The Golden Silence Part 36

No veil hid her face, but folds of thin woollen stuff beautifully woven, and dyed blue, almost as dark as indigo, fell from her head nearly to her feet, over a loose robe of orange-red, cut low in the neck, with sleeves hiding the elbows. She looked towards the west, shading her eyes with her hand: and the sun near its setting streamed over her face and hair, chiselling her features in marble, brightening her auburn hair to fiery gold, giving her brown eyes the yellow tints of a topaz, or of the amber beads which hung in a long chain, as far down as her knees.

From the white roof many things could be seen besides the immense monotonous dunes along whose ridges orange fire seemed to play unceasingly against the sky.

There was the roof of the Zaoua mosque, with its low, white domes grouped round the minaret, as somewhere below the youngest boys of the school grouped round the taleb, or teacher. On the roof of the mosque ba.s.sourah frames were in the making, splendid ba.s.sourahs, which, when finished, would be the property of the great marabout, greatest of all living marabouts, lord of the Zaoua, lord of the desert and its people, as far as the eye could reach, and farther.

There were other roofs, too, bubbling among the labyrinth of square open courts and long, tunnel-like, covered and uncovered corridors which formed the immense, rambling Zaoua, or sacred school of Oued Tolga.

Things happened on these roofs which would have interested a stranger, for there was spinning of sheep's wool, making of men's burnouses, fashioning of robes for women, and embroidering of saddles; but the woman who looked towards the west with the sun in her eyes was tired of the life on sun-baked roofs and in shadowed courts.

The scent of orange blossoms in her own little high-walled garden came up to her; yet she had forgotten that it was sweet, for she had never loved it. The hum of the students' voices, faintly heard through the open-work of wrought-iron windows, rasped her nerves, for she had heard it too often; and she knew that the mysterious lessons, the lessons which puzzled her, and constantly aroused her curiosity, were never repeated aloud by the cla.s.ses, as were these everlasting chapters of the Koran.

Men sleeping on benches in the court of the mosque, under arches in the wall, waked and drank water out of bulging goatskins, hanging from huge hooks. Pilgrims washed their feet in the black marble basin of the trickling fountain, for soon it would be time for moghreb, the prayer of the evening.

Far away, eighteen miles distant across the sands, she could see the twenty thousand domes of Oued Tolga, the desert city which had taken its name from the older Zaoua, and the oued or river which ran between the sacred edifice on its golden hill, and the ugly toub-built village, raised above danger of floods on a foundation of palm trunks.

Far away the domes of the desert city shimmered like white fire in the strange light that hovers over the Sahara before the hour of sunset.

Behind those distant, dazzling bubbles of unearthly whiteness, the valley-like oases of the southern desert, El Souf, dimpled the yellow dunes here and there with basins of dark green. Near by, a little to the left of the Zaoua hill, such an oasis lay, and the woman on the white roof could look across a short stretch of sand, down into its green depths. She could watch the marabout's men repairing the sloping sand-walls with palm trunks, which kept them from caving in, and saved the precious date-palms from being engulfed in a yellow tide. It was the marabout's own private oasis, and brought him in a large income every year. But everything was the marabout's. The woman on the roof was sick to death of his riches, his honours, his importance, for she was the marabout's wife; and in these days she loved him as little as she loved the orange garden he had given her, and all the things that were hers because she was his.

It was very still in the Zaoua of Oued Tolga. The only sound was the droning of the boys' voices, which came faintly from behind iron window-gratings below, and that monotonous murmur emphasized the silence, as the humming of bees in a hive makes the stillness of a garden in summer more heavy and hot.

No noises came from the courts of the women's quarters, or those of the marabout's guests, and attendants, and servants; not a voice was raised in that more distant part of the Zaoua where the students lived, and where the poor were lodged and fed for charity's sake. No doubt the village, across the narrow river in its wide bed, was buzzing with life at this time of day; but seldom any sound there was loud enough to break the slumberous silence of the great Zaoua. And the singing of the men in the near oasis who fought the sand, the groaning of the well-cords woven of palm fibre which raised the buckets of hollowed palm-trunks, was as monotonous as the recitation of the Koran. The woman had heard it so often that she had long ago ceased to hear it at all.

