For a long time we sat in silence, and then I said, “The question is not easy to answer. It must be because of the love I bear you, noble lord. Not for your gifts to me, but because you have sometimes spoken to me and treated me as if I were a reasoning being. I love you for your beauty, your intelligence, your pride, your doubts, and your wisdom. Your like has hardly been seen upon this earth. It is true that you have your faults. You’re jealous of your power-you’re a spendthrift, a blasphemer, and many other things that people blame you for. But none of this affects my feelings for you. No one hates you for your human failings, Grand Vizier Ibrahim, though they like to talk of them and magnify them, to justify to themselves and to their fellows the malice they bear you. They detest you only because you stand so high above other men, and that is something that mediocre souls can never endure. And yet in each one of us lies the latent faculty of surpassing others. Of that I am sure.
“Perhaps I love you best for your high aims and motives and for never behaving with deliberate cruelty to anyone. Thanks to you no one in the Sultan’s dominions is persecuted for his faith, be he Christian or Jew. Do you wonder that men hate you, Grand Vizier Ibrahim? But because of these things I love you.”
He listened with a tired smile, as if mocking himself and admiring my talent for stringing words so pleasantly together. I tiptoed from the room and fetched the tray of covered dishes that servants had prepared, setting it beside him, lifting the silver lids and tasting a little of all the food to reassure him. Abstractedly he began to eat, and when I gave him the sleeping draught he took it without demur. I held his hand until he slept, kissed it once more respectfully, and then replaced all the money and jewels in the chest so as not to expose the servants to too great temptation. I called these men and ordered them to undress their lord and carry him to bed, and they obeyed me with gladness, having felt deep concern for the sleeplessness that the Grand Vizier had so long suffered.
Three days afterward Mustafa ben-Nakir appeared, unexpectedly, as was his custom. I feared the worst, for he seemed to bring with him a breath of cold menace. The silver bells at his knees rang as pleasantly as ever, but he was less carefully dressed and less clean than he was wont to be. He had even forgotten the Persian book. I asked where he had been and what he had been doing, and he said, “Let us go down to your marble quay and watch the stars come out. A poem is about to be born in my heart and I do not want your servants or even your wife to be present at this solemn moment.”
When we had made our way down to the water’s edge, Mustafa ben-Nakir looked about him and asked, “Where is your brother Antar the wrestler?”
I replied impatiently that I knew little of his movements, because since our return from Tunis he had gone barefoot, let his hair grow, and spent days together among the dervishes, watching their magic arts and listening to the shameless tales with which they beguiled credulous women into giving them money. Yet I called him and he emerged reluctantly from the boathouse, gnawing a bone.
“Ah, Antar, do you think to join our brotherhood?” asked Mustafa ben-Nakir in wonder at his appearance. Andy stared at him oafishly with his round gray eyes and said, “You see I have no lionskin over my shoulders. But my aim has indeed been to seek God upon the moun- taintops and in the desert. How could you guess my thoughts, when I have not hinted them even to the dervishes?”
Mustafa ben-Nakir was so greatly astonished that he touched brow and ground with his finger tips at Andy’s feet.
“In truth,” he said, “Allah is great and marvelous are his ways. This is the last thing I should have expected. Tell me what has led you to seek the holy path.”
Andy seated himself on the edge of the landing stage and dipped his weary feet into the water, gnawing meanwhile at his bone.
“How am I to explain to you what I hardly understand myself? While I had my friend Michael’s little dog beside me I felt a better creature. Rael hated no one and at once forgave all wrongs. If when I was drunk I happened to tread on his paws and make him yelp with pain, he’d come up to me at once to lick me as if asking forgiveness for having got in the way. He took the blame for my mistake, though over and over again I tried to explain the foolishness of this. On cold nights Rael would keep me warm. But who rightly values happiness and friendship before they’re gone? Not until that good dog found his well-deserved reward in the Seraglio did I see how much Michael and I had lost.”
He wiped away a few tears and went on, “Now that sorrow has found me I can see that the little dog was wiser than I; I see at last that I bear the guilt of the world’s evil. Whenever I see a man do an evil or a cruel deed I say to myself, the fault is yours! Alas, I’m a simple man and would do best to betake myself to a mountaintop or a desert, for these new thoughts of mine seem greatly to irritate other people, and I think I shall never again go to war. If I do it must be for some good and righteous cause.”
“I can offer you a good cause at this moment,” said Mustafa ben- Nakir eagerly. “Move away out of earshot and guard us against eavesdroppers; make short work of them if they appear. A poem is about to be born in my heart.”
Andy answered good naturedly, “I’m an ignorant fellow, yet I understand the anguish of such a birth. But I’ve noticed too that wine can allay much of it, and I will fetch Michael’s largest wine jar from the cellar.”
When he had gone, Mustafa ben-Nakir at once began, “I’ve been in the city to perform certain devotional exercises, and at the same time I heard news. There was also a story being told which I shall now repeat to you.”
In vain I protested that I was in no mood for stories and would prefer to hear his errand in plain language. He insisted in injured tones that ill tidings must be wrapped in silk, and in the name of the Compassionate he went on, “There was once a rich and respected lord whose falconer was a handsome youth of the same age as himself. The master became exceedingly fond of his servant and believed him as honorable as he was handsome, but when he would have entrusted him with the stewardship of his household, the guileful servant protested, saying, ‘It is not easy to govern so large a household. What surety have I that one day my lord will not be wroth with me and take off my head?’ The honorable master laughed and said, ‘I, wroth with thee? Thy friendship is more to me than the sight of my eyes. Yet, since neither of us can see into the future, I swear by the Prophet and the Koran that I will never dismiss or punish thee for any error. Rather I will protect and shield thee with all the power that Allah has given me, all the days of my life.’
“Not many years had passed before the slave squandered his master’s substance and endangered his house by forming connections in the teeth of law and custom. All too late the noble lord perceived his mistake and would have punished the slave who had so basely abused his trust, but he was a devout man and could not break his oath. The slave, who after the manner of slaves hated and envied his master because of his noble nature, crept to his bedside one night, strangled him, and sold his house and possessions to the unbeliever, thus doing not only his master but all Islam irreparable harm.”
Mustafa ben-Nakir fell silent, and in the blue darkness I saw the glitter of his eyes. He added coolly, “Is not that a strange story? What would you have done, Michael, in that noble master’s place?”
“Allah, what a foolish question! I would have hastened to the Mufti and asked him for a fatwa to release me from my rash oath. That is what a mufti is for.”
“Exactly!” whispered Mustafa. “This very morning the story has been told to the Mufti. He has been asked to prepare a fatwa, in return for which Sultan Suleiman has promised to build the most splendid mosque ever seen, at the highest point of the city. The fatwa frees him from the sacred oath that he swore in the folly of his youth, and he can now act without offending against the laws of the Koran.”