Kitabı oku: «Every Man for Himself», sayfa 9

VIII – THEY WHO LOSE AT LOVE

And old Khalil Khayyat, simulating courage, went out, that the reconciliation of Yusef Khouri with the amazing marriage might surely be accomplished. And returning in dread and bewildered haste, he came again to the pastry-shop of Nageeb Fiani, where young Salim Awad, the light of his eyes, still lay limp over the round table in the little back room, grieving that Haleema, Khouri’s daughter, of the tresses of night, the star-eyed, his well-beloved, had of a sudden wed Jimmie Brady, the jolly truckman. The smoke hung dead and foul in the room; the coffee was turned cold in the cups, stagnant and greasy; the coal on the narghile was grown gray as death: the magic of great despair had in a twinkling worked the change of cheer to age and shabbiness and frigid gloom. But the laughter and soft voices in the outer room were all unchanged, still light, lifted indifferently above the rattle of dice and the aimless strumming of a canoun; and beyond was the familiar evening hum and clatter of New York’s Washington Street, children’s cries and the patter of feet, drifting in at the open door; and from far off, as before, came the low, receding roar of the Elevated train rounding the curve to South Ferry.

Khayyat smiled in compassion: being old, used to the healing of years, he smiled; and he laid a timid hand on the head of young Salim Awad.

“Salim, poet, the child of a poet,” he whispered, “grieve no more!”

“My heart is a gray coal, O Khalil!” sighed Salim Awad, who had lost at love. “For a moment it glowed in the breath of love. It is turned cold and gray; it lies forsaken in a vast night.”

“For a moment,” mused Khalil Khayyat, sighing, but yet smiling, “it glowed in the breath of love. Ah, Salim,” said he, “there is yet the memory of that ecstasy!”

“My heart is a brown leaf: it flutters down the wind of despair; it is caught in the tempest of great woe.”

“It has known the sunlight and the tender breeze.”

Salim looked up; his face was wet and white; his black hair, fallen in disarray over his forehead, was damp with the sweat of grief; his eyes, soulful, glowing in deep shadows, he turned to some place high and distant. “My heart,” he cried, passionately, clasping his hands, “is a thing that for a moment lived, but is forever dead! It is in a grave of night and heaviness, O Khalil, my friend!”

“It is like a seed sown,” said Khalil Khayyat.

“To fail of harvest!”

“Nay; to bloom in compassionate deeds. The flower of sorrow is the joy of the world. In the broken heart is the hope of the hopeless; in the agony of poets is their sure help. Hear me, O Salim Awad!” the old man continued, rising, lifting his lean brown hand, his voice clear, vibrant, possessing the quality of prophecy. “The broken heart is a seed sown by the hand of the Beneficent and Wise. Into the soil of life He casts it that there may be a garden in the world. With a free, glad hand He sows, that the perfume and color of high compassion may glorify the harvest of ambitious strife; and progress is the fruit of strife and love the flower of compassion. Yea, O Salim, poet, the child of a poet, taught of a poet, which am I, the broken heart is a seed sown gladly, to flower in this beauty. Blessed,” Khalil Khayyat concluded, smiling, “oh, blessed be the Breaker of Hearts!”

“Blessed,” asked Salim Awad, wondering, “be the Breaker of Hearts?”

“Yea, O Salim,” answered Khalil Khayyat, speaking out of age and ancient pain; “even blessed be the Breaker of Hearts!”

Salim Awad turned again to the place that was high and distant – beyond the gaudy, dirty ceiling of the little back room – where, it may be, the form of Haleema, the star-eyed, of the slender, yielding shape of the tamarisk, floated in a radiant cloud, compassionate and glorious.

