ISKANDER BEG.
THE respectable Hadji Festahli proceeded slowly as he climbed the ladder of streets that leads to the higher part of the city, in which stood the house of Iskander Beg. From time to time he had to pass through streets so narrow that his two honorable companions, Hussein and Ferzali, who walked beside him along the streets where they could go three abreast, were then obliged to fall back and walk behind him in single file, — a humiliation from which they made haste to escape as soon as the street became wide enough for three abreast. Occasionally one or the other would attempt to engage the hadji in conversation; but so great was his preoccupation, he did not hear them, did not answer; and he was even so absent-minded that he failed to observe that in spitting to right and left, he sometimes spat upon the black beard of Hussein, sometimes upon the red beard of Ferzali.
His inattention continued so long that his two companions began to be angry.
“This is a singular man!” said Hussein; “he is spoken to, and, instead of replying, he spits.”
“May it fall into his throat!” cried Ferzali, wiping his beard. “The proverb says truly, Hussein: ‘If the master is at home, it is sufficient to speak his name, and the door will be opened to you; but if he is not there, you will get nothing, even by breaking in.’
Useless to speak any more to Mir Hadji Festahli; his mind is elsewhere, the house is empty.”
Ferzali à la barbe rose, as they called him in Derbend, because, instead of employing the two substances in use among the Tartars for coloring the beard, — substances, the first of which begins by tinting the beard red, and the second finishes by dyeing it black, —
Ferzali, who used only the first, and who, consequently, kept his beard the color of the first streak of dawn as it appears on the verge of the horizon — Ferzali was deceived. The house was not empty; it was, on the contrary, so full of its own occupants, and their strife was creating such an uproar, that, not being able to understand even the voice of his own mind, Hadji Festahli could not understand other people’s voices.
This was what his thoughts were urging: “Have a care, Festahli! every step that you take toward the dwelling of Iskander Beg brings you nearer to danger. Remember how seriously you have offended him. Beware, Hadji Festahli, beware!”
What, then, had passed between Hadji Festahli and Iskander Beg?
We are about to relate it.
Iskander was born at Derbend, when the city was already occupied by the Russians, — this occupation dates from 1795; but his father had been the intimate friend of the last khan, who had been driven from his provinces by Catherine’s army. In 1826, he died of chagrin because the Persians, whom he was expecting at Derbend, had been routed at Kouba, to which point they had advanced; but, when dying, he had charged his son, then fifteen years of age, never to serve the Russians, and never to make friends with the inhabitants of Derbend, who had repelled the Persians.
He was dead; but his convictions, his habits, his opinions, all survived in his son, whose ideas, thoughts, and desires were all opposed to the desires, thoughts, and ideas of the inhabitants of Derbend. A handful of rice, a glass of water, a little light, much air, were all of which the young Iskander Beg had need.
In the spring, when the entire world was awakening to the breath of love and poetry, he would saddle his good Karabach horse, swing from his shoulder the fine gun from Hadji Moustaff, the most celebrated gunsmith in Daghestan, and, with his bold yellow falcon perched upon his thumb, he would hunt the pheasant over mountain and valley until he was ready to drop with fatigue, if you grant there can be fatigue in the pursuit of a passion. Then he would dismount from his horse, which he allowed to wander at will, lie down in the shade of some great tree beside a stream, and sleep tranquilly to its gentle sound. Whether its sweet harmony caused him to dream, whether his dreams were prosaic, whether he was poet or philosopher, rhymer or reasoner, I know not. This I do know, — he lived tingling with the thrill of life. What more would you have?
In winter, when the snow, driven by the wind, beat against his windows, he loved to listen to the howling of the storm whirling over his chimney; stretched upon his rug, his eyes would follow the play of the embers upon his hearth, or the curling smoke from his pipe.
Did he see the figure of the devil in the embers? Did he see angels’ wings in the smoke from his pipe? He said so, himself. The fact is, he dwelt in a nameless realm, and in this realm, of which he was king, he rummaged boxes of emeralds, pearls, and diamonds; he carried off women beside whom the houris, green, yellow, and blue, promised by Mahomet to the faithful, were but Kalmucks or Samoyedes; he cast himself into unheard of perils; he fought gnomes, giants, enchanters, and fell asleep amidst the creatures of his fancy, and awoke in the morning, the ideal so confused with the real that he did not know whether he had been awake or dreaming.
And sometimes he would summon his Lesghian noukar and have him sing. The Lesghian sang of the freedom of his brothers upon their mountains, their courage in combat and the chase; and then the Asiatic heart of Iskander would begin to swell. He would take his dagger and feel its point; he would sharpen the blade of his shaska, and mutter, —
“Shall I, then, never fight?”
His wish was not long in being realized; Kasi Mullah attacked Derbend. It was a fine opportunity for brave men to test their mettle.
Iskander Beg did not overlook it.
