The opening of the daily auction broke into my reflections. I caught the eye of the porter I had bribed, and then found a seat. “Royal” Bijars and “Royal” Sarouks were extolled and lauded with all the dramatic art and perjury at the command of auctioneers hailing from the Near East. And under the floodlights, those pseudo-royal rugs did have a magnificent appearance.
“How much am I offered for this Royal Sarouk? This magnificent, lustrous carpet! It is worth a thousand dollars! Am I offered seven hundred? Seven hundred? They are getting scarcer every day! A genuine, Royal Sarouk! Do I hear five hundred? Is there no one here who really knows rugs? This is not a floor covering, this is—four hundred? Thank you. I am offered four hundred dollars. That shouldn’t even buy the fringe! Will someone give me five hundred? Did I hear four fifty? Seventy-five… Eighty? Thank you. Who offers five hundred?…”
And thus through the heap of rugs. Then came some Boukhara saddle-bags, one at a time; then more “Royal” Bijars, and Kashans, and Kirmans. Valiantly the plump Mephisto, pleading, groaning, holding out for just one more dollar, perjured his way through the stacks beside the rostrum. And all the while the porter paraded up and down the aisle, giving the bidders a glimpse of the articles in question.
Finally, after an hour’s exhorting, after the perspiration was trickling down his cheeks and glistening on his brow, after fatigue had left its marks on the chubby auctioneer, the porter handed him the fragment I had discovered.
Under that powerful light, its suave magnificence glowed forth through the coating of dust and dirt. Devil take that light! But thanks to the nap’s being worn so close, the now weary auctioneer, somewhat dulled by fatigue, did not sense that he held the remains of a silken rug in his hands; nor did the silver bullion ground below the medallion betray itself. The porter had handed him the end nearest the original center, where the medallion reached from border to border, and where consequently there was no silver ground to meet his fingertips. Then, scarcely had the orator opened his harangue, the porter snatched the precious fabric and was dashing down the aisle, holding it as well knotted up as he could contrive without seeming to do so.
Noble African! Nevertheless, it was a ticklish moment.
“How much am I offered for this antique rug?” he had begun, flashing it beneath the flaring floodlight, before yielding it to the eager porter. “Yes, sir, I know it is half of a rug, but it is old and very rare. It is an antique Tabriz…”
Which proved that he’d never seen it before I’d exhumed it from that dark, dusty corner! That he’d not noticed the silver ground! Tabriz…pure and simple improvisation on his part.
“Sixty dollars? Thank you. I am offered sixty. It is worth several hundred. A rare old Tabriz. Seventy? Thank you, madam!”
Damn that school-teacher! What made her think it was worth seventy? Though she might be a decoy to raise the bids.
So I came up five.
“Will anyone offer a hundred? Ninety? Give me ninety for this rare old—I am offered ninety! Will someone make it a hundred?”
I rather fancied that my ninety-five would land it.
“Ninety-five…once…ninety-five…twice…”
The porter was already thrusting another piece into the auctioneer’s weary fingers.
But before the hammer could drop—
“El hamdu li-lláh!” gasped someone at my right. “One hundred!”
A lean foreigner with a nose like the beak of a bird of prey took the seat next to me; a Turk, perhaps, or a Kurd whom civilization had not robbed of his alert, predatory air and desert gauntness.
“And ten!” I snapped back.
“One-fifty,” enunciated the newcomer.
Hell’s hinges! Who was that fool? And who ever heard of an Oriental, unless he were a dealer, caring a happy hoot about the threadbare, worn fragment of an antique ring.
“And seventy-five!”
That ought to stop him. But it didn’t. Not for a moment.
“Two hundred,” he pronounced.
And when I raised him twenty-five, he did as much for me, and without batting an eyelash. I prayed that some angel would slip me the handle of a meat-ax, and then offered fifty more.
The auctioneer beamed and gloated and rubbed his hands, and praised heaven for connoisseurs who appreciated antiques. The porter, from force of habit, once more began to deploy the precious piece to egg on the bidders, but, catching my eye, he desisted; though it could have done no harm, for that relentless heathen at my right was out for that rug. That “El hamdu li-lláh!” was the incredulous gasp of one who has stumbled around a corner and met fate face to face; it would be my roll against his.
