XXXIII
On a flat white roof, which bubbled up here and there in rounded domes,a woman stood looking out over interminable waves of yellow sand, a vastgolden silence which had no end on her side of the horizon, east, west,north, or south.
No veil hid her face, but folds of thin woollen stuff beautifully woven,and dyed blue, almost as dark as indigo, fell from her head nearly toher feet, over a loose robe of orange-red, cut low in the neck, withsleeves hiding the elbows. She looked towards the west, shading her eyeswith her hand: and the sun near its setting streamed over her face andhair, chiselling her features in marble, brightening her auburn hair tofiery gold, giving her brown eyes the yellow tints of a topaz, or of theamber beads which hung in a long chain, as far down as her knees.
From the white roof many things could be seen besides the immensemonotonous dunes along whose ridges orange fire seemed to playunceasingly against the sky.
There was the roof of the Zaouia mosque, with its low, white domesgrouped round the minaret, as somewhere below the youngest boys of theschool grouped round the taleb, or teacher. On the roof of the mosquebassourah frames were in the making, splendid bassourahs, which, whenfinished, would be the property of the great marabout, greatest of allliving marabouts, lord of the Zaouia, lord of the desert and its people,as far as the eye could reach, and farther.
There were other roofs, too, bubbling among the labyrinth of square opencourts and long, tunnel-like, covered and uncovered corridors whichformed the immense, rambling Zaouia, or sacred school of Oued Tolga.Things happened on these roofs which would have interested a stranger,for there was spinning of sheep's wool, making of men's burnouses,fashioning of robes for women, and embroidering of saddles; but thewoman who looked towards the west with the sun in her eyes was tired ofthe life on sun-baked roofs and in shadowed courts.
The scent of orange blossoms in her own little high-walled garden cameup to her; yet she had forgotten that it was sweet, for she had neverloved it. The hum of the students' voices, faintly heard through theopen-work of wrought-iron windows, rasped her nerves, for she had heardit too often; and she knew that the mysterious lessons, the lessonswhich puzzled her, and constantly aroused her curiosity, were neverrepeated aloud by the classes, as were these everlasting chapters of theKoran.
Men sleeping on benches in the court of the mosque, under arches in thewall, waked and drank water out of bulging goatskins, hanging from hugehooks. Pilgrims washed their feet in the black marble basin of thetrickling fountain, for soon it would be time for moghreb, the prayer ofthe evening.
Far away, eighteen miles distant across the sands, she could see thetwenty thousand domes of Oued Tolga, the desert city which had taken itsname from the older Zaouia, and the oued or river which ran between thesacred edifice on its golden hill, and the ugly toub-built village,raised above danger of floods on a foundation of palm trunks.
Far away the domes of the desert city shimmered like white fire in thestrange light that hovers over the Sahara before the hour of sunset.Behind those distant, dazzling bubbles of unearthly whiteness, thevalley-like oases of the southern desert, El Souf, dimpled the yellowdunes here and there with basins of dark green. Near by, a little to theleft of the Zaouia hill, such an oasis lay, and the woman on the whiteroof could look across a short stretch of sand, down into its greendepths. She could watch the marabout's men repairing the slopingsand-walls with palm trunks, which kept them from caving in, and savedthe precious date-palms from being engulfed in a yellow tide. It was themarabout's own private oasis, and brought him in a large income everyyear. But everything was the marabout's. The woman on the roof was sickto death of his riches, his honours, his importance, for she was themarabout's wife; and in these days she loved him as little as she lovedthe orange garden he had given her, and all the things that were hersbecause she was his.
It was very still in the Zaouia of Oued Tolga. The only sound was thedroning of the boys' voices, which came faintly from behind ironwindow-gratings below, and that monotonous murmur emphasized thesilence, as the humming of bees in a hive makes the stillness of agarden in summer more heavy and hot.
