ADVENTURE TALES #5

by John Gregory Betancourt

  “The pride and beauty will grow again.”

  For quite a while they argued, until finally Omar the Black gave in.

  But he cursed violently while scissors and razor did their fell work. He cursed yet more violently when, hav­ing announced that the stallion was strong enough to carry the two of them, he was informed by his twin bro­ther that such a thing was out of the question.

  For, opined Omar the Red, here was he himself most splendidly clad as became a gentleman of High Tartary. And here was the other, in stained and odorous rags — a very scarecrow of a man. It would seem strange to people, whom they might meet, to see them in such an intimacy, astride the same horse.

  Better far, he said, for the other to run sturdily in back of the stal­lion, with outstretched hand, like some im­portunate beggar crying for zekat! ze­kat! zekat! — alms for the sake of Allah.

  He clapped his brother heartily on the back. “It will be safest for you,” he added. “Besides, you will see more of this fine broad world, walking on your two feet, than cocked high and stiff upon a saddle.”

  Omar the Red laughed.

  *****

  SO, on an evening almost a week later, did Timur Bek laugh, back in Gulabad, when — for at first he had not recognized him, with his beard shorn off — he learned that this smooth-cheeked man was Omar the Black.

  “Here you are,” exclaimed Timur Bek, “with your face as soft as a girl’s bosom!”

  He laughed more loudly. “Oh,” he cried, “if Gotha could see you!”

  Omar the Black swallowed his an­ger.

  “She is still here?” he demanded.

  “And pining for you, I have no doubt.”

  “And — your promise?”

  “I have not forgotten it.”

  Timur Bek went on to say that he was ready to open negotiations about the girl’s purchase with Yengi Meh­met. He would do it tactfully and drive as good a bargain as he could.

  “I know, of course,” he added, “that you have the jewels.” He smiled. “The Jew, Baruch ben Isaac ben Eze­chiel, made a great ado about it. Swore that nineteen tough Tartars, armed to the teeth, broke into his shop and as­saulted him!”

  “Nor,” said Omar the Black, “did he lie — exactly. For am I not the equal of the nineteen toughest Tartars in the World? Very well. My brother and I shall sell the jewels. Do you know a place — oh — a discreet place where we —”

  “Can sell the jewels? Not necessary.”

  “But —”

  “The Khan likes precious gems as much as minted gold.”

  “Still, he may suspect —”

  “He will not listen to the evil voice of suspicion — if the jewels be rich enough. If they be rich enough, his left eye will look west, and his right east. Let’s have a look at the loot.”

  The other reached into his bree­ches. He poured the gems in a shimmering stream on a low divan; and Timur Bek licked his lips. He said:

  “It may take a good many of these trinkets to —”

  “Nothing too much to buy me my heart’s desire. Here — take half the stones!”

  Timur Bek coughed.

  “There is also,” he said, “the mat­ter of the money which I borrowed from the Khan, giving the little slave-girl, whom I love, as security. You were going to help me pay back the loan — remember?”

  “I do. And I shall keep my word.”

  “The sooner, the better — for you.”

  Omar the Black frowned. “Eh?”

  “This girl, you see, has the Khan’s ear. I need her assistance. Loving me as I love her, she is anxious to return to me. And so, unless I buy her back, I am afraid she —”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” Omar the Black in­terrupted impatiently. “Here — take another fourth of the stones. Surely it will be enough.”

  “Not quite.”

  “But —”

  “Thirty thousand tomans I borrowed. It will take the rest of the stones to —”

  “All right!” with a sigh. “Take them all!”

  Timur Bek’s hands were about to scoop up the jewels, when Omar the Red cried:

  “Wait!”

  He touched his brother’s knee.

  “You are forgetting our agreement,” he told his brother. “You were going to use some of the treasure to pay off your old debts, so that we can return home and —”

  “I have not forgotten.”

  “Why —”

  “Listen!” Omar the Black winked slowly at his twin brother. “That time I broke into the Jew’s shop, I was in a hurry. I took only half the jewels. The other half is waiting for you and me.”