“What is my love?” he whispered. “Is it a consuming fire? Nay,” he answered, his voice rising, warm, tremulous; “rather is it a little blaze, kindled brightly in the night, that it may comfort my beloved. What is my love, O Haleema, daughter of Khouri, the star-eyed? Is it an arrow, shot from my bow, that it may tear the heart of my beloved? Nay; rather is it a shield against the arrows of sorrow – my shield, the strength of my right arm: a refuge from the cruel shafts of life. What are my arms? Are they bars of iron to imprison my beloved? Nay,” cried Salim Awad, striking his breast; “they are but a resting-place. A resting-place,” he repeated, throwing wide his arms, “to which she will not come! Oh, Haleema!” he moaned, flinging himself upon the little round table, “Haleema! Jewel of all riches! Star of the night! Flower of the world! Haleema … Haleema…”

“Poet!” Khalil Khayyat gasped, clutching the little round table, his eyes flashing. “The child of a poet, taught of a poet, which am I!”

They were singing in the street – a riot of Irish lads, tenement-born; tramping noisily past the door of Nageeb Fiani’s pastry-shop to Battery Park. And Khalil Khayyat sat musing deeply, his ears closed to the alien song, while distance mellowed the voices, changed them to a vagrant harmony, made them one with the mutter of Washington Street; for there had come to him a great thought – a vision, high, glowing, such as only poets may know – concerning love and the infinite pain; and he sought to fashion the thought: which must be done with tender care in the classic language, lest it suffer in beauty or effect being uttered in haste or in the common speech of the people. Thus he sat: low in his chair, his head hanging loose, his eyes jumping, his brown, wrinkled face fearfully working, until every hair of his unshaven beard stood restlessly on end. And Salim Awad, looking up, perceived these throes: and thereby knew that some prophetic word was immediately to be spoken.

“They who lose at love,” Khayyat muttered, “must… They who lose at love…”

“Khalil!”

The Language Beautiful was for once perverse. The words would not come to Khalil Khayyat. He gasped, tapped the table with impatient fingers – and bent again to the task.

“They who lose at love…”

“Khalil!” Salim Awad’s voice was plaintive. “What must they do, O Khalil,” he implored, “who lose at love? Tell me, Khalil! What must they do?”

“They who lose at love… They who lose at love must… They who lose at love must … seek…”

“Speak, O Khalil, concerning those wretched ones! And they must seek?”

Khayyat laughed softly. He sat back in the chair – proudly squared his shoulders. “And now I know!” he cried, in triumph. He cleared his throat. “They who lose at love,” he declaimed, “must seek…” He paused abruptly. There had been a warning in the young lover’s eyes: after all, in exceptional cases, poetry might not wisely be practised.

“Come, Khalil!” Salim Awad purred. “They who lose at love? What is left for them to do?”

“Nay,” answered Khalil Khayyat, looking away, much embarrassed, “I will not tell you.”

Salim caught the old man’s wrist. “What is the quest?” he cried, hoarsely, bending close.

“I may not tell.”

Salim’s fingers tightened; his teeth came together with a snap; his face flushed – a quick flood of red, hot blood.

“What is the quest?” he demanded.

“I dare not tell.”

“The quest?”

“I will not tell!”

Nor would Khalil Khayyat tell Salim Awad what must be sought by such as lose at love; but he called to Nageeb Fiani, the greatest player in all the world, to bring the violin, that Salim might hear the music of love and be comforted. And in the little back room of the pastry-shop near the Battery, while the trucks rattled over the cobblestones and the songs of the Irish troubled the soft spring night, Nageeb Fiani played the Song of Love to Lali, which the blind prince had made, long, long ago, before he died of love; and in the sigh and wail and passionate complaint of that dead woe the despair of Salim Awad found voice and spent itself; and he looked up, and gazing deep into the dull old eyes of Khalil Khayyat, new light in his own, he smiled.

“Yet, O Khalil,” he whispered, “will I go upon that quest!”

Now, Salim Awad went north to the bitter coasts – to the shore of rock and gray sea – there to carry a pack from harbor to harbor of a barren land, ever seeking in trade to ease the sorrows of love. Neither sea nor land – neither naked headland nor the unfeeling white expanse – neither sunlit wind nor the sleety gale in the night – helped him to forgetfulness. But, as all the miserable know, the love of children is a vast delight: and the children of that place are blue-eyed and hungry; and it is permitted the stranger to love them… On he went, from Lobster Tickle to Snook’s Arm, from Dead Man’s Cove to Righteous Harbor, trading laces and trinkets for salt fish; and on he went, sanguine, light of heart, blindly seeking that which the losers at love must seek; for Khalil Khayyat had told him that the mysterious Thing was to be found in that place.

