Part 8

Much had they got to say about the price of barley and the drought; of tribal fights; of where our Lord the Sultan was, and if he had reduced the rebels in the hills,—matters that constitute the small talk of the tents, just as the weather and the fashionable divorce figure in drawing-rooms. Knowing what was expected of him, the Consul touched on European politics, upon inventions, the progress that the French had made upon the southern frontier of Algeria; and as he thus unpacked his news with due prolixity, the Sherif now and again interjected one or another of those pious phrases, such as “Allah is merciful,” or “God’s ways are wonderful,” which at the same time show the interjector’s piety, and give the man who is discoursing time to collect himself, and to prepare another phrase.

After a little conversation languished, and the two men who knew each other well sat listlessly, the Consul smoking and the Sherif passing the beads of a cheap wooden rosary between the fingers of his right hand, whilst with his left he waved a cotton pocket handkerchief to keep away the flies.

Looking up at his companion, “Consul,” he said, for he had now dropped the Ambassador with which he first had greeted him, “you know us well, you speak our tongue; even you know Shillah, the language of the accursed Berbers, and have translated Sidi Hammo into the speech of Nazarenes-I beg your pardon—of the Rumi,” for he had seen a flush rise on the Consul’s cheek.

“You like our country, and have lived in it for more than twenty years. I do not speak to you about our law, for every man cleaves to his own, but of our daily life. Tell me now, which of the two makes a man happier, the law of Sidna Aissa, or that of our Prophet, God’s own Messenger?”

He stopped and waited courteously, playing with his naked toes, just as a European plays with his fingers in the intervals of speech.

The Consul sent a veritable solfatara of tobacco smoke out of his mouth and nostrils, and laying down his cigarette returned no answer for a little while.

Perchance his thoughts were wandering towards the cities brilliant with light—the homes of science and of art. Cities of vain endeavour in which men pass their lives thinking of the condition of their poorer brethren, but never making any move to get down off their backs. He thought of London and of Paris and New York, the dwelling-places both of law and order, and the abodes of noise. He pondered on their material advancement: their tubes that burrow underneath the ground, in which run railways carrying their thousands all the day and far into the night; upon their hospitals, their charitable institutions, their legislative assemblies, and their museums, with their picture-galleries, their theatres—on the vast sums bestowed to forward arts and sciences, and on the poor who shiver in their streets and cower under railway arches in the dark winter nights.

As he sat with his cigarette smouldering beside him in a little brazen pan, the night breeze brought the heavy scent of orange blossoms, for it was spring, and all the gardens of the sanctuary each had its orange grove. Never had they smelt sweeter, and never had the croaking of the frogs seemed more melodious, or the cricket’s chirp more soothing to the soul.

A death’s-head moth whirred through the tent, poising itself, just as a humming-bird hangs stationary probing the petals of a flower. The gentle murmur of its wings brought back the Consul’s mind from its excursus in the regions of reality, or unreality, for all is one according to the point of view.

“Sherif,” he said, “what you have asked me I will answer to the best of my ability.

“Man’s destiny is so precarious that neither your law nor our own appear to me to influence it, or at the best but slightly.

“One of your learned Talebs, or our men of science, as they call themselves, with the due modesty of conscious worth, is passing down a street, and from a house-top slips a tile and falls upon his head. There he lies huddled up, an ugly bundle of old clothes, inert and shapeless, whilst his immortal soul leaves his poor mortal body, without which all its divinity is incomplete; then perhaps after an hour comes back again, and the man staggering to his feet begins to talk about God’s attributes, or about carrying a line of railroad along a precipice.”

The Sherif, who had been listening with the respect that every well-bred Arab gives to the man who has possession of the word, said, “It was so written. The man could not have died or never could have come to life again had it not been Allah’s will.”

His friend smiled grimly and rejoined, “That is so; but as Allah never manifests his will, except in action, just as we act towards a swarm of ants, annihilating some and sparing others as we pass, it does not matter very much what Allah thinks about, as it regards ourselves.”