  He turned to Timur Bek:

  “When will you speak to the Khan?”

  “Tonight. At once.”

  Timur Bek left his house. He went round the corner to the garden gate of Yengi Mehmet’s palace.

  There, while night was falling thick­er and thicker, wrapping the streets in a cloak of trailing purple sha­dows, he whistled: two high, shrill notes, followed by a throaty, fluting tremolo, like a crane calling to its mate.

  There was silence.

  He waited; listened tensely, then repeated the call — and the gate opened softly; and a small white-robed figure slipped out and rushed into his arms with a little cry of joy.

  “O my beloved!”

  “O soul of my soul!”

  “O king!”

  “O sweetmeat!”

  They spoke in a whisper, at length. They laughed. They kissed. And presently Timur Bek returned to the roof-top of his house, where Omar the Black was pacing up and down impatiently, while Omar the Red was ap­plying himself to a bottle of Persian wine.

  “Well — ?” demanded the former.

  “I talked to my girl.”

  “Not to the Khan?”

  “She, as I told you, has the Khan’s ear. And it seems that he is willing to sell Gotha. But —”

  “Is there a but?”

  “Isn’t there always?” Timur Bek paused. “He is fond of her.”

  “What’s that?” — excitedly.

  “In a fatherly manner. Yes — as if she were his daughter. Therefore he insists that whoever buys the girl must marry her.”

  “I — marry?”

  “Yes. It is part of the bargain. You must marry her at once. Tomorrow evening, at the Mosque of Hassan. A simple ceremony, with no witnesses. The girl, being shy, insists on it.”

  Omar the Black did not reply im­mediately.

  Marriage, he reflected — as more than once, on his lawless path, his bro­ther had reflected — meant bonds of steel. It meant the orderly homespun ways of life; meant — oh, all sorts of disagreeable things. . . . An end to freedom!

  And it was on his tongue to ex­claim: “No! Let Yengi Mehmet keep the girl!”

  But he reconsidered as he thought of her — with her full red lips, and her brown hair as smooth as oil, and her gray eyes that seemed to hold all the secret wisdom, all the secret sweet moc­k­ery of womanhood.

  Lovely! So very lovely!

  He loved her. . . . Besides, coming to think of it, marriage was not ­ne­cessarily the end. Bonds of steel, too, could be broken — by a strong and ruthless man.

  “Very well,” he announced. “Marriage it will be.” And, severely, to his brother: “Let this be a lesson to you — to follow in my virtuous footsteps!”

  “As virtuous,” remarked Timur Bek, “as mine own. For I too shall take a wife unto myself — the little slave-girl whom I love.”

  “You have repaid your loan to the Khan?”

  “Thanks to you, Great-Heart. To­morrow morning my love and I are going away. Therefore if, for the time being, you and your bride and your brother would care to live in my house, you are welcome. There is food in the larder and wine in the cellar. And after all, with your jewels gone —”

  “I shall be poor, I know.”

  “Only,” chimed in Omar the Red, “until Baruch, the rich Jew, contributes another handful of gems.”

  *****<
br />
  LATE on the following evening, Omar the Black, arrayed in some of his brother’s handsome clothes, went to the Mosque — an ancient and beau­tiful building raised on a flight of broad marble steps, its great horseshoe gateway covered with delicate mosaic arabesques in mauve and silver and heliotrope and elfin-green.

  There the bride, wrapped from head to foot in three heavy white wedding veils, awaited him.

  She saw his smooth cheeks. But she gave no more than a little start. For she had been warned of what had happened to his beard; and with or with­out his beard, she loved him — loved him dearly.

  Slowly he walked up to her. He bowed — and so did she.

  *****

  HAND in hand they stepped before the green-turbaned priest, who united them in holy wedlock, according to the rites of Islam:

  “Will you, O son of Adam, take this woman to wife — before God the One, and the Prophet the Adored, and the multitude of the Blessed Angels?”

  “I will!”

  “Will you, O daughter of Eve, take this man to husband — before God the One, and the Prophet the Adored, and the multitude of the Blessed Angels?”

