Phantom (35 page)

I found the shah sitting at a marble-topped table, poring over the plans of the new palace with odd intensity. The sun streaming in from the window reflected on the diamond clasp which held an egret feather in place upon his
kolah
. When he glanced up and made a quick gesture for me to rise from my obeisance, the feather danced like a coy woman in the faint breeze that blew in from the open casement.

"Have you seen these plans, Daroga?" he demanded abruptly.

I hastened to assure him that I had not. Knowledge is a very dangerous thing in Persia, and sick at heart though I was, I was not yet ready to contemplate execution with any equanimity. Erik's interior designs for the Garden of Echoes had always been a closely guarded secret. What tales had been carried from Mazanderan to arouse the shah's suspicions now? Did he know of the documents Erik had entrusted to my care? Did he know of my presence during that desperate consultation with the master mason?

The shah drew heavily on a calean and regarded me steadily with eyes that always reminded me of a hawk's.

"Tell me, Daroga," he began conversationally, blowing a stream of smoke in my direction, "does my masked friend consider himself adequately rewarded for his services… extraordinary as we grant them to be?"

"Your generosity has always been without question, O Shadow of God," I said warily.

"You have not answered my question!" snapped the shah with unexpected irritation. "The sultan… the emir… they, too, would be generous to a man of such singular talents."

I was silent, aware that the ground beneath my feet had become dangerously unstable.

The shah set his water pipe aside in order to lock the plans safely into the drawer in his desk.

"I have it in mind to present him with a gift—a little token of my immense regard," he continued thoughtfully. "1 should be vastly interested to hear how he receives it. The nature of your work requires you to be an observant man, Daroga. I shall expect a report containing exact details of his… well, what shall we say?… his
gratitude. "

I bowed low to avoid looking at a smile which made me deeply uneasy—the smile of a man whose mother had taught him to appreciate the finer points of torture.

Behind this sudden whim I sensed the khanum's jealous anger.

It seemed that Erik was to be punished after all for those months of willful desertion…

The girl was an odalisque, a slave of the royal harem who had completed her training as a concubine, but not yet been chosen to serve in the royal bed. There was no greater honor for the shah to bestow upon a favored servant than the gift of a harem virgin—the gift of a wife.

When I had stammered my rehearsed piece, there was a deathly silence in Erik's softly lit apartment, a tension that pulled every muscle taut as a bowstring.

He stared at the girl with a ravening hunger that the mask could not disguise, and his sudden, overwhelming desire was like sheet lightning, shocking in its savage intensity. I saw his shoulders hunch against the pain, his hands lock on his knees and claw upward into his flesh in a desperate attempt to contain the screaming tyranny of his own body.

When he looked up at me it was with bitter hatred, as though he understood the exact purpose of my presence here tonight.

"Bring her forward," he said.

Erik's voice had lost all its beauty and become a harsh, metallic rasp which made the girl shrink instinctively against the arm of the eunuch who restrained her. She was dragged across the room and thrown at his feet, in accordance with his curt gesture. Rising slowly, like some great unfurling shadow, he leaned forward and pulled off the girl's veil to reveal huge eyes edged with antimony, staring up at him with undisguised terror.

"How old are you?" he demanded harshly.

"Fifteen, master." Her voice was barely audible.

"Have they told you what is expected of you?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"Very well. I have seen what lies behind your veil, my dear… now you shall be accorded a reciprocal honor. Come forward and remove my mask."

The girl did not move; she continued to kneel at his feet, staring up at him in horror.

"To refuse me now is to refuse the shah himself," said Erik steadily. "If you resist I shall take you by force and then return you to execution at his hands. But only come to me willingly for this one night and I swear you shall go free at dawn. One night buys you the rest of your life and the means to spend it in honorable comfort. And perhaps, after all, that night will not be so terrible as you fear…"

As he bent to offer the girl his hand, she shrank away, pressing her hennaed fingers together in a desperate gesture of supplication.

