The Achmed Abdullah Megapack

by Achmed Abdullah

  “Ah!” softly breathed the grocer; and there followed another silence.

  Yung Long’s young cousin was kneading, against the pipe, the dark opium cubes which the flame gradually changed into gold and amber.

  “Please smoke,” advised the grocer.

  Nag Hong Fah had shut his eyes completely, and his fat face, yellow as old parchment, seemed to have grown indifferent, dull, almost sleepy.

  Presently he spoke:

  “Your honorable sister, Yung Quai, will make a most excellent mother for the children of my late wife.”

  “Indeed.”

  There was another silence, again broken by Nag Hong Fah. His voice held a great calmness, a gentle singsong, a bronze quality which was like the soft rubbing of an ancient temple gong; green with the patina of the swinging centuries.

  “My friend,” he said, “there is the matter of a shimmering bracelet given by you to my late wife—”

  Yung Long looked up quickly; then down again as he saw the peaceful expression on the other’s bland features and heard him continue:

  “For a while I misunderstood. My heart was blinded. My soul was seared with rage. I—I am ashamed to own up to it—I harbored harsh feelings against you. Then I considered that you were the older brother of Yung Quai and a most honorable man. I considered that in giving the bracelet to my wife you doubtless meant to show your appreciation for me, your friend, her husband. Am I not right?”

  Yung Long had filled his lungs with another bowlful of opium smoke. He was leaning back, both shoulders on the mat so as the better to dilate his chest and to keep his lungs filled all the longer with the fumes of the kindly philosophic drug.

  “Yes,” he replied after a minute or two. “Your indulgent lips have pronounced words full of harmony and reason. Only—there is yet another trifling matter.”

  “Name it. It shall be honorably solved.”

  Yung Long sat up and fanned himself slowly.

  “At the time when I arranged a meeting with the mother of your children,” he said, “so as to speak to her of my respectful friendship for you and to bestow upon her a shimmering bracelet in proof of it, I was afraid of the wagging, leaky tongues of Pell Street. I was afraid of scandal and gossip. I therefore met your wife in the back room of Señora Garcia’s store, on the Bowery. Since then I have come to the conclusion that perhaps I acted foolishly. For the foreign woman may have misinterpreted my motives. She may talk, thus causing you as well as me to lose face, and besmirching the departed spirit of your wife. What sayeth the ‘Li-Ki’? ‘What is whispered in the private apartments must not be shouted outside.’ Do you not think that this foreign woman should—ah—”

  Nag Hong Fah smiled affectionately upon the other.

  “You have spoken true words, O wise and older brother,” he said rising. “It is necessary for your and my honor, as well as for the honor of my wife’s departed spirit, that the foreign woman should not wag her tongue. I shall see to it tonight.” He waved a fat, deprecating hand. “Yes—yes. I shall see to it. It is a simple act of family piety—but otherwise without much importance.”

  And he bowed, left the store, and returned to his house to get his lean knife.

  THEIR OWN DEAR LAND

  Omar the Black sighed—and grinned a little too—at the recollection.

  “There was Esa, the chief eunuch, yelling at me,” he said to his twin brother Omar the Red. “And there was Fathouma, the woman I had, if not loved, then at least left, smiling at me! Ah—I felt like a nut between two stones. Can you blame me that I sped from the place?”

  He described how, with the help of crashing elbows and kicking feet, he bored through the crowd; how at a desperate headlong rush, he hurtled around a corner, a second, a third, seeking deserted alleys, while behind him, men surged into motion.

  There was then pursuit, and the chief eunuch’s shouts taken up in a savage chorus:

  “Stop him!”

  “What has he done?”

  “Who cares? Did you not hear? A hundred pieces of gold to the man who stops him!”

  “Money which I need!”

  “No more than I! Money—ah—to be earned by my father’s only son!”

  Well, Omar the Black had decided, money not to be earned, if he could help it. He was not going to be stopped, and delivered up to the chief eunuch. It would mean one of two things: an unpleasant death or a life even more unpleasant.