“When I was young,” slowly said the Sherif, “whilst in the slave trade far away beyond the desert, I met the pagan tribes.

“They had no God . . . like Christians. . . Pardon me, I know you know our phrase: nothing but images of wood.

“Those infidels, who, by the way, were just as apt at a good bargain as if their fathers all had bowed themselves in Christian temple or in mosque, when they received no answer to their prayers, would pull their accursed images down from their shrines, paint them jet black, and hang them from a nail.

“Heathens they were, ignorant even of the name of God, finding their heaven and their hell here upon earth, just like the animals, but . . . sometimes I have thought not quite bereft of reason, for they had not the difficulties you have about the will of Allah and the way in which he works.

“They made their gods themselves, just as we do,” and as he spoke he lowered his voice and peered out of the tent door; “but wiser than ourselves they kept a tight hand on them, and made their will, as far as possible, coincide with their own.

“It is the hour of prayer. . . .

“How pleasantly the time passes away conversing with one’s friends”; and as he spoke he stood erect, turning towards Mecca, as mechanically as the needle turns towards the pole.

His whole appearance altered and his mean presence suffered a subtle change. With eyes fixed upon space, and hands uplifted, he testified to the existence of the one God, the Compassionate, the Merciful, the Bounteous, the Generous One, who alone giveth victory.

Then, sinking down, he laid his forehead on the ground, bringing his palms together. Three times he bowed himself, and then rising again upon his feet recited the confession of his faith.

The instant he had done he sat him down again; but gravely and with the air of one who has performed an action, half courteous, half obligatory, but refreshing to the soul.

The Consul, who well knew his ways, and knew that probably he seldom prayed at home, and that the prayers he had just seen most likely were a sort of affirmation of his neutral attitude before a stranger, yet was interested.

Then, when the conversation was renewed, he said to him, “Prayer seems to me, Sherif, to be the one great difference between the animals and man.

“As to the rest, we live and die, drink, eat, and propagate our species, just as they do; but no one ever heard of any animal who had addressed himself to God.”

A smile flitted across the pock-marked features of the descendant of the Prophet, and looking gravely at his friend,—

“Consul,” he said, “Allah to you has given many things. He has endowed you with your fertile brains, that have searched into forces which had remained unknown in nature since the sons of Adam first trod the surface of the earth. All that you touch you turn to gold, and as our saying goes, ‘Gold builds a bridge across the sea.’

“Ships, aeroplanes, cannons of monstrous size, and little instruments by which you see minutest specks as if they were great rocks; all these you have and yet you doubt His power.

“To us, the Arabs, we who came from the lands of fire in the Hejaz and Hadramut. We who for centuries have remained unchanged, driving our camels as our fathers drove them, eating and drinking as our fathers ate and drank, and living face to face with God. . . . Consu’, you should not smile, for do we not live closer to Him than you do, under the stars at night, out in the sun by day, our lives almost as simple as the lives of animals? To us He has vouchsafed gifts that He either has withheld from you, or that you have neglected in your pride.

“Thus we still keep our faith. . . . Faith in the God who set the planets in their courses, bridled the tides, and caused the palm to grow beside the river so that the traveller may rest beneath its shade, and resting, praise His name.

“You ask me, who ever heard of any animal that addressed himself to God. He in His infinite power . . . be sure of it . . . is He not merciful and compassionate, wonderful in His ways, harder to follow than the track that a gazelle leaves in the desert sands; it cannot be that He could have denied them access to His ear?

“Did not the lizard, Consul . . ., Hamed el Angri, the runner, the man who never can rest long in any place, but must be ever tightening his belt and pulling up his slippers at the heel to make ready for the road . . ., did he not tell you of El Hokaitsallah, the little lizard who, being late upon the day when Allah took away speech from all the animals, ran on the beam in the great mosque at Mecca, and dumbly scratched his prayer?”

