Hussein

by Patrick O'Brian

  Hussein, after suitably respectful greetings, to which the fakir did not reply, but only laughed in a disconcerting way, stated his business.

  ‘So you want him cursed? This is all very vague: is he to die of leprosy, small-pox, or by strange, hideous dreams?’

  ‘Well, I am a poor man …’

  ‘Oh, no you are not: you have thirty-two rupees there and a steady salary.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I know everything,’ said the fakir magnificently. ‘Now for those thirty-two rupees down and twenty next month I shall put a horror into the mind of Kadir Baksh, so foul that he shall wither for want of sleep and die mad within a month. I know him and I hate him: he spat at me some three years ago, and refused me alms; that is why I will do it so cheaply and, above all, so thoroughly.’

  ‘But this is a great sum for such a humble man as I am: and also what proof can I have that the curse will be effective?’

  ‘How did the babu Surendranath die? And Dhossibhoy Chatterji, Krishnaswami the Merchant, Wali Din, and Nichols Sahib the Englishman? You know,’ he said, turning to Abd’Arahman, ‘even if this impious and irreverent youth does not.’

  ‘All mad,’ replied the letter-writer.

  ‘Of course. But come in this room behind, and I will convince you. Will you come too?’ he asked Abd’Arahman.

  ‘I am an old man: I know your powers. I will remain in the sun.’

  Hussein crawled into the little dark room after the fakir; there was a brass pot with a fire burning in it that gave out a suffocating stench.

  ‘Sit there, and do not move,’ said the fakir. ‘Hold this. It contains a hair of the Beard of the Prophet. If you loose your hold upon it your soul will die, and probably your body also.’

  Hussein felt sweat running down behind his ears. He sat still, gripping the amulet.

  The fakir moved about in the darkness, muttering. Presently he stopped, and Hussein heard, with an indescribable feeling of dread, a whispering noise that came from all around the room, like the noise of wind among trees. The horrible part of it was that there were several voices in the noise, each muttering, so that distinct words could be heard now and then. It rose and fell, like a breeze: the smell from the brazier grew worse, and the fakir threw something on it that flared up with a green flame. The voices sniggered.

  The fakir muttered a question. The voices quavered an answer. Something that was not the fakir moved in a dark corner.

  Hussein had to hold himself from panicking.

  The fakir burst out into a long incantation: the voices followed him, and sometimes they moaned. Then he blew a tongue of red flame from his mouth, and wiping his lips with his long, henna-dyed beard, he said to Hussein:

  ‘Look firmly and without cease at the light in the ring on my left hand.’

  Hussein stared at it for some time: the voices died down to a gentle murmuring, but that was worse than before, for the sound seemed to hold in itself an incredible malignancy.

  Hussein felt his neck stiffening as he kept his eyes on the spot of light. The fakir muttered some words that Hussein heard half-consciously. Then, after a while, he said, in a loud voice:

  ‘Look at my left arm.’

  Hussein transferred his gaze to that, and the muttering went on. The voices rose to a loud chattering, and the fire burnt up with leaping green flames. Then Hussein saw the fakir take his withered left arm with his sound right hand and break it off at the elbow: he even heard it snap with a brittle sound, like a dry stick.

  Seven

  The last thing of which Hussein was conscious was the hardness of the amulet, which he gripped with such force that it broke his skin: then he was aware that he was in the front room, with Abd’Arahman splashing water on his face and the red-bearded fakir leering down at him.

  The withered arm was still in its place. ‘Now,’ said the holy man, ‘do you believe that I can curse?’

  Hussein did not speak a word, but laid his thirty-two rupees on the ground, and staggered out, leaning on Abd’Arahman’s arm.

  ‘What happened?’ asked the old man.

  ‘All Jehanna,’ he replied, and went away to his house, where he neither ate nor drank, but only slept for several hours.

  For some days Hussein had to go away with Jehangir to take an official over some plantations, but before he went he saw Sashiya for a little while in the cemetery. She had slipped away, unobserved, from the other women to the trees, and he told her all that had been done.