He sallied forth with the Tartars, mounted on his fine Karabach charger, which knew neither rocks nor abysses; and he was always at the front. To join him, yes, that might be possible; but to pass him, never. He did not run, he flew like the eagle, despatching death far and near, first with his gun, then, the discharged gun swung from his shoulder, with kandjiar on high, hurling himself with savage shouts upon the enemy.
One day there had been an engagement near Kouba, and having dislodged the Russians from a vineyard, the Tartars began, notwithstanding their success, to riot, according to the Asiatic custom, with two heads lopped off and fastened to a standard taken from the enemy. The Russian troops had already re-entered the town, but a young Russian officer and a few Tartars, among whom we find Iskander Beg, had halted near the fountain. Bullets and balls were whistling around them; the Russian officer was at the time drinking of the pure, limpid water. Lifting his head, he saw before him Iskander Beg in simple close tunic of white satin; his rolled-up sleeves revealed hands and arms reddened with blood to the elbow.
He was leaning upon his gun, his lips curled in scorn, his eyes flashing through tears, blazing with wrath.
“What is the matter, Iskander?” demanded the Russian. “It strikes me that you have acquitted yourself well of your share of the work, and have nothing to regret.”
“Hearts of hares!” he muttered. “They march regularly enough when advancing, but in retreat, they are wild goats.”
“Well, after all,” said the young Russian, “the day seems to be ours.”
“Of course it is ours; but we have left poor Ishmael over there.”
“Ishmael?” demanded the officer. “Isn’t that the handsome lad that came to me at the beginning of the fight and begged me to give him some cartridges?”
“Yes; he was the only one I loved in all Derbend; an angelic soul. He is lost!”
And lie wiped away a single tear that trembled upon his eyelid and could not decide to fall.
“Is he captured?” inquired the Russian.
“He is dead!” answered Iskander. “Braver than a man, he had all the imprudence of a child. He wanted to pick a bunch of grapes, and he cleared the space separating him from the vines. He lost his head by it. Before my eyes, the Lesghians cut his throat. I could not help him; there were ten men to deal with. I killed three of them, that was all I could do. Just now they are retreating; they are insulting his body, the wretches! Come,” cried he, turning to three or four Tartars who stood listening, “who of you still has some love, fidelity, and courage in his soul? Let him return with me to rescue the body of a comrade.”
“I will go with you myself,” announced the Russian officer.
“Let us go,” said two of the Tartars also.
And they four rushed upon the band of Lesghians, who, not expecting this sudden attack, and believing that these four men were followed by a much greater number, retreated before them; and they advanced to the boy’s body, took it up, and bore it back to the town.
At her gate, the mother was waiting. She threw herself upon the decapitated body with heart-rending shrieks and tears.
Iskander gazed at her, his eyebrows drawn together; and now it was not a single tear that trembled alone upon his eyelid, — there were streams of them coursing down his cheeks like waters from a fountain.
A mother’s despair melted this lion’s heart.
“How unfortunate that you are not a Russian!” said the officer, extending his hand.
“How fortunate that you are not a Tartar!” replied Iskander, grasping the hand.
One thing is well known: the moustache, which is an indication of approaching maturity, is likewise the herald of love.
Iskander had not escaped the universal law. Every hair of his moustache had sprouted upon his lip at the very instant that a desire had sprung up in his heart, —— desires vague as yet, inexplicable to himself, but, like orange boughs, bearing on the same branch both fruit and flowers. Why do women like the moustache so much? Because, the symbol of love, it springs from the same source, and crisps in the warmth of desire. What seeks the youth with head erect, humid eye, smiling face, and ruby lip under the budding moustache?
Neither honors nor fortune, — only a kiss.
A virgin moustache is a bridge thrown across two loving mouths; a moustache —
Let us leave the moustaches here, they are carrying us too far; then, too, why, with gray moustache, talk ot black or blonde?
Besides, moustaches, of whatever color, lead me from my subject.
I return, then.
In the month of the preceding April, Iskander had, according to his custom, set out for the chase. The day was beautiful; it was a true spring holiday; it was warm without heat, fresh without humidity. Iskander plunged into the midst of an ocean of verdure and flowers. He had now, for several hours, been going from gorge to gorge, from mountain to mountain; he wanted something, he knew not what. For the first time the air seemed difficult to breathe, for the first time, his heart beat without cause; his unquiet breast fluttered like a woman’s veil.
And, speaking of veils, let us note a fact.
When Iskander formerly passed through the streets of Derbend, he would never have cast a look toward a woman, had she been unveiled to her girdle; while, on the contrary, from the very day on which he was able to twist the ends of his little black moustache between his fingers, every nose-tip, every lip, every brown eye or blue that he could catch a glimpse of through a peephole in a veil, turned him hot and cold at once. It is a positive fact that he had never studied anatomy; well, in spite of his ignorance, he could picture to himself a woman from the toe of her slipper to the top of her veil, not only without error but even without oversight, merely from catching sight of a little silk-stockinged foot in a velvet slipper under a kanaos trouser embroidered with gold or silver.
