Test of Manhood
A/N: Thank you, ghostwritten2, for looking this over first. Warning: contains a violent and sexual slash scene.
The two older men sat at a table in the back of the dim, smoke-filled brasserie on a quiet side street in the Montmartre district of Paris. A chess set sat on the table before them, the pieces still in the box, or perhaps put away from a completed game.
The tall, waxen-faced one sipped from a glass of liquid clear as crystal, fresh as crushed peppermint. "Why is it always Persia, Baron? She asks me about Persia, and gives me no rest."
"She must love you, or she wouldn't ask. Women don't ask about the histories of men for whom they have no feeling," the shorter, older one replied as he caressed his scarf of fine cashmere. "I want to hear of it as well. Perhaps I too love you, Erik."
The tall man laughed, ragged claws scraping across metal. "Women ask, ask again, but never can you tell them the answers they seek, never can the truth be wrapped up in a tidy enough bundle to satisfy their tender sensibilities."
"Perhaps you underestimate her."
"Baron, you don't know her."
"Erik, perhaps it is you who does not know her. Introduce me to her – the Bal Masque is tomorrow."
"Never. You will never see her."
"I can see her on stage any time I wish."
"You will never kiss her hand," Erik said. "She is my jewel, one that I keep in a velvet case and take out for no man."
"How very Persian of you."
"Insult me further, and I will suddenly lose my motivation to help you with your particular problems. I've arranged for an introduction for you tomorrow night, one that I promise you will find to your liking. Be satisfied with that."
A waiter walked by carrying a tray laden with iced champagne. "Would you like some?" the Baron asked, noting the man's long brown hair curling over the tender nape of a winter-pale neck.
"With peppermint schnapps? Hardly. And why do you make an infernal pest of yourself by quizzing me about a country, about a time that is decades gone?"
"Because I see the light in your eyes when that name gets mentioned, and I have spent my whole adult life guided by those tiny mysterious sparks that flare up in a man, that illuminate the corridors into his soul."
"Be careful what corridors you tread, Baron," Erik said, and then sighed as he looked at the other man's lined face that waited so patiently. "Very well. I have a story for you, to give you an idea of what it was like. No doubt you think of the paintings of Ingres, of white-limbed beauties with waterfalls of waving red hair, lolling on marble poolsides. The Shah had women, dozens of them, but they lacked the fine features given them by the salon painters. Even so, he was protective of them. After I had lived in the palace for about a year, his chief eunuch, the one responsible for harem security, called me in to see him.
" 'The women ask about you again,' he said, disgruntled.
" 'I amuse them, and they are grateful for the opportunity to practice their French.'
" 'They say they are tired of having us interrupt your visits, that we make you leave before they are ready. Also, they suspect you of being a eunuch yourself.'
" 'Why is that?' I asked, although I already knew.
" 'Because you refuse to submit to Dr. Mansour's examination. Not that it would be enough, of course.'
" 'Of course not.' I knew that a superficial physical examination alone was sometimes not adequate to judge whether the castrating operation had been entirely successful."
"I'm confused," the Baron interrupted. "When my men clipped calves or colts on our old estate, there was no doubt everything was gone. How could that be unclear with a man?"
"Men are more delicate than cattle or horses. The Copts had perfected a means of castration where only the blood vessel was cut. It was done through a tiny slit, and the outer structure, the 'bag of life,' as it was called, remained intact. Many preferred that in their eunuchs; they didn't want them to appear marred, and there was far less chance of death. Sometimes with this technique, though, the vessels would regrow, and function would return." Erik sighed heavily again. "You see why I can tell her virtually nothing of Persia? It's all 'unfitting for ladies.'"
"Perhaps it is you who finds it uncomfortable and unfitting. It's no wonder she's curious. Everyone talks about the eunuchs of the seraglios, but women especially get very few details."
Erik stretched himself out to his full length in the leather chair, and went on. " 'Are you a eunuch?' the security chief asked me straight out.
"'Why is it important?' I answered.
"His moon face normally showed calm, however, now he reddened not with embarrassment but anger. 'Because the women in my charge are making a nuisance of themselves. When the Shah-in-Shah (long may he live) visits them, all they talk of is the French legerdemainist, whom our sovereign greedily reserves to himself.' "
"The Shah knows that I am always at his disposal. But this examination ... is it painful? Will it damage me?'
"He screwed his fat face up into what was probably a laugh, although it looked like a sneer. 'You know, Trap-door Maker, I have never liked you. You descend from Russia like a hawk and catch everyone in these talons of yours. You've even won over the Shah's cousin, that young newly appointed chief of police. I saw what lies under that mask on your first day, do you remember? I would say you are so damaged already that one or two more alterations won't matter. But never having had the pleasure of seeing how far your peculiarities extend beneath your robes, I reserve judgement. As to the examination,' and here he leered, 'Some find it less than pleasant. Some find it enjoyable. But I have never seen anyone damaged,' and he gave a knowing little chuckle.
