Chapter IV: Preface (4)

And now no power in the world was capable of keeping Muhzin back from following the voice of the heavenly vision. He put in his pouch whatever of ready money he had by him, and confided his whole store of gems to Ali Hojia, who was his nearest friend, and a worthy, honourable man to boot, till he himself should return from Mecca. And Ali took the charge upon him for friendship's sake.

Muhzin, after many vicissitudes, reached Mecca. On the road robbers attacked him, and robbed him of all his money, but, fortunately, the little box with the magic unguent escaped; it was concealed within his turban, and therefore they did not discover it. A beggar he entered the holy city, and lived from hand to mouth on the alms of compassionate pilgrims.

Every day he could be seen at the gate of the cemetery near the well of Zemzem, watching the funeral processions which passed before him day after day, for Mecca is a populous place.

A year had passed, and he was still waiting in vain--a coffin such as that described by the nocturnal apparition had not yet passed before him. Either the coffin was blue but the pall was not yellow, or the pall lacked the necessary blue letters, or if it had the blue letters the arabesques were not of silver, or if every requisite mark of identification was there, the corpse was not the corpse of a woman, but of a man, or a manchild of twelve years.

Muhzin was slowly approaching that state of mind which we call madness, when one day he heard from the other beggars that there was going to be a splendid funeral that day--the wife of the Kadilesker, the beautiful Eminha, had died.

Eminha!

That name put heart into Muhzin once more. All day long he did not depart from the gate of the cemetery, and the beating of his heart almost stifled him when he heard approaching him the funeral music which always heads the funeral procession.

Muhzin had no thought for the splendour of the funeral, no thought for the dancing dervishes, nor for the wailing women-mourners, nor for the _siligdars_ who scattered small silver coins among the mob of mendicants. All he could do was to gaze upon the bier.

Even from a distance he could see that the coffin was blue and the pall a bright yellow. When they came nearer he could even distinguish the blue letters on the pall, and when they came level with him he could see the silver embroidery of arabesques quite well.

Muhzin, wild with joy, violently pushed aside those standing in front of him, forced his way through the procession right up to the coffin, and cried--

"Stop! Stop! This is Eminha. This is my wife!"

The attendants, the great men, the Kadilesker himself--the dead woman's husband--looked with amazement upon this raving figure who had dared to disturb the order of the funeral; but Muhzin regarded them not, but stripped the pall from off the face of the dead woman.

The young woman who lay there really resembled his Eminha. Death is a great artist. With one cold breath she knows how to make all human faces singularly alike.

"She is not dead!" cried Muhzin to the dumfoundered crowd. "I can make her arise, and then you will see that she will call me her husband. I have been waiting for her here a whole year. Hence, all of you! for I would kill and slay and scatter curses around me! Ye shall not bury the living!"

The people were alarmed at the sight of mad Muhzin, and still more by his savage words. Moreover, the mourning Kadilesker dearly loved his dead wife, and when Muhzin said that he would raise her up again, he also was glad, and made place for him by the coffin that he might perform this miracle.

With the fervour of devotion, Muhzin drew from his girdle the little box and opened it; a yellow-coloured ointment was inside it, speckled with little green-gold points, of whose magical efficacy Muhzin himself was quickly convinced when he dipped into it the index finger of his right hand, for it burnt him as severely as if he had plunged it into boiling oil. But this extraordinary quality of the ointment was only a greater testimony to its marvellous origin, so that Muhzin did not hesitate to thoroughly rub the eyebrows and the lips of the corpse with his anointed finger-tip.

Everybody was intently watching to see whether the breath of life would return beneath the influence of the wondrous unguent, but nobody was so devout a believer in it as Muhzin himself.

But lo! instead of the eyes and lips of the dead woman opening, as was expected of them, the places which Muhzin had anointed turned black, the skin began to crackle and blister, and the face of the dead woman became quite hideous.

