Omar Khayyam - a life

by Harold Lamb

  And Omar sensed the magic that authority can work.

  "The praise to Allah the Compassionate!" he cried, bending his forehead to the carpet. When Nizam said that he had leave to go, he sprang up, forgetting the silver and then hurrying back for it at a whisper from Tutush, who reminded him to salaam again at the door.

  As soon as they were alone, Tutush bent toward Nizam. "O Sun of Benevolence, said I not that this youth is the proper instrument, already shaped to thy hand? Where in all Nisapur would we have found such another? Is he not made for the part—with his strange wisdom, his stranger habit of speaking the truth, his naive ignorance of all but his star gazing—and that incredible prophecy to bear witness to him? My soul, he even swore to Master Ali that the King's astrologer must determine the truth."

  Nizam did not smile. "I wish I knew his secret.... Yet he hides nothing."

  "Nothing!" echoed the chief of Nizam's spies with satisfaction. "Every other word from his lips is Proof, and every other word is Truth. My soul!" he flicked the rosary with abandon. "I shall call him Hujjrat 'l haqq—Proof of the Truth. Clothe him in a master's robe, teach him to be a trifle mysterious, and above all silent, then present him to Malikshah, saying 'Here is Omar the Tentmaker, who prophesied at Malasgird—I have found him for the Majesty of Allah upon earth.' My sinful soul, it fits like a dancing girl's slipper."

  "At the end," mused Nizam, "he bore himself like an unbridled colt, yet once I had the feeling that he would have defied us."

  "La—la! The stripling's in love—when he has not the girl in his arms, he is thinking of her in his arms——"

  He stopped abruptly, for Nizam's eyes had grown cold, and Nizam was a fanatic of orthodox Islam.

  "Perhaps," observed the Minister, "his secret may be a gift of the Invisible. Such men know, without knowing how knowledge comes to them."

  'True—true. 'With Allah are the keys of the unseen.'"

  "I cannot reason otherwise than that his prophecy was a miracle."

  'True—most true." Tutush, who did not believe in miracles, had no intention of confessing as much to his distinguished patron. But he fell to wondering what might come to pass if Omar—if Proof of the Truth—should learn to prophesy again, and the prophecy should come true. "It can't be done," he assured himself. "Omar himself confessed that it can't be done. But now old Nizam hath half convinced himself that it can be. Ma'shallah m'shallah —my head was never made for these purely intellectual problems."

  He determined to send the pockmarked beggar elsewhere and to select a discreet man and wife, confidential spies, to be the servants of Omar's tower.

  By the fountain in the Street of the Booksellers, Omar was whispering eagerly into Yasmi's small ear, while the girl made pretense of filling a water jar.

  "Oh, heart of my heart, at last and at last I have a place to shelter thee and a door of which I alone shall have the key. I shall have grapes soaked in wine for thy lips that are more fragrant than wine, and sweet cakes for thy hunger, and—oh, glory to the Compassionate—thyself beside me."

  "But," she whispered, "it is a ruin."

  "And the bread is only a little bread. But with thou beside me in this ruin I shall have more joy than the Sultan in his castle there."

  The tower that became the House of the Stars, above the burial place on the river.

  Tutush had kept his promise, as far as the tower itself was concerned. By nightfall the next day he had handed Omar the key of his new observatory. And for several days thereafter woodworkers and brickmakers had labored to repair the tower and its outer wall—making bricks of clay down by the river's edge and letting the sun dry them after they were placed.

  It pleased Omar, who wished to have no one else in the tower when Yasmi visited it for the first time. He ordered the workmen to whitewash the walls of the tower's ground floor, and there he spread a large woven ground cloth. This was to be the reception chamber of his observatory.

  On the second floor he put the finest of the rugs, and the lacquered Chinese screen with a dragon in raised gilt coiling over it. Here stood his sleeping quilt and the chests for his belongings, of carved sandalwood.

  The third floor he left bare except for the low work tables and the pigeonhole cabinet for manuscripts. This would be the place of labor when the instruments came. Tutush had brought many books, the gift of Nizam al Mulk; but he explained that the instruments Omar desired would have to be sought in Baghdad.

