It was not until I was in the street that I envisaged the difficulty I would have in getting out of Asir immediately. I only had a rendezvous with Bahagum at sunset. There was little chance that he would spend the day waiting for me at the well in which the subterranean passage opened. He had told me, moreover, that he had a beloved wife in Asir that he counted on bringing with him. He would certainly be with her. I did not envisage without apprehension the idea of finding my own way, alone, through a maze of dark corridors. Subterranean obscurity has always had a paralyzing influence on me. I had wondered, a few hours earlier, by means of what signs my guide took one route in preference to another. I had slipped a briquette into my belt, but it would not be much use to me if I were lost.
While making these reflections I followed the street that I had taken before. I seemed to perceive an animation that it had not had previously. Suddenly I heard cries. Women were fleeing. I saw armed men who were blocking a street to be right. Doors were banging. I started to run. Doubtless I took a wrong turn, and I arrived at a rather vast square. Was it there that the Djohor was to take place? A pyre was being built there. There must be a shortage of wood, because I saw men in the process of removing the doors from a large house. Others were throwing furniture out of windows, which was crashing down.
I almost ran into a group of people engaged in animated discussion. In the middle, a tall man, absolutely black in color, with wooly hair, was talking incessantly. That negro was majestic, and I thought that it was Nahang, the Abyssin minister, a wise and cunning man who had arrived at governing the Deccan by virtue of his oratory power. It was learned subsequently that he had always been a partisan of the surrender of Asir, but that the violence of the Hindu Omrahs had triumphed over his will. He was surrounded by silent warriors whose terrible and impassive faces I remarked. They were listening to the Abyssin’s words but they were not shaken in their resolution.
The city was too narrow within its ramparts for one to be able to go astray there. I orientated myself in the direction of Fort Malgarh, which dominated it, I went back to the stairways that I had descended, still crossing the path of people running in an indescribable disorder. In the end I recognized a wall of earth that I had crossed. The well ought to be a little further on.
I was suddenly grabbed by the arm so forcefully that I nearly fell. It was Bahagum.
I remember that my first thought was to thank Providence. The second was to say to myself: There, is therefore, a Providence!—something that I had frequently doubted in confrontation with the incoherence and illogicality of events.
I made him a sign that there was no time to lose, and pointed in the direction of the well.
He burst into extravagant laughter.
“The well is blocked,” he told me. “We’re condemned to burn in Asir.”
He explained to me that Abyssin soldiers, the only troops in Asir that were still disciplined and continued to fight methodically against the epidemic and death, had gone past that morning carrying bodies to the abandoned well. Then they had finished blocking it with earth.
Bahagum added that it mattered little to him. He was no longer thinking of fleeing. His wife had been one of the first to be taken for the Djohor. She was now penned with other women, to be burned a little later.
It would have laughed myself on any other occasion at the excessively sudden faith that I had placed in Providence. With lightning rapidity, I was traversed by the thought that it was my overly hasty thanks that had brought misfortune and had determined the event that would cause my doom. But I reflected immediately that the well must have been filled in long before my thanks could have reached the divinity that I blessed and cursed by turns. And I remembered that, in the vicissitudes of life, it is not appropriate to occupy oneself with divine things, but to seek in human reason the best means of getting out of trouble.
I remarked that Abyssin soldiers, recognizable by the blackness of their faces, were emerging in large numbers from a covered gallery than ran along the ramparts and heading in an orderly manner in the direction of the city. A little further on, the gallery was interrupted; there was an uncovered esplanade on to which a cannon of gigantic proportions had been dragged. That cannon was famous, and had a name, like a person. It was called Abdallah. I had perceived it in the distance on arriving and had noticed the silhouettes of the black men who were guarding it. Now, however, the esplanade was deserted. I remembered that Bahagum had been employed transporting munitions from the bunkers to the forts.
I seized his arm in my turn as he was about to draw away, no longer occupied with me.
“Perhaps there’s a means of preventing the Djohor and saving your wife from the pyre,” I told him. “A dangerous means—but at the point where we are, it’s worth taking a few risks.”
He looked at me in bewilderment. He did not seem to understand. I explained to him, regardless, the plan that had just hatched in my brain.
Abdallah, the enormous cannon, had been placed in a location where the mountain had a dip and where the rampart, being lower, had more chance of being taken by storm. If an explosion occurred inside the rampart, it might, if it were sufficiently powerful, open a breach from which Akbar’s troops would immediately take advantage. I knew that the eventuality of an attack at that point had been examined several times. But where were the powder stores? Were they confided to the Abyssin soldiers that we had just seen heading for the city? What was the ordinary surveillance? Did Bahagum think that he might be able to get me into the bunkers?
At first he remained silent. Then, instead of responding to me in Hindi, the language in which he had conversed until now, or in Persian, which he spoke badly but in which he could make himself understood, he started speaking in the dialect used in Khandesh, of which I had only learned a few words in Ahmednagar.
That exasperated me to the point that I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. He pulled away and proffered a few incoherent remarks, still in the same barbaric dialect.