" 'I wish an audience with the Shah himself,' I demanded. The chief eunuch fixed me with a look of hate, but did not deny my request. Fortunately Nasir was in Tehran at the time, even occasionally in the Golestan Palace itself, and the next day saw me.
" 'You must understand,' Nasir said to me, 'to the women, my building plans are unimportant. That is, until they want a new and more beautiful palazzo, or want to hear what their rivals say about them when they smoke the hookah together in a closed room. They think only of their own amusements, do they not? They want you to walk freely among them, although if you did, I think I would get no more work out of you, for they would engage you constantly in conversation and song and entertainment. I have explained time and again that you cannot, but they insist we find out for certain.'
" 'Why are they so unsure?' I asked, but I knew.
" 'Because while you have been offered women, unbelievers like yourself of course, you have consistently refused. The women don't believe you are capable. They know that among your own people the castrated condition is considered shameful, and that you would be accustomed to hiding it. They give me no peace about it and say if he is a eunuch, let him come in among us freely, and so, Lover of Trapdoors, I insist that you submit to our examination.'
" 'Not Dr. Mansour's?' I asked. 'I am willing to reconsider that previously foolish refusal.'
" 'There are certain inconsistent results of which the good doctor's observation cannot reassure us. Our examination is more thorough, and more conclusive.' He must have seen me flinch, for he said laughingly, 'Most men do not find it uncomfortable.'
" 'What is this examination, precisely?'
"He twisted his small lithe form around nervously. 'It's best that you not anticipate,' he replied.
" 'And if I refuse?'
" 'You prepare to leave the country tomorrow. I value your skills, but you have made good drawings, and I can pass them on to other builders. Seven women here call me husband, and by the rubrics of my faith I have to keep them all content. Then there are their sisters, their cousins, the concubines, the dancers ... Sometimes it is a great weariness, and I envy you Europeans your single wife, although not your depressing lack of sensual variety. Then, there is the consideration that my chief eunuch is responsible for all the women's safety, and if he is perturbed, if he is anxious, he cannot serve me as I require. That doesn't even begin to tell you of the complaining I hear from the Queen Mother.'
"So that's what was behind it, I thought. 'Why can't Dr. Mansour perform an examination similar to yours?' I asked him.
" 'Just as I submit to my faith, so does Dr. Mansour yield himself to his. As a follower of Isa and Maryam, he would find our techniques objectionable.' His face took on a faint expression of pleading. 'Were you submitted to Allah, I would not trouble you so. And you know, my clever one, perhaps you should consider the Path of Submission. So many doors would open to you here, and not just the hidden ones you insert into my palaces. I can find you a wife from among the faithful, more than one if you wish, beautiful women as fat as you like with lovely dark eyes and brows like ravens' wings. You can live here at court not as a servant but as a courtier.
"Nasir must have caught my expression of disdain. 'No, please,' he went on. 'Don't start in again on your face. I have seen it revealed and naked before, and to be honest, there are worse. When smallpox swept through Tehran a decade ago, there were people whose faces literally had melted. Skin covered their eyes and obscured their noses, so that they could scarcely see or breathe. Mansour told me that one man's member had practically separated from his body. So you see, my friend, we are not squeamish here. But if you are to stay, we insist on knowing whether you are a whole man or not.'"
"He sounds like the very devil of tyranny," the Baron remarked, refilling his glass from the mostly-empty bottle that sat between them.
"When he sat on the Peacock Throne he was supreme," Erik said, "but in the hands of the women and eunuchs of his court he yielded like clay. I asked him for a day to think about it, and he agreed.
"I lay awake all that night. While Persia would never be my home, I worked there, and everything I did was useful, everything I made was well-regarded. In France I would have labored for years as a journeyman under some master. In Persia I was my own man, master of my own crews. In Persia I could wrap this battered visage in a scrap of silk. There was no need for my false nose, no need to perfect the full facial mask on which I now work so that she and I can live untroubled in Paris."
"You've already told me the boys held little attraction for you," the Baron remarked. "So why not just yield, accept a woman, and be done with it?"
"I refused Persian women because for one thing, their looks did not appeal to me. Spare me that expression, Baron, the one that says I have no right to have any taste when it comes to women. Their squat forms and dark, beetlebrowed features held no charm for me, and I can assure you they would have held none for you either, although the beauty of their boys would have set you to writing poetry, as they did half the men in that country. But feminine beauty in Persia? It was not to be found. The 'little sultana,' the Shah's favorite wife, was supposed to be the loveliest woman in Persia, but were she to stroll down Hausmann Boulevard in Paris no one would look twice at her.
