Arslan

always had about half a dozen different books in process, scattered around the house. Arslan seemed to pick up whichever one was handiest. Most of them came out of my bookcases, and to tell the truth I was surprised to be reminded of what all I had on hand. They read Shakespeare, and Shaw, and Oscar Wilde, and an old manual of beekeeping, and Stories of the Great Operas, and the introductions to Luella’s cookbooks, and Paradise Lost, and (so help me God) Fowler’s Dictionary of English Usage from cover to cover, and books on vegetable gardening and evolution and hunting rifles, and Moby Dick, and Nietzsche, and the Bible. Those were all from my shelves, and so were the old histories: Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico, and Cook’s Voyages, and a few volumes left from a nineteen-hundred set of histories of the principal nations of the world. The books that Arslan produced from somewhere were mostly histories, too, but modern ones, and technical works on electronics, medicine, biology.

And it was this hodgepodge that Hunt read day by day, sitting a little hunched with the book on his knees, never looking up except for occasional furtive glances at Arslan, and all the life of his young body and soul concentrated in his voice.

Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,

Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat

That we must change for Heav’n, this mournful gloom

For that celestial light? Be it so, since he

Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid

What shall be right.

And as Hunt read, Arslan listened. Sometimes his eyes would take on a tranced expression, his eyelids would droop, and he would look, for the time being, genuinely Oriental.

For we cannot call it reasoning to make pain a

presumption of death, while, in fact, it is rather a

sign of life. For though it be a question whether that

which suffers can continue to live for ever, yet it is

certain that everything which suffers pain does live,

and that pain can exist only in a living subject.

Meanwhile, if it was one of his irregular mealtimes, he would be chewing slowly, seeming to consider and savor every mouthful. He liked to eat like a Roman emperor, reclining on the living-room couch, with his meal on the coffee table. Chairs certainly weren’t invented for Arslan. If he wasn’t standing up, or riding something, he was sure to be stretched out somewhere.

His movement was prompt and his hand heavy;

the staff of Ivan IV. seems to have passed into his grasp.

We have seen him strike with his cane the greatest

lords, Prince Menchikof among the number. He bent

to his will men, things, nature, and time; he realized

his end by despotic blows.

Or he would be leaning back in my armchair beside the kitchen sink, in the blissful trance of a hot shave, the little orderly operating with all the grim delicacy of a brain surgeon. And Arslan would look like a petted cat.

Locks so grey did never grow but from out some

ashes! But do I look very old, so very, very old,

Starbuck? I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped,

as though I was Adam, staggering beneath the piled

centuries since Paradise.

It was strange fare for a Turkistani general. He never commented, never asked questions; and, almost always, he was doing something else while he listened. But he listened. Sometimes a passage would make him smile. More often, he would turn his snake’s eyes abruptly on Hunt, with an expressionless spotlight intensity that it almost hurt to watch. Hunt seemed to feel it, always; a flush would start upward from his neck, and his voice would burn all the more earnestly. But those were never the times when he stole his glances at Arslan.

His mother had been after me all along to arrange some way for her to talk to Hunt. She had lost weight, and she’d never had a lot to spare. Her freckled face was pinched and grim, but she went about business as briskly as ever. On my way to Nizam’s—or more often on my way back, because I’d be in better humor—she would waylay me. “Any chance, Franklin?”

“Nothing new, Jean, but you know there’s always a chance.”

What was less common was for me to hear anything from her husband. Arnold Morgan was generally considered the best attorney in town, or anyway the sharpest, and in my opinion he’d raised a fine son; but I didn’t think any the better of him for the way he was acting now.

I caught up with him one day just coming out of his office. Business was still being conducted, Arslan or no Arslan. A lot of legal requirements were in abeyance, for lack of a government, and we weren’t allowed to hold court, but there was still plenty to keep the lawyers busy. “Hello, Arnold.” I slowed down to fall into step beside him, and he looked a little annoyed.

“Good afternoon, Franklin. How’s it going?”

“Not too bad.” I waited; sooner or later he would have to ask about his son.

“Of course, Jean keeps us pretty well posted about Hunt,” he said reluctantly, “and I know he’s in good hands at your house. The best thing we can do for him now is not make waves.”

“He’s in General Arslan’s hands,” I said.

He threw a furious look at me and checked himself. “Fortunately, Hunt has been brought up to think for himself. He’s a very mature boy.” He settled his hat more firmly on his head, and added, “All this must be pretty hard on your ulcer.”

“It’s not an ulcer. It’s a spastic pylorus.”

“I beg your pardon.”

What that came to was that Arnold Morgan was in no hurry to get his son back. A bright, polite, good- looking child was an asset, no matter how much it took to support him, but now Hunt was tainted. It wasn’t a question of morals. It would have been the same if he had lost his looks, or his grade average. But Jean was dying for him.

It wasn’t often Hunt was alone with Luella and me, or either of us. But sometimes Arslan would trot upstairs for a few minutes, or swing out of the house for half an hour, leaving Hunt unoccupied. He would sit in his little pool of self-consciousness, waiting for whatever somebody might choose to do to him next. I always took the opportunity to speak to him and try to get some reaction, if it was nothing but a faint nod in response to some remark on the weather.

“Isn’t there a poem with something about Bukhara in it? Something about ‘lonely Bukhara’?” Arslan had just gone out with one of his officers, and the word Bukhara hung in the air.

Hunt nodded. He got up silently, took an old high school literature book from the shelf, and leafed straight to the page he wanted. He held the book out toward me without a word.

“Will you read it to me, please, Hunt?” I didn’t want him to feel that reading was just part of the regimen Arslan inflicted on him.

He sat down, docile as always. “Matthew Arnold,” he said quietly, smoothing the page. “’Sohrab and Rustem.’” He began to read. I didn’t pay much attention to the words at first—

My terrible father’s terrible horse—

But Hunt was reading it as if he’d been born to read it.

O Ruksh, thou art more fortunate than I;

For thou hast gone where I shall never go,

And snuff’d the breezes of my father’s home.

And thou hast trod the sand of Seistan—

It didn’t sound exactly like what I remembered.

—But I

Have never known my grandsire’s furrow’d face—

His voice shook with feeling. It was a question whether he would make it through.