Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  The place had no other occupants. Either we were the only travelers on that road that night or, as seemed more likely, Kagig had exercised authority and purged the kahveh of other guests. Certainly our coming had been expected, for there was very good yoghourt in ample quantity, and other food besides — meat, bread, cheese, vegetables.

  When we had all eaten, and lay back against the stone wall looking at the fire, with great fanged shadows dancing up and down that made the scene one of almost perfect savagery, Gregor called again for Maga. Again she did not answer him. So he rose from his place and reached for a rawhide whip.

  “I said she shall be thrashed!” he snarled in Turkish, and he made the whip crack three times like sudden pistol-shots. Will did not catch the words, and might not have understood them in any case, but Rustum Khan, beside me, both heard and understood.

  “Atcha!” he grunted. “Now we shall see a kind of happenings. That girl is not a true gipsy, or else my eyes lie to me. They stole her, or adopted her. She lacks their instincts. The gitanas, as they call their girls, are expected to have aversion to white men. They are allowed to lure a white man to his ruin, but not to make hot love to him. She has offended against the gipsy law. The attaman* must punish. Watch the women. They take it all as a matter of course.”

  —— —— —— —— *Attaman, gipsy headman. —— —— —— ——

  “Maga!” thundered Gregor Jhaere, cracking the great whip again. I thought that Kagig looked a trifle restless, but nobody else went so far as to exhibit interest, except that the old Turk by the fire emerged far enough out of kaif to open one eye, like a sly cat’s.

  The attaman shouted again, and this time Maga mocked him. So he strode down the room in a rage to enforce his authority, and dragged her out of the shadow by an arm, sending her whirling to the center of the floor. She did not lose her feet, but spun and came to a stand, and waited, proud as Satanita while he drew the whip slowly back with studied cruelty. The old Turk opened both eyes.

  Nothing is more certain than that none of us would have permitted the girl to be thrashed. I doubt if even Rustum Khan, no admirer of gipsies or unveiled women, would have tolerated one blow. But Will was nearest, and he is most amazing quick when his nervous New England temper is aroused. He had the whip out of Gregor’s hand, and stood on guard between him and the girl before one of us had time to move. The old Turk closed his eyes again, and sighed resignedly.

  “Our preux chevalier — preux but damned imprudent!” murmured Fred. “Let’s hope there’s a gipsy here with guts enough to fight for title to the girl. It looks to me as if Will has claimed her by patteran* law. The only man with right to say whether or not a woman shall be thrashed is her owner. Once that right is established—”

  —— —— —— — * Patteran, a gipsy word: trail. —— —— —— —

  “Touch her and I’ll break your neck!” warned Will, without undue emotion, but truthfully beyond a shadow of a doubt.

  The gipsy stood still, simmering, and taking the measure of the capable American muscles interposed between him and his legal prey. Every gipsy eye in the room was on him, and it was perfectly obvious that whatever the eventual solution of the impasse, the one thing he could not do was retreat. We were fewer in number, but much better armed than the gipsy party, so that it was unlikely they would rally to their man’s aid. Kagig was an unknown quantity, but except that his black eyes glittered rather more brightly than usual he made no sign; and we kept quiet because we did not want to start a free-for-all fight. Will was quite able to take care of any single opponent, and would have resented aid.

  Suddenly, however, Gregor Jhaere reached inside his shirt. Maga screamed. Rustum Khan beside me swore a rumbling Rajput oath, and we all four leapt to our feet. Maga drew no weapon, although she certainly had both dagger and pistol handy. Instead, she glanced toward Kagig, who, strangely enough, was lolling on his blankets as if nothing in the world could interest him less. The glance took as swift effect as an electric spark that fires a mine. He stiffened instantly.

  “Yok!” he shouted, and at once there ceased to be even a symptom of impending trouble. Yok means merely no in Turkish, but it conveyed enough to Gregor to send him back to his place between his women and the Turk unashamedly obedient, leaving Maga standing beside Will. Maga did not glance again at Kagig, for I watched intently. There was simply no understanding the relationship, although Fred affected his usual all-comprehensive wisdom.

