The Purple Cloud
Page 46
cut, with henna. Thereremained her head, but with this I would have nothing to do, onlypointing to the tarboosh which I had brought, to a square kerchief, tosome corals, and to the fresco of a woman on the wall, which, if shechose, she might copy. Lastly, I pierced her ears with the silverneedles which they used here: and after two hours of it left her.
About an hour afterwards I saw her in the arcade round the court, and,to my great surprise, she had a perfect plait down her back, and overher head and brows a green-silk feredjeh, or hood, precisely as in thepicture.
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Here is a question, the answer to which would be interesting to me:Whether or not for twenty years--or say rather twenty centuries, twentyeternal aeons--I have been stark mad, a raving maniac; and whether ornot I am now suddenly sane, sitting here writing in my right mind, mywhole mood and tone changed, or rapidly changing? And whether suchchange can be due to the presence of only one other being in the worldwith me?
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This singular being! Where she has lived--and how--is a problem to whichnot the faintest solution is conceivable. She had, I say, never seenclothes: for when I began to dress her, her perplexity was unbounded;also, during her twenty years, she has never seen almonds, figs, nuts,liqueurs, chocolate, conserves, vegetables, sugar, oil, honey,sweetmeats, orange-sherbet, mastic, salt, raki, tobacco, and many suchthings: for she showed perplexity at all these, hesitation to eat them:but she has known and tasted _white wine_: I could see that. Here, then,is a mystery.
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I have not gone to Imbros, but remained here some days longer observingher.
I have allowed her to sit in a corner at meal-time, not far from where Ieat, and I have given her food.
She is wonderfully clever! I continually find that, after an incrediblyshort time, she has most completely adapted herself to this or that.Already she wears her outfit as coquettishly as though born to clothes.Without at all seeming observant--for, on the contrary, she gives animpression of great flightiness--she watches me, I am convinced, withpretty exact observation. She knows precisely when I am speakingroughly, bidding her go, bidding her come, tired of her, tolerant ofher, scorning her, cursing her. If I wish her to the devil, she quicklydivines it by my face, and will disappear. Yesterday I noticedsomething queer about her, and soon discovered that she had beenstaining her lids with black kohol, like the _hanums_, so that, havingfound a box, she must have guessed its use from the pictures.Wonderfully clever!--imitative as a mirror. Two mornings ago I found anold mother-of-pearl kittur, and sitting under the arcade, touched thestrings, playing a simple air; I could just see her behind one of thearch-pillars on the opposite side, and she was listening with apparenteagerness, and, I fancied, panting. Well, returning from a walk beyondthe Phanar walls in the afternoon, I heard the same air coming out fromthe house, for she was repeating it pretty faultlessly by ear.
Also, during the forenoon of the previous day, I came upon her--forfootsteps make no sound in this house--in the pacha's visitors'-hall:and what was she doing?--copying the poses of three dancing-girlsfrescoed there! So that she would seem to have a character as light as abutterfly's, and is afraid of nothing.
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Now I know.
I had observed that at the beginning of every meal she seemed to havesomething on her mind, going toward the door, hesitating as if to seewhether I would follow, and then returning. At length yesterday, aftersitting to eat, she jumped up, and to my infinite surprise, said herfirst word: said it with a most quaint, experimental effort of thetongue, as a fledgling trying the air: the word '_Come_.'
That morning, meeting her in the court, I had told her to repeat somewords after me: but she had made no attempt, as if shy to break the longsilence of her life; and now I felt some sort of foolish pleasure inhearing her utter that word, often no doubt heard from me: and afterhurriedly eating, I went with her, saying to myself: 'She must be aboutto shew me the food to which she is accustomed: and perhaps that willsolve her origin.'
And so it has proved. I have now discovered that to the moment when shesaw me, she had tasted only her mother's milk, dates, and that whitewine of Ismidt which the Koran permits.