  When he came back he found a boy squatting before his hut: the boy said the red-bearded fakir wanted to see him, so he went at once.

  He found him sitting in the sun against the wall of the temple of Hanuman. Hussein could hardly take his eyes from the distorted arm that stuck straight up from the fakir’s curiously twisted shoulder.

  ‘I have begun the curse,’ said the fakir, ‘but now it is essential that Kadir Baksh should know what is coming to him. You must see to that.’

  ‘But how can I do that without incurring the blood-feud if he dies?’

  ‘If he dies! In the Name of the Compassionate! What do you think my curses do? But you must let him know. I do not care how. Go away. I wish to think.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Go away, or I shall curse you too.’

  Hussein walked slowly away, thinking. The boy followed him. The fakir used this boy for gazing into pools of ink, and other things.

  ‘I know how it can be done,’ he said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Give me four annas, and I will do it for you — I have done these things often.’

  ‘But how?’ asked Hussein again.

  ‘Four annas first.’

  ‘Two now, and two when it is done.’

  ‘As you say.’

  Hussein squatted by a fountain — they were in a public square — and gave the boy two annas. ‘Now how will you do it?’ he asked.

  ‘I will go to Kadir Baksh — I know where he lives — and tell him that there is a message from a woman waiting for him at my master’s hut.’

  ‘But will he come? Surely he will suspect something?’

  ‘I will leer meaningly at him. He will come like a hawk. It always works with these Pathans,’ replied the boy.

  ‘You are right. Allah’s curse on all unbelievers and Pathans!’

  That evening Hussein met the boy walking through the elephant lines with Kadir Baksh. The Pathan spat as they passed: so did Hussein. Before he had gone many yards a stone sang past his head.

  Abd’Arahman was sitting, as was his custom, in the Krishnavi bazaar when Hussein came again into town.

  ‘I have a message for you,’ he said, when he saw Hussein. It was a note to say that Fatima was ill, and Sashiya could not see him because she had to sit by her cousin.

  So Hussein spent the evening with Abd’Arahman, helping him with his book, which was rapidly coming into being. It was an amusing evening, for the old man had a wonderful store of memories, and hundreds of highly-seasoned stories.

  The next day all the elephants were being used in a procession through Haiderabad for the greater honour of a visiting Rajah, come to pay his respects to the Viceroy, who happened to be passing through the town.

  As the gorgeously caparisoned elephants went between the lines of soldiers that kept the people back, Hussein, on Jehangir, caught the eyes of the fakir’s boy, who dodged under a soldier’s arm, gave him a quick nod and slipped back into the crowd.

  Hussein looked forward through the swaying howdahs to where Kadir Baksh sat on his elephant, immediately in front of the Viceroy himself: he had half expected to see his enemy withered already, but there was no visible change.

  Nevertheless, Kadir Baksh was far from at peace within: he had gone to the fakir’s hovel as the boy had predicted, expecting a message from someone — he had hoped that it might be from Sashiya — and he had been told by the boy to wait in the front room.

  After a little while the boy came back and said: ‘She will
be a little while yet,’ and he gave Kadir Baksh some coffee.

  Kadir Baksh woke up — still in a dazed state — some time later, to find himself in a dark room. He had been drugged.

  Meanwhile the boy, anxious to earn his two annas, had persuaded the fakir to attend to the Pathan himself. So in a half-dream Kadir Baksh heard someone being cursed with hideous thoroughness; then he got used to the dim light, and saw a red-bearded fakir sitting before him. Suddenly he realised that the person who was being cursed was himself. He vaguely remembered having seen the fakir before.

  While he was still dazed and unable to move, horrible things happened in the room, so that he was not sure whether he was awake or in a ghastly nightmare.

  He awoke a second time, leaning against some railings in a deserted garden. He could not remember how he had got there, or what had happened, but he rather thought that he must have been drunk.

