The Journeyer - Jennings Gary - Страница 104
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I did not meet Nostril or my uncle there; most likely the slave had gone in search of some accessible boy of the kuch-i-safari, and possibly so had Uncle Mafio. I again asked the Jew for the dark-brown girl Chiv, and got her, and had her, so energetically that she gasped Romm words of astonished pleasure—“yilo!” and “friska!” and “alo! alo! alo!”—and I felt sadness and compassion for all the eunuchs and Sodomites and castroni and every other sort of cripple who would never know the delight of making a woman sing that sweet song.
3
ON my every subsequent visit to Shimon’s place of business—and they were fairly frequent, once or twice a week—I asked for Chiv. I was quite satisfied with her performance of surata, and had almost ceased to notice her skin’s qahwah color, and was not at all disposed to try the other colors and races of females the Jew kept in his stable, for they were all inferior to Chiv in face and figure. But surata was not my only diversion during that winter. There was always something happening in Buzai Gumbad that was of novelty and interest to me. Whenever I heard a burst of noise that was either someone stepping on a cat or someone starting to play the native music, I always assumed it was the latter, and went to see what kind of entertainment it promised. I might find just a mirasi or a najhaya malang, but it would as often be something more worth observing.
A mirasi was only a male singer, but of a special sort: he sang nothing but family histories. On request, and on payment, he would squat before his sarangi—which was an instrument rather like a viella, played with a bow, but laid flat on the ground—and he would saw at its strings, and to that wailing accompaniment he would warble the names of all the forebears of the Prophet Muhammad or Alexander the Great or any other historical personage. But not many requested that sort of performance; it seemed that everybody already knew by heart the genealogies of all the accepted notables. A mirasi was oftenest hired by a family to sing its history. Sometimes, I suppose, they indulged in the expense just to enjoy hearing their family tree set to music, and perhaps sometimes just to impress all their neighbors within hearing. But usually they engaged a mirasi when a matrimonial match was contemplated with some other family, and so would set forth, at the top of the mirasi’s lungs, the estimable heritage of the boy or girl about to be betrothed. The family’s head would write down or recite that entire genealogy to the mirasi, who would then arrange all the names into rhyme and rhythm—or so I was told; I never could preceive much other than monotonous noise—the singing and sarangi sawing of which could occupy hours. I assume this took a considerable talent, but after one stint of hearing how “Reza Feruz begat Lotf Ali and Lotf Ali begat Rahim Yadollah” and so on, from Adam to date, I did not exert myself to attend any other such performances.
The doings of a najhaya malang did not pall quite so quickly. A malang is the same thing as a darwish, a holy beggar, and even up on top of the Roof of the World there were beggars, both native and transient. Some of these offered entertainment before demanding bakhshish. A malang would sit down cross-legged in front of a basket and tweedle on a simple wood or clay pipe. A najhaya snake would raise its head from the basket, spread its hood and gracefully sway, seeming to dance in time to the raucous tweedling. The najhaya is a fearsomely cross and venomous snake, and every malang maintained that none but he had such power over the serpent—a power acquired in occult ways. For instance, the basket was a special sort called a khajur, and could be woven only by a man; the cheap pipe had to be mystically sanctified; the music was a melody known only to the initiated. But I soon perceived that every snake had had its fangs drawn and was harmless. It was also apparent, since snakes have no ears, that the najhaya was simply swaying back and forth to keep its impotent aim fixed on the wiggling pipe end. The malang could have played a melodious Venetian furlana and got the same effect.
But sometimes I would hear a sudden burst of music and follow it to its source and find a group of handsome Kalash men chanting in baritone, “Dhama dham mast qalandar …” as they put on their red shoes called utzar, which they donned only when they were about to charge into the stamping, kicking, pounding dance they called the dhamal. Or I might hear the rumbling drumbeat and wild piping that accompanied an even more frenzied, furious, whirling dance called the attan, in which half the camp, men and women alike, might join.
Once, when I heard music swelling forth in the darkness of night, I followed it to a Sindi train’s encampment of wagons in a circle, and found the Sindi women doing a dance for women only, and singing as they danced, “Sammi meri warra, ma‘in wa’ir … .” I found Nostril also looking on, smiling and beating time with his fingers on his paunch, for these were women of his own native land. They were rather too brawny for my taste, and inclined to mustaches, but their dance was pretty, being done by the light of the moon. I sat down beside Nostril, where he sat propped against a wheel of one of the covered wagons, and he interpreted the song and dance for me. The women were recounting a tragic love story, he said—the story of a Princess Sammi, who was a girl much in love with a boy Prince named Dhola, but when they grew up he went away and forgot her and never came back. A sad story, but I could sympathize with Prince Dhola, if his little Princess Sammi had grown meaty and mustached as she matured.
Every woman in the train must have been recruited into the dance, because, inside the wagon against which Nostril and I leaned, an unattended and restive baby was bellowing loud enough to drown out even the sonorous Sindi music. I endured it for some time, hoping the child would eventually doze—or strangle, I did not much care which. When after a long time it did neither, I grumbled irascibly.
“Allow me to hush it, master,” said Nostril, and he got up and climbed inside the wagon.
The child’s wails subsided to gurgles and then to silence. I was grateful, and bent all my attention on the dance. The infant remained blessedly quiet, but Nostril stayed in there for some time. When at last he climbed down to sit beside me again, I thanked him and said in jest, “What did you do? Kill and bury it?”
He replied complacently, “No, master, I had an inspiration of the moment. I delighted the child with a fine new pacifier to suck, and a creamier milk than its mother’s.”
It took me a little while to realize what he had said. Then I recoiled from him and exclaimed, “Good God! You did not!” He looked not at all ashamed, only mildly surprised at my outburst. “Gesu! That miserable little thing of yours has been foully diseased, and filthily inserted in animals and backsides and—and now a baby! Of your own people!”
He shrugged. “You wished the infant quieted, Master Marco. Behold, it still sleeps the sleep of contentment. And I do not feel half bad myself.”
“Bad! Gesu Maria Isepo, but you are the worst—the most vile and loathsome excuse for a human being that I have ever met!”
He deserved at least to be beaten bloody, and surely he would have got worse than that from the baby’s parents. But, since I had in a way incited him, I did not strike the slave. I merely scolded and reviled him and quoted to him the words of Our Lord Jesus—or Nostril’s Prophet Isa—that we should always treat tenderly little children, “for of such is the kingdom of God.”
“But I did it tenderly, master. Now you have peace in which to enjoy the rest of the dancing.”
“I will not! Not in your company, creature! I could not meet the eyes of the dancing women, knowing that one of them is the mother of that wretched innocent.” So I went away before that performance was concluded.
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