As it was getting dark, I lit and took with me the big red-silk lantern,and we set out, she leading, and walking confoundedly fast, slackeningwhen I swore at her, and getting fast again: and she walks with acertain levity, flightiness, and liberated _furore_, very hard todescribe, as though space were a luxury to be revelled in. By whatinstinctive cleverness, or native vigour of memory, she found her way Icannot tell, but she led me such a walk that night, miles, miles, till Ibecame furious, darkness having soon fallen with only a faint moonobscured by cloud, and a drizzle which haunted the air, she withoutlight climbing and picking her thinly-slippered steps over mounds of_debris_ and loosely-strewn masonry with unfailing agility, Ioccasionally splashing a foot with horror into one of those little pondswhich always marked the Stamboul streets. When I was nearer her, I wouldsee her peer across and upward toward Pera, as if that were a rememberedland-mark, and would note the perpetual aspen oscillations of the longcoral drops in her ears, and the nimble ply of her limbs, wondering witha groan if Pera was our goal.
Our goal was even beyond Pera. When we came to the Golden Horn, shepointed to my caique which lay at the Old Seraglio steps, and over thewater we went, she lying quite at ease now, with her face at the levelof the water in the centre of the crescent-shape, as familiarly as a_hanum_ of old engaged in some escapade through the crowded Babel ofGalata and that north side of the Horn.
Through Galata we passed, I already cursing the journey: and, followingthe line of the coast and the great steep thoroughfare of Pera, we cameat last, almost in the country, to a great wall, and the entrance to animmense terraced garden, whose limits were invisible, many of the treesand avenues being still intact.
I knew it at once: I had lain a special fuse-train in the great palaceat the top of the terraces: it was the royal palace, Yildiz.
Up and up we went through the grounds, a few unburned old bodies in ragsof uniform still discernible here and there as the lantern swung pastthem, a musician in sky-blue, a fantassin and officer-of-the-guard inscarlet, forming a cross, with domestics of the palace inred-and-orange.
The palace itself was quite in ruins, together with all its surroundingbarracks, mosque, and seraglio, and, as we reached the top of thegrounds, presented a picture very like those which I have seen of theruins of Persepolis, only that here the columns, both standing andfallen, were innumerable, and all more or less blackened; and throughdoorless doors we passed, down immensely-wide short flights of steps,and up them, and over strewed courtyards, by tottering fragments ofarcades, all roofless, and tracts of charcoal between interruptedavenues of pillars, I following, expectant, and she very eager now.Finally, down a flight of twelve or fourteen rather steep and narrowsteps, very dislocated, we went to a level which, I thought, must be thefloor of the palace vaults: for at the bottom of the steps we stood on alarge plain floor of plaster, which bore the marks of the flames; andover this the girl ran a few steps, pointed with excited recognition toa hole in it, ran further, and disappeared down the hole.
When I followed, and lowered the lantern a little, I saw that the dropdown was about eight feet, made less than six feet by a heap ofstone-rubbish below, the falling of which had caused the hole: and itwas by standing on this rubbish-heap, I knew at once, that she must havebeen enabled to climb out into the world.
I dropped down, and found myself in a low flat-roofed cellar, with afloor of black earth, very fusty and damp, but so very vast in extentthat even in the day-time, I suppose, I could not have discerned itsboundaries; I fancy, indeed, that it extends beneath the whole palaceand its environs--an enormous stretch of space: with the lantern I couldonly see a very limited portion of its area. She still led me eagerlyon, and I presently came upon a wh
ole region of flat boxes, each abouttwo feet square, and nine inches high, made of very thin laths, packedto the roof; and about a-hundred-and-fifty feet from these I saw, whereshe pointed, another region of bottles, fat-bellied bottles in chemisesof wicker-work, stretching away into gloom and total darkness. Theboxes, of which a great number lay broken open, as they can be by merelypulling with the fingers at a pliant crack, contain dates; and thebottles, of which many thousands lay empty, contain, I saw, oldIsmidtwine. Some fifty or sixty casks, covered with mildew, some oldpieces of furniture, and a great cube of rotting, curling parchments,showed that this cellar had been more or less loosely used for theoccasional storage of superfluous stores and knick-knacks.
It was also more or less loosely used as a domestic prison. For in thelane between the region of boxes and the region of bottles, near theformer, there lay on the ground the skeleton of a woman, the details ofwhose costume were still appreciable, with thin brass gyves on herwrists: and when I had examined