  While the procession wound its slow way through the town, Kadir Baksh pondered over what had happened to him, trying to piece together the fragments of memories that hung about his brain.

  He felt curiously depressed and anxious, as if something were going to happen.

  That night Kadir Baksh drank heavily — he was anything but a strict Mahommedan — to raise his spirits. Because of the drink he slept well at first, but a little after the moon had risen he woke suddenly: he was wide awake; in a moment his head was perfectly clear, and he was conscious of a singular causeless dread inside him.

  For some time he strained to catch a sound which, for some reason that he did not know, he expected. Then he heard a sort of murmur behind him. He twisted round, but he saw nothing. From another corner of the room there came a gentle, incredibly malignant chuckle. Kadir Baksh glared into the darkness: he thought he saw something move across a thin shaft of moonlight. For a long while he stayed quite still, listening. He heard nothing more for a period that seemed like hours, and at length he grew so stiff and cramped that he moved, and having settled in a more comfortable position, he slept again.

  Almost at once, it seemed to him, he entered into a nightmare world so hideous and foul that he awoke screaming, damp all over with cold sweat. His dream had been of a loathsome amorphous black thing, so extraordinarily evil as to be well-nigh indescribable.

  Mixed up with this dream was the figure of a fakir with a straggling red beard, whose left arm was withered and fixed above his head. As he awoke he heard the same chuckle: for some reason it seemed to deprive him of the power of movement, so that he lay tensely still, waiting for the next sound.

  Nothing happened for a long time, and he felt himself going off to sleep: he dreaded the idea of having that hideous dream again, so he took to pinching himself to keep awake. At last the pinches became too few and far between to keep him from sleeping, and he dozed off. At once he was in the nightmare again: this time it was even worse than before. The same loathsome black thing and the same fakir took part in it, but there were other things, vague shapes, small and large, that kept up a continual rapid muttering in the background.

  He awoke in an even worse state than before, and again he heard the gloating chuckle from a far dark corner.

  Kadir Baksh managed to keep awake for the rest of the night: all the time he stared fixedly into the corner where he thought that he saw a dark thing move from time to time. He felt that if once it moved out of the corner something appalling would happen to him, and somehow he knew that he could only keep it there by a great effort of will, and by watching it continually.

  An age seemed to pass, and the thin moonbeams moved slowly over the floor. Then a thin grey light filtered through the window. Kadir Baksh had never been so glad to see the dawn. The grey light grew stronger, and the shadows in the corners melted away. He staggered out into the open: in the daylight he felt safe.

  Towards noon he felt inclined to treat the whole thing as a dream caused through drinking too much, and he swore an oath to himself not to drink any more for a week. But a little fear stayed in the back of his mind, although he assured himself again and again that he was a fool to have been frightened of a dream, like a child.

  Strangely enough he did not tell anyone about it, although two or three people saw that he was looking unwell.

  By sunset the fear in the back of his mind had grown and grown, so that he could hardly bear to be out of the company of other men. He lived ordinarily in a hut in the elephant lines, but the idea of what might be awaiting him when he returned became so awful to him that he decided to spend the night at his brother’s house in the town. His father, two uncles, four brothers and several cousins lived in a huge rambling house on the outskirts of Haiderabad. Technically it belonged to his eldest brother, but any member of the family would stay there as by right, for they were Pathans, and they held almost feudally strong ties of kinship among themselves. Most of them were horse copers, some did nothing at all, and others were frankly professional thieves. They came of a tribe of hereditary thieves and cattle-lifters, and this was the effect a town had upon them.

  Kadir Baksh sat up as late as he could, playing dice with some of his cousins; but at last they all went to bed and he felt ashamed not to go too. As long as he could he kept awake, and he fixed a pin so that it would prick him into wakefulness if he lay down. But it slipped sideways, and he slept and writhed again in the grip of the hideous dream. He awoke to find two of his brothers and an uncle standing over him.

  ‘What were you screaming for?’ they asked.

