Abruptly snatched from his solitude, he had received the supreme power at the moment when Akbar’s armies were entering his kingdom on all sides. The Omrahs of the Deccan, the old regent Tchand Bibi and her Abyssin ministers had ceased their quarrels in order to gather the unanimity of resistance around him. Ten thousand armed warriors had solemnly come in search of the son of the ancient kings. He had been found clad in white in a garden of laurels, in meditation alongside his aged master.
At first he had refused the offered royalty. He only believed in the efficacy of prayer; he did not want to quit his white robe, not to abandon the man who had instructed him and who had made a vow to die in the shade of the fig tree under which he was sitting. “That won’t stop it!” had been the reply. The uprooted fig tree had been carried away on an elephant’s back, the old Brahmin in its shade, and him, in the same ascetic’s robe, to pray for his people—but the men of the Deccan would know that the legitimate descendant of the Farrukhis was in impregnable Asir.
To the astonishment of everyone, Bahadur of the innocent heart had seized the reins of authority with a firm hand. He had kept his linen robe, he had had the fig tree planted, he had sat down beside his master, but he gave orders that were peremptory, albeit mysterious. He was the one who had decided the resistance to Akbar’s armies, in spite of the advice of the minister Abyssin Nahang, but an unexpected resistance. He had had a meeting with Aboul Fazi and had learned how benevolent the domination of Akbar would be if he submitted. He had returned to Asir and had closed the gates. God alone would decide, he had said.
The siege had begun, but he had given orders to the operators of thirteen hundred artillery pieces and mortars lined up on the ramparts only to fire in the night in the direction of the stars. In the same way, on the bastions, the boilers had been heated in order to launch boiling oil at a pure loss when there was no attack. The army would withdraw of its own accord, he said.
It had not withdrawn. At the first attacks, the sovereign’s pacific orders had been violated. The war had been exercised with its habitual fury.
Eleven months had gone by.
And now Akbar and his chiefs were wondering whether they would ever succeed in taking Asir. It was the month of Zilhidja, which we call July. The heat was overwhelming. Epidemics had broken out among the troops. The earthworks could only be carries out at night. The cavalry was useless and the horses were dying in large numbers. Certainly, many deserts assured them that the city of Asir had become an inferno, that there were many partisans of surrender, that the mortality among the discouraged inhabitants was so great that the dead were no longer being buried. Sometimes, the wind blew a reek of the charnel house from the city as far as the besiegers. But they were sure of nothing. The fury of resistance is rooted in souls and the defenders of Asir might have to be killed to the last man.
Now, one man who had escaped from Asir by night and who was being kept out of sight near Aboul Fazi’s tent had come to make a proposition. He alone knew, he said, of a narrow passage through the mountains departing from the ditches and ending inside the city wall, between the populous district of Takhati and the fort of Malgarh. He offered to lead warriors along that passage. The man was employed in the bunkers where the powder was stored. His name was Bahagum; he seemed trustworthy.
Emperor Akbar did not want to risk a troop in that hazardous enterprise. He consented to risk the life of one man, who would take account of the condition of the city and the possibilities of an attack by that route. I was to be that man.
“I would have preferred him to be less ugly,” I said, when I saw Bahagum.
“It appears that it was an accident,” said the officer who had accompanied him. “Once, when he was sleeping in the open, a hyena tore away a portion of his face.”
“And why is he betraying his own people?”
“Like all traitors,” the man, who was full of experience, told me, “for money. He has asked for a lot of money. And like all traitors, he says that the money is not for him but for his wife and children.”
I had hair long enough to be knotted over my shoulders. I stripped down to my underwear, over which I put a kind of cotton smock, so that I looked like just anyone, neither poor nor well-off.
Bahagum had arrived shortly before dawn and it was necessary to wait for the end of the following night, for the surveillance relaxed during the hours preceding sunrise. Aboul Fazi wanted to accompany me as far as the limits of the camp. He gave me the name of a notable inhabitant of Asir who had been won over to the Emperor’s cause and by whom I could have myself recognized.
