Omar Khayyam - a life

by Harold Lamb

  Closer to him she moved, staring down in fascination at the outlines of the cemetery, half hidden in the dusk. When Omar put his arm about her she trembled and tried to draw away. Her head sank lower and her eyes closed.

  Against him he felt the throbbing of her heart, and he heard her breathless whisper. "I am afraid—I am afraid." The hunger that was in him found no words, but whisper answered whisper. Her hands stole up to his cheeks and pressed them. "Look at me!" But her eyes were closed.

  The silver arc of the new moon grew light and a star winked within it. It looked as if it had been painted there on the curtain of the night sky. The strange hunger gnawed at Omar and thrills of pain ran through him—pain that ceased when he felt the quivering lips of the girl against his.

  "Nay," she breathed, "it hurts—nay, I——"

  Against the dark robe that he had taken from her, her shoulders gleamed white in the starlight. Her arms, clinging to his neck, drew him down to the warmth of her lips and the pulsing of her breast, and the white flame of her love that answered his hunger, until she cried out and lay still. In the tide of his passion he held her, until they lay there breathing deep and little conscious.

  Long after the night prayer they wandered back to the city gate, heedless of the earth under their feet and of the crescent moon poised like a scimitar in the sky. And when they reached the fountain beneath the plane tree in the Street of the Booksellers, Yasmi clung to him, the tears wetting the veil beneath her eyes. "O heart of my heart, how can I leave thee?"

  For Yasmi there was only the one love and the one beloved, and the pain of parting racked her body, although her lips murmured that surely, surely the angel of the Invisible must have visited that ruined tower, touching her soul and taking the very blood from her body.

  Omar did not want to eat, and he could not sleep. Drowsiness filled his body, but his senses yearned toward the magic of the night. He smiled down at the beggar he found curled up by the gate of his dwelling—a beggar whom he had noticed hobbling about the street of late. His wandering feet led him down the familiar way to the park, where the watchmen with their round lanterns cried out the hours in the name of God. The intoxication in him made him aware of strange sights in the night—a shadow that slipped through the trees behind him toward the great pool around which homeless men slept, breathing heavily, unconscious of the magic of the night.

  A white donkey drowsed beside a crooked man who crouched at the edge of the pool, hugging a cloak about him. The twain seemed to Omar to be the figures of a remembered dream—somewhere before now he had seen them, but not thus.

  When Omar seated himself beside them, the hunchback pointed down at the water. "Oh, brother, the moon hath drowned herself in a sea of tears."

  Omar looked down at the silver scimitar reflected upon the pool's surface. Grief had no meaning for him this night, but he was aware that the crooked man grieved.

  "What dost thou?" he asked gently.

  "I keep watch. See how these others have fallen into sleep. Verily I watch the moon that is drowned, for that is the true moon, and the other in the sky is unchanged, unheeding. Yea, it will set and rise again, as if this night were as other nights."

  'True—true," Omar said.

  "These others——" the hunchback waved at the sleepers——"have a master, a new master. But I am Jafarak, and I have lost my master. Aiwallah—he was the sun of kindliness. Aiwallah—he was the protector of unfortunates. Aiwallah—he loved Jafarak, the misshapen, the most ignoble of his slaves. Now the sun is gone from the Land of the Sun, and protection from the faithful, and his beloved from Jafarak. Aiwallah, the Sultan Alp Arslan is slain!"

  Omar, watching the wavering light on the water, barely heard. "I knew it not," he said.

  "When all Nisapur knows it this day that we returned, bearing his body from Samarkand? It was his kismet. Look ye, my brother, he was firm and strong in his power, with an army about him. But who can escape his fate? A dog of a captive was brought before my master at Samarkand. Two strong swordbearers held the captive by the arms when he came before my master's face. Then the dog cried out a foul word at my Lord, who grew hot with the flame of anger. He took his bow, he took an arrow, and he motioned the swordbearers to stand away so that he could end the life of that dog with his shaft—he, the skilled one who hath never missed with his bow."

  Jafarak wiped at his cheeks and sighed. "Yet that one shaft sped amiss, and the dog who had two knives hidden upon him leaped and stabbed my master thrice in the bowels, and after four days he went to the mercy of Allah."

