Read Online The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Salman Rushdie
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“because as it happens I was blessed with an equable disposition and a fondness for the sex act which not even that thimble-cock ox of a despoiler could change. But I was never a warm person and since the injustice I suffered at the hands of Lady Man Bai the chill in my vicinity has increased. In the summer men like the cooling effect of my proximity but in winter I don’t get so much work.”
“Prepare me,” said the yellow-haired man. “Because today I have to go to court on important business, and I must be at my best or perish.”
“If you can afford it,” she answered, “I’ll make you smell as desirable as any king.”
She began to turn his body into a symphony for the nose, for which she told him that the price would be one gold mohur coin. “I’m overcharging you, naturally,” she warned him, but he simply shook his left wrist, and she gasped when she saw the three gold coins held between his four fingers. “Do a good job,” he said, and gave her all three. “For three gold mohurs,” she said, “people will believe you’re an angel from Paradise if that’s what you want them to think, and when you’re finished up there doing whatever it is you have to do, you can have me and the Mattress together, satisfying your wildest dreams for a week for nothing extra.”
She sent for a metal washtub and filled it herself, mingling hot and cold water in the ration of one bucket to three. Next she soaped him all over with a soap made from aloe, sandal, and camphor, “to make your skin fresh and open before I put on your royal airs.” Then from beneath the bed she produced her magic box of fragrances wrapped up in a careful cloth. “Before you reach the emperor’s presence you will have to satisfy many other men,” she said. “So the perfume for the emperor will lie hidden at first beneath the fragrances that will please lesser personages, which will fade away when you reach the imperial presence.” 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 the time she had finished he was convinced he smelled like a cheap whorehouse, which was where he was, after all, and he regretted his decision to ask for the Skeleton’s help. But out of courtesy he kept his regrets to himself. He took out of his little carpetbag clothes of a finery that made the Skeleton gasp. “Did you murder somebody to get those or are you really a somebody after all?” she wondered. He didn’t answer. To look like a person of consequence on the road was to attract the attentions of men of violence; to look like a hobo at court was an idiocy of a different kind. “I have to go,” he said. “Come back later,” she told him. “Remember what I said about the free offer.”
He put on his inevitable overcoat in spite of the budding heat of the morning and set off to do what he had to do. Miraculously the perfumes of the Skeleton went ahead of him and smoothed his way. Instead of shooing him off and telling him to go to the gate on the city’s far side, to wait in line for permission to enter the Courtyard of Public Audience, the guards went out of their way to assist him, sniffing the air as if it bore good news and bursting into improbable welcoming smiles. The chief of the guardhouse dispatched a runner to fetch a royal adjutant, who arrived looking irritable about being summoned. As he approached the visitor there was a shift in the breeze and an entirely new scent filled the air, a scent whose subtlety was too delicate for the guards’ coarse noses, but which made the adjutant think all of a sudden of the first girl he had ever loved. He volunteered to go personally to the house of Birbal to arrange things, and returned to say that all necessary approvals had been
“Prepare me,” said the yellow-haired man. “Because today I have to go to court on important business, and I must be at my best or perish.”
“If you can afford it,” she answered, “I’ll make you smell as desirable as any king.”
She began to turn his body into a symphony for the nose, for which she told him that the price would be one gold mohur coin. “I’m overcharging you, naturally,” she warned him, but he simply shook his left wrist, and she gasped when she saw the three gold coins held between his four fingers. “Do a good job,” he said, and gave her all three. “For three gold mohurs,” she said, “people will believe you’re an angel from Paradise if that’s what you want them to think, and when you’re finished up there doing whatever it is you have to do, you can have me and the Mattress together, satisfying your wildest dreams for a week for nothing extra.”
She sent for a metal washtub and filled it herself, mingling hot and cold water in the ration of one bucket to three. Next she soaped him all over with a soap made from aloe, sandal, and camphor, “to make your skin fresh and open before I put on your royal airs.” Then from beneath the bed she produced her magic box of fragrances wrapped up in a careful cloth. “Before you reach the emperor’s presence you will have to satisfy many other men,” she said. “So the perfume for the emperor will lie hidden at first beneath the fragrances that will please lesser personages, which will fade away when you reach the imperial presence.” 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 the time she had finished he was convinced he smelled like a cheap whorehouse, which was where he was, after all, and he regretted his decision to ask for the Skeleton’s help. But out of courtesy he kept his regrets to himself. He took out of his little carpetbag clothes of a finery that made the Skeleton gasp. “Did you murder somebody to get those or are you really a somebody after all?” she wondered. He didn’t answer. To look like a person of consequence on the road was to attract the attentions of men of violence; to look like a hobo at court was an idiocy of a different kind. “I have to go,” he said. “Come back later,” she told him. “Remember what I said about the free offer.”
He put on his inevitable overcoat in spite of the budding heat of the morning and set off to do what he had to do. Miraculously the perfumes of the Skeleton went ahead of him and smoothed his way. Instead of shooing him off and telling him to go to the gate on the city’s far side, to wait in line for permission to enter the Courtyard of Public Audience, the guards went out of their way to assist him, sniffing the air as if it bore good news and bursting into improbable welcoming smiles. The chief of the guardhouse dispatched a runner to fetch a royal adjutant, who arrived looking irritable about being summoned. As he approached the visitor there was a shift in the breeze and an entirely new scent filled the air, a scent whose subtlety was too delicate for the guards’ coarse noses, but which made the adjutant think all of a sudden of the first girl he had ever loved. He volunteered to go personally to the house of Birbal to arrange things, and returned to say that all necessary approvals had been
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