blackness upon the ground. Hidden in that dark, someone called out: “Aqib bmg Sadiqi?”—an inescapable voice, all too well known. “Is that you, brother, with your wild hair?” Three men came swaggering from shadow, toting weighty battle-spears. The speaker, whom one must never address as other than “Corporal,” said, “Who is that with you? I do not know that stranger.” The three men wore robes of majority and armor-plated jerkins. Without exception, they were formidable in stature, breadth of shoulder, strength of arm.

  “Be at ease, I pray you, Corporal,” Aqib said, and took the Daluçan soldier’s hand, as he might a close friend’s. “Come with me to see the Menagerie is one from Daluz. We Olorumi swore safe passage to all of the Daluçan Embassy, and we swore it by the blood of every Saint. I ask you, then, to proffer greetings to this man.”

  “Vale, Dalucianus,” said the Corporal grudgingly, echoed by his two fellows. The three enjoyed a good hard stare at this soldier from so far abroad: the pallor of his skin seeming moreso under the godslight, his hair lank as a horsetail. They looked especially at the steel-alloy breastplate he wore, its dazzling mirror-polish. The Corporal, taking some steps from the other guardsmen, beckoned to Aqib: “Come here, brother. I wish to drop a word in your ear.”

  The Daluçan soldier squeezed Aqib’s hand and let go. “Go ’head. I’m right here waiting for you.”

  Worriedly Aqib looked between the man beside him and the Corporal. “I won’t be a moment. Sabah, stay. Stay put, girl.”

  Across Aqib’s shoulders, the Corporal lay a powerful arm and, whispering, pulled him in close. “Be wary, Aqib,” the Corporal said. “Do nothing to disrespect our family’s honor, do you hear? Where that one comes from, they know nothing of righteousness, nothing of the Saints. The Daluçans follow . . . other ways. Do you take my meaning?”

  No. “ . . . yes?” said Aqib; and frightened of his brother, he began as usual to babble. “But I am sure there is no cause for worry. Sabah can always smell out bad intentions. Remember that thief, and the assassin? Him, she doesn’t mind in the least. She knows a bright soul. Look there; she lets him pat her head! I am sure the Daluçan means no harm. He is very friendly.”

  “I daresay he is, you silly wretch!” The Corporal ground his teeth together. “You must have some notion, Aqib, of the turpitudes of luxury that go on in the wide world beyond Olorum—such unspeakable acts as never should occur! Don’t you see?”

  Aqib felt now as he had all throughout childhood: that everyone was moving deftly within norms long established, confidently speaking in terms already defined, but that no one had remembered to clue in poor little Aqib. “Please, I beg you, Brother . . . ,” he began. “Corporal, I mean to say!” He hurriedly corrected himself. “I cannot understand you. What do you mean?”

  “By our own Sainted mother! You don’t know, do you?” The Corporal’s arm squeezed Aqib round the neck, shook him roughly. “Such a spoilt, sheltered child you are!” The Corporal seemed fit to burst with the desire to explain further. In the end, though, as if to himself, he only quoted Canon: “‘An the mantle be immaculate, cast no filth upon it.’” He then repeated himself. “Do nothing to disrespect our family’s honor.”

  “I wouldn’t.” Aqib promised. “I never will.”

  “You all good, over here? Everything all right?”

  Startled by this irruption, the Corporal flung Aqib aside to clear a space for his spear. Aqib might have fallen, but the Daluçan soldier caught and bore him up. His body pressed uncomfortably for a moment to the metallic chest, his mouth and nose to the bearded neck; then the corded arm released him, except for a hand. One cannot love a new friend more than one’s own brother, or should not anyway.

  The Corporal glowered, his fists clenched about his spear. Although taller, he wasn’t half so heavily built as the Daluçan—beside whom Aqib felt himself able to stand uncowed for once, even with his brother looking daggers. Aqib knew that he embodied shortfall, disappointment, and inadequacy; still, though, how had he ever trespassed so far as to merit the hatred burning in the Corporal’s eyes?

