The sight of the Persian palace made Nadir's heart leap within his chest. More than hearing his native tongue again, more than the fragrances and tastes of his native land's meals, more than being among his own people who understood his customs, the palace was his final and true homecoming. It had been months since he had laid eyes on the minarets and spires and he couldn't suppress a little glad gasp. His eyes immediately flew to the tower; the windows were dark.
Just as quickly as it had risen within him, his heart now sunk to the pit of his stomach. He chided himself for being so emotional over it; it was obviously what had been designed to happen. Why else would the shah send Nadir away but to clear away the last objection to the simple extermination of a very real threat?
Of course Nadir could only think of the boy during his travels. He had been sent to the boy's homeland to find French entertainers. All day he was surrounded by things he wished to share with him, things that he longed to show him. And yet...there were times that he had forgotten the boy existed at all, forgot all about tangles of court life and the demands that were made of him. And he was happy to forget. Guilt now mingled with sadness in the core of his heart and it was with this heaviness that he approached the room the shah was waiting for him in.
Upon entering, he stopped in his tracks - but, sensing it was a betrayal of his emotions, he spurred himself on. He made the appropriate supplications as he approached the throne but he had seen it - the Louis Philippe-style chair at the side of the dais where the boy usually sat. Perhaps...Well, Nadir was cautious with his optimism.
"Oh king of kings, I know you will find these entertainers the pinnacle of European style, perfection in every way!"
"They're resting in the cottage now?" The shah asked, waving Nadir to his feet.
"Yes, your majesty, but I believe they will be recovered for the receiving feast you've planned for them tomorrow, and then ready to perform beginning the following night through the week. And they understand, your excellency, what a privilege it is for you to allow them to demonstrate their considerable talent. I must also thank you, your highness, for indulging this idea of mine and allowing me to bring a taste of French entertainment to the court. You know…" Nadir polished his pince-nez with his handkerchief. "...the managers of the opera house were quite intrigued by your interest and wondered if your highness would deign to visit their establishment sometime in the future. One of them has traveled with the group, in fact; I'm certain he'll bring it up. Something to consider…"
"We'll see. Your letters describing their talents were quite interesting and I look forward to what they have to offer."
There was a moment of silence then where the shah seemed lost in thought and Nadir waited to either be dismissed or answer further questions. The shah stroked his beard and turned his eyes to his faithful servant.
"I know you are thinking of him. Don't worry - he should be in his apartment. But we should have a discussion regarding our little friend before you get too comfortable, daroga."
Nadir's heart felt as if it was doing somersaults within his chest and he worried there was a repeat of his past medical emergency in his future. "Your eminence?"
"Daroga, our little friend has been an invaluable addition to the court for many years. And yet…" the shah tapped his finger against his chin. "You can't deny that he's been...less than obedient these last few years. I know, I know...my daughter brings out the worst in him. But it was even before that - don't you think, daroga? - that he was starting to show signs of disobedience. And he doesn't respond very well to any of our methods to get him to stay in line."
Nadir waited, head bowed, to hear where this line of thought was going.
"Did your man tell you what happened after your episode?"
As they were traveling to Paris Darius had, in fact, told Nadir what had happened during the time immediately after Nadir fell ill. The next day, the princess and her husband were set to leave but they delayed departure one day longer. There was the matter of retribution for the boy's little trick of putting the court to sleep and the princess wanted to be there for it. Nadir was grateful that he had been far out of the country and away from the royal family when Darius recounted what happened next. There would've been no way he would've been able to hold his tongue if he had been at court.
The shah decided the boy was to be flogged. Corporal punishment wasn't new; after all, it hadn't even been a year since the shah personally broke the boy's hands for trying to steal a kiss from one of the girls who served in the haram. It was these snaps of cruelty that defined the borders of the shah's tolerance.
One way or another, Darius found himself as another witness in the butterfly garden, no doubt engineered so that he could tell Nadir the story of what transpired. It was quite gruesome; the boy was in the position many of his victims had been in before, with a eunuch wielding the whip and the shah and the princess watching from their customary perch. Unfortunately, the boy had been conditioned to take a beating early in life and held up for longer than they expected.
What they wanted was a performance, they wanted to make him sing. He submitted without hesitation but withheld his voice, no matter how fierce the lashing, no matter how much he bled. The shah looked on, grim yet determined to met out the punishment. The princess' experience, however, was far more varied.
