Winter's Tales (35 page)

The Prince was a gay and gallant young man; it amused him to vex the old, cautious men of his father’s Court, and Mirza Aghai’s tale to him contained the promise of a rare adventure. When he had thought the matter over, he told the Minister that he would not forego the chance of meeting his
doppelganger
. He would go himself to speak with him, and detect the truth about him. He forbade the old men to interfere with his plan, and this time took such precautions that it became impossible to them to impede or control him. In vain did Mirza Aghai beseech him to give up so perilous a project. The only concession which in the end they wrested from him was the promise that he would go about well armed, and that he would take with him one attendant in whom he could trust.

I was, just then, seeing much of the young Prince. For Prince Nasrud-Din had on his left cheekbone a mole, the size of a cherry. It was slightly disfiguring in itself, and it was naturally in his way when he wished to go about incognito. So after he had watched my cure of his father, the Shah, he called upon me to rid him of the nevus. The treatment was slow; I had time to entertain the Prince with the narratives that he loved, and I held, by the nature of things, a big bag of tales which belongs to our classic Western civilization, and were new to him.

The Prince was also afraid of growing fat, so that at times he
would cat very little. The Queen, his mother, who thought that he had never been more lovable than when, as a baby, he had been fat, took much trouble with the purveyors and the chefs of the royal household, to make them bring and prepare such rare dishes as might tempt her son’s appetite. Now she saw that when I was relating my stories to him the Prince would sit long over his food, and she graciously entreated me to keep him company at table. I told the Prince as much as I could remember of the
Divina Commedia
, and of a few of Shakespeare’s tragedies, together with the whole of the
Mysteries of Paris
, by Eugene Sue, that I had read just before I left Europe. During our talks on such works of art I gained his confidence, and when by this time he was to choose a companion in his secret expeditions he asked me to go with him.

He took pleasure in having me dressed up as a Persian beggar, in a big cloak and slippers, and with a flap over one eye. Each of us kept a poniard in his belt and a pistol in his breast; the Prince made me a present of my poniard, which had a silver hilt, set with turquoises. The old Minister Mirza Aghai then approached me, and promised me his gratitude and a permanent and lucrative office at Court should I, in the end, succeed in turning the mind of Nasrud-Din from his caprice. But I had no faith in my power to turn the mind of a Prince, nor had I any wish to do so.

We thus wandered through the streets and the slums of Teheran, during some evenings of early spring. On the terraces of the Royal Gardens the peach trees were already in blossom, and in the grass there were crocus and jonquils. But the air was sharp and the night frost not far away.

Within the city of Teheran the evenings of this season are wonderfully blue. The ancient grey walls, the planes and olive trees in the gardens, the people in their drab garments and the long, slow
files of heavy-laden camels coming home through the gates—all seem to float in a delicate mist of azure.

The Prince and I visited strange places, and made the acquaintance of dancers, thieves, bawds and soothsayers. We had various long discussions on religion and love, and many times we also laughed together, for we were both young. But for a while we did not find the man on whose track we walked; neither did we, anywhere, hear much of him. Still we knew the name by which he called himself, which was the same as the Prince had used as a beggar. And in the end, one evening, we were guided by a small boy to a market-place, close to the oldest gate of the town, where, we were told, the plotter by this hour was wont to seat himself. By the well of the place the bare-legged child stopped, and pointed to a small figure sitting on the ground at some distance. He gave us a clear, steady glance, said: “I will go no farther,” and ran off.

We paused for a moment, and felt our knives and pistols. It was a poor and vile square; narrow streets led to it; the houses were pitiable and decayed; the air filled with nauseous smells; the ground broken and dusty. The ragged inhabitants of the streets had come from their work, and in the last hour of daylight were lounging and chatting in the open, or drawing water from the well. A few of them were buying wine by the counter of an open tavern, and we did so too, asking for the cheapest that the innkeeper had to sell, since we were ourselves beggars tonight. As we drank, we kept an eye on the man upon the ground.

