“When he came back from the Alhambra he had bags under his eyes all the way to the chin,” one of his uncles said.
“The goat has finally found his she-goat,” another, whose hatred for Abul Hacen was ancient and well-known, repeated incessantly.
Abul Hacen remembered that the Almoradi family had never liked him. They were Moroccan in origin. They had fought his grandfather, and in spite of the advantages with which he had heaped them, they had remained quietly hostile Oh, why had he not relied more on the Zegris? They were rigorous, it’s true, but faithful. Virtue, he could see, had its good side, and the Almohade sovereigns were not so foolish when they punished with death women who went abroad unveiled. Now he was the talk of Granada. He, who, had excited the admiration of his soldiers a few days before in the streets of Zahara, was no longer anything but an old man who had been deceived by the wife he loved with a vigorous young man. It would have been better to fall from the top of the highest mosque in Granada.
But the detestable Almoradis were about to learn to know him!
First of all, he would stab Isabelle. Afterwards...
Isabelle! The light of the dawn! Was he not illuminated by her? Did not his eyes moisten when the syllables of her name were sung? What if she still loved him? There are women who have temporary caprices. They satisfy them and they return with more ardor to the man they love. He was like that himself. Women, fundamentally, are driven by the same instincts as men.
No, he would not kill Isabelle. To know in what measure she had loved Tarfe and simultaneously to avenge himself on the Almoradis, that was the problem, and he had a simple, easy and ingenious means of resolving it.
He did not expose his plan to the Hagib. The man had a rather limited and paltry mind fixed on the interests of the realm. In addition, he had shown a monstrous indifference to Isabelle’s treason. Had he not even shrugged his shoulders slightly on learning of it? The Hagib was stupid. He would act alone.
The sun would soon set. A translucent dusk was bathing the Court of Lions.
“You who are the source of my happiness, I want you to witness the punishment of my enemies.”
The Emir put his arms around Isabelle with a feigned tenderness that did not leave her without anxiety.
At the back of the Court of Lions there was a room of repose full of divans, which as known as the rose room. A fountain sprang from the middle and a balcony overlooked it, which one reached by a narrow stairway. It was on that balcony that they were both sitting. Sinister silhouettes filled the room of repose.
“Why have you brought those sinister individuals?” asked Isabelle.
“I’ve been offended. We’ve been offended, you and me. The blood of the calumniators is going to flow,” replied Abul Hacen.
“There’s no necessity for me to remain here,” said Isabelle, getting up.
Abul Hacen retained her, squeezing her wrist with such force that she understood confusedly what was about to happen, and she was afraid.
The first of the Almoradis who responded to Abul Hacen’s message was Ahmed ben Alhassan, who had grown rich in commerce in jewels. He was given to flattery and humility, and the habit of bowing had eventually given his body a forward inclination.
Scarcely had he entered the rose room than he was already bowing, and that permitted Haroun the executioner to deliver a great blow of the scimitar on the nape of the neck, which almost severed his head. Then his body was pulled into a corner.
Isabelle had uttered a cry of terror, and the Almoradi who was sent in next undoubtedly heard it, for he only took a single step forward and stopped, looking to the right and left fearfully. He either recognized Haroun or perceived the body of his relative in the dim light of the room, which was only illuminated by a single high lamp placed at the back. He stepped back.
The executioner struck him with two blows that slashed his face. He whirled around, gesticulating, disfigured and bloody, until a dagger-thrust in the back had made him fall dead into the fountain, reddening the water with his blood.
An extraordinary thing happened to the valiant Ismail. He was reputed to be invincible in war and witnesses worthy of faith testified that they had seen arrows slide over him. He received three blows from Haroun without being discomfited; he drew a curved dagger that he had in his belt and, backed up against the wall, faced his enemies. They all rushed him. He had seized a large porcelain vase, with which he protected himself. His right arm, with which he tried to strike, was so badly cut that it launched jets of blood with every gesture he made.