  “All is well, Dalucianus,” said the Corporal. “And as for you, Brother, I pray to see you ever abiding by the Saintly Canon. Our good father came by the Menagerie this afternoon. Master Sadiqi was not best pleased to find you neglecting the bears. His very words: ‘That boy has work enough here to do. These jaunts with Sabah can wait.’”

  “But how should the prince’s favorite cat,” Aqib exclaimed, “be kept always in her pen and fed dead meat, day after day, with no joy of the field—?” He cut himself off. When calm, his speech was melodious and modulated, a sweet tenor; but when upset, his voice took just that note of girlish stridence no man can take seriously. More calmly Aqib went on. “The prince himself bade me take Sabah often to the Royal Park.”

  Smirking, the Corporal only lifted his shoulders and dropped them. You argue with the wrong one. I do but deliver the message.

  Aqib nodded. “Very well. I shall do just as Master Sadiqi our father requires, of course.” And he went to the gates, gave the sign—whistling the note—that undid the lock, and opened the wicket door, letting himself, Sabah, and the soldier inside.

  And what was inside?

  Stink.

  Noise!

  From the godslight without, fractured brightness pierced the wooden gates, and these scattered rays picked out a bewildering labyrinth of split-rail corrals and stout wickerwork cages, some of which were piddling hutches stacked one atop another, rodents inside, or piglets, or coneys; other cages so vastly built as to encompass a stunted tree, rocky hillock, or small pond. The yips of hunting coyotes, snuffles of hippopotamus, blown breath of equines, of antelopes, and all manner of simian gibbering came from the divers enclosures.

  “Oh, my menials have done poor work today!” Aqib led Sabah and the Daluçan down pungent, noisy straits. “Whenever I spend the afternoon at the Park it’s like this! They will muck, they will gather it up into piles, but they will not cart the shit out to the gardens . . . ! Tomorrow there shall be a reckoning, oh yes— Careful!” Aqib leapt forward, pulling hard upon the soldier’s hand still in his own. The Daluçan staggered after him. Briefly cloying the air, a glob of rotted plantain winged past, just missing them. “The chimps,” Aqib explained. “I do apologize. Up you go, Sabah.” They’d stopped beside a fence densely woven of living bushes. “Go on now!” And Sabah sprang nimbly onto the fence, scrabbled to the top, whence she jumped down, disappearing inside.

  “She could get out of there easy enough, look to me.”

  “Certainly. But Sabah’s a good girl. Sh
e’ll stay put.” Just then a little coolness pattered Aqib’s scalp, neck and shoulder, like tiny pinpricks, and he turned his face heavenward. A drop splashed his forehead, another his chin, and then no more.

  “O Daluciane! Did you feel that? The clouds just now gave their first taste of the Long Rains!”

  “Yeah, I felt it,” the soldier said. And the same bright grin communicated between them.

  “You have it in your mind,” Aqib said, jubilant, “that Olorum is green already. But we aren’t yet. No, right now we are parched: we are withered and almost dead. But only wait until after the Long Rains have drenched us city and nation—then you were in Paradise, my friend! Wait and see!”

  “Eheu, amicissime,” the soldier said with a sad smile; “nam ego dies decem solos hic manebo. Me deinde ultra mare reperies. Illud numquam miraculum videbo.”

  The giddy joy bled away. “Oh,” Aqib said. “Only ten days more. I had quite forgot. Of course you’ve already been here this whole long season. I wish . . . I wish we had met on the first day of your arrival, instead of so near your leave-taking.”

  “Me, too,” the Daluçan said. “I feel the exact same way, Aqib.”

  They stood side by side at the elephants’: watching the mother beast work upon one of the enclosure’s godtrees, tearing away leafy acacia branches, knocking loose apples, so that food fell down within reach of her baby.

  Aqib began to expound: “A godtree—”

  “We’ve got us a few godtrees, Aqib,” the soldier said, “even in far-off Daluz.”

  “Oh yes,” Aqib said, “of course, you do.” One never knew quite what needed explaining, and where the silences should go.