The Consul nodded. “Hamed el Angri,” he said, “no doubt is still upon the road, by whose side he will die one day of hunger or of thirst. . . . Yes; he told me of it, and I wrote it in a book. . . .”

“Write this, then,” the Sherif went on, “Allah in his compassion, and in case the animals, bereft of speech, that is in Arabic, for each has his own tongue, should not be certain of the direction of the Kiblah, has given the power to a poor insect which we call El Masgad to pray for all of them. With its head turned to Mecca, as certainly as if he had the needle of the mariners, he prays at El Magreb.

“All day he sits erect and watches for his prey. At eventide, just at the hour of El Magreb, when from the ‘alminares’ of the Mosques the muezzin calls upon the faithful for their prayers, he adds his testimony.

“Consu’, Allah rejects no prayer, however humble, and that the little creature knows. He knows that Allah does not answer every prayer; but yet the prayer remains; it is not blotted out, and perhaps some day it may fructify, for it is written in the book.

“Therefore El Masgad prays each night for all the animals, yet being but a little thing and simple, it has not strength to testify at all the hours laid down in Mecca by our Lord Mohammed, he of the even teeth, the curling hair, and the grave smile, that never left his face after he had communed with Allah in the cave.”

The Consul dropped his smoked-out cigarette, and, stretching over to his friend, held out his hand to him.

“Sherif,” he said, “maybe El Masgad prays for you and me, as well as for its kind?”

The answer came: “Consu’, doubt not; it is a little animal of God, . . . we too are in His hand. . . .”

XIV FEAST DAY IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

THE great Capilla, the largest in the Jesuit Reductions of Paraguay, was built round a huge square, almost a quarter of a mile across.

Upon three sides ran the low, continuous line of houses, like a “row” in a Scotch mining village or a phalanstery designed by Prudhon or St. Simon in their treatises; but by the grace of a kind providence never carried out, either in bricks or stone.

Each dwelling-place was of the same design and size as all the rest. Rough tiles made in the Jesuit times, but now weathered and broken, showing the rafters tied with raw hide in many places, formed the long roof, that looked a little like the pent-house of a tennis court.

A deep verandah ran in front, stretching from one end to the other of the square, supported on great balks of wood, which, after more than two hundred years and the assaults of weather and the all-devouring ants, still showed the adze marks where they had been dressed. The timber was so hard that you could scarcely drive a nail into it, despite the flight of time since it was first set up. Rings fixed about six feet from the ground were screwed into the pillars of the verandah, before every door, to fasten horses to, exactly as they are in an old Spanish town.

Against the wall of almost every house, just by the door, was set a chair or two of heavy wood, with the seat formed by strips of hide, on which the hair had formerly been left, but long ago rubbed off by use, or eaten by the ants.

The owner of the house sat with the back of the strong chair tilted against the wall, dressed in a loose and pleated shirt, with a high turned-down collar open at the throat, and spotless white duck trousers, that looked the whiter by their contrast with his brown, naked feet.

His home-made palm-tree hat was placed upon the ground beside him, and his cloak of coarse red baize was thrown back from his shoulders, as he sat smoking a cigarette rolled in a maize leaf, for in the Jesuit capillas only women smoked cigars.

At every angle of the square a sandy trail led out, either to the river or the woods, the little patches planted with mandioca, or to the maze of paths that, like the points outside a junction, eventually joined in one main trail, that ran from Itapua on the Paraná, up to Asuncion.

The church, built of wood cut in the neighbouring forest, had two tall towers, and followed in its plan the pattern of all the churches in the New World built by the Jesuits, from California down to the smallest mission in the south. It filled the fourth side of the square, and on each side of it there rose two feathery palms, known as the tallest in the Missions, which served as landmarks for travellers coming to the place, if they had missed their road. So large and well-proportioned was the church, it seemed impossible that it had been constructed solely by the Indians themselves, under the direction of the missionaries.