Abul Hacen, standing on the balcony, followed the struggle, and had the desire to go down in order to join in. The Almoradi perceived him and shouted insults at him. They were lost in the din. The Emir, however, distinguished: “Miserable blind man!” and his rage redoubled, for, not knowing whether the blindness in question related to his sight or his love for Isabelle, he interpreted in both senses and received two offences.
The valiant Ismail suddenly collapsed, Haroun and his companions fell upon him. But it was only a feint. The Almoradi, seeing that all resistance was futile, had decided to kill at least one of his executioners. The one who seized him was stabbed, ravaged, opened in two, and Ismail, pierced with thrusts and already dead, plunged his tenacious blade once again into the enemy breast.
Abul Hacen stamped his feet on his balcony. It was a centenary custom to fill the room with enormous roses every morning. There were red ones, white ones and violet ones, and all of them, now soaked in blood, were spread out like the tears of beauty before the triumph of evil. The blood, the soiled petals of the flowers and the crimson cloaks of the murdered Almoradis mingled in a single red harmony, through which the silhouettes of men dislocated by fury passed like phantoms.
Isabelle had fainted, but Abu Hacen had decided to wake her up when Tarfe appeared, by shaking her by her hair and pricking her with his dagger if necessary.
For Tarfe was about to appear. To be certain of his coming, Abul Hacen had sent a written message via the faithful Ali. The scene was only organized for the death of the young man and to see what quality of dolor that death inspired in Isabelle.
Other Almoradis expired in their turn. The halls of the Alhambra filled with rumors. The Hagib, the only man who could have intervened, was absent. A eunuch who was drunk or whom fear had caused to lose his reason, started running, torch in hand, shouting incomprehensible words. Then, suddenly, through the corridors sand the gardens a kind of anguish passed like a breath, which caused everyone to fall silent and wait.
But in the rose room, where the dead were heaped up and a sanguinary fury possessed souls, Tarfe did not arrive. The mute Ali had gone to his house and had put into his own hands an amicable message from Abul Hacen inviting him to come to hear singers at the Alhambra. That invitation was only abnormal in that it was written by the Emir’s own hand instead of that of one of his scribes.
Tarfe was at the foot of the staircase in his palace and his father, old Ali Hamad, was standing beside him. He showed him, not without pride, the large sheet of parchment with the Emir’s seal and he picked up his cloak in order to leave. But then Ali, who had remained motionless, extended his hand. The head of the Almoradi family and his son Tarfe did not grasp the cause of that gesture at first. They considered Ali’s extended hand, and they interrogated one another with their gaze. But when their eyes went to the mute’s face, they understood. That face reflected the pity and sadness of simple souls, which cannot understand hatred, and sometimes tries to limit it by an invisible good deed.
Ali’s arm had fallen back along his body and his face tried to become impassive again.
That was all right! He could go. Tarfe would not penetrate into the Alhambra before being informed of the danger that threatened him. Salvation often comes from a stranger who goes away without recompense and whom one never sees again.
When Tarfe arrived on horseback in the street that went from the Darro to the Puerta de la Justicia he saw an assembly in which there were
several Almoradis. In the middle of the group a young man of fifteen, whose lips were painted and his face made up, was speaking animatedly, raising a delicate hand whose fingernails were covered in carmine and which was holding an orange branch.
Tarfe recognized the young man as young Abdallah, the lover of his cousin, Abu Said, the debauchee.
When Abu Said, summoned like the other Almoradis by Abul Hacen, had arrived at the Puerta de la Justicia, he had declared to the guards that he was never separated from the adolescent with the handsome face by whom he was accompanied. Negligently leaning on his shoulder, he had strolled back and forth in the courtyard, awaiting his turn to be received. At the moment when he was summoned, he had plucked a branch from the orange tree and had handed it to young Abdallah with the tenderness with which another man would have given a present of a flower to a woman.
The adolescent, who was standing near the rose room, had heard a loud scream of death. He had perceived a trickle of blood under the bronze of the door. He had fled, and had been allowed to pass, no order having been given in his regard. Now, breathless and trembling, he was recounting what he had seen and heard to the Almoradis, and his falsetto voice, further broken by emotion, had something ridiculous and tragic about it.
