Pretty Michal Part 20

"Fear nothing! Ibrahim sleeps soundly. I have mixed opium with his tobacco. If you fired off cannons close to his ear he would not awake. We might kiss each other over his body, and still he would not awake."

Valentine made as though he did not understand.

Then Jigerdilla began to sing a popular ballad all about love. Even in those times such ditties used to be sung, but on the sly, in the woods or the meadows; for within the walled cities the clergy forbade them, preached whole series of sermons against them, called them "flower songs," said that they only served to corrupt good manners.

And it certainly is very strange what liberties are taken in singing. If a gentleman said to a pretty woman in simple prose, "My dear, prithee give me a couple of kisses!" she would, there and then, give him an answer with her hand which would make his eyes flash fire; but if he sang the self-same sentence in an elegant manner, the lady would forthwith sit her down at the piano and play the accompaniment. And, again, if a pretty woman were to say to a gentleman, in the presence of her husband, "Taste and see how sweet my kiss is!" the husband would instantly cry vengeance, and send for sword and pistols; but when madame sings the same words in a fine soprano voice before a whole roomful of people, the husband himself is the first to applaud and cry, "Da capo!"

And Jigerdilla could sing those enticing songs so seductively that it was impossible to listen to her and remain cold.

But Valentine manfully hardened his heart, and would not accompany her.

"Can't you sing these songs, then?" asked Jigerdilla derisively.

"I know one or two of them, and have sung them quite often enough.

It was for nothing but that that I was expelled from college. But I have vowed that not a single flower song shall cross my lips so long as I am in captivity."

The Turk had in his garden a fine and costly plum tree, and in those days plum trees were accounted curiosities. The fruit upon it was round and red as a rose. Gardeners call them bonameras.

Ibrahim was proud of this tree. He had told Valentine beforehand, that if he dared to pluck a single plum, he would break every bone in his body. He had destined all the fruit for the table of the pasha.

One afternoon, Jigerdilla again accompanied her lord into the garden. She again mingled opium with his tobacco so as to make him dead-drunk, and then, as Valentine still refused to sing a flower song with her, she threw herself on the gra.s.s in a pet, and pretended to fall asleep.

The sun was shining fiercely, and so great was Valentine's thirst that his tongue cleaved to the very roof of his mouth. The grapes he dare not touch, for their juice left a black stain behind it, but the rosy red plums smiled at him so enticingly. They, at any rate, were not numbered. So fancying that no one saw him, he ventured to steal up to the tree, drew down a branch, and ate of the plums that were reserved for the pasha's table.

"The pasha would get the fever if he ate so many. Why should he have them all?"

Suddenly he heard behind him a mocking peal of laughter--Jigerdilla had been on the watch all the time--and in his terror he started back so violently, that he snapped off the branch of the plum tree which he had pulled down toward him.

"Ha, ha, Valentine! Now you can look forward to something pleasant."

Back he went to his work very much ashamed, and he now worked with such zeal that he finished in one hour what it usually took him two to do. But Jigerdilla gave him no peace. She made ribald songs upon him, pelted him with green nuts, and mocked him in all sorts of ways.

And Valentine felt just like a child who has been naughty and expects to be beaten for it. The Turk had often said that he would not give a branch of this tree for a hundred denarii. How many blows with a whip would he reckon to a denarius?

When it was evening the butcher awoke. He fell to drinking again, and he drank so much that his wife and his slave had to prop him up on his way back to the house.

As he pa.s.sed by the bonamera tree, he perceived that a branch had been broken off.

At this sight he immediately became quite sober.

"Who did that?" he roared, tearing his whip from his girdle, while his eyes rolled about as if he were the brother of the hippopotamus whose hide had supplied the lashes of his whip.

But before Valentine could say a word, Jigerdilla had already exclaimed:

"I did it. What does it matter if there be one paltry branch more or less?"

The only misfortune which happened in consequence was this: Ibrahim raised his whip without more ado, and belabored the back of his dear wife with the full force of his fury, and perhaps he would have flayed her from her head to her heels had he not accidently stumbled and fallen on his nose, when the blood spurted out so violently that he had enough to do to stop it till he got home.

But in the meantime, Jigerdilla had endured sufficient stripes to convince Valentine that hot indeed must be the pa.s.sion felt for him by this woman, who was ready to take a slave's fault on her own shoulders, and suffer the punishment which ought to have been his.

At noon, next day, all three went into the vineyard together.

When Ibrahim had gone to sleep as usual, Jigerdilla called Valentine to her.

"I still feel sore from yesterday's stripes," she said. Then she gave him a silver box of ointment.

"I can't reach the wounds on my shoulder. Rub them for me with this balsam."

With that she let her dress glide down over her shoulders so that Valentine could see her naked, snow-white neck and back; but he also saw great red wheals, as thick as his finger, stretching right across the velvety skin.

Valentine rubbed them well with the fragrant balsam, and then asked Jigerdilla if her wounds felt a little easier.

"I should get well much more quickly if only you would kiss them!"

Valentine recoiled at these words.

"How should I kiss the shoulders of a strange woman who is also my master's wife?"

"Your master is sleeping, he sees nothing."

"But G.o.d sees."

The Turkish lady looked around in astonishment.

"I see no one!"

"G.o.d is present everywhere, though invisible."

"If He is invisible, His whip must also be invisible, and He therefore cannot beat me with it."

"Nay, but His invisible whip can beat right sorely. Look at me! I have not done but only thought of doing something which G.o.d forbids, and for that one sin I now bear these fetters."

"I would take off your chains every night. I know where Ibrahim keeps the keys of them--in his girdle. You shall only be a slave by day. At night you shall be free, and the ransom would not be dear, we could easily agree about it; you could pay it off in kisses."

"But that would be a sin before G.o.d!"

"How can it offend G.o.d if a man kisses a woman?"

"Because that would be breaking His commandment, which forbids a man to l.u.s.t after that which belongs to another."

"Come now, tell me!" cried Jigerdilla, suddenly giving another turn to the conversation, "how could you quietly look on yesterday, while Ibrahim whipped me instead of you? Why did you not seize his arm and confess that it was you who did the mischief?"

"I'll tell you why. I did not keep silence for fear of the blows, but because I was afraid that Ibrahim would have killed you if I had told the truth."

"And what made you fear that Ibrahim would have killed me?"

"Because you took my fault on your shoulders."