The Purple Cloud

by M. P. Shiel

great steps allold Stamboul, and watch the moon for hours and hours, so passionatelybright she soared through clear and cloud, till I would be smitten withdoubt of my own identity, for whether I were she, or the earth, ormyself, or some other thing or man, I did not know, all being so silentalike, and all, except myself, so vast, the Seraskierat, and theSuleimanieh, and Stamboul, and the Marmora Sea, and the earth, andthose argent fields of the moon, all large alike compared with me, andmeasure and space were lost, and I with them.

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  These proud Turks died stolidly, many of them. In streets ofKassim-pacha, in crowded Taxim on the heights of Pera, and under thelong Moorish arcades of Sultan-Selim, I have seen the open-air barber'srazor with his bones, and with him the half-shaved skull of thefaithful, and the long two-hours' narghile with traces of burnt tembakiand haschish still in the bowl. Ashes now are they all, and dry yellowbone; but in the houses of Phanar and noisy old Galata, and in the Jewquarter of Pri-pacha, the black shoe and head-dress of the Greek isstill distinguishable from the Hebrew blue. It was a mixed ritual ofcolours here in boot and hat: yellow for Mussulman, red boots, blackcalpac for Armenian, for the Effendi a white turban, for the Greek ablack. The Tartar skull shines from under a high taper calpac, theNizain-djid's from a melon-shaped head-piece; the Imam's and Dervish'sfrom a grey conical felt; and there is here and there a Frank inEuropean rags. I have seen the towering turban of the Bashi-bazouk, andhis long sword, and some softas in the domes on the great wall ofStamboul, and the beggar, and the street-merchant with large tray ofwater-melons, sweetmeats, raisins, sherbet, and the bear-shewer, and theBarbary organ, and the night-watchman who evermore cried 'Fire!' withhis long lantern, two pistols, dirk, and wooden javelin. Strange how allthat old life has come back to my fancy now, pretty vividly, and for thefirst time, though I have been here several times lately. I have goneout to those plains beyond the walls with their view of rather barrenmountain-peaks, the city looking nothing but minarets shooting throughblack cypress-tops, and I seemed to see the wild muezzin at some summit,crying the midday prayer: '_Mohammed Resoul Allah!_'--the wild man; andfrom that great avenue of cypresses which traverses the cemetery ofScutari, the walled city of Stamboul lay spread entire up to Phanar andEyoub in their cypress-woods before me, the whole embowered now intrees, all that complexity of ways and dark alleys with overhangingbalconies of old Byzantine houses, beneath which a rider had to stoopthe head, where old Turks would lose their way in mazes of thepicturesque; and on the shaded Bosphorus coast, to Foundoucli andbeyond, some peeping yali, snow-white palace, or old Armenian cot; andthe Seraglio by the sea, a town within a town; and southward the Sea ofMarmora, blue-and-white, and vast, and fresh as a sea just born,rejoicing at its birth and at the jovial sun, all brisk, alert, to theshadowy islands afar: and as I looked, I suddenly said aloud a wild, madthing, my God, a wild and maniac thing, a shrieking maniac thing forHell to laugh at: for something said with my tongue: '_This city is notquite dead._'

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  Three nights I slept in Stamboul itself at the palace of some sanjak-beyor emir, or rather dozed, with one slumbrous eye that would open towatch my visitors Sinbad, and Ali Baba, and old Haroun, to see how theyslumbered and dozed: for it was in the small luxurious chamber where thebey received those speechless all-night visits of the Turks, long rosyhours of perfumed romance, and drunkenness of the fancy, and visionarylanguor, sinking toward morning into the yet deeper peace of dreamlesssleep; and there, still, were the white _yatags_ for the guests to sitcross-legged on for the waking dream, and to fall upon for the finalswoon, and the copper brazier still scenting of essence-of-rose, and thecushions, rugs, hangings, the monsters on the wall, thehaschish-chibouques, narghiles, hookahs, and drugged pale cigarettes,and a secret-looking lattice beyond the door, painted with trees andbirds; and the air narcotic and grey with the pastilles which I hadburned, and the scented smokes which I had smoked; and I all drugged andmumbling, my left eye suspicious of Ali there, and Sinbad, and oldHaroun, who dozed. And when I had slept, and rose to wash in a room nearthe overhanging latticed balcony of the facade, before me to the northlay old Galata in sunshine, and that steep large street mounting toPera, once full at every night-fall of divans on which grave dervishessmoked narghiles, and there was no space for passage, for all wasdivans, lounges, almond-trees, heaven-high hum, chibouques in forests,the dervish, and the innumerable porter, the horse-hirer with his horsefrom Tophana, and arsenal-men from Kassim, and traders from Galata, andartillery-workmen from Tophana; and on the other side of the house, thesouth end, a covered bridge led across a street, which consisted mostlyof two immense blind walls, into a great tangled wilderness of flowers,which was the harem-garden, where I passed some hours; and here I mighthave remained many days, many weeks perhaps, but that, dozing onefore-day with those fancied others, it was as if there occurred a laughsomewhere, and a thing said: 'But this city is not quite dead!' wakingme from deeps of peace to startled wakefulness. And I thought to myself:'If it be not quite dead, it _will_ be soon--and with some suddenness!'And the next morning I was at the Arsenal.

