Alhazred

by Donald Tyson

  A woman left her lighted doorway and approached Martala, thinking her a young man. She ignored me. No doubt she thought me a slave or servant, since I walked on the opposite side of the donkey. Only the poor walked. Had she been able to clearly see the disreputable condition of our robes in the growing murk, she might have ignored both of us. She babbled in Persian, and when Martala made no response other than to glance at her, she pulled open the top of her red dress and exposed her naked breasts, then cupped them in her hands and squeezed them, laughing. Her teeth were not good.

  Martala made a gesture with her left hand that carried universal meaning. The harlot stepped back as though slapped and spat on the ground, then covered herself and returned to her doorway.

  We went on to the end of the wall and passed between the more honest dwellings of the village before making our way into the fields. Behind a grove of nut trees we stopped, and the girl dismounted from the donkey. She tried to conceal her relief and rubbed her buttocks when she thought my eyes looked elsewhere. It was some consolation that her backside ached as much as my legs, but I drew no attention to it.

  “There are more people here than I expected,” she said.

  “Indeed. This is a prospering port. The fortress must provide protection against bandits and river raiders.”

  “Did you notice the two guards at the gate?”

  “They were wearing armor. Chain mail shirts over their tunics, and steel helmets. The Sons of Sirius must keep their own army.”

  “They must be wealthy.”

  The same thought had occurred to me. The signs of wealth were everywhere. The dockside exhibited good repair, and this could only be achieved by constant maintenance. Several cargos unloaded from the boats were costly trade goods of silks, ivory, and sandalwood. The merchants I had seen in the plaza and coming out of the ale house wore their prosperity on their backs, and their heads—their turbans were enormous. I had no taste for such ostentatious display. It was my own view that ten additional cubits of silk wrapped around the head denoted a fool.

  “Perhaps they throw open the gates during the day.”

  I shook my head, lost in thought. The guards had been too watchful. These were prudent men, these magi. Gaining entry into the walls of the monastery might prove more difficult than I had imagined.

  Through the deepening gloom I studied the ground beneath the trees. The dry grass had not recently been grazed.

  “We will sleep here tonight. Tomorrow we will attempt to breach the walls of their keep.”

  How this was to be accomplished, I had no notion. Perhaps the dark man would visit me in my dreams and offer me the key to the gate, I thought wryly. He had been anxious that I should learn the secrets of the magi, but silent as to how this was to be accomplished. No matter, my own purposes required that I gain access to their library. That was spur enough to my imagination.

  I woke in the glow of morning with no memory of dreams, and the scent of fresh dung in my nostrils. Our donkey had chosen to relieve itself, and the girl had tied it too near our sleeping place. It was fortunate that its rope was not longer. Slapping the girl on the rump through her cloak to wake her, I cut short her curses with a finger to my lips.

  “We must find a place to conceal our wealth before the village wakes,” I told her.

  Leaving the donkey to browse the dewy grass, we walked far enough past the fields to be reasonably assured that the spot we chose was seldom traveled. I emptied our wallets and shifted all the precious items into my wallet. This I hid beneath the overhang of a large rock, where there was a small gap of shadow. Our food and common items I pressed into the girl’s wallet until it bulged, and gave it to her to sling on her shoulder. The ground showed little sign of our passage. I was satisfied that I would recognize the place again without difficulty by day or night, but that no one else would see that we had been there.

  “Belt this to your waist,” I said, passing her my sword in its scabbard.

  “What is this all about?” Martala murmured in a surly tone as she put on my sword. She did not like being kept in ignorance.

  My mind still working, I made my way with swift strides to the donkey while the girl trailed after me with a pout, and untied the rope from around its neck. When I retied it around my own neck, she looked at me as though I had suddenly gone mad.

  “I am your feeble-witted older brother,” I told her. “You must lead me by this rope to prevent me doing injury to myself.”

  “Indeed?” She put her hands on her hips. “How came this misfortune?”

  “As a child of three I was kicked by a donkey, and ever since I have been unable to speak, or make any sounds other than a kind of braying. Like this.”

  I demonstrated what I considered to be the noises of a madman. The girl smiled in spite of herself.

  “I can feed myself and perform simple work, but I drool and I cannot be trusted to cut my nails or clean my own anus.”

  She frowned.

  “Surely you are not that feeble of mind?”

  “Yes, I fear I am. You must be with me at all times to assist me in such necessary functions. But you do not mind, because you promised our father before he died that you would always take care of me.”

  “Where do we come from, and why are we here?”

  “Good questions. I wonder if the truth would serve?”

  “I have never known it to do so,” she said simply.

  “Nor have I.”

  I cast my eyes eastward. The sun was just rising above the lip of the world. It lit the wall of the fortress with red light, and I observed that the wall was composed of clay bricks. Never had I known a land so fond of bricks.

  “We are from Alexandria. You were forced to flee with me out of Egypt when your uncle sought my life, as the rightful inheritor of our father’s fortune. You had reason to believe that you would find security at Baghdad, where dwelt the father of our dead mother, but recently you learned that he had succumbed to a lingering sickness.” I stopped and regarded her face. “Too complex?”

