Omar Khayyam - a life

by Harold Lamb

  Their eyes were distended, and at times one would wipe the sweat from his brow with a loose turban end. They were intent upon something happening behind the flames.

  A dance was going on, a sword dance that whirled about a single half-naked man standing with his arms stretched above his head. Slowly he turned upon his heels, chanting:

  "Allah illahi — allah illahi — illahi."

  From the lips of the throng echoed the chant, in cadence with the swaying bodies and the chiming of the bells.

  About the singer leaped and whirled a score of dancers, each swinging two swords in such perfect time that steel never touched steel, although the blades circled the heads of the other dancers, and seemed about to slash their bodies in twain. Sweat flew from their bare arms as the dance quickened and the gleaming steel became a shimmering arc of light.

  ". . . illahi illahi!" the crowd moaned, rocking upon its haunches.

  How long the dance had been going on Omar did not know, but it was nearing its end. Rukn ud Din was gripping his arm and breathing hard. On the other side of him a boy was sobbing and chewing his lips.

  "His hour is at hand!" screamed a voice through the monotone of the chant. "To paradise ... to paradise."

  Still the man with arms upstretched and head thrown back turned slowly among the whirling swords. And Omar became aware of something else behind the dancer. A form took shape in the leaping fires, a beast with clawlike feet, the legs of a lion, the trunk of a bull. High in the shadows reared its monstrous head of a man with a curling beard.

  Wings towered on either side the head, and although the thing was stone, the flickering light gave it a semblance of life.

  "Now," Rukn ud Din cried, "now, he goes to paradise!"

  The revolving man stood still. The swords were touching him; they caressed his flesh, and blood ran down into the white cloth of his breeches. The stains spread, and he screamed with dreadful exultation. His upraised arms drooped to his sides. Steel swept against his neck, severing his head from his shoulders.

  For an instant the body stiffened, the arms jerked, and then it collapsed to the floor.

  As it did so, the chiming ceased, the chant was stilled, and every man except Omar and Rukn ud Din flung himself forward on his face.

  "The Lord of Life and Death," a voice cried in the silence.

  Between the claws of the bearded bull stepped a tall figure in gleaming white. From wrists to chin it was wrapped, like a shrouded mummy. But the dark head was that of Hassan iba Sabah.

  Bending down, he picked up the body that lay at his feet.

  "Look, ye devoted ones," he called. "For this one hath gone to paradise."

  Men around Omar rose to their knees. They saw Hassan between the claws of the stone beast. In his arms he held the limp body. But—and a sigh went through the throng at the sight—no scar marred the skin of the man in Hassan's arms; its head hung from its shoulders, and the white linen upon its legs bore no stain of blood. Line for line, hair for hair, the limp body was that of the dancer who had been struck down by the swords.

  "Behold," the crowd murmured, "it is accomplished."

  Still holding the body, Hassan stepped back between the feet of the winged beast and disappeared among the shadows at the back of the cavern. The sword dancers, still panting, circled the flames to merge with the crowd that had begun to take notice of Omar. Boys circulated among the white-robed figures, filling bowls with wine from the jars on their shoulders. Eager hands stretched forth for the bowls.

  "By all the gods," whispered Rukn ud Din, "it is good to drink after a sight like that. Do not say anything aloud, for these swordsmen are in a mood to cut up the stone bull yonder. They do not know you are a privileged person. Ah!"

  The little man's fingers trembled as he seized a bowl and drank down the contents. Omar noticed how one of the sword dancers wiped clean his weapon with a cloth.

  "That, at least, is real blood," he said.

  The warrior's lips twitched in a snarl and he thrust the naked scimitar before the Tentmaker's eyes. "Touch! Smell!" he grinned. "And if then you doubt, you will discover if your own blood be real, or not."

  Others turned to stare at Omar, from haggard eyes. The dance or their own excitement had intoxicated them to the point where it would be a relief to do violence.

  "Y'allah, how came he among us? Who brought him?"

  Rukn ud Din took a bowl from a boy and handed it hastily to Omar. "Drink," he whispered, "and be silent. Uncaged tigers are gentler than these." To the crowd he cried, "This is a guest of the Da'is. It was a command that he should come to behold the face of our lord."

