I lay there trembling on the dirty floor, just about done with fatigue and fear. At least it was dim and cool in here. And then I heard someone speaking in the cell, and raised my head; at first I could make nothing out in the faint light that came from a single window high in one wall, and then I started with astonishment, for suspended flat in the air in the middle of the cell, spread-eagled as though in flight, was the figure of a man. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness I drew in a shuddering breath, for now I could see that he was cruelly hung between four chains, one to each limb from the top corners of the room. More astonishing still, beneath his racked body, which hung about three feet from the floor, was crouched another figure, supporting the hanging man on his back, presumably to take the appalling strain of the chains from his wrists and ankles. It was the crouching man who was speaking, and to my surprise, his words were in Persian.
“It is a gift from God, brother,” says he, speaking with difficulty. “A rather dirty gift, but human – if there is such a thing as a human Russian. At least, he is a prisoner, and if I speak politely to him I may persuade him to take my place for a while, and bear your intolerable body. I am too old for this, and you are heavier than Abu Hassan, the breaker of wind.”
The hanging man, whose head was away from me, tried to lift it to look. His voice, when he spoke, was hoarse with pain, but what he said was, unbelievably, a joke.
“Let him … approach … then … and I pray … to God … that he has … fewer fleas … than you … Also … you are … a most … uncomfortable … support … God help … the … woman … who shares … your bed.”
“Here is thanks,” says the crouching man, panting under the weight. “I bear him as though I were the Djinn of the Seven Peaks, and he rails at me. You, nasrani,”c he addressed me: “If you understand God’s language, come and help me to support this ingrate, this sinner. And when you are tired, we shall sit in comfort against the wall, and gloat over him. Or I may squat on his chest, to teach him gratitude. Come, Ruski, are we not all God’s creatures?”
And even as he said it, his voice quavered, he staggered under the burden above him, and slumped forward unconscious on the floor.
a See Flashman.
b “Aral Sea!”
c Christian.
The hanging man gave a sudden cry of anguish as his body took the full stretch of the chains; he hung there moaning and panting until, without really thinking, I scrambled forward and came up beneath him, bearing his trunk across my stooped back. His face was hanging backward beside my own, working with pain.
“God … thank you!” he gasped at last. “My limbs are on fire! But not for long – not for long – if God is kind.” His voice came in a tortured whisper. “Who are you – a Ruski?”
“No,” says I, “an Englishman, a prisoner of the Russians.”
“You speak … our tongue … in God’s name?”
“Yes,” says I, “Hold still, curse you, or you’ll slip!”
He groaned again: he was a devilish weight. And then: “Providence … works strangely,” says he. “An angliski … here. Well, take heart, stranger … you may be … more fortunate … than you know.”
I couldn’t see that, not by any stretch, stuck in a lousy cell with some Asiatic nigger breaking my back. Indeed, I was regretting the impulse which had made me bear him up – who was he to me, after all, that I shouldn’t let him dangle? But when you’re in adversity it don’t pay to antagonize your companions, at least until you know what’s what, so I stayed unwillingly where I was, puffing and straining.
“Who … are you?” says he.
“Flashman. Colonel, British Army.”
“I am Yakub Beg,”36 whispers he, and even through his pain you could hear the pride in his voice. “Kush Begi, Khan of Khokand, and guardian of … the White Mosque. You are my … guest … sent to me … from heaven. Touch … on my knee … touch on my bosom … touch where you will.”
I recognized the formal greeting of the hill folk, which wasn’t appropriate in the circumstances.
“Can’t touch anything but your arse at present,” I told him, and I felt him shake – my God, he could even laugh, with the arms and legs being drawn out of him.
“It is a … good answer,” says he. “You talk … like a Tajik. We laugh … in adversity. Now I tell you … Englishman … when I go hence … you go too.”
I thought he was just babbling, of course. And then the other fellow, who had collapsed, groaned and sat up, and looked about him.
“Ah, God, I was weak,” says he. “Yakub, my son and brother, forgive me. I am as an old wife with dropsy; my knees are as water.”
Yakub Beg turned his face towards mine, and you must imagine his words punctuated by little gasps of pain.
“That ancient creature who grovels on the floor is Izzat Kutebar,”37 says he. “A poor fellow of little substance and less wit, who raided one Ruski caravan too many and was taken, through his greed. So they made him ‘swim upon land’, as I am swimming now, and he might have hung here till he rotted – and welcome – but I was foolish enough to think of rescue, and scouted too close to this fort of Shaitan. So they took me, and placed me in his chains, as the more important prisoner of the two – for he is dirt, this feeble old Kutebar. He swung a good sword once, they say – God, it must have been in Timur’s time!”
“By God!” cries Kutebar. “Did I lose Ak Mechet to the Ruskis? Was I whoring after the beauties of Bokhara when the beast Perovski massacred the men of Khokand with his grapeshot? No, by the pubic hairs of Rustum! I was swinging that good sword, laying the Muscovites in swathes along Syr Daria, while this fine fighting chief here was loafing in the bazaar with his darlings, saying ‘Eyewallah, it is hot today; give me to drink, Miriam, and put a cool hand on my forehead.’ Come out from under him, feringhee, and let him swing for his pains.”
“You see?” says Yakub Beg, craning his neck and trying to grin. “A dotard, flown with dreams. A badawi zhazhkayana who talks as the wild sheep defecate, at random, everywhere. When you and I go hither, Flashman bahadur, we shall leave him, and even the Ruskis will take pity on such a dried-up husk, and employ him to clean their privies – those of the common soldiers, you understand, not the officers.”
If I hadn’t served long in Afghanistan, and learned the speech and ways of the Central Asian tribes, I suppose I’d have imagined that I was in a cell with a couple of madmen. But I knew this trick that they have of reviling those they respect most, in banter, of their love of irony and formal imagery, which is strong in Pushtu and even stronger in Persian, the loveliest of all languages.
“When you go hither!” scoffs Kutebar, climbing to his feet and peering at his friend. “When will that be? When Buzurg Khan remembers you? God forbid I should depend on the goodwill of such a one. Or when Sahib Khan comes blundering against this place as you and he did two years ago, and lost two thousand men? Eyah! Why should they risk their necks for you – or me? We are not gold; once we are buried, who will dig us up?”
“My people will come,” says Yakub Beg. “And she will not forget me.”
“Put no faith in women, and as much in the Chinese,” says Kutebar cryptically. “Better if this stranger and I try to surprise the guard, and