Horror seized upon Muhzin. This was not the effect he had anticipated. The people around him murmured aloud, the Kadilesker rushed furiously upon him, and, seizing him by the throat, cast him to the ground.

"Accursed magician!" he cried, "so shamelessly to distort the face of my dead wife, and make her, now that she is dead, just such an one as thou thyself art while still alive!"

"To the stake with him!" thundered the mob all around; they were furious with Muhzin. "To the fiery pit with him--reserved for the idol-worshippers and sorcerers--the wretch who would desecrate the bodies of the dead!"

And worthy Muhzin would have been burnt on the spot had not the Governor of Damascus happened to be there, who, perceiving that they had to do with a lunatic rather than an idolater, ordered his chiauses to seize Muhzin, tie him to a pillar, give him two hundred strokes with a camel-driver's whip, and then bring the man before him, that he might confess what mad idea it was that had induced him to deform the features of the dead wife of the Kadilesker.

Muhzin told the Governor about the marvellous apparition which had sent him thither.

"My poor Muhzin," said the Governor, when he understood the whole affair, "what a confounded fool thou art to allow thyself to be imposed upon by such a lot of rubbish! Some one has been making a butt of thee. Why, that Eminha who was the wife of the Kadilesker was born and lived here from her childhood until now; how, then, could she be thy wife a year ago? Moreover, that unguent of thine is a fraud. It is no magic thing, but a corrosive poison with which they are wont to blister the bodies of the poor in the times of pestilence. Every dervish knows of it. Come to thy senses, man! Make an end of thy pilgrimage, return home to Stambul, and follow thy trade. I hope that no greater trouble awaiteth thee when thou gettest home."

Muhzin kissed the hand of the humane Pasha, who gave him some dinars to help him on his way, and turned back towards Stambul forthwith, with ragged garments, a scarred body, a broken heart, and a half-crazy mind.

Poor, and tormented by grief, he reached Stambul after many weeks, picked up by one caravan in the place where a former one had dropped him, bringing home with him a wound on the temples from the lance of a Bedouin freebooter, the impression in his thigh of four teeth of a panther, from which he had contrived to escape half alive, and a terrible emptiness in his heart, in which all hope and faith had died.

When he got back to Stambul he thought within himself that, after having escaped from so many dangers, God would, at least, visit him with no more affliction, but, content with what had already befallen him, would suffer him to attend to his business in peace for the small remainder of his days.

Wherefore he at once sought out worthy Ali Hojia, his one faithful friend, to whom he had confided the keeping of his treasures.

Ali received him kindly. "Well, and so thou hast just come, Muhzin," said he; "of a truth, I had given thee up for lost. Every evening have I prayed that thou mightest return."

And then Muhzin told him how ill he had fared, and what a fool the vision had made of him, and said that henceforth, he would believe no more in visions, even if their beards were made of moonbeams.

"And that will be wise of thee, Muhzin," said Ali Hojia. "Did I not tell thee not to go? If thou hadst remained at home here thou wouldst not have been robbed and made a fool of. And now thou hast made of thyself a laughing-stock and a beggar. Yet grieve not. For a week a table shall be spread in my house for thee, and then other merciful Mussulmans will care for thee to the end of thy days."

"I thank thee for thy goodness, Ali," said Muhzin; "but I will not be a beggar. Produce my hidden treasures, and I will trade with them as before. I will live honourably."

"Then, where are these treasures of thine?" asked Ali, exceedingly amazed.

"Why, with thee, of course," replied Muhzin.

Ali Hojia shook his head. "Muhzin, my friend, thy misfortunes have robbed thee of thy wits, so that thou knowest not what thou sayest. Thou hast just told me that thou wert robbed on thy journey, and now thou sayest I have treasures of thine which I have never seen. I tell thee what--go now and have a little sleep and clear thy mind somewhat. After that I will gladly see thee again."

And with that worthy Hojia very gently pushed Muhzin from his door, and shut it in his face.

