Part 17

“Have you noticed that in mirage the things one fancies one sees generally appear in large numbers—buildings crowded as in towns, trees growing together as in woods, men shoulder to shoulder in large companies?”

My experience of mirage in the desert was so, and I acknowledged it.

“Have you ever seen in a mirage a solitary figure?” he continued.

I thought for a moment. Then I replied in the negative.

“No more have I,” he said. “And I believe it’s a very rare occurrence. Now mark the mirage that showed itself to mademoiselle on the first day of the desert journey of the Parisians. She saw it on the northern verge of the oasis of Sidi-Okba, late in the afternoon. As they journeyed Tahar, their dragoman—he had applied for the post, and got it by the desire of mademoiselle, who admired his lithe bearing and gorgeous aplomb—Tahar suddenly pulled up his mule, pointed with his brown hand to the horizon, and said in French:

“‘There is mirage! Look! There is the mirage of the great desert!’

“Our Parisians, filled with excitement, gazed above the pointed ears of their beasts, over the shimmering waste. There, beyond the palms of the oasis, wrapped in a mysterious haze, lay the mirage. They looked at it in silence. Then Mademoiselle cried, in her little bird’s clear voice:

“‘Mirage! But surely he’s real?’

“‘What does mademoiselle see?’ asked Tahar quickly.

“‘Why, a sort of faint landscape, through which a man—an Arab, I suppose—is riding, towards Sidi—what is it?—Sidi-Okba! He’s got something in front of him, hanging across his saddle.’

“Her relations looked at her in amazement.

“‘I only see houses standing on the edge of water,’ said her sister.

“‘And I!’ cried the husband.

“‘Houses and water,’ assented Tahar. ‘It is always so in the mirage of Sidi-Okba.’

“‘I see no houses, no water,’ cried mademoiselle, straining her eyes. ‘The Arab rides fast, like the wind. He is in a hurry. One would think he was being pursued. Why, now he’s gone!’

“She turned to her companions. They saw still the fairy houses of the mirage standing in the haze on the edge of the fairy water.

“‘But,’ mademoiselle said impatiently, ‘there’s nothing at all now—only sand.’

“‘Mademoiselle dreams,’ said Tahar. ‘The mirage is always there.’

“They rode forward. That night they camped near Sidi-Okba. At dinner, while the stars came out, they talked of the mirage, and mademoiselle still insisted that it was a mirage of a horseman bearing something before him on his saddle-bow, and riding as if for life. And Tahar said again:

“‘Mademoiselle dreams!’

“As he spoke he looked at her with a mysterious intentness, which she noticed. That night, in her little camp-bed, round which the desert winds blew mildly, she did indeed dream. And her dream was of the magic forms that ride on magic horses through mirage.

“The next day, at dawn, the caravan of the Parisians went on its way, winding farther into the desert. In leaving Sidi-Okba they left behind them the last traces of civilisation—the French man and woman who keep the auberge in the orange garden there. To-day, as they journeyed, a sense of deep mystery flowed upon the heart of mademoiselle. She felt that she was a little cockle-shell of a boat which, accustomed hitherto only to the Seine, now set sail upon a mighty ocean. The fear of the Sahara came upon her.”

My companion paused. His face was grave, almost stern.

“And her relations?” I asked. “Did they feel⸺”

“Haven’t an idea what they felt,” he answered curtly.

“But how do you know that mademoiselle⸺”

“You’ll understand at the end of the story. As they journeyed in the sun across the endless flats—for the mountains had vanished now, and nothing broke the level of the sand—mademoiselle’s gaiety went from her. Silent was the lively, chattering tongue that knew the jargon of cities, the gossip of the Plage. She was oppressed. Tahar rode close at her side. He seemed to have taken her under his special protection. Far before them rode the attendants, chanting deep love songs in the sun. The sound of those songs seemed like the sound of the great desert singing of its wild and savage love to the heart of mademoiselle. At first her brother-in-law and sister bantered her on her silence, but Tahar stopped them, with a curious authority.

“‘The desert speaks to mademoiselle,’ he said in her hearing. ‘Let her listen.’

“He watched her continually with his huge eyes, and she did not mind his glance, though she began to feel irritated and restless under the observation of her relations.

“Towards noon Tahar again described mirage. As he pointed it out he stared fixedly at mademoiselle.

