Part 3
“You speaking the truth!” cried the first little bird as she cavorted on the air before him, and all the birds’ tongues tinkled like little bells with laughter. “Do you remember the terrible lie you told your mother about finding the necklace?”
Either the very last crimson rays of the sun on him or his own conscience turned the little camel’s face bright red and he hung his head between his legs and looked hard at the sand.
“You’ve always made the mistake of being conceited,” one clear sweet bird’s voice sang to him, and immediately the other voices went on with it, one by one, as if it were so many verses of the same song they were singing as they fluttered about him in the evening air.
“You always made the mistake of not believing what your mother told you,” rippled the notes from one feathered throat, and the next one sang:--
“You always bullied creatures smaller than yourself.”
“You were wrong not to do what Mohammed’s son told you,” whistled another, and still another trilled:--
“You were always a coward except when you were with your mother.”
“You were so pleased with yourself you wouldn’t listen to the herons,” sang the next, and one, swinging far back on the youngest camel’s tail, chirped:--
“You have always been the most conceited camel on the desert,” and another sang clearly to him:--
“You made the mistake of insulting the flamingos when they tried to help you! Now they’re your enemies for life!”
“But I could see the oasis right before me all the time!” the little camel cried out, by this time very near to tears. “It’s so plain anybody can see it if they simply look--” He swung around to point out to them the far waving palms and the birds hovering over the trees against the horizon ahead, and then he stopped short and stared in amazement, for nowhere in sight was there any sign of anything at all. “But--but--what’s happened--but--there was--but--I don’t understand--” he stammered, and with a loud sweet trill of laughter the scores of bright small birds took wing from his back and his tail and from the crown of his head and the tips of his ears and paused a moment with a rush of wings above him.
“There wasn’t any oasis!” one shrill musical bird voice called down to him, and all the other voices sang in chorus together:--
“You saw a mirage! A mirage! You saw a mirage!”
“You’re lost!” cried the first bird’s clear little voice. “You thought you knew better than anyone else, and now you’re lost!”
They all gave another burst of laughter, and then they called out:--
“A mirage, a mirage! You saw a mirage!”
In another instant, the flock of them had risen straight above him and vanished into nothing in the graying sky.
Now that the youngest camel found himself alone in the falling night, he sank down upon his knees in despair. He laid his quivering chin upon his forelegs and sobs shook his bowed little shoulders. He was alone, he was lost, with nothing to eat or drink and not even his harp to comfort him. Which way Aqsu lay he no longer knew, and in his grief he believed that he would never find his mother or any other living thing again.
“Hope, hope, where are you?” he cried out in desperation. But he knew that magic word was powerless now to bring Mohammed’s son to his side. As complete darkness fell around him, his terror grew and he rose to his feet again and stumbled blindly on. “Oh, why, why did I let the sun fall warm on my tail?” he wept aloud. “It was just what he told me not to do.”
_V_
During that night the youngest camel must have dropped in his tracks and fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion, for the next thing he knew the sun was shining on his face again. He jumped to his feet quickly in the early day and, as if his life depended on it, he began running towards the rising sun. But in a moment he stopped short, saying to himself:--
“But it wasn’t in the morning when Mohammed’s son said I should run straight in the direction of the sun’s face. Perhaps that makes a difference. Perhaps I should run with the sun behind me now if I want to find my way to the oasis.”
So he turned around and began running as fast as he could in the opposite direction, thinking to himself that everything would surely be all right now. All he need do was to run away from the sun until the noon hour came and it was exactly in the middle of the sky, and then as it came down the other side he would race straight towards it, and perhaps he wouldn’t be too late to catch up his mother and the caravan if they had taken their time about setting out from Aqsu. He was feeling quite comforted by these thoughts, and at the same time he was trying very hard not to feel too self-satisfied because he had worked out the movements of the sun without any help from anyone older and wiser than himself. He was hungry and he wanted a drink very badly, but somehow he was filled with new hope and courage now that another day had dawned.
He kept up his pace for an hour or more without seeing any sign of life either on earth or in the sky, and there was no doubt that he did not mind the nothingness and the loneliness nearly as much as he had the day before. With every step he took, he felt a little bit braver and a little bit surer that he was going in the right direction at last. So when he saw two black shapes on the desert far ahead, he said to himself:--
“I’m certain they’re nice friendly sort of creatures who will tell me how many miles the oasis lies ahead.”
On he went with eager, flying feet, and soon he saw that the two black forms were those of birds. Two enormous birds were apparently seated on the sand having a conversation together, their backs turned to him and their heads nodding and shaking as they talked. But as he came nearer, he ran less quickly towards them, for he saw their heads were bald as ostrich eggs and reddish in color, and that they were not conversing at all but tearing fiercely with their curved beaks and their great claws at something they held between them on the sand.