With a jolly wind abeam – a snoring breeze from the southwest – the tight little Bully Boy, fore-and-after, thirty tons, Skipper Josiah Top, was footing it through the moonlight from Tutt’s Tickle to the Labrador: bound down north for the first fishing of that year. She was tearing through the sea – eagerly nosing the slow, black waves; and they heartily slapped her bows, broke, ran hissing down the rail, lay boiling in the broad, white wake, stretching far into the luminous mist astern. Salim Awad, the peddler, picked up at Bread-and-Water Harbor, leaned upon the rail – staring into the mist: wherein, for him, were melancholy visions of the star-eyed maid of Washington Street… At midnight the wind veered to the east – a swift, ominous change – and rose to the pitch of half a gale, blowing cold and capriciously. It brought fog from the distant open; the night turned clammy and thick; the Bully Boy found herself in a mess of dirty weather. Near dawn, being then close inshore, off the Seven Dogs, which growled to leeward, she ran into the ice – the first of the spring floes: a field of pans, slowly drifting up the land. And when the air was gray she struck on the Devil’s Finger, ripped her keel out, and filled like a sieve; and she sank in sixty seconds, as men say – every strand and splinter of her.

But first she spilled her crew upon the ice.

The men had leaped to port and starboard, fore and aft, in unthinking terror, each desperately concerned with his own life; they were now distributed upon the four pans which had been within leaping distance when the Bully Boy settled: white rafts, floating on a black, slow-heaving sea; lying in a circle of murky fog; creeping shoreward with the wind. If the wind held – and it was a true, freshening wind, – they would be blown upon the coast rocks, within a measurable time, and might walk ashore; if it veered, the ice would drift to sea, where, ultimately, in the uttermost agony of cold and hunger, every man would yield his life. The plight was manifest, familiar to them, every one; but they were wise in weather lore: they had faith in the consistency of the wind that blew; and, in the reaction from bestial terror, they bandied primitive jokes from pan to pan – save the skipper, who had lost all that he had, and was helplessly downcast: caring not a whit whether he lived or died; for he had loved his schooner, the work of his hands, his heart’s child, better than his life.

It chanced that Salim Awad, who loved the star-eyed daughter of Khouri, and in this land sought to ease the sorrow of his passion – it chanced that this Salim was alone with Tommy Hand, the cook’s young son – a tender lad, now upon his first voyage to the Labrador. And the boy began to whimper.

“Dad,” he called to his father, disconsolate, “I wisht – I wisht – I was along o’ you – on your pan.”

The cook came to the edge of the ice. “Does you, lad?” he asked, softly. “Does you wisht you was along o’ me, Tommy? Ah, but,” he said, scratching his beard, bewildered, “you isn’t.”

The space of black water between was short, but infinitely capacious; it was sullen and cold – intent upon its own wretchedness: indifferent to the human pain on either side. The child stared at the water, nostrils lifting, hands clinched, body quivering: thus as if at bay in the presence of an implacable terror. He turned to the open sea, vast, gray, heartless: a bitter waste – might and immensity appalling. Wistfully then to the land, upon which the scattered pack was advancing, moving in disorder, gathering as it went: bold, black coast, naked, uninhabited – but yet sure refuge: being greater than the sea, which it held confined; solid ground, unmoved by the wind, which it flung contemptuously to the sky. And from the land to his father’s large, kind face.

“No, b’y,” the cook repeated, “you isn’t. You sees, Tommy lad,” he added, brightening, as with a new idea, “you isn’t along o’ me.”

Tommy rubbed his eyes, which were now wet. “I wisht,” he sobbed, his under lip writhing, “I was– along o’ you!”