“The two other Parisians exclaimed that they saw forest trees, a running stream, a veritable oasis, where they longed to rest and eat their _déjeuner_.

“‘And mademoiselle?’ said Tahar. ‘What does she see?’

“She was gazing into the distance. Her face was very pale, and for a moment she did not answer. Then she said:

“‘I see again the Arab bearing the burden before him on the saddle. He is much clearer than yesterday. I can almost see his face⸺’

“She paused. She was trembling.

“‘But I cannot see what he carries. It seems to float on the wind, like a robe, or a woman’s dress. Ah! _mon Dieu!_ how fast he rides!’

“She stared before her as if fascinated, and following with her eyes some rapidly-moving object. Suddenly she shut her eyes.

“‘He’s gone!’ she said.

“‘And now—mademoiselle sees?’ said Tahar.

“She opened her eyes.

“‘Nothing.’

“‘Yet the mirage is still there,’ he said.

“‘Valérie,’ cried her sister, ‘are you mad that you see what no one else can see, and cannot see what all else see?’

“‘Am I mad, Tahar?’ she said gravely, almost timidly, to the dragoman.

“And the fear of the Sahara came again upon her.

“‘Mademoiselle sees what she must,’ he answered. ‘The desert speaks to the heart of mademoiselle.’

“That night there was moon. Mademoiselle could not sleep. She lay in her narrow bed and thought of the figure in the mirage, while the moonbeams stole in between the tent pegs to keep her company. She thought of second sight, of phantoms, and of wraiths. Was this riding Arab, whom she alone could see, a phantom of the Sahara, mysteriously accompanying the caravan, and revealing himself to her through the medium of the mirage as if in a magic mirror? She turned restlessly upon her pillow, saw the naughty moonbeams, got up, and went softly to the tent door. All the desert was bathed in light. She gazed out as a mariner gazes out over the sea. She heard jackals yelping in the distance, peevish in their insomnia, and fancied their voices were the voices of desert demons. As she stood there she thought of the figure in the mirage, and wondered if mirage ever rises at night—if, by chance, she might see it now. And, while she stood wondering, far away across the sand there floated up a silvery haze, like a veil of spangled tissue—exquisite for a ball robe, she said long after!—and in this haze she saw again the phantom Arab galloping upon his horse. But now he was clear in the moon. Furiously he rode, like a thing demented in a dream, and as he rode he looked back over his shoulder, as if he feared pursuit. Mademoiselle could see his fierce eyes, like the eyes of a desert eagle that stares unwinking at the glaring African sun. He urged on his fleet horse. She could hear now the ceaseless thud of its hoofs upon the hard sand as it drew nearer and nearer. She could see the white foam upon its steaming flanks, and now at last she knew that the burden which the Arab bore across his saddle and supported with his arms was a woman. Her robe flew out upon the wind; her dark, loose hair streamed over the breast of the horseman; her face was hidden against his heart; but mademoiselle saw his face, uttered a cry, and shrank back against the canvas of the tent.

“For it was the face of the Spahi who had ridden in the procession of the Governor—of the Spahi to whom she had thrown the roses from the balcony of Algiers.

“As she cried out the mirage faded, the Arab vanished, the thud of the horse’s hoofs died in her ears, and Tahar, the dragoman, glided round the tent, and stood before her. His eyes gleamed in the moonlight like ebon jewels.

“‘Hush!’ he whispered, ‘mademoiselle sees the mirage?’

“Mademoiselle could not speak. She stared into the eyes of Tahar, and hers were dilated with wonder.

“He drew nearer to her.

“‘Mademoiselle has seen again the horseman and his burden.’

“She bowed her head. All things seemed dream-like to her. Tahar’s voice was low and monotonous, and sounded far away.

“‘It is fate,’ he said. He paused, gazing upon her.

“‘In the tents they all sleep,’ he murmured. ‘Even the watchman sleeps, for I have given him a powder of hashish, and hashish gives long dreams—long dreams.’

“From beneath his robe he drew a small box, opened it, and showed to mademoiselle a dark brown powder, which he shook into a tiny cup of water.

“‘Mademoiselle shall drink, as the watchman has drunk,’ he said—‘shall drink and dream.’

“He held the cup to her lips, and she, fascinated by his eyes, as by the eyes of a mesmerist, could not disobey him. She swallowed the hashish, swayed, and fell forward into his arms.

