I did not know if the Jew was just making a crude jest, but I was not confronted by any large and ill- tempered Hunzik man between Shimon’s place and the karwansarai. To avoid any such confrontation, I stayed prudently close to the inn’s main building for the next few days, listening, in company with my father or uncle, to the various bits of advice dispensed by the landlord Iqbal.
When we loudly praised the good milk given by the cow yaks, and loudly marveled at the bravery of the Bho who dared to milk those monsters, Iqbal told us, “There is a simple trick to milking a cow yak without hazard. Only give her a calf to lick and nuzzle, and she will stand still and serene while it is being done.”
But not all the information we got at that time was welcome. The Hakim Mimdad came again to confer with Uncle Mafio, and began by suggesting gravely that it be done in private. My father and Nostril and I were present, and we got up to leave the chamber, but my uncle stopped us with a peremptory flap of his hand.
“I do not keep secret any matters that may eventually concern my karwan partners. Whatever you have to tell, you may tell us all.”
The hakim shrugged. “Then, if you will drop your pai-jamah …”
My uncle did, and the hakim eyed his bare crotch and big zab. “The hairlessness, is that natural or do you shave yourself there?”
“I take it off with a salve called mumum. Why?”
“Without the hair, the discoloration is easy to see,” said the hakim, pointing. “Look down at your abdomen. You see that metallic gray tinge to the skin there?”
My uncle looked, and so did all of us. He asked, “Caused by the mumum?”
“No,” said Hakim Mimdad. “I noticed the lividity also on the skin of your hands. When next you remove your chamus boots, you will see it on your feet as well. These manifestations tend to confirm what I suspected from my earlier examination and from observation of your urine. Here, I have poured it into a white jar so you may observe for yourself. The smoky color of it.”
“So?” said Uncle Mafio, as he reclothed himself. “Perhaps I had been dining on the colored pilaf that day. I do not remember.”
The hakim shook his head, slowly but positively. “I have seen too many other signs, as I said. Your fingernails are opaque. Your hair is brittle and breaks easily. There is only one other confirming sign I have not seen, but you must have it somewhere on your body. A gummatous small sore that refuses to heal.”
Uncle Mafio looked at him as if the hakim had been a sorcerer, and said in awe, “A fly bite, away back in Kashan. A mere fly bite, no more.”
“Show me.”
My uncle rolled up his left sleeve. Near his elbow was an angry and shiny red spot. The hakim leaned to peer at it, saying, “Tell me if I am wrong. Where the fly first bit, the bite healed and a small scar formed, in the natural manner. But then the sore erupted anew beyond the scar, and then healed again, and then erupted again, always beyond the old scar …”
“You are not wrong,” my uncle said weakly. “What does it mean?”
“It confirms my conclusion diagnostic—that you are suffering from the kala-azar. The black sickness, the evil sickness. It does indeed proceed from the bite of a fly. But that fly is, of course, the incarnation of an evil jinni. A jinni who cunningly takes the form of a fly so small that it would hardly be suspected of bearing so much harm.”
“Oh, not so much that I cannot bear it. Some mottled skin, some coughing, a little fever, a little sore …”
“But unhappily it will not for long be not so much. The manifestations will multiply, and worsen. Your brittle hair will break and you will go bald all over. The fever will bring emaciation and asthenia and lassitude, until you have no will to move at all. The pain below your breast bone proceeds from the organ called your spleen. That will hurt even more, and begin to bulge frighteningly outward, as it hardens and loses all function. Meanwhile, the lividity will spread over your skin, and it will darken to black, and it will pouch out into gummata and blebs and furuncles and squamations until your entire body—including your face—resembles one great bunch of black raisins. By then, you will be ardently wishing to die. And die you will, when your splenic functions fail. Without immediate and continuing treatment, you are sure to die.”
“But there is a treatment?”
“Yes. This is it.” Hakim Mimdad produced a small cloth sack. “This medicament consists principally of a fine- powdered metal, a trituration of the metal called stibium. It is a sure vanquisher of the jinni and a sure cure for the kala-azar. If you start now to take this, in exceedingly minute amounts, and go on taking it as I prescribe, you will soon start to improve. You will regain the weight you have lost. Your strength will return. You will be again in the best of health. But this stibium is the only cure.”
“Well? Only one cure is needed, surely. I will gladly settle for the one.”
“I regret to tell you that the stibium, while it arrests the kala-azar, is itself physically harmful in another particular.” He paused. “Are you sure you would not prefer to continue this consultation in private?”
Uncle Mafio hesitated, glancing about at us, but squared his shoulders and growled, “Whatever it is, tell it.”
“Stibium is a heavy metal. When it is ingested, it settles downward from the stomach into the splanchnic area, working its beneficial effects as it goes, subduing the jinni of the kala-azar. But being heavy, it precipitates into the lower part of the body, which is to say the bag containing the virile stones.”
“So my cod dangles heavier. I am strong enough to carry it.”
“I assume that you are a man who enjoys, er, exercising it. Now that you are afflicted with the black sickness, there is no time to waste. If you do not yet have a lady friend in this locality, I recommend that you hie yourself to the local brothel maintained by the Jew Shimon.”
Uncle Mafio barked a laugh, which perhaps I or my father could better interpret than the Hakim Mimdad. “I fail to see the connection. Why should I do that?”
“To indulge your virile capability while you can. Were I you, Mirza Mafio, I should hasten to make all the zina I could. You are doomed either to be horribly disfigured by the kala-azar, and eventually to die of it—or, if you are to be cured and kept alive, you must begin immediately taking the stibium.”
“What do you mean,
“Think on it. Some would rather die of the black sickness.”
“In the name of God, why? Speak plainly, man!”
“Because the stibium, settling in your scrotum, will instantly start exercising its other and deleterious effect —of petrifying your testicles. Very soon, and for the rest of your life, you will be totally impotent.”
“Gesu.”
No one else said anything. There was a terrible silence in the room, and it seemed that no one wished to brave the breaking of it. Finally Uncle Mafio spoke again himself, saying ruefully:
“I called you Dotor Balanzon, little realizing how truly I spoke. That you would indeed present me with a mordant jest. Giving me such a comical choice: that I die miserably or I live unmanned.”
“That is the choice. And the decision cannot be long postponed.”
“I will be a eunuch?”
“In effect, yes.”
“No capability?”
“None.”
“But … perhaps … dar mafa’ul be-vasile al-badam?”
“Nakher. The badam, the so-called third testicle, also gets petrified.”
“No way at all, then. Capon mal capona. But … desire?”
“Nakher. Not even that.”
“Ah, well!” Uncle Mafio surprised us all by sounding as jovial as ever. “Why did you not say that at the first? What matter if I cannot function, if I shall not even want to? Why, think of it! No desire—therefore no need, therefore no nuisance, therefore no complicated aftermath. I ought to be the envy of every priest ever tempted by a woman or a choirboy or a succubo.” I decided that Uncle Mafio was not really so jovial as he was trying to sound. “And after all, not many of my desires could ever have been realized, anyway. My most recent one dwindled away in a trembling land. So it is fortunate that this jinni of castration assailed only me and not someone of worthier desires.” He barked another laugh, with that horrid false joviality. “But listen to me—raving and maundering. If I am not careful, I may even become a moral philosopher, the last refuge of eunuchdom. God forfend. A moralist is more