She looked westward, across the river to the ugly village with the dried palm-leaves on its roofs, and far away to the white-domed city, the dimpling oases and the mountainous dunes that towered against a flaming sky; then eastward, towards the two vast desert lakes, or chotts, one of blue water, the other of saltpetre, which looked bluer than water, and had pale edges that met the sand like snow on gold. Above the lake of water suddenly appeared a soaring line of white, spreading and mounting higher, then turning from white to vivid rose. It was the flamingoes rising and flying over the chott, the one daily phenomenon of the desert which the woman on the roof still loved to watch. But her love for the rosy line against the blue was not entirely because of its beauty, though it was startlingly beautiful. It meant something for which she waited each evening with a pa.s.sionate beating of her heart under the orange-coloured robe and the chain of amber beads. It meant sunset and the coming of a message. But the doves on the green tiled minaret of the Zaoua mosque had not begun yet to dip and wheel. They would not stir from their repose until the muezzin climbed the steps to call the hour of evening prayer, and until they flew against the sunset the message could not come.

She must wait yet awhile. There was nothing to do till the time of hope for the message. There was never anything else that she cared to do through the long days from sunrise to sunset, unless the message gave her an incentive when it came.

In the river-bed, the women and young girls had not finished their washing, which was to them not so much labour as pleasure, since it gave them their opportunity for an outing and a gossip. In the bed of shining sand lay coloured stones like jewels, and the women knelt on them, beating wet bundles of scarlet and puce with palm branches. The watcher on the roof knew that they were laughing and chattering together though she could not hear them. She wondered dimly how many years it was since she had laughed, and said to herself that probably she would never laugh again, although she was still young, only twenty-eight. But that was almost old for a woman of the East. Those girls over there, wading knee-deep in the bright water to fill their goatskins and curious white clay jugs, would think her old. But they hardly knew of her existence.

She had married the great marabout, therefore she was a marabouta, or woman saint, merely because she was fortunate enough to be his wife, and too highly placed for them to think of as an earthly woman like themselves. What could it matter whether such a radiantly happy being were young or old? And she smiled a little as she imagined those poor creatures picturing her happiness. She pa.s.sed near them sometimes going to the Moorish baths, but the long blue drapery covered her face then, and she was guarded by veiled negresses and eunuchs. They looked her way reverently, but had never seen her face, perhaps did not know who she was, though no doubt they had all heard and gossipped about the romantic history of the new wife, the beautiful Ouled Nal, to whom the marabout had condescended because of her far-famed, her marvellous, almost incredible loveliness, which made her a consort worthy of a saint.

The river was a mirror this evening, reflecting the sunset of crimson and gold, and the young crescent moon fought for and devoured, then vomited forth again by strange black cloud-monsters. The old brown palm-trunks, on which the village was built, were repeated in the still water, and seemed to go down and down, as if their roots might reach to the other side of the world.

Over the crumbling doorways of the miserable houses bleached skulls and bones of animals were nailed for luck. The red light of the setting sun stained them as if with blood, and they were more than ever disgusting to the watcher on the white roof. They were the symbols of superst.i.tions the most Eastern and barbaric, ideas which she hated, as she was beginning to hate all Eastern things and people.

The streak of rose which meant a flock of flying flamingoes had faded out of the sky. The birds seemed to have vanished into the sunset, and hardly had they gone when the loud crystalline voice of the muezzin began calling the faithful to prayer. Work stopped for the day. The men and youths of the Zaoua climbed the worn stairs to the roof of the mosque, where, in their white turbans and burnouses, they prostrated themselves before Allah, going down on their faces as one man. The doves of the minaret--called Imams, because they never leave the mosque or cease to prostrate themselves, flying head downwards--began to wheel and cry plaintively. The moment when the message might come was here at last.