They deliberated in order to decide what it was appropriate to do.
Moussa, supported by Tarfe, wanted them to go find weapons and attack the Alhambra. Others, more sensible, talked about leaving the city. Many Almoradis were dead. How could their servants be gathered? Which were the families on whom they could count? It was Tarfe’s violence that decided the flight of all. Was not his imprudence the original cause of the evil? The essential thing was to warn the Almoradis who had not yet responded to the Emir’s summons. They would take stock the following day.
The moon rose. Tarfe and Moussa found themselves alone. They departed at a gallop through the narrow streets of the Albaycin, and there was no longer anyone there but a fifteen-year-old child, sobbing against a wall.
It was only late in the night that Abul Hacen finally discovered how much he had loved Isabelle. The women known as the light of dawn thought that life was slipping away and spared neither the extravagant words nor the actions that, accomplished at the right moment, pour forgetfulness into ulcerated lovers.
When the moon was high in the sky, the Emir wanted a breath of air, and he had walked on to the terrace of the room in which Isabelle, among the cushions, was savoring a hard-earned slumber. He was like a man who has drunk a mixture of opium and nepenthe. He felt strangely light.
From the place where he was leaning he could see a door that opened to the Court of Lions. Slaves were passing through it, carrying bodies. But they seemed to be moving very far way, in a lunar world to which he was entirely foreign. Those slaves were accomplishing tasks that had nothing to do with him.
In the end, he saw a silhouette so tall that he wondered who the disproportionate individual could be, whom he did not know. The silhouette was that of the Hagib. His face was more jaundiced than usual. He was measuring with despair the dramas that the Emir’s folly had engendered, and suffering from the injustice committed.
Enclosed in his thoughts, he traversed the courtyard and advanced, without seeing him, toward the balcony on which the Emir was leaning. At each step he took, very straight in his black robe, he grew immeasurably in Abul Hacen’s eyes. He grew like the neglected duty, the charges of the kingdom, the inexorable effects of evil actions. He was a thin black giant, the sad Hagib meditating in the night of the Alhambra, and Abul Hacen, frightened, hastened to go back into Isabelle’s room.
XIV. Almazan’s Encounters in the Twilight
Almazan had a great deal of difficulty going down the street of the harness-makers. It was being searched. There were searches going on all over Granada.
A man who recognized him as the Emir’s physician shouted at him, almost under his nose: “Long live King Boabdil!”
For Aixa the Horra, in accord with the Zegris, had distributed great riches among the lower orders in order that the word would go round that only Boabdil was capable of leading the war against the Spaniards successfully.
At the corner of the street of the perfumers, cavaliers of the Moroccan guard passed by. They were holding their spears in the middle and distributing solid blows with the shaft at anyone who did not get out of the way quickly enough. Their brutality had made them hated for a long time. Cries of fury burst out behind them. By the words he heard, Almazan measured the unpopularity of Abul Hacen.
Sitting outside a door, an old man who must have been nearly a hundred years old was searching with his eyes for someone who wanted to listen to him. He shouted: “Only a young man can see clearly. The Alhambra is a castle of prostitutes, Muhamad Alhamar, who was a great king, said that to reign, it’s necessary to be young and virtuous.”
A little further on, a man who was entirely covered by a saffron cloak and wore a turban and slippers of the same color, was announcing that all the friends of the Zegris ought to gather in the Plaza de Bibarrambla at the hour of prayer.
There was a stir in the crowd and Almazan went back up in the direction of the Puerta de la Elvira. It was not without sadness that he saw Granada delivered to factions at the moment when it would need all its strength to triumph over its enemies.
It’s always thus, he thought. It was the same in Athens, Rome and Alexandria. Cities are like men. Intelligence kills their will, and as soon as they think too much, they die.
He heard cries and laughter, and he saw a singular cortege advancing toward him.
A traveler with a fat belly was mounted on a donkey. He was covered in dust, sweating and laughing. His spindly legs disappeared under an infinity of sacks and packages. To his right there as a pale young man who was pulling with difficulty a burden attached to him by a strap, and to his left, almost buried under withered flowers and dusty branches an equivocal brown-haired girl was walking with a slight limp.
