The Achmed Abdullah Megapack

by Achmed Abdullah

  They saw fat Turki cattle grazing in the pastures. They saw lithe Turki women prepare rich food for their masters. They saw ample-girded bankers count their gain.

  So the jirgahs met, and the priests went among the rock-perched villages preaching war, Holy War, in the name of Allah, the king of swords and men. They descended into the trembling plains, smashed my regiments as the whirling mill-stones smash the dry grains of the field, and raided the land for many miles. And they returned to their rocky fastnesses well pleased with themselves and the bounty of Allah’s gifts.

  Yakoob Beg the Wise, on hearing of this outrage, decided to send a punitive expedition against the robbers and to recover the stolen cattle and women. He proclaimed that he would carry the flames of revenge into the remotest villages of the Kanjutis.

  And one day a messenger hastened to my palace and delivered into my hands a letter from the Beg.

  I opened it and trembled.

  For, behold—the Beg commanded me to proceed on a journey up the Yarkand River, from my capital as far as the mountains, and to survey the main stream and its principal tributaries.

  It had been decided, he wrote, that the army, so as to save them the long march across the sun-scorched, man-killing plains, should travel on boats to the head of navigation, thus using its undiminished strength in climbing and conquering the steep Kanjuti strongholds.

  I should therefore make an exact personal survey of the river and exert especial care in measuring the breadth of it, that it might be known to the war-chiefs how many boats could travel upstream, shoulder on shoulder, without danger of collision.

  The Beg’s letter wound up with recommending me to the mercy of Almighty Allah, the King of the Day of Judgment, and the detailed account of the many cheerful things which would happen to me in case of mistakes.

  I said that I trembled when I read the letter, the Beg’s written orders.

  And indeed—though mine was a miraculous skill in the raising of the many taxes, the making out of accounts, and the intricacies of compound interest, I possessed scarcely any knowledge in the art of surveying treacherous streams.

  Gladly would I have commissioned some ancient and learned sheik to do the work for me. But I thought of the Beg’s implicit orders, I thought of the Beg’s many spies, and then I thought of the Beg’s skilled executioners, those red-robed gentry who hold the Central-Asian record in the swift removing of perfectly healthy heads.

  I increased the taxes on fishing-nets and water-rights, and I administered a severe bodily chastisement to my favorite slave. But it failed to make me feel any happier.

  So I sent word to my confidential adviser, the pandit Rakhal Chandar Tawari, and told him of my bitter plight.

  We put our heads together and talked earnestly and long, the Hindu quoting the Vedas and the Upanishads, and the laws of Manu, and I referring to the Koran, as well as to the Lila-Shastra and other more worldly books. Finally we evolved a plan of judging distances which combined the merits of facility with the charm of novelty.

  Early next morning, after ceremonious prayers, we proceeded up the stream on a comfortable native craft, and I took up a commanding position on top-deck, cross-legged, calm, and dignified. By my side sat my faithful Hindu clerk, in front of me stood a large jewel-incrusted hubble-bubble, and across my knees lay a carefully-sighted rifle which had fetched its weight in silver north of the Khaibar.

  Slowly we sailed for a few miles, and presently the river broadened, and we came within sight of a village. The Hindu looked up, smiling his oily Babu smile, and gravely I winked at him and asked in accents of disinterested serenity:

  “Tell me, Chandar. What wouldst thou judge to be the distance from here to yonder village?”

  The Hindu replied timorously:

  “Protector of the poor, mayest thou look with favor on thy undeserving slave. I judge the distance to be about three hundred yards, oh, thou pilgrim.”

  And I said:

  “Curse thee for a blind owl. Thy ancestry is rotten, thy manners deplorable, and thou hast been fed on the flesh of a yellow dog. Verily do I declare that thy female progenitors have been noseless, shameless, and disreputable since the day of the Hegira. Thou doest lie to me, thy benefactor and master. For indeed do I proclaim that the distance is nearer six hundred yards.”

  Again I winked a grave wink, and, bringing the rifle to my shoulders, I opened fire on the village. The bullets took effect, and crowds of shrieking Turkis rushed out of their huts to see what all the trouble was about, while the groans of a wounded man drifted across the water.