  "Who answers for him?"

  A stripling staggered to the front of the circle forming about Omar. Thrusting aside the older men, he clutched the hilt of a dagger in his girdle. His mouth hung open and his eyes were blank in the head that swayed on his shoulders. "Who answers for him?"

  "I do," cried Rukn ud Din, trying in vain to push the boy aside.

  "He is no man of the mountain. Look, the dye upon his beard—look, the white skin on his hands. O ye who serve our lord, here is one in hidden guise."

  Snarling faces pressed closer. Eyes glowed red with lust. Stench of blood and sweat stung the nostrils. ... A sudden warmth flooded Omar's brain. The sides of the cavern were receding into space. He was looking upon a multitude of priests who had served the altar of the earth, here in the maw of the earth, since the beginning of time.

  The stone beast had grown gigantic, and the stone wings moved. Between the claws lay the altar to which all bodies must come, the altar of Baal and the everlasting fire. He stood up and laughed, because it was ridiculous that his poor body should seek to protect itself against the power of the Beast.

  "Way! Make way!"

  Heavy footfalls drew nearer, and long staffs whirled against the heads of the crowd. A group of black slaves, moving shoulder to shoulder, forced its way toward Omar.

  Strangely, the clamoring swordsmen submitted to be thrust aside and beaten by the blacks, who closed in upon Omar. He was picked up by strong arms and carried away from the fire. The muttering of voices dwindled behind him and the tread of the black slaves grew louder as they passed into a dark corridor.

  Irresistible drowsiness crept over Omar. He was being carried through the darkness upon a litter of some kind. Once, when the motion ceased, he smelled strong incense and opened his eyes with an effort.

  Turning his head he looked into the red coals of a brazier from which smoke curled up, into his face. The smoke had a pleasant scent. A hand passed across his forehead. Hassan ibn Sabbah was bending over him, and Hassan's voice repeated two words over and over, "To paradise ... to paradise."

  The distant winking stars grouped themselves into Orion's square. And beside it clustered the bright heads of the Twins. The eye of the Crab gleamed clear, and then its claws took shape.

  Omar moved his head and sought for the other constellations. Yes, they were in their proper places, but something was wrong with the sky. He stared thoughtfully into the round face of a golden moon, low upon the horizon. There should be no moon in this sky, least of all such a full autumn moon. Moreover, he felt that if he reached out his hand, he could touch its face.

  He sighed pleasantly and realized that he was lying down. His body felt light and when he sat up he moved with effortless ease, yet his head seemed to have a veil drawn about it. Triumphantly, he stood up.

  A fruit tree attracted his attention. It was loaded with blossoms—he sniffed their fragrance—and that strange moonlight revealed all the colors of the blossoms. But the moon did not exist. Omar was quite certain of that.

  Under his bare feet he felt soft grass. He extended his fascinating investigation to his arms. Sleeves of light silk covered them, and this unexpected beauty of his body filled him with delight.

  The sound of running water attracted his attention next. With some difficulty—because his feet did not carry him in just the direction he wished—he arrived at the
source of the water, and it was a fountain.

  At least it ran from a rock, and he stooped to drink of it. After a taste he drank long and steadily. His throat had been parched and dry, and the water was red Shiraz wine.

  "Good wine of Shiraz," Omar said aloud, and listened to his words receding into the night.

  His roving glance fell upon a lion with a grinning head. Without trouble he walked to the lion, and touched its hard head, as smooth as porcelain. The lion, however, did not move. Omar climbed upon its back and still it did not move. He waited until that fact was established beyond any doubt. Now he had discovered three things about this garden of the moon.

  "First, the moon is not real. Second, the water is wine. Third, this king of beasts is Chinese."

  Having progressed so far, he felt himself to be at the threshold of a brilliant discovery. But his mind suddenly became weary of logic. His feet led him away from the lion toward a pool of water, still and inviting. White water blooms flecked its surface, and a white swan drifted far away, asleep with its head under its wing. This seemed to Omar to be a marvelously satisfactory way to sleep.

