Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories Part 17

'Why don't you go down too?' suggested Zumbul Agha. The variable climate of a great house had made him too perfect an opportunist not to take the line of being in favor again. 'It might be better. Give me the key and I will do what there is to do. But you might send up Shaban.'

Why not? the Pasha secretly asked himself. Might it not be the best way out? At the same time he experienced a certain revulsion of feeling, now that Helene was gone, in the way she had gone. She really was prodigious! And with the vanishing of the lantern which had brought him a measure of rea.s.surance he felt the weight of an uncleared situation, fantastic but crucial, heavy upon him. And the Negro annoyed him intensely.

'Thank you, Zumbul Agha,' he replied, 'but I am not the nurse of madama, and I will not give you the key.'

If he only might, though, he thought to himself again!

'You believe her, this Frank woman whom you had never seen five years ago, and you do not believe me who have lived in your house longer than you can remember!'

The eunuch said it so bitterly that the Pasha was touched in spite of himself. He had never been one to think very much about minor personal relations, but even at such a moment he could see--was it partly because he wanted more time to make up his mind?--that he had never liked Zumbul Agha as he liked Shaban, for instance. Yet more honor had been due, in the old family tradition, to the former. And he had been a.s.sociated even longer with the history of the house.

'My poor Zumbul,' he uttered musingly, 'you have never forgiven me for marrying her.'

'My Pasha, you are not the first to marry an unbeliever, nor the last.

But such a marriage should be to the glory of Islam, and not to its discredit. Who can trust her? She is still a Christian. And she is too young. She has turned the world upside down. What would your father have said to a daughter-in-law who goes shamelessly into the street without a veil, alone, and who receives in your house men who are no relation to you or her? It is not right. Women only understand one thing, to make fools of men. And they are never content to fool one.'

The Pasha, still waiting to make up his mind, let his fancy linger about Zumbul Agha. It was really rather absurd, after all, what a part women played in the world, and how little it all came to in the end! Did the black man, he wondered, walk in a clearer, cooler world, free of the clouds, the iridescences, the languors, the perfumes, the strange obsessions, that made others walk so often like madmen? Or might some tatter of preposterous humanity still work obscurely in him? Or a bitterness of not being like other men? That perhaps was why the Pasha felt friendlier toward Shaban. They were more alike.

'You are right, Zumbul Agha,' he said, 'the world is upside down. But neither the madama nor any of us made it so. All we can do is try and keep our heads as it turns. Now, will you please tell me how you happened to be up here? The madama never told you to come. You know perfectly well that the customs of Europe are different from ours, and that she does not like to have you follow her about.'

'What woman likes to be followed about?' retorted the eunuch with a sly smile. 'I know you have told me to leave her alone. But why was I brought into this house? Am I to stand by and watch dishonor brought upon it simply because you have eaten the poison of a woman?'

'Zumbul Agha,' replied the Pasha sharply, 'I am not discussing old and new or this and that, but I am asking you to tell me what all this speech is about.'

'Give me that key and I will show you what it is about,' said the eunuch, stepping forward.

But the Pasha found that he was not ready to go so directly to the point.

'Can't you answer a simple question?' he demanded irritably, retreating to the farther side of the fountain.

The reflection of the painted ceiling in the pool made him think of Helene--and Madame Pomegranate. He stared into the still water as if to find Helene's face there. Was any other face hidden beside it, mocking him?

But Zumbul Agha had begun again, doggedly:--

'I came here because it is my business to be here. I went to town this morning. When I got back they told me that you were away and that the madama was up here, alone. So I came. Is this a place for a woman to be alone in--a young woman, with men working all about, and I don't know who, and a thousand ways of getting in and out from the hills, and ten thousand hiding-places in the woods?'

The Pasha made a gesture of impatience, and turned away. But after all, what could one do with old Zumbul? He had been brought up in his tradition. The Pasha lighted another cigarette to help himself think.

'Well, I came up here,' continued the eunuch, 'and as I came I heard madama singing. You know how she sings the songs of the Franks.'

The Pasha knew. But he did not say anything. As he walked up and down, smoking and thinking, his eye caught in the pool a reflection from the other side of the room, where the door of the latticed room was, and where the cypress-wood chest stood as the servants had left it in the middle of the floor. Was that what Helene had stood looking at so long?

he asked himself. He wondered that he could have sat beside it so quietly. It seemed now like something dark and dangerous crouching there in the shadow of the little room.