  “No.” She mused a moment. “Why aren’t we rich?”

  “Pirates stole what little gold we could carry away from our wicked uncle. They tortured me until you told them where it was hidden aboard the ship, and disfigured me, and deprived me of my manhood. Now we make our way with only the clothes on our backs and this sorry animal, which we purchased with our last bronze fil.”

  “It is plausible. A little romance is useful when spinning a tale. It occupies the mind.”

  I unfolded the few remaining scraps of my plan to her as we made our way toward the gates of the fortress by way of its northern side, she upon the donkey, tugging me at the end of my rope. Several farmers and their wives glanced at us curiously as we passed through the village, but they recoiled when they saw my face. I projected my tongue at the corner of my mouth and made braying noises in my throat.

  “Tell me if I overact,” I whispered to the girl.

  She jerked the rope and choked me, struggling to suppress her amusement.

  As we had agreed, she rode across the plaza and dismounted next to a stone post that stood beside a round stone basin filled with water. She tied the tattered bridle of the beast to an iron ring of the post. A horse stood tied to another of the rings. It ignored the donkey with a sublime display of indifference borne of its own sense of superiority. Tugging me along at the end of my own tether, Martala went to watch the merchants open their stalls.

  I took a little wooden bowl from my belt and began to perform the part of a fool. My antics attracted a small group of village children who had no better occupation while their parents prepared their farm wares for sale. To my surprise, they were not mean of spirit. They merely stared at me in wide-eyed fascination, and laughed when I made faces at them. A little girl, who could not have been older than five years, was so ter
rified of my face, she remained hidden behind the body of her older brother the whole time, hugging his waist, and peeked at me through the space beneath his armpit.

  From time to time, a passing merchant or boatman dropped a bronze fil into the wooden bowl between my hands. When this happened, Martala immediately removed the coin and thanked the charity of the giver. I smiled with vacant delight and bobbed my head in the imitation of a bow, making noises as though attempting to speak.

  When the sun rose well above the horizon, and the plaza began to bustle with buyers and sellers intent on their own business, a small door no taller than the entrance door of a house opened in the left iron-bound panel of the main gate of the fortress. A young man of my own age or less, dressed in the white turban and white robe of a scholar yet wearing a sword belted at his waist, emerged and made his way toward two rows of stone benches beneath a spreading shade tree, on the side of the plaza away from the noise of the market where perhaps a dozen men and two women sat waiting. All had fat purses, to judge by their fine clothing and freshly oiled hair. I had watched them gather with curiosity, having no notion of their purpose, but it soon became apparent they were students.

  He began to declaim to them in Greek concerning Aristotle’s History of Animals, walking up and down before the benches, quoting long passages in the work of the Stagirite from memory, and emphasizing his points with gestures of his hands. At times he paused to allow his pupils to ask questions. He engaged in dialogue with them, but his tone remained unemotional, almost detached, as though he knew the topic so well, it no longer had the power to challenge his mind.

  All this while, men exited from the small door to transact business with merchants or to purchase food stuffs from the stalls, counting out dinars or dirhams into the eager palms of those who waited for their appearance. I observed that at no time did anyone pass into the gate who had not already emerged from it. The sages carried through the doorway their own baskets of fish, eggs, and other provisions, and used wheeled carts to convey cut firewood into the compound from a stack that had been erected at no great distance from the wall by those selling it.

  At any instant there might be a dozen men from the fortress in the plaza, not including the two guards who stood like stone images with their pikes perfectly upright. Some were dressed as warriors, wearing conical helmets on their heads and chain mail vests over their tunics, or even breastplates, while others wore the long white robes of scholars, yet even the scholars carried weapons. I did not see one who lacked a sword at his belt.

  Martala drew me away from the stalls and nearer the benches, feigning an interest in the lesson. In this, we were not alone, for a scattering of merchants and other travelers idling in the plaza gathered around behind the benches to hear the words of the young teacher. I was not assured from the expressions of their faces that every one of them comprehended the subject, or indeed the Greek tongue itself, but they remained respectfully silent, a tribute to the inherent dignity of the speaker. The women hearers appeared particularly impressed. He was a handsome youth, almost as attractive as I had been, with curling black hair and lustrous brown eyes, but his narrow chin and small mouth made his face both sensual and weak.

  During a pause longer than usual, Martala hazarded a question. The young scholar blinked at her in surprise, impressed by the intelligence of her inquiry, or by the excellence of her Greek, perhaps both. He glanced at me and I stuck out my tongue at him. This ruffled his dignity though he strove not to show it. He gave the girl an excellent answer and went on with his teaching, from time to time casting her an appraising glance.

  When the lesson concluded, the seated pupils gathered close to him and, with a word or two of praise for his work, put coins into a silver cup that he held out. I reflected that he and I were in the same profession, but that his coins were silver, whereas mine were bronze. Some of those who had stood listening behind the benches also came forward and placed dirhams of the smallest size into his cup.