As he was about to quit me he hesitated for a few seconds, and then called me back in order to say in a low voice: “Be on your guard. While interrogating that man it seemed to me several times that he was not entirely in his right mind.”
We traversed the dried-up ditches thanks to the moonless night, avoiding the patches of light cast by the torches attached to the round path of the ramparts. The entrance to the passage to which my companion led me opened at the foot of one of the bastions of Fort Malgarh.
It was necessary to crawl under the thickness of the wall. Then we found ourselves in a kind of tunnel, which broadened or narrowed, doubtless in accordance with the form of the rock under which we were moving. My companion preceded me with a lamp. When we arrived in a kind of room where I could almost stand upright, he turned round in order to say: “The crocodiles of the ditches once assembled here in heaps. Now there isn’t a single one.”
He seemed to regret it. Then we took a rudimentary staircase that rose up in a spiral. I imagined that such a passage must have been contrived when that tower of Fort Malgarh was constructed. It was the most ancient. I had heard it said that it was prodigiously old, built before known epochs by a race of giants. The stairway was, however, so narrow that it seemed rather to be made for the usage of dwarfs.
It was necessary to crawl again. Suddenly, my companion stopped, extinguished his lantern and made me a sign to come alongside him.
“We’ve arrived,” he said.
I could only see darkness in front of me, but I was bathed by cooler air..
“The passage opens into a well,” my companion murmured.
“Into a well?”
“It’s dry, and corpses have been thrown into it. That’s how I discovered the passage. I came down with a rope in order to see what the dead had in their pockets.”
Bahagum uttered a bizarre sound that must have been laughter. “One is always robbed in such cases, but I get my revenge by biting them in the good place.”
“What is the good place?” I asked, troubled by his strange words.
He touches my cheek with his finger drawing a circle.
I shivered, imagining that horrible being biting dead men in the depths of a well. The idea of a fall chilled me with horror.
“How are we going to get up?”
“A rope might have given an alert, although the place is solitary. We’ll hang on to the stones. But in order to distinguish them it’s necessary to wait for sunlight to begin to appear.”
That could not be long delayed. We remained still. I sometimes felt a draught that brought us nauseating odors. In the end, I began to get drowsy. I was woken up by a warmth against my cheek and I moved my head back instinctively. I bumped it on the stone and I heard a noise of jaws snapping shut. There was a silence, and then my companion said: “Let’s go—there’s enough light now.”
I crawled behind him, feeling my cheek.
I heard him murmur again: “You put your foot to the right.”
He was above me, and I was tempted to seize his leg and make him fall to the bottom of the well, but I made appeal to my reason. I hoisted myself up behind him without too much difficulty.
The sun had risen. We were in waste ground. The sound of trumpets could be heard in the distance. We took a few steps and stopped at the foot of a few stunted palm trees. It had been agreed that I would see all that it was possible for me to see of the ci
ty, its defenders and their armaments. I had to spend my day doing that and meet my guide again at sunset. He would then take me back through the subterranean passage we had just followed and into the heart of Akbar’s camp, and would receive the promised recompense thereafter. He had an interest in nothing happening to me, so he made me all sorts of recommendation.
“There are places it’s necessary not to go,” he told me. “Death passes there. It’s almost always invisible and those it touches die suddenly without anyone being able to explain why.”
He had already said that the previous day, but we had not believed him. We knew that a terrible epidemic was rife in Asir, but we could not add faith to those instantaneous deaths.”
“What are those places?”
“The side-streets where the poor live. The poor are always stricken first.”
It was no time to deliver oneself to considerations of divine justice. I started walking rapidly, orientating myself as best I could. I had prepared an entire story in case I was interrogated, but when I reached what I judged to be the commencement of the city, I saw that no one was thinking of paying any heed to me.