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  It is long since I have so deeply enjoyed, even to the marrow. It may be'the White' who has the guardianship of my life: but assuredly it is'the Black' who reigns in my soul.

  Grandly did old Stamboul, Galata, Tophana, Kassim, right out beyond thewalls to Phanar and Eyoub, blaze and burn. The whole place, except onelittle region of Galata, was like so much tinder, and in the five hoursbetween 8 P.M. and 1 A.M. all was over. I saw the tops of those vastmasses of cemetery-cypresses round the tombs of the Osmanlis outside thewalls, and those in the cemetery of Kassim, and those round the sacredmosque of Eyoub, shrivel away instantaneously, like flimsy hair caughtby a flame; I saw the Genoese tower of Galata go heading obliquely on anupward curve, like Sir Roger de Coverley and wild rockets, and bursthigh, high, with a report; in pairs, and threes, and fours, I saw theblue cupolas of the twelve or fourteen great mosques give in andsubside, or soar and rain, and the great minarets nod the head, andtopple; and I saw the flames reach out and out across the empty breadthof the Etmeidan--three hundred yards--to the six minarets of the Mosqueof Achmet, wrapping the red Egyptian-granite obelisk in the centre; andacross the breadth of the Serai-Meidani it reached to the buildings ofthe Seraglio and the Sublime Porte; and across those vague barrenstretches that lie between the houses and the great wall; and across theseventy or eighty great arcaded bazaars, all-enwrapping, it reached; andthe spirit of fire grew upon me: for the Golden Horn itself was a tongueof fire, crowded, west of the galley-harbour, with explodingbattleships, Turkish frigates, corvettes, brigs--and east, with tens ofthousands of feluccas, caiques, gondolas and merchantmen aflame. On myleft burned all Scutari; and between six and eight in the evening I hadsent out thirty-seven vessels under low horse-powers of air, with trainsand fuses laid for 11 P.M., to light with their wandering fires the Seaof Marmora. By midnight I was encompassed in one great furnace and fierygulf, all the sea and sky inflamed, and earth a-flare. Not far from meto the left I saw the vast Tophana barracks of the Cannoniers, and theArtillery-works, after long reluctance and delay, take wing together;and three minutes later, down by the water, the barrack of theBombardiers and the Military School together, grandly, grandly; andthen, to the right, in the valley of Kassim, the Arsenal: theseoccupying the sky like smoky suns, and shedding a glaring day over manya mile of sea and land; I saw the two lines of ruddier flaring where thebarge-bridge and the raft-bridge over the Golden Horn made haste toburn; and all that vastness burned with haste, quicker and quicker--tofervour--to fury--to unanimous rabies: and when its red roaring stormedthe infinite, and the might of its glowing heart was Gravitation, Being,Sensation, and I its compliant wife--then my head nodded, and withcrooked lips I sighed as it were my last sigh, and tumbled, weak anddrunken, upon my face.

 
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  O wild Providence! Unfathomable madness of Heaven! that ever I shouldwrite what now I write! I will not write it....

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  The hissing of it! It is only a crazy dream! a tearing-out of the hairby the roots to scatter upon the raving storms of Saturn! My hand willnot write it!

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  In God's name----! During four nights after the burning I slept in ahouse--French as I saw by the books, &c., probably the Ambassador's, forit has very large gardens and a beautiful view over the sea, situated onthe rapid east declivity of Pera; it is one of the few large houseswhich, for my safety, I had left standing round the minaret whence I hadwatched, this minaret being at the top of the old Mussulman quarter onthe heights of Taxim,