The Complete Simon Iff (48 page)

They came upon the man of God just as he halted for breakfast. It was a very different affair to Simon Iff’s; four servants hustled in its preparation. According to custom, Iff gave the desert salutation, and would have passed; but the missionary was astonished to see two Europeans in Arab clothes, walking unattended. “Here, you fellows,” he called in bad French, “come here! Who are you?” Simon Iff went across very briskly as if he were repelling an attack at the charge. But he spoke very humbly. This is Lord Juventius Mellor, sir,” he said, “and I am his servant.

“Delighted to meet you, your Grace,” cried the missionary, ignoring Iff, and running eagerly to the young man. “I think I had the pleasure of preaching before your Grace’s father, three years ago, at Bellows Falls.”

“Sorry,” returned the disciple, “but that was not my father; it was Virgil Abishag Curtiss; they sent him up the river last year.”

“Dear me, how very, very sad! But won’t you partake, your Grace, of the frugal hospitality of a poor servant of our dear Lord and Master?”

“We have just breakfasted, but we shall be glad to take a cup of coffee with you.” One must never refuse hospitality in the Sahara; to do so is a Declaration of War.

“And are these all your camels?” asked Lord Juventius, after having falsely explained that he was consumptive and had come on this walking tour as his last chance.

“They are,” smirked the minister. “The Lord has been pleased to bless my efforts greatly.”

Offerings of grateful converts?”

“Alas, the converts are but few. There seems a lack of understanding in this people: truly said Esaias.”

“They accuse you of multiplying gods, don’t they?”

“Indeed, that is the substance of the difficulty. Only the Holy Ghost can prepare their hearts to receive our dear Lord and Master.”

“Have you three gods or five?”

“Ah, your Grace refers to the Papists! I am from the American Baptist Mission.”

“Splendid, splendid! I have often longed to meet one of you hero martyrs. Have you gleaned long in the Lord’s field?”

“Twelve years in Africa, my dear young Grace.”

“You are going home now?”

“Only for a season. Candidly and frankly, I have heard the call of China. The teeming millions! The perishing millions!”

“That is a long way off.”

“For our dear Lord and Master, I would go further yet.”

“Indeed I humbly trust it may be so,” interrupted Simon piously. Juventius smiled sweetly and continued. “But how many converts have you made here?” The good man’s face fell.

“As I told your Grace, there is a certain difficulty—an obstacle to the Grace of God, as it were, so to speak.”

“But you hope for better luck in China?”

“Indeed, yes; your Grace will observe that we have a means which we use with the Chinese; we find so many many slaves to the Opium Habit. And we cure them. That gives us a claim on their gratitude and so prepares the way for their salvation.”

“How do you cure them?” asked Iff, suddenly. He knew China as he did his own house.

“We administer morphia, in what seems to us suitable doses. That helps greatly, for of course only converts can be supplied with morphia.”

“Excuse me,” said Simon, “but I knew a man who got left badly in China once. I hope you aren’t going out there without a hard and fast contract with the Drug Ring.”

“Indeed not, my bood fellow; I should guess not.”

“Quite right,” said Simon, rising—he had not tasted his coffee.

“Look out—there’s a horned viper on the path.” Two servants had already seen the reptile, and were striking it with long sticks.

“That’s a clumsey way to kill them,” he continued over his shoulder to the missionary, “you should let them bite you.”

“Good-morning and a pleasant journey and restored health to your Grace,” cried the missionary despairingly to the departing Juventius.

II

“This is pretty good dawamesk,” said Simon Iff in Arabic to the big white-bearded Sheikh who acted as Patriarch to Ouled Djellal. (Dawamesk is a preparation of hashish, or The Grass, as the Arabs call it.) They were seated outside the little inn which is the principal building of the village.

“Abu’dDin,” returned the Arab, (for Simon Iff was known all over the desert by this title of “Father of Justice,” Din meaning Truth, Law, Faith, but above all Justice.)

“It is good dawamesk. It is made in Djelfe by a wise and holy man who can balance himself upon one thumb, o thou who also art most wise and holy!”

“It is indeed The Grace, o Father of Lions, and I am refreshed in my spirit by its soft influence. Allah is munificent as he is great.”

“There standeth no man before His face,” returned the Sheikh, “and not by dawamesk alone, though it be one-third hashish, shall man behold his glory.”