"You would rather die than lie with me?" he demanded with pained disbelief. "You would truly rather die?"

The girl collapsed at his feet in a weeping, hysterical heap and Erik turned from her abruptly, clenching his hands around his arms.

"Take the child away," he said.

The eunuch looked at me in astonishment, expecting guidance, and I went hurriedly across the room to speak in a low urgent tone.

"Apparently you have not understood the custom, Erik," I whispered. "The girl is the shah's gift, a personal token of his esteem. To return her in this fashion would be counted an unforgivable breach of etiquette—an insult that would never be forgiven."

"Take her away," he repeated tonelessly. "Tell the shah I have no desire for nubile girls. Tell him I am…
incapable
… of using such a gift. Damn you, tell him whatever is necessary to ensure that she receives no punishment."

I made a sign to the eunuch, who promptly dragged the weeping, hysterical girl from the room. I knew it would not be possible to buy his silence; the man would accept whatever money I cared to offer and still run blabbing to the harem with this tale. Malicious gossip is one of the few pleasures left to the frustrated, incomplete male. Whatever I chose to tell the shah when I gave my report, the khanum would most certainly hear the truth.

When we were alone Erik poured a glass of arrack with trembling fingers.

"You had better go," he said wretchedly.

I shook my head. "I would like to talk to you first."

He passed one hand across the mask.

"Yes," he said, "that is a right I cannot deny you—but I should be grateful for a few minutes of privacy now… just a few minutes alone… you understand?"

I nodded slowly, turned toward the door, and paused to look back again.

"Erik… why did you send her away? You desired her and she was yours to use exactly as you pleased. Why risk offending the shah for the sake of a girl who is only a slave?"

He gave a great cry of rage, lifted the table in front of him, and threw it across the room with a force that splintered the legs asunder from the marble top.

"Only a slave… only an animal!" he roared. "You asinine Persian dolt—get out of my way quickly, before I forget all that I owe you!"

I shrank back against the wall as he made for the door, pulling it open with a savage force that tore some of the hinges from the jamb.

As I watched him stride away, with breathless apprehension, I knew that anyone who crossed his path tonight would not live long enough to repent of their folly.

My spies in the harem brought the story to me the next day.

Erik had been required to present himself at a window of the torture chamber normally reserved for the khanum's exclusive use, the lady herself choosing to watch from a balcony above, with her attendants. I am told that from this position it was virtually impossible to see into the torture chamber and that it was already commonly understood that today's amusements would take place outside the famous mirrored room.

The khanum looked down upon her favorite through an intricately woven lattice that reduced her figure to an intriguing silhouette.

"I have chosen to honor you today, Erik, with a little entertainment of my own devising," she said softly. "I think you will agree that I have studied your art with some distinction and I would welcome your opinion on my choice of subject. Draw back the curtain on the window."

He pulled the velvet drapes apart and stood for a moment grimly contemplating the sight that met his gaze before turning back to the balcony. The eunuchs say that, when he spoke, the chill of his voice would have frozen the Caspian Sea.

"I see you have learned nothing under my tuition, ma-dame. I find your choice of subject vulgar and tedious, the work of an amateur who has failed to understand her artistic limitations."

There was an awesome silence in the gallery. Those who were watching the khanum closely say that she flinched and flushed crimson beneath the aperture of her veil.

"Vulgar and tedious as my entertainment may be," she spat venomously, "it will still take place entirely as planned."

"Then, madame, I regret it will take place in my absence."

And turning his back upon her rudely, Erik walked out of the harem without waiting to be dismissed.

They say that the entertainment eventually continued in the absence of all spectators, but I knew the death of the little slave girl would not be the end of the matter.

No one else had ever dared to treat the khanum with such contemptuous insolence.

I knew that she would take a terrible revenge upon the author of her public humiliation.