  “I will!”

  Silence. . . . Omar the Black stared at his wife.

  “Soon to be mine!” he whispered. “Soon — soon!”

  Then there was the priest chanting a surah from the Koran in nasal, sacerdotal tones:

  *

  For the Merciful hath taught the Koran,

  He created the male and the female,

  He taught them clear speech,

  He taught them desire and fulfilment.

  An echo of His own creation.

  So which of the Lord’s bounties would ye twain deny?

  The sun and the moon in their courses,

  And the planets do homage to Him,

  And the heaven He raised it and appointed the balance,

  And the earth He prepared it for living things.

  Therein He created fruit, and the palm with sheaths,

  And grain with its husks, and the fragrant herb,

  And the male and the female of man and of beast.

  So which of the Lord’s bounties would ye twain deny?

  *

  “Not I,” said Omar the Black to his wife, “to deny this particular bounty.”

  She gave a happy little laugh; the priest finished; husband and wife salaamed toward Mecca; and then Omar took her to Timur Bek’s house, up to the rooftop beneath the stars.

  There his brother was. He greeted the couple with loud shouts of:

  “Yoo-yoo-yoo!”

  But Omar the Black cut him short.

  “Enough `yoo-yoo-yoo’ for the nonce,” he said. “This is the one mo­ment — of many, many mom­ents — when I can do with­out your company.”

  So Omar the Red left — winking, in passing, at the bride. And a few sec­onds later, slowly and clum­sily, since his hands trembled so, Omar the Black raised the three wed­ding veils one by one.

  “Wah,” he whispered throatily, “you are all my dreams come true!”

  Then, swiftly, he receded a step. For, with the moon laying a mocking silver ribbon across her features, he saw that the woman whom he had marr­ied was Fathouma, the Grand Khan’s sister, and not Gotha.

  Omar stood there without speak­ing. He stared at her.

  Even more faded she was than when he had seen her last; more gray the hair that curled on her temples; more sharply etched the network of wrinkles at the corners of her brown gold-flecked eyes. But still the same eyes — with the same tenderness in them, the same sweetness and simpli­city, the same depth of feeling. Eyes that lit up as she said to him:

  “You broke my heart, years ago, when you left me. But now, the Lord be praised, you have made it whole again.”

  She walked up to him. And what could he do but take her into his arms?

  “Last night,” she went on, “when Timur Bek sent me word through Gotha that you had come to Gulabad in search of me, that you wanted me — wanted me for wife — I almost swooned with the great joy of it. And it was so tactful of you to insist on a simple wedding, you and I” — he winced a little at her next words — “being no longer young, lest people ridicule us. Already Esa is on his way to tell my brother the news; and my brother, too, will be so very happy —”

  She stopped for breath. She kissed him.

  “And,” she went on, “I talked to my cousin, the Khan of Kulistan. He will make you a captain in the pal­ace guard, although —” with a fleeting smile curling her lips — “he is a little angry at you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of Gotha.”

  “Oh!”

  “He liked her, and,” she laughed — “more than merely liked her. Hayah — the old cat, though blind and lame, still hankers after mice! And you, like the generous soul you are, giving all your jewels to Timur Bek, so that he could pay back to Yengi Mehmet what he owed him, and free Gotha, and marry her!”

  He gave a start.

  “You said — marry?”

  “Did you not know? Very early this morning they went to the mosque and became man and wife. And now they are off to the steppe, the wilderness, to spend their honeymoon. For they are young. They can stand the rigor, the chill harsh winds, the open air. Well” — and again she smiled, while again he winced a little — “we are not young, you and I. But our love is as great as theirs — is it not, my lord?”

  He did not reply immediately. He looked at her, with a long and search­ing look. And then — nor was it altogether because he feared her brother the Grand Khan, and knew that this time he would have no chance at all to get away, but also, and chiefly, because of a queer feeling in his soul, something akin to tender pity — he inclined his head and said: “There was never love greater than mine, O heart of seven roses!”