“Nay, but by right intentness, with an holy life.”

“But hashish doth indeed assist us who are weak in soul, and whose lives are defiled with iniquity.”

“There was a great king,” said the magician, “in a country beyond Suleiman’s, whose name was Nebuchadnezzar. For seven years did this holy man live upon Grass, becoming mad and running about naked. These things are written to encourage us. I am myself made bold to find a secret place in the sand where I may seek this blessing, for I have the Great Word from a certain Ulema of Alkahira, the most cunning reputed in all Al Misr.”

The old man clasped the knees of Simon Iff in pathetic entreaty. “O my father, wilt thou not reveal it to me? I swear by the Beard of the Prophet of Allah that I will not profane it.”

“Thou must first renounce all human ties and duties; wilt thou leave thy children to perish in the desert for lack of thy wisdom?”

The Sheikh sighed. “My father, it is hard to wait for Paradise.”

“It is also a mistake,” said Simon, on whom the hashish was having a delightful effect, “as in the case of Mohammed (Peace be upon him!) when he waited for the mountain to come to him.”

The Sheikh began to laugh uproariously; a mild blasphemy is much appreciated by the simply pious. Nor is judicious dawamesk any impediment to mirth. Iff took him by the arm.

“Let us go to the entertainment. Have you good dancing-girls in Ouled Djellal?”

“We have pride in Fatima, the Scorpion,” replied the old man with enthusiasm; “she is like a young date palm heavy with fruit. Her teeth are like pearls, but her bite is like a scorpion’s sting, and hence is her lakab (nick-name, said Iff to Lord Juventius, aside) the Scorpion. She is like the air of the desert at dawn when she dances, and when she loves it is a simoon.”

“And the others?”

“They are soft like shadows upon the sand dunes in the belly of the Desert, and she is the full moon.”

“I am certainly encouraged in my determination to see her.”

They were walking across the big square of the village. It was only a few steps; but the dawamesk made the way seem long, and infinitely brilliant. The universe was stainless, ineffable, silent. The moon lit the world with incorruptible phantasy. All was white, even the sand, save only for the soft blue shadows, and the gold stars in the impenetrable indigo of Heaven. Only the low monotonous clang of cymbals stirred the night. Only the flitting forms of men, like ghosts, disturbed the shrine-like sanctity of the square. Now they were at the dancing-hall, a long room with tables and benches with a wide aisle and a dais at the end where sat the dancers and the musicians.

“There is Fatima,” said the Sheikh, “look how the eyes of Muley Husein are fixed on her. He goes to the South to-morrow to his own house; it is said that he will take her with him.” Muley Husein was an enormous negro, fierce and proud, with a green turban, and an aigrette of uncut jewels to fasten it. Two Arabs, with their hands upon their daggers, stood behind him to guard him.

Simon Iff seated himself and drank the coffee brought by the attendant as he watched the dance. There is no fascination in the world like this: if you have enough coffee, and enough tobacco, and just the right amount of hashish, you can sit all night and every night, and never wax weary of that splendid show. There is no question of a performance inthe Anglo-Saxon sense of the word. It resembles nothing so much as ocean. There is no object, not even play. The dance simply existed, indifferent to all things. For those who can stop grasping the streams of event and float upon that ocean, it is very Paradise. If you expect something to happen, or want something to happen, it is Hell.

The girl who had been dancing sat down, without warning, as she had begun. In these Arabian Nights nobody takes apparent notice of anything. But there was a murmur as of the birth of some hot deadly wind, when, after a pause, Fatima advanced to the front of the dais. She was tall and slim, but sturdy. Her head-dress, her necklaces, her amulets and her anklets were all of Napoleons strung on gold wire. As she stood and swayed, there were a couple of thousand dollars on her in gold currency. She was of rich yellow-brown skin, like an autumn leaf at its most golden. There were purple shadows, lucious as ripe plums. All blended admirably with the dull blue of her tattoo marks, and the Indian red of the big sash which accentuated her hips. It was fastened with a huge brooch, circular, of rough pearls; and with her glances and her gestures her whole dance seemed to say, “Look at my brooch!” Simon Iff looked. His eyes left her body, that swayed just as a snake does when it hears music of the right kind, her head that jagged from shoulder to shoulder with an insanely impossible jerk, and came to the brooch. It rose and fell like the breast of a sleeping child; then it made circles, loops, whorls, sinuous, and subtle, as if the moon were drunken on old wine; then with savage ecstasy it gave a series of strong jerks, straight up and down, and Simon thought that it could drag his soul to Hell, and he would love her for it. He contrasted her mentally with a fat hag from Tunis, Jewish and Greek, he thought, who banged a cymbal in the background. The flabby piece of paste! The old Sheikh noticed the magician’s glance wander, and told him that the object of his animadversion was Fatima’s mother.