  Omar, however, had no inclination to work. He spent hours in the Nisapur bazaar buying things with his new silver coins. He bought rolls of white floss silk for a dress—for Yasmi would wear white within doors when she was at last his wife—and porcelain jars of sugared fruits; he bought incense powder to burn, and a bronze griffin to burn it in; he bought an armlet of thin silver set with turquoise, the color of the clear sky.

  "Ai!" cried Yasmi when the gifts were laid before her, "this is surely magic."

  "Then thou art the sorceress, O Disturber of Hearts."

  Yasmi clapped her hands softly, and made him clasp the armlet above her elbow. She examined the great carpet with breathless interest—for such things were new in the Land of the Sun—and she studied the gilt dragon even while Omar was brushing the soft hair back from her throat where the pulse leaped under his fingers. Such happiness was almost pain to Yasmi.

  "There are many books in the chamber above," she observed. "Dost thou read them, all of them, when I am not here?"

  She was afraid every time she left Omar—afraid of the silence and the time that would pass until she could sit beside him again. She wanted to know all that he did in the interval.

  "Nay," he responded carelessly, "yet there is one little book of verses by a man of the desert. I have read that."

  "Verses!" Yasmi knew the rhymed tales that the poets sang about ancient kings and horses and battles. "Has it any love in it?"

  "Not so much as I have in the smallest corner of my heart." And he bent back her head until she was forced to look into his eyes, which always disturbed her after their meeting.

  "Ai," she whispered, "I am ashamed."

  "Thou art more lovely than Shirin whom the djinn-maidens adorned."

  "Was that in the book?"

  "Wallahi, ay, in the book of my heart."

  "And what is in mine?" She smiled expectantly.

  "In thine? Oh, cruelty and disdain that recks little of Omar's suffering!"

  It seemed to Yasmi that her lover was gifted with unearthly powers. Surely he knew the wisdom of ancient men, and he could read the verses that poets sang—he could utter words more musical than any verses. Now he had made the ruined tower into a paradise for her and for her alone. But all that mattered little, so long as Omar was Omar, and loved her. She sighed with the sheer delight of it, and threw herself back on the cushions, her arms widespread, her dark eyes half closed seeking and holding his. "Say, am I cruel?" The whisper parted her lips. "Say, am I disdainful?"

  And he threw himself down upon her, seizing her in the intoxication that was near to faintness.

  For the blood in Omar was Arab blood, kindled through centuries of life in the dry, heat-ridden air of the wastes wherein the struggle against the barren land and the wolf-like enemies had created men sensitive to every mood and still implacable as steel. His passion for Yasmi gripped him with terrifying intensity.

  It seemed to her very important that the beloved tower should have a name. After all, the people of Nisapur said that ghosts foregathered there from the graves below. With her lover, Yasmi cared not a snap of her little fingers for wandering ghosts; but an old superstition made her want to give the tower a name. Yet when Omar suggested some, she laughed, because she had learned when he was jesting.

  "Nay, it is not the Abode of Blessedness, nor the Chamber of the Houri. I tell thee, it is not. It is—it is——"

  "The Visitation of the Angel."

  "Certainly not." Yasmi believed implicitly that a good angel had alighted there to bestow love upon them, y
et she shrank from speaking of that. "It is the House of the Stars. Surely, my heart's heart, thou canst read the stars and tell other men what their fate is to be?"

  Omar glanced at her curiously. "I? Who says that?"

  "Oh, it is said in the street, in the bath—that thou didst prophesy the throne for our lord Malikshah. Thou knowest."

  Yasmi felt proud that her lover should be able to read the fate even of kings. Moreover, that must be his work here in the tower. Yasmi considered that astronomy began and ended with casting horoscopes.

  "I know," Omar acknowledged reluctantly.

  "Then it is true. And soon—perhaps by the end of the next moon—thou wilt have here the tools to point at the stars, and more silver, and then thou mayest come to my father with a name that is known and the price in thy hand to pay for me, and we can stand before the witnesses."

  Omar regretted that he had spent all his money upon the things for Yasmi. But at that time he had not thought of anything else.