I will not tell you whether, on this occasion, his hunt was successful; I will say only that the hunter was very distrait, — so distrait that, instead of seeking the lonely haunts where pheasant and partridge are wont to hide, he turned his horse toward two or three hamlets where he had absolutely no business.
But the day was fine, and, whether standing at their gates, or sitting on the house-tops, he hoped to see one of those pretty little contemporaneous animals that he had reconstructed with as much precision as the learned Cuvier had reconstructed a mastodon, an ichthyosaurus, a pterodactyl, or any other antediluvian monster.
Unfortunately, he had to be content with the specimens already known. Women were at their gates, women were on the terraces; but the Mohammedan women, who sometimes put aside their veils for unbelievers, never lift them for their compatriots. The result was that the desires of Iskander Beg, not finding a face upon which to fix themselves, were scattered to the winds.
The young man became sad, drew a profound sigh, threw the bridle on his horse’s neck, and left him master to go what way he would.
This is what travellers and lovers ought always to do when they have an intelligent horse.
The horse knew a delightful road leading home; on this road, under some tall plane-trees, was a spring forming a pool, at which he was in the habit of slaking his thirst: he took this route.
Iskander Beg paid no attention as to what path his horse was taking.
Little it mattered to him; he was riding in a dream.
And along with him, on both sides of the road, stalked all sorts of phantoms; these were women, all veiled it is true, but their veils were so carelessly worn that not one of them prevented his seeing what should have been unseen.
Suddenly Iskander reined in his horse; his vision seemed turned into reality.
At the edge of the spring was hidden a girl of fifteen or sixteen years, more beautiful than he had ever dreamed a woman could be. With the pure water she was cooling her beautiful face, which the April sun had tinted like a rose; then she gazed at herself in the shimmering mirror, smiled, and took so much pleasure in seeing herself smile, that she saw nothing else, listening the while to the birds that sang above her head, and hearing only their songs, which seemed to say: “Gaze into the fountain, beautiful child! Never was flower so fresh as thou mirrored there before; never will flower so fresh as thou be mirrored after thee!”
They doubtless said it to her in verse; but I am obliged to tell it in prose, not knowing the rules of poetry in bird language.
And they were right, the feathered flatterers; it was hard to imagine flower fresher, purer, more beautiful than this one which appeared to have sprung up from the edge of the pool in which it was reflected.
But it was one of those human blossoms that Granville knows so well how to paint, — with black locks, eyes like stars, teeth like pearls, cheeks like peaches; the whole enveloped, not by one of those thick, ill-advised veils that conceal what they cover, but by a gauze so fine, so silky, so transparent, that it seemed woven from the filmy beams which Summer shakes from her distaff when Autumn comes.
Then if the imprudent eye descended in a straight line from her face, that was indeed another matter. After a neck, which might have served as a model for the Tower of Ivory of Scripture, came —
Undoubtedly what came after and was half hidden by a chemise of white maufe, embroidered with blue, and. an arkabouke of cherry satin, was very beautiful, since poor Iskander could not repress an exclamation of delight.
The cry had no sooner escaped him than Iskander wished that he had been born dumb; he had driven himself out of Paradise.
The girl had heard the exclamation; she turned around and uttered a cry on her part; over her transparent veil she threw a thick one, and ran, or, rather, flew away, twice gasping the name of Iskander Beg.
He, stricken dumb when it was too late, motionless when perhaps he would have run, his arms extended, as if to stay the reality which, in fleeing, again melted into a vision, stood breathless with staring eyes, like Apollo watching the flight of Daphne.
But Apollo very quickly darted forth upon the track of the beautiful nymph, while Iskander Beg did not budge so long as he was able to catch a glimpse through the thicket of a hand’s breadth of that white veil.
And when it was lost to view he became much agitated, for he felt then as if life, a moment suspended, was returning in waves upon him, rudely and noisily invading his heart.
“Allah!” murmured he, “what will they say of her and of me if any one has seen us? — How beautiful she is! — She will be scolded by her parents. — What lovely black eyes! — They will think that we had planned a rendezvous! — What lips! — She knows my name; twice as she ran she cried: ‘Iskander! Iskander!’”
And he again sank into his revery, if a state can be called a revery in which the blood is boiling, while harps are ringing in one’s ears, and when all the stars of heaven are seen in broad daylight.
Most certainly would night have surprised Iskander on the borders of the pool, into whose waters his heart seemed to have fallen, had not the horse, feeling his bridle, tightened for an instant, gently relax, continued on his way without consulting his rider.
Iskander reached home madly in love.
We are sorry indeed not to have found either time or space in this chapter to tell why Iskander bore malice to Mir Hadji Festahli; but we promise our readers, positively, to tell them in the following chapter.