Almazan recognized Aboulfedia. The Jewish physician stopped his mount. He did not show any surprise at encountering his disciple, but his little eyes had a gleam of satisfaction.
“You see,” he said, “I’m making my entrance into Granada on a donkey, like Jesus Christ in Jerusalem, or the prophet Ibn Toumert in Tlemcen. But the prophet had made a vow always to wear a coarse woolen chemise while I, I beg you to take note, am only clad in the rarest silk.”
And he insisted that Almazan feel the fabric of his chemise.
“What have I come here to do?” he said. “Lilith has summoned me, and here I am. I’ve brought Belial with me, as well as all the accessories of beauty and pleasure.”
Almazan saw that a huge broken perfume-burner was protruding from one of his sacks, along with cushions in which embroideries alternated with rips.
“A young priestess precedes me, laden with flowers.” And he indicated Rebecca, who, in spite of her lassitude, parted the flowers by which she was laden in order to smile with a toothless mouth.
“And now,” added Aboulfedia, “you can take me to Lilith.”
Almazan replied to him that nothing was easier than to introduce himself into the Alhambra on condition of continuing as he went to gave the Emir’s favorite that symbolic name, her true name being to unpopular.
He had already seized the bridle of the donkey when a cry rang out from a street that opened to the right and a man ran forward. He was improbably thin and his head was coiffed in the black bonnet that Jews had the custom of wearing. He moved Almazan aside gently and, taking Aboulfedia by the shoulders, he said to him: “You really are Aboulfedia of Seville?”
“Yes,” replied Aboulfedia. “So what?”
“I’m Anan ben Joshua, your coreligionist, and we have been living in Granada, father and son, for three centuries.
But that name said nothing to Aboulfedia; he visibly did not know his interlocutor. He was in haste to reach the Alhambra and his protectress, by means of Almazan. He pulled away from the Jew’s grip, grumbli
ng.
“I don’t care about my coreligionists,” he exclaimed. “Let me pass.”
But the man turned toward him a face in which intelligence shone. In spite of Aboulfedia’s resistance, he seized him by the neck and spoke to him in a low voice. Almazan only perceived a few words, of which he did not grasp the significance, and which the Jew repeated:
Tabernacle... Moses.… Granada...
To his great surprise, he saw Aboulfedia’s face change and take on an extraordinary, almost dramatic gravity.
“Almazan,” he said, “I thank you, but I’ll go with my venerable coreligionist Anan ben Joshua, whom I’ve known for a very long time and who has just spoken to me.”
Aboulfedia made a sign to young Rodriguez and the toothless girl. His donkey pirouetted and he drew away, guided by the Jew, without paying any further heed to Almazan.
When Almazan went past the great mosque it was the hour of the fifth prayer, He crossed the path of a man dressed as a Santon who wore on his shoulder the sign of pilgrims returned from Mecca. Almazan had scarcely passed him than he turned round precipitately—but the Santon had prostrated himself on the ground and was praying, soiling his forehead with the dust.29
Two old men passing by stopped and one said to the other: “Look at the fervor with which that Santon is making the four rika of the prayer of the night.”
Almazan reflected. He was sure that he was not mistaken. That Santon was the man who had introduced himself into the room of the automata on the evening of the meeting of the Rose-Cross But he was also another individual, and his memory, infidel thus far, suddenly permitted him to receiver him in the mists of remembrance.
That Santon was a former Dominican, who had been expelled from the Order for debauchery, and of whom the Holy Office made use as a spy. He was the one who had denounced in Seville that Dutchman Van Daele and had had Felice de Hurtado burned on false accusations of heresy. Tomas de Torquemada confided inadmissible missions to him and executions for which he did not want any tribunal or judgment. If, as Rosenkreutz had said at Al Birouni’s house, many Brothers of the Rose-Cross had perished mysteriously in Castile and Aragon, solely for the crime of being philosophers and scholars, it was that man who had been the agent of their death.
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