“Vultures!” thought the youngest camel, and a little tremor of fear went through him, for his mother had told him stories enough of how these creatures lived. He was about to turn to one side and make a curve to avoid them, but then he remembered all that the bright-feathered, sharp-tongued little birds had said to him the night before. “It’s much wiser to be polite to everyone I meet, because one never knows,” he said to himself, and he stepped a little closer to them. “Please,” he began in a timid voice, and both vultures were so startled by the sound that they each gave a squawk and jumped a full yard into the air.
“Snakes alive!” cried one bird as she came down on the sand again and with the claws of one foot seized upon the thing they had been eating. “You ought to give some warning instead of creeping up on people like that!”
“I thought you must have seen me long ago,” said the youngest camel apologetically.
“Not at all,” said the second vulture. “We came down to finish eating this hare in peace and quiet and we had no idea anyone was spying on us.”
As she said this, she snatched up in her vicious claws the other end of what was left of the hare and started tearing at it with her beak.
“I didn’t mean to spy,” said the little camel. “I just wanted to ask you if I am going in the right direction for the oasis and Aqsu.”
When he said this, both birds stopped fighting over their prey and looked at him with interest.
“Are you lost?” asked the first one in a sharp, rather eager voice.
“Yes, I’m afraid I am,” said the little camel. “But I think by running ahead of the sun until noon and then running towards it all afternoon I’m sure to come to the oasis in the end. At least, Mohammed’s son told me yesterday to keep the sun straight before me--”
“Ah, but yesterday was yesterday,” said the first vulture with a giggle as she gave her sister a sly glance. “Today is today, so of course everything is quite different.”
“I don’t see how the sun can be any different,” said the youngest camel. “The sun always follows exactly the same course, so all I have to do is follow the sun as soon as it is past the noon hour--”
“Where in the world did you learn that the sun always follows the same course?” cried the second vulture. “There’s an idea for you!”
“Why, it never does the same thing twice,” said the other vulture, still giggling behind her wing. “Some days it runs all over the place, getting behind clouds and hiding behind mountains. Yesterday it was going from north to south, just for the fun of it, and today, as you can see for yourself, it’s going from east to west.”
“Don’t imagine you can count on the sun!” said the second sister with great contempt, and she went back to pulling and tugging at the remains of the hare.
“You might just as well become acquainted with us now,” said the first vulture, seizing on one of the best bits for herself. “My name’s Annie and my sister’s name is Mabel, and if you’re really lost you’ll come to know us very well indeed in the end.”
“Yes, I am lost,” said the youngest camel, looking from one to the other of their faces. “I thought perhaps you’d be kind enough to tell me which way the oasis lies.”
“I must say he’s quite truthful,” said Annie with a gulp as she swallowed the dead hare’s fuzzy tail.
“I haven’t always been,” said the youngest camel, “but I think I’ve learned my lesson now and I’m trying very hard not to lie any more. But now that you tell me the sun isn’t going the same way today as it did yesterday, I simply don’t know what to do--”
“It would have been better for your sake if you hadn’t told the truth this time,” said Mabel, ignoring his last remark. Then she turned back to the business before them and began slicing the hare’s heart into neat roast-beef-like portions with her beak.
“But why?” asked the youngest camel, rather disgusted at the way the two sisters grabbed and squawked over their meal.
“Well, as long as you’re lost,” said Annie, “then you can’t find the oasis, and if you can’t find the oasis then you’re sure to die in another two or three days--” She paused to pick her teeth reflectively with the yellow claw of one foot. “You’re small but you’re rather well covered with meat,” she said in a moment, and at this the two sisters looked at each other and cackled out loud.
Suddenly, the poor little camel realized what their conversation was all about and he gave a scream of terror. He reared up on his hind legs with fright and spun around, and set off as fast as he could across the desert. He had no idea which way he was going and it didn’t matter much any more whether he was lost or not. He only knew he must get out of sight of the two bald sisters, and out of the sound of their chortling laughter. So he ran at full speed until the midday sun beat down on his head like fire, and then he slowed into a walk. He hoped that walking quietly along would make his heart stop beating so fast and loud with fear, and he tried making up some rhymed poetry so as to steady his nerves. But nothing sounded right to him, neither the sonnet form, nor rondos, nor madrigals, nor pastorals, nor odes. The laments and ballads and elegies were even less successful, so in despair he decided on just trying to write a letter to his mother in verse, but he couldn’t think of a single original or even beautiful line.
“Dear Mother [he began], how in the world am I going to get on without you? I miss your hump and your sore hip and everything about you.
“That’s just plain statement of fact. That isn’t poetry,” he interrupted himself severely. “Now see if you can’t think of something really lyrical the way you used to at the oasis at night.”
