He raised eyes and hands to the vaulted roof and remained thus a minute lost in admiration of their subtlety.
“There came a bad harvest. They clamoured for immediate payment of the seed they had advanced to us, pretending to act merely as bailiffs for Muhammed Effendi, but the mind of the unbeliever was well seen in what followed. Our houses became the property of the notable, so they said, the property of Muhammed Effendi, but in practice theirs. My father and my brethren lived on in the village; they were like trees which have struck deep root in the ground, which to transplant is to kill. But I, being young and full of pride, chose rather to roam the land as a beggar than to feed as a slave from the hand of my enemy. I have had much joy of life since then, yet have I never forgotten the shame of my house nor the oath which I swore solemnly before the Qadi himself. And now that the allotted hour grows nigh, behold, Allah sends thee to me in the nick of time. By my beard, I blame thee not for forsaking thy woman; it seems to me that thou didst well to get rid of her. What use, I ask, in keeping her since thou sayest she was barren? And thou art more serviceable to me as a lone man. Allah is just!” He thought fit to embrace his new adherent and slobber over him in a very fatherly way, much to Saïd’s annoyance.
“Enough! enough!” muttered the fisherman, pushing him off. “Of a surety I will aid thee in this business. But tell me, I pray thee, O my uncle, how came thy hand to be withered.”
The old beggar threw back his head and laughed so that the whole roof of his mouth was displayed and its horseshoe of broken yellow teeth. The subject considered, such merriment was frightful to Saïd; it made him shudder. The woman started up in alarm to her full height, and, with an oath, pronounced him mad.
“Ah, ha, ha! I have a withered hand. It is curious—not so? Know then that it befell me in this wise: While I was yet new to the work I met a beggar who had his arm withered to the shoulder like the dead branch of a tree. He told me that it brought him great wealth and marvelled much how I could move pity, being whole and in the best of health. Inquiring if he had been born like that, he laughed at me for a simpleton. He said it is easy—nothing easier in all the world; and he promised to teach me the way of it. I had thought to take service as a muleteer or otherwise, but the talk of his riches and his merry life changed my mind. We were together two days and became friends. On the third day we reached the town and he sought out a certain dervìsh and brought me to him. I went in whole and sound even as thou art; I came forth with this hand in the state thou seest. It is a trick—no more. At first one has to be careful lest the blood should flow back to it; but that is all. It has been my stock-in-trade, the head of my wealth.”
Of a sudden he bent down and pinched Saïd’s leg rapturously. “Aha, what a leg! Behold, O Nûr, how stout and strong it is! I know one in the city who would treat it for thee—up to the knee! By Allah, that is all I ask—only to the knee! Ah, it would look sweet—beautiful! It would bring tears to any man’s eyes when he compared it with its brother, and on one so young. Only up to the knee; what sayest thou? I tell thee, my dear, there is wealth in it—money—much money! But no, alas! it cannot be; for all thy strength may be needed in the work of vengeance.”
There was something foul and inhuman about this rhapsody which made Saïd kick and edge away with loathing as from the touch of a ghoul. The old beggar eyed him reproachfully.
“Ah, now thou art very like Mansûr—very like my son!” he murmured, with a remembering shake of his head. “Mansûr would never consent to have so much as a finger treated, though I besought him with tears for hours together. The young are ever so boastful of strength and blind to their own advantage. And now, O my soul, if thou art ready I will show thee the house of Yuhanna the Nazarene that thou mayest know it among others for the house of an enemy.”
He rose and went to where Nûr was munching bread and olives, with jaws cramped by the stiff coat of paint on her cheeks. He whispered a few words to her, while Saïd stretched himself and yawned, glad to breathe free of a place which the queer behaviour of his new friend had rendered distasteful. Then together they mounted the broken stairs and issued forth into the dewy shadow in which the newly-risen sun steeped the narrow roadway.
XVIII
Mustafa led on by unfrequented tunnels and passages avoiding as far as might be the main streets, where professional pride obliged him to put on an appearance of extreme feebleness and whine despairingly as one in the clutch of a devil. At last, in a narrow lane between high walls, with never a lattice, he stopped before a low door which was open.
“This is the house of the pig—the house of Yuhanna!” he whispered. “I will enter—it is the beggar’s privilege. Do thou follow as far as thou canst without being seen!”
A narrow passage turned at right angles after a few yards, so that the interior of the house could not be looked into from the street. This notion of an entrance the wealthier Christians and Jews had borrowed from their Muslim neighbours. With