  For he knew the chief eunuch of old—knew that the latter, who had been fiercely jealous of him during the days of his affluence and influence at the court of the Grand Khan of the Golden Steppe, had always intrigued against him, always detested him, always tried to undermine him. And here, tonight, was Esa’s chance.

  A chance at bitter toll!

  Either—oh, yes!—an unpleasant death or a life yet more unpleasant. Either to be handed over by the eunuch to the Grand Khan; and then—the Tartar considered and shuddered—it would be the tall gallows for him, or the swish of the executioner’s blade. Or else—and again he shuddered—his fate would rest with Fathouma, the Grand Khan’s sister.

  And—ai-yai—the way she had peered at him through the fluttering silk curtains of the litter! The way she had smiled at him! Such a sweet, gentle, forgiving smile! Such a tender smile!

  Allah—such a loving smile!

  Why—this time she might be less proud, less the great lady. Might insist on carrying out their interrupted marriage-contract. And what then of this other girl, this Gotha? A girl—ah, like the edge of soft dreams—a girl whom he loved madly.…

  He interrupted his thoughts.

  What, he asked himself, as his legs, one sturdy and sound and the other aching rheumatically, gathered speed, was the good in thinking, right now, of Gotha? First he would have to find safety—from the Grand Khan’s revenge no less than from Fathouma’s mercy.

  Faster and faster he ran—then swerved as a man, whom he passed, grabbed his arm and cried:

  “Stop, scoundrel!”

  Omar shook off the clutching fingers; felled, with brutal fist, another man who stepped square in his path; ran still faster, away from the center of the town, through streets and alleys that were deserted—and that a few moments later, as if by magic, jumped to hectic life.

  Lights in dark houses twinkled, exploded with orange and yellow as shutters were pushed up. Heads leaned from windows. Doors opened. The coiling shadows spewed forth people—men as well as women. They came hurrying out of nowhere, out of everywhere.

  They came yelling and screeching: “Get him!”

  “Stop him!”

  “There he goes!”

  “After him!”

  The pack in full cry—two abreast, three, four, six abreast. Groups, solitary figures!

  A lumbering red-turbaned constable, stumbling out of a coffee-shop, wiping his mouth, tugging at his heavy revolver.

  Shouted questions. Shouted answers:

  “What is it?”

  “What has happened?”

  “A thief!”

  “No! A murderer!”

  “Three people he slew!”

  “Four! I saw it with these eyes!”

  “Ah—the foul assassin!”

  And sadistic, quivering, high-pitched screams: “Get him!” … “Catch him!” … “Kill him!”

  Ferocious gaiety in the sounds. For here was the cruel, perverted, thrill of the man-hunt.

  “Get him!”

  “Kill him!”

  “Quick, quick, quick! Around the next corner! Cut him off!”

  Swearing, shrieking. Throwing bricks and pots and clubs and stones. Pop! pop! pop!—the constable’s revolver dropping punctuation marks into the night. And on, on, the sweep of figures. And Omar the Black running, his lungs pounding, his heart beating like a triphammer; darting left, right, left, right—steadily gaining on his pursuers, at last finding temporary refuge at the edge of town, in the old cemetery, among the carved granite tombstones that dreamed of Judgment Day.

  There
, stretched prone on the ground, he turned his head to watch the mob hurrying on and past on a false trail. He listened to the view-halloo of the chase growing fainter and fainter, finally becoming a mere memory of sound.

  Then, slowly, warily, he got up. He looked about.…

  Nobody was within sight.

  So he doubled on his tracks and left Gulabad from the opposite direction, hag-ridden by his double fear—of the Grand Khan’s revenge and of Fathouma’s loving tenderness.

  To put the many, many miles between himself and this double fear, this double danger—that is what he must do, and do as quickly as possible. His resolve was strengthened by the knowledge that money was sultan in High Tartary as anywhere else in the world; that the tale of the rich reward which had been offered for his capture—a hundred pieces of gold—would be round and round the countryside in no time at all, and so every hand there would be against his, and every eye and ear seeking him out.