I was struck by the pestilential odor. It must have been emanating for a long time, for all the inhabitants and soldiers that I saw were holding pieces of cloth under their noses. I thought of engaging someone in conversation. I saw a family on the threshold of a house of good appearance. A large balcony cast a shadow over a tall old man who was in the middle, legs crossed, between two children. A woman a little further away was semi-recumbent, and I supposed that she must be looking for something on the ground. I slowed my pace and approached them. I got ready to offer my services to find whatever it was the woman was searching for so attentively.
I commenced a phrase, but it stopped on my lips. The old man had responded to me silently by way of the stony grimace that was fixed on his features. He and his kin had been overtaken by death. How long ago?
I passed soldiers in disorder. I went down a streets that ought to have been lined by bazaars, but whose shops were closed, and I arrived in a narrow square where several pagodas were facing one another. Hazard had dispensed me of long research. I recognized from the description that had been given to me the location of the dwelling of the rich Miram Adil, Akbar’s partisan, who had been prevented from quitting Asir by concern for his property.
I was struck by the sounds of an orchestra, which had to be inside an ancient palace, doubtless the dwelling of Miram Adil. People sitting cross-legged in the square were listening to the orchestra with ecstatic faces. I wondered whether they were dead or alive; the movement of their respiration indicated to me that musical ecstasy was the sole cause of their immobility.
I penetrated into the palace without difficulty. Disorder reigned there. I climbed a staircase and, guided by the sounds, I arrived in a large room where the musicians were playing. There were dancers who were drinking and eating. Some were getting ready to leave. It was the end of a night of music and dancing. It was infinitely surprising in such circumstances, but I had acquired the habit of not being astonished by anything with the Hindus.
When the music stopped playing, a few aged men who were sitting on cushions got up and took their leave of a tall individual who had to be the master of the house. I had seen his gaze settle on me without surprise. I understood that anyone could come in, and that all precedence had been abolished in the universal disarray. I thought involuntarily of what happens when a fire ravages a forest and causes all the wild animals that ordinarily flee from one another to fraternize.
I approached Miram Adil and said to him in a low voice that I had been sent by Aboul Fazi. He did not manifest the surprise that I expected. Perhaps he did not believe me at first. He contented himself with making me a sign to wait until we were alone.
I rapidly undid the corner of my garment into which I had sewn a ring that Aboul Fazi had give me at the moment of departure and of which he made use as a seal. There were various overlapping designs engraved on it, which were the symbols of the various religions in which he believed equally. Mira Adil examined it very attentively and contented himself with saying: “The water of the sapphire is very poor.”
And instead of returning it to me he carefully put it in an inside pocket of his garment.
“It’s a pity that you didn’t arrive sooner. You’d have seen the most extraordinary dancing girls that you’ll ever see. This evening they’ll all be dead.”
I explained to him rapidly that, in accordance with the information that I was going to take back to the camp, a general assault would be mounted on the city of Asir.
“It will be too late,” he told me. “You’ve arrived a day too late. Asir will be burned and the Djohor constructed beforehand.”
The Djohor was a horrible custom of ancient wars in India. When a besieged city was on the brink of being taken, its defenders built a huge pyre and burned all their women and children thereon. Then they had themselves killed in combat. The Djohor of Asir was what the Emperor feared most. For centuries the Deccan had furnished sacred dancers to a part of Asia. There were several celebrated schools there, which had retreated to Asir in order to preserve them from invaders. There was not a warrior in the imperial army who did not dream about the beauty of those dancers. Akbar had given severe orders for the dancers to be protected. In the case that the city was taken by assault, it was his personal guard that was to surround the pagodas in order to defend them. I knew that if the Djohor took place, even the greatest military victory would be considered as a disaster.
“But I thought that Prince Bahadur had to an extreme the great respect for life that the religion of Brahma teaches!” I cried.