First was anticipation, delighting in the sight of the boy stripped down and humbled for transgressions against her. After the first crack of the whip, she looked on with a vulgar, almost obscene pleasure. As the the silence wore on, she began to writhe with frustration. Next came anger, her green eyes sparking from within the shadows of her screened gallery. Inspiration came last.
"Oh, daddy, daddy! Don't hurt him anymore! Hasn't he suffered enough?" The princess threw herself at her father, hanging off his arm. The shah held out a hand and the eunuch stayed his whip. "Daddy, if he's been so bad to you, why not get rid of him - send him to me! I'll make sure he stays in line…"
Here, she approached the balustrade and looked down with gleaming, scheming eyes. Regardless, whatever she had in mind wouldn't come to fruition. The boy grinned - his terrifying, chilling smile - and said he served the shah alone as he was the one who purchased him. This earned her fury - but the shah's mercy. The whipping ended but Darius mentioned the boy was kept in the prison until Nadir had summoned him upon his recovery. What kind of pain must he have been in when he appeared at Nadir's bedside?
"His obedience just then...I believed it, but just for that moment. I think our clever friend has a way of...changing our perceptions sometimes. Don't you think, Daroga?"
Nadir's eyes went to the dark red ruby that sat on the shah's littlest finger for just a moment and nodded hesitantly, if just to agree with his king. "First, he was caught with the girl from the haram. Then, he put us to sleep with his song. What did he do during that time? You said you found him in his room, locked up tight. That can't be all…"
"That was all, your highness, I swear it…" Nadir once again bowed deeply. "The shock of it all was so great...I must be of more delicate constitution than I thought…"
"He has run you ragged, hasn't he?"
Nadir remained silent.
"There was another transgression…"
Nadir swallowed hard. What now?
"...although I'm not really sure if it was a transgression or not. He said it was a mistake, and at the time, I believed him...but now I'm not certain."
Nadir suppressed an exasperated sigh.
"Did you know...one of the architects that helped with the creation of the palace addition was caught trying to smuggle out the designs?"
Nadir gasped. The shah nodded and continued.
"Well, he had hoped to make it as far as perhaps India and sell the concepts. I don't like that, don't like it at all. This is my special, private palace, this is my personal jewel!" He paused, his brow furrowing. "So you know what the punishment had to be - he was made to run the maze. Our Monsieur seemed upset about the task I put him to, as if he had an affinity for the man. Is that even possible?" He seemed to ask this question to no one in particular so Nadir kept his mouth shut. "Eventually, he wore the man down, chasing him through the mirrors. The terror was something to behold...the man wasn't a criminal, wasn't used to the threat of punishment."
Nadir's stomach turned, thinking of this scholarly, rather timid man being hunted in the very creation he helped build by what he assumed was a bloodthirsty creature.
"As a mercy, the Punjab lasso was administered and that was that. So I thought!" The shah narrowed his eyes. "As they took his body for disposal, he sat up! Apparently, he had only been subdued, had only lost consciousness! Why, if the guards hadn't lingered, he could've possibly escaped!"
"...It must've been a mistake, your excellency," Nadir said with a weak, shameful smile.
"That's what he said. He said that he had made a mistake. Tell me - has that meticulous creature ever made a mistake?"
Nadir helplessly shrugged, unsure of what to say.
"I'm not sure, not completely certain that it was a mistake...but at the moment, I let it pass. That's three transgressions that I've let go. I've never been so lenient with someone who has been so disobedient. Yet when I punish him, nothing seems to reach him. He doesn't seem to care about anything...except…" The shah turned to Nadir, his intention clear in his eyes. "Well. I'm sure if I need to, we can be creative and find a way to get his attention. Don't you think, daroga?"
"Yes, your excellency." Nadir folded over into a deep bow, practically biting his tongue in two.
"Go on up to see him. No doubt he has been waiting for you to come back."
"Thank you, your grace." Nadir bowed and scraped and crawled his way out of the receiving room. With a measured step so as not to betray his excitement, he made his way to the tower. There would be another day to process all that the shah said. For now, he had quite a bit to discuss with his favorite prisoner.
At the door of the tower stood two guards - new additions, no doubt, or perhaps installed just for Nadir's absence. Nadir waved them away and jabbed the many keys in the many locks, finally opening the door. The boy was standing in the center of the room, almost in the same position Nadir last saw him in, seemingly waiting for him. In his strange little way of showing affection, he reached out and gave Nadir a light pat on the forearm with his cold, bony fingers.
"It's been a while, hasn't it?" he said meekly, trying not to betray his elation. Nadir wouldn't have it and gathered him up in a crushing embrace. The boy gave a squeak of confusion but gamely tolerated it.
