We were finishing our late nooning at the café which pleased me
best near the little park with the old Roman statues by the sea,
where the handful of resident Europeans liked to take the air at
evening. I was engaged in my favorite occupation of regarding the
street. The little room was crowded with natives seated close,
quietly gaming or doing nothing; Turkish officers rolled by in
carriages; there was continuous passing; a half-dozen _gamins_ played
in the street, the most eager-faced, the most lithe-motioned of boys,
the most snapping-eyed Jewish bootblacks, quite beyond the nimble
Biskris of Algiers reputed to be the kings of the profession in the
Mediterranean; on the other side of the street a flower seller was,
as always, binding up violets interminably in his lean hands. It
was a pleasant scene; but I lazily consented when Absalom suggested
that we drive out to the Jewish village. We crossed the street to
the cab-stand. I am not good at bargaining, and I am impatient at
the farce or tragedy, as the case may be, of a guide beating down
a cabman; but my feelings toward Absalom were different. I frankly
admired him as he stood in his plain dignity, perfectly motionless,
with a long-stemmed rose at his lips, a beautiful half-blown dark
bloom with the curves of a shell in its frail, firm petals; and
when the figure had dropped deftly and almost noiselessly from
fifteen francs to six, “it is just,” said Absalom, and seated
me in the carriage with the double harness.
We passed into the pleasant vistas of the oasis, rolling over the
red roads with the tumbled earth walls and by the deep-retired
houses and the orange gardens, and the air was full of the fresh
balm of spring. It was a smiling, green, and blossoming world, and
it was good to be alive. I knew it was just such a world that such
villages are in, and this one was native to the oasis and partook of
its qualities; but it seemed to take only the rudest and roughest
of them and to carry them down. It was a disheartening sight. I
had never seen so wretched a Jewish village. The houses, the people
were of the poorest; and not in an ordinary way. The village was a
fantasy of poverty, a _diablerie_. The faces and forms, attitudes,
occupations of the people, their mere aggregation, depressed me in
a sinister way. Some of them were sharpening sickles on old bones;
and others, women with earrings, were working at some primitive
industry with their toes, using them as if they were fingers. The
little place was thronged and busy as an ant-hill; but the signs
of wretched life were everywhere, and most in the bodies of these
poor creatures. I was glad to be again in the garden and grove of
the roadside, and amid the wholesomeness of nature, as we drove
off to the centre of the oasis.
There we found a great house, that seemed to be of some public
nature, built on the top of a high, bare hill. It belonged to a
pashaw, and its roof commanded the whole view of the oasis and
its surroundings. It was somewhat like a rambling summer hotel in
aspect. We were admitted as if there were nothing uncommon in our
visit, and I mounted to the roof and saw the wide prospect—the
white city and blue sea behind, the ring of the palmerai about,
the gray desert beyond—and on coming down was taken to a large
and rather empty room with a balcony. There Absalom told me that
the pashaw, who seemed to be the city governor, would be pleased
if I would lend him my carriage, as he had an unexpected call to
go to town. Shortly after the pashaw came in. It was evident that
Absalom regarded him as a very great man. He shook hands with me,
and was gravely courteous; but he understood very little French,
and real conversation was out of the question. He ordered coffee,
gave me cigarettes, and took me out on the balcony, pointing out
the desert mountain range, Djebel-Ghariane, of which there was
a fine view, and other features. We drank our coffee, and after
perhaps twenty minutes of polite entertainment he took my card,
shook hands in a friendly spirit, and bade me good-by with an _au
revoir_. I sat alone looking out from the balcony toward those
distant mountains over the great desert, smoking the cigarettes he
had left me, and thinking of that vast hinterland of fanatic Islam
before my eyes, so jealously guarded from exploration, where the
fires of hatred against the Christian nations are systematically fed,
while a victorious proselytism is sweeping through the central negro
tribes, reclaiming them from fetich worship to “the only God.”
The carriage was not gone long. We drove back at once, and I found
the flower seller by the cab-stand still twining those endless
bunches of violets, and jonquils and narcissi, in the sinking sun.
That evening we spent at the Turkish theatre. It was better
furnished than the Sicilian. Palms decorated one side of the stage,
and large flags draped the back. The centre was occupied by a group
of three women of whom the one in the middle was plainly the _prima
donna_. She was a striking figure, tall, and, in her dress, attitude,
and expression, of the music-hall Cleopatra type. A high, gilt crown
rested on her abundant black hair; her eyebrows were straight, the
eyes liquid, roving, and full of fire, the mouth and other features
large, the throat beautiful and firm; a white veil descended from
the crown on either side, ornaments were on her arms and feet,
she wore a flashing girdle, but the effect of her person was not
dissipated in jewels or color; her figure remained statuesque,
linear, and so much so that there seemed to me something almost
hieratic in her pose, as she stood there, with the crown and the
veil, motionless, the whole semi-barbaric form finely relieved
on the broad stripe of the beautiful flag behind. This was when
she was in repose; when she sang or danced the effect was quite
different. I was not her only admirer. There were a hundred or
more men in the hall—no Europeans. They were smoking, talking,
moving about in their seats freely, with an indolent café manner,
and the performance went on with long waits. The lady of the stage
was a favorite; men threw cigarettes to her and engaged her in
conversation from the floor, and she would fling back a sentence
to them. There was one admirer beyond all the rest. He sat in the
centre near the stage, a splendidly appointed youth from Alexandria,
garbed in the richest red, with a princely elegance and mien, a
gallant; cigarettes were not for him—he stood up and threw kisses
with both hands vociferously and numerously; he left no doubt as to
his sentiments. Once or twice he attempted to rush the stage, but
was restrained. He would go out, and come back loaded with flowers
for ammunition. He had a negro rival off to the left, also finely
apparelled, but no match in that regard for the Alexandrian red,
though he held his own in the attention of both the audience and the
queen of the stage. Meanwhile the numbers of the performance lazily
succeeded one another; there was music on the zithern and mandolin,
the tambour was heard—songs, dances, other girls. It was all
perfectly blameless; and, indeed, in my judgment, the Arabs have
a stronger sense of public decorum than the northern barbarians at
their play. I saw the entertainment out and went to my castle.