But the silly, everyday sort of letter went on:--
“I’ve made a fool of myself with every bird that flies And with Mohammed’s son, and I’ve told so many lies.”
But he couldn’t help adding at the end:--
“One or two things I’ve said are true: History, Music, Memory, Are still the invisible three, And Love, invisible it’s true, Still has the shape and smell of you.”
He wasn’t at all satisfied with this, and even when he had repeated it over two or three times to himself and once out loud he did not feel the glow of pride which usually suffused his being after he had composed a poem.
“Perhaps it might be better if I tried putting it to music,” he said. But the fact that he did not have his harp with him made the biggest difference, and now when he opened his lips to sing, nothing but a hoarse whisper came from his mouth. By this time, he knew beyond any shadow of doubt that he was neither a poet nor a singer, and he swallowed his pride and said bravely to himself: “Very well, then. Now I have found out the truth about myself. It’s time I did. I cannot write poetry and I cannot sing, but perhaps I can dance.”
He remembered the foolish poem he had made up about dancing for the Shah and the Lamas and the Raj with a tambourine tied to his tail, and now he tried to execute a few dance steps across the burning sand. But he only tottered awkwardly from side to side, and if he hadn’t stopped at once he would certainly have toppled over.
“I am a camel without any gifts of any kind,” he told himself in a stern voice. “Everything I have believed about myself has been blind, empty vanity. I have no talent as a poet, nor as a singer, nor as a dancer, and now that I am much too weak to carry a load and walk in a caravan with other camels, I am no good to anyone on earth and I might as well be dead.”
Indeed this might very easily have been the end of the youngest camel, for there seemed no reason at all why he should not have sunk down there under the blistering heat and quietly breathed his last. And in another day or two Annie and Mabel would have come flapping along and smiled sideways at each other as they wheeled above him, and after circling over him a few times they would have descended and begun their meal. Only this isn’t at all what happened, for now that the little camel admitted that he no longer thought his own voice so beautiful and his own poetry so fine, and no longer longed for a full-length mirror so that he could see how lovely he looked while he danced, he seemed to be able to hear other voices which he had never dreamed existed. The air that passed his ears seemed now to have the power of speech, and as he walked he listened.
“There is an oasis in every camel’s desert of despair,” said one particle of air to him, and another murmured:--
“It cannot be far now, for you have come a long way.”
“Keep a stiff upper hump,” said the soft warm air in his ears. “Be armed with patience, lamblike, quiet as a mouse, cool as a cucumber.”
“I’ll try,” said the youngest camel meekly, although he was feeling very hot.
Even the sand under his feet seemed to be endowed with speech now, for as it ran through his hoofs he heard it whispering:--
“The wind is coming, the wind is coming.”
“The wind is coming,” murmured one grain of sand to another all over the desert, and the others whispered:--
“In a little while we shall have to rise and dance.”
Before the little camel had gone much farther, he saw a white cloud of wind advancing rapidly across the clear blue sky, and in another minute he heard it wailing:--
“Here I am, ow-oooo-ow--oooooo! Here is your master, ow-ooo! Arise, slaves! A-r-i-i-i-i-se!”
Here and there across the desert the sand began to rise in spirals, whirling and turning and swaying its arms in the frantic dance. Wild, ghost-like figures of sand spun up around the youngest camel, reaching taller and taller above him.
“Dance! Dance!” screamed the wind as he lashed them, and in an instant the little camel was almost blinded by the gritty veils which were flung into his eyes. Nothing could he see to the east or the west or the north or the south except the dervish-like white figures which spun around him. The sun seemed to have been blown from the sky, and the gray of twilight closed upon them. As the little camel staggered blindly on through the swirling skirts of flying sand, he heard the voices speaking secretly in his ears.
“Close your eyes,” whispered one sand dervish as the wind thrust her fiercely upon him.
“Close your lips,” said another as the wind blew her savagely against the little camel’s tender nose.
“Do not breathe deeply,” whispered a third, and still another murmured:--
“Do not struggle. You will only wear yourself out.”
The force of the wind had blown every thought from his head, and now he closed his eyes and his lips as the sand dervishes had bade him and he let himself be guided by their gentle hands. How many hours passed like this he never knew. All around him spun the tireless dancers, torn this way and that by the wind’s screaming fury, and when they came near they whispered words of hope and courage to him.
“When you find the pathway between the winds, you will be saved,” one sand dervish murmured in his ear, and another one whispered:--
“Believe in us. We will show you the way.”
All through that afternoon, perhaps, and through the night that followed, the youngest camel staggered blind and spent through the storm. But now there seemed to be no longer any division of time, no night or day, no sun or moon, no heat or cold. But finally, when he thought he could go no farther, the voice of a sand dervish whispered to him:--
“Now we have brought you to the pathway between the winds. Go quietly ahead. Farewell.”
