Читать книгу The Valley of the Kings - Marmaduke William Pickthall - Страница 4

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Beyond the ancient town and its dark green orange gardens, between the tilled plain and the shore, the sandhills roll away to north and south, with here a dwelling, there a patch of herbage. To Iskender, lying prone on the crest of the highest dune, caught up into the laugh of sunset, their undulations appeared flushed and softly dimpled, like the flesh of babes. Returning homeward, hungry, from a day of much adventure, he had espied from this eminence a camp of nomads in a certain hollow, and at once forgot his supper in desire to sketch it. He had settled to the work with such complete absorption that Elias Abdul Messîh, his companion, for once grew tired of the sound of his own voice, and left him, with a sigh for his obtuseness. And Iskender was glad to be rid of him, to lie alone and nurse his secret joy; for he had this day made the acquaintance of an Englishman, whose affability restored his pride of life. Might Allah bless that light-haired youth, for he was the very lord of kindness, and beautiful as an angel from Allah. His cheeks had the same rose-bloom as the Sitt Hilda's, while his blue eyes danced and sparkled like sea-waves in sunlight. How different from the priest of the Mission, whose gaze was of green ice! Moreover, he had praised Iskender's painting and taught him a trick of colouring, which consisted in washing the page yellow and letting it dry before setting to work on it. The artist had never been so happy since the day, six months ago, when the missionary had declared against his sketching as mere waste of time. The ladies of the Mission, who had fostered it, obsequious to the edict, then condemned it strongly. His mother, too, turned round and blamed him for it. Only the Sitt Hilda still was kind, comforting him in secret, till his love leapt up. And then came outer darkness. Iskender was a profligate, and driven forth.

Debarred from Christian society, hardly less than Muslim, by his English education and his Protestantism, he was a pariah in his own land. This very morning, sketching a gateway in the town, he had been beaten by some Muslim boys and called an idol-maker; and, traversing a Christian hamlet among the gardens, had been reviled and pelted by its Orthodox inhabitants. For company he had been obliged to consort with English-speaking touts and dragomans, who welcomed his proficiency in the foreign tongue; and these he hated, for they mocked his art. The one exception was Elias Abdul Messîh. Elias could read Arabic fluently (a feat beyond Iskender, who had been schooled in English), and from trips to Beyrût and the towns of Egypt had brought back any number of miraculous romances, which he read and read again until they turned his brain. Impersonating the chief characters, he dwelt in a world of magical adventure, and spoke from thence to ears that understood not. For this he was named the Liar and the Boaster, and, though well liked, derided. He had taken a fancy to Iskender, and often sat beside the artist while he sketched.

His talk revealed new worlds to the pupil of the English missionaries, who hitherto had looked to England as the realm of romantic ambition—the land where, by simply entering holy orders, a poor son of the Arabs could attain to wealth and luxury. Now, for the first time, he was shown the wonders of the East. Elias, in his tales, despised the Christians, his own folk, anathematised the Jews, and praised the Muslims, till Iskender longed to embrace the doctrine of Muhammad, and become a freeman of the land of old romance. But when he said as much, Elias shook his head. It was known that every Muslim would be damned eternally.

Moved by the example of this friend, Iskender's brain conceived wild dreams of greatness, enabling him in imagination to enslave the wicked missionaries and carry off his blushing love amid applause. He told Elias that his father, Yâcûb, had left a treasure buried in the ground, which he would dig up some day, and astound mankind; and Elias accepted the statement as quite probable. But such fancies were of no real comfort to Iskender, being rendered feverish by his sense of wrong. He had known no solace till this day at noon, when the English youth from the hotel had smiled on him. Now, once again, he looked to England as of old—to England where great honours were conferred on painters.

With a final dab at the sky, he held his picture off from him, to mark the effect. In love with the figure of a camel belonging to the camp, which was chewing the cud superbly in the foreground, he had at unawares so magnified the creature that it bestrode the whole page of his drawing-book; while the camp itself, the sandhills, some scattered houses and a palm-tree in the distance, the very sky, seemed no more than the pattern of a carpet upon which it stood. There was something wrong, he perceived—something to do with that perspective which, despite instructions from the Sitt Hilda, he could never rightly comprehend.

