My friend Cliff took to a dwarf in Trebizond. Swaggering out of our hotel we passed behind ranks of men on their knees, at prayer, while all around them traffic whizzed, and then we approached the dwarf. He sprang out of his basket and with his left hand gestured to us to enter his restaurant-a splendid gesture. He also bowed, but only slightly, perforce, him reaching no higher than our stomachs. He was perfectly proportioned, but so small that he lived in a basket, serving only to motion, with his splendid gesture, visitors into the cavern of his restaurant.

My weathered friend did not heed the gesture, but, with an equally good grace, stopped and shook the dwarf's right hand-the entire arm disappeared for an instant inside Cliff's genial palm. "Hos bulduk efendim," he explained, "but we are out for a walk, geziyoruz, and perhaps we will gratefully return." The dwarf climbed back into his basket, and we walked on. The next day, the same reciprocal attentions; recognized by the dwarf, Cliff again told him: "Bugün de biraz geziyoruz," and back to the basket went his dwarf.

We thought of the dwarf on that second afternoon. Under our sunshade, in one of the tea houses that cover the celebrated square in Trebizond, we exchanged our thoughts. This great forum down to which, through a maze of winding alleys, some very late Byzantine emperors descended from their ramparts, clad in cloth of gold, to review the dazzling Circassian and the other maidens: there assembled, all the maidens, especially the Armenian ones, hoped to be chosen as brides, though one alone would be chosen. This celebrated arena: the dragged-out blare of Pontic trumpets, brisk tattoos from kettledrums, the rancid smell of the executioner's moustache as he sucks it, the puff of smoke from the pipe he deposits on the block, the flash of the executioner's sword as he lifts it, the gasp of the thong, the glitter in the eyes of Cliff's dwarf's forefathers. Grinding as it was, that ancient street life, they came to know no other, and flesh for generations absorbed its avalanche of noise so fondly that, far from going deaf to it, or blind to the pulsing hologram of signs it was the skin but not the heart of, desire could finally take no more and scraped from its echoing barrel's bottom not dregs enough for one last crackling loaf, only enough for a solitary börek, frittered, in its basket. O slow decay of the golden haze historians twirling giant locust antennae lacquered over the town!-Others, meanwhile, had waited for the barbarians-all the latest books tossed aside, unread; all the puzzles long solved, puzzle contrivers tearing their last few hairs out; what curlings of lips into sneer or pout when noble youths and their nanas, bored with Miss Byzantium ceremonies, cackle anew about fashions the barbarians might bring in, mangling quotations as they poohpooh the pomp of the cavalry, the quibbles of bishops, and stick out their tongues at recently ennobled nouveaux riches who stand there all agog, there on the great square, while robes rustle in the sea breeze and towers tremble in the noon mirage. Did the barbarians really gnaw the haunches of living oxen for dinner? Did, in their country, chickens run around raw? Did those men wear trousers? Why does the Emperor flit like that through his palace, from window to window, showing the point of his nose now and then, but a nose so accustomed to the smell of blood that it might as well be the nose of a ghost?

On the third day, Cliff was all set to shake again his dwarf's hand, as we passed by, but his dwarf never sprang from his basket. He was not looking at us, and he made no gesture. Cliff's dwarf was miffed. We paused, but he clove to his basket, and he yawned. That small yawn from Cliff's dwarf dismayed us. Would he leap up, if we passed? With what contortion might he reverse his gesture? Would Cliff's miffed dwarf cuss us out? We knew his voice: it buzzed. Cliff's dwarf's voice was a deep and loud drone, a hornet's voice; or no, none but the concentrated buzz, heard as from some middle heaven, of a thousand years on the street. "Hos geldiniz!" he had droned, "buyurun...." and then his splendid gesture. But now, yes, miffed, the dwarf only yawned. As we walked on, he hurtled out of his basket, on his feet in a flash, and we heard him buzz behind us: "Never again will I say buyurun to you, nevermore; do you suppose, messiö, that the times long gone are bigger than me, sweeter than the feasts I bid you to, more important than my yawn? The fire, messiö, the sacred fire, you forgot it!" We turned, too late, Cliff's dwarf had hopped back into his basket, not too late to glimpse the grin he tried to exchange with his patron, who had bustled out of the cavern into the doorway, hands lifted, shaking his head.

lingo 5

Books in print by Christopher Middleton

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