  Perceiving an opportunity, Martala gave a little tug on my rope and went forward to drop into his cup one of the bronze fils I had begged.

  “If I could offer more I would do so,” she said in a modest tone, her head lowered. “Never have I heard such wisdom spoken so well.”

  His serious expression softened. He removed the fil from the cup and held it out to her.

  “I can see that you need this more than my order. Please, do not impoverish yourself. Use it to buy a loaf of bread.”

  Martala lifted her head with pride.

  “I was not always poor. Do not deprive me of what little dignity remains in my life.”

  What else could the scholar do, but ask for the story of her life? She told it without enhancement, as though ashamed of its details, and with such conviction that I almost believed it myself. I had to remind myself to grunt and drool, I was so captivated by her artfulness. She added details that I would never have conceived to make our implausible tale more convincing. When she came to the part about the pirates, the young sage turned to study my face and shook his head.

  “A double tragedy, that your brother should have been deprived of sense at so young an age, and then had his beauty stolen as well. My heart sorrows for your fate, but we derive strength from our misfortunes, and I see that you are a boy of brave spirits.”

  For the next six days, we made ourselves at home in the marketplace during the day, and slept in the woods beyond the fields at night. On the second day Martala sold the donkey to a farmer for less than a tenth of what I had paid for the beast. This allowed us to buy what we needed of fresh food and drink from the vendors without arousing suspicion. I continued to dance and crawl on all fours, and my wooden bowl seldom went empty. Travelers passed through the port daily, moving with the boats up or down the river, so there was always a new audience. I began to enjoy my antics. Success in my deception was determined by how many coins I received.

  Each day, Martala listened to the lessons beneath the tree. Several members of the order, all of them young and beardless, taught various subjects such as mathematics and rhetoric. I discovered that some of the regular students had traveled from far lands to sit at their feet. At the end of the lesson the girl never failed to place her pathetic bronze fil into the silver cup, although she never sat on a bench but always stood respectfully at the back.

  On the seventh day, the first scholar she had addressed, who bore the heroic name Baruch, smiled at her as he accepted her offering.

  “You must accompany me into the monastery. I have told my brothers about you, and your thirst for knowledge, and our leader Rumius wishes to speak with you.”

  Chapter 45

  The timbers that composed the great gate were cedar beams of impressive thickness, I observed as we were escorted through the small door by Baruch. Even the little door itself was secured behind us by four heavy iron bars that ran completely across it from one side to the other, making it as strong as any other part of the gate. It would take a siege ram to batter it down.

  As we left the entrance a line of men, some young and others of middle years, ran past with heavy packs on their bare backs. They grunted and laughed with effort, arms and sides glistening with sweat. A man in a helmet and chain mail vest stood to one side and encouraged their steps with a short whip having many leather tassels on its end. At first glance I mistook them for slaves. Then I realized they were monks exercising their bodies. Further away, pairs of men engaged in swordplay under the watchful eye of a gray-haired teacher, and others who were completely naked wrestled in the Greek fashion, by using only the arms and upper body, within circles of packed red clay.

  There was more open space inside the walls of the monastery than I had expected, most of it closely mowed grass shaded by overspreading trees and crossed by numerous paved paths, with here and there a stone bench for sitting. On the nearest bench, a bearded elder watched our progress with an expression of
mild curiosity. The entry of those not of his order must have been an uncommon event. I let my gaze wander, impressed by the splendor of the place, which would rival the walled garden of an emperor.

  Three great buildings dominated the enclosure. The largest was made of stone, and occupied the northern side. In its upper two levels, glass windows with many tiny panes caught the sunlight and glittered. Two wings extended outward like the paws of a reclining lion, so that between them was formed a small courtyard paved with red sandstone blocks that held at its center the bronze statue of a slender woman. Naked to the waist and bearing as a crown the horns of the crescent moon, she stood with proud posture upon a stone pedestal, one arm elevated as though to pluck something from the sky. She evoked an echo in my memory that eluded me when I sought to recall it.

  The many small shuttered windows in the great brick edifice to the west gave it the look of a dormitory. The lack of pretension in its architecture suggested that it had been built to house the largest possible number of inhabitants. Indeed, it was an ugly building, its rust-colored facade stained with streaks of soot that rain had washed off the flat roof. It did not press its back against the wall, but stood out from it a considerable distance. A tall board fence enclosed the space behind it. I heard the lowing of a cow beyond the fence, and my unglamoured nose caught the distinct scent of stewed cabbage. The kitchens that would feed so many men must be extensive.

  The noise of hammers beating on metal sounded from the smaller building against the southern wall. As we continued across the lawn, I noticed columns of black smoke coil upward from its many chimneys. It was of mixed construction, its ground level of roughly dressed stone, its upper two levels of heavy timbers. Small fired bricks glazed with blue and green filled the spaces between the timbers. Windows were few and of small size, their carved screens all fastened wide to catch the breeze.