And Allah did not grant the imams’ prayers. On the contrary, the heat seemed to increase. The wells ran dry. It was necessary to put guards beside those from which muddy water could still be drawn and to ration the inhabitants. Many, who were weakened by poor nourishment, feel in the street, afflicted by heatstroke. A sentinel on a platform at the summit of the Abderame tower was seen to remain motionless for an entire day, leaning on his arquebus. Toward evening, Spanish arquebusiers who had advanced within range of him launched arrows at him without him interrupting his meditation. The sun had killed him some time before, and when night fell those who were breathing the cool air on their terraces were still pointing at his silhouette outlined in the sky.
Sometimes a Spanish cannonball set fire to a house. But the rumor went around that he heat of the sun was sufficient to provoke conflagrations on its own, and in the fiery atmosphere people lived in the perpetual apprehension of fire.
To the torture of thirst was added that of hunger. The food shops were closed. Everyone was living on what their prudence had caused them to store in their homes. The improvident begged or waited in long queues in front of the Alcazaba for distributions of food. There were some who died of starvation stoically in their homes. They were no longer seen. Their deaths only became known by the odor of decomposition that escaped their door. And as people also died of fevers and all sorts of diseases, the virulence of which had redoubled, the number of those who perished augmented to such an extent that the odor of the putrescence of the dead, filtering from thresholds, floating over terraces, and trailing through all the streets, was the odor of the city, decomposed and dying itself.
And in that extreme misery, as if it were engendered by the ferments of the corruption, a bitter and unhealthy desire developed to enjoy the flesh that was about to be spoiled.
As soon as the sun set, the streets filed with sordid murmurs. Women could not go out without risk of being knocked down and raped. Brothels were besieged. Spanish slaves and Berber dancers who devoted themselves to debauchery made fortunes in a matter of days. The high street, where many prostitutes resided, offered a singular spectacle. Women stood outside their doors beneath gem-studded combs showing through their open gandourahs bodies covered with jewelry from head to toe. The negroes guarding them, standing next to them, were similarly laden. The joy of wealth caused pride to blossom on their faces, to such an extent that a man climbing the high street thought he was walking between two rows of indecent queens, obscene idols worshiped by a corrupt people.
And that frantic thirst for enjoyment was communicated by occult means to the Spanish camp.
The knights, the men of the Santa Hermandad, the Galicians and the mercenaries were all hoping for and counting on the pillage of the city. They knew that Malaga was, next to Granada, the richest city in the Moorish kingdom. In the evening, outside the tents, they traced plans of the city in the sand. They showed one another the location of the street of the jewelers, the mosques and the palace of Ali Dordux. It was there that it was necessary to rush first.
But it was, above all, the women that they coveted. Renegade prisoners have given descriptions of the most beautiful young women. They were known by name. The soldiers played dice for them, sharing them out in advance. Zorah, the daughter of a silk-merchant who was famed in Malaga for her beauty, her chastity and her love of poetry was the most desired, after Rachel, a young Jewish girl of sixteen. And by the light of fires that made their loosened armor gleam, all of them saw in dreams the sumptuous dwellings with doors broken down, and chambers full of velvet, and beds in which, on golden brocade, they would lay down virgins trembling with fear.
One night, Almazan had a dream.
In a foggy square he saw Christian Rosenkreutz, poorly dressed and holding a staff in his hand. On his back, attached by a strap, he had a leather bag, like someone who is about to make a long journey on foot. His face was sad and his ordinarily bright eyes were veiled. Around his neck he wore the emblematic cross in alchemical gold with a thick rose in the middle, and the cross and the rose, which were not shining, nevertheless gave off a kind of supernatural radiation.
On seeing Rosenkreutz, Almazan held out his arms and ran toward him. Then Rosenkreutz turned his head slightly to one side and considered him as one considers a stranger who inspires no sympathy, and started walking with a long stride, far away. He went very quickly. He had already climbed a high mountain. At the end of an infinite road, he met other men who seemed to be waiting for him, whose faces Almazan could not make out, but all of whom wore the same emblem of the rose and the cross around their necks.
