Chapter 7 · Untitled Chapter

The host says the afternoon is finished, and forty men stand up at once, which is not a loud sound. Wool against wool. A cuff button set right. The chandelier keeps its hum going over their heads, and I keep my place in the gallery with my back to the dark of the stair, because the clearing is the part of the afternoon nobody thinks is a scene.

They think the scene is what was said. I have never found it so.

The servers come in through the side door without being called. Two of them, and a third who carries nothing and only holds the door, and the brass tray, and the Dallah still faintly working its heat through the cloth.

All afternoon the pourer began at the cushion to the host's right and moved outward from there, right hand, right hand, the finjan filled to less than half, the dates set at the rim, and every man given the chance to say enough with a tilt or a palm.