The Blue Hour

Chapter 15: Reshid

Reshid listened to Peresto's words, "Reshid, mon ami...," whispered into the gold embroidered drapery which split the room in two, separating them - had separated them during their French lessons - week after week, year after year. He heard warm affection in her voice and pride swelled into his thumping heart.

"I am your friend, Princess Peresto, and your loyal servant," he managed to answer, feeling the weight of the eunuch's watchful gaze on his back. With his hands tucked into the wide sleeves of his dervish tunic, he closed his eyes and imagined the toe of her slipper appear beneath the drapery. A pointed slipper? What colour? Silver? Blue like the sea?

Through the curtain, he heard her stand. Too soon, their time together was over. With a rustle of fabric and the sound of a heavy door swinging shut, she was gone, leaving him alone with the lingering scent of her perfume. The silence around him swelled. His emotions were in turmoil, and the paper note, still hidden in the sleeve of his tunic, chafed at his skin.

A chit-chatting agha escorted him out of the Imperial Harem, but Reshid did not hear him. Neither did he notice that the morning mist after the night's rain, had given way to a brisk and fair spring day, or  that the sky was cloudless and blue, or that a flock of swans flew south along the shore. As he dragged his lame leg towards the gilded palace gates, Peresto's words - derisive and shrewd, he thought bitterly - turned in his head, and the darned paper note in his sleeve grazed his skin. Disappointment and anger festered inside. His whole body revolted. To think he had dreamt of how Peresto's slender fingers (it's how he imagined them) would open his note, with a caress, of how her eyes would light up at reading his words, of how she would press his signature to her lips. What on earth had he been thinking?

He scoffed out loud. How pitiful he was. He had let down his guard - again - let her purring voice under his skin - again. It possessed him. It haunted him in his dreams, it fanned a tiny flame of hope, and every time - again - it reined him in and brought him to heel. He could feel its alluring tickle as he fled, leaving the palace behind him.

By the time he headed down the road toward his home in Galata, he was in such an agitated state of self-loathing that he barely registered the bustle of daily life through the haze of his racing mind.

Overwhelmed, he stopped in his tracks and closed his eyes, taking a moment to steady his breathing and collect his thoughts.

He brought out the note from inside his sleeve and crushed it between his fingers. The poetic words of love he had painstakingly written for her, rejected. Well, not really rejected. He never dropped the note on the floor as he had planned to do, he never pushed it with the toe of his shoe under the hem of the curtain which separated them, the toe of her slipper never emerged to receive it. Instead of delivering his note he had recognised it for what it was: vulgar, sick, insulting. How could she accept it? She, a Sultana. It would be beneath her dignity. She would reject it and punish him for his insolence, forbid him from ever returning to the palace again. The mere thought of it made him break into a cold sweat and his courage failed him. Not for the first time, he left the harem with the note tucked into his sleeve, frustrated at his own weakness, and with an aching heart.

Night and day, he thought about her. Not because he needed her, he rarely needed women. He rarely needed anyone. It was his fate to live without love, without family and children.

On a couple of occasions, as a younger man, he had solicited prostitutes, young girls, but he did not like it, the destructive, transactional nature of the act. He didn't really want Peresto either, not sexually. What he dreamed of was to unveil her mystery, to open her up gently, with caresses and kisses. He wanted her sharp, disciplined mind. He wanted her natural confidence, her sense of belonging and purpose. But most of all, he wanted to reveal himself to her, to stand naked before her, he wanted to rest his head in her lap, to be caressed and loved.