“I isn’t able t’ swim t’ you, Tommy,” said the cook; “an’, ah, Tommy!” he went on, reproachfully, wagging his head, “you isn’t able t’ swim t’ me. I tol’ you, Tommy – when I went down the Labrador las’ year – I tol’ you t’ l’arn t’ swim. I tol’ you, Tommy – don’t you mind the time? – when you was goin’ over the side o’ th’ ol’ Gabriel’s Trumpet, an’ I had my head out o’ the galley, an’ ’twas a fair wind from the sou’east, an’ they was weighin’ anchor up for’ard – don’t you mind the day, lad? – I tol’ you, Tommy, you must l’arn t’ swim afore another season. Now, see what’s come t’ you!” still reproachfully, but with deepening tenderness. “An’ all along o’ not mindin’ your dad! ‘Now,’ says you, ‘I wisht I’d been a good lad an’ minded my dad.’ Ah, Tommy – shame! I’m thinkin’ you’ll mind your dad after this.”

Tommy began to bawl.

“Never you care, Tommy,” said the cook. “The wind’s blowin’ we ashore. You an’ me’ll be saved.”

“I wants t’ be along o’ you!” the boy sobbed.

“Ah, Tommy! You isn’t alone. You got the Jew.”

“But I wants you!”

“You’ll take care o’ Tommy, won’t you, Joe?”

Salim Awad smiled. He softly patted Tommy Hand’s broad young shoulder. “I weel have,” said he, slowly, desperately struggling with the language, “look out for heem. I am not can,” he added, with a little laugh, “do ver’ well.”

“Oh,” said the cook, patronizingly, “you’re able for it, Joe.”

“I am can try eet,” Salim answered, courteously bowing, much delighted. “Much ’bliged.”

Meantime Tommy had, of quick impulse, stripped off his jacket and boots. He made a ball of the jacket and tossed it to his father.

“What you about, Tommy?” the cook demanded. “Is you goin’ t’ swim?”

Tommy answered with the boots; whereupon he ran up and down the edge of the pan, and, at last, slipped like a reluctant dog into the water, where he made a frothy, ineffectual commotion; after which he sank. When he came to the surface Salim Awad hauled him inboard.

“You isn’t goin’ t’ try again, is you, Tommy?” the cook asked.

“No, sir.”

Salim Awad began to breathe again; his eyes, too, returned to their normal size, their usual place.

“No,” the cook observed. “’Tis wise not to. You isn’t able for it, lad. Now, you sees what comes o’ not mindin’ your dad.”

The jacket and boots were tossed back. Tommy resumed the jacket.

“Tommy,” said the cook, severely, “isn’t you got no more sense ’n that?”

“Please, sir,” Tommy whispered, “I forgot.”

“Oh, did you! Did you forget? I’m thinkin’, Tommy, I hasn’t been bringin’ of you up very well.”

Tommy stripped himself to his rosy skin. He wrung the water out of his soggy garments and with difficulty got into them again.

“You better be jumpin’ about a bit by times,” the cook advised, “or you’ll be cotchin’ cold. An’ your mamma wouldn’t like that,” he concluded, “if she ever come t’ hear on it.”

“Ay, sir; please, sir,” said the boy.

They waited in dull patience for the wind to blow the floe against the coast.

It began to snow – a thick fall, by-and-by: the flakes fine and dry as dust. A woolly curtain shut coast and far-off sea from view. The wind, rising still, was charged with stinging frost. It veered; but it blew sufficiently true to the favorable direction: the ice still made ponderously for the shore, reeling in the swell… The great pan bearing Salim Awad and Tommy Hand lagged; it was soon left behind: to leeward the figures of the skipper, the cook, the first hand, and the crew turned to shadows – dissolved in the cloud of snow. The cook’s young son and the love-lorn peddler from Washington Street alone peopled a world of ice and water, all black and white: heaving, confined. They huddled, cowering from the wind, waiting – helpless, patient: themselves detached from the world of ice and water, which clamored round about, unrecognized. The spirit of each returned: the one to the Cedars of Lebanon, the other to Lobster Cove; and in each place there was a mother. In plights like this the hearts of men and children turn to distant mothers; for in all the world there is no rest serene – no rest remembered – like the first rest the spirits of men know.

