THE MILLER.
KNOW you the Tengua?
It is sometimes a brooklet, sometimes a torrent, sometimes a stream, and at times a river.
For a quarter of a verst it runs cramped within a narrow gorge, into which it plunges with abhorrence, and through which it madly courses.
The storms of many centuries have not washed the blackened traces of lightning from the walls of the gorge where the Tengua thunders.
Entire masses of rock, precipitated from the mountain’s height to the bottom of the gorge, form the bed over which it leaps and foams with maddening uproar.
The neighborhood of this chasm is wild and gloomy; its entrance is formidable.
The right bank of the torrent casts the shadow of its rocks far over the valley.
The left bank lowers into the water a narrow path which first traverses a little wood.
Ill luck to the horseman who, without guide, engages in a struggle with this liquid hell, especially at seasons of thaw or melting snow.
Ill luck to him if he encounter brigands in this pass, which seems expressly planned for an ambuscade. Defence and flight are impossible here.
At this spot Mullah Nour, the bandit from the book of whose life we are taking a page, — this very Mullah Nour with a dozen of his fellows stopped three regiments which were returning with the enormous spoils of General Pankratief’s expedition.
When they were just on the point of descending into the river, he appeared before them mounted and completely armed, threw his bourka on the ground and said, —
“I salute you, comrades! Allah has granted you victory and spoils. Honor be to you! but it would only be like the good Christians you are to let me share your happiness. I exact nothing, — I entreat; be generous, and let each give me what he will. Think now, brothers, you are returning rich, carrying presents to your relatives. As for me, I am poor, I have no home; and for an hour’s repose under others’ roofs, I pay a handful of gold. Yet, know you, brothers, men have, like cowards, stripped me of everything. Happily, Allah has preserved my courage; more than that, he has given me these gloomy ravines and these naked rocks which you yourselves scorn. Of these rocks and ravines I am king, and no one shall pass through my territories without my permission. You are in great numbers, you are brave; but if you mean to pass by force, it will cost you much blood, and of time much more, for you will cross only when I and my brave men have fallen. Every stone will fight for me, and as for myself, I will shed here the last drop of my blood; I will burn here my last grain of powder. Choose; you have much to lose, and I nothing. Men call me Nour, The Light, but my life, I swear, is gloomier than the darkness.”
A murmur rose from the ranks of the troopers; some frowned, others were wrathful.
“Let us trample Mullah Nour under our horses’
feet,” said they, “and go on. You see how many we are, how many you are. On! let us charge the bandits!”
But no one ventured first into the roaring stream, whose ford was covered by the guns of a dozen brigands.
Rashness made way for reflection, and the three regiments yielded to Mullah Nour’s demands.
“We shall give you what we like, and nothing more.”
And so saying, each cavalier threw a little money down on the bandit’s bourka.
“But understand that, by force, you could not have taken a nail from our horses’ shoes.”
And they passed one by one in single file before Mullah Nour.
Mullah Nour smilingly bowed to them.
“Allah!” said he, after this adventure which had brought him three or four thousand roubles, “it is no feat to shear the wool from the sheep of Daghestan, when I have shaved the hair from the wolves of the Karabaeh. I do not know why these people of Daghestan should complain about their crops; I take no pains to sow, plough, or cultivate; I stand on the highway and pray, and my prayer brings me an ample harvest. Only know how to set about it, and you can extract an abassi, not from every carriage, but from every gun-barrel.”
But early in the summer of the year in which the events that we are relating took place, no one had seen Mullah Nour, no one had heard Mullah Nour spoken of as on the banks of the Tengua. Where was he, then?
In the government of Shekin perhaps; perhaps in Persia, where he might indeed have been forced to take refuge; and perhaps he was dead.
Nobody knew anything about him, — not even Mullah Sédek, who pretended to have been robbed by him on his way from Persia to Derbend.
He had left Kouban early in the morning, this worthy, this respectable Mullah Sédek, and, toward noon, he had reached the spot where the Tengua, freed from the confines of the gorge, goes on its way. Insatiate as the desert sand, he was unwilling to take a guide, whose trouble he must have paid for by a few paltry pieces of the coin that he had gathered by the bushel at Derbend.
The June sun was terribly warm, and our wayfaring mullah was in the act of transferring his gun from the right shoulder to the left.
When he caught sight of a little wood in the distance, he was delighted; but when he saw the river close at hand, he was in despair.
“May the devil take me!” murmured he; “had I known what this river was like, I would not have attempted to cross it without a guide, although its bed were silver and gold instead of rocks. In fact, I was crazy not to have hired one.”
And he gazed about him in terror; the spot was deserted and solitary.
However, after careful search, he discovered, tied to a tree in the wood, a horse all saddled and bridled; and under this same tree was a simple Tartar, armed only with his kandjiar, a weapon that no Tartar ever goes without.
Mullah Sédek approached step by step and looked attentively.
The flour whitening the Tartar’s coat and beard indicated that he was a miller. The miller was eating his breakfast.