The overhanging porch and flight of steps that ran down to the grassy sward in the middle of the town gave it an air as of a cathedral reared to nature in the wilds, for the thick jungle flowed up behind it and almost touched its walls.

Bells of great size, either cast upon the spot or brought at vast expense from Spain, hung in the towers. On this, the feast day of the Blessed Virgin, the special patron of the settlement, they jangled ceaselessly, the Indians taking turns to haul upon the dried lianas that served instead of ropes. Though they pulled vigorously, the bells sounded a little muffled, as if they strove in vain against the vigorous nature that rendered any work of man puny and insignificant in the Paraguayan wilds.

Inside, the fane was dark, the images of saints were dusty, their paint was cracked, their gilding tarnished, making them look a little like the figures in a New Zealand pah, as they loomed through the darkness of the aisle. On the neglected altar, for at that time priests were a rarity in the Reductions, the Indians had placed great bunches of red flowers, and now and then a humming-bird flitted in through the glassless windows and hung poised above them; then darted out again, with a soft, whirring sound. Over the whole capilla, in which at one time several thousand Indians had lived, but now reduced to seventy or eighty at the most, there hung an air of desolation. It seemed as if man, in his long protracted struggle with the forces of the woods, had been defeated, and had accepted his defeat, content to vegetate, forgotten by the world, in the vast sea of green.

On this particular day, the annual festival of the Blessed Virgin, there was an air of animation, for from far and near, from Jesuit capilla, from straw-thatched huts lost in the clearings of the primeval forest, from the few cattle ranches that then existed, and from the little town of Itapua, fifty miles away, the scanty population had turned out to attend the festival.

Upon the forest tracks, from earliest dawn, long lines of white-clad women, barefooted, with their black hair cut square across the forehead and hanging down their backs, had marched as silently as ghosts. All of them smoked great, green cigars, and as they marched along, their leader carrying a torch, till the sun rose and jaguars went back to their lairs, they never talked; but if a woman in the rear of the long line wished to converse with any comrade in the front she trotted forward till she reached her friend and whispered in her ear. When they arrived at the crossing of the little river they bathed, or, at the least, washed carefully, and gathering a bunch of flowers, stuck them into their hair. They crossed the stream, and on arriving at the plaza they set the baskets, which they had carried on their heads, upon the ground, and sitting down beside them on the grass, spread out their merchandise. Oranges and bread, called “chipa,” made from mandioca flour and cheese, with vegetables and various homely sweetmeats, ground nuts, rolls of sugar done up in plaintain leaves, and known as “rapadura,” were the chief staples of their trade. Those who had asses let them loose to feed; and if upon the forest trails the women had been silent, once in the safety of the town no flight of parrots in a maize field could have chattered louder than they did as they sat waiting by their wares. Soon the square filled, and men arriving tied their horses in the shade, slackening their broad hide girths, and piling up before them heaps of the leaves of the palm called “Pindó” in Guarani, till they were cool enough to eat their corn. Bands of boys, for in those days most of the men had been killed off in the past war, came trooping in, accompanied by crowds of women and of girls, who carried all their belongings, for there were thirteen women to a man, and the youngest boy was at a premium amongst the Indian women, who in the villages, where hardly any men were left, fought for male stragglers like unchained tigresses. A few old men came riding in on some of the few native horses left, for almost all the active, little, undersized breed of Paraguay had been exhausted in the war. They, too, had bands of women trotting by their sides, all of them anxious to unsaddle, to take the horses down to bathe, or to perform any small office that the men required of them. All of them smoked continuously, and each of them was ready with a fresh cigarette as soon as the old man or boy whom they accompanied finished the stump he held between his lips. The women all were dressed in the long Indian shirt called a “tupoi,” cut rather low upon the breast, and edged with coarse black cotton lace, which every Paraguayan woman wore. Their hair was as black as a crow’s back, and quite as shiny, and their white teeth so strong that they could tear the ears of corn out of a maize cob like a horse munching at his corn.