The unfortunate merchant now fell into absolute despair. He himself began to doubt whether he was in his senses, or whether he had indeed turned crazy, and the hidden treasure was a dream, a phantom, like the rest.

In his despair he flew to the Grand Vizier, cast himself at his feet, and told him the whole story.

"Hast thou a witness who saw thee give thy treasures to Hojia?" inquired the Grand Vizier.

"Allah alone, none other. Truly we were such good friends, one body and one soul."

"Then keep still till I have spoken to the Sultan."

When the Grand Vizier had spoken to the Sultan about the matter, Soliman commanded him to proclaim at every corner of every street, through the public criers, that a certain merchant, Muhzin by name, recently returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca, had drowned himself at night in the Bosphorus. His dead body had been found by the fishermen; if, therefore, the dead man had any friends or relations who wished to bury him with due respect, they were to come for him, otherwise the corpse would be buried in the common cemetery reserved for the poor.

Naturally Ali Hojia was the last person to come forward to bury Muhzin; on the contrary, he did not show himself at all, but several days afterwards he secretly visited the cemetery of the poor, and there discovered the flat tomb on which two rough stones had been rolled, and on one of these stones the name of Muhzin had been coarsely smeared.

But Muhzin was cast by the Sultan into the prison of the Seven Towers, so that he might not be able to show himself, even if he had a mind to. There, however, he was well treated and lacked nothing.

Soliman, moreover, got from the merchant an exact description of his deposited treasures, piece by piece, with all their distinguishing marks, and made an inventory of them. Then he commanded the Grand Vizier to make friends with Hojia under some pretext or other.

The Grand Vizier went very cautiously to work, and having frequently had occasion to observe the wisdom of the learned lawyer, promised to present him to the Sultan.

The Sultan condescended to enter into conversation with the lawyer, and expressed himself delighted at his dialectical skill. Presently he got into the habit of asking his opinion concerning various ticklish points of law in cases about which even the members of the Divan had different opinions, and always he gave great weight to the words of Ali. At last he so far extended his favour towards him as to appoint him Chief Almoner, and raise him high among the dignitaries of the Seraglio.

So much favour absolutely blinded Hojia, it was now six months since the death of Muhzin had been proclaimed, and no doubt he thought no more about it.

One day the Sultan perceived in the girdle of Hojia a rosary just like one which was mentioned in the inventory of the merchant's stolen treasures. It was made of coral beads of the size of filberts, engraved all round with sacred texts, and the larger beads were encrusted with diamonds.

The Sultan admired the string of beads. "What a splendid bead-string thou hast," said he. "In the whole of my treasury I have not the like of it. The coral is extraordinarily beautiful, and the workmanship priceless."

Ali was transported with joy, and made haste to offer to the Sultan the jewel which was so fortunate as to have won the favour of the Grand Signior.

The Sultan graciously condescended to accept the present, and gave Hojia instead of it three purses of gold, far more indeed than the jewel was worth, and invited him the next day to the Dzsirid Square, where a splendid entertainment was to be held.

Hojia was even more delighted by this distinction than by the Sultan's gift; he would be able to appear on the Dzsirid in the suite of the Sultan.

The Dzsirid was the one open space in the Seraglio where the Turkish magnates diverted themselves with pike-casting, dart-throwing, and other manly sports. The Sultan himself often took part in these pastimes. The best of shooting grounds also formed part of the Dzsirid.

On this occasion the Sultan also took part in the shooting; and very badly he shot, not once did he hit the mark. Wherefore he began to grow angry, and, as is the way with marksmen under such circumstances, he blamed the mark, the bowstring, the quiver, and the burning sun for his bad shooting, and at last burst forth against the ring on his finger as the cause of all his wide shooting. For it was the custom of the archer to wear on his finger a serpent-shaped spiral ring, so as to gain a firmer hold of the bow-string, and be able to make the bow twang to its full extent at the proper time.