  A chance lull in the cries of the animals carried to them laughter from the Corporal and guardsmen out front, making boasts and curses as they threw bones together. Aqib would never stand as a peer to such men, however long he lived, whatever he accomplished: suddenly he knew the truth of this to his very bones. At that moment, Aqib felt he could bear anything in the world better than more hateful sneers and bitter words from his brother. Yet he and the Daluçan would have to pass the gauntlet at the gate again. Master Sadiqi had of course shown him the secret way through the walls surrounding the Menagerie. But Aqib was mindful of the great confidence invested in him, and no one else alive; surely it wouldn’t do to go revealing the secret passage to an outsider, even one of bright soul? The soldier, leaning close, spoke softly: “Could I kiss you, Aqib?”

  “No!” Aqib answered, shocked, whispering himself. “Men cannot kiss!” Yet it seemed there was a conspiracy within his own body. For it took all of his strength not to consummate their nearness into actual touch, while he was utterly strengthless to shift even an inch away.

  “I bet you they can.” The soldier’s breath smelled of young palm wine. “Anybody ever make love to you, Aqib?” So near, his words were sensation, a brush of feathers. “Let me; I want to. Can I?”

  A mystery clarified for Aqib, and not just concerning this long walk, this fraught conversation—not just tonight’s mystery, as it were—but the deeper one concerning his inmost self. Ah, this was why his wayward gaze alit so often on whom it shouldn’t, going back to peek howevermuch snatched away: those taut bellies and hard thighs of men heroically scrawled in scars. So yes, then: clearly two men could kiss! And what else might they do? Lie down together kissing, if they both wished it, and furthermore . . . unclothed? A desperate thrill of desire throbbed in Aqib’s loins, nearly a climax. “No,” he whispered harshly, seizing the soldier’s wrist in a staying grip. “We cannot, for Saintly Recitature says . . . And we are in the open here.” Nervously he glanced back toward the front gate of the Menagerie, whence again came the sound of laughter. “My brother . . .” would kill us, or try to. The very earth seemed to list and yaw, when Aqib thought of the Corporal’s face deranged by fury, raining down unstoppable violence.

  “What about inside then, Aqib? Where nobody could see us? I can take a room back at that taberna. I hate it up at the Sovereign House, anyway. Everybody in the palace hustling one bill of goods or the other. Come with me back to the place where we met.”

  Yes, all right! Let’s go now—and we’ll leave by the secret door!

  But in an aggrieved tone, postponing this decision, Aqib said, “How can I? I do not even know your name, O Soldier of Daluz.”

  He smiled. “We can fix that, easy. I’ll tell you. My name is—”

  [eleventh day]

  Great Olorum gathered at the seashore to see off the Daluçan ship. In formal robes he stood among his father, sister, and brother in the shade afforded by their house parasolists. The sun beat down, a white plangency in utter blue skies, yet the heat did not oppress, for the Daluçan gods had raised freshening winds out of the propitious quadrant. Their great-winged god turned lazy gyres in the void above the masts and sails; and the other, much bigger and tailed like a fish, swam alongside the ship. She breached at intervals, white detonations going up when the god crashed over sideways rather than slipping splashlessly back into the sea. The Olorumi choirs had sung, the priest-dancers offered their benisons, and now the multitude was silent, except here and there where a beautiful young woman wept quietly. Aboard ship a smaller crowd looked back at the shore, and among those pale Daluçans were a darker few. New wives stood beside new husbands, and Aqib saw some youth too, grieving to leave his home, sobbing in fact, but comforted and murmured to in the burly arms of his Daluçan knight. Aqib’s gaze flitted between that pair and his own soldier, alone at the gunwale with the bright green scarf tied about his neck, waving and waving, his features dimming already in the distance. Some girl on shore screamed a Daluçan name, and another woman, another Daluçan name. Behind Aqib’s lips yet a third name fought to be wailed out.

  Then a young woman broke from her mother’s embrace and ran into the sea and she drowned. A second girl splashed into the waves but was wrestled to shore alive.