  He was silent; and he thought, with supreme self-satisfaction: When I do a thing, by Allah and by Allah, I do it in style! It is the glorious way of me.

  So he bowed gallantly in the Persian manner, his hand on his breast. He was about to kneel before her, and had already bent his left leg, when sud­denly he felt a stabbing pain and gave a cry.

  “Why! Oh,” was her anxious query­

  “What is the matter?”

  “Nothing, nothing.”

  “But I heard you —”

  “A little pain — in my left leg.”

  “A wound?”

  “No. A touch of rheumatism.”

  She shook a finger at him.

  “Your own fault!”

  “Eh?”

  “Yes. To be up here on the roof late at night, in the cold, as if you were in your teens!”

  “But —”

  “You are old enough to have more sense! Off to bed with you — and a hot brick at your feet, and a glass of mulled wine to put you to sleep. Tomorrow we’ll leave this draughty house, and stay with my cousin the Khan of Gul­istan, and —”

  “Look —” he interrupted indignantly.

  “Be quiet! I know what is good for you.”

  Firmly she took him by the arm and led him down the stairs.

  He did not resist. They passed Omar the Red’s room. And Omar the Black bit his lips and frowned as he heard a faint, “Yoo-yoo-yoo!” heard, a moment later, something which sounded, suspiciously, like laughter.

  *****

  IT cannot be said that, during the days that followed, Omar the Black was exactly unhappy. In fact, though he hated to admit it, he was enjoying life.

  There was his wife. Faded, sure enough, and wrinkled. Not lovely at all, not the one to quicken a man’s heartbeat and set his flesh to aching. On the other hand, she was so kindly, so very, very kindly — and so strangely humble when, frequently, she said to him:

  “You bring me great happiness. I love you, O best beloved!”

  He would kiss her gently; lying like a gentleman, and after a while not ly­ing at all, though he thought he did, he would reply:

  “So do I love you, O delight!”r />
  Furthermore — oh, yes, Fathouma was right — he was no longer in his teens, no longer eager to travel the hard road, with ever danger and death lurking around the corner. And it was pleasant to be once more, as formerly at the court of the Grand Khan of the Golden Steppe, a man of fashion, dressed in cloak and breeches of hand­somely embroidered, Bokharan satin, and hose of gossamer silk, and boots of soft red leather, and a voluminous turban that had cost fifty pieces of silver — and always a deal of money clanking in his breeches, what with his captain’s pay and his wife’s generosity — and the work quite suiting his fancy.

  Indeed, Omar did no work to speak of. Except that, as a captain in the service of the Khan of Gulistan, he would mount guard at the palace every forenoon for a leisurely, strolling hour or two, swapping yarns and boasts and lies with the other tall captains. And in the afternoons he would whistle to his tawny Afghan hound and stalk through the streets and bazaars, buy­ing whatever he wished, and once in a while getting into a row because of insult real or, more often, imagined.

  And in the evenings he would go on an occasional riotous drinking-bout, rolling home late and noisy — and Fa­th­ouma would be waiting for him, would cool his throbbing temples with scented water, nor give him the sharp edge of her tongue, but warn:

  “You must be careful, best be­loved. A man of your years —”

  He would flare up.

  “What do you mean — a man of my years?” he would demand. “Why, my heart is the same as ever it was, keen and lightsome! And my soul has the same golden fire, and my joints are still greased with the rich grease of youth, and —”

  “Of course,” she would agree soo­th­ingly. “And yet you look a little tired, and so you had better have your breakfast in bed tomorrow. And here” — stirring a cup that held a steaming, dark, strong-smelling broth — “some tea of bitter herbs for your stomach.”

  “No, no!”

  “Yes, yes! Drink it at one swallow, hero, and it will not taste so bad.”

  He would sigh — and obey.

  He would, to tell the truth, feel better for it the next day, and get up later and later as morning succeeded morning.

  And as time progressed, moreover, Omar went on fewer drinking-bouts; and, gradually he became less, eager at smelling out insults and picking quarrels with all and sundry. In fact, the only quarrel which he had — and care­fully nursed — was with his bro­ther.