“Italian and Jewish from Malta the island is she by birth, and her name is Desda, which in that speech means desirable; but Fatima’s father was a pure Badawi, a lizard of the sand. Dirty Desda, they call her, and Mother of Snot.”

“O father of fortunate warriors, is it the dawamesk which betrayeth my judgement, or is this Fatima indeed a Peri of the Prophet? For such enchantment have I never beheld with these eyes.”

“It is the dawamesk, without doubt, o Lord of Judgments, for I also have not seen her in this flowering on any other night.”

The music seemed to hush itself to low muttering intensity as she danced. The night was stifling hot; in that airless barn, with its heavy candles, the smoke of oil, of tobacco, of kif, it seemed to Simon Iff as though Time were abrogated, as though the fantastic movements of the brooch on the girl’s belly were the geometry of some insane and sensual god. With one side-twitch he swooped down slippery wave-summits of glaucous air until he came nigh swooning; a circular heave, and he saw a billion universes set awhirl by lust; she shook her shoulders, and he thought of God with his winnowing-fan, driving the light souls as chaff into annihilation. She slowed into bowers of night, and then—those fierce vertical jerks sucked the magician shuddering through æon upon countless æon of orgiastic ecstasy. He noticed that he was gasping strongly. One of the many advantages of hashish is that the slightest call to action bestows the power, if one wills, to come straight out of the intoxication into a state of especially vigorous freshness. “It is not the dawamesk,” he said to himself; “the girl is really dancing as I have never seen anyone dance before. Then since it is not that, the Sheikh too sees her in abnormal state.” Abnormal states interest Simon Iff. Is it love? “That Muley Husein is certainly a magnificent beast,” he said aloud, turning to his disciple, “you observe the super-excellence of our young friend? What is it?”

The young man inhaled his cigarette deeply before replying. “She is intensely concentrated, she has utterly lost herself. She is dancing on her second wind, if I may call it that. But she had sone this at the cost of an infinitely fierce struggle with something in herself. She may have made up her mind to kill somebody, or more likely herself. Or she may be under the influence of some drug not hashish; or she may be going to be ill.”

“Time will show,” replied Simon, relapsing into his intoxication, with complete indifference to all speculation. But before another minute had passed Fatima herself settled the point by staggering and then settling to the ground. Her mother went to her, lifted her into a chair and sent a boy to bring water. Another girl took her place, and the music clashed out anew with vital frenzy. No one appeared to notice the accident.

But the new girl did not interest Simon; she was an anticlimax; he kept his eyes on Fatima.

“Ju,” said he, “your third arrow hit the mark. She is very ill. I will ask the Sheikh to give orders.”

In a few moments the girl had been taken to her room in the court-yard. Muley Husein loomed in the doorway over the little party. Simon Iff made his examination. Her skin was cold and clammy, her pupils contracted, her breath stertorous. “All is well,” reported Simon Iff at length, after administering an injection from a small case which he invariably carried on long journeys. “It is the will of Allah that she shall not die this night.”

The negro gave a fierce cry of joy. “But I am bound to tell you that she has been poisoned.”

“It is not possible,” shrieked the mother, while Muley Husein roared with rage.

“It is possible, and it is true,” said the Sheikh, “for the Father of Justice makes no errors.”

“Let me know the jackal that did this!” cried Muley. The Sheikh was as indifferent as before. “All things are known to Allah, the All-Knower,” was his comment, which is Arabic for “I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

“Perhaps a small investigation?” suggested the magician.

“O Father of Justice and Perspecuity, the case is common. All the women are jealous of her beauty and of her fame, and all her lovers are in despair because they fear that Muley Husein will take her into his harem.”