Our holy man, who had felt his heart beat for an instant, became reassured.
“Hi! friend!” cried he to the unknown, “it seems to me that you belong hereabouts, do you not?”
“To be sure I belong here,” replied the miller with his mouth full.
“In that case, you ought to know all the fords of this river?”
“Oh! I certainly think I ought to know the fords of the Tengua; she runs only with my permission. Such as you see her, this river is my servant.”
“You will do me a great service, my good man, and Allah will bless you, if you will conduct me to the other side of the gorge.”
“Wait until night,” tranquilly returned the miller. “Between now and night the river will fall, my horse will be rested, and I, too, shall be refreshed. It will not take us more than a quarter of an hour then to ford the torrent; but just now it is dangerous.”
“In the name of Allah! In the names of Ali and Hussein! In the name of my prayers! I am a mullah; lead me across without delay, now, instantly!”
“Oh!” said the miller, “neither prayers nor blessings will bring that to pass. Never, at such high water, will I try to ford the Tengua!”
“Have some feeling, my friend; Allah will reward you, you may be sure, if you do anything for a mullah.”
“Mullah as much as you like, but I would not risk getting drowned to guide the prophet himself.”
“Do not despise me; I am not so poor as you think, perhaps, and if you render me this service, it shall not be for nothing.”
The miller smiled.
“Well, let us see, what would you give me?” he said, scratching his beard.
“I will give you two abassis; I hope that is reasonable.”
“Good! two abassis? With two abassis I should not even have the means of getting my horse shod. No, I will not take you across for two roubles even; because a new head is not to be bought with two roubles, and a man would plainly be risking his head in that frightful ford.”
They bargained a long time; at last Mullah Sédek ended by promising the sum exacted by the miller.
On giving up his horse’s bridle to the guide, Mullah Sédek surrendered at discretion and trusted himself entirely to the other’s experience. The holy man nearly died of fright when he began to ford the river and penetrated the entrance of the gorge. But when, through the opposite gap, he again caught sight of the valley covered with grass, with sunlight and flowers, his courage revived, and supposing there was nothing more to fear, he addressed his guide, —
“Come, will you get on a little faster, you rascal?”
But our brave mullah had found his courage a little too soon. The last part of the ford was the deepest and most dangerous.
The guide halted just at that part, and turning his horse, he said, —
“Well, Sédek, ten steps more and you are on the bank. Now let us settle our accounts. You know that I have well earned your gold-piece, eh?”
“A gold-piece! Have you no conscience, friend? No, you are joking, surely. I might as well have built me a silver bridge to cross on. Go on, now, good fellow, and on the other side I will give you two abassis and you can be off.”
“Good! we shall come to better terms, I fancy.”
“Undoubtedly, undoubtedly. Necessity — you hold a knife to my throat, and I must certainly cross over. Where do you expect a poor traveller to get so much money? Alas! I have already been robbed. Come, come, take me to the other side, brother; and once there, you can go about your business, and I will go about mine.”
“Not so,” said the miller, shaking his head; “I told you, and I repeat that I will not leave this spot without having settled my account with you, and our account docs not date from to-day. You have no conscience, Mullah Sédek, but you doubtless have a memory. To excite sympathy and obtain money at Derbend, you invented the story that Mullah Nour had stopped you, stripped you, and taken everything. Tell me, where did that happen?”
“I have never said such a thing!” cried Mullah Sédek; “may Allah condemn me if I said that!”
“Recall the court of the mosque, Sédek; remember what you said to the Lesghian, what you told the wayfarer who slept on his bourka. And now look me in the face, as I am looking at you, and perhaps we shall recognize each other.”
Mullah Sédek scanned the face of his guide; under the flour which covered it he was at first unrecognizable, but the flour had disappeared; gradually the whitened beard had become black; under the frowning brows glittered two black eyes. However, seeing that he had no weapon but his kandjiar, Mullah Sédek seized his gun; but before he could cock it, the kandjiar’s point was at his breast.
“If you twitch so much as a hair of your moustache,” said the counterfeit miller, “I warn you that, like Jonah, you shall go to preach to the fishes against drinking either wine or brandy. Come, now, away with your gun, away with your sword! Your business is to cheat people in the shops and in the pulpit; to lie in the morning, to lie in the evening, to lie at all times; but fighting is the business of brave men, — not yours, therefore. Do not move, I say, you son of a dog! In this place, there is no need for me to waste even one charge of powder on you, and that is why I carry no fire-arms; I have only to drop your horse’s bridle, and in five minutes you are a corpse.”
At these words Mullah Sédek turned as white as wax. He clutched his horse’s mane, conscious that he was growing dizzy, and about to slip from his saddle. But, without for an instant losing sight of the wicked kandjiar that glittered against his breast like a flashing light, he cried, —
“Mercy! I am a mullah!”
“I am myself a mullah,” responded the guide, “and even more than a mullah, — I am Mullah Nour.” Mullah Sédek gave a shriek and cowered to his horse’s mane, clasping both hands about his own neck, as if he already felt the steel’s sharp edge upon its nape.
