Firouz looked at us with satisfaction. ‘Where are you going?’ he said.
I wanted to say, ‘To find Sophia and my son.’ I didn’t want to have to take Firouz into account sufficiently to have to lie to him.
‘We’re going to have a look around Suwaydiyya,’ said Bembel Rudzuk. ‘I think some of the merchants there may have provisions they’ve hidden away from the Franks.’
‘Very daring,’ said Firouz, ‘with so many Franks between here and Suwaydiyya. Very daring indeed.’ He was looking at the sword I was wearing that used to be his.
‘I know the back ways,’ said Bembel Rudzuk.
‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Firouz. He took the bag that was slung from my shoulder and looked into it. ‘You won’t starve while you’re out looking for provisions, will you,’ he said. ‘You’re got enough food here for a week. Will you be back in time to stand guard on the wall tonight?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We don’t go on until midnight.’
‘Good,’ said Firouz. ‘I think it’s probably best if I lock you up until then; that way you won’t wear yourselves out walking all those weary miles and you’ll be alert and well-rested for tonight.’
‘We haven’t done anything to be locked up for,’ said Bembel Rudzuk.
‘Not yet,’ said Firouz. ‘But you inspire doubt and mistrust in me, and as I’m in command of this part of the wall I’m taking it on myself to keep out of trouble.’
‘No!’ I cried out. ‘You mustn’t do that!’
‘Why not?’ said Firouz.
‘Because tonight may be the night the Franks take Antioch!’ I blurted out.
Firouz jumped back as if I had thrust a viper into his face. ‘Who told you that?’ he said.
‘It came to me in a dream, a vision, a night journey,’ I said.
‘Have you told this to anyone else?’ said Firouz.
‘No,’ I said.
Firouz motioned to two of the guards. ‘Lock these two up in the tower,’ he said.
I began to laugh, I couldn’t help it.
‘What are you laughing at?’ said Firouz.
‘Life and death,’ I said. ‘It’s so hard to make a good job of either.’
Firouz began to laugh too. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Truly it doesn’t give me pleasure to lock you up, it’s just that all of us have different things to do and this is what I have to do.’
‘It doesn’t really matter,’ I said. ‘It’s only life and death.’
‘It’s strange,’ said Firouz: ‘people buy and sell, they go here and there, they make plans for this year and the next year as if there will be no end to life, as if there will always be a next day and a next year; but sometime there must come an end to the days and the years; it must be like walking into a wall where one has always found a door.’ While he said this reflectively and in a companionable manner as if we were sitting in a coffee house Bembel Rudzuk and I stood before him with a guard on either side of us. When he had completed this observation the guards took away our bows and arrows, our swords and daggers and our bags. ‘Your weapons and your other possessions will be given back to you later,’ said Firouz as the guards took us away to the tower.
Later than what? I thought. With the two guards behind us we climbed the stone stairs to that part of Firouz’s tower that rose above the wall. There we were taken up more stairs to the top of the tower and put into a little room in which there was nothing but an overwhelming stench of urine and excrement and a bucket that had not been emptied for a very long time. A little dimness was provided by a high-up window that was too small to squeeze through.
I beat on the door to ask for the bucket to be emptied. There was no response of any kind. ‘This is to be our end then,’ I said, ‘in a little dim room with a bucket of old shit.’
‘Be glad we’re in the room and not in the bucket,’ said Bembel Rudzuk.
We sat on the floor and looked up and down and all around the little room. It was so dreadfully finite. There was no possibility whatever of there being any more to it than we could see.
‘What Firouz said about buying and selling, do you think he meant anything by it, do you think he wanted to be bribed?’ I said.
‘I think he’s already been bought by the Franks,’ said Bembel Rudzuk.
The bucket stood there stinking in a corner in a buzzing of flies in the dimness of the little locked stone room. I thought: Is this a metaphor? Then a nearby bird said, ‘Plink, plink, plink.’ Ah! I thought, explanations are unnecessary. So I felt a little better until the naked headless tax-collector appeared, writhing with maggots as always. Never mind, I thought, this is only illusion.
From wherever the tax-collector’s voice lived came a long sigh, ‘Ahhhhhhh!’ He assumed the necessary position over the bucket and emptied his bowels with a torrent like Onopniktes, I half expected dead donkeys to come out of him turning over and over in that disgusting flood. This is metaphorical illusion, I told myself, dismiss it from your mind; have other illusions, better ones; see Sophia. But Sophia would not come, even Bodwild would not come. My young death, I thought, surely he will come, I am like a father to him, I am his father — let us at least have a proper leavetaking before he goes out into the world to seek his fortune, let there be a fond embrace, a manly clasping of hands, a tear or two would be nothing to be ashamed of. But no, he would not come. Comfortless I sat on the floor with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands.
‘Ahhhhhh!’ sighed the tax-collector again. He must have left the bucket because now he was returning to it to relieve himself once more with the same torrential rush and with a noise that was like the bursting of the Unseen into the seen, which of course in its own way it was. Surely, I thought, this is no proper epiphany; surely if God is gone I shall at least see Christ one more time, I deserve at least that much.
Pffffffttttt! went the tax-collector. The stench was no longer within the limits of what could be called a smell, it had become something in the nature of a metaphysical premise. The grotesquerie of the tax-collector’s appearing without a head while thus emptying himself of the waste of a lifetime, perhaps of more than one lifetime! Really, I thought, how much can be expected of my forbearance, my civility? After all, if this is illusion I must have something to say about it. ‘If you’re going to keep doing that at least you must accept responsibility for it!’ I shouted. ‘At least you can show your face!’
‘What did you say?’ said Bembel Rudzuk.
‘Say!’ I said. ‘Who can say anything with this constant noise, this unbearable stench!’
‘I don’t hear anything,’ said Bembel Rudzuk, ‘and I haven’t been noticing the smell for a while.’
‘Everything’s all right with you then, is it?’ I said. ‘With you there’s nothing to complain of?’
‘I’ve already told you,’ he said, ‘that I’ve had a good life and I’ve had enough of it and I’m ready to go. Why should I have any complaints?’
‘This smell,’ I said, ‘this smell isn’t illusion, it’s a real stink, it’s a stench of actuality.’
‘Where I am there’s not that much of a stench,’ he said.
‘There’s no need to be insulting,’ I said.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Here we have an opportunity for preparation, we have a little quiet time in which there is nothing for us to do, nothing is required of us; it is like a silent desert in which we are not far from the track that will take us to that farthest lote-tree that is shrouded in unutterable mystery. All we need is a little patience, a little quietness of mind as we look for the track in the silent desert.’