The Sultan kept on grumbling at his ring, saying that it was badly made and caught in the bow-string every time, so that he could not let it go quickly enough, and with that he snatched it off, and cried, "Give me another ring!"

His attendants hastened to offer their own rings to the Grand Signior. The Sultan tried them all one after another.

"That won't do, that won't do! Ah! nobody makes such good archery-rings as the goldsmith Sulassan used to make, and he is dead now. But is there none here who has a ring made by Sulassan?"

At this question, Ali Hojia eagerly rushed up to the Sultan, and signified that he possessed a ring which was a production of the dead master. Would the Padishah deign to accept it from him?

Soliman did deign to accept it. This was the choicest jewel which the merchant had described to him. He accepted it from Hojia, put it on his finger, and thenceforth shot so skilfully at the mark that every one applauded him, and none more so than Ali Hojia.

After the sports in the Dzsirid, the Sultan sent for Muhzin. In his hand was the string of beads, and on his finger was the ring, and he was praying with the Koran before him.

Astonishment overcame the merchant when he saw his lost jewels in the possession of Soliman. He cast himself at the Sultan's feet, and, catching hold of the hem of his garment, exclaimed: "Oh, my lord, the ring and the string of beads which thou holdest in thy hand are mine."

The Sultan asked him what was written on each one of the beads and how many stones were in the ring, and the merchant answered each question exactly, whereupon the Sultan sent him back to the Seven Towers.

On the following day he sent for Hojia.

He discoursed with him on all manner of juridical questions which had come before the Divan, and took the opinion of the learned lawyer upon them all. Amongst other cases, he suddenly put this one to him: a certain man had grossly abused the confidence of a friend, who had confided his property to his care while he was on his travels, and robbed him of everything; what did such a man deserve for such a monstrous act of treachery?

Now, it is notorious that the greatest sinners are the most rigorous judges of offences similar to their own in others, and it is even possible that it never occurred to Hojia that he himself had been guilty of a like offence. Besides, his sin was buried deeply away in the tomb of Muhzin, and nobody knew anything about it.

So the jurist replied to the Sultan that such an extraordinary offence demanded an extraordinary punishment, and the sinner deserved nothing less than pounding to death in a mortar.

"Thou hast pronounced thine own condemnation," cried the Sultan. Then he clapped his hands, and four Izoglans came running in and bound Hojia hand and foot, took from him his keys, searched his dwelling thoroughly, and found in it the whole of the treasure which had been confided to him by his friend the merchant.

The confounded Hojia, who fancied he was bathing in the sunlight of the highest favour, and never reflected that in the sunlight everything becomes transparent, in his terror confessed everything, and also said that he was the apparition who, after fastening on a beard smeared over with a phosphorescent unguent, had come to the room of the sorrowing Muhzin and practised on the unfortunate mourner the accursed trick which had well-nigh robbed him of life and reason. It was he, too, who had stolen the body of Eminha from its tomb.

The Sultan immediately summoned a meeting of the Divan, laid the case before the Viziers, and told them of the punishment which the Hojia himself had said that a crime like his deserved.

The Viziers answered that Hojia's opinion was just. The crime was indeed of a new sort, and it was right, therefore, that he should be the first to taste the proper punishment for it.

By the Sultan's command, therefore, a huge mortar was cut out of marble, a huge pounding pole with four handles thereto being at the same time made to match the mortar.

Ali Hojia, meanwhile, was attired in a purple robe, with a golden turban on his head, and a bespangled girdle round his body, and so they cast him into the mortar. Then four Bostanjis seized the pounding beetle, and raising it by its four handles, rammed it with all their might into the mortar at a sign from the Aga of the Bostanjis. A frightful yell arose from the mortar, tapering off into an unspeakable, indescribable whistling shriek. The Bostanjis raised the pounding beetle a second time, and a second time they rammed it home. But now only a muffled groan responded to the impact. The third stroke was followed by a ghastly whimper, and after the fourth stroke there was no response but the crunching of bones.