  Then he became aware of sounds in the garden. Craftily he listened and was not deluded. "It is not a nightingale strayed into this garden of the moon. It is a woman singing." After a while he decided that she was playing upon a lute. Pleasant to hear, but not unwonted.

  What really invited him was the house upon the water. Perhaps it floated, or perhaps it had been there when the pool came. No matter, there it was. If he could find his way to it——

  Rushes tangled about his feet and he fell among them. There, beneath the trees this strange moon shed no light. Vines caught his knees, and for a while he lay hopelessly among them. "O Thou," he complained to the night, "Who settest the pitfalls, wilt thou cry 'Death' to those who fall?"

  No one answered him, and he thought that after all the vines were friendly things. By their aid he pulled himself to the water's edge and beheld a slender bridge. At the end of the bridge floated or stood the house or the boat. Not for purposes of scientific investigation but to satisfy his own whim he wanted to enter this thing shining upon the water.

  Midway across the bridge he saw his shadow walking upon the water and stopped to watch it. When his shadow stopped also he laughed, because this was really amusing.

  The house rocked gently when he stepped within it. He pushed aside a curtain, and gazed at another, silver moon lying upon the carpet. He touched it and found it to be a warm round ball of light. But he could not pick it up. Something stirred behind it and a voice whispered,

  "The son of Ibrahim."

  Omar sat down by the voice, on yielding cushions, and considered.

  "Nay, not the son of Ibrahim," he announced, "but his High Excellency Khwaja Imam Omar, Master of the Stars and King's astronomer. Make salaam O creature of the night."

  "Be merciful to thy slave! Behold, I make salaam."

  The voice of this houri of paradise was low and strange. But then creatures in dreams did not speak in Persian or Arabic. They spoke to you, and you understood.

  Long golden hair covered the head at his knee. It was soft as silk beneath his fingers.

  "Does this boat drift," he asked, "through an endless night?"

  "One night is like to another."

  "And the moon," Omar assented with conviction, "never changes. It does not rise, it does not set; it does not wax or wane. And the demons sing to it."

  After a moment it occurred to him to turn her over. The face upon the cushions was pale, the eyes looked up at him without expression, and the small lips drooped. It stirred Omar's memory.

  "Zoë," he said at last, "and the great Khorasan road, and the night I wept for Rahim. . . . They took you away when I was the son of Ibrahim."

  Cool to his touch was Zoë's body, lying so still in the silver light. Cool her lips, to his caress. Resting his head upon her arm he wondered what had frightened her and had taken her garments away. But Zoë was beautiful, even dead in a drifting boat, in a night that would have no end.

  "I wanted to keep you," he mused, and suddenly he smiled. "Nay, I am no more than the son of Ibrahim."

  The fright left Zoë's eyes and her lips curved. She pressed his head against her throat, and sighed. And the swan, asleep, drifted by on the still water, past the porcelain lion. Omar watched Zoë raise her arm and reach toward the light. She tossed something over it and the light grew dim as the wall of a tent.

  Then Zoë took him into her arms again. And this time she was not dead—she was warm and living.

  Hassan chose the hour of Omar's waking on the second morning to visit him. When he entered Omar's chamber, unannounced, the little black slave grew livid with fear and fled.

  Closing the door carefully, Hassan seated himself on the carpet by the sleeper and spoke to him in a low voice until he stirred.

  "Where hast thou been? Tell me."

  For a while Omar looked up at the ceiling. There were dark shadows under his eyes. "Asleep," he said, "and dreaming."

  "Was it a dream?"

  "Nay, only a little—not all."

  "Then where wert thou?" Hundreds of times Hassan had asked this question of men roused from just such a sleep in this way, and he awaited the answer with confidence. In paradise, the hundreds had said with one voice.

  "It was," Omar said thoughtfully, "a remarkable artificial paradise."

  Not by a glance or a change of tone did Hassan betray his surprise. "Artificial?" he asked.

  "Ay, the moon was too low in the sky."

  "What else?"

  Omar smiled in recollection. He was fully awake now. "The houri of your paradise was a girl I knew."

  "That could not be. What girl was this?"

  "Zoë the Byzantine, in the boat upon the lake."