Almazan made an immense effort to launch himself forward and climb that mountain, but he felt that his body was as heavy as lead. He could not move. Something warm, powerful and delicious mobilized him.
He woke up. Isabelle had her two arms wrapped around his shoulders and her body as stuck against his. He sensed the movement of her abdomen against him as she breathed, and the air was embalmed by the human perfume by which his life was intoxicated.
What a solid chain her thin wrists made! How light she was, and yet heavy! Oh no, the man who had that warm flesh on his would never climb the mountain.
He embraced her ardently. She laughed at waking up under his caresses. As the day was born they got dressed and went down toward the sea. Everything was calm, Isabelle had never been as cheerful. At the bottom of the garden there was a little sand that formed a beach. They arrived there, and Isabelle than unrolled the long cashmere veil in which she was wrapped and kicked off her slippers, saying that she wanted to bathe. When she was naked, she ran toward the sea—but she came back immediately and called to Almazan.
There was a formless mass that the tide had doubtless cast up on the beach, and which was still half-floating. It was a human form. The fish had devoured the face, but by the crimson of the garments, which the water had been unable to discolor, Almazan recognized that it was what remained of Tarfe.
Full of horror, in the nascent dawn, he was obliged to reload the body on to the boat and row out in order to throw it overboard as far as possible from the sea.
From that day on, they no longer went down the stairways of the gardens, and no longer went toward the sea.
He strove not to think any more. He knew that he had fallen and was resigned to his decadence. The desire for Isabelle’s body tormented him perpetually. He loved her with all the more fury because he sensed something in her escaping him.
One day, he quit the great market hall in which the wounded had been accumulated and went home unexpectedly. Isabelle was not there. He called the maidservants. They stammered, they knew nothing. He threatened them uselessly.
Then, filled with anxiety, he set out in search of her. The sun was more implacable than ever and the very stones seemed to be suffering. He was surrounded by a group of emaciated people who were running through the streets demanding the surrender of the city. They recognized him as a member of the Council of Twelve and shouted to him: “Bread! Bread for our children!”
He had great difficulty escaping them.
A little further on, he heard clamors, and gesticulating women pushed him to the center of a group on the threshold of a house.
A giant with the head of a brute was brandishing the fleshless body of a little girl. He lifted that waxen mummy with close eyes over the crowd. He was a butcher who had been accused days before of having killed his child in order to eat her. Seized with rage, he had just disinterred her in order to prove the falsity of those accusations. And as the witnesses to the scene recoiled, shouting, demanding the punishment of the calumniators, the butcher sat down on the ground and started weeping like a child.
Almazan skirted the ill-famed quarter that was at the foot of the Alcazaba. The hovels were swarming with an intense life. Bodes were shining with sweat. The dervish Massar had affirmed that the extraordinary heat was an advance sign of the end of the world. That had provoked an increase in carnal desire. Through open doors, peop
le could be seen coupling, and Almazan noticed that the groans of pleasure resembled death-rattles.
A woman threw away her jewels and asked which way Mecca was, in order to pray. A group demanded silence. The trumpet of Israfil had, they said, sounded the first blast, which was the precursory sound. It was necessary to expect the second blast, that of consternation, and the third, that of resurrection. Someone shouted that Masihal Dadja, the false prophet, had appeared, and that he was King Ferdinand. Another pointed at the sun and said that it was about to be extinguished abruptly like a candle blown out by the breath of Allah. And a negro twisted the feet of a dog in order that it would complain in human language, for on the day of the last judgment, animals would be able to speak.