  Then I turned again to my faithful pandit and said:

  “Did I not tell thee so? The distance is indeed six hundred yards. My rifle spoke the truth, and thou art as blind as that new-born, objectionable, and particularly illegitimate mongrel-pup, thy unclean female ancestor, which justly ashamed of having given birth to thee, committed suicide, thus losing its chances of paradise.”

  Thus, beloved one, did we journey up the river, exchanging pleasant converse and measuring with bullets from shore to shore, in obedience to the orders of Yakoob Beg, and to the greater glory of myself.

  And I, to commemorate the successful survey, caused the following inscription to be engraved on a copper tablet which to this day can be seen in the great bazaar of Yarkand’s capital:

  During the just and equitable rule of Ibrahim Fadlallah, the Egyptian, that accomplished and charitable governor who, faithful servant of Yakoob Beg the Wise, the Fount of the Just Law, brought law and order into this province, whose generosity like clouds showered blessings everywhere, and at whose door fortune attended as an insignificant slave, this monument was erected to commemorate the survey of the great river which waters Yarkand, and as a feeble testimonial of a nation’s gratitude.

  THE INCUBUS

  Speaking in after years about that period of his life, Lloyd Merriwether, being a New Englander and thus congenitally given to dissecting his motives and reactions and screwing them into test-tubes, used to add, by way of psychological comment, that it wasn’t the big things that mattered in a crisis, but the small ones; and that, by the same token, it was not the big things one missed when one was away from that blending of hackneyed efficiency and pinchbeck mechanical process called Civilization, but the petty, negligible ones—those that have grown to become second nature, almost integrally part of one’s self, like one’s eyes, or ears, or nose.

  Now—he would say—take, for example, a razor-strop or a box of talc powder. Take a bottle of eau de Cologne or witch hazel; or, if you prefer, a nail buffer, a pair of toilet scissors, or what not.

  Silly, foolish, tinsel things, you say? Rubbish a man can do without just as well? Well—don’t you believe it! Not for a single, solitary moment!

  Oh, yes! You can do without all that truck when you are home, all snug and taut and comfortable—with shops around you on every street so that you know you can buy them, if the spirit moves you and you have the price. Sure.

  But suppose you find yourself somewhere at the back of the beyond, where you can’t buy the fool things for love or money—absolutely cannot get them. Why, at that very moment, those flummeries become vital—vital not from a pathological angle, because you always want what you can’t get, but really, truly, physically vital.

  It was that which meant the tragedy of the whole thing.

  You bet. Tragic! Although—not—because it was so ludicrous, straight through. For, you know, I was quite out of my head when that fellow from the Angom Presbyterian Mission picked me up. What was his name? Oh, yes. Morrison. Doctor Sylvester Morrison, an Englishman, and a very decent chap.

  * * * *

  I was a raving lunatic when he found me. Sat there screeching some musical-comedy song of a few years back—“Gee—but this is a lonesome town!” or something of the sort.

  Say! It must have sounded funny, back yonder, in the heart of Africa, with the sun rays dropping straight down from a brazen sky to shatter themselves upon the hard-
baked surface into sparkling, adamantine dust—to rise again in a dazzling vapor.

  Oh, yes. Very funny, no doubt!

  And then I went for Doctor Morrison with my knife. Lucky for him that I had used my last cartridge.

  Well, to go back to the beginning, I felt a presentiment of coming disaster shortly after I was faced by the fact that those ochre-smeared, plum—colored Fang coons had run away during the night, as fast as their skinny legs would let them. I never did find out what made them stampede, nor cared to discover the reason why. You know what they are like—half children and half apes, and chuck—full of animistic superstitions and the inhibitions that go with them. I guess they must have heard a drum-signal boom-booming through the night—some brute of a flat-nosed, tattooed medicine-man brewing his smelly craft somewhere in the miasmic jungle to the north, and giving them the tip that I was “dam bad ju-ju.” At any rate, there I found myself that morning, on the upper reaches of the Ogowe River, a day’s journey below Boue, a week from the coast, and all alone.