Then a few Correntino gauchos next appeared, dressed in their national costume of loose black merino trousers, stuffed into long boots, whose fronts were all embroidered in red silk. Their silver spurs, whose rowels were as large as saucers, just dangled off their heels, only retained in place by a flat chain, that met upon the instep, clasped with a lion’s head. Long hair and brown vicuna ponchos, soft black felt hats, and red silk handkerchiefs tied loosely round their necks marked them as strangers, though they spoke Guarani.

They sat upon their silver-mounted saddles, with their toes resting in their bell-shaped stirrups, swaying so easily with every movement that the word riding somehow or other seemed inapplicable to men who, like the centaurs, formed one body with the horse.

As they drew near the plaza they raised their hands and touched their horses with the spur, and, rushing like a whirlwind right to the middle of the square, drew up so suddenly that their horses seemed to have turned to statues for a moment, and then at a slow trot, that made their silver trappings jingle as they went, slowly rode off into the shade.

The plaza filled up imperceptibly, and the short grass was covered by a white-clad throng of Indians. The heat increased, and all the time the bells rang out, pulled vigorously by relays of Indians, and at a given signal the people turned and trooped towards the church, all carrying flowers in their hands.

As there was no one to sing Mass, and as the organ long had been neglected, the congregation listened to some prayers, read from a book of Hours by an old Indian, who pronounced the Latin, of which most likely he did not understand a word, as if it had been Guarani. They sang “Las Flores á Maria” all in unison, but keeping such good time that at a little distance from the church it sounded like waves breaking on a beach after a summer storm.

In the neglected church, where no priest ministered or clergy prayed, where all the stoops of holy water had for years been dry, and where the Mass had been well-nigh forgotten as a whole, the spirit lingered, and if it quickeneth upon that feast day in the Paraguayan missions, that simple congregation were as uplifted by it as if the sacrifice had duly been fulfilled with candles, incense, and the pomp and ceremony of Holy Mother Church upon the Seven Hills.

As every one except the Correntinos went barefooted, the exit of the congregation made no noise except the sound of naked feet, slapping a little on the wooden steps, and so the people silently once again filled the plaza, where a high wooden arch had been erected in the middle, for the sport of running at the ring.

The vegetable sellers had now removed from the middle of the square, taking all their wares under the long verandah, and several pedlars had set up their booths and retailed cheap European trifles such as no one in the world but a Paraguayan Indian could possibly require. Razors that would not cut, and little looking-glasses in pewter frames made in Thuringia, cheap clocks that human ingenuity was powerless to repair when they had run their course of six months’ intermittent ticking, and gaudy pictures representing saints who had ascended to the empyrean, as it appeared, with the clothes that they had worn in life, and all bald-headed, as befits a saint, were set out side by side with handkerchiefs of the best China silk. Sales were concluded after long-continued chaffering—that higgling of the market dear to old-time economists, for no one would have bought the smallest article, even below cost price, had it been offered to him at the price the seller originally asked.

Enrique Clerici, from Itapua, had transported all his pulperia bodily for the occasion of the feast. It had not wanted more than a small wagon to contain his stock-in-trade. Two or three dozen bottles of square-faced gin of the Anchor brand, a dozen of heady red wine from Catalonia, a pile of sardine boxes, sweet biscuits, raisins from Malaga, esparto baskets full of figs, and sundry pecks of apricots dried in the sun and cut into the shape of ears, and hence called “orejones,” completed all his store. He himself, tall and sunburnt, stood dressed in riding-boots and a broad hat, with his revolver in his belt, beside a pile of empty bottles, which he had always ready, to hurl at customers if there should be any attempt either at cheating or to rush his wares. He spoke the curious lingo, half-Spanish, half-Italian, that so many of his countrymen use in the River Plate; and all his conversation ran upon Garibaldi, with whom he had campaigned in youth, upon Italia Irredenta, and on the time when anarchy should sanctify mankind by blood, as he said, and bring about the reign of universal brotherhood.