A creature with mad eyes fell to the ground in a crisis of hysteria and seized Almazan by the leg, He freed himself but, in spite of the disgust he experienced, he could not resign himself to going away. He recalled the descriptions that Isabelle had given him of parodies of the Sabbat in Aboulfedia’s house. He recalled the false horror of which she gave evidence, the regret betrayed by her gaze and the palpitation of her breasts. Aboulfedia had once spoken to him of that promiscuity in lust that one found in the secret cults of ancient gods. Those who had once practiced those rites aspired to recommence. Perhaps Isabelle was allowing in one of those hovels among prostitutes, surrendering herself to men whose lasciviousness was multiplied by terror and hunger.
But where to find her?
Women made signs to him and then tried to retain him. He saw nothing around him but abject, sniggering faces.
Al Nefs, the angel of lust! I remembered Isabelle with her crimson chemise, when she had appeared to him in the gardens of Alexaras under a vault of golden citrus trees. Al Nefs was not an angel with a beautiful face, he was a demon, he was a thousand demons with frightful forms, he was the power that attracts the human spirit downwards and causes its irremediable loss.
He fled, running. He went down streets. He stumbled over ordure that was no longer being swept way and formed large heaps.
Exhausted men, sitting on those dung-heaps, did not even turn to look at him. Bands of vultures were flying overhead and alighting in clusters on the desiccated palm-trees of the public squares.
He finally reached his house. Isabelle had returned. She had a firm, hostile expression. Almazan saw with surprise that she was hiding an ivory crucifix in a box, preciously. Was it that she had gone to look for in the streets of Malaga?
That question caused her anger to burst forth.
Was she not a Christian? Was she not a Spaniard? Anyway, she had been abducted by violence. There was a curse on Malaga and the people who defended it. She did not want to be confounded with the herd of young Muslim women when the city was pillaged. She wanted to live and she was taking her precautions.
“What precautions?” Almazan asked.
She replied that Isabelle de Solis would obtain all the safeguards she required from Don Gutierre de Cardenas, one of the heroes of the war. She had known him in Seville. It was easy for her to get a message to him by night via a turncoat.
Almazan declared that he was determined to prevent her sending that message.
Then Isabelle’s indignation reached its peak.
“Because I’ve loved you, I’m linked to you forever, and after having been the slave of a king, I should become that of a Spanish soldier, merely to have the honor of sharing your fate? Is it my fault if you’re a renegade, if you can’t return to Spain? It wasn’t necessary for you to poison the Archbishop of Seville back then. With me, there’s no point in denying it. I saw your servant, whom you also killed, the night when I sought refuge in your house in Triana. I looked through the keyhole as I went away and I understood why you hadn’t taken me when I offered myself to you. It appears that you’re afraid of the dead!”
Almazan remained silent. So Isabelle believed that he had murdered his protector! Perhaps that was why she had loved him. He was disgusted with himself, as if he really had committed the crime.
He went up to the terrace of the house and he stood there for a long time. The sun was setting. In the garden, a woman and an old man were drawing stagnant water from the well, with difficulty. With a clatter of wings, vultures were flying over the Djouma mosque, where a muezzin was saying the evening prayer in a hoarse voice. The air was heavy and charged with frightful odors. Everywhere in the tortured city, despair filled souls.
And he understood that his amour, by virtue of a natural law, had also decomposed, along with the breath of dead wells and cadavers abandoned to the beasts.
The end of the world did not arrive. Far from being extinguished, the sun increased its ardor. The trumpets that sounded were not the trumpets of Istrafil but those of the guards on the towers summoning the Gomeres to the ramparts. For want of nourishment and water, many soldiers could no longer get up to fight, and the Spaniards were enlarging the breaches in the walls every day.
Hamet el Zegri decided to attempt a desperate sortie with all the valid warriors that remained to him. Massar had received assurances of victory from the dead. Weapons would break against the breasts of the believers, become invincible. His certainty was so great that he offered to march bare-headed before the combatants, crying the white banner of the Gomeres. The offer was accepted, and enthusiasm returned. The city had one last frisson of glory.