But his pride in the monster camel condoned everything. He just lengthened all the tent-ropes a little with his smallest paint-brush, thereby imparting to the black pavilions a look of spiders squashed by the triumphant beast, and laid aside his work, well pleased. There were many groups abroad, of people enjoying the cool evening; he saw them stalking ghostlike in the coloured light; but they kept to the bound sand of the trodden pathways, and if any one descried him on his perch, none laboured up to see what he was after.

At ease upon the ground, with chin on palm, he tried to judge what colours would be needed in order faithfully to reproduce the sunset glow. He compared that glow to the insurgent blood ever ready to mantle in the cheeks of the Sitt Hilda; but this was a warmer, swarthier flush than ever dyed the white skin of a Frank. Then, looking east, he watched the blue increase on the horizon, its drowsy glimmer radiating thoughts of rest, as if a hovering spirit whispered "Hush!" A star glanced out above the distant palm-tree; in that direction it was night already behind the crimsoned earth. A flash from the grand glass windows of the Mission, ruddy with the last of daylight, caused him to wag his head and sigh:

"Would to Allah I were rich like one of them!" The English youth from the hotel had laughed at missionaries. Though here so great and powerful, it seemed they were little thought of in their own country. When Iskender eagerly inquired whether a famous painter would take rank before them, the Englishman had said: "Yes, rather!" with his merry laugh.

"O Allah, help me," was Iskender's prayer now, "that I may travel to the countries of the Franks, and reap the honour they accord to painters!"

This with a fond glance at his drawing-book, which contained a camel—ah, but a camel such as Allah made him!—a camel worthy to be framed in gold and hung in king's palaces!

"Is—ken—der!" A shrill, trailing cry disturbed his reverie; when, looking forth in the direction of the sound, he saw in a dell beneath, where ran a footpath, a man and a woman standing still amid the shadows, gazing up at him.

"Ya Iskender! Make haste, descend, come down to us!" The call came again more peremptorily.

The voice was his mother's. Muttering, "May her house be destroyed!" he emptied the pannikin of paint-foul water which he had carried with him all day long, picked up his drawing-book, and obeyed. As he prepared to descend, the last red gleam forsook the sand-crests, leaving them ashy white.

"Make haste, O shameless loiterer. We bring thee news—fine news! Praise Allah who assigned to thee Abdullah for an uncle—one so kind, so considerate, so thoughtful for thy welfare.~.~.~. But first I must tell thee how the three ladies came in thy absence to inform me of their intention to educate the son of Costantîn to be a clergyman; whilst thou, whose mother has washed for them these twenty years, art required to sweep their house."

"What matter!" rejoined Iskender, with a listless shrug. "My ambition is to visit the country of the Franks and gain the honour of a mighty painter."

His mother stretched out her hands to heaven, screaming:

"Hear him, Allah! Is he not bewitched? Desire of the lady Hilda has made him mad. O Holy Maryam, O Mar Jiryis and all saints, condemn those who have led him thus to ruin. Hear him now; he would make pictures! Well, to Allah the praise; but it is their doing!~.~.~. Now, for the love of Allah, put such toys aside and hear Abdullah's generous plan for thy advancement. Know that a young Englishman has lately come to the Hotel Barûdi——"

"I know that well," Iskender grunted irritably. "He is my friend. This day he spent two hours with me."

"Thy friend!~.~.~. O merciful Allah!" cried his mother.

"Thou knowest him?" exclaimed Abdullah, much affronted.

"Come, cease thy dreaming, tell the story, mad-man!" His mother shook his arm and screamed at him. "Art possessed with thy dumb devil. Speak! What sayest thou?"

"May thy father perish!" cried Iskender, startled.

"Curse thy religion!" retorted his mother hotly. "Is thy uncle dirt to be thus disregarded? Ask his pardon, O my dear!"

Abdullah the dragoman laughed at that, and suggested they had best be moving, for the night was near. A trace of grievance lingered in his voice and manner, for he loved ceremonies, and had looked forward to a formal presentation of his nephew to the English nobleman.

"Come, tell the story of thy day!" he too insisted. At first it had not been a happy one, Iskender told them. He had tried to paint the beauty of the sea between two dunes, but it turned to a blue gate on yellow gate-posts; then a boat turned upside down upon the beach, but the portrait made resembled nothing earthly. Then the Englishman had taught him a new way, and things went well, and he had drawn a camel.~.~.~.

He was opening his sketch-book to display the masterpiece; but his mother shrieked:

"Who cares to hear all that. Tell of the Englishman; how came he with thee?"

