“She has eaten them all! Behold, how fat she is!” cried out Gulbeyzah. “I believe she is just going to have some others. Look!” She plunged, and made fresh ripples. Laughter hailed this sally. A brown girl, lissom as a snake, sprang hard on the facetious one and promptly ducked her.
Angry, humiliated, feeling lost eternally, Barakah scrambled out to face a row of grinning, dancing hags. They and the shameless girls, the fiendish music, the sweating walls, the fumes of incense hiding the high roof, combined to make her fancy she was underneath the earth assisting at an orgy of malignant jinn.
Some one smote her from behind. She turned round angrily. A fair-haired girl was running. She ran after her. Another struck her lightly as she ran. She turned again. A third sprang on her, pinioned both her arms and kissed her on the mouth, amid applause. Then first she realized that it was all a game; the girls were friendly. In the magnitude of her relief, her shyness vanished. She soon led the romp. It was one long dancing game of follow-my-leader, varied with moods of hide-and-seek and leapfrog. All the while the singers kept up their wild din, the hired dancers never ceased their weird contortions.
Afterwards, when they were all rubbed down and clothed again, there was a feast of most delicious dainties in the ante-rooms, and Barakah was introduced to her late playfellows, transformed as if by magic to polite young ladies. Every one of them, she found, had brought a present for her. She chattered merrily in French, and ate and drank with appetite unknown before. Driving home in the carriage with three delicately perfumed maidens, whose soft hands caressed her, she experienced a blissful languor, like thanksgiving.
CHAPTER VIII
Meanwhile the anguish of the lady Fitnah had become unbearable. The beating she had received, which kept her silent, was only part of the injustice which prevailed against her. She alone, she had assurance, was vouchsafed clear vision of the horror of this marriage; all the rest were drugged and blinded by the creature’s spells. She had heard of Frankish women, who were barren, holding men entranced for life, thus ending families; and had no doubt at all but this was one of them. A woman of volcanic passions, always righteous, for her to look on evil was to seek to slay it.
She said, “The fiend will suck my Yûsuf’s life out and then vanish.”
Her group of flatterers replied:
“Alas, yes! She will suck him as one sucks an orange, and go her way refreshed,” giving the sad mother a distracting picture of her first-born as an empty orange-skin flung in the gutter among other refuse.
She cried, “By Allah! she shall die!”
The sycophants replied, “Yes, by thy blessed womb, she shall—an awful death,” and began to meditate the form that death should take.
“But she has islamed,” one objected.
“Who knows if she has really islamed?” was the answer. “Our lord the Pasha is bewitched. He has forgone in her case every ordeal that might test her faith. It is ascertained that she is barren and will drink the bridegroom’s life. Woe! Woe! The end of a most noble race!”
Inspired by hatred of iniquity, fanned and encouraged by her little court, the anguished mother had made sure arrangements for the English girl’s dishonour, thinking no crime to vilify so bad a thing. The scheme, alas! had been frustrated by the eunuchs; whose vigilance redoubled the poor lady’s grief. What dreadful magic must reside in that foul creature to make the Pasha guard her like a pearl? to make poor Yûsuf cling to her and shun his mother? Her cronies recommended her to summon negresses, of those who have familiar intercourse with demons, and hold the mystic ceremony called a zâr—the latest novelty. But Fitnah Khânum feared the Pasha, who denounced such consolations as against religion. She was in despair. The hours flew by towards the wedding; and she, perceiving all its horror, had no power to stop it.
On the very morning of the day appointed for the final ceremonies, she received two visitors, not in her own room, but in a dirty closet used for rubbish. The first to enter was the same old woman who had lured Barakah from her chamber with the name of Yûsuf. The second, throwing off the veil, revealed a goatish face with pointed ears beneath a foul white skull-cap. It was Abu Sumûm, the most renowned of sorcerers.
He spread out his hands and chanted:
“In the name of Allah, Er Rahmân, Er Rahîm,
Who taught the words of might to Suleymân el Hakîm,
And gave the seal of power into his hand,
Lo, here I stand,
Abu Sumûm, your humble servant to command!
Would you love-potions, I can give you those
Will bring the loved one to your feet though walls oppose
And all the doors be guarded by his foes.
Or have you enemies, but name their names
And I will torture them with hellish flames.
Wouldst thou their death? I’ll write a potent spell
Upon an ass’s thigh-bone, hide it well
Beneath the threshold where they dwell.
Wouldst thou their madness? I will tie their mind
To some low creature of a restless kind,
A bird or fish, that when it moves they rage,
And when it rests their fury they assuage;
And none shall know the secret saving I,
So that for lack of remedy they die.
Abu Sumûm the wily one I am,
State but your need of me and so—Salâm!”
Having concluded this doggerel, setting forth his stock-in-trade, the wizard stood with arms crossed, grinning widely.
“I have an enemy,” faltered the lady, “and she is dreadful, being a ginniyeh, and no child of Adam.”
“Think not to instruct me,” said the warlock. “Nothing uncanny comes to Masr, but my hosts of servants who are in the air inform me instantly. Ah, if it is the Englishwoman thou opposest, have a care, for she is full of art, having attained the secret of invisibility, of self-protection, and also of transforming people into dogs. Now, what, I ask, dost thou require of me exactly—a potion that shall make her love thee, or her madness, or a wasting illness?”
“Nothing, nothing, save her instant death,” sobbed Fitnah—“the wedding is to-day—and then take all my wealth.”
“By thy leave, lady,” cried the wizard, much offended, “I am not him thou seekest! Send for an assassin! My business is with art and not brutality. Find out some chopper-up of wood: I am a carver!”
“But I know of no assassin! How can we women find and bring one hither? O Abu Sumûm, be generous, for Allah’s love!”
“Hear the excellent lady, the very mother of kindness! Hear her, O Abu Sumûm! Behold her sufferings! Grant her petition, for the love of Allah, and our Lord reward thee!” pleaded the old woman who had brought him in.
“I know not. It is not my line of business. And yet, I bethink me, there is art in it,” muttered the sorcerer, relenting visibly—“much art, for she is the most skilful witch on earth; and no one else in Masr, under Allah, could hope to overcome her—Ha! What is this?” He raised his hand to his right ear, and stood intently