No noises came from the courts of the women's quarters, or those of themarabout's guests, and attendants, and servants; not a voice was raisedin that more distant part of the Zaouia where the students lived, andwhere the poor were lodged and fed for charity's sake. No doubt thevillage, across the narrow river in its wide bed, was buzzing with lifeat this time of day; but seldom any sound there was loud enough to breakthe slumberous silence of the great Zaouia. And the singing of the menin the near oasis who fought the sand, the groaning of the well-cordswoven of palm fibre which raised the buckets of hollowed palm-trunks,was as monotonous as the recitation of the Koran. The woman had heard itso often that she had long ago ceased to hear it at all.
She looked westward, across the river to the ugly village with the driedpalm-leaves on its roofs, and far away to the white-domed city, thedimpling oases and the mountainous dunes that towered against a flamingsky; then eastward, towards the two vast desert lakes, or chotts, one ofblue water, the other of saltpetre, which looked bluer than water, andhad pale edges that met the sand like snow on gold. Above the lake ofwater suddenly appeared a soaring line of white, spreading and mountinghigher, then turning from white to vivid rose. It was the flamingoesrising and flying over the chott, the one daily phenomenon of the desertwhich the woman on the roof still loved to watch. But her love for therosy line against the blue was not entirely because of its beauty,though it was startlingly beautiful. It meant something for which shewaited each evening with a passionate beating of her heart under theorange-coloured robe and the chain of amber beads. It meant sunset andthe coming of a message. But the doves on the green tiled minaret of theZaouia mosque had not begun yet to dip and wheel. They would not stirfrom their repose until the muezzin climbed the steps to call the hourof evening prayer, and until they flew against the sunset the messagecould not come.
She must wait yet awhile. There was nothing to do till the time of hopefor the message. There was never anything else that she cared to dothrough the long days from sunrise to sunset, unless the message gaveher an incentive when it came.
In the river-bed, the women and young girls had not finished theirwashing, which was to them not so much labour as pleasure, since it gavethem their opportunity for an outing and a gossip. In the bed of shiningsand lay coloured stones like jewels, and the women knelt on them,beating wet bundles of scarlet and puce with palm branches. The watcheron the roof knew that they were laughing and chattering together thoughshe could not hear them. She wondered dimly how many years it was sinceshe had laughed, and said to herself that probably she would never laughagain, although she was still young, only twenty-eight. But that wasalmost old for a woman of the East. Those girls over there, wadingknee-deep in the bright water to fill their goatskins and curious whiteclay jugs, would think her old. But they hardly knew of her existence.She had married the great marabout, therefore she was a marabouta, orwoman saint, merely because she was fortunate enough to be his wife, andtoo highly placed for them to think of as an earthly woman likethemselves. What could it matter whether such a radiantly happy beingwere young or old? And she smiled a little as she imagined those poorcreatures picturing her happiness. She passed near them sometimes goingto the Moorish baths, but the long blue drapery covered her face then,and she was guarded by veiled negresses and eunuchs. They looked her wayreverently, but had never seen her face, perhaps did not know who shewas, though no doubt they had all heard and gossipped about the romantichistory of the new wife, the beautiful Ouled Nail, to whom the marabouthad condescended because of her far-famed, her marvellous, almostincredible loveliness, which made her a consort worthy of a saint.
The river was a mirror this evening, reflecting the sunset of crimsonand gold, and the young crescent moon fought for and devoured, thenvomited forth again by strange black cloud-monsters. The old brownpalm-trunks, on which the village was built, were repeated in t
he stillwater, and seemed to go down and down, as if their roots might reach tothe other side of the world.
Over the crumbling doorways of the miserable houses bleached skulls andbones of animals were nailed for luck. The red light of the setting sunstained them as if with blood, and they were more than ever disgustingto the watcher on the white roof. They were the symbols of superstitionsthe most Eastern and barbaric, ideas which she hated, as she wasbeginning to hate all Eastern things and people.