  I was rather annoyed. You know, Africa raises Cain with a white man’s nerves and general amiability. And if I could have caught one of those runaway coons, I would have given him what was coming to him with my hippo-hide whip. But it was no use trailing them in the jungle. The wilderness had swallowed them, and so I contented myself with cursing them in English and Freetown pidgin.

  Afraid of being alone?

  Not I. You see, I wasn’t a greenhorn, but an old Africander, dyed-in-the-wool, dyed-in-the-trek, and able to take care of myself. I knew that particular part of the French Congo better than I know my native Cape Cod, and I really did not need a guide; nor porter for that matter, since I was to go the rest of the way by canoe.

  Nor was I afraid of any stray natives popping out of the bush. I’ve always been friends with them. I am not an adventurer—seeking for the rainbow, the pretty little rainbow that usually winds up in a garbage can—not an explorer, nor a soldier. I am a businessman, pure and simple, and I needed the natives to bring me rubber and ivory and gold—dust, while they needed me to get them their particular hearts’, and stomachs’, desires—American cloth, and beads, and pocketknives, and Worcester sauce, and Liverpool trade gin, and rifles that didn’t shoot and similar truck. Of course, I did ’em brown whenever I had half a chance, and I guess they returned the compliment. So we had mutual respect for each other, and I wasn’t scared of them—not the slightest bit.

  As soon as I discovered that my Fangs had stampeded, I took stock of my belongings, and I saw that they had not taken much—in fact, nothing except the little waterproofed pack which contained my toilet articles, mirror and razor and shaving—brush and comb and all the rest. Struck me as funny at the time. I said to myself that those Fangs were fools—damned fools. They might have helped themselves to some of my other packs as easy as pie. Food, you know, tobacco, beads, all that. But they had not. Why? God only knows. I told you before that they’re half children and half apes.

  So I had a good laugh at their expense.

  Well—I didn’t laugh much a few days later.

  * * * *

  There I was, then, in the crawling, stinking heart of Africa, all alone, and—for the moment, at least—cheerful enough. For I am a businessman, and I told myself that those fool negroes had saved me a tidy little penny by bolting, since I owed them a month’s wages. Too, I was well supplied with everything a fellow needs in the wilderness, from quinine to matches, from tabloid beef to—oh, tabloid fish cakes. My health, but for occasional, woozy fever spats—they being part of Africa’s eternal scenery and accepted as such—was first-rate, and my canoe a snug, comfy little affair that pulled as easy as a feather.

  I decided that I would just drift along down the Ogowe River to the estuary, and no hurry—not a darned bit of hurry. The Ogowe is not a treacherous water; the channel is clearly marked most of the way, and the mangroves sit rather well back—like hair on the brow of a professional patriot, eh?

  As to the pack with my toilet articles? Well, what did it matter? There weren’t any women kicking around loose in that part of the Dark Continent to care or fuss if my hair was long or short, my complexion smooth or stubbly, my fingernails round or square. Blessed relief, in fact, to be independent of one’s outer man, I thought.

  So, I repeat, I was quite cheerful—for a few seconds, perhaps minutes.

  But, almost immediately, I knew that my cheerfulness was faked—faked by myself, subconsciously, for my own, private, especial benefit; almost immediately, I sensed that vague, crushing presentiment of coming disaster I told you about—and my nerves began to jump sideways and backward, like a whisky-primed Highland Scot when he hears the whir of the war pipes.

  Of course, being a sensible fellow, and not imaginative, I tried to crystallize my nervous presentiment. Couldn’t, though. It was too subtle, too elusive—too damned African, to put it in the proverbial nutshell. All I was sure of was a sort of half-feeling—and I’ve had it before and since—that Africa was not a continent, but—oh, a being, a sinister, hateful, cruel, brooding monster, with a heart and soul and desires—rotten desires, mostly—and that this Africa hated me, because I was white, because I was an interloper, because I had no business there except—well, dollars and cents.

  Yes. A mass of rocks and rivers and forests and jungles, this Africa, but with the physical, even the spiritual attributes of man—and I used to brood on that thought until often, in my dreams, I felt like taking Africa by the throat and throttling it as I would an enemy. Silly, too, since I needed Africa for the benefit of my bank-account and the encouragement of my creditors.

