The Thief of Bagdad. Achmed Abdullah

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the wall. It was steep, high, straight up and down, with never a foothold of any sort. A cat in climbing, he was. But to reach this balcony he needed wings, and—he laughed—“I am not a bird, and may Allah grant it be many years before I become an angel!”

      And then, brushing through the deserted Square, he heard two noises blending into a symphony: a man’s staccato snore and a donkey’s melancholy, pessimistic bray. He looked about, and, a little to the left, he saw an enormous Tartar peddler—well over three hundred pounds he must have weighed—asleep in the sun, sitting cross-legged on huge haunches, his extravagant stomach resting and overlapping on his stout knees, his great, turbaned head bobbing up and down, snoring loudly through half-open lips, while, a few feet away, a tiny white donkey, the fruit-panniers empty but for three spoiled melons and roped to the wooden pack-saddle, was braying at the sky, doubtless complaining of its boredom.

      “A pulley!” thought Ahmed. “Sent by Allah Himself to help me up to yonder balcony!”

      A few moments later he had unwound the turban cloth from about the Tartar’s head, weighted it with a melon, flung one end over the balcony railing, and, when it came back to his hands, tucked it deftly under the sleeping man’s knees, then tied it to the donkey’s saddle.

      “Up, little donkey!” he called softly. “Up, little brother, and back to thy stable—the rich, green food! Up!”

      And the donkey, nothing loath, ambled sturdily on its way; the Tartar, with the turban cloth tugging at his knees, awakened, saw the donkey trotting away, and waddled after it with loud shouts of: “Hey, there! Wait a moment, Long-Ears!” And thus, clinging to the turban cloth as if it were a rope, ambling donkey and waddling peddler serving as a pulley, Ahmed was drawn up to the balcony in triumph and comfort, and lost no time in helping himself to food, stuffing his mouth with large, greedy, well-spiced handfuls.

      He had not been there very long when a commotion caused him to look down. Around the corner, surrounded by a crowd of men and women and children, he saw an Indian sorcerer swinging with a majestic stride. The man was immensely tall, emaciated, bearded, and naked but for a scarlet loin-cloth. By his side tripped a young boy, while two attendants followed, one carrying a grass-woven basket and a bundle of swords, the other a coiled rope.

      Arrived just below the balcony, the Hindu stopped and addressed the crowd.

      “Moslems,” he said, “permit me to introduce myself. I am,” he announced without the slightest diffidence, “Vikramavata, the Swami, the Yogi, the greatest miracle-worker out of Hindustan! There is none in the Seven Known Worlds who approaches me in the mastery of either white or black magic! I am a vast sea of most excellent qualities! I am—so I have been assured by truth-telling and disinterested persons in China and Tartary and the lands of the doe-faced Mongols—a jewel of pure gold, a handful of powdered rubies, an exquisite tonic for the human brain, the father and mother of hidden wisdom!” He motioned to his attendants who put basket, swords, and rope on the ground, and went on: “If you like my sorcery, stay not the generosity of your hands! For”—in flat and shameless contradiction to his previous statement—“I am but a poor and humble man, with seven wives and seven times seventeen children, all clamoring for food!”

      He bent; opened the basket.

      “Ho!” he shouted at the young boy who thereupon jumped into the basket, where he curled up like a kitten. The Hindu closed it, picked up the swords and thrust them through every part of the basket with all his strength, while the crowd looked on, utterly fascinated.

      Up on the balcony Ahmed, too, watched. He was pleased more than ever with himself and the world at large. Why, he had money, a few choice jewels, an abundance of food—here he helped himself to another liberal fistful—and now a show: all free of charge, all for the asking and taking!

      “Hayah!” he said to himself, sitting on the balcony rail and chewing luxuriously, “life is pleasant—and he who works and strives is a fool!”

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

      Down in the Square the Hindu continued his sorceries.

      He put a dry mango seed on the ground for all the world to see. Thrice he passed his hand over it, murmuring mysterious Indian words:

      “Bhut, pret, pisach, dana,

       Chee mantar, sab nikal jana,

       Mane, mane, Shivka khahna …

      and the mango seed burst—it grew—it shot in the air—in bloom—in fruit. Again he waves his hand and—behold!—the mango was gone.

      He asked the boy to approach. He whispered a secret word and, suddenly, a glistening Khyberee sword flashed in his right hand. He lifted it high above his head. He struck with all his might. And the boy’s head rolled on the ground; blood squirted; while the onlookers were aghast, sucking in their breath like little lisping babes in the dark. Then he waves his hands again, and there was the boy, his head on his neck where it belonged, a smile on his lips.

      So trick followed trick while the crowd applauded and shuddered and laughed and chattered and wondered, until finally the Hindu announced the greatest of all his tricks: the trick of the magic rope.

      “A rope,” he explained, uncoiling it and whizzing it through the air with a sharp noise, “woven from the hair of a purple-faced witch of the left-handed sect! Never in all the world was there such a rope! Look, O Moslems!”

      Swish!—he threw the rope into the air, straight up, and it remained there standing, without support, erect, lithe, like a slim tree, its upper end parallel with the balcony rail and directly in front of Ahmed’s eyes, who could hardly control his itching palms.

      Why—he thought—to possess this magic rope! What a help for the Thief of Bagdad!

      The Hindu clapped his hands.

      “Hayah! Ho! Jao!” he yelled; and suddenly the boy disappeared, vanished into the nowhere, while the spectators gaped with open mouths.

      “Hayah! Ho! Jao!” the sorcerer repeated; and a quivering shout of awed wonder rose from the crowd as they saw there, high up on the rope, come out of the nowhere into which he had disappeared, the boy clinging like a monkey. The next moment he had slid down and was going the round of the audience, asking for bakshish that was contributed generously; and even Ahmed was on the point of obeying the impulse and had already reached into his baggy trousers for a coin, when a throaty, guttural cry of rage caused him to turn quickly. There, like a plum-colored, obese goddess of wrath, stood the Nubian cook who had come from the interior of the palace. She saw the bowls of food; saw that impious hands had toyed with their contents; saw the munching, chewing Ahmed; and, putting two and two together, went for him, brandishing her heavy iron stirring ladle like a Sarazene battle ax.

      Ahmed considered and acted at the same fraction of a second. He launched himself away from the balcony railing; leaped straight at the magic rope; clutched it; and so there he was, swinging in mid-air, the cook calling down imprecations from above, the Hindu echoing them from below. And be it mentioned—in Ahmed’s favor or to his shame, exactly as you prefer—that he replied to both, impartially, vituperatively, enthusiastically, insult for insult and curse for curse.

      ‘‘Come back here, O Son of a noseless Mother, and pay for what you stole!” yelled the cook.

      “Come СКАЧАТЬ