“A moment later, across the spaces of the desert, whitened by the moon, rode the figure mademoiselle had seen in the mirage. Upon his saddle he bore a dreaming woman. And in the ears of the woman through all the night beat the thunderous music of a horse’s hoofs spurning the desert sand. Mademoiselle had taken her place in the vision which she no longer saw.”

My companion paused. His pipe had gone out. He did not relight it, but sat looking at me in silence.

“The Spahi?” I asked.

“Had claimed the giver of the roses.”

“And Tahar?”

“The shots he fired after the Spahi missed fire. Yet Tahar was a notable shot.”

“A strange tale,” I said. “How did you come to hear it?”

“A year ago I penetrated very far into the Sahara on a sporting expedition. One day I came upon an encampment of nomads. The story was told me by one of them as we sat in the low doorway of an earth-coloured tent and watched the sun go down.”

“Told you by an Arab?”

He shook his head.

“By whom, then?”

“By a woman with a clear little bird’s voice, with an angel and a devil in her dark beauty, a woman with the gesture of Paris—the grace, the _diablerie_ of Paris.”

Light broke on me.

“By mademoiselle!” I exclaimed.

“Pardon,” he answered; “by madame.”

“She was married?”

“To the figure in the mirage; and she was content.”

“Content!” I cried.

“Content with her two little dark children dancing before her in the twilight, content when the figure of the mirage galloped at evening across the plain, shouting an Eastern love song, with a gazelle—instead of a woman—slung across his saddle-bow. Did I not say that, as the desert is the strangest thing in nature, so a woman is the strangest thing in human nature? Which heart is most mysterious?”

“Its heart?” I said.

“Or the heart of mademoiselle?”

“I give the palm to the latter.”

“And I,” he answered, taking off his wide-brimmed hat—“I gave it when I saluted her as madame before the tent door, out there in the great desert.”

_SAFTI’S SUMMER DAY_

Safti is a respectable, one-eyed married man who lives in a brown earth house in the Sahara Desert. He has a wife and five children, and in winter he works for his living and theirs. When the morning dawns, and the great red sun rises above the rim of the wide and wonderful land which is the only land that Safti knows, he wraps his white burnous around him, pulls his hood up over his closely-shaven head, rolls and lights his cigarette, and sets forth to his equivalent of an office. This is the white arcade of a hotel where unbelieving dogs of travellers come in winter. I am an unbelieving dog of a traveller, and I come there in winter, and Safti comes there for me. I, in fact, am Safti’s profession. By me, and others like me, he lives. For a consideration he shows me round the market, which I knew by heart six years ago, and takes me up the mosque tower, from which I gazed over the flying pigeons and the swaying palms when Safti was comparatively young and frisky. Together we visit the gazelles in their pretty garden, and the Caïd’s Mill, from which one sees the pink and purple mountains of the Aures. We ride to the Sulphur Baths, we drive to Sidi-Okba. We take our _déjeuner_ out to the yellow sand dunes, and we sip our coffee among the keef smokers in Hadj’s painted café. We listen to the songs of the negro troubadour, and we smile at Algia’s dancing when the silver moon comes up and the Kabyle dogs round the nomads’ tents begin their serenades. And then I give Safti five francs and my blessing, and he bids me “_Bonne nuit!_” and his ghostly figure is lost in the black shadows of the palm-trees.

Oh, Safti works hard, very hard in winter. The other day I asked him: “Don’t you get exhausted, Safti, with all this exertion to keep the Sahara home together? You are getting on in years now.”

“Ah yes, Sidi; I am already thirty-two, alas!”

He was thirty-five when I first met him; but he is as clever at subtraction as a London beauty.

“Good heavens! So much! But, then, how can you keep up the wear and tear of this tumultuous life? You must have an iron strength. Such work as you do would break down an American millionaire.”

Safti raised his one dark eye piously towards Allah’s dwelling.

“Sidi, I must labour for my children. But in the summer, when you and all the travellers are gone from the Sahara to your fogs and the darkness of your days, I take my little holiday.”

“Your holiday! But is it long enough?”

“It lasts for only five months, Sidi; but it is enough for me. I am strong as the lion.”