The white roof had a wall, which was low in places, in others very high, so high that no one standing behind it could be seen. This screen of whitewashed toub was arranged to hide persons on the roof from those on the roof of the mosque; but window-like openings had been made in it, filled in with mashrabeyah work of lace-like pattern; an art brought to Africa long ago by the Moors, after perfecting it in Granada. And this roof was not the only one thus screened and latticed. There was another, where watchers could also look down into the court of the fountain, at the carved doors taken from the Romans, and up to the roof of the mosque with all its little domes. From behind those other lace-like windows in the roof-wall, sparkled such eyes as only Ouled Nal girls can have; but the first watcher hated to think of those eyes and their wonderful fringe of black lashes. It was an insult to her that they should beautify this house, and she ignored their existence, though she had heard her negresses whispering about them.

While the faithful prayed, a few of the wheeling doves flew across from the mosque to the roof where the woman waited for a message. At her feet lay a small covered basket, from which she took a handful of grain. The dove Imams forgot their saintly manners in an unseemly scramble as the white hand scattered the seeds, and while they disputed with one another, complaining mournfully, another bird, flying straight to the roof from a distance, suddenly joined them. It was white, with feet like tiny branches of coral, whereas the doves from the mosque were grey, or burnished purple.

The woman had been pale, but when the bird fluttered down to rest on the open basket of grain, colour rushed to her face, as if she had been struck on each cheek with a rose. None of the doves of the mosque were tame enough to sit on the basket, which was close to her feet, though they sidled round it wistfully; but the white bird let her stroke its back with her fingers as it daintily pecked the yellow grains.

Very cautiously she untied a silk thread fastened to a feather under the bird's wing. As she did so it fluttered both wings as if stretching them in relief, and a tiny folded paper attached to the cord fell into the basket. Instantly the woman laid her hand over it. Then she looked quickly, without moving her head, towards the square opening at a corner of the roof where the stairway came up. No one was there. n.o.body could see her from the roof of the mosque, and her roof was higher than any of the others, except that which covered the private rooms of the marabout.

But the marabout was away, and no one ever came out on his roof when he was absent.

She opened the folded bit of white paper, which was little more than two inches square, and was covered on one side with writing almost microscopically small. The other side was blank, but the woman had no doubt that the letter was for her. As she read, the carrier-pigeon went on pecking at the seeds in the basket, and the doves of the mosque watched it enviously.

The writing was in French, and no name was at the beginning or the end.

"Be brave, my beautiful one, and dare to do as your heart prompts.

Remember, I worship you. Ever since that wonderful day when the wind blew aside your veil for an instant at the door of the Moorish bath, the whole world has been changed for me. I would die a thousand deaths if need be for the joy of rescuing you from your prison. Yet I do not wish to die. I wish to live, to take you far away and make you so happy that you will forget the wretchedness and failure of the past. A new life will begin for both of us, if you will only trust me, and forget the scruples of which you write--false scruples, believe me. As he had a wife living when he married you, and has taken another since, surely you cannot consider that you are bound by the law of G.o.d or man? Let me save you from the dragon, as fairy princesses were saved in days of old.

If I might speak with you, tell you all the arguments that constantly suggest themselves to my mind, you could not refuse. I have thought of more than one way, but dare not put my ideas on paper, lest some unlucky chance befall our little messenger. Soon I shall have perfected the cypher. Then there will not be the same danger. Perhaps to-morrow night I shall be able to send it. But meanwhile, for the sake of my love, give me a little hope. If you will try to arrange a meeting, to be settled definitely when the cypher is ready, twist three of those glorious threads of gold which you have for hair round the cord when you send the messenger back."

All the rosy colour had died away from the woman's face by the time she had finished reading the letter. She folded it again into a tiny square even smaller than before, and put it into one of the three or four little engraved silver boxes, made to hold texts from the Koran, which hung from her long amber necklace. Her eyes were very wide open, but she seemed to see nothing except some thought printed on her brain like a picture.