  Kadir Baksh did not reply, but stared past them into a dark corner, from which he heard the chuckle that he had expected and dreaded, and where he saw the dark thing move gently.

  ‘Keep it back, for the love of Allah!’ he shrieked.

  They all turned; they saw nothing.

  ‘What is it?’ asked the eldest brother, but Kadir Baksh could not answer for the trembling of his teeth. After a little while he calmed down, and still staring into the corner he said:

  ‘I am not very well: would you stay with me to-night?’

  They thought it was a touch of fever, and his eldest brother pulled a string bed into the room and stayed with him. He was about to blow out the light after they had talked a while, when Kadir Baksh said:

  ‘Put the lamp in that corner, will you?’

  His brother looked at him curiously, but he did so, and went to sleep.

  He was awakened shortly afterwards by an inhuman howl: it was Kadir Baksh doubled up in what looked like a fit. He was twitching violently, and there was froth between his lips.

  People came running in, and they all tried to rouse him, but in vain: he lay unconscious till the next day, when he came to. He was very queer to speak to, but he seemed fairly well otherwise.

  Towards nightfall he became more and more uneasy; he refused to go to bed at all, and spent the whole night surrounded by lights in the courtyard, walking about to keep awake. For several nights he did this, until he was almost dead from lack of sleep. Hussein saw him one day: for a moment he hardly recognised the Pathan, his face was so altered, but when he did he chuckled grimly and went to tell Abd’Arahman.

  That night towards dawn Kadir Baksh slept in spite of the lights. His dream was even more terrible than before; Daoud Shah, whom he had helped to murder some two years before, came and joined with the devils who tormented him. His waking terror was horrible to see. After that he refused to be left alone for a moment, and he grew steadily worse. He would not speak, for he feared the sound of his own voice, and he would not take food. Some days passed and Kadir Baksh seemed hardly sane. Hussein, whom he had meant to kill, joined with Daoud Shah in his dreams, which came upon him now even when he was awake. He thought that he had killed Hussein. He grew very thin, and only spoke to mutter incoherent things about Hussein, Daoud Shah and a red-bearded fakir, and to shriek dreadfully if a shadow moved.

  They sent for a hakim. This doctor was famous for his strength of mind; he treated all his patients with a purge and an invincible determination to
make them do whatever they did not want to do: thus he made fat people take exercise, and the thin ones take more food. He applied this type of remedy always, and on the whole it worked well.

  The relations of Kadir Baksh told the hakim that he would never leave the company of other people, and that he hated the dark; so the doctor caused them to prepare a quiet room, which was carefully darkened with shutters. Then he saw Kadir Baksh, and told the relatives that the patient was delirious and should be left in peace in the dark, quiet room.

  ‘The patient', said the good hakim, ‘might become a little violent — it is only natural in this delirious state. Of course, he does not know what he is doing, so we had better strap him down in his bed, lest he do himself some injury. You should take him a little light food three times a day, until the fever has declined, but otherwise you must leave him quite alone. Pay no attention to what he says, even if he shouts and screams — it is only light-headedness arising from certain humours in the spleen.’

  So four men, one for each limb, took Kadir Baksh and strapped him on his bed. The hakim covered his face with a cloth to keep the flies away, and they left him in the darkened room.

  No one bothered about the really appalling sounds that came from the room, and when they ceased after one dreadful long-drawn scream that died away with a choking moan, they nodded their heads, and said that the hakim was quite right, for Kadir Baksh would be sleeping peacefully now.

  After some hours they went with food to the darkened room: Kadir Baksh was lying in a very strange position in one corner — he had broken his thick straps — with his hands over his head, as if he were protecting himself from something, which was manifestly absurd, because there was nothing there, as everyone pointed out. Nevertheless there was an expression of unutterable horror on his face: he was quite dead.

  On the evening of the same day the fakir sent for Hussein, who came as soon as he could. He found the fakir lying in front of his hovel, looking utterly exhausted.