  “Another claimant to the title!” he said. “A fight between Will and Kagig for that woman ought to be amusing, if only Will weren’t a friend of mine. Watch America challenge him!”

  But Will did nothing of the kind. He smiled at Maga, offered her a cigarette, which she refused, and returned to his place beyond Fred, leaving her standing there, as lovely in the glowing firelight as the spirit of bygone romance. At that Kagig shouted suddenly for fuel, and three of the Turk’s seven hoydens ran to heap it on.

  Instantly the leaping flames transformed the great, uncomfortable, draughty barn into a hall of gorgeous color and shadows without limit. There was no other illumination, except for the glow here and there of pipes and cigarettes, or matches flaring for a moment. Barring the tobacco, we lay like a baron’s men-at-arms in Europe of the Middle Ages, with a captive woman to make sport with in the midst, only rather too self-reliant for the picture.

  Feeling himself warm, and rested, and full enough of food, Fred flung a cigarette away and reached for his inseparable concertina. And with his eyes on the great smoked beams that now glowed gold and crimson in the firelight, he grew inspired and made his nearest to sweet music. It was perfectly in place — simple as the savagery that framed us — Fred’s way of saying grace for shelter, and adventure, and a meal. He passed from Annie Laurie to Suwannee River, and all but made Will cry.

  During two-three-four tunes Maga stood motionless in the midst of us, hands on her hips, with the fire-light playing on her face, until at last Fred changed the nature of the music and seemed to be trying to recall fragments of the song she had sung that afternoon. Presently he came close to achievement, playing a few bars over and over, and leading on from those into improvization near enough to the real thing to be quite recognizable.

  Music is the sure key to the gipsy heart, and Fred unlocked it. The men and women, and the little sleepy children on the long wooden platform opposite began to sway and swing in rhythm. Fred divined what was coming, and played louder, wilder, lawlessly. And Maga did an astonishing thing. She sat down on the floor and pulled her shoes and stockings off, as unselfconsciously as if she were alone.

  Then Fred began the tune again from the beginning, and he had it at his finger-ends by then. He made the rafters ring. And without a word Maga kicked the shoes and stockings into a corner, flung her outer, woolen upper-garment after them, and began to dance.

  There is a time when any of us does his best. Money — marriage — praise — applause (which is totally another thing than praise, and more like whisky in its workings) — ambition — prayer — there is a key to the heart of each of us that can unlock the flood-tides of emotion and carry us nolens volens to the peaks of possibility. Either Will, or else Fred’s music, or the setting, or all three unlocked her gifts that night. She danced like a moth in a flame — a wandering woman in the fire unquenchable that burns convention out of gipsy hearts, and makes the patteran — the trail — the only way worth while.

  Opposite, the gipsies sprawled in silence on their platform, breathing a little deeper when deepest approval stirred them, a little more quickly when her Muse took hold of Maga and thrilled her to expression of the thoughts unknown to people of the dinning walls and streets.

  We four leaned back against our wall in a sort of silent revelry, Fred alone moving, making his beloved instrument charm wisely, calling to her just enough to keep a link, as it were, through which her imagery might appeal to ours. Some sort of mental bridge between her tameless paganism and our twentieth-century t
wilight there had to be, or we never could have sensed her meaning. The concertina’s wailings, mid-way between her intelligence and ours, served well enough.

  My own chief feeling was of exultation, crowing over the hooded city-folk, who think that drama and the tricks of colored light and shade have led them to a glimpse of the hem of the garment of Unrest — a cheap mean feeling, of which I was afterward ashamed.

  Maga was not crowing over anybody. Neither did she only dance of things her senses knew. The history of a people seized her for a reed, and wrote itself in figures past imagining between the crimson firelight; and the shadows of the cattle stalls.

  Her dance that night could never have been done with leather between bare foot and earth. It told of measureless winds and waters — of the distances, the stars, the day, the night-rain sweeping down — dew dropping gently — the hundred kinds of birds-the thousand animals and creeping things — and of man, who is lord of all of them, and woman, who is lord of man — man setting naked foot on naked earth and glorying with the thrill of life, new, good, and wonderful.