Almost at once the gale’s force grew less and less about him and the screams of the wind grew fainter and fainter until there was nothing to be heard except a last long parting wail. Then a perfect calmness fell upon the earth and air around the little camel, and in another moment he ventured to open his eyes. And there he stood blinking in bewilderment, for he saw he was no longer on the desert, nor was there any sign of sand or a distant horizon to be seen. His feet lay on a carpet of fresh green grasses, and a little rivulet ran chattering through the rocks beside him. All about stood luxuriant fruit trees with their boughs laden, and through their thick foliage he saw the sun was rising. Delicate birds with bright exotic plumage winged from branch to branch above his head, and shy wood animals moved swiftly in the glades.
Now that his eyes grew accustomed to these unexpected wonders, he saw that a few steps before him, just at the edge of the wood, a silk tent was pitched. Its brocaded doors were caught back with brooches of shining stones and a thin thread of incense smoke was drawn languidly upward from its opening onto the quiet air. The youngest camel looked in amazement about him, and then he fell joyfully on his knees at the stream’s brink and lowered his head toward the cool running water. But before he had time to drink, a rather lazy, indolent voice called out to him from inside the tent.
“Not so fast, not so fast, young camel. Listen first to what I have to say. You have passed through the third and last night of your ordeal of loneliness,” it said, “but the third day is just dawning. Twelve hours lie ahead of you before you may safely eat or drink. The day which is just being born is the Day of Temptation. Some camels consider it the most difficult day of all.”
If anyone had said this to the little camel the week before, he would have paid no attention at all, but would have gone right ahead and drunk his fill at the brook. Then he would have jumped up and run to the big trees and started pulling the fruit hungrily down from the heavily laden boughs. But so much had happened to him in the past two days that now he rose obediently without so much as wetting his parched lips, and turned respectfully towards the beautiful silk tent.
“Well, I must say you’ve saved yourself a lot of trouble,” the voice went on, and the youngest camel stood listening to it with lowered head. “If you hadn’t done what I told you, all this would have vanished in the twinkling of an eye and you would be right back in the middle of the sandstorm again and this time the sand dervishes would never have helped you to get out.”
“I thought the storm was over, master,” said the little camel, not daring to lift his eyes towards the tent.
“Oh, it never stops,” the lazy voice went on. “It’s always there for other camels to get lost in the way you did. It’s always blowing just as hard as when you were in it, only you can’t hear it any more because the sand dervishes showed you the pathway between the winds.”
“Why were they so kind as to help me, O master?” asked the little camel respectfully, and the sleepy voice answered:--
“Probably because you admitted in that poem you made up yesterday that you were really very conceited and had made a fool of yourself with everybody you met. The herons and the flamingos gave a very bad report on you, but apparently you got a little more sensible later. If you manage to get through today without being childish, you ought to be having a nice champagne supper somewhere with your mother this evening.”
The youngest camel felt a tremor of joy go through him at these words, and he felt himself strong enough now to resist any temptation that might come along. He almost jumped straight up into the air with delight, but his knees were so weak under him from lack of food and weariness that he decided not to make any unnecessary movements. Instead he called out in an enraptured voice:--
“Oh, I know I can get through today all right! I’m absolutely certain I’ll do everything the way I should!”
“You don’t know anything about it,” said the voice, and it sounded now as if its owner were stifling a yawn. “You mustn’t start out by being so sure of anything. Come in and pay reverence to me and I’ll explain things to you more fully. Come along in, don’t be bashful,” it said as the little camel hesitated and teetered on one foot near the open door. “All you have to do is pay homage to me and then you have nothing to fear.”
The little camel took another uncertain step towards the tent, and then he halted again and said:--
“Please, I’m afraid I don’t know how to pay homage. You see, nobody ever taught me how.”
“Oh, just bow down a few times and strike your forehead once or twice on the floor, and kiss my big toe if you feel like it,” said the sleepy voice. “It doesn’t really matter what you do as long as you feel inferior to me inside. It’s just part of the rigamarole and the sooner you get it over with the better. Some camels are so arrogant they absolutely refuse to do it, and then it’s really such a bore for everybody. They have to go right back to Annie and Mabel and be torn to pieces for dinner.”
When he heard this, the little camel made haste to enter the tent, and there he fell promptly on his knees and struck his forehead three times on the richly carpeted floor. After he had done this, he advanced with lowered head to embrace the unknown person’s toe. The smell of incense was strong and sweet on the air, and when his eyes had become accustomed to the dim light he saw that it was a spotlessly clean gold hoof he kissed. He glanced quickly up and looked shyly and curiously at the owner of it, and lo! it was an enormously fat and incredibly ancient camel with a coat as white as snow.