I thought that violence could only make things worse. I summoned up all my calm and, in the name of the wife that he loved and might save, I begged him to respond to my questions in Hindi. I added that I would take all the responsibility, and that he would only have to facilitate my entry, which ought to be possible for him, since he was an employee of the arsenal, and in view of the general disarray.
He finally decided to respond. It was, in fact, to the Abyssin soldiers, who were the best artillerymen and the most disciplined troops, that the operation of Abdallah and the mortars in that section of the ramparts had been confided. Emir Togrul was their chief. He had not seen him come out, but he thought that the bunkers must have been abandoned, everyone, or almost everyone, having been summoned for the Djohor. The plan might succeed.
He spoke slowly. He did not have the appearance of a man whose wife was about to be burned and who found himself in such a dramatic situation. His eyes had become astonishingly vague. He was unhurried, He seemed possessed.
“What’s the point” he said. “Isn’t it better to die?”
“No, no!” I shouted, forcefully, “it’s better to live.” And I shoved him in front of me, without knowing for sure whether that was the right direction.
It happened that I was not mistaken. We went through a vaulted gallery, and he made me a sign to go down a stairway behind him. We marched along a corridor only illuminated by loopholes. Everything seemed deserted. At the entrance to a room, a voice that seemed to emerge from the ground called to us. I saw in the gloom a man who appeared to be a cripple, with a saber across his knees. He was a guard whose disability doubtless prevented him from carrying women to a pyre. Bahagum, who knew him, said a few words to him in a low voice, pointing at me.
“Is it here?” I asked.
“No, the stones for the catapults are here. The powder is in the other room.
I saw a wooden gutter running at head-height. It was presently empty. I thought that it was a precaution in case of fire. Water could
not have been circulating there for a long time, for the tree-trunks forming the conduit were dislocated and falling in places. There was an odor of mineral substance, a damp so penetrating that I thought involuntarily that the atmosphere of tombs must be similar.
“The powder stores are in front of you,” said Bahagum. “But the Emir Togrul might appear at any minute.”
His voice was imprinted with respect. Large crates bound with iron were piled up one atop another. He added: “Those that are to be sent up first are always opened in advance.”
I had not prepared anything, and I could see that it was necessary not to count on my companion, who as giving signs of the most intense fear. He might even hinder me. I made him a sign that I would act alone, and he drew away rapidly by way of the corridor along which we had come.
My belt terminated in a fringe. I tore a strip off it and wound it into a fuse. How easy the work of destruction is to accomplish, by comparison with creation, which takes so long! One spark, and everything would be finished! The difficulty consisted of saving my life. It was necessary to make a calculation regarding the duration of the combustion of the fuse. I had a point of comparison in the wick of my briquette, but that was consumed with an extreme slowness. I suspected that the one I had just fabricated would burn much more rapidly. I had to calculate the time that would be necessary for me to regain the agglomeration of the houses of Asir. If the fuse burned too quickly I would be doomed. If it burned too slowly, someone might come.
I fixed it between the planks of the lid. I hesitated, and then I lit it.
At the precise moment when I gathered my momentum in order to flee, a thunderous voice resounded.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?”
At the same time, I perceive a shadow that was blocking the corridor.
I was tempted to tear out the fuse and crush it underfoot. Then I thought: By the grace of God! The silhouette that was a few feet away from me seemed to be gleaming with weapons. I looked around and perceived one of the hollow trees that had served as a gutter for the flow of water. It was enormous but my strength is great and it was multiplied tenfold. I seized it and delivered a formidable blow to the head of the man, who collapsed. I noticed his irritated expression and his forked beard. A metal helmet rolled under my feet. Like an arrow, I traversed the space that separated me from the light.
It was my instinct that made me leap over the cripple, of whom I was no longer thinking. A blue flash passed beneath me. I heard the whistle of his saber, with which he doubtless tried to cut my hamstrings.
A clamor was rising up from the city of Asir. How beautiful the sunlight streaming over the towers of the pagodas seemed! How desirable life was! That perception took possession of me involuntarily while I raced forward. I stumbled over a crouching individual, who stretched himself out and gripped me around the neck with his hands. It was Bahagum.
“The fuse is burning!” I cried. “We only have a few minutes—perhaps a few seconds.”
But he did not let go. I heard the sound of his jaws. He was trying to seize my cheek with his teeth. He had the face of a madman.
“It’s better to die!” he shouted. “We’re going to die!”
I struggled with him desperately. Had emotion diminished my strength while the madness that possessed my adversary had augmented his? It seemed to me that his torso and arms were made of granite. We had fallen to the ground and he was holding me beneath him. Before my eyes, the silhouette of the enormous cannon Abdallah was outlined. Gripped by a bizarre disinterest, I examine its details.
I was only thinking of protecting my face from the teeth of the madman, which were drawing incessantly closer, and at the same time, I said to myself: But he’s right! It’s better to die! And everything that I had just done appeared to me to be utterly futile. The struggle was long and unending. It lasted so long and appeared to me so atrocious that I ended up wishing that the fuse would be consumed and that an explosion would put an end to the combat.