  Therefore Omar the Black traveled in haste and in stealth. At night he traveled, hiding in the daytime, preferring the moors and forests to the open, green fields; taking the deer- and wolf-spoors instead of honest highways; plunging to the knee—and his rheumatic leg hurting him so—at icy fords rather than using the proper stone bridges that spanned the rivers; avoiding the snug, warm villages where food was plentiful and hearts were friendly. And living—as the Tartar saying has it—on the wind and the pines and the gray rock’s lichen!

  Footsore he was, and weary; and wishing: “If only I had a horse!”

  A fine, swift horse to take between his two thighs and gallop away. Then ho for the far road, the wild, brazen road, and glittering deeds, glittering fame! Yes—glittering fame it would be for him; and he hacking his way to wealth and power; and presently returning to Gulabad.

  No longer a fugitive, with a price on his head and the Grand Khan’s revenge at his heel, but a hero, a conqueror; the equal—by the Prophet the Adored!—to any Khan.

  Omar was quite certain of his ultimate success, and for no better or, belike, no worse reason than that he was what he was: a Tartar of Tartars—the which is a thing difficult to explain with the writing of words to those who do not know our steppes and our hills.

  Perhaps it might best be defined by saying that his bravery overshadowed his conceit—or the other way about—that both bravery and conceit were overshadowed by his tight, hard, shrewd strength of purpose, and gilded by his undying optimism. Anyway, whatever it was, he had it. It made him sure of himself; persuaded him, too, that some day Gotha would be his, so sweet and warm and white in the crook of his elbow.

  The imagining intoxicated him. He laughed aloud—and a moment later grew unhappy and morose. Only a fool, he told himself, will grind pepper for the bird still on the wing.

  Not a bird, in his case, but a horse. A horse was the first thing he had to have for the realization of his stirring plans. Without a horse, these plans were useless, hopeless—as useless and hopeless as trying to throw a noose around the far stars or weaving a rope from tortoise-hair.

  Yes, the horse was essential. And how could he find one, here in the lonely wilderness of moor and forest?

  Thus, despondent and gloomy, he had trudged on. Night had come; and the chill raw wind, booming out of the Siberian tundras, had raced like a leash of strong dogs; and hunger had gnawed at his stomach; and thirst had dried his throat; and his leg had throbbed like a sore tooth. “Help me, O Allah, O King of the Seven Worlds!” he had sobbed—and as if in answer to his prayer, he had heard a soft neighing, had seen a roan Kabuhi stallion grazing on a short halter, had sneaked up noiselessly, had unhobbled the animal and been about to mount.… And then:

  “By Beelzebub,” he said now, angrily, to his twin-brother, “it had to be yours!”

  Again he sighed.

  “Ah,” he added, “am I not the poor, miserable one, harried by the hounds of fate!”

  * * * *

  Omar the Red looked up.

  “Not poor, surely,” he remarked.

  “What do you mean—not poor?”

  “Unless, in your flight, you lost the jewels which you took from the rich Jew.”

  Omar the Black jumped up.

  “As the Lord liveth,” he exclaimed, “I had forgotten them!”

  Anxiously he tapped his loose breeches. There was a pleasant tinkle, and a few seconds later a pleasant sight as he brought out a handful of emeralds and rubies that sparkled in the moon’s cold rays.

  Then once more he became despondent.

  “What good,” he asked, “are these jewels to me? As much good as a comb to a bald-headed man. Why, not even were you to give me your horse—”

  “Which, decidedly, I shall not.”

  Omar the Black paid no attention to his brother’s unfeeling comment.

  “No,” he repeated, “not even were you to give me your horse.”

  For, he went on to say, Gotha was a slave in the harem of Yengi Mehmet, the Khan of Gulistan. The latter, according to Timur Bek, was as eager for money as a young flea is for blood. Therefore, before Omar the Black had a chance to leave his mark upon High Tartary and return to Gulabad, a hero, a conqueror, somebody else might covet the girl, might offer a great price for her—and Yengi Mehmet would sell her.…

  He drew a hand across his eyes.

  “Allah, Allah!” he cried. “What am I to do? Ah, if you could see this girl! As a garment, she is silver and gold! As a season, the spring!”