And so they went pounding away with their pestle till they were tired out, and by that time all that remained in the mortar was a shapeless mash of blood and bones and silk and gold filigree.

Thus did Sultan Soliman punish the deceiver.

* * * * *

Eighty years ago the French traveller Tavernier saw this very mortar, so terrible a memorial of Ottoman justice, standing in the door of the Hall of the Divan.

V

LOVE AND THE LITTLE DOG

What can there be in common between love and a little dog? Well, listen! and I'll tell you.

My dear friend Toni was head over ears in love with a pretty little girl whom I did not love at all. This was not because I prefer falling in love with ugly little girls, or because I consider it superfluous to love a girl who is already loved by another fellow, but simply because one eye of this particular girl was black and the other blue.

"Toni," I said, "look out for yourself! This double sort of eye bodes no good. With one of them she'll ogle you, and with the other some one else. The blue eye may be faithful to you, the black one may deceive."

Toni replied I was quite wrong. In his opinion these two eyes harmonized admirably; they reminded him, he said, of bright dawn and starry night. Indeed, properly speaking, he alone would be the faithless one, as he would now be loving a blue eye and a black one at the same time.

Still, I did not like the business at all, and as I felt sure that Toni would be considerably the loser by it, I was determined to save him if I could.

"It will be the worse for you if you take her," I said. "For one thing, you will not be able even to call her your better _half_. With those contradictory eyes she will, at the very utmost, only be your better _two quarters_. Depend upon it, she must have been formed from the ribs of two different men. Have nothing to do with her, Toni, my boy!"

Whereupon Toni became abusive, and told me never to regard him as a friend again.

"Who are you to talk to me like that?" he cried. "You are not my father, or my mother, or my elder brother, or my married sister, or even my godfather, are you? Who are you to ride roughshod over my happiness? I don't care a rap what you say, and stand out of my way, or I'll punch your head. I mean to have her in any case now."

So, as I certainly could not say that I was his father, or even his godfather, I had to stand aside and let him go galloping headlong downhill towards the Vale of Matrimony without the brake on. If he were particularly fortunate, he might, perhaps, plump into a ditch when halfway down, and so come off cheaply with a broken arm; if, however, he were doomed to be unlucky, he would plunge to the bottom of the valley and break his neck.

Nevertheless, he was lucky, and fell off his high horse when he was only halfway down.

One evening he came to me full of a great resolution.

"Well, old chap, I'm not going to marry Nelly after all."

"She has jilted you, I suppose?"

"No. Something happened when I was with her last, that's all."

"Indeed! What was it?"

"Well, we had been strolling in the garden for an hour or more, mooning and spooning, and I had also been reciting verses to her, and she had laughed at them, and it seemed to me that only the angels could laugh like that, when suddenly there came bouncing towards us a little pet puppy, a tiny beast about five weeks old, just able to patter along the ground with his little paws, who wagged his little tail and fawned upon Nelly in the most comical manner when he got up to her, at the same time sticking up one little ear high in the air, and holding the other little ear down. Why he should do so I didn't know; perhaps he had been taught it, I thought. Nelly thereupon stooped down towards the little dog, and, seizing the point of its little erected ear with two of her pretty snow-white fingers, raised it into the air. The little puppy wriggled and whined, but Nelly, smiling all the time, threatened it with the index finger of the other hand. 'Come! stop it, stop it! no whining! It's not pretty,' she said, till the poor little creature gradually grew quiet, and remained suspended in the air by its ear. Then Nelly put it on the ground again, and the little puppy, softly whimpering, tripped off again, while Nelly never ceased smiling at it. Well, after that I scarce waited to get into my overcoat and wish her good-bye. I think that's all the leave-taking she deserves, and don't suppose I shall ever meet her again. No, my friend, _my_ ears could never stand such manoeuvres."

Thus it was that the little puppy-dog saved my friend Toni from a life-long danger.

VI

THE RED STAROSTA