  One of the Turk’s seven sons produced a saz toward the end — a little Turkish drum, and accompanied with swift, staccato stabs of sound that spurred her like the goads of overtaking time toward the peak of full expression — faster and faster — wilder and wilder — freer and freer of all limits, until suddenly she left the thing unfinished, and the drum-taps died away alone.

  That was art — plain art. No human woman could have finished it. It was innate abhorrence of the anticlimax that sent her, having looked into the eyes of the unattainable, to lie sobbing for short breath in her corner in the dark, leaving us to imagine the ending if we could.

  And instead of anticlimax second climax came. Almost before the echoes of the drum-taps died among the dancing shadows overhead a voice cried from the roof in Armenian, and Kagig rose to his feet.

  “Let us climb to the roof and see, effendim,” he said, pulling on his tattered goat-skin coat.

  “See what, Ermenie?” demanded Rustum Khan. The Rajput’s eyes were still ablaze with pagan flame, from watching Maga.

  “To see whether thou hast manhood behind that swagger!” answered

  Kagig, and led the way. No man ever yet explained the racial aversions.

  “Kopek! — dog, thou!” growled the Rajput, but Kagig took no notice and led on, followed by Monty and the rest of us. Maga and the gipsies came last, swarming behind us up the ladder through a hole among the beams, and clambering on to the roof over boxes piled in the draughty attic. Up under the stars a man was standing with an arm stretched out toward Tarsus.

  “Look!” he said simply.

  To the westward was a crimson glow that mushroomed angrily against the sky, throbbing and swelling with hot life like the vomit of a crater. We watched in silence for three minutes, until one of the gipsy women began to moan.

  “What do you suppose it is?” I asked then.

  “I know what it is,” said Kagig simply.

  “Tell then.”

  “‘Effendi, that is the heart of Armenia burning. Those are the homes of my nation — of my kin!”

  “And good God, where d’you suppose Miss Vanderman is?” Fred exclaimed.

  Will was standing beside Maga, looking into her eyes as if he hoped to read in them the riddle of Armenia.

  Chapter Six “Passing the buck to Allah!”

  LAUS LACHRIMABILIS

  So now the awaited ripe reward —

  Your cactus crown! Since I have urged

  “Get ready for the untoward”

  Ye bid me reap the wrath I dirged;

  And I must show the darkened way,

  Who beckoned vainly in the light!

  I’ll lead. But salt of Dead Sea spray

  Were sweeter on my lips to-night!

  Oh, days of aching sinews, when I trod the choking dust

  With feet afire that could not tire, atremble with the trust

  More mighty in my inner man than fear of men without,

  The word I heard on Kara Dagh and did not dare to doubt —

  Timely warning, clear to me as starlight after rain

  When, sleepless on eternal hills, I saw the purpose plain

  And left, swift-foot at dawn, obedient, to break

  The news ye said was no avail — advice ye would not take!

  Oh, — nights of tireless talking by the hearth of hidden fires —

  On roofs, behind the trade-bales — among oxen in the byres —

  Out in rain between the godowns, where the splashing puddles warn

  Of tiptoeing informers; when I faced the freezing dawn

  With set price on my head, but still the set resolve untamed,

  Not melted by the mockery, by no suspicion shamed,

  To hide by day in holes, abiding dark and wind and rain

  That loosed me straining to the task ye ridiculed again!

  Oh, weeks of empty waiting, while the enemy designed

  In detail how to loot the stuff ye would not leave behind!

  Worse weeks of empty agony when, helpless and alone,

  I watched in hiding for the crops from that seed I had sown;

  For dust-clouds that should prove at last Armenia awake —

  A nation up and coming! I had labored for your sake,

  I had hungered, I had suffered. Ye had well rewarded then

  If ye had come, and hanged me just to prove that ye were men!

  But all the pride was promises, the criticism jeers;

  Ye had no heart for sacrifice, and I no time for tears.