Suddenly, I thought: The cripple will have gone to help the man whose skull I fractured; he’ll have seen the fuse and will have extinguished it. My head touched the ground; I was holding Bahagum’s jaw at arm’s length, and I could no longer see anything but the blue sky. How near it is! I thought. Perhaps nearer than we believe!
And it was at that moment that an unknown but agreeable force lifted me up and projected me into the air, detaching me from the horrible grip of my adversary as if by magic. At the same time, a deafening but harmonious detonation resounded and I lost consciousness, penetrated by a sentiment of delight, for there is a mystery in great catastrophes that transforms human terror into joy.
The explosion opened a breach in the rampart, as I had foreseen, and Akbar’s troops precipitated into Asir. The Djohor did not take place, but there was only a change of sex in the quality of the dead, for the garrison was exterminated in defending itself. The immense riches of the family of the Farrukhis, accumulated over centuries in the citadel, fell into Akbar’s hands. Prince Bahadur only retained the fief of the Deccan nominally.
If a guardian angel watches over me, as I have always believed, it manifested the interest that it had in me that day. It prolonged my unconsciousness while the Mongols mounted the assault ad launched themselves into Asir, or I would certainly have been killed if I had attempted to have myself recognized.
It only reanimated me toward evening, and in the midst of the general disorder it guided me to the Tchagatai warriors of the Emperor’s guard, whose companion I had been during the long nights of the siege. They took me to Aboul Fazi, to whom I gave an account of my mission.
Certainly, I thanked the guardian angel, for having protected me in that way. But since it was able to do what it did, it had to have a certain power over material things, so why had it not made use of that power to aid me in my struggle against Bahagum and permitted me to escape the explosion? The man who says that destiny has played with him employs an expression full of verity, for there is a game that escapes us, a kind of cosmic chess game in which we are only derisory pawns.
THE STAR OF INDIA
The Chinese astronomer Li Tai was celebrated in the court of Agra for having translated into pure Persian the book of The Perpetual Concordance with the Stars. He had studied the stars in Peking with the Jesuit Ricci, of whom he flattered himself of being the friend. He had been obliged to flee China in consequence of an imprudent horoscope of the son of the Emperor of that country and had traversed the Gobi desert, recognizing the route by the skeletons of humans and camels that bordered it. He was a very savant astrologer, but he had had the unfortunate custom of only learning from the planetary signs about impending misfortunes of a horrible nature. He had a love of catastrophes and he announced them incessantly. Thus, he had advised Emperor Akbar that a certain formal indication originating from Mars permitted him to affirm that the city of Asir would never be taken. He was, however, not at all confused when the event contradicted him. He was a jovial man and, although he scorned the vulgar things of life, he drank a great deal.
Like many men and a few women he had wanted to meet the man who had blown up the cannon Abdallah, had been launched into the sky along with it, and had fallen back almost intact, while the cannon, made of thick bronze, had been pulverized. We had sympathized in spite of the difference in our ages, and he had drawn up my horoscope.
My future was very somber. I would never see my homeland again. I would be bitten by a cobra and my limbs would be paralyzed by it. The glory I enjoyed would not last long.
Astrology is very important in India, and was especially so at Akbar’s Court. I noticed that, there as everywhere else, the errors of astrologers fortified the faith people had in them even more than the predictions that were realized, Li Tai had a great authority because he knew how to manipulate misfortune, which he gladly distributed in a lavish manner. Then too, the fact that he was Chinese added to his prestige. One day, he made me a strange revelation.
We had g
one out together on horseback to go see a celebrated ascetic whom everyone, including Emperor Akbar, held in great veneration. I had allowed myself to yield without restriction to my liking for magnificent costumes and I remember that I was wearing a long boucaran cloak lined with silver, which floated behind me. Boucaran is a precious fabric that came from Arzingan in Armenia, and which only the sons of the richest families in Agra dared to wear. I had a turban so vast, and knotted in such a manner, that it was sufficient to protect Li Tai from the sun, to whose right I was riding.
“Have you ever seen the star of India?” he asked me, while we were on the road.
“What star?”
“A star that only shines over the land of India. It’s enormous and blue. I believe that one only sees it once in one’s lifetime.
The existence of such a star had an implausible character, even for an ignorant young man., but I thought that the affirmation of its existence came from a great Chinese astronomer. I never knew, moreover, whether he wanted to make fun of me.
Sri Narinda, the ascetic we were going to visit, lived in the ruins of an abandoned fortress. He had been traveling for years when, on an indication he read in the sky, he had know that he had to stop. A few disciples had come to live with him and had installed platforms in the large trees nearby, like those that are fitted over the roads for travelers in case of tigers. Unlike the majority of ascetics, who are difficult to approach, Sri Narinda liked to converse with men and did not show any pride in the wisdom he had acquire. He was an exception among sages.
Li Tai and he talked for a long time in my presence, but it was in one of the numerous language of India that I did not understand. I ended up getting bored, and perhaps my foot was tapping the ground impatiently. That was involuntary, for I deem that it is necessary to respect wisdom, even in its incomprehensible manifestations.
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