  Hassan had the ability, rare among men, to change his plans instantly; moreover he could do so without giving any outward sign of his intention. His spies had assured him—and they had not been chosen for their ignorance—that Omar could be enslaved by his senses, especially by wine and women. With a smile he dismissed this hope.

  "I trust," his voice had a new note, "you found the wine of my paradise suitable?"

  "Ah, it was good."

  "I regret that the moon did not give satisfaction—to an astronomer. Unfortunately the light of day does not lend itself to illusion. But my Fidais, my devoted ones, never questioned it. After a visit to paradise they desire nothing so much as the opportunity to return to it. They are all young, of course. The Lasiks, the adherents, also crave it. As for the Rafiks, some of whom you met in Ray, I fancy they doubt its celestial nature, but they do not enjoy it the less for that."

  "What of Rukn ud Din and his companion Da'is? Do they visit it?"

  "Never. They are my brain workers; the library and the laboratory are their sphere. They find their own pleasures. You understand by now that my servants are divided into different classes. ,,

  "Four you have named."

  'The laymen compose the fifth—merchants like Akroenos who attend to matters of trade, in the outer world. Oh, they make a profit out of me, being merchants. But they have never entered the gates of knowledge."

  Omar thought of Akroenos, who had come as far as the gate of Alamut once.

  "You bear many names, Hassan, son of Sabah."

  "Why not? To the laymen and the devoted Fidais, I am in truth the lord of life and death. If you doubt that, you will have proof of it presently. They speak of me as the master of the mountain because our strongholds are being built, like Alamut, on the summits of the hills. Such places can be defended by few against many."

  "And the Rafiks, what of them?"

  "The zealots of the new faith, the champions, the apostles. They know me as the messenger of the Mahdi—as you did in Jerusalem."

  "But now I no longer know you." Omar rose and went to the open window. "What do the two other classes of your converts believe?"

  "Two others? I have told you of all
five."

  "Five, but not all," Omar said over his shoulder. "There are seven."

  Amusement crept into Hassan's dark eyes. "For the moment I forgot that you were a mathematician. Enlighten my understanding: why do you say 'seven?"

  "Are you not known as Seveners? Your propagandists ask the unenlightened why there are seven days in the week and seven planets in the sky—counting the sun and the moon. I'll wager a dirhem against a Byzantine ducat that you have also seven classes of initiates."

  Hassan smiled his appreciation. "Good!" he murmured. "Thou art tempered steel that cuts to the core! Akroenos swears thou wilt rise to great fame, but I say thou art worthy of more than fame. What other secret of Alamut hast thou discovered?"

  Only for an instant did Omar hesitate whether to conciliate Hassan or to defy him. Alamut was not the place to show weakness.

  "Thy secret of reading letters before they arrive by courier," he said.

  "What dog saith that I use trickery? What lie is this?" Hassan's eyes contracted in sudden distrust.

  "No dog. A falcon brought this down to me, on the way to Ray." Omar felt in his girdle and drew out the silver tube within which lay the message saying that he was on the road to Ray.

  Swiftly Hassan read it, and glanced at the tiny tube. Sheer astonishment drove the rage from his face. "By Allah and by Allah! Ay, naught but a falcon could bring a messenger pigeon from the air. But what luck—what impossible luck is thine." He nodded as if making inward decision. "True, I have used messenger pigeons at times. Here in Alamut they bring the tidings of the world to me. Yet even the Da'is know naught of them. They come to the village, not to the castle—enough! Let us take our hands from the sword-hilt of strife, and tear apart the veil of dissension between us."

  Striding to Omar's side, he flung his arm about his shoulders. "Thou art asking thyself—'What is Hassan?' Then hear! Hassan is a wretched soul, once a student of life. What good is it to gain wisdom, where kings and their ministers rule souls as well as bodies? I have been lashed like a wandering dog by the armed guards of Cairo; I have tasted shame and have been flung mockery for consolation, ay, before I was of an age to beget a son. But in Cairo I learned wisdom at the feet of the masters of the Ismailite Lodge—the Seveners as thou wouldst say. I fled over the sea and sat at the feet of the cabbalists, those aged men in Tiberias by the sunken water of Galilee. Enough of that—I love not many words and thou also hast studied the mysteries when the stars grew dim over a weary land."