  I offered — nay, I gave! I squandered body and breath and soul,

  I bared the need, I showed the way, I preached a goodly goal,

  I urged you choose a leader, since your faith in me was dim,

  I swore to serve the chief ye chose, and teach my lore to him,

  So he should reap where I had sown. And yet ye bade me wait —

  And waited till, awake at last, ye bid me lead too late!

  And so, in place of ripe reward,

  Your cactus crown! And I, who urged

  “Get ready for the untoward”

  Must drink the dregs of wrath I dirged!

  Ye bid me set time’s finger back!

  And stage anew the opened fight!

  I’ll lead. But slime of Dead Sea wrack

  Were sweeter on my lips this night!

  The first thought that occurred to each of us four was that Kagig had probably lied, or that he had merely voiced his private opinion, based on expectation. The glare in the distance seemed too big and solid to be caused by burning houses, even supposing a whole village were in flames. Yet there was not any other explanation we could offer. A distant cloud of black smoke with bulging red under-belly rolled away through the darkness like a tremendous mountain range.

  We stood in silence trying to judge how far away the thing might be, Kagig standing alone with his foot on the parapet, his goat-skin coat hanging like a hussar’s dolman, and Monty pacing up and down along the roof behind us all. The gipsies seemed able to converse by nods and nudges, with now and then one word whispered. After a little while Maga whispered in Will’s ear, and he went below with her. All the gipsies promptly followed. Otherwise in the darkness we might not have noticed where Will went.

  “That proves she is no gipsy!” vowed Rustum Khan, standing between

  Fred and me. “They, would have trusted one of their own kind.”

  “They call her Maga Jhaere,” said I. “The attaman’s name is Jhaere.

  Don’t you suppose he’s her father?”

  “If he were her father he would have no fear,” the Rajput answered. “All gipsies are alike. Their women will dance the nautch, and promise unchastity as if that were a little matter. But when it comes to performance of promises the gitana* is true to the Rom.* * It is because she is no gipsy that they follow her now to watch. And it is because men say that Americans are Mormons and polygamous, and very swift in t
he use of revolvers, that all follow instead of one or two!”

  —— —— —— — * Gitana, gipsy young woman. * * Rom — Gipsy husband, or family man. —— —— —— —

  “Go down then, and make sure they don’t murder him!” commanded Monty, and Rustum Khan turned to obey with rather ill grace. He contrived to convey by his manner that he would do anything for Monty, even to the extent of saving the life of a man he disliked. At the moment when he turned there came the sound of a troop of horses galloping toward us.

  “I will first see who comes,” he said.

  “The blood of Yerkes sahib on your head, Rustum Khan!” Monty answered.

  At that he went below.

  But neither were we destined to remain up there very long. We heard colossal thumping in the kahveh beneath us and presently the Rajput’s head reappeared through the opening in the roof.

  “The fools are barricading the door,” he shouted. “They make sure that an enemy outside could burn us inside without hindrance!”

  At that Kagig came along the roof to our corner and looked into Monty’s eyes. Fred and I stood between the two of them and the parapet, because for the first few seconds we were not sure the Armenian did not mean murder. His eyes glittered, and his teeth gleamed. It was not possible to guess whether or not the hand under his goat-skin coat clutched a weapon.

  “It is now that you Eenglis sportmen shall endure a test!” he remarked.

  Exactly as in the Yeni Khan in Tarsus when we first met him there was a moment now of intense repulsion, entirely unaccountable, succeeded instantly by a wave of sympathy. I laughed aloud, remembering how strange dogs meeting in the street to smell each other are swept by unexplainable antipathies and equally swift comradeship. He thought I laughed at him.

  “Neye geldin?” he growled in Turkish. “Wherefore didst thou come? To cackle like a barren hen that sees another laying? Nichevo,” he added, turning his back on me. And that was insolence in Russian, meaning that nobody and nothing could possibly be of less importance. He seemed to keep a separate language for each set of thoughts. “Let us go below. Let us stop these fools from making too much trouble,” he added in English. “One man ought to stay on the roof. One ought to be sufficient.”