On the mosque roof a hundred men of the desert knelt praying in the sunset, their faces turned towards Mecca. Down in the fountain-court, the marabout's lazy tame lion rose from sleep and stretched himself, yawning as the clear voice of the muezzin chanted from the minaret the prayer of evening, "Allah Akbar, Allah il Allah, Mohammed r'soul Allah."

The woman did not know that she heard the prayer, for as her eyes saw a picture, so did her ears listen to a voice which she had heard only once, but desired beyond all things to hear again. To her it was the voice of a saviour-knight; the face she saw was glorious with the strength of manhood, and the light of love. Only to think of the voice and face made her feel that she was coming to life again, after lying dead and forgotten in a tomb for many years of silence.

Yes, she was alive now, for he had waked her from a sleep like death; but she was still in the tomb, and it seemed impossible to escape from it, even with the help of a saviour-knight. If she said "yes" to what he asked, as she was trying to make herself believe she had a moral and legal right to do, they would be found out and killed, that was all.

She was not brave. The la.s.situde which is a kind of spurious resignation poisons courage, or quenches it as water quenches fire. Although she hated her life, if it could be called life, had no pleasure in it, and had almost forgotten how to hope, still she was afraid of being violently struck down.

Not long ago a woman in the village had tried to leave her husband with a man she loved. The husband found out, and having shot the man before her eyes, stabbed her with many wounds, one for each traitorous kiss, according to the custom of the desert; not one knife-thrust deep enough to kill; but by and by she had died from the shock of horror, and loss of blood. n.o.body blamed the husband. He had done the thing which was right and just. And stories like this came often to the ears of the woman on the roof through her negresses, or from the attendants at the Moorish bath.

The man she loved would not be shot like the wretched Bedouin, who was of no importance except to her for whom his life was given; but something would happen. He would be taken ill with a strange disease, of which he would die after dreadful suffering; or at best his career would be ruined; for the greatest of all marabouts was a man of immense influence. Because of his religious vow to wear a mask always like a Touareg, none of the ruling race had ever seen the marabout's features, yet his power was known far and wide--in Morocco; all along the caravan route to Tombouctou; in the capital of the Touaregs; in Algiers; and even in Paris itself.

She reminded herself of these things, and at one moment her heart was like ice in her breast; but at the next, it was like a ball of fire; and pulling out three long bright hairs from her head, she twisted them round the cord which the carrier-pigeon had brought. Before tying it under his wing again, she scattered more yellow seeds for the dove Imams, because she did not want them to fly away until she was ready to let her messenger go. Thus there was the less danger that the carrier-pigeon would be noticed. Only Noura, her negress, knew of him.

Noura had smuggled him into the Zaoua, and she herself had trained him by giving him food that he liked, though his home was at Oued Tolga, the town.

The birds from the mosque had waited for their second supply, for the same programme had been carried out many times before, and they had learned to expect it.

When they finished scrambling for the grain which the white pigeon could afford to scorn, they fluttered back to the minaret, following a leader.

But the carrier flew away straight and far, his little body vanishing at last as if swallowed up in the gold of the sunset. For he went west, towards the white domes of Oued Tolga.

x.x.xIV

Still the woman stood looking after the bird, but the sun had dropped behind the dunes, and she no longer needed to shade her eyes with her hand. There was nothing more to expect till sunset to-morrow, when something might or might not happen. If no message came, then there would be only dullness and stagnation until the day when the Moorish bath was sacredly kept for the great ladies of the marabout's household.

There were but two of these, yet they never went to the bath together, nor had they ever met or spoken to one another. They were escorted to the bath by their attendants at different hours of the same day; and later their female servants were allowed to go, for no one but the women of the saintly house might use the baths that day.