I gazed at him with an admiration I could not repress. There was, indeed, something of the hero about this simple-minded Saharaman. We were at the edge of the oasis, in a remote place looking towards the quivering mirage which guards dead Okba’s tomb. A tiny earthen house, with a flat terrace ending in the jagged bank of the Oued Biskra, was crouched here in the shade. From it emerged a pleasant scent of coffee. Suddenly Safti’s bare legs began to “give.” I felt it would be cruel to push on farther. We entered the house, seated ourselves luxuriously upon a baked divan of mud, set our slippers on a reed mat, rolled our cigarettes, and commanded our coffee. When a Kabyle boy with a rosebud stuck under his turban had brought it languidly, I said to Safti:

“And now, Safti, tell me how you pass your little holiday.”

Safti smiled gently in his beard. He was glad to have this moment of repose.

“Each day is like its brother, Sidi,” he responded, gazing out through the low doorway to the shimmering Sahara.

“Then tell me how you pass a summer day.”

The coffee nerved him to this stubborn exertion, and he spoke.

“_Sahah_, Sidi.”

“_Merci._”

We sipped.

“A day in summer, Sidi, when the great heats begin in June? Well, at five in the morning I get up⸺”

“And light the fire,” I murmured mechanically.

The one eye stared in blank amazement.

“Proceed, Safti. You get up at five. That is very early.”

“The sun rises at a quarter to five.”

“To call you. Well?”

“I eat three fresh figs, and sometimes four. I then mount upon my mule, and I ride very quietly into Biskra to take coffee with my friends.”

“That is half-an-hour’s exercise?”

“About half-an-hour. After taking coffee with my friends we play at dominoes. It is forbidden for the Arabs to play at cards in Biskra. I remain in the café at the corner⸺”

“I know—by the Garden of the Gazelles!”

“—till eleven o’clock, at which time I again mount upon my mule, and return quietly to my home. When I reach there I eat with my wife and children sour milk, bread, and dates from my palm-trees which I have kept from the autumn. At twelve we all go to bed together in a black room.”

“A black room?”

“We fear the flies.”

“I see.”

“Till four in the afternoon I, my wife, and my children sleep in the black room. At that hour I rise once more, and go quietly to the Café Maure in old Biskra, near my house. I play cards there for five coffees till seven o’clock. At seven the mosquitoes arrive, and prevent us from playing any more.”

“How intrusive! Always at seven?”

“Always at seven. I then walk very quietly with my friends to the end of the oasis.”

“To the Tombuctou road?”

“Yes, Sidi; to get the air. We come back by the same road quietly, and I go to my house, and eat a cold kous-kous with my wife and children. After this I return to the café and play ronda till one o’clock.”

“One o’clock at night?”

“Yes. At one o’clock I go with my friends very quietly to bathe in the stream beneath the wall near the mosque. We stay in the water for, perhaps, an hour, and when we come out we drink lagmi.”

“What’s lagmi?”

“Palm wine. Then at three o’clock I go to my home, mount upon the roof quietly with my wife and children, and sleep till dawn.”

“And you do this for five months?”

“For five months, Sidi.”

“And—and your wife, Safti?”

I felt that I was very indiscreet; but Safti is good-natured, and has bought quite a number of palm-trees out of his savings when with me.

“My wife, Sidi?”

“What does she do all the time?”

“She remains quietly in my house.”

“She never goes out?”

“Never, except upon the roof to take a little air.”

“Doesn’t she get rather bor⸺”

The one eye began to look remarkably vague.

“And you find five months of this life a sufficient rest in the course of the year?”

Safti smiled at me with resignation.

“I cannot take more, Sidi; I am not a rich Englishman.”

“Well, Safti, you must make the best of your fate. It is the will of Allah that you should toil.”

“_Shal-làh!_ I will take another coffee, Sidi.”

“Larbi!”

I called the Kabyle boy.

_SMAÏN_

“When the African is in love he plays upon the pipe.”

+Sahara Saying+.

Far away in the desert I heard the sound of a flute, pure sound in the pure air, delicate, sometimes almost comic with the comicality of a child who bends women to kisses and to nonsense-words. We had passed through the sandstorm, Safti and I, over the wastes of saltpetre, and come into a land of palm gardens where there was almost breathless calm. The feet of the camels paddled over the soft brown earth of the narrow alleys between the brown earth walls, and we looked down to right and left into the shady enclosed spaces, seamed with water rills, dotted with little pools of pale yellow water, and saw always giant palms, with wrinkled trunks and tufted, deep green foliage, brooding in their squadrons over the dimness they had made. The activity of man might be discerned here in the regularity of the artificial rills, the ordered placing of the trees, each of which, too, stood on its oval hump. But no man was seen; no flat-roofed huts appeared; no robe, pale blue or white, fluttered among the shadows; no dog blinked in the golden patches of the sun—only the sound of the flute came to us from some hidden place ceaselessly, wild and romantic, full of an odd coquetry, and of an absurdity that was both uncivilised and touching.