  Aqib shouted. LucrioLucrioLucrioLucrioLucrioLucrio. The sea would surely bear him up, and he could race across the shining plain and catch up to the ship, and all would end well, nothing would be too late. Salt flooded his mouth and he came up with a hack and wheeze, but fought on toward the offing into which the ship had vanished. His sight and breath washed away, but blind and breathless he could still strive in the direction of love, or else die. For that too would be acceptable, to die. Some Saint’s hand stretched from Heaven and plucked Aqib from the waves, by the hair wrenching his head upwards out-of-water. Even struggling with all his might Aqib was exactly nothing to the power of that Saint Who dragged him easily back to the shallows and threw him onto the beach. Trembling and facedown in sand, Aqib lay there vomiting water. He groveled and retched and coughed until he thought he must die after all. No Saint—it had been the Corporal, who kicked him in the side, shouting abuse, until Sister and Master Sadiqi drew him off. Aqib sobbed and wished to die.

  Part Two

  Therefore she understood that, more or less, no one is guilty. Or more precisely, that the guilty exist, but that they are also human beings, just like their victims.

  Joseph Brodsky

  [first night]

  Lucrio subsided then, and let Aqib speak for them both. “Menials—be assured the owner of this fondac, your master, who’s away at home but should, as you say, return tomorrow morning, shall hear this stern address as well. But let us reach some clarity, we who are here tonight, concerning the dignities and comforts owed to one of the Daluçan Embassy.”

  Aqib held forth upon such dignities and comforts, and none save the girl in the green neckerchief, a by-blow of the owner, clearly (as she seemed to fancy herself some species of manager), made so bold as to offer back what had always been standard practice at the fondac, in contrast to these very novel requirements.

  Aqib clapped, startling everyone. “No,” he said sharply. “We’ll have none of your lip, missy. And furthermore there shall be—” He paused, looking over the three gathered, who squatted on their haunches
before him. “But where are the rest of you, the other menials who work in this fondac?”

  “Royal Cousin,” said the girl with the green kerchief, “some are in the kitchen cooking, others in the refectory, busy serving—”

  Again they were astonished by a crack of handmade thunder: “Fetch them.”

  Two cowered; the girl leapt up and ran, returning on the double with seven others wearing dingy kerchiefs, tied at head, arm, or neck, as drudges do.

  “Now that I may address you all”—with a touch upon the arm, Aqib shushed Lucrio, who had made to speak—“Master Daluçan’s rooms are not to be disturbed for any reason, at any time. He will have no attendant for morning ablutions, nor food brought in to break the fast. In this fondac, there shall be no spying—no gossiping—whatsoever. Nosy busybodies, creepers in the hallway outside the door, and curious eyes peering through windows: all these shall meet with severe redress.” Burned alive? Beheaded? Flung off a cliff into the sea? The gravity of Aqib’s tone was such that no doom seemed too far-fetched. His gaze bleakly met each menial’s in turn, so that none should lack for a moment to consider how fools may come to sorrow. “I trust I’ve made myself perfectly clear?” Heads nodded all around, and voices lifted up—

  “Yes, Royal Cousin, oh yes!”

  —unanimously. The smallest boy’s eyes filled with tears, lips trembling. The twin girls clutched each other’s hand. Aqib caught not one flash of rebellion or cheek anywhere. Good. “And we pray, too, that misbehavior on the part of one should not make all of you suffer. That would grieve us. You may go.” The menials fled. “Veni, Lucrio.” Aqib led his lover past the hanging carpet, into the room.

  The dim glow of a night-lamp revealed the room’s adequate appointments. Aqib begged to aid in the disarmourment, and so Lucrio explained the way of it to him. Their hands at opposite sides, they sprang the catches interlocking chest and back plate of Lucrio’s cuirass, the tunic beneath all sweated-through. Now it was comfortable to embrace. “We’ll not have to worry about them I shouldn’t think,” he said. “I put the fear into them properly.”