“It must be that you’ve found me out, for now I’d accept no backsheesh even if you’d give it, and I beg that my saying go in one of effendi’s ears and out the other.”
“We must be on guard against tricksters, but it comes to me that you are honest, and I’ll give you a silver dinar.”
“I can’t go back on my word, effendi, but I’ll implore you Allah’s blessing, and if it comes to you in the form of good offices from humble men like me, and thereby you live to pass this way again, you may give me a feast.”
The opium seller salaamed deeply and went his way. When Nicolo investigated the report, he discovered that a new variety of fiber had been used in shipbuilding for about five years, although the builders maintained that it was fully as strong as the old. The more they thumped their palms with their fists, the greater the doubt raised in Nicolo’s mind. Also the single-sailed craft, undecked except for hides, were small, foul, and crawling with rats and roaches.
So it came to pass that on Maffeo’s next protest at the sea journey, Nicolo yielded, with fine handsomeness, to his wishes.[13]
As we set forth up the caravan road to Shamil and Nevergun Pass I pondered with my usual anxiety the words and deeds of Nicolo. His guess that the Tatar-speaking opium seller had been employed by owners of antiquated ships was on the right street but the wrong corner. The real truth was, the man also spoke Arabic, and had been employed by me.
The trick was of the caliber of the first I had played in my lifelong war with Nicolo—falsifying his letter for the eyes of my uncle Zane. The cunning was of the same low sort and the immediate success of its operation as notable. Both had been hazardous, and in the first instance I had ultimately paid the piper. The piper’s fee would be a great deal higher for the present dancing, and I could only pray to my saints and trust to my luck for deliverance therefrom.
But the saints are not supposed to support artifice and deceit, and Luck is a famous whore.
3
It is hard to believe that Hell itself is hotter than Hormuz. Sometimes a wind blows across the plain that must be the breath of Hell, for men breathe it and fall dead and their bodies give the appearance of being baked in a long, slow fire. During our stay there, it smote an army of nearly seven thousand marching to collect the king’s tax from a recalcitrant prince, and since there was no water in which they could lie till the pall passed, not one life was spared.
Throughout the hot season no eyes in the city can shut with sleep, the rich seeking the coolness of their well-watered country villas and the lowest beggars fleeing the walls to be beside the roads. With this, and the death wind striking without warning, you would think that folk would abandon the country to beasts, birds, snakes, and evil spirits. Instead it throngs with dark-skinned Mohammedans who appear to enjoy life almost as well as Venetians. They eat vast quantities of dates and fish. They drink a date wine, marvelously spiced, and a cordial more fragrant than musk and spikenard, known as Mohammed’s Bouquet. They keep orchards of peaches, apricots, pomegranates, and oranges. They are born and die, hope, despair, fear, challenge, love. You would think them children of God, the same as ourselves.
Only two days north of Hormuz, we came on rough, rocky, gullied ground climbing steeply for a distance of twenty miles. Here we overtook some merchants waiting with their caravans for reinforcements ere they ventured on, and we were glad of their company in the journey forward. This wilderness, and that which lay beyond the great rich plains, were the abode of beasts more savage and terrible than the black-maned lions of the desert. They were some breed of Mongols, calling themselves Karaunas, and their business was raiding caravans. Our band being strong, we saw no hair or hide of the murderous rogues clean on to the Plain of Rúdbár.
This too had been fertile land until its towns and cities were laid waste. Still my eyes found much to brighten and delight them. On the sun-baked pastures ranged the fat-tailed sheep, almost as big as the little donkeys of Hormuz. The carts and plows were often drawn by immense oxen, snow-white, with a great hump on their shoulders—some of them kneeling like camels to receive their riders, and all of them beautiful in the noble way of beasts. Turtledoves winged from thorn grove to palm clump in multitudinous darting flocks, their pace ever seeming to quicken until it suddenly stopped short at the place of lighting. And among them ranged and slew the swiftest falcons I had ever seen—some sort of peregrines, I thought—their business in life declared by their blood-red breasts.
We ate of citronlike fruits with what appeared to be tooth marks in their skins, known as the apples of Paradise. It was said that they had grown from seed in the core that Adam dropped when he and his mate had shared a forbidden feast. And in the thickets dwelt a large black-and-white grouse, like to a francolin except for his flame-bright beak and feet; our Arab cameleers told us they had brought corn to Mohammed starving in the desert. Truly their evening cry sounded like Arabic words, saying,
“Sweet are the corn ears! Praised be Allah!”
The great plain was slightly tilted toward the distant mountains. Every day was cooler than the last, the landscape more wild and desolate. On an afternoon that we saw a lion asleep on a rock and met a gray wolf trotting down the road as though going to market, we were glad to find a mud-walled village in which we could seek shelter from the Karaunas. And since the settlement seemed indistinguishable from a hundred others scattered over the plain—a stretch of white road, a cluster of houses of sun-baked brick under date palms, a well, sheep and dogs and donkeys, and some score dark-skinned Infidels—how could we expect such a heart-warming scene as this we came upon at the village gate?
Two people were standing there, as though waiting for us, both of them a sight for homesick eyes. Not I, but most of our number, had some venerable kinsmen beyond the deserts whom one of the two recalled—this an aged man with snowy beard and hair whose proud bearing set at naught his shabby dress. That we could see his hair, instead of its being hidden under a turban, lifted the heart of every Christian in our company. It was almost certain proof that he was a Nestorian, cut off from all his kind except for one companion.
That companion was a damsel of not more than eighteen, unveiled, modestly but poorly dressed, and with a bright piece of embroidered cloth in her hand. One glance told me that she was among the few most beautiful, perhaps the very most, of all the damsels I had seen since leaving Venice long ago when I was young. Nor had the sum been small or its quality scurvy. My eyes had brushed a thousand agreeable faces since that departure to find out if even one could be as lovely as the one I had lost. A good many had been virgin slaves being transported to distant bazaars—and merchants who must count centesimi did not waste costly transport on homely faces. The girls I had seen in windows and on roof tops had wanted to be seen; since God made Eve, the plainest women have behaved the most properly. Moreover, God had scattered female beauty or its semblance from Ethiopia to Ultima Thule. It had been as rife in Baghdad as in Bologna.
Since leaving Venice, I had been true to the one I had lost. That was neither good sense nor sound philosophy—how can truth be kept with the nonexistent? Better say I had been continent out of respect to a memory. Even this was not the truth—continence does not count on Saint Peter’s book unless it tugs against temptation. Suddenly it came to me, with a rush of joy, that I was cured of the distemper. Time is a gentleman, say the Chinese. He is a good physician, too, and while he had not healed my strange raw wound, I thought that he had reconciled me to inevitable loss. But perhaps I would be sorry that this particular damsel had been the one to waken these yearnings from their long, cold sleep. The captain of our company had seen her too.