  "Aman" murmured Omar. "Peace."

  "I sit," Jafarak rocked himself back and forth, "I sit by the moon of tears, and I weep."

  From a great distance, Omar looked into a black night, with Rahim's grave at his feet, and Rahim's servant rocking at his side.

  "What is i' the pot comes to the ladle," quoth the pockmarked beggar. "Nay, he is young yet and his blood does not sleep o' nights. Ahai, I am weary for sleep. Have I not followed at his heels since last Friday-eve? Nay, he suspects nothing. In his present state he could not tell a bull from an ass."

  "Is the girl a slave?" asked Tutush. "Is she wed?"

  The begger blinked shrewdly. "At night a cat looks like a sable. But she is no slave, although the women of her house drive her to carry burdens enough. She hath no husband—that is sure."

  "And her name?"

  "Yasmi they call her. The bathkeeper of the Glory of Hussayn hammam sayeth that Abu'l Zaid the cloth-merchant of Meshed hath made an offer for her to the owl-blind bookseller."

  "Abu'l Zaid the merchant?"

  "Yes, lord."

  "He hath a large tent and many camels." Tutush meditated a moment while the mendicant, not having been paid for anything as yet, waited respectfully. "At least our young Tentmaker will not stray from the booksellers' street. Go thou and watch, until a message comes."

  "On my head. Yet how will I know the messenger, O lord?"

  "When he stirs thee—thus—with his foot, saying 'Where wanders the Tentmaker?' Until then, do not sleep so much. Other men have eyes to see, and ears to hear thy snores."

  "Ai-a, thy slave hath not——"

  Tutush turned away, dropping a handful of coppers in the dust, and the beggar made haste to gather them up before the hovering urchins could snatch them away. As he did so his lips moved, counting their value. "No more than a Baghdad dirhem—black money for white labor. Eh, water would not run out of that lordling's fist."

  Yet because he feared Tutush—the more since he did not know whom the plump man served—he hastened off to take his chosen place on the stone by the fountain beneath the plane tree.

  From his post he beheld great activity around the gates of the academy. Long-beards came and went with their servants. Along the edge of the park below the street passed cavalcades of horsemen. All Nisapur was astir and speculating upon the turn in the Wheel of Fortune. The Sultan was dead and even while the city mourned fittingly, preachers in the Friday mosque proclaimed the name of the new Sultan in their prayers—Malikshah, the young and comely, who had been known among the people as the Lion Cub.

  Malikshah, whose beard scarcely covered his chin, who had hastened from his books and his tutors and his polo field, was now Protector of the Faith, King of the East and West, Lord of the World, and the amirs of the Land of the Sun* hastened to do him reverence.

  *[Khorosan.]

  All this the begger perceived with half an eye, because he was intent upon Omar and Yasmi. During the hours of daylight they were seldom visible, but after the curtain of dusk they met at the fountain—two shadows in the dusk, heedless of the hurrying footsteps around them.

  Well for the girl, the beggar mused, that she was heavily veiled, a very twin to a half hundred others thronging the twilight to gossip and feast and watch the tumult of the Wheel of Fortune moving. Otherwise she would have been seen and known.

  As to Omar, the beggar thought this tall scholar had lost both sight and hearing
. Only at times did Omar remember to eat with the pilgrims, in the crowded courtyard of the Friday mosque. He drank at the fountain and he spoke to no one.

  "Belike," the beggar thought enviously, "he is as drunk as if he emptied a whole wineskin down his gullet each evening. Ai—it costs him not one broken piaster."

  It was the next day that a porter came and planted his slippered toes in the beggar's ribs.

  "O Father of the lice," the porter muttered, "where wandereth this mad Tentmaker of thine?"

  "Ya, father of nothing at all—windbladder!" The beggar, glancing up evilly, perceived that this was only an under-servant without a staff. "Sired by a scavenger on a woman without a nose! Ditch-born, and bred——"

  A second kick jarred him into fuming silence. "Who sent thee?" he grumbled.

  "One that could hang thy carcase on the Castle gate for the crows to peck."