I waited for the order to arrest him, but it did not come, and the only logical reason 1 could find for this extraordinary forbearance was the shah's reluctance to be parted from a man who was still of use to him. Whatever fate the khanum was brewing for Erik would have to wait until the new palace was completed to the shah's satisfaction.

With the coming of the hot weather Tehran became deserted, as all who were able to took themselves off to their tasteful summer residences in the cooler regions of the Shimran Hills. It was by tradition a quiet and somnolent period in the court year, the last moment imaginable for an attempt on the shah's life; but in August he was attacked while mounting his horse by four Babi dissidents, who had approached him under the pretense of presenting a petition. I can only think that these men were determined to achieve martyrdom, for though the shah was wounded by a pistol shot and thrown from his horse in the confusion, the assassins were quickly overcome by the royal guard, one of them dying in the ensuing scuffle.

Panic ensued. Although there was still a month left of the country season, everyone rushed back to the walls of Tehran, fearing the outbreak of revolution. The Russian mission fled, the British lay low, vast numbers of so-called conspirators were promptly seized, and everyone remotely connected with the Babi sect went in daily fear of his life.

Swift and bloody were the reprisals that followed in the wake of the young shah's grim and merciless mood, and I was obliged to show my loyalty in a manner which filled me with loathing. It was not the hunting down of the conspirators that made me balk—I was well accustomed to such activities—but the horrible fate that awaited these ill-advised extremists. Even Erik showed no enthusiasm for his task when asked to devise a suitable torture to precede the execution of Suleiman Khan, the principal instigator of the conspirator.

The night before the execution Erik came to my apartment and sat fingering the strings of his violin with a restless unease that filled me with foreboding. I knew that the shah had been dissatisfied with his original suggestions— not
enough
, he had snapped angrily, not
sufficient
to teach the people the fate of traitors.

"You disappoint me, sir. I had expected better of your imagination. Perhaps you are losing some of your famous talent for death. I advise you to think again with some speed…"

You disappoint me
… dangerous words in the ears of any imperial servant! Erik had been given twenty-four hours to rectify his failure and I knew now, as I looked upon his quiet despair, that he had succeeded.

"You have satisfied the shah at last?" I prompted nervously.

"Yes"—Erik plucked a string absently—"he is well pleased with the final… design."

Morbid fascination obliged me to ask for details. Quietly, without emotion, he told me that the body of Suleiman Khan was to be pierced in various parts, the holes to be of sufficient width to accommodate lighted camp candles which would be permitted to burn down to the flesh. The traitor would then be dragged through the streets to the place of execution, where his body would be cleft into two neat halves by a hatchet.

We were both silent for a while; I utterly appalled, and he himself finally sickened by the ugly excesses that he had been forced to dredge up from the black vaults of his mind.

I watched him draw his hand caressingly over the polished wood of his violin.

"I am weary of manufacturing these living nightmares," he said slowly, "very weary. Do you have any opium, Nadir?"

I frowned. "You're taking too much opium these days-far too much!"

"Yes, I know," he said grimly. "If I take enough over a sufficient length of time it will kill me—and what a great loss to the world
that
would be!"

"Erik—"

"Don't preach at me"—he sighed—"my mind is like the floor of an abattoir, slimed with blood and filth. Opium draws a beautiful veil across my eyes… it lets me forget, for a little while. Now, do you have any or not?"

The laws of hospitality forbidding me to deny the need of any guest, I went silently to a cupboard and returned with the accoutrements of our national vice. There cannot be a man in Persia who is not well acquainted with an opium addict. The rich indulge themselves in comfort while the poor starve and sell the clothes off their backs to support the deadly habit. Opium quiets a troubled soul, bathing its anguish with a soft, insidious balm, and I knew of no man who stood in greater need of its soothing poison than Erik.

I gave him the pipe with its decorated porcelain bowl, the size of an egg, and its slender stem of cherry wood; I gave him the tongs and the glowing coals that would make the precious weed bubble and fume.