When dusk began to dye the circumambient cloud, the pan of ice was close inshore; the shape of the cliffs – a looming shadow – was vague in the snow beyond. There was no longer any roar of surf; the first of the floe, now against the coast, had smothered the breakers. A voice, coming faintly into the wind, apprised Tommy Hand that his father was ashore… But the pan still moved sluggishly.

Tommy Hand shivered.

“Ah, Tom-ee!” Salim Awad said, anxiously. “Run! Jump! You weel have – what say? – cotch seek. Ay – cotch thee seek. Eh? R-r-run, Tom-ee!”

“Ay, ay,” Tommy Hand answered. “I’ll be jumpin’ about a bit, I’m thinkin’, t’ keep warm – as me father bid me do.”

“Queek!” cried Salim, laughing.

“Ay,” Tommy muttered; “as me father bid me do.”

“Jump, Tom-ee!” Salim clapped his hands. “Hi, hi! Dance, Tom-ee!”

In the beginning Tommy was deliberate and ponderous; but as his limbs were suppled – and when his blood ran warm again – the dance quickened; for Salim Awad slapped strangely inspiring encouragement, and with droning “la, la!” and sharp “hi, hi!” excited the boy to mad leaps – and madder still. “La, la!” and “Hi, hi!” There was a mystery in it. Tommy leaped high and fast. “La, la!” and “Hi, hi!” In response to the strange Eastern song the fisherboy’s grotesque dance went on… Came then the appalling catastrophe: the pan of rotten, brittle salt-water ice cracked under the lad; and it fell in two parts, which, in the heave of the sea, at once drifted wide of each other. The one part was heavy, commodious; the other a mere unstable fragment of what the whole had been: and it was upon the fragment that Salim Awad and Tommy Hand were left. Instinctively they sprawled on the ice, which was now overweighted – unbalanced. Their faces were close; and as they lay rigid – while the ice wavered and the water covered it – they looked into each other’s eyes… There was, not room for both.

“Tom-ee,” Salim Awad gasped; his breath indrawn, quivering, “I am – mus’ – go!”

The boy stretched out his hand – an instinctive movement, the impulse of a brave and generous heart – to stop the sacrifice.

“Hush!” Salim Awad whispered, hurriedly, lifting a finger to command peace. “I am – for one queek time – have theenk. Hush, Tom-ee!”

Tommy Hand was silent.

And Salim Awad heard again the clatter and evening mutter of Washington Street, children’s cries and the patter of feet, drifting in from the soft spring night – heard again the rattle of dice in the outer room, and the aimless strumming of the canoun – heard again the voice of Khalil Khayyat, lifted concerning such as lose at love. And Salim Awad, staring into a place that was high and distant, beyond the gaudy, dirty ceiling of the little back room of Nageeb Fiani’s pastry-shop near the Battery, saw again the form of Haleema, Khouri’s star-eyed daughter, floating in a cloud, compassionate and glorious. “‘The sun as it sets,’” he thought, in the high words of Antar, spoken of Abla, his beloved, the daughter of Malik, when his heart was sore, “‘turns toward her and says, “Darkness obscures the land, do thou arise in my absence.” The brilliant moon calls out to her: “Come forth, for thy face is like me, when I am in all my glory.” The tamarisk-trees complain of her in the morn and in the eve, and say: “Away, thou waning beauty, thou form of the laurel!” She turns away abashed, and throws aside her veil, and the roses are scattered from her soft, fresh cheeks. Graceful is every limb; slender her waist; love-beaming are her glances; waving is her form. The lustre of day sparkles from her forehead, and by the dark shades of her curling ringlets night itself is driven away!’”… They who lose at love? Upon what quest must the wretched ones go? And Khalil Khayyat had said that the Thing was to be found in this place… Salim Awad’s lips trembled: because of the loneliness of this death – and because of the desert, gloomy and infinite, lying beyond.

“Tom-ee,” Salim Awad repeated, smiling now, “I am – mus’ – go. Goo’-bye, Tom-ee!”

