The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan Part 24

"Am I a fool," answered the old man, "that I should dislike it? Say what it is."

"Softly, my friend," remarked the eunuch; "we must go on slow and sure.

Will you suffer yourself to be led blindfolded at midnight wherever I choose to take you, for a job?"

"That's another question," said Babadul; "times are critical, heads fly in abundance, and a poor tailor's may go as well as a vizier's or a capitan pacha's. But pay me well, and I believe I would make a suit of clothes for Eblis, the foul fiend, himself."

"Well, then, you agree to my proposal?" said the eunuch, who at the same time put two pieces of gold in his hand.

"Yes, most surely," said Babadul, "I agree. Tell me what I am to do, and you may depend upon me."

Accordingly they settled between them that the eunuch was to come to the stall at midnight, and lead him away blindfolded.

Babadul, being left alone, continued his work, wondering what could be the job upon which he was to be so mysteriously employed; and, anxious to make his wife partaker of the news of his good luck, he shut up his stall earlier than usual, and went to his house, that was situated not far from the little mosque in the fish-market, of which he was the muezzin.

Old Dilferib, his wife, was almost as much bent double as her husband; and in consequence of the two gold pieces, and contemplation of more which they expected to receive, they treated themselves to a dish of smoking kabobs, a salad, dried grapes, and sweetmeats, after which they consoled themselves with some of the hottest and most bitter coffee which the old woman could make.

True to his appointment, Babadul was at his stall at midnight, where he was as punctually met by Mansouri. Without any words, the former permitted himself to be blindfolded, whilst the latter led him away by the hand, making many and devious turns, until they reached the imperial seraglio; there, stopping only to open the private iron gate, Mansouri introduced the tailor into the very heart of the sultan's private apartments. The bandage over his eyes was taken off in a dark chamber, lighted up only by a small lamp, which stood on the shelf surrounding the top of the room, but which was splendidly furnished by sofas of the richest brocade, and by carpets of the most costly manufacture. Here Babadul was commanded to sit, until Mansouri returned with a bundle, wrapped in a large shawl handkerchief: this being opened, a sort of dervish's dress was displayed to the tailor, and he was requested to look at it, to consider how long he would be making such a one, and then to return it again, duly folded up, to its shawl covering. In the meanwhile, Mansouri told him to stay there until he should return to take him away again, and then left him.

Babadul, having turned the dress over and over again, calculated each st.i.tch, and, come to his proper conclusions, packed it up in the handkerchief, as he had been commanded; but no sooner had he done this than a man of lofty demeanour and appearance, whose look made the poor tailor shrink within himself, came into the room, took up the bundle, and walked away with it, without uttering a single word.

A few minutes after, as Babadul was pondering over the strangeness of his situation, and just recovering from the effects of this apparition, a door opened in another part of the apartment, and a mysterious figure, richly dressed, came in, bearing a bundle, equally covered with a shawl, about the size of that which had just been taken away; and making the lowest prostrations before the tailor, in great apparent trepidation, approached him, placed it at his feet, kissed the ground, and retreated without saying a word, or even looking up.

"Well," said Babadul to himself: "this may be something very fine, and I may be some very great personage, for aught I know; but this is very certain, that I had rather be patching my old cloak in the stall than doing this job, however grand and lucrative it may be. Who knows what I may have been brought here for? These comings in and goings out of strange-looking people, apparently without tongues in their heads, do not argue well. I wish they would give me fewer bows and a greater supply of words, from which I might learn what I am to get by all this.

I have heard of poor women having been sewn up in sacks and thrown into the sea. Who knows? perhaps I am destined to be the tailor on such an occasion."

He had scarcely got thus far in his soliloquy when the slave Mansouri re-entered the room and told him, without more words, to take up the bundle; which having done, his eyes were again blindfolded, and he was led to the spot from whence he came. Babadul, true to his agreement, asked no questions, but agreed with the slave that in three days the dress should be ready for delivery at his stall for which he was to receive ten more pieces of gold.