“Three-fifty!” he announced, scarcely giving the overjoyed auctioneer a chance to acknowledge my last bid.
“Five hundred!” was my last despairing effort.
And “five-fifty” came like the crack of doom.
The stranger rose from his seat, peeled a wad of bills from a roll that would have choked a rhinoceros, and claimed his prize. Have it delivered? Absolutely not! And when I saw the look in his eye, and the gesture with which he draped that scrap over his arm, I knew that all the wealth of the Indies could not separate him from one thread of that ancient relic.
I climbed to my feet and strode down the aisle, talking to myself in non-apostolic tongues. But as I reached the paving, my meditations were interrupted. “Allow me to thank you, effendi.”
It was the foreigner, still caressing the nap of the precious fragment he had draped over his arm.
“I owe you a great deal for having discovered this piece. Though I was almost too late.”
I couldn’t resist that courtly manner, that cordial good-fellowship. The bird of prey had laid aside his predatory manner and seemed really overjoyed about something; happiness, exaltation were mingled with his triumph.
“Don’t thank me; thank my slim bank roll,” I laughed, and swallowed the remnants of my disappointment.
“I have been hunting that piece for years,” continued the stranger. “In Stamboul, Sultanabad, Tabriz… New York… London…wherever rugs are sold. And now I, or rather you, have found it. I regret your disappointment. But I had to have that rug,” he concluded, speaking his last phrase in the tone of a bigoted Moslem announcing his belief in the unity of Allah.
“So I noted,” was my reply; though it wasn’t as ill-natured as it may sound.
“If you can spare the time, I shall tell you the story. And show you the other half of the rug. You knew, of course, that there was another half.”
This was becoming interesting.
“I suspected as much; though who, and where—”
“I am Ilderim Shirkuh bin Ayyub,” announced the stranger, and bowed in response to my acknowledgment of the introduction.
Ilderim Shirkuh bin Ayyub. Very impressive. But what of it?—though there was something familiar about that resonant handle.
He led the way to a car parked at the curbing.
* * * *
During our drive north, bin Ayyub maintained a reflective silence that gave me a bit of time for my own thoughts. And as the long, aristocratic car purred its way toward the Gold Coast, I began to sense that I had indeed fallen into something. True, I had lost the prize I had sought to capture; but had I made the grade, I’d probably have remained in ignorance of its entire significance.
A few blocks past the Edgewater Beach Hotel we drew up before an ancient, bulky mansion set back of an acre of lawn; a great house, its dignity still overshadowing its approaching decrepitude; an outlaw, a rebel that still withstood the encroachment of apartments and apartment hotels.
A negro, arrayed in a striped kuftán and wearing a massive, spirally twisted turban, ushered us into a dimly lit salon which, though almost bare of furniture, was magnificently carpeted and tapestried with ancient, lustrous Persian rugs. Clusters of arms and
armor placed at intervals along the walls gleamed icily in the dull light of several great, brazen floor-lamps. It seemed almost sacrilege to tread on that magnificent palace carpet whose exquisite loveliness, framed by a border of hardwood floor, reminded me of a diamond set off by its background of onyx.
Bin Ayyub finally broke the silence he had maintained; for as we entered, he had with a gesture invited me to be seated, he himself remaining on his feet, preoccupied, regarding the precious fragment he had captured, looking at it as though all the splendor about him was cheap and tawdry in comparison to that threadbare, eroded scrap he held in his hands.
“Unintentionally—and involuntarily also—you have done me a great service,” he at last began, as he seated himself. “As I told you, I am Ilderim Shirkuh bin Ayyub.”
Again he paused, as if to let that impressive title sink home. And as I saw him against that background of lustrous rugs and damascened scimitars and armor, I wondered whether I had been wrong in having omitted a salaam.
Bin Ayyub turned to the negro and—I can in no other way describe his manner—published an order. Then, to me, “You have heard of Saiah ad Din Yusuf bin Ayyub? In your language, Saladin?”
