The Thief of Bagdad. Achmed Abdullah

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СКАЧАТЬ donkey who traveled abroad looking for horns—and lost its ears! Beware, my friend! All day the place is watched by the Caliph’s soldiers. And all night—look!”—he pointed through the iron mesh of the door—“do you see these traps, these grooves and grottoes and cages? They contain the warden’s of the night: man-eating striped tigers from Bengal, black-maned Nubian lions, and long-armed, dog-toothed gorillas from the far forests! Take heed, my clever bazar hound!”

      “It was your fault, Bird-of-Evil!” Ahmed turned to his friend when the captain had walked away. “Why did you move just as I was crossing the threshold?”

      “I could not help it! A flea bit me!”

      “And now a mule will kick you!” Ahmed raised his right foot.

      Bird-of-Evil squirmed rapidly away.

      “Wait! Wait!” he implored. “Wait until tonight! Then we shall climb the walls!”

      “Impossible, fool! They are too steep!”

      “You forget the magic rope!”

      “Right—by the Prophet’s toe-nails!”

      And so when night came, closing in overhead like an opaque dome of dark-green jade encrusted with a shimmering net of stars, drop ping over sleeping Bagdad with a brown, clogging pall of silence, Ahmed and Bird-of-Evil went quietly on their way, the magic rope coiled about the former’s left arm. They reached the palace. It stabbed up to the sky’s dark tent with fantastic, purple outlines pierced here and their, where the slaves were still about some late duty, by glittering pencils of light. They stopped in the shadow-blotch of the outer wall that, at a height of twenty-odd feet, was crowned with an elaborate balustrade of carved, fretted, pink marble. They waited; listened, sucking in their breath. They could hear a captain of the night watch going the rounds, the steady tramp-tramp-tramp of his booted feet, a faint crackling of steel, the swish of his curved sabre scraping across stone flags. The sounds died away. Came other sounds—the voices of the savage beasts that guarded the palace, prowling and slinking about the garden: the vibrant growl of the lions beginning in a deep basso and ending in a shrill, stabbing treble; the angry hissing and spitting, as of enormous cats, of the great, ruddy Bengal tigers; the chirp and whistle—ludicrously in contrast to their size—of the long-armed gorillas.

      Ahmed uncoiled his rope.

      “Can you make it?” whispered Bird-of-Evil.

      “Easily.”

      “But—the lions and tigers. … ?”

      “Beyond the outerwall—I noticed it this afternoon—at a distance of a few feet is a second wall, a broad ledge with a door set in. Once on top of the outer wall, I can leap across to the ledge and fool those jungly pets. Then through the door and—for the rest—I shall rely on my nose, my fingers, and my luck.”

      “May Allah the One protect you!” mumbled Bird-of-Evil piously.

      “Allah? Bah!” sneered the Thief of Bagdad. “It is mine own strength and cleverness that will protect me! Wait down here, O ancient goat of my soul. Within the hour I shall be back with a king’s ransom tucked away in my breeches.”

      He tossed the rope into the air. He spoke the secret word. The rope obeyed. It stood straight. A minute later, climbing hand over hand, Ahmed was on top of the outer wall. He looked down into the flat, emerald-green eyes of a tiger that crouched below, swishing its tail from side to side and doubtless thinking that here was a late supper provided by Fate itself. Then, measuring the distance to the ledge with his eyes, he fooled both tiger and Fate by leaping across, neatly, lithely, and safely. He opened the door that gave unto the ledge; and found himself in an empty hall. So, softly, warily, on naked, silent feet, he walked on through rooms and rooms and again rooms. All were empty of life. Some of them, beneath swinging ceiling lamps, lay ablaze with raw, clashing colors, others were in dull, somber shades which melted into each other; on, through corridors supported by pillars whose capitals were shaped into pendant lotus forms or crowned with fantastic, lateral struts carved into the likeness of horsemen or war-girt elephants.

      Finally he came to a great, oblong room. There was no furniture here except a tall incense burner on a twisted gold stand giving out spirals of scented, opalescent smoke, a number of large, iron-bound chests and boxes, and a profusion of silken pillows where three enormous palace eunuchs, dressed in yellow gauze that gave a generous glimpse of the brown flesh beneath, were snoring loud enough to rouse the dead.

      “By the itching of his palms as well as by the sight of the boxes, the Thief of Bagdad knew that he had arrived in the Caliph’s treasure chamber. And, while the three eunuchs continued to sleep the sleep of both the just and the unjust, he crept over to one of the chests; found it locked; found, furthermore, that the key to it was fastened so tightly to one of the eunuchs’ waist shawls that it was impossible to remove it; then, softly, slowly, inch by inch, he slid the chest along the floor until, without waking the sleeper, he was able to lift the key to the lock.

      He turned it. The lock opened. He raised the lid; looked; suppressed a cry of pleasurable excitement.

      For there, in a shimmering heap, were jewels from all the corners of Asia: jasper from the Punjaub, rubies from Burma, turquoises from Thibet, star-sapphires and alexandrites from Ceylon, flawless emeralds from Afghanistan, purple amethysts from Tartary, white crystal from Malwa, onyx from Persia, green jade and white jade from Amoy and from Turkestan, garnets from Bundelkhand, red corals from Socotra, pearls from Ramesvaram, lapis lazuli from Jaffra, yellow diamonds from Poonah, pink diamonds from Hydarabad, violet diamonds from Kafiristan, black, fire-veined agate from Dynbulpore.

      “If my breeches were only large enough to hold them all!” thought the Thief of Bagdad. “What shall I take first?”

      And he had just decided to start with a gorgeous string of evenly matched black pearls, had it already in his hand, when suddenly he sat up and listened. For, from not very far away, he heard the plaintive, minor cadences of a one-stringed Mongol lute; heard a high, soft voice lilting a Mongol song:

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      “In the pagoda of exquisite purity

       I hear each day the tinkle-tinkle

       Of my lost love's jade girdle gems.

       Looking from the carved' broad window

       Of the pagoda of exquisite purity,

       I see the unsullied waters of my grief

       Flow on in bleak undulation.

       I see a stray cloud of my Mongol home land

       Above the spire of the pagoda of exquisite purity,

       And the wild geese of Tartary flying over the river dunes …”

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