Mullah Nour began to laugh at Sédek’s terror; then raising him up at last, he said, —
“Your story to the people of Derbend maligned me; you made everybody believe that I had robbed you of your last kopeck, of your last shirt even, — I, who give the poor man the bit of bread that he begs in vain at the rich man’s door, — I who never take more than one piece of gold from the merchants themselves, and that not for myself, but for my comrades, — comrades who would kill and plunder without shame and without remorse, did I not restrain them. And more than that, — you are the robber, for you meant to rob your guide by refusing him what you had promised; lastly, you are an assassin, for when I demanded what was legitimately my due you would have assassinated me.”
“Have pity on me, pardon mo, good Mullah Nour!” said Sédek.
“Have you ever pitied the lot of the poor man whom you saw dying of hunger? Would you have felt any remorse if you had killed me? No; for you are a miserable wretch. You coin every letter of the Koran into money, and in your own interests and for your own profit you sow dissension in families. I recognized you; I knew what sort of a man you were, and I did not touch you when you passed along here on your way to Derbend. You did not see me; you did not meet me; you did not know me; yet you insulted me. Well, now you will not be lying when you say that I have robbed you. Mullah Sédek, give me your money!”
Mullah Sédek sent up shriek after shriek, he shed great tears; but he was entrapped, he had to submit. One after another, he cast his poor roubles into the sack held out to him by Mullah Nour, squeezing each coin before letting it go, as if a coating of silver might cling to his hands.
Finally, he reached the last piece.
“That is all,” said he.
“You would swear to a lie on the edge of the grave!” cried Mullah Nour. “Look here, Sédek, unless you wish to become more intimately acquainted with my poniard, count better. You still have money; you have gold in the inside pocket of your tchouska. I know how much, and I can tell you, — fifteen hundred roubles. Is n’t that it?”
Great was the lamentation of Sédek, but he was forced to yield up his very last piece of gold.
Mullah Nour had spoken the truth, he knew the amount.
Mullah Nour then conducted Sédek to the much desired bank, and made him there dismount from his horse.
Mullah Sédek believed himself at quits with the bandit, but he was deceived.
“Now, that is not all,” said the latter; “you have hindered the marriage of Iskander Beg, and you must mend what you have marred. You have a bottle of ink in your girdle; write to Hadji Festahli that you have received on the way a letter from your brother, in which he tells you that his son does not wish to marry, and has gone on a pilgrimage to Mecca; or say that he is dead, if you like. The deuce! you ought not to be put to it for a lie! Only, arrange it so that Iskander can wed his promised bride. Otherwise, I shall see to marrying you to the houris, Mullah Sédek!”
“Never!” cried Mullah Sédek, “never! No, no, no, I will not do it! You have taken all I had; be content with what you have robbed me of.”
“Ah! is it so?” said Mullah Nour.
He clapped his hands three times, and, at the third, a dozen bandits appeared, as if they had issued from the rocks.
“The worthy Mullah Sédek wishes to write,” said Mullah Nour; “second him, my friends, in the laudable intention.”
In a twinkling, Mullah Sédek, if such was indeed his desire, had nothing left to wish for. One bandit detached his ink-bottle, another dipped his pen in the ink, a third handed him paper, and last of all, a fourth, bracing his hands against his knees, and lowering his shoulders, offered his back for a desk.
Three times Mullah Sédek began to write, but, whether from errors or unwillingness, three times he broke off., “Well?” demanded Mullah Nour, his voice but the more threatening for appearing to be perfectly calm.
“The ink is bad, and my head is so bothered that I can think of no words.”
“Then write with your blood and think with your papak,” said Mullah Nour, with an emphasizing flash of the terrible kandjiar; “but write very quickly! If not, I will put such a point between your two eyebrows that the devil alone can tell which letter of the alphabet you resemble.”
Mullah Sédek saw that his hesitation had gone its length, and he finally made up his mind to write.
“Set your seal now,” said Mullah Nour, when the letter was finished.
Mullah Sédek obeyed.
“There! now give it to me,” demanded Mullah Nour; “I will see to posting it.”
He took the letter, read it, assured himself that it was what he desired, thrust it into his pocket, and then, tossing to Mullah Sédek all that had been taken from him, he said, —
“There is your gold and silver, Sédek; take it back, not a kopeck is missing. And now which of us two is miser or thief? Answer. However, it is not a gift, but a payment. You have blackened my name at Derbend, you must regild it at Schumaka, and that in open mosque. Go, then, and know that if you do not carry out my orders, my ball will find you, however well hidden you may be. I have convinced you that I know everything; I will prove to you that I can do everything.”
Mullah Sédek pledged himself to all that the bandit exacted, took possession of his money very joyfully, restored it to his pockets, after first assuring himself that his pockets contained no holes, and, remounting his horse, he set off at full gallop.
Two days later, Mullah Sédek scandalized the people of Schumaka by a discourse in which he eulogized Mullah Nour, comparing him to a lion that bore the heart of a dove in his breast.