There was an old crooked fig tree growing out from a creek in the wall, and he sat beneath it. No crowd surrounded him, as we had been led to expect. But while I watched him I saw the wayfarers slacken their pace as they passed him. One and another amongst them stood still and exchanged a few words with him before they walked on, and each of them seemed to turn his face half
away from the beggar, and to hold himself, in his nearness, with reverence and awe. As slowly I took in the whole scene before me, I thought it to be in some way unusual and striking. The place was as low and miserable as any I had walked through in the town, yet there was dignity in the atmosphere of it, and a stillness as of anticipation and confidence. The children played together without fighting or crying, the women prattled and laughed lowly and gaily, and the water-drawers waited patiently for one another.

The innkeeper was talking with a donkey driver, who had brought him two big baskets of fresh beans, cabbage and lettuce. The donkey driver said: “And what do you imagine that they will be dining on at the palace tonight?” “On what will they be dining?” said the innkeeper. “That is not easy to tell. They may be having a peacock, stuffed with olives. They may eat carps’ tongues, cooked in red wine. Or they will be partaking of a fat-rumped, cinnamon-stewed sheep.” “Yes, by God,” said the ass driver. We smiled at the description of these extraordinary dishes, which were obviously dainties to the poor. Prince Nasrud-Din paid for his wine, draped his mendicant’s cloak over his head, and without a word went forth and seated himself a little way from the stranger. I took the place next to him, by the wall.

The man for whom we had so long searched, and of whom we had talked so much between us, was a still person; he did not lift his eyes to look at the newcomers. He sat on the earth with his legs crossed, his head bent, and his folded hands resting on the ground in front of him. His beggar’s bowl stood beside him, and it was empty.

He had on a large cloak, like that which the Prince wore, only more tattered and patched. It had a hood to it, which partly covered his head, but while he sat so quiet, his eyes downcast, I had time to study his face. It was true that he bore a likeness to the
Prince. He was a dark, slight young man, a few years older than Nasrud-Din, of such age as the Prince would assume in his role of beggar. He had long, black eyelashes, and a small thin black beard, similar to the beard which the Prince used to put on with his beggar’s disguise, only it was really growing on his face. Upon his left cheekbone he had a brown mole, the size of a cherry, and I saw, because I had experience in that matter, that it was put on artificially, with skill. As to his countenance and manner, he was in no way like the daring and dangerous conspirator whom I had expected to meet. His face was peaceful, so that indeed I do not remember to have set eyes on a more serene human physiognomy. It was also singularly vacant of shrewdness, or even of much intelligence. That dignity and collectedness which, a moment ago, I had been surprised to find in the market-place around him, were repeated within the figure of the man himself, as if these qualities were concentrated in, or issuing from, the ragged and lean beggar’s form. Perhaps, I reflected, there are few things which will impart as great dignity to a man’s appearance as the air of complete content and self-sufficiency.

When we had thus sat together in silence for a while, it happened that a poor funeral procession came along, on its way to the burial ground outside the walls, the corpse on a litter and covered with a cloth, a few mourners following it, and some idlers of the street strolling behind. As they caught sight of the beggar under the fig tree, they again seemed to be seized with some kind of fear or veneration; they swerved a little in their course as they passed, but they did not speak to him.

When they had gone by, the beggar lifted his head, gazed at the air before him, and in a low and gentle voice said: “Life and Death are two locked caskets, each of which contains the key to the other.”

The Prince started as he heard his voice, so like was his mode of speaking, even to a slight snuffle within it, to his own. After a moment, he himself spoke to the stranger. “I am a beggar like you,” he said, “and have come here to collect such alms as merciful people will give me. Let us not waste our time while we wait for them, but talk about our lives. Is your life as a beggar of so little value to you that you would be content to exchange it for death?” The beggar seemed unprepared for so energetic an address. He did not answer for a minute or two, then gently wagged his head and said: “Not at all.”