“Certainly. Who has not?”
“I am descended in direct line from Saladin; that fragment is part of the throne-rug of my ancestor, the nephew of Shirkuh of Tekrit, and sultan of Syria and Egypt. Now do you begin to see why I value that scrap?”
“Do you mean to say that that rug covered the throne of Saladin?”
“Exactly. And I shall prove it.”
Even as bin Ayyub spoke, the African returned, carrying a small chest of dark wood, elaborately carved, and bound in bands of discolored metal, bluish black, like age-old silver.
“Look how the pieces match!” exulted bin Ayyub, as he took from the chest that which I saw at a glance was the other part of the relic I had discovered. The pieces did indeed match perfectly; though the last-acquired fragment was somewhat the more worn and eroded by the rough use of those who had possessed it, ignorant of its worth.
“Read, effendi! Surely you can read, else you would never have bid this afternoon.”
But I insisted that bin Ayyub read and translate into English. I felt rather foolish about strutting my halting Arabic before this polished Oriental whose very English was better than my own.
In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate!
To my Lord Saiah ad Din Yusuf bin Ayyub, the Sun of Heaven, thus hath spoken Abimilki, the groom of thy horse:
I am the dust under the sandals of my Lord the King; seven and seven times at the feet of my Lord I fall;
I have bowed me down seven times with breast and back;
and all that the King said to me, well, well do I hear!
Abimilki, a servant of the King am I, and the dust of thy two feet!
And here it was, threadbare and eroded by the passing of eight centuries, the throne-rug of Saladin, that great prince who elevated himself from the castle of Tekrit, in Kurdistan, to the throne of Syria and Egypt, and reigned as Defender of the Faith and Sword of Islam…
Had the auctioneer’s hammer fallen just an instant earlier—
“Allahu akbar!” ejaculated bin Ayyub, sensing my thoughts. “To think of how close a race it was! A second later, and I might now be bargaining with you for your prize, offering you all my possessions for that one fragment of carpet. And you would have refused… I would go barefooted through the tall flames of Gehennem for what I took from you an hour ago.” Then, to the negro: “Saoud! Prepare some coffee!
“I wonder,” he resumed, “if you have any truly rare rugs in your collection? Like that Isphahan, for example?”
Bin Ayyub plucked from the wall what even in that dim light I recognized as an ancient Isphahan: that deep wine-red and solemn green, that classically perfect rendition of the Shah Abbas border and field were unmistakable. It was indeed an old Isphahan, that final, supreme prize of the collector; that rarest and most costly of all rugs.
I admitted that I had not attained, and probably never should attain, to such a fabulously scarce piece of weaving.
“You are wrong, quite wrong. For since I need that wall space for Saladin’s throne-rag, I shall give you that Isphahan with my thanks and apologies—”
“Apologies?”
“Yes. For what I am giving you is a worthless rag compared with what I took from you this afternoon.”
Such generosity is dizzying. That small, perfect Isphahan would be worth several thousand dollars even had it been ragged as a last year’s bird’s nest. I was stumped, stopped dead.
Saoud, entering with coffee, interrupted my thanks. After having served the steaming, night-black, deathly bitter beverage, the negro took his post at the farther end of the salon, in front of a pair of heavy curtains that I fancied must conceal an alcove.
“In El-Kahireh it is the custom to perfume one’s coffee with a tiny bit of ambergris,” remarked bin Ayyub. “But I have devised a more subtle combination.” In response to the master’s nod, Saoud parted the silver-embroidered curtains and caught them on the hilts of the scimitars that hung at each side of the alcove. A great jar, fully as tall as the negro, and gracefully curved as a Grecian amphora, glowed in the level, sunset rays like a monstrous, rosy-amber bead.
He lifted the cover of the jar: and from it rolled a wave of overwhelming sweetness, an unearthly fragrance so curiously blended that I could not pick the dominant odor. Jasmine, or the rose of Naishapur, or all the mingled spices of Cebu and Saigon…with undertones of sandalwood and patchouli… A dizzying madness, a surge of intoxicating warmth and richness poured resistlessly from the glowing, pulsating, almost transparent depths of that great urn.