  Never mind, though.

  I just couldn’t crystallize that damned, sneaking, ghastly presentiment, and so, knowing even at the time that it was a lie, I said to myself:

  “Fever, old man! Go ahead, and do the regular thing!”

  I did. I dosed myself with quinine and Warburg’s and a wee nip of three-star just to top it off. Then I packed my canoe with a fairly steady hand, jumped in, balanced it and pushed off, gliding between the banks of the Ogowe River.

  * * * *

  Remember my telling you that I had intended drifting along slowly, that I was in no hurry? Well, the moment my paddle fanned the water, I reconsidered, subconsciously. I decided, again subconsciously, that I was in a devil of a hurry, that I must get away from the hinterland, from the Congo, from the whole of Africa.

  I said to myself that, arrived at the coast, I would catch the first mail-boat bound for Liverpool and then on to America. No—I wouldn’t even wait for the mail-boat. I would go straight aboard the first dirty tramp steamer that came wallowing up from the south, and beat it home.

  Home! That’s what I needed! And rest, rest—and a white man’s big, crimson drink in a white man’s proper surroundings—with white-aproned saloonkeepers and stolid policemen and, maybe, a night-court magistrate or two all complete. I wanted to be shut for a while from this stinking, brooding, leering Africa. I wanted America, the white man’s land, the white man’s blessed, saving vices and prejudices.

  How I longed for it, longed for it as if it were a woman, as I paddled down the river!

  Of home I thought, of foolish things—New York, and dear, garish Fifth Avenue all agleam with shop windows and the screaming brasses of passing automobiles, and the soda place around the corner on Forty-second, and the night boat to Boston—and a solid hour with the ads in back of the magazines. And then I looked about me and I saw Africa, putrid, acrid! And, gee! How I hated it—hated it!

  I pulled myself together. Sure, more quinine, more Warburg’s, and another nip of the stuff. Back to the paddle with all my strength—and the canoe flying along like a sentient being.

  I paddled as if all the furies were after me. Just opened a tin at random, sneaked forty winks now and then, and off again, though my hands were raw and blistered, my back sore and strained till I nearly shrieked, my legs numb from the knees down, my eyes red-rimmed and smarting with watc
hing the current.

  Three days. Four. Five—

  And the work! And the sweat! And the heat! Why, man, all the heat of all the universe seemed to have gathered into a tight, crimson ball poised directly above my eyes.

  But I kept right on, with always the picture of home before my mind’s eyes. Home, white faces, hundreds and hundreds of them, houses of stone, paved streets, a sun which did not maim and kill, then dinner, plain, clean, as dinner should be, the theater, and over it all the sweet home scent.

  On the sixth day, I fell in a faint. Picked myself up again, rescued my paddle that was about to float away downstream, swallowed an opium pill, and called myself a fool. Perhaps it was the last helped the most. At all events, I was off again. But I felt weak. I felt conscious of a sickening sensation of nameless horror—and—do you know what I was afraid of?

  I’ll tell you. Myself. Yes, myself! I was afraid of—myself. Momentarily, I crystallized it. Myself—and you’ll see the reason presently.

  * * * *

  That day I did get into a mangrove swamp; a thick and oozy one, too, with the spiky orchids coming down in a waxen, odorous avalanche, and all sorts of thorny plants reaching down and out as if trying to rip the heart out of my body, as if trying to impede my progress, to keep me there. My hands and face were lacerated, my clothes torn, but I didn’t care. By main force, I jerked the canoe free and was off again, whipping the water like a madman; and the fear, the horror, the vague presentiment always growing!

  And my hatred of Africa, it nearly choked me! And the loneliness! The loneliness which lay across my heart, my soul, my body, like a sodden blanket, and the fear that I would never reach home.

  I lost all track of time. A week to make the coast, I had figured; and here it was at the very least the tenth day, and still my paddle went, still the river slid before my eyes like a watered-silk ribbon, still Africa unrolled like an odorous, meaningless scroll, still at my back rode horror and fear.