I stopped to listen, and looked round, searching the vistas between the palms.

“Where does it come from?” I asked of Safti.

His one eye blinked languidly.

“From some gardener among the trees. All who dwell in Sidi-Matou are gardeners.”

The persistent flute gave forth a shower of notes that were like drops of water flung softly in our faces.

“He is in love,” added Safti with a slight yawn.

“How do you know?”

“When the African is in love he plays upon the pipe. That is what they say in the Sahara.”

“And you think he is alone under some palm-tree playing for himself?”

“Yes; he is quite alone. If he is much in love he will play all day, and, perhaps, all night too.”

“But she cannot hear him.”

“That does not matter. He plays for his own heart, and his own heart can hear.”

I listened. Since Safti had spoken the music meant more to me. I tried to read the player’s heart in the endless song it made. Trills, twitterings, grace notes, little runs upward ending in the air—surely it was a boy’s heart, and not unhappy.

“It is coming nearer,” I said.

“Yes. Ah, it is Smaïn!”

Safti’s one eye is sharp. I had seen no one. But as he spoke a tall youth in a single white garment glided into my view, his eyes bent down, his brown fingers fluttering on a long reed flute covered with red arabesques. His feet were bare, and he moved slowly.

Safti hailed him with the accented violence peculiar to the Arabs. He stopped playing, looked, and smiled all over his young face. In a moment he was on our side of the earth wall, and talking busily, staring at me the while with unabashed curiosity. For few strangers come to Sidi-Amrane, and Smaïn had never wandered far.

“What does he say?” I asked of Safti.

“I tell him we shall be at Touggourt to-morrow night, and shall stay there a week. He answers that his heart is there with Oreïda.”

“What! Does his lady-love live at Touggourt?”

“Yes; she is a dancer.”

Smaïn smiled. He did not understand French, but he knew we were speaking of his love affair, and he was not afflicted with shyness. As he accompanied us to the village he played again, and I read his nature in the soft sounds of his flute.

All that day he stayed with us, and nearly all that day he played. Even when he guided me through the village, where, between terraced houses, pretty children—the girls in deep purple, with yellow flowers stuck in their left nostrils, the boys in white—danced with a boisterous grace round brushwood fires, his flute was at his lips, and his fingers fluttered ceaselessly. And as night drew on the music was surely more amorous, and I seemed to see Oreïda drawing near over the sands.

Smaïn was but sixteen, tall and slim as a reed, with a poetic face and lustrous, languid eyes. I imagined Oreïda a child too—one of those flowers of the desert that blossom early and fade ere noontide comes. Sometimes such flowers are very beautiful. As I heard the flute of Smaïn in the pale yellow twilight I knew that Oreïda was beautiful—with one of those exquisite, lithe figures, whose movements make a song; with long, narrow dark eyes, mysterious pools of light and shadow; with thick hair falling loosely round a low, broad forehead; and perfect little hands, made for the dance of the hands that the Bedouin loves so well.

All this I knew from the sound of Smaïn’s flute. I told it to Safti, and bade him ask Smaïn if it were not true.

Smaïn’s reply was:

“She is more beautiful than that; she is like the young gazelle, and like the first day after the fast of Ramadan.”

Then he played once more while the moon rose over the palm gardens, and Safti, lighting his pipe of keef with tender deliberateness, remarked placidly:

“He would like to come with us to Touggourt and to die there at Oreïda’s feet, but his father, Said-ben-Kouïdar, wishes him to remain at Sidi-Matou and to pack dates. He is young, and must obey. Therefore he is sad.”

The smoke rose up in a cloud round Smaïn and his flute, and now I thought that, indeed, there was a wild pathos in the music. The moon went up the sky, and threw silver on the palms. The gay cries from the village died down. The gardeners lay upon the earth divans under the palmwood roofs, and slept. And at last Smaïn bade us good-bye. I saw his white figure glide across the great open space that the moon made white as it was. And when the shadows took him I still heard the faint sound of his flute, calling to his heart and to the distant Oreïda through the magical stillness of the night.