“It was thus, but evil engenders evil. On the tower of his palace, the Prince never ceases to implore his ancestors, the solar Devas. Since his master died and the fig-tree under which he sheltered has also dried up, his soul has changed and he allows his Omrahs free rein.”
“Is there no means of preventing the execution of this crime?”
“No. The decision has been made. And what would be the point? Death is born of death, and death is everywhere. It appears here spontaneously, as if it were in the paving stones over which one walks, in the air that one breathes. Look.”
He went to the window, making a metallic sound with every movement, which made me think that he must be carrying all his jewelry sewn into the lining of his garments. He showed me all of the western part of Asir.
“Out there are the dead that have not been buried, and of which great piles are being made. That cart drawn by oxen, preceded by a guard ringing a bell is laden with rice for distribution. No one, or almost no one, is taking any. The reserves are so great that the entire population of Asir could be nourished for some time. It is more terrible to die without cause than to die of hunger. That began with the elephants. Then the livestock followed. Perhaps they were too densely crowded in the parks. First the vultures came in thousands. They must have been visible from the Emperor’s camp. They died in their turn.”
Beyond a succession of stairways, behind walls of earth, Miram Adil’s hand showed me the livestock pens. There was no longer anything but one vast charnel house in which designs of animals gleamed in places, traced in bones. Vultures were lurching around them.
“Death has come to the beasts,” he went on. “There is a pagoda into which it penetrated when the crowd filled it and everyone was stricken simultaneously. Who knows whether it is not a supernatural intervention, whether the Unique, who orders everything, in response to Bahadur’s prayers, has not sent death, as the best mediator between his children and him?”
I looked at that man, with the puffy face of a sybarite, whose sparkling eyes and plump lips revealed a mixture of intelligence and sensuality. Something that was foreign to him seemed to be fluttering around him. His natural love of life and its pleasures had given way to a strange lassitude.
“The Djohor!” he murmured. “Perhaps it’s the expression of a divine thought.
Our ancestors believed that. An exceptional beauty that is revealed in the rhythm and form of women, a traditional art augmented by the genius of the creatures that exercise it, ought to be destroyed rather than soiled. Is not fire the hidden breath of the supreme force?”
“But don’t you think that if Akbar’s troops succeeded in entering Asir today, the Djohor might be prevented?”
Miram Adil shook his head. “The situation is desperate. More than a third of the defenders and more than a third of the inhabitants have died of the epidemic. If Akbar attacked on every side at once, there would be a weak point that lacked men. But he doesn’t know that. You can’t inform him in time, and when you do inform him, the suicide of Asir will have taken place.”
A resolution had just taken possession of me.
“I’m going to try to save the women of Asir from the pyre,” I said. “I’ll go back to the Emperor’s camp as soon as possible. I might fail, but I might succeed. Don’t you want to come with me? It’s the best chance you have of saving your life.”
Miram Adil had a melancholy smile, and his gaze, in scanning me from head to toe, seemed to say that I must be very young to suppose him possessed of such a great love of existence.
“I’ve made three journeys to Bagdad to bring back Persian miniatures that I contemplate every day because of their perfection. They are, with the beauty of dancing girls, my reason for being on earth. Now, there are other lovers of Persian miniatures in Asir. I would only have to leave my palace, and few hours later, my treasure would have disappeared. My miniatures are my children. I carry two of them, the most ancient, on my breast, but I can’t carry them all.”
His eyes had become brilliant. With a rapid gesture, he took a little scroll from beneath his robe, seemingly from the same pocket in which he had placed Aboul Fazi’s ring. He unrolled before me an ancient piece of worn silk on which were painted, in faded colors, individuals, which might have been birds, sitting in an arbor. Everything was very indistinct and seemed to me to be devoid of beauty. I would have liked to make him see how contradictory his conduct was. His treasures would be destroyed if Asir was burned; by fleeing, he might save at least a part of them. But I had to act quickly and I sensed the futility of anything I might say.
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