Having got rid of his companion, he proceeded with all haste to his house, where he knew his wife would be impatiently waiting his return; and as he walked onwards he congratulated himself that at length he had succeeded in getting indeed a job worth the having, and that his fate had finally turned up something good for his old age. It was about two o'clock in the morning when he reached the door of his house. He was received by his wife with expressions of great impatience at his long absence; but when he held up the bundle to her face, as she held up the lamp to his, and when he said, "_Mujdeh_, give me a reward for good news:--see, I have got my work, and a handsome reward we shall get when it is finished," she was all smiles and good humour.

"Leave it there till we get up, and let us go to bed now," said the tailor.

"No, no," said the wife, "I must look at what you have got before I retire, or I shall not be able to sleep": upon which, whilst he held up the lamp she opened the bundle. Guess, guess at the astonishment of the tailor and his wife, when, instead of seeing a suit of clothes, they discovered, wrapped in a napkin, in its most horrid and ghastly state, a human head!

It fell from the old woman's hands and rolled away some paces, whilst the horror-struck couple first hid their faces with their hands, and then looked at each other with countenances which nothing can describe.

"Work!" cried the wife, "work, indeed! pretty work you have made of it!

Was it necessary to go so far, and to take such precautions, to bring this misfortune on our heads? Did you bring home this dead man's head to make a suit of clothes of?"

"_Anna senna! Baba senna!_ Curses be on his mother! Perdition seize his father!" exclaimed the poor tailor, "for bringing me into this dilemma.

My heart misgave me as that dog of a eunuch talked of blindfolding and silence to me: I thought, as true as I am a Turk, that the job could not consist only in making a suit of clothes; and sure enough this dog's son has tacked a head to it. Allah! Allah! what am I to do now? I know not the way to his home, or else I would take it back to him immediately, and throw it in his face. We shall have the bostangi bashi and a hundred other bashis here in a minute, and we shall be made to pay the price of blood; or, who knows, be hanged, or drowned, or impaled! What shall we do, eh, Dilferib, my soul, say?"

"Do?" said his wife; "get rid of the head, to be sure: we have no more right to have it palmed upon us than anybody else."

"But the day will soon dawn," said the tailor, "and then it will be too late. Let us be doing something at once."

"A thought has struck me," said the old woman. "Our neighbour, the baker, Ha.s.san, heats his oven at this hour, and begins soon after to bake his bread for his morning's customers. He frequently has different sorts of things to bake from the neighbouring houses, which are placed near the oven's mouth over-night: suppose I put this head into one of our earthen pots and send it to be baked; no body will find it out until it is done, and then we need not send for it, so it will remain on the baker's hands."

Babadul admired his wife's sagacity, and forthwith she put her plan into execution. When the head had been placed in a baking-pan, she watched a moment when n.o.body was at hand, and set it on the ground, in the same row with the other articles that were to be inserted in Ha.s.san's oven.

The old couple then double-barred the door of their house, and retired to rest, comforting themselves with the acquisition of the fine shawl and napkin in which the head had been wrapped.

The baker Ha.s.san and his son Mahmud were heating their oven, inserting therein thorns, chips, and old rubbish at a great rate, when their attention was arrested by the extraordinary whinings and barking of a dog, that was a constant customer at the oven for stray bits of bread, and much befriended by Ha.s.san and his son, who were noted for being conscientious Mussulmans.

"Look, Mahmud," said the father to the son, "see what is the matter with the dog: something extraordinary is in the wind."

The son did what his father bade him, and seeing no reason for the dog's noises, said, "_Bir chey yok_, there is nothing," and drove him away.

But the howlings not ceasing, Ha.s.san went himself, and found the dog most extremely intent upon smelling and pointing at the tailor's pipkin.