The streak of rose which meant a flock of flying flamingoes had fadedout of the sky. The birds seemed to have vanished into the sunset, andhardly had they gone when the loud crystalline voice of the muezzinbegan calling the faithful to prayer. Work stopped for the day. The menand youths of the Zaouia climbed the worn stairs to the roof of themosque, where, in their white turbans and burnouses, they prostratedthemselves before Allah, going down on their faces as one man. The dovesof the minaret--called Imams, because they never leave the mosque orcease to prostrate themselves, flying head downwards--began to wheel andcry plaintively. The moment when the message might come was here atlast.
The white roof had a wall, which was low in places, in others very high,so high that no one standing behind it could be seen. This screen ofwhitewashed toub was arranged to hide persons on the roof from those onthe roof of the mosque; but window-like openings had been made in it,filled in with mashrabeyah work of lace-like pattern; an art brought toAfrica long ago by the Moors, after perfecting it in Granada. And thisroof was not the only one thus screened and latticed. There was another,where watchers could also look down into the court of the fountain, atthe carved doors taken from the Romans, and up to the roof of the mosquewith all its little domes. From behind those other lace-like windows inthe roof-wall, sparkled such eyes as only Ouled Nail girls can have; butthe first watcher hated to think of those eyes and their wonderfulfringe of black lashes. It was an insult to her that they shouldbeautify this house, and she ignored their existence, though she hadheard her negresses whispering about them.
While the faithful prayed, a few of the wheeling doves flew across fromthe mosque to the roof where the woman waited for a message. At her feetlay a small covered basket, from which she took a handful of grain. Thedove Imams forgot their saintly manners in an unseemly scramble as thewhite hand scattered the seeds, and while they disputed with oneanother, complaining mournfully, another bird, flying straight to theroof from a distance, suddenly joined them. It was white, with feet liketiny branches of coral, whereas the doves from the mosque were grey, orburnished purple.
The woman had been pale, but when the bird fluttered down to rest on theopen basket of grain, colour rushed to her face, as if she had beenstruck on each cheek with a rose. None of the doves of the mosque weretame enough to sit on the basket, which was close to her feet, thoughthey sidled round it wistfully; but the white bird let her stroke itsback with her fingers as it daintily pecked the yellow grains.
Very cautiously she untied a silk thread fastened to a feather under thebird's wing. As she did so it fluttered both wings as if stretching themin relief, and a tiny folded paper attached to the cord fell into thebasket. Instantly the woman laid her hand over it. Then she lookedquickly, without moving her head, towards the square opening at a cornerof the roof where the stairway came up. No one was there. Nobody couldsee her from the roof of the mosque, and her roof was higher than any ofthe others, except that which covered the private rooms of the marabout.But the marabout was away, and no one ever came out on his roof when hewas absent.
She opened the folded bit of white paper, which was little more than twoinches square, and was covered on one side with writing almostmicroscopically small. The other side was blank, but the woman had nodoubt that the letter was for her. As she read, the carrier-pigeon wenton pecking at the seeds in the basket, and the doves of the mosquewatched it enviously.
The writing was in French, and no name was at the beginning or the end.
"Be brave, my beautiful one, and dare to do as your heart prompts.Remember, I worship you. Ever since that wonderful day when the windblew aside your veil for an instant at the door of the Moorish bath, thewhole world has been changed for me. I would die a thousand deaths ifneed be for the joy of rescuing you from your prison. Yet I do not wishto die. I wish to live, to take you far away and make you so happy thatyou will forget the wretchedness and failure of the past. A new lifewill begin for both of us, if you will only trust me, and forget thescruples of which you write--false scruples, believe me. As he had awife living when he married you, and has taken another since, surelyyou cannot consider that you are bound by the law of God or man? Let mesave you from the dragon, as fairy princesses were saved in days of old.If I might speak with you, tell you all the arguments that constantlysuggest themselves to my mind, you could not refuse. I have thought ofmore than one way, but dare not put my ideas on paper, lest some unluckychance befall our little messenger. Soon I shall have perfected thecypher. Then there will not be the same danger. Perhaps to-morrow nightI shall be able to send it. But meanwhile, for the sake of my love, giveme a little hope. If you will try to arrange a meeting, to be settleddefinitely when the cypher is ready, twist three of those gloriousthreads of gold which you have for hair round the cord when you send themessenger back."