Massar was the first to fall, to a stone from a sling that broke his skull. The Gomeres fought with frenzy, but were overwhelmed by numbers. Hamet el Zegri sought death in vain. He came back covered in blood, desperate. Nevertheless, he was able to save the white banner.
Then it was as if the city emerged from lethargy. Delegates of the quarters and the trade guilds slid furtively toward the house of Ali Dordux. It was necessary to offer the surrender of the city. Ali Dordux had done it himself. He had already sent emissaries to King Ferdinand. He had proposed to open a gate to the city treacherously, to deliver Hamet el Zegri, his Gomeres and the renegades on condition that the inhabitants of Malaga would have their lives spared and their property would be respected. King Ferdinand had replied that city must be surrendered without conditions, that it would be pillaged, and that its inhabitants would be reduced to slavery.
When Almazan arrived at Ali Dordux’s door, where the Council of Twelve was in session, he was refused entry. When he was astonished, and took as witnesses several notable merchants who were there, they turned away. He understood The Spaniards would doubtless treat him as a renegade, and in order not to have to defend him, the inhabitants of Malaga were hastening to abandon him.
He headed for the castle of Jebelfaro in order to join Hamet el Zegri. On the way, he saw people weeping in doorways. Others were praying with grim resignation, prostrate in ordure. They had just learned of the King of Spain’s response.
But Almazan could not reach the castle. The vaulted gallery that departed from the Alcazaba and which led there had its heavy doors closed. Hamet el Zegri had locked himself in with his last Gomeres and no longer wanted to communicate with a city that was planning to surrender.
Almazan went home. Isabelle was waiting for him impatiently. She threw her arms around him. She was tender and full of ardor. She immediately drew him into the garden. There was a fisherman of the neighborhood who was also waiting for him. The fisherman was a brave man named Reduan whose forearm had been broken by a cannonball at the beginning of the siege and whom Almazan had treated and healed. He had just come to make Almazan party to an escape plan that he had conceived with two other fishermen.
They had noticed that large flat-bottomed mahones were perpetually furrowing the sea around the Spanish galleys, carrying troops to the shore, bringing water and provisions to the ships. Those mahones all had a red beacon light in the prow. Now, he possessed a mahone of the same form. As soon as night began to fall, he would embark on it. He would come along the coast and then, hooking a red light to his prow, he would row straight toward the Spanish fleet. He hoped, by favor of the d
arkness, to be confounded with the supply boats and get through the enemy line. Afterwards, he would deploy his sail and, if Allah protected him, he would reach Almunecar, or even the Moroccan coast.
He offered to take Almazan and Isabelle with him. The latter had already accepted, and a small box containing her effects was already prepared, as well as a casket containing her jewelry.
The immutable sun was about to disappear into the sea and a fiery breeze carrying dust and miasmas, was rising heavily. Reduan declared that the breeze would permit them to reach Africa during the night. It was agreed that in an hour, he would be at the bottom of the garden with his mahone.
That hour of waiting on the terrace of the garden passed very quickly. Isabelle placed her head on Almazan’s shoulder several times, fixing him with her eyes of slightly ambered gold. She asked him to forget the bad words she had said to him. Was he not the only man that she had ever loved?
But her nerves were shaken. She was trembling, she had sudden alarms. She ran toward the entrance door of the house, opened it and looked out into the street anxiously.
Since the morning the cannons no longer resounded, either on the side of the besieged or the besiegers, and there as something sinister about that silence. At a given moment, Isabelle huddled against Almazan and begged him, in an infantile voice, to take her away and always keep her with him. Then, suddenly, she disengaged herself, wiped her eyes and listened once again for footfalls.
In the end, there was a splashing at the bottom of the garden and a whispered appeal. The mahone was there. Almazan took Isabelle’s box and they went down. They had already taken their places beside the three men when Isabelle leapt ashore, lightly. She had forgotten the casket containing her jewels.
The Angel of Lust Page 30