"They stoned me," he replied indifferently; "and I was running from them, weeping, when he met me, and I cried to him in English to protect me. He had compassion on me, and admired my pictures——"

Iskender became aware that his companions were no longer listening, so stopped abruptly. His uncle seemed to think some miracle had happened, for he heard him praising Allah and the Holy Virgin, the while his mother kept exclaiming in her shrill-pitched tones. His mind strayed far from them, occupying itself with distant features of the landscape. All the earth was now obscure: stars sparkled in the dome of the sky. From a high, sandy neck their path surmounted, he beheld the minarets of the town, seeming to cut the sky above the sharp sea-line. The timbre of his mother's voice made for inattention like the monotonous shrill note of the cicada; and he had at all times a trick of projecting his wits into the scene around him, whence it needed a shout to re-collect them, as she knew to her grievance. She shouted now, and punched him in the back:

"Forget not to tell the Emîr that thou art a Brûtestant, which is half an Englishman."

Jarred in his bones by her shrillness, he exclaimed:

"Merciful Allah! Is my mother mad? The Emîr! In the name of angels, what Emîr?"

"O Holy Maryam! Am I not unblessed in such a son? What wonder that the priest and the ladies favour the son of Costantîn—may his house be destroyed!—who has at least the grace to listen when one speaks to him.~.~.~. Thou goest in the morning to the Hotel Barûdi, to visit formally this English youth, who is an Emîr in his own country, and proffer thy services. Thou wilt present thyself before him, not as now in a soiled kaftan, but in thy best. Give him to know how thy mother is esteemed by the missionaries, how thou art thyself a Brûtestânt of the English Church."

"Whist!" said Abdullah warningly.

Some one was hurrying towards them down the path.

"Who is it?" breathed the mother of Iskender.

It was Elias, who was looking for his friend.

"No word to him, or all is lost!" hissed old Abdullah.

But Elias for the moment had no ears. After parting from Iskender he had been seized with a new and vivid inspiration, and felt the need of his accustomed listener. Dragging his friend aside he whispered breathlessly:

"I am in great haste. A lady—ah, a beauty!—waits for me—a Muslimeh, I do assure thee—one of the most closely guarded. I go now to the tryst. It is to risk my life; but what care I, for love has maddened me. I would not tell a living soul save thee; but if I die in the adventure, thou wilt pray for me. I sought thee in thy house, but found thee not."

"May Allah guard and prosper thee!" replied Iskender.

But by then his friend was gone, driven on by the fierce wind of his imagining towards the house-door, not far distant, where his wife stood looking for him. Iskender could not prevent a lump from rising in his throat at the vision of requited love, however perilous. From a dream of the Sitt Hilda he was roused by his mother saying:

"Thou must sup with us, O Abdullah! After all thy kindness to Iskender, thou canst scarce refuse me."

They were at the house.

With a polite show of reluctance Abdullah entered, and sat down beside the wall, while Iskender helped his mother spread the feast for him. Then, when all was ready, the young man wrapped some morsels in a piece of bread, and carried them out beyond the threshold, to be alone. Squatting there, he was once more happy in thoughts of the fair young Englishman who, though a prince, had shown such kindness towards him. By Allah, he would give his life for that sweet youth. He asked no better than to serve him always.

The highest lobes of the cactus hedge before him were like great hands shorn of fingers thrust against the sky. Through a gap he beheld the lights of the Mission—fierce hostile eyes intent upon his thoughts. The wail and bark of a jackal came from the landward plain.

"Praise to Allah!" The voice of his mother raised for a moment above its monotone caused him to turn and look into the house.

They had made an end of eating in there and were now arranging the programme of Iskender's conduct towards the young Emîr. His uncle sat cross-legged by the wall, puffing slowly at a narghîleh, his mother opposite to him, in the same posture, also with a narghîleh, not smoking for the moment, but leaning forward with one hand out, talking eagerly. A saucer-lamp stood on the floor between them, among remnants of the feast; it caused their faces to look ghastly, lighted thus from below, and sent their shadows reeling up the wall. The woman declaimed untiringly with gestures of demonstration, and the man kept acquiescing by a nod which set the tassel of his fez in motion.

The dull sententiousness of the dragoman and his mother's shrill, rash judgments were alike irritating to Iskender. They claimed to understand the foreigners perfectly; and in truth they knew enough of the foibles of the lords of gold to secure to themselves a livelihood. They had never, either of them, loved a Frank.