He jumped upon Ha.s.san, then at the pot, then upon Ha.s.san again, until the baker no longer doubted that the beast took great interest in its contents. He therefore gently drew off the lid, when need I mention his horror and surprise at seeing a human head staring him in the face?

"Allah! Allah!" cried the baker; but being a man of strong nerves, instead of letting it fall, as most people would have done, he quietly put on the lid again, and called his son to him.

"Mahmud," said he, "this is a bad world, and there are bad men in it.

Some wicked infidel has sent a man's head to bake; but thanks to our good fortune, and to the dog, our oven has been saved from pollution, and we can go on making our bread with clean hands and clear consciences. But since the devil is at work, let others have a visit from him as well as ourselves. If it be known that we have had a dead man's head to bake, who will ever employ us again? we must starve, we must shut up our oven; we shall get the reputation of mixing up our dough with human grease, and if perchance a hair is found, it will immediately be said that it came from the dead man's beard."

Mahmud, a youth of about twenty, who partook of his father's insensibility and coolness, and who, moreover, had a great deal of dry humour and ready wit, looked upon the incident in the light of a good joke, and broke out into a hearty laugh when he saw the ugly picture which the grinning head made, set in its earthen frame.

"Let us pop it into the shop of Kior Ali, the barber, opposite," said the youth; "he is just beginning to open it, and as he has but one eye, we shall be better able to do so without being seen. Do, father," said Mahmud, "let me; n.o.body shall discover me; and let it be done before there is more daylight."

The father consented; and Mahmud catching the moment when the barber had walked to the corner of the street to perform certain ablutions, stepped into his shop, and placed the head on a sort of takcheh, or bracket on the wall, arranged some shaving towels about it, as if it had been a customer ready seated to be shaved, and, with a boy's mischief in his heart, stepped back to his oven again, to watch the effects which this new sort of customer would have upon the blind barber.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ??O mercy! mercy!? cried Kior Ali?. 24.jpg]

Kior Ali hobbled into his shop, which was but ill lighted by a glimmering of daylight that hardly pierced through the oil-papered windows, and looking about him, saw this figure, as he supposed, seated against the wall ready to be operated upon.

"Ha! peace be unto you!" said he to it: "you are rather early this morning; I did not see you at first. My water is not yet hot. Oh, I see you want your head shaved! but why do you take off your _fese_ (skull-cap) so soon? you will catch cold." Then he paused. "No answer,"

said the barber to himself. "I suppose he is dumb, and deaf too perhaps.

Well, I am half blind: so we are nearly upon equal terms: however, if I were even to lose my other eye," addressing himself to the head, "I dare say, my old uncle, I could shave you for all that; for my razor would glide as naturally over your head, as a draught of good wine does over my throat."

He went methodically about his preparations; he took down his tin basin from a peg, prepared his soap, then stropped his razor on the long bit of leather that was fastened to his girdle. Having made his lather, he walked up to the supposed customer, holding the basin in his left hand, whilst his right was extended to sprinkle the first preparation of water on the sconce. No sooner had he placed his hand on the cold head, than he withdrew it, as if he had been burnt. "Eh! why, what's the matter with you, friend?" said the barber; "you are as cold as a piece of ice."

But when he attempted a second time to lather it, down it came with a terrible bounce from the shelf to the floor, and made the poor shaver jump quite across his shop with the fright.

"Aman! aman! O mercy, mercy!" cried Kior Ali, as he thrust himself into the furthermost corner without daring to move: "take my shop, my razors, my towels,--take all I have; but don't touch my life! If you are the Shaitan, speak; but excuse my shaving you!"

But when he found that all was hushed after the catastrophe, and that nothing was to be feared, he approached the head and taking it up by the lock of hair at the top, he looked at it in amazement. "A head, by all the Imams!" said he, accosting it: "and how did you get here? Do you want to disgrace me, you filthy piece of flesh? but you shall not!