'I sat down, under the terrace,' he heard the eunuch go on, 'where no one could see me, and I listened. And after she had stopped I heard--'

'Never mind what you heard,' broke in the Pasha. 'I have heard enough.'

He was ashamed--ashamed and resolved. He felt as if he had been playing the spy with Zumbul Agha. And after all, there was a simple way to answer his question for himself. He threw away his cigarette, went into the little room, bent over the chest, and fitted the key into the lock.

Just then a nightingale burst out singing, but so near and so loud that he started and looked over his shoulder. In an instant he collected himself, feeling the black man's eyes upon his. Yet he could not suppress the train of a.s.sociation started by the impa.s.sioned trilling of the bird, even as he began to turn the key of the chest where his mother used to keep her quaint old furs and embroideries. The irony of the contrast paralyzed his hand for a strange moment, and of the difference between this spring night and other spring nights when nightingales had sung. And what if, after all, only calamity were to come out of the chest, and he were to lose his last gift of hope? Ah! He knew at last what he would do! He quickly withdrew the key from the lock, stood up straight again, and looked at Zumbul Agha.

'Go down and get Shaban,' he ordered, 'and don't come back.'

The eunuch stared. But if he had anything to say, he concluded not to say it. He saluted silently and went away.

V

The Pasha sat down on the divan and lighted a cigarette. Almost immediately the nightingale stopped singing. For a few moments Zumbul Agha's steps could be heard outside. Then it became very still. The Pasha did not like it. Look which way he would, he could not help seeing the chest--or listening. He got up and went into the big room, where he turned on the water of the fountain. The falling drops made company for him, and kept him from looking for lost reflections. But they presently made him think of what Helene had said about them. He went out to the porch and sat down on the steps. In front of him the pines lifted their great dark canopies against the stars. Other stars twinkled between the trunks, far below, where the sh.o.r.e lights of the Bosphorus were.

It was so still that water sounds came faintly up to him, and every now and then he could even hear nightingales on the European side. Another nightingale began singing in his own woods--the same one that had told him what to do, he said to himself. What other things the nightingales had sung to him, years ago! And how long the pines had listened there, still strong and green and rugged and alive, while he, and how many before him, sat under them for a little while and then went away!

Presently he heard steps on the drive and Shaban came, carrying something dark in his hand.

'What is that?' asked the Pasha, as Shaban held it out.

'A revolver, my Pasha. Zumbul Agha told me you wanted it.'

The Pasha laughed curtly.

'Zumbul made a mistake. What I want is a shovel, or a couple of them.

Can you find such a thing without asking any one?'

'Yes, my Pasha,' replied the Albanian promptly, laying the revolver on the steps and disappearing again. And it was not long before he was back with the desired implements.

'We must dig a hole, somewhere, Shaban,' said his master in a low voice.

'It must be in a place where people are not likely to go, but not too far from the kiosque.'

Shaban immediately started toward the trees at the back of the house.

The Pasha followed him silently into a path that wound through the wood.

A nightingale began to sing again, very near them--_the_ nightingale, thought the Pasha.

'He is telling us where to go,' he said.

Shaban permitted himself a low laugh.

'I think he is telling his mistress where to go. However, we will go too.'

And they did, bearing away to one side of the path till they came to the foot of the tall cypress.

'This will do,' said the Pasha, 'if the roots are not in the way.'

Without a word Shaban began to dig. The Pasha took the other spade. To the simple Albanian it was nothing out of the ordinary. What was extraordinary was that his master was able to keep it up, soft as the loam was under the trees. The most difficult thing about it was that they could not see what they were doing, except by the light of an occasional match. But at last the Pasha judged the ragged excavation of sufficient depth. Then he led the way back to the kiosque.

They found Zumbul Agha in the little room, sitting on the sofa with a revolver in either hand.

'I thought I told you not to come back!' exclaimed the Pasha sternly.

'Yes,' faltered the old eunuch, 'but I was afraid something might happen to you. So I waited below the pines. And when you went away into the woods with Shaban, I came here to watch.' He lifted a revolver significantly. 'I found the other one on the steps.'