The woman on the white roof in the midst of the golden silence gazed towards the west, though she looked for no event of interest; and her eyes fixed themselves mechanically upon a little caravan which moved along the yellow sand like a procession of black insects. She was so accustomed to search the desert since the days, long ago, when she had actually hoped for friends to come and take her away, that she could differentiate objects at greater distances than one less trained to observation. Hardly thinking of the caravan, she made out, nevertheless, that it consisted of two camels, carrying ba.s.sourahs, a horse and Arab rider, a brown pack camel, and a loaded mule, driven by two men who walked.

They had evidently come from Oued Tolga, or at least from that direction, therefore it was probable that their destination was the Zaoua; otherwise, as it was already late, they would have stopped in the city all night. Of course, it was possible that they were on their way to the village, but it was a poor place, inhabited by very poor people, many of them freed Negroes, who worked in the oases and lived mostly upon dates. No caravans ever went out from there, because no man, even the richest, owned more than one camel or donkey; and n.o.body came to stay, unless some son of the miserable hamlet, who had made a little money elsewhere, and returned to see his relatives. But on the other hand, numerous caravans arrived at the Zaoua of Oued Tolga, and hundreds of pilgrims from all parts of Islam were entertained as the marabout's guests, or as recipients of charity.

Dimly, as she detached her mind from the message she had sent, the woman began to wonder about this caravan, because of the ba.s.sourahs, which meant that there were women among the travellers. There were comparatively few women pilgrims to the Zaoua, except invalids from the town of Oued Tolga, or some Sahara encampment, who crawled on foot, or rode decrepit donkeys, hoping to be cured of ailments by the magic power of the marabout, the power of the Baraka. The woman who watched had learned by this time not to expect European tourists. She had lived for eight years in the Zaoua, and not once had she seen from her roof a European, except a French government-official or two, and a few--a very few--French officers. Never had any European women come. Tourists were usually satisfied with Touggourt, three or four days nearer civilisation. Women did not care to undertake an immense and fatiguing journey among the most formidable dunes of the desert, where there was nothing but ascending and descending, day after day; where camels sometimes broke their legs in the deep sand, winding along the fallen side of a mountainous dune, and where a horse often had to sit on his haunches, and slide with his rider down a sand precipice.

She herself had experienced all these difficulties, so long ago now that she had half forgotten how she had hated them, and the fate to which they were leading her. But she did not blame other women for not coming to Oued Tolga.

Occasionally some cad or agha of the far south would bring his wife who was ill or childless to be blessed by the marabout; and in old days they had been introduced to the marabouta, but it was years now since she had been asked, or even allowed, to entertain strangers. She thought, without any active interest, as she looked at the nodding ba.s.sourahs, growing larger and larger, that a chief was coming with his women, and that he would be disappointed to learn that the marabout was away from home. It was rather odd that the stranger had not been told in the city, for every one knew that the great man had gone a fortnight ago to the province of Oran. Several days must pa.s.s before he could return, even if, for any reason, he came sooner than he was expected. But it did not matter much to her, if there were to be visitors who would have the pain of waiting. There was plenty of accommodation for guests, and there were many servants whose special duty it was to care for strangers. She would not see the women in the ba.s.sourahs, nor hear of them unless some gossip reached her through the talk of the negresses.

Still, as there was nothing else which she wished to do, she continued to watch the caravan.

By and by it pa.s.sed out of sight, behind the rising ground on which the village huddled, with its crowding brown house-walls that narrowed towards the roofs. The woman almost forgot it, until it appeared again, to the left of the village, where palm logs had been laid in the river bed, making a kind of rough bridge, only covered when the river was in flood. It was certain now that the travellers were coming to the Zaoua.

The flame of the sunset had died, though clouds purple as pansies flowered in the west. The gold of the dunes paled to silver, and the desert grew sad, as if it mourned for a day that would never live again.

Far away, near Oued Tolga, where the white domes of the city and the green domes of the oasis palms all blended together in shadow, fires sprang up in the camps of nomads, like signals of danger.