  "Soon," he nodded. "But how can I have a price that is worthy——"

  "Foolish," she chided him. "If thou art the astronomer of the great lord Nizam al Mulk, the people of my house will not bargain much about payment. I wish—I wish it were done, and I could dwell behind the curtain of thy house without ever going forth again." Her eyes became fixed. "I could not live unless that happens."

  "Then stay," he cried.

  "How can I?" Her lip quivered. "They say that a woman who is not wed is stolen, and that is ill. Perhaps I have been too happy, and now I shall pray in the mosque for the mercy of Allah because I had thought for nothing but this joy."

  Omar's thoughts, however, did not incline him toward the mosque. Sunrise was too fair upon the green plain, sloping down to the dark cypresses of the cemetery, and the very cushions of his chamber brought to him the scent of Yasmi's body. When she did not appear the next day, he drowsed restlessly through his books, his attention caught by the refrain of the book of verses—solitary quatrains scattered among the pages like flowers in the grass. On a blank leaf he traced words out of his own mind.

  When Spring's bright magic on the meadow lies,

  With wine beside me I sit, to devise

  A love song to my houri. Call me a dog

  If I can spare a thought to Paradise.

  He thought this would please Yasmi, to have a rubai written for herself alone. How contentedly she would laugh, and how her eyes would sparkle as she fixed it in her memory to repeat to herself afterward. Still, he knew it was a poor enough rubai; he had only put down in words what was in his head, instead of making beautiful phrases about love.

  Yasmi did not come the next day, nor the next.

  Omar had waited for long hours by the fountain under the plane tree. He had sat within the gate of the mosque looking at every veiled figure of a woman that came and went. And he had not seen Yasmi.

  In the afternoons he hurried back to his tower, certain that she must be there waiting for him, only to find the rooms empty. Then he assured himself that she must be ill—perhaps too ill to send a message. He regretted now that he had not accepted the servants Tutush had offered him—he did not know one woman to send to the house of the bookseller to secure tidings of Yasmi and perhaps a message for him.

  He was passing through the bazaar on his way to the mosque when he encountered a familiar pockmarked face, and remembered the beggar who had haunted the Street of the Booksellers. But this time the beggar turned away quickly as if to escape notice.

  "Eh, say." Omar caught his shoulder. "Hast thou seen—the one who talked with me by the fountain?"

  The red-rimmed eyes blinked at him shrewdly. "That one. By my head, young master, I have not seen her, because she is gone."

  Omar's lips moved. "Gone?"

  The beggar, who could read faces, saw his chance for even greater profit than he had made already out of his watching. "Hss!" he whispered, drawing at Omar's sleeve. "I have heard—but I am weak with hunger, and in need."

  Mechanically Omar felt in his girdle and discovered that he had not a single coin left. Impatiently he motioned the beggar to follow, while he sought out the booth of a moneylender he had known in his student days. It was a silent Bokharan who squatted behind small piles of coins—Greek byzants, Baghdad dirhems, and copper pieces of every shape, some even square or pierced with holes and strung together.

  "Give me a gold dinar, Nasir Beg," Omar demanded, "until the next moon."

  The moneylender felt in a heavy wallet. "It will be a silver dirhem for each moon," he began.

  "Be quick!" Omar caught the gold piece and handed it to the beggar, drawing him out of the crowd. "What is it thou knowest? The truth—tell only the truth."

  "May the head fall from my shoulders if I lie! Three—four days ago they beat that one thou knowest for not keeping to the women's quarters. I heard the mothers-of-other-girls say it at the fountain. The brother of the father of that one is now master of the house. Eh, eh! One stone is enough for a house full of glass. Very angry was the uncle, and then, on the second day, by Allah's will, came a second offer for her from the cloth-merchant Abu'l Zaid. The uncle did not stop to boil tea, not he."

  Omar said nothing, but his eyes were bleak.

  "Wallahi" said the beggar, "they sent for Abu'l Zaid, they sent for the kadi and witnesses. My eyes saw them all arrive, with friends to eat the saffron rice and sweet sherbet of the wedding. They gave me little enough."

  "And she—what of her?"

