Part 3 (1/2)

We only knew that peddling is a pleasure, that a bank account is a supreme joy, that a dish of _mojadderah_ cooked by Im-Hanna is a royal delight, that our dour dark cellar is a palace of its kind, and that happiness, like a bride, issues from all these, and, touching the strings of Khalid's lute, mantles us with song.”

CHAPTER V

THE CELLAR OF THE SOUL

Heretofore, Khalid and Shakib have been inseparable as the Pointers.

They always appeared together, went the rounds of their peddling orbit together, and together were subject to the same conditions and restraints. Which restraints are a sort of sacrifice they make on the altar of friends.h.i.+p. One, for instance, would never permit himself an advantage which the other could not enjoy, or a pleasure in which the other could not share. They even slept under the same blanket, we learn, ate from the same plate, puffed at the same narghilah, which Shakib brought with him from Baalbek, and collaborated in writing to one lady-love! A condition of unexampled friends.h.i.+p this, of complete oneness. They had both cut themselves garments from the same cloth, as the Arabic saying goes. And on Sunday afternoon, in garments spick and span, they would take the air in Battery Park, where the one would invoke the Statue of Liberty for a thought, or the gilded domes of Broadway for a metaphor, while the other would be scouring the horizon for the Nothingness, which is called, in the recondite cant of the sophisticated, a vague something.

In the Khedivial Library MS. we find nothing which this Battery Park might have inspired. And yet, we can not believe that Khalid here was only attracted by that vague something which, in his spiritual enceintes.h.i.+p, he seemed to relish. Nothing? Not even the does and kangaroos that adorn the Park distracted or detained him? We doubt it; and Khalid's lute sustains us in our doubt. Ay, and so does our Scribe; for in his _Histoire Intime_ we read the following, which we faithfully transcribe.

”Of the many attractions of Battery Park, the girls and the sea were my favourite. For the girls in a crowd have for me a fascination which only the girls at the bath can surpa.s.s. I love to lose myself in a crowd, to buffet, so to speak, its waves, to nestle under their feathery crests. For the rolling waves of life, the tumbling waves of the sea, and the fiery waves of Al-Mutanabbi's poetry have always been my delight. In Battery Park I took especial pleasure in reading aloud my verses to Khalid, or in fact to the sea, for Khalid never would listen.

”Once I composed a few stanzas to the Milkmaid who stood in her wagon near the lawn, rattling out milk-punches to the boys. A winsome la.s.s she was, fresh in her sororiation, with fair blue eyes, a celestial flow of auburn hair, and cheeks that suggested the milk and cherry in the gla.s.s she rattled out to me. I was reading aloud the stanzas which she inspired, when Khalid, who was not listening, pointed out to me a woman whose figure and the curves thereof were remarkable. 'Is it not strange,' said he, 'how the women here indraw their stomachs and outdraw their hips? And is not this the opposite of the shape which our women cultivate?'

”Yes, with the Lebanon women, the convex curve beneath the waist is frontward, not hindward. But that is a matter of taste, I thought, and man is partly responsible for either convexity. I have often wondered, however, why the women of my country cultivate that shape. And why do they in America cultivate the reverse of it? Needless to say that both are pruriently t.i.tillating,--both distentions are d.a.m.nably suggestive, quite killing. The American woman, from a fine sense of modesty, I am told, never or seldom ventures abroad, when big with child. But in the kangaroo figure, the burden is slightly s.h.i.+fted and naught is amiss.

Ah, such haunches as are here exhibited suggest the _aliats_ of our Asiatic sheep.”

And what he says about the pruriently t.i.tillating convexities, whether frontward or hindward, suggests a little prudery. For in his rhymes he betrays both his comrade and himself. Battery Park and the attractions thereof prove fatal. Elsewhere, therefore, they must go, and begin to draw on their bank accounts. Which does not mean, however, that they are far from the snare. No; for when a young man begins to suffer from what the doctors call hebephrenia, the farther he draws away from such snares the nearer he gets to them. And these l.u.s.ty Syrians could not repel the magnetic attraction of the polypiosis of what Shakib likens to the _aliat_ (fattail) of our Asiatic sheep. Surely, there be more devils under such an _aliat_ than under the hat of a Jesuit. And Khalid is the first to discover this. Both have been ensnared, however, and both, when in the snare, have been infernally inspired.

What Khalid wrote, when he was under the influence of feminine curves, was preserved by Shakib, who remarks that one evening, after returning from the Park, Khalid said to him, 'I am going to write a poem.' A fortnight later, he hands him the following, which he jealously kept among his papers.

I dreamt I was a donkey-boy again.

Out on the sun-swept roads of Baalbek, I tramp behind my burro, trolling my _mulayiah_.

At noon, I pa.s.s by a garden redolent of mystic scents and tarry awhile.

Under an orange tree, on the soft green gra.s.s, I stretch my limbs.

The daisies, the anemones, and the cyclamens are round me pressing: The anemone buds hold out to me their precious rubies; the daisies kiss me in the eyes and lips; and the cyclamens shake their powder in my hair.

On the wall, the roses are nodding, smiling; above me the orange blossoms surrender themselves to the wooing breeze; and on yonder rock the salamander sits, complacent and serene.

I take a daisy, and, boy as boys go, question its petals: Married man or monk, I ask, plucking them off one by one, And the last petal says, Monk.

I perfume my fingers with crumpled cyclamens, cover my face with the dark-eyed anemones, and fall asleep.

And my burro sleeps beneath the wall, in the shadow of nodding roses.

And the black-birds too are dozing, and the bulbuls flitting by whisper with their wings, 'salaam.'

Peace and salaam!

The bulbul, the black-bird, the salamander, the burro, and the burro-boy, are to each other shades of noon-day sun: Happy, loving, generous, and free;-- As happy as each other, and as free.

We do what we please in Nature's realm, go where we please; No one's offended, no one ever wronged.

No sentinels hath Nature, no police.

But lo, a goblin as I sleep comes forth;-- A goblin taller than the tallest poplar, who carries me upon his neck to the Park in far New York.

Here women, light-heeled, heavy-haunched, pace up and down the flags in graceful gait.

My roses these, I cry, and my orange blossoms.

But the goblin placed his hand upon my mouth, and I was dumb.

The cyclamens, the anemones, the daisies, I saw them, but I could not speak to them.

The goblin placed his hand upon my mouth, and I was dumb.

O take me back to my own groves, I cried, or let me speak.

But he threw me off his shoulders in a huff, among the daisies and the cyclamens.