Although Kior Ali has lost one eye, yet his other is a sharp one, and knows what it is about. I would give you to the baker Ha.s.san there, if his rogue of a son, who is now looking this way, was not even sharper than this self-same eye; but now I think of it, I will take you where you can do no harm. The Giaour Yanaki, the Greek _kabobchi_ [80] (roast meat man), shall have you, and shall cut you up into mincemeat for his infidel customers." Upon this Kior Ali, drawing in one hand, in which he carried the head, through the slit on the sides of his _beniche_, or cloak, and taking up his pipe in the other, he walked down two streets to the shop of the aforesaid Greek.

He frequented it in preference to that if a Mussulman, because he could here drink wine with impunity. From long practice he knew precisely where the provision of fresh meat was kept, and as he entered the shop, casting his eye furtively round, he threw the head in a dark corner, behind one of the large sides of a sheep that was to be used for the kabobs if the day. No one saw him perform this feat; for the morning was still sufficiently obscure to screen him. He lighted his pipe at Yanaki's charcoal fire, and as a pretext for his visit, ordered a dish of meat to be sent to him for breakfast; a treat to which he thought himself fully ent.i.tled after his morning's adventure.

Yanaki, meanwhile, having cleaned his platters, put his skewers in order, lit his fires, made his sherbets, and swept out his shop, went to the larder for some meat for the shaver's breakfast. Yanaki was a true Greek:--cunning, cautious, deceitful; cringing to his superiors, tyrannical towards his inferiors; detesting with a mortal hatred his proud masters, the Osmanlies, yet fawning, flattering, and abject whenever any of them, however low in life, deigned to take notice of him. Turning over his stock, he looked about for some old bits that might serve the present purpose, muttering to himself that any carrion was good enough for a Turk's stomach. He surveyed his half sheep from top to bottom; felt it, and said, "No, this will keep"; but as he turned up its fat tail, the eye of the dead man's head caught his eye, and made him start, and step back some paces. "As ye love your eyes," exclaimed he, "who is there?" Receiving no answer, he looked again, and again; then nearer, then, thrusting his hand among sheep's heads and trotters, old remnants of meat, and the like, he pulled out the head--the horrid head--which he held extended at arm's length, as if he were afraid it would do him mischief. "Anathemas attend your beard!" exclaimed Yanaki, as soon as he discovered, by the tuft of hair on the top, that it had belonged to a Mussulman, "Och! if I had but every one of your heads in this manner, ye cursed race of Omar! I would make kabobs of them, and every cur in Constantinople should get fat for nothing. May ye all come to this end! May the vultures feed on your carca.s.ses! and may every Greek have the good fortune which has befallen me this day, of having one of your worthless skulls for his football!" Upon which, in his rage, he threw it down and kicked it from him; but recollecting himself he said, "But, after all, what shall I do with it? If it is seen here, I am lost for ever: n.o.body will believe but what I have killed a Turk."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ?To where the dead body of a Jew lay extended.? 25.jpg]

All of a sudden he cried out, in a sort of malicious ecstasy, "'Tis well I remembered,--the Jew! the Jew!--a properer place for such a head was never thought or heard of; and there you shall go, thou vile remnant of a Mahomedan!"

Upon which he seized it, and hiding it under his coat, ran with it down the street to where the dead body of a Jew lay extended, with its head placed immediately between its legs.

In Turkey, you must know, when a Mahomedan is beheaded, his head is placed under his arm, by way of an honourable distinction from the Christian or Jew, who, when a similar misfortune befalls them, have theirs inserted between their legs, as close to the seat of dishonour as possible.

It was in that situation then that Yanaki placed the Turk's head, putting it as near, cheek by jowl, with the Jew's, as the hurry of the case would allow. He had been able to effect this without being seen, because the day was still but little advanced, and no one stirring; and he returned to his shop, full of exultation at having been able to discharge his feelings of hatred against his oppressors, by placing one of their heads on the spot in nature, which, according to his estimation, was the most teeming with opprobrium.