I wondered how Saoud could endure it at such close range. And then, drinking fully of the potent wave that swept past me, I lost all physical sensation save that of floating in a sea of torrid, confusing sweetness. And then the African replaced the cover of the jar. I fancied that he reeled ever so slightly as he withdrew from that throbbing luminous fountain of unbelievable fragrance, and wondered that he did not collapse.
Bin Ayyub had apparently forgotten my presence. He sipped his coffee, and with half-closed eyes stared into the depths of the urn. The unfathomable, perfect peace which Moslems wish each other with their “Es-Salaam Aleika” had descended upon him: keyf, the placid enjoyment of wakefulness that is half sleep.
The silence, the utter repose was contagious. I found myself gazing, eyes half out of focus, at the throne-rug…
And then I sensed that eyes were staring at me from some place of concealment. I turned and caught a glimpse of a dainty armful, shapely and elegantly contoured: a girl with smoldering, Saracenic eyes, pools of dusky enchantment. Just for an instant I held her level, unabashed gaze which lingered long enough to let me fully sense her imperious calm and composure. It was just a glimpse, barely enough to let me recognize the transparent, olive complexion and faintly aquiline features of a Transcaucasian, a Gurjestani, the most flawlessly lovely of all Oriental women. And then the portieres closed on the vision.
What a mad afternoon! The throne-rug of Saladin…and then the descendant of that great prince…and that girl, with her smoldering, kohl-darkened eyes…the familiar spirit of the urn whose Byzantine curves imprisoned that glowing, rosy-amber sea of sweetness…wild thought!…but she was small and dainty enough to have emerged from that great jar, and then vanished back into its shimmering, pulsating depths…
“The contents of that jar,” began bin Ayyub, emerging from the silence, “would make a rich perfume of all the seas of the world. It would be folly to try to imagine the countless myriads of blossoms and herbs, spices and gums that are imprisoned in that essence. A drop, a thousand-fold diluted, and a drop of that dilution, equally diluted, would be more potent than the strongest scents known to your Feringhi perfumers.”
“It seems you took a fearful risk in shipping such a fragile and precious article into this country,” I suggested.
“It was risky. Still, I would rather have had it shattered en route than fall into the hands of the spoilers who looted my house in Stamboul. But as luck would have it, there was a babbler among my enemies, so that I had warning. I packed my treasures, and smuggled them out, one at a time. And the night before the bowstring was to grace my throat, my family and I left in disguise.”
Bin Ayyub paused to reflect a moment, wondering, perhaps, whether to carry on or change the subject. And then the darkness of his deep-set eyes flared fiercely.
“Do you see that cord?” He indicated a fine strand of hard-braided silk which hung from the peg that supported the scimitar at the right of the alcove containing the Byzantine urn. “My enemy was so careless as to walk by moonlight the evening before a doom was to settle on my house. And as a souvenir of the promenade, I brought with me that fine, stout cord which, for all he cared, I might have left there to chafe his throat,” concluded bin Ayyub, as he stroked his black mustache.
And then he showed me how the bowstring is employed; that flickering, swift gesture of his long, lean hands was gruesomely convincing. Bin Ayyub was indeed a versatile man.
“Swift and probably painless?” I volunteered.
“Yes. But if I had my choice of deaths,” mused bin Ayyub, “I would elect to be drowned in a pool of that perfume, with my breath so rich with its fragrance that my senses would entirely forsake me…”
A tinkle of bracelets interrupted his musings. The portieres parted, and the lady from Gurjestan reappeared. In that strange atmosphere, it never occurred to me to commit the faux pas of rising as she entered. This was doubtless bin Ayyub’s “family”; and, though the United States were on the street, they had not quite penetrated to this dim salon, so that I felt it would be tactful not to seem to take any notice of the girl. Upon more intimate acquaintance with bin Ayyub, I might be presented to her; but not at present.
The 11th Golden Age of Weird Fiction Page 2
