When I awoke an old man was there. He wore a different style of dress, less frightening 
to me than that of the turbaned Turks, and his eyes were kindly. He bent near me. He 
spoke a new language which was uncommonly soft and sweet, but I couldn't understand him.
  
  A voice speaking Greek told him that I was a mute, had no wits and growled like a beast.
  
  Time to laugh again, but I was too sick.
  
  The same Greek told the old man I hadn't been torn or wounded. I was marked at a high 
price.
  
  The old man made some dismissing gestures as he shook his head and talked a song in the 
new speech. He laid his hands on me and gently coaxed me to my feet.
  
  He took me through a doorway into a small chamber, draped all in red silk.
  
  I spent the rest of the voyage in this chamber, except for one night.
  
  On that one night-and I can't place it in terms of the journey-I awoke, and finding him 
asleep beside me, this old man who never touched me except to pat or console me, I went 
out, up the ladder, and stood for a long time looking up at the stars.
  
  We were at anchor in a port, and a city of dark blue-black buildings with domed roofs 
and bell towers tumbled down the cliffs to the harbor where the torches turned beneath 
the ornamented arches of an arcade.
  
  All this, the civilized shore, looked probable to me, appealing, but I had no thought 
that I could jump ship and get free. Men wandered beneath the archways. Beneath the arch 
nearest to me, a strangely garbed man in a shiny helmet, with a big broad sword dangling 
on his hip, stood guard against the branching fretted column, carved so marvelously to 
look like a tree as it supported the cloister, like the remnant of a palace into which 
this channel for ships had been rudely dug.
  
  I didn't look at the shore much after this first long and memorable glimpse. I looked 
up at Heaven and her court of mythical creatures fixed forever in the all powerful and 
inscrutable stars. Ink black was the night beyond them, and they so like jewels that old 
poetry came back to me, the sound even of hymns sung only by men.
  
  As I recall it, hours passed before I was caught, beaten fiercely with a leather thong 
and dragged back down in the hold. I knew the beating would stop when the old man saw me. 
He was furious and trembling. He gathered me to him, and we bedded down again. He was too 
old to ask anything of me.
  
  I didn't love him. It was clear to the witless mute that this man regarded him as 
something quite valuable, to be preserved for sale. But I needed him and he wiped my 
tears. I slept as much as I could. I was sick every time the waves were rough. Sometimes 
the heat alone sickened me. I didn't know real heat. The man fed me so well that 
sometimes I thought I was a being kept by him like a fatted calf to be sold for food.
  
  When we reached Venice, it was late in the day. I had no hint of the beauty of Italy. 
I'd been locked away from it, down in this grime pit with the old keeper, and being taken 
up into the city I soon saw that my suspicions about the old keeper were perfectly right.
  
  In a dark room, he and another man fell into bitter argument. Nothing could make me 
speak. Nothing could make me indicate that I understood anything that was happening to 
me. I did, however, understand. Money changed hands. The old man left without looking 
back.
  
  They tried to teach me things. The soft caressing new language was all around me. Boys 
came, sat beside me, tried to coax me with soft kisses and embraces. They pinched the 
nipples on my chest and tried to touch the private parts which I'd been taught not even 
to look at on account of the bitter occasion of sin.
  
  Several times I resolved to pray. But I discovered I couldn't remember the words. Even 
the images were indistinct. Lights had gone out forever which had guided me through all 
my years. Every time I drifted deep into thought, someone struck me or yanked at my hair.
  
  They always came with ointments after they hit me. They were careful to treat the 
abraded skin. Once, when a man struck me on the side of the face, another shouted and 
grabbed his upraised hand before he could land the second blow.
  
  I refused food and drink. They couldn't make me take it. I couldn't take it. I didn't 
choose to starve. I simply couldn't do anything to keep myself alive. I knew I was going 
home. I was going home. I would die and go home. It would be an awful painful passage. I 
would have cried if I'd been alone. But I was never alone. I'd have to die in front of 
people. I hadn't seen real daylight in forever. Even the lamps hurt my eyes because I was 
so much in unbroken darkness. But people were always there.
  
  The lamp would brighten. They sat in a ring around me with grimy little faces and quick 
pawlike hands that wiped my hair out of my face or shook me by the shoulder. I turned my 
face to the wall.
  
  A sound kept me company. This was to be the end of my life. The sound was the sound of 
water outside. I could hear it against the wall. I could tell when a boat passed and I 
could hear the wood pylons creaking, and I lay my head against the stone and felt the 
house sway in the water as if we were not beside it but planted in it, which of course we 
were.
  
  Once I dreamed of home, but I don't remember what it was like. I woke, I cried, and 
there came a volley of little greetings from the shadows, wheedling, sentimental voices.
  
  I thought I wanted to be alone. I didn't. When they locked me up for days and nights in 
a black room without bread or water, I began to scream and pound on the walls. No one 
came.
  
  After a while, I fell into a stupor. It was a violent jolt when the door was opened. I 
sat up, covering my eyes. The lamp was a menace. My head throbbed.
  
  But there came a soft insinuating perfume, a mixture of the smell of sweet burning wood