Читать книгу The Lacquer Lady - Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse - Страница 17

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THE cold weather lay like the benison of a temperate hand over the life in Mandalay. People who had sworn they could never bear the climate a week longer—and these were chiefly those kalās who could not, by reason of their debts or crimes, leave even though the temperature of hell had overtaken them—drew deep breaths and went about their dubious business once again. But Mr. Moroni languished and seemed to grow yellower and more desiccated every day.

He had caught a fever that nothing seemed to allay, and now in the bright sunshine and in the cool of the nights, his teeth still rattled in his head or his limbs burned with the fire that consumed him. Mrs. Moroni tried dosing him with unsavoury compounds she obtained from the bazaar—from the wezas, or wise men, who undertook the curing of sickness. The simple remedies derived from herbs, that often proved efficacious when the art of European doctors failed, were of no avail, and the little cylinders of bamboo, painted scarlet and gold, yielded of their perfumed and harmless contents unavailingly. Moroni, who knew of many cures from the herbs and simple oils used by the native doctors, took of these remedies uncomplainingly, his opinion of the European medicines was not so high that he scorned to try the local wisdom, and the deep scepticism in matters spiritual that was his followed him also into more material regions. But when it came to the nastier panaceas of magic Mrs. Moroni had to be more cautious. Moroni lay upon his bed, tossing with fever, his splitting head wrapped in wet rags, his tortured limbs racked with swift pains that shot to his fingers and toes, alternately thrown outside the sheet in the effort after coolness, or smothered under heavy wraps as he tried to get warm in the midst of the ague fits that shook him. And, outside on the verandah, the wise men cast his horoscope, to find out under which planets he had been born.

Moroni might, argued the doctors, be ill in any of the four dats, or elements, the dat of earth, that of water, of fire or of wind. It was all important to discover which of these dats held the largest proportion in his life, and this could only be done by the knowledge of the planets ruling at the time of his birth. Even apart from these four elements, it was always possible that his sickness might be caused by derangement of his mind, which was called seit, or by food, which was called ahaya, or through the influence of the seasons, which was called utu. And there was, of course, always the horrid notion that he might be suffering from his kan, the accumulated influence of all his good and evil actions in all his last lives. If that were so, and the evil predominated, then nothing could save him.

It was of course, of vital importance that the patient should not eat of any food which began with the same initial as his own name, and, having discovered from Mrs. Moroni, who produced his birth certificate, that he had been born on a Sunday, he was not allowed to eat eggs, or other food beginning with a vowel. There was little save eggs that Moroni cared to eat, for the chickens were tough through much exercise. Some extremely unsavoury remedies were provided by the wezas and cunningly advanced by Mrs. Moroni, but her husband, who suspected the draughts, did no more than smell at them disgustedly.

Poor fat Mrs. Moroni, more unkempt than ever, terrified at losing her white husband and the provider of her life, sobbed and shook like a jelly, but she did not dare to suggest to the sick but violent and arrogant man that he might be possessed by an evil spirit, and consequently ought to be beaten with bamboos and have red pepper rubbed into his eyes. So the ancient Garibaldino was allowed to die in peace, with only his daughter Fanny and his partner Delange by his bedside.

“I must be dying because of my kan,” the dying man murmured dryly, with his familiar twisted smile. “My evil actions are evidently the strongest. I always suspected it. Yet I fought to make united Italy ... Fanny, I do not tell you to look after your mother. She will always have enough rice and curry, and her rocking-chair. Your dresses are another matter ... but I do not worry over you. You will always choose your friends well ... you had better marry Captain Bagshaw, he is rich and should not live too long. His kan will see to that, though the white man will call it apoplexy ... Delange, don’t let them cheat you up at the Palace like they did me. My respects to the old King, I bear him no grudge. Fanny’ll have to learn weaving now if she doesn’t marry Bagshaw ... Julie will teach her ...” for a minute the sick man’s eyes turned on Fanny, who knelt, in tears, beside him. That quiet, shrewd, dark gaze took in the round, sorrowful face, the fine olive hands, so soft and unblemished from any work, that delicately dabbed at the frightened eyes. “No ... I do not think you will choose to do weaving, Francesca mia ... it has been much my fault, I took no trouble over you. But you were a girl and I did not know how ...”

A livid shade passed over the weaver’s face, he struggled to raise himself in bed, and the Frenchman, with an exclamation of grief, slipped his arm beneath his neck, and lifted him a trifle. Moroni’s eyes glowed with a sudden passionate fire—the only time that Fanny had ever seen them thus illumined.

“Vengo ... vengo ... Generalissimo mio! Avanti!”

Fanny, in the sordid wailing, the hateful but necessary arrangements that followed her father’s death, found herself leaning both figuratively and literally upon Captain Bagshaw for the Nemesis chanced to be up in Mandalay just then. Monsieur Delange may have been a great friend of Papa’s, but he did not know how to treat Fanny; he spoke of work and of learning from Julie ... Captain Bagshaw knew that Fanny was too fragile for treatment such as this. Agatha, melted by Fanny’s grief, talked of a life shared with her at the Mission, even while knowing in her heart of hearts that it would never be a success. Fanny, between the sobs that shook her little person, shook her glossy head.

“It’s what I’d like better than anything, Agatha darling, but dear Papa ... dear Papa ... wanted something else for me. I don’t know yet that I can ... but I’ll try, because of Papa.”

And Fanny, with a fresh burst of tears, dried her eyes on one of the famous Bagshaw handkerchiefs.