Here an old poor woman came staggering across the square towards us, approaching the beggar in the shy and submissive manner of the others, turning her face away as she spoke to him. She was pressing a loaf of bread to her bosom, and as she stopped she held it out to him in both her hands, “For the mercy of God,” she said, “take this bread and eat it. We have seen that you have sat here by the wall for two days, and have had nothing to eat. Now I am an old woman, the poorest of the poor here, and I think that you will not refuse alms from me.” The beggar softly lifted his hand to reject the gift. “Nay,” he said, “take back your bread. I will not cat tonight. For I know of a beggar, my brother in mendicancy, who sat by the town wall for three full days, and was given nothing. I will experience myself what he did then feel and think.” “Oh, God,” sighed the old woman, “if you will not eat the bread I shall not eat it myself either, but I shall give it to the cart-bullocks which come in by the gate, and are tired and hungry.” And with that she staggered away again.

When she had gone, the Prince once more turned to the beggar. “You are wrong,” he said. “No beggar of the town has sat by the wall for three days and has been given nothing. I have asked for alms myself, you know, and have never been without food even
for the length of a day. The people of Teheran are not so hardhearted nor so indigent as to let the meanest of beggars starve for three days.” To this the beggar answered not a word.

It was now growing colder. The great space above our heads was still glass-clear and filled with sweet light; innumerable bats had come out from holes in the wall and were noiselessly cruising within it, high and low. But the earth and everything belonging to it lay in a blue shadow, as if it had been finely enamelled with lazulite. The beggar drew his old cloak round him and shivered. “It would be better for us,” I said, “to seek a little shelter in the gate itself.” “Nay, I shall not go there,” said the beggar. “The gatekeepers chase away beggars from the gate with a bastinado.” “You are wrong once more,” said the Prince. “I, who am a beggar myself, have sought shelter in the gates, and no gate-keeper has ever told me to go away. For it is the law that poor and homeless people may sit within the gates of my city, when the traffic of the day is done.”

The beggar for a minute thought his words over; then he turned his head and looked at him. “Are you the Prince Nasrud-Din?” he asked him.

Prince Nasrud-Din was startled and confused by the beggar’s straight question; his hand went to his knife, as my hand to my own. But after a second he haughtily looked him in the face. “Yes, I am Nasrud-Din,” he said. “You must know my face, since you have counterfeited it. You must have followed me for a long time, and closely, in order to assume my part in the eyes of my people with so much skill. I have known about your game, too, for some time. Your motive for playing it, only, I do not know. I have come here tonight to learn it from your own lips.”

The beggar did not answer at once; then again he shook his head. “Heigh-ho, my gentle lord,” he said. “May you rightly say so, when
I have donned that very attire and semblance, which you yourself think most dissimilar to your own, and most likely to conceal you, and to beguile the people of your town? Might not I as justly charge you yourself with having, in your greatness, mimicked my humble countenance, and embezzled my beggar’s appearance? Aye, it is true that I have once seen you, at a distance, in your mendicant’s clothes, but I have learned more from those who followed and watched you. It is true, too, that I have made use of the likeness that God deigned to create between you and me. I have profited by it to be proud, and grateful to God, where before I was cast down. Will a Prince blame his servant for that?”

“And whom,” asked the Prince with a penetrating glance at the beggar, “do the people of the market-place and the streets believe you to be?” The beggar threw a quick, furtive glance round him to all sides. “Hush, my lord, speak low,” he said. “The people of the market-place and the streets dare not for their lives let me know who they believe me to be. Did you not see them turning away their heads and cast down their eyes as they passed by or spoke to me? They know that I will not be known; they are afraid that, if ever I find out who they believe me to be, my wrath against them shall be so terrible that I shall go away, never to come back to them.”

At these words the Prince coloured and became silent. At last he said gravely: “They all believe you to be Prince Nasrud-Din?” The beggar for a moment showed his white teeth in a smile. “Yes, they believe me to be Prince Nasrud-Din,” he said. “They think that I have got a palace to live in, and may go back there whenever I wish. They believe that I have got a cellar filled with wine, my table laid with rich food, my chests filled with garments of silk and fur.”