All the rosy colour had died away from the woman's face by the time shehad finished reading the letter. She folded it again into a tiny squareeven smaller than before, and put it into one of the three or fourlittle engraved silver boxes, made to hold texts from the Koran, whichhung from her long amber necklace. Her eyes were very wide open, but sheseemed to see nothing except some thought printed on her brain like apicture.
On the mosque roof a hundred men of the desert knelt praying in thesunset, their faces turned towards Mecca. Down in the fountain-court,the marabout's lazy tame lion rose from sleep and stretched himself,yawning as the clear voice of the muezzin chanted from the minaret theprayer of evening, "Allah Akbar, Allah il Allah, Mohammed r'soul Allah."
The woman did not know that she heard the prayer, for as her eyes saw apicture, so did her ears listen to a voice which she had heard onlyonce, but desired beyond all things to hear again. To her it was thevoice of a saviour-knight; the face she saw was glorious with thestrength of manhood, and the light of love. Only to think of the voiceand face made her feel that she was coming to life again, after lyingdead and forgotten in a tomb for many years of silence.
Yes, she was alive now, for he had waked her from a sleep like death;but she was still in the tomb, and it seemed impossible to escape fromit, even with the help of a saviour-knight. If she said "yes" to what heasked, as she was trying to make herself believe she had a moral andlegal right to do, they would be found out and killed, that was all.
She was not brave. The lassitude which is a kind of spurious resignationpoisons courage, or quenches it as water quenches fire. Although shehated her life, if it could be called life, had no pleasure in it, andhad almost forgotten how to hope, still she was afraid of beingviolently struck down.
Not long ago a woman in the village had tried to leave her husband witha man she loved. The husband found out, and having shot the man beforeher eyes, stabbed her with many wounds, one for each traitorous kiss,according to the custom of the desert; not one knife-thrust deep enoughto kill; but by and by she had died from the shock of horror, and lossof blood. Nobody blamed the husband. He had done the thing which wasright and just. And stories like this came often to the ears of thewoman on the roof through her negresses, or from the attendants at theMoorish bath.
The man she loved would not be shot like the wretched Bedouin, who wasof no importance except to her for whom his life was given; butsomething would happen. He would be taken ill with a strange disease, ofwhich he would die after dreadful suffering; or at best his career wouldbe ruined; for the greatest of all marabouts was a man of immenseinfluence. Because of his religious vow to wear a mask always like aTouareg, none of the ruling race had ever seen the marabout's f
eatures,yet his power was known far and wide--in Morocco; all along the caravanroute to Tombouctou; in the capital of the Touaregs; in Algiers; andeven in Paris itself.
She reminded herself of these things, and at one moment her heart waslike ice in her breast; but at the next, it was like a ball of fire; andpulling out three long bright hairs from her head, she twisted themround the cord which the carrier-pigeon had brought. Before tying itunder his wing again, she scattered more yellow seeds for the doveImams, because she did not want them to fly away until she was ready tolet her messenger go. Thus there was the less danger that thecarrier-pigeon would be noticed. Only Noura, her negress, knew of him.Noura had smuggled him into the Zaouia, and she herself had trained himby giving him food that he liked, though his home was at Oued Tolga, thetown.
The birds from the mosque had waited for their second supply, for thesame programme had been carried out many times before, and they hadlearned to expect it.
When they finished scrambling for the grain which the white pigeon couldafford to scorn, they fluttered back to the minaret, following a leader.But the carrier flew away straight and far, his little body vanishing atlast as if swallowed up in the gold of the sunset. For he went west,towards the white domes of Oued Tolga.