  "Omar, called the Tentmaker, is down yonder in the bath of the Glory of Hussayn. Allah be witness, I would be there if I had but one dirhem to pay the keeper——"

  By way of rewarding him the porter spat into his bowl and swaggered off, leaving the pockmarked one nearly speechless with rage. "May dogs litter on thy grave—may vultures strip thy bones—may the fires of the seven hells scorch thy thick hide!" he groaned.

  Omar followed the porter to the first courtyard of the Castle where the armed retinues of a half-dozen nobles waited beside saddled horses. Here they found Tutush who was in a fever of impatience, crying out at sight of Omar, and grasping him by the sleeve, to hasten in past guards and servitors—all of whom seemed to know the voluminous blue turban and the swaying rosary—to a small chamber, empty of furniture.

  "My soul," he whispered, "it is past the hour appointed. Yet he hath not sent for thee as yet." Curiously, he glanced at Omar. "Knowest thou who hath summoned thee into his presence? Nizam al Mulk."

  Omar's pulse quickened, and he felt more than a little amazed. Nizam al Mulk—the Arranger of the World—was the title of the man who had been Alp Arslan's Minister and who still held authority now that Malikshah, the son of the slain Sultan, had come to the throne. More than that, Nizam al Mulk was virtually dictator under the Sultan's authority. A learned and brilliant Persian, he had gathered into his hands by degrees the administration of everything except the army. It was a mystery why he should have sent for a scholar of the academy.

  Tutush cast no light on the mystery. "Once," he said reflectively, "I dug into thee at the Takin gate the spur of arrogance. It was a test. By command of Nizam al Mulk I have had thee watched——"

  Omar glanced down at him swiftly.

  "—and guarded. Thou art young, and without heed. But now, at this moment thy destiny is in the balance. Nizam himself will test thee. So give heed."

  Omar heard without comprehending. It seemed purposeless—unless that Lion Cub who was now Sultan had asked for him. But the Lion Cub was remote in the shadows of the highway and Yasmi's eyes looked up at him, unveiled.

  Suddenly a slave drew back a heavy curtain. The empty chamber was in reality only an alcove of the long audience hall with its huge rose carpet. Against the mid-wall sat a man of some sixty years, erect and busied with the papers upon the low tables at his knees. His thin brown beard, carefully combed, lay against the gray silk of his tunic. He spoke briefly to a group of men—handed the papers to one who seemed to be a secretary, and acknowledged their salaams of farewell as they all backed, bowing, toward the far door.

  Tutush advanced with Omar. They paused once to make salaam and then knelt on the carpet before Nizam al Mulk.

  For some seconds the eyes of the Minister from beneath shaggy brows considered Omar. Then he glanced over the sheets of paper in his fingers. "You are the son of Ibrahim of the Tentmakers, student in mathematics, disciple of Master Ali? When you were a boy you studied philosophy under the Sufi Imam Muaffak?"

  He spoke in the crisp modulated voice of one who talks in public for long hours and is listened to. Tutush, who sat apart from Omar, said nothing whatever.

  "Master Ali writes that you have a strange power. There is no power save from Allah. I wish to know one thing. Tell me by what divination you predicted to our Lord the Sultan, who was then prince, the fate of the battle of Malasgird and the double death of the Christian Caesar and our own lord, upon whom be blessing!"

  Omar felt the blood rush to his face. If only he could think of some plausible story. But he suspected that the man with the austere eyes and the cold voice would brush aside any pretense.

  'The truth——" he gulped. "Highness, it was a jest."

  Nizam stirred impatiently. "What words are these? Explain yourself. It could not have been a jest."

  "But it was." Omar felt sure of himself now. He was telling the thing as it happened. "Highness, I wandered that night through the camps and came to the one guarded by Turks. I did not understand much of their speech—did not realize that the young lord was the prince. The professors about him made a foolish mistake in pointing out the star Suhail. The whim came to me to voice a prophecy in their solemn manner. That was all."

  "You are abrupt to the point of discourtesy." The Minister leaned back against his cushions. "How do you account for the fact that this—jesting prediction—foretold three events. Ay, the battle, and the deaths of two kings?"

  Omar thought for a moment. "Highness, how can I account for it? Nothing happens except by the will of Allah, yet this happened."