"Besides the lack of appeal, I myself had constructed listening tubes, walls that were not what they seemed, elaborately conceived spyholes. Given the court's ravenous curiosity about me, I fully expected my own tricks to be used against me were I to avail myself of a concubine. Needless to say, it was a bit of an inhibiting factor."
"I don't believe you, Erik," the Baron remarked. "Your explanation is too facile. Surely in that whole country there was one woman whom you could have found fair."
"Believe what you like," Erik remarked, offhand. "But I continue. To return to France felt like walking into a living death, so I told the chief eunuch I would submit. He rubbed his hands together and looked altogether too happy at the prospect, and I grew sick with fear. He brought me into a room, a little parlor with a large carved screen, and two other eunuchs joined us. All the castrati are unusually tall, and they are not all stout, either. One lean and strong one had his face set in a permanent mask of cruelty. He moved over to the door, guarding it with his arms folded. The other was enormous, a rolling bag of fat. The huge eunuch told me to lie down on the couch and remove all my garments below the waist. Trembling, I did so. He put his puffy, cold hands on me in shameful ways, and shortly his clinical gropings took on a caressing quality."
The Baron shifted in his chair. "Monstrous," he said, but his breath quickened just a little, barely noticeable.
Erik looked at him closely, marking his reaction, then continued. " 'The chief eunuch turned to the fat one, and said, 'Bring it here.'
"From a cabinet the fat eunuch drew out a long leather object. At first I could not understand what it was, and then I knew. I tried to leap up from the couch, but the lean guard was too fast. He pulled my arms up behind my back, and when I tried to kick the others, each one tied one of my legs to the settee, spreading them apart as wide as they would go.
" 'Don't worry,' the chief eunuch said to me with a leer. 'It won't hurt you. The women use them for their pleasure, so how bad can it be?'
" The lean guard chimed in, 'It would have been easier had he just taken a woman. Then she could have told us.'
" 'Who knows?' the fat eunuch said. 'Some like it this way. I for one am always happy to oblige.' He pulled my hips towards him and caressed me again expertly, sensuously, until nature's irresistible consequence followed, and I could feel myself given over to pleasure against my will. The chief eunuch first oiled the leather prop, and then myself in an unspeakable place, and before I knew it, it happened. Up to the hilt he thrust the object..."
"My God, man," the Baron interrupted, panting openly now.
Erik laughed the same ragged metallic laugh but his eyes were cold. "I cried out, I screamed, but they were relentless. The corpulent eunuch sweated, and his flesh shook from all his exertions. They laughed, they cheered me on, they remarked how they would like me to enjoy them under better circumstances. Then as I fell completely under the sway of that probing, thrusting club, they grew silent, almost awed. I cried out loudly and when I spent myself, it flew up in a long arc which they watched in fascination, and they almost forgot to collect in a cloth the incontrovertible proof that they needed. 'Then we would have to do this all over again,' the fat one laughed with relish, and continued to caress me even as I lay gasping and limp. They could tell the Shah that yes, I was a whole man, and thus barred from free and easy contact with his women."
He stopped his narrative, choking with emotion. "Barbaric," the Baron murmured, but he flushed with excitement, throbbed at the thought of this arch and arrogant man pulsing with helpless lust under the Persian eunuch's hands. He licked his lips. "What happened after that?" he asked.
Erik took on a faraway expression. "It was never the same. Having their curiosity satisfied made the women of the court gossip even more. I couldn't see their faces, but their voices grew more hostile, as if I'd cheated them out of something. It disappointed them." Then, as if he tired of the topic, he picked up a pencil and started to sketch on a scrap of paper.
The Baron swallowed through a throat dry as sand, and gulped the remainder of his drink. It burned all the way down. "It's not a story for a Frenchwoman, is it?"
Erik looked up absently, eyes like yellow coins in the lamplight. "I told her that stories of Persia would burn her like fire."
"Women don't believe us, do they?" the Baron said.
"No," Erik replied softly. "They do not. Perhaps when you make the acquaintance of Mademoiselle Giry, you will find her character to serve as an exception."
"One should be optimistic."
"She is a good girl," Erik said, suddenly all sternness. "You know the terms of our arrangement. She marries you and your family releases all your English assets. And you treat her like the empress she deserves to be." He glared at the long-haired waiter, then at the Baron. "Not one tear shall fall from her eyes because of one such as him, either."
A mist of cold descended out of the warm room upon the Baron. "Of course not," he whispered.
Erik's smile slashed across his white face. "It is good when men understand one another. A game of chess before we adjourn for the night?"