« The
water ran down from the edges of his mouth and hung on his shaven chin like a
liquid beard. At length he handed back the empty gourd, gave a sigh of
satisfaction, and wiped the beard away. »
« He
could dream in seven languages : Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Persian,
Russian, English and Portuguese. He had picked up languages the way most
sailors picked up diseases ; languages were his gonorrhoea, his syphilis,
his scurvy, his ague, his plague. As soon as he fell asleep half the world
started babbling in his brain, telling wondrous travellers’ tales. In this
half-discovered world every day brought news of fresh enchantments. »
« ‘because
in my city, this veil of a word, this hidden bird, is a delicately euphemistic
term for the organ of the male sex, and I take pride in that which I possess
but do not have the ill grace to display.’ »
« ‘Ucello
di Firenze’ had gone, leaving only that name behind like the abandoned skin of
a snake. »
« Even
the emperor succumbed to fantasy. Queens floated whithin his palaces like
ghosts, Rajput and Turkish sultanas playing catch-me-if-you-can. »
« In
the language of his forefathers the word for iron was timur. »
« an
angry king was like a god who made mistakes. »
« when
it’s time to unleash a few insults, a man will always choose his mother
tongue. »
« After
that she got to work, anointing him with civet and violet, magnolia and lily,
narcissus and calembic, as well as drops of other occult fluids whose names he
did not even like to ask, fluids extracted from the sap of Turkish, Cypriot and
Chinese trees, as well as a wax from the intestines of a whale. »
« By
then, however, the knowledge was of no use to him, except to remind him of what
he should never have forgotten, that witchcraft requires no potions, familiar
spirits or magic wands. Language upon a silvered tongue afford enchantment
enough. »
« The
silence thickened like curdled milk. »
« From
the day of her birth she was nicknamed Qara Köz, which was to say Black Eyes,
on account of the extraordinary power of those orbs to bewitch all upon whom
they gazed. »
« Or
who knows ? I might turn Turk myself. »
« ‘In
the Rhetorica it’s called by the same name, the memory palace,’ il Machia
answered. ‘You build a building in your head, you learn your way around it, and
then you start attaching memories to its various features, its furniture, its
decorations, whatever you choose. If you attach a memory to a particular
location you can remember an enormosu amount by walking around the place in
your head.’ »
« This
young woman has had her own memories removed, or consigned to some high attic
of the palace of memory which has been erected in her mind, and she has become
the repository of everything her master needed to have remembered. What do we
know of the Ottoman court ? This may be a commin practice among the Turks,
or it may have been the tyrannical whim of a specific potentate, or one of his
favourites. »
« ‘Arcalia
the Turk,’ said the memory palace. ‘Wielder of the Enchanted Lance.’
‘That
complete bastard,’ said Ago Vespucci, admiringly. ‘He did what he said he’d do.
He went over to the other side.’ »
« He
was a lover of tulips, and had them embroidered on to his tunics and cloaks,
believing them to be bringers of good fortune, and of the fifteen hundred
varieties of Stamboul tulip six in particular were to be found thronging his
palace rooms. The Light of Paradise, the Matchless Pearl, the Increaser of
Pleasure, the Instiller of Passion, the Diamond’s Envy and the Rose of the
Dawn : these were his favourites, and by them he was revealed as a
sensualist beneath his warrior’s exterior, a creature of pleasure hiding inside
a killer’s skin, a female self within the male. »
« ‘Nobody
in this place knows the meaning of fear,’ she replied, first in Persian and
then again in Chaghatai, her Turkish mother tongue.
And
beneath those words, the real words. Will you be mine. Yes. I am yours. »
« ‘You
haven’t stopped being a child,’ Andrea Doria told him. ‘You still think that
home, at the end of a long journey, is a place where a man finds peace.’ »
« ‘Damnation,
Machia,’ he whispered, sweating lightly, the curse escaping his lips under the
pressure of his emotions, after a long period during which he had forsaken
swearing entirely, and the sack of dead thrushes fell from his hand. ‘I think I
just rediscovered the meaning of human life.’ »
« Until
you’re not, the Universal Ruler thought. My love, until you’re not. »
The Enchantress of Florence – Salman Rushdie
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