  "Nothing happens except by Allah's will. I wish I knew what led you to say that." Nizam spoke as if Omar had been a lifeless thing under examination. "Certain it is that you could not have known the day and the hour of the birth of the Roumi king; you could not have calculated the sign ascendant at his birth. How did you cast the horoscope of the Sultan Alp Arslan?"

  Tutush blinked involuntarily, perceiving the snare beneath the casual words.

  "I did not cast it," responded Omar.

  "But you have skill enough to make such calculations?"

  "Certainly. So have five hundred others."

  "Perhaps." Nizam's brows knit. "But I have yet to hear of a three-fold prediction made by any other. And Master Ali believes you are gifted with a strange power."

  Tutush, who had been ordered by Nizam to find out all that was to be known about Omar Khayyam, made an imperceptible sign of confirmation.

  "Son of Ibrahim," demanded the Minister suddenly, "hast thou not heard that Malikshah hath asked for thee many times since the death of his father?"

  "I had not heard."

  Both men glanced at him, and Nizam seemed satisfied, although he made no comment. "Thou art young to appear as yet in the Presence," he mused. "And since thy prophecy was but—a jest—thou hast need to tread with caution upon the carpet of audience. I do not hide from thee that Malikshah would receive thee with favor; yet a word such as thou hast spoken to me in this room would cast thee into disgrace, if not into the torturer's hands. . . . What reward wouldst thou ask of the Sultan for that strange prophecy of thine?"

  At the swift probe of the question Omar flushed. It seemed to him that his whim of that night had become a millstone hanging upon his neck. "What have I to do with the Court?" he cried. "I seek no reward."

  This Nizam could not quite believe—he was too well schooled in the way of that same Court. Yet he saw his opportunity to impress this headstrong youth.

  "I, the Minister, am the servant of Malikshah, and I will befriend thee—since thou seekest no reward. Wilt thou have Nizam for protector of thy body and patron of thy studies, O son of Ibrahim the Tentmaker?"

  Gratitude to the grave man with the clear eyes flooded upon Omar. The door of the House of Wisdom had been closed to him, and he had tasted beggar's fare for these last days, when he had longed for a roof to shelter Yasmi.

  "Ay, indeed!" he cried, his eyes shining.

  "Then say, of what hast thou need?"

  "An observatory. An astrolabe of Baghdad make three cubits in diameter. The star tables of Ptolemy——" />
  "What more? Say on."

  "If your Highness will! A celestial globe of polished bronze, with horizontal ring. And a star lantern. If it were possible, a water clock accurate to the two-minute space."

  Tutush raised his brows at this marshalling of instruments both rare and costly. But Nizam signed to him to write down the list.

  "And where," he smiled, "shall this observatory be? On some lofty roof?"

  "By the wisdom of your Highness," besought Omar all in a breath, "Nisapur hath been guarded from war, and the ancient watch towers stand deserted along the roads. Beyond the wall, overlooking the cemetery and the river, there is such a tower—I have used it of nights, often. Could it be granted me, with a good lock for the door, and—and some fair Bokhara carpets, with pillows and a Chinese screen, and a water jar of silver?"

  "Wallahi," exclaimed Nizam, surprised. "Astronomy, it seems, hath many needs I had not guessed. Still——" the compliment had pleased him, and he caught the sincerity in Omar's entreaty—"all this shall be given thee, upon one condition."

  Omar cast himself forward and pressed the Minister's thin hand to his forehead.

  "Upon condition," added Nizam, "that never to any living being wilt thou say that the prophecy at Malasgird was a jest."

  "I shall not speak of it, Highness."

  "If you do," put in Tutush blandly, "say that it was an inspiration of the moment,"

  "Ay," cried Omar happily, "as you will."

  "Although," remarked Nizam good-humoredly, "thou hast remembered a screen of Cathayan make and a silver water jar, thou hast taken no thought of food or service. Here is a small purse of silver for the one and Tutush shall find thee a pair of servants."

  It was true that Omar had not heeded such things. He took the embroidered purse in his hand curiously. Never before had he possessed money by the fistful. A subtle intoxication warmed him.

  "When shall I have the tower?" he asked anxiously.

  Nizam glanced at Tutush who pursed his lips. "By the afternoon prayer, tomorrow," said that individual obligingly.