“No, no!”

In this hoarse, gasping protest Salim Awad perceived rare sweetness. He smiled again – delight, approval. “Ver’ much ’bliged,” he said, politely. Then he rolled off into the water…

One night in winter the wind, driving up from the Battery, whipped a gray, soggy snow past the door of Nageeb Fiani’s pastry-shop in Washington Street. The shop was a cosey shelter from the weather; and in the outer room, now crowded with early idlers, they were preaching revolution and the shedding of blood – boastful voices, raised to the falsetto of shallow passion. Khalil Khayyat, knowing well that the throne of Abdul-Hamid would not tremble to the talk of Washington Street, sat unheeding in the little back room; and the coal on the narghile was glowing red, and the coffee was steaming on the round table, and a cloud of fragrant smoke was in the air. In the big, black book, lying open before the poet, were to be found, as always, the thoughts of Abo Elola Elmoarri.

Tanous, the newsboy – the son of Yusef, the father of Samara, by many called Abosamara – threw Kawkab Elhorriah on the cook’s counter.

“News of death!” cried he, as he hurried importantly on. “Kawkab! News of death!”

The words caught the ear of Khalil Khayyat. “News of death?” mused he. “It is a massacre in Armenia.” He turned again, with a hopeless sigh, to the big, black book.

“News of death!” cried Nageeb Fiani, in the outer room. “What is this?”

The death of Salim Awad: being communicated, as the editor made known, by one who knew, and had so informed an important person at St. John’s, who had despatched the news south from that far place to Washington Street… And when Nageeb Fiani had learned the manner of the death of Salim Awad, he made haste to Khalil Khayyat, holding Kawkab Elhorriah open in his, hand.

“There is news of death, O Khalil!” said he.

“Ah,” Khayyat answered, with his long finger marking the place in the big, black book, “there has been a massacre in Armenia. God will yet punish the murderer.”

“No, Khalil.”

Khayyat looked up in alarm. “The Turks have not shed blood in Beirut?”

“No, Khalil.”

“Not so? Ah, then the mother of Shishim has been cast into prison because of the sedition uttered by her son in this place; and she has there died.”

“No, Khalil.”

“Nageeb,” Khayyat demanded, quietly, “of whom is this sad news spoken?”

“The news is from the north.”

Khayyat closed the book. He sipped his coffee, touched the coal on the narghile and puffed it to a glow, contemplated the gaudy wall-paper, watched a spider pursue a patient course toward the ceiling; at last opened the big, black book, and began to turn the leaves with aimless, nervous fingers. Nageeb stood waiting for the poet to speak; and in the doorway, beyond, the people from the outer room had gathered, waiting also for words to fall from the lips of this man; for the moment was great, and the poet was great.

“Salim Awad,” Khayyat muttered, “is dead.”

“Salim is dead. He died that a little one might live.”

“That a little one might live?”

“Even so, Khalil – that a child might have life.”

Khayyat smiled. “The quest is ended,” he said. “It is well that Salim is dead.”

It is well? The people marvelled that Khalil Khayyat should have spoken these cruel words. It is well? And Khalil Khayyat had said so?

“That Salim should die in the cold water?” Nageeb Fiani protested.

“That Salim should die – the death that he did. It is well.”

The word was soon to be spoken; out of the mind and heart of Khalil Khayyat, the poet, great wisdom would appear. There was a crowding at the door: the people pressed closer that no shade of meaning might be lost; the dark faces turned yet more eager; the silence deepened, until the muffled rattle of trucks, lumbering through the snowy night, and the roar of the Elevated train were plain to be heard. What would the poet say? What word of eternal truth would he speak?

“It is well?” Nageeb Fiani whispered.

“It is well.”

The time was not yet come. The people still crowded, still shuffled – still breathed. The poet waited, having the patience of poets.

“Tell us, O Khalil!” Nageeb Fiani implored.

“They who lose at love,” said Khalil Khayyat, fingering the leaves of the big, black book, “must patiently seek some high death.”

Then the people knew, beyond peradventure, that Khalil Khayyat was indeed a great poet.