Nadir ordered a proper feast to be brought up to the tower
and proceeded to eat up the entire night with his tales of Parisian life. He talked about the gardens, the cafes, the nightlife, the fashions, the people, and the crown jewel of his trip - the incredible opera house. It was a kingdom unto itself, filled with tailors sewing the clothing of heroes and queens, stagehands crafting fantastic worlds from paper, wood, and fabric, the way the air seemed to vibrate with potential right before the curtain went up, the ebb and flow of Parisian patrons going up and down the polished grand staircase.
Apparently, his royal insignia made quite an impression on the management who took great pains to show him around to his satisfaction. The combination of exoticism, the potential of a royal patron, and Nadir's charming French skills went far in allowing him quite a bit of access. The managers bent over backwards to make him happy, especially once Nadir began writing letters to the shah with his proposal. Nadir described the incredible view from the manager's personal box, box five, a perfect perch to the side of the stage that allowed one to see not only the performance but into the orchestra pit and a little bit back into the wings.
And what incredible performances! The music, the singing, the dancing - unlike anything Nadir had seen before. Nadir went on and on, trying to describe all that he had seen.
" - in the end, I was able to secure, through the shah's generosity, three singers, five musicians, and six dancers along with one of the managers. Tomorrow, you'll be able to meet them all at the reception, and then my friend, the ballerina - "
"Hold on one moment, daroga. I have to switch." The boy held up a hand to silence him.
"Switch? What do you mean?"
The boy's fingers walked over the spread set out in front of them, settling on the bowl of sugared almonds. He plucked one and placed it next to a line of nine olives on his empty plate.
"I ran out of olives. Please continue."
Nadir looked down at olives and the lone almond on the boy's plate. "What? Ran out of olives? What is this?"
"This? Well, I decided to start keeping track of every time you say 'my friend, the ballerina'. At this moment, you've mentioned her…" He made a grand show of counting out each olive "...roughly ten times."
Nadir blinked, dumbfounded.
"She must've made quite an impression on you, old man! In any case, you were saying? What did you want to tell me about meeting 'your friend, the ballerina', tomorrow?"
Nadir fumbled for words for a moment, unable to speak.
And then he heard it.
He giggled.
The boy blankly stared at him as if he couldn't believe his friend had uttered such a ridiculous sound. Nadir could scarcely believe it himself. But it wasn't the first time.
No, he had made this absurd noise once before when his friend, the ballerina, had been the only one brave enough to show him down to the legendary black lake under the opera house. She was quite courageous, leading the way with a lamp held high to a bridge that stretched over the still, black waters in the depths of the basement. But there were rats down there in the dark and a rat catcher, and when this frightening entity made a brief appearance brushing past them in the artificial night, she screamed and practically leapt into Nadir's arms. At that moment, because he was nervous and because he couldn't believe he was being so familiar with such a strange yet fascinating woman, so foreign to him in every way and yet so comfortable as if he had known her before, he giggled. The sound carried in the dark and echoed, making him so self-conscious that to cover his embarrassment, all he could manage was to giggle again.
And he did so now, giggling once more. The lone drawn-in eyebrow visible on the boy's face began climbing up his forehead as his eyes widened with disbelief. Nadir stuffed his handkerchief under his nose to stifle any further giggling and poured himself a cup of tea with a traitorous, tremulous hand.
"Aren't you the least bit excited? You'll be meeting artists and fellow Frenchmen tomorrow," Nadir said, attempting a recovery.
"I am not French."
"What? How can you say that?"
"You've said it yourself. I'm not really French, I am a parody of a Frenchman."
Nadir paused. Perhaps he said something to this effect but he couldn't imagine saying these exact words. "Don't be ridiculous. You're plenty French. You'll get along just fine."
"They won't like me." The boy rolled the one almond with one finger back and forth across the edge of his plate.
"Of course they'll like you!" Nadir tried to sound confident but the truth was he wasn't quite certain what the reception would be when they discovered there was a Frenchman enslaved in the Persian palace. What would be worse is if the shah demanded the boy entertain them beyond just a bit of piano or violin and they changed their mind, deciding he deserved to be in chains.
The boy sighed."The question is to what degree they'll dislike me."
"You're so negative." Nadir waved away his concerns. "You haven't even met these people and already, you're being so depressing. You know, my friend, the ballerina, is very open minded and - "
The boy plunked another sugared almond on the plate. Nadir stared at it, conscious of what he had just said, unable to stop yet another giggle from escaping his lips.