Dancing with Kings. Eva Stachniak

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      The salty taste of blood inside her mouth frightens her. The memory of happiness, of lightness is gone. Instead, she has to face her mother’s fury.

      ‘What did he do?’ Mana screams and pushes her on her bed. Another slap, weaker than the one before. Her skirt is lifted, her legs spread. She has been damaged, nibbled at and spat out. Tried and left aside. Who will buy damaged goods now? What man in his right mind would pay for what he can have for free? Who would keep a cow if the milk comes for nothing?

      Mana is poking inside her, feeling for the damage. How cruel her fingers can be. How rough.

      ‘Was he hard,’ she asks. ‘Did he put it in all the way? ‘Dou-Dou, I’m talking to you. Answer me, girl. ‘Tell me everything. I’m your mother.

      ‘It’s for your own good.

      ‘Plenty of dirty pots in the kitchen that need to be scrubbed. The maid can be let go, the scruffy thing she is, and dirty too. You want dirt? You can scrub the pots with ashes. See how your hands redden from scalding. See how your knuckles grow and crack open. See how they bleed.

      ‘Is that what you want, girl? Is that what I gave you your life for? Is that why I screamed with pain for the twelve hours you took to be born? Tearing me apart, almost killing me?

      ‘And for what? A poke from this runt? This good-fornothing? This high-and-mighty cavalier whose tongue is stronger than his dick. Who now walks around the town in his glory, telling everyone what you let him do.’

      In the end Mana’s tears are harder to bear than her anger. Seeing her hide her face in her hands in shame. Hearing her sobs.

      ‘All I ever wanted for you is now lost.’

      Dou-Dou wants to scream that this is not true. Isn’t she still her mother’s beloved daughter as she was a day ago? But her mother only looks at her with unseeing eyes.

      ‘You do not know the power of the human tongue.’

      The sun is caught in Mana’s raven black hair. If angels have faces, that’s how they must look. The shape of the brows enlarging the eyes, the cheeks full and smooth. The lips like cherries, glistening from the tears that have rolled down her cheeks.

      ‘Is that what you want girl? Is that what I gave you your life for? Is that why I screamed from pain for the twelve hours you took to be born? Tearing me apart so badly that I could have no more children?

      ‘I’ve always wanted my daughter to do better than I’ve done. Not to waste what God has given her. Not to throw it away. Was it too much to hope for?’

      

      Konstantin Glavani comes back from the tavern. Even from his steps, Dou-Dou can tell that he knows. From the force with which his heels hit the ground. From the way his fist lands on the table. With a thump. With choking anger. Something falls off, rolls, smashing on the floor.

      There is a slap, then another one, and a scream. ‘Like mother, like daughter,’ he yells. ‘Is that what you teach her? To spread her legs for every loser in Bursa?

      ‘To be the talk of the town?’

      The door opens and Sophie’s body softens like a kitten readying itself for a fall. She is lying on her stomach, sobbing into a pillow and her father is standing beside the bed. His breath is all she hears. In and out, in and out. In his big hand she can see the handle of the whip Konstantin Glavani uses to corral the sheep.

      This silence frightens her more than Mana’s screams.

      He lifts her skirt, her shift, and exposes her buttocks. If she doesn’t tense them, it will hurt less. The swish of leather through the air comes first, before the spasm, before the warmth of her pee dissolving into the mattress. When the strap touches her skin, she feels another spasm. And another until there is nothing but burning pain.

      She doesn’t scream. Her face is buried in the pillow. Tears soak into the embroidered fabric. Mana had stitched these birds singing on branches, their beaks open wide. And the tall cypresses that sway in the wind. She did it in another time when Sophie was but a child and wanted to know about everything. How to make such a bird look real. How to make a thread go through the eye of the needle.

      Her father stops and turns her over. ‘Look at me,’ he says. ‘See the man who can’t look his friends in the eye. Who has to listen in silence as his daughter’s name is dragged in filth. The man whose daughter is a whore.’

      She looks at him. He is standing above her, big body swaying, his breath smelling of wine and roasted lamb. Red blotches have sprung up on his neck, his mouth is twisted into a grimace of disgust. She remembers that his fingers can bend a horseshoe. He will not be made the laughing-stock of Bursa. He will not allow his daughter to disgrace his name. He will kill her first, and then kill himself.

      ‘A brood mare.’

      He lifts his hand in the air. A big hand, calloused and reddened, with chapped skin on the knuckles. Will her neck snap with a crack, like that of a chicken?

      She fixes her eyes on him. Everything can happen now. Everything is nestled in such moments, the malice, the revenge, the pain. The hand falls down slowly, limp, alongside his body. It clenches into a fist and then relaxes, defeated.

      How does one escape the power of human tongues?

      She has heard of a man slashing his daughter’s face with a razor. Of burning her cheeks with hot coals to scar her beauty. Her father keeps looking at her, forcing himself to keep looking, until, in an instant, he turns on his heel, and walks away. The door slams after him, and she wipes the tears from her eyes and cheeks. There is a pitcher of water and a basin her mother has left for her, and she splashes cold water on her face. Then she squats over the basin and washes the place between her legs, still wet from her pee. Where the strap hit her, she can feel needles of pain in a web of punishment, the memory of her defeat.

      

      Konstantin Glavani announces that they are leaving Bursa.

      She watches his quick, determined steps, listens to the stomping of his heels on the floor. Outside, the earth smells of camomile, lemon blossom, and laurel. Her friends are in the fields, running or riding horses. Or making bonfires on the edge of the river. Diamandi is there too, but she won’t see him. She is not allowed to leave the house of shame.

      The stories flow, thicker and more poisonous each day. The stories men whisper in low, lusty whispers. The stories women repeat with gasps of disbelief. There will be no end to them now, no end to the malice of lashing tongues. The torrent of gossip will follow her until the day God pleases to call her to His presence and account for her sins. An egg once broken cannot be made whole again.

      Konstantin Glavani is pacing the room. He has been punished for the sins of the flesh, for marrying beneath himself. For being a fool and closing his ears to the words of the wise. Slash her throat, people tell him. Make her kneel in the dust and cut your daughter’s throat. Make her bellow like a heifer when she sees a knife raised above her head.

      What a fool he has been for thinking that God has blessed him when his daughter was born. For thinking his little Dou-Dou would be the light of his soul, the blessing of his old age. For thinking that he, a father of but one child, would sit in her garden one day and rock his grandchildren on his knees.

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