  “So,” was the other’s impatient interruption, “you told me before—and bored me profoundly. The question is—you desire this girl?”

  “As Shaitan, the Stoned Devil, the Accursed, desires salvation.”

  “Very well. You shall have her.”

  “But—how?”

  “I shall help you”—Omar the Red paused. “For a consideration.”

  “There would be,”—bitterly,—“a consideration, you being you.”

  “There is, I being I—or for that matter, anybody being anybody. Therefore, if I help you to get your heart’s desire, will you—”

  “Yes, yes! Anything! Put a name to it!”

  “A dear name! A grand and glorious name! The old palace back home where you and I were born, which I lost to you—”

  “In a fair fight.”

  “Fair enough. I want it back.”

  “Is that all? Help yourself.”

  “Thanks. Only—I have not enough money. But you, with a tenth of these jewels, can pay off the old debts.… Listen!” He spoke with deep, driving seriousness. “Far have I wandered, astride a horse and on stout shoes, and too, at times, on the naked soles of my feet, fighting thy own fights—and other men’s fights—for the sport of it and a bit of loot. But over yonder”—he pointed north—“is the only place I have ever seen worth hacking sound steel for in earnest. And over yonder the one girl, Ayesha, worth loving. Ah—somebody once told me there is no happiness in another man’s shoes, nor in another man’s castle, nor with another man’s wife. So—what say you—we go home, you and I, and live there—I with Ayesha and you with Gotha—”

  “I—with Gotha? But—”

  “Did I not tell you I would help you?”

  “How can you?”

  “I shall buy her for you.”

  “What with—since you have no money?”

  “But you have the jewels. And did not Timur Bek offer to arrange the matter with the Khan?”

  “Yes.”

  “There you are. Timur Bek will be your intermediary with the Khan—and I shall be your intermediary with Timur Bek. Hand over the jewels. I shall hurry to Gulabad, sell the jewels, talk to Timur Bek, have him buy the girl, then return here with her and—”

  “No!” came Omar the Black’s loud bellow.

  “No?”

  “No, indeed!”

  “Why not?”

  The other smiled thinly.

  “Would you leave meat on trust with a jackal.”

  “In other words, you do not trust me?”
/>   “Neither with the jewels, nor with the girl.”

  “And perhaps,” was the shameless admission, “you are wise. But—well, there is another way.”

  “Yes?”

  “We shall both go to Gulabad.”

  “I—with a price on my head?”

  “On your black-bearded head, don’t forget. But who, tell me, will recognize this same head—without the beard?”

  “Oh”—in a towering rage—“dare you suggest that I should—”

  “Shave off your beard? Right.”

  “Impossible! Why, by the Prophet the Adored, this beard,”—he ran a caressing hand through it—“has been my constant and loyal companion in joy and in sorrow. It is the pride and beauty of my manhood.”

  “The pride and beauty will grow again.”

  For quite a while they argued, until finally Omar the Black gave in.

  But he cursed violently while scissors and razor did their fell work. He cursed yet more violently when, having announced that the stallion was strong enough to carry the two of them, he was informed by his twin brother that such a thing was out of the question.

  For, opined Omar the Red, here was he himself most splendidly clad as became a gentleman of High Tartary. And here was the other, in stained and odorous rags—a very scarecrow of a man. It would seem strange to people, whom they might meet, to see them in such an intimacy, astride the same horse.

  Better far, he said, for the other to run sturdily in back of the stallion, with outstretched hand, like some importunate beggar crying for zekat! zekat! zekat!—alms for the sake of Allah.

  He clapped his brother heartily on the back. “It will be safest for you,” he added. “Besides, you will see more of this fine broad world, walking on your two feet, than cocked high and stiff upon a saddle.”

  Omar the Red laughed.

  * * * *

  So, on an evening almost a week later, did Timur Bek laugh, back in Gulabad, when—for at first he had not recognized him, with his beard shorn off—he learned that this smooth-cheeked man was Omar the Black.

  “Here you are,” exclaimed Timur Bek, “with your face as soft as a girl’s bosom!”