  The beggar considered. "I heard a carpet spreader say to another that she had been seen weeping the night before, led back to the house by two men. Perhaps she ran away, perhaps she was afraid—young girls are wayward and ignorant. But Abu'l Zaid paid a good price, having heard of her beauty. He is a merchant with many tents in his kafila——"

  The beggar stared, because Omar had turned away and was pushing through the crowd like a man who cannot see. The pockmarked one felt of the gold dinar, and rang it anxiously against a stone. It was good, it chimed true and clear. With a sigh he stowed it away beside the pieces of silver that he had got three days before from Yasmi's uncle, for whispering to him that Yasmi was visiting a strange youth in the tower by the cemetery.

  At that time it had seemed to the beggar that he could make more profit from the uncle than from either Omar or Abu'l Zaid. Of course after that the uncle had kept Yasmi under close guard, while he sent hastily to the cloth-merchant.

  But now Omar had enriched him, miraculously, with a gold coin. The beggar edged over to the moneylender's stall.

  "Eh," he ventured, "what imp of folly led thee to lend to that masterless student who dawdles about the streets?"

  The Bokharan thrust a stalwart arm before his piled-up money, and fingered the knife at his girdle. "Stand back, father of thieves. There is no chaff here for thy beak to pluck. Knowest not that Nizam al Mulk hath bestowed his favor upon this same student?"

  "On the Tentmaker? Ai!" The beggar moaned, as if flesh and blood had been plucked from him. If he had known, he could have gleaned twice the reward from Omar himself by merely threatening to tell his secret. If he had only known!

  That day Omar was half blind and half deaf to everything except the tumult within him. Somehow he made his way to the street and the fountain, and called for Yasmi's uncle. A strange man came, who cried out upon him angrily, and Yasmi's aged father appeared pale and uncertain among the books of the well-known shop.

  "Art mad," demanded the uncle, "to speak of what is behind the veil? Are the women of this house cattle that thou shouldst name them?"

  "Let him beware of himself," a woman's voice railed from behind a screen, "this thief who hath no shame! By Allah, when did ever a thief dare come back to the scene of his theft, making outcry? Let him be beaten upon the soles of his feet! Let him be bound and beaten! O vulture! O son of a burnt father!"

  But the men of the house were too prudent to lay hand upon the Tentmaker in his mood of madness. So the women railed unappeased, u
ntil Omar turned and ran from the lashing of their voices.... It was hours later, when he had found Tutush sitting looking at turquoises in the corner of a gem shop, that he became a little quieter. He told his story in broken sentences and the master of the spies listened intently while pretending to examine the stones in his hand.

  While he listened, Tutush pondered. If this girl had been a common singer or slave, he would have exerted himself to find her and restore her to Omar.

  But she had entered the harem of a Moslem; she was the property of her husband, and Tutush knew that Nizam would be reluctant to interfere in a matter behind the curtain—the Moslem law that isolated women behind the curtain was not to be broken openly. Besides, Yasmi had caught Omar in the net of infatuation, and Tutush did not care to have his protegé under one woman's influence. Several women were safe, even desirable as sources of information and persuasion, but one—especially a young thing as obsessed with love as he suspected Yasmi to be—might be dangerous. So, having made up his mind not to interfere, he assumed a horrified and sympathetic manner.

  "Alas, that this should have happened. Had you come to me earlier—but a marriage before witnesses is a steel chain. Who can sever it? Let us take thought upon it, and I will see——"

  "But you can find her. Surely you can find her. In the next moon I could have asked for her. She—she was afraid."

  Tutush nodded and shook his head and clicked his tongue and sighed. "It is incredible. Who can avert his fate?"

  "Find out where she is. If I could know!"

  "Certainly, at once. Tonight I shall send men to the serais of the bazaar. Tomorrow they will tell you where she is to be found. Meanwhile stay with me."

  When Tutush's agents appeared the next day they assured Omar that the cloth-merchant Abu'l Zaid of Meshed was not with his kafila. The man was no longer in Nisapur. With his new wife and a few servants he had left the city, but whether to the east or west or north or south they could not discover. There were many roads and ten thousand merchants. Soon, no doubt, Abu'l Zaid would reappear. Meanwhile they would watch every gate.