THE DANCE IN THE COURTYARD
Tokalji herded us through the atrium and up the stairs into the large
chamber with the apse where he, himself, slept.
"Sit," he ordered roughly, motioning to several stools. "I have
something to say."
He went to a chest in the corner, and drew from it a bottle of rakia,
raw Oriental brandy. I looked about for a cup as he handed it to
Nikka, but my comrade, better versed in the customs of the country,
deftly wiped the bottle's neck with his coat-sleeve, hoisted it for a
long dram, wiped the neck again and passed it to me. I imitated him
as well as I could, although a passing acquaintance with Cognac in my
days as a student at the Beaux Arts and also in the A.E.F. did not
save me from a choking sensation as the fiery liquid burned my
gullet. Tokalji regarded me with contempt when I handed it to him,
tilted the bottle bottom-up and drained the equivalent of a
water-glass, with a smack of gusto.
"There," he said, setting the bottle on the floor. "We'll talk
better wet than dry--although I will say, Giorgi, your friend is no
great hand at the bottle. I hope he's a better thief."
"Only try him," said Nikka eagerly.
"Humph, I may! But to be frank with you, my lad, I don't want you
two for a thieving job. It's something more difficult, and the
reward will be in proportion."
Nikka permitted his fingers to caress the hilt of his knife.
"We should enjoy a good killing," he hinted.
"No, no, Giorgi. That will come in time, but whatever else you do,
you must keep your knife sheathed in this business. As it happens,
the men we are after are worth more to us alive than dead."
"Whatever you say, voivode," answered Nikka equably. "But what about
your own men? They're a likely-looking lot."
"Yes, but not so many of them have the gifts I require in this
service," retorted Tokalji, lifting the bottle once more. "They are
clever thieves and fighters, but what I require now is men who can
follow and spy. My best men at that work have failed to produce
anything worth while in two weeks, and moreover, they have become
known to our enemies. I must have new men, and abler men."
He bent his brows in a ferocious grimace.
"If you succeed, you are my friends. You shall have rich pickings.
But if you fail you had better leave Stamboul."
Nikka dropped his hand again on his knife.
"Why threaten?" he asked coolly.
Tokalji glared at him with the blankly savage menace of an old
gorilla.
"Beware how you defy Beran Tokalji in his own den," he snarled.
"Well, let it pass. It shows you have spirit, but do not tempt me
too far, Giorgi. When I am aroused I must taste blood."
Nikka rose.
"I am a free man," he answered casually. "So is my comrade, Jakka.
We sell our knives and our fingers to the best bidder, and if we
don't like the treatment we say so and leave."
Tokalji regarded him uneasily.
"Here," he said gruffly, offering the bottle, "drink again and think
better of it, man. No harm is done by plain talk. That's right.
Sit. I get along with those who don't fear me too much. You shall
not be sorry you strayed in here--but you must deal honestly with me.
I am buying your wits, and I expect something for my money."
"So far it is only we who have paid," retorted Nikka. "How much are
we to get?"
"How much? It depends upon how much we win. There will be hundreds
of gold pieces for every man if it goes right."
"If what goes right?"
Tokalji hitched his stool closer to us, and glanced around.
"See you, Giorgi--and you, too, Jakka, if you can understand any of
this talk,--the two Franks you robbed live at the hotel in Pera,
where all the rich Franks stay."
"We saw it this morning," assented Nikka.
"These two Franks are an English lord and his servant. They seek
something which I also seek and with them in their venture are two
others, an Amerikansky, Nash, and one named Zaranko, who, they say,
is a fiddler and was one of our people in his youth."
"I have heard of that one," said Nikka.
"Would you know his face?"
"I think I would."
"Good! Above everything else we wish to learn what has become of the
Americansky and the fiddler and when they are to arrive. Also, they
are two more Franks at the hotel, a man named King and his daughter.
They, I think, are Amerikansky like Nash. We do not understand how
they come to be in this business. If they are really in it, perhaps
it would be worth while to kidnap the girl. We might hold her to
blackmail her friends."
"But what do they seek that you also seek?" asked Nikka.
"If you breathe it to a soul, I will cut out your heart with my own
knife, I, Beran Tokalji," replied the Gypsy chief by way of preface.
"They have the secret to a treasure."
"What?" exclaimed Nikka with great pretense of astonishment. "Here
in Stamboul?"
"Close by, my lad, close by. They know its location, but if we are
smart we should be able to take it from them as soon as they reveal
their knowledge. It is for us to find out their secret or wring it
from them, by torture, if necessary."
"This is a job worth doing," cried Nikka, jumping up. "Jakka and I
will be diligent. We will start now to trail the Franks."
But Tokalji barred the door to him.
"Not so fast, not so fast," he answered with his gargoyle laughter.
"The job has waited for you some time. It can wait a few hours
longer. I prefer to keep you under my wing for the night, until we
become better acquainted. You look like the right sort of fellow,
Giorgi, and your friend is not so poor a man for a Frank; but after
all, as I said to you, you came in to me from the street this
afternoon, and all I know about you is that you are a good thief.
"It is not enough. I must know more. And for another thing, it will
help you to await the return of the two I have out watching these
Franks in Pera. They have not found much, but they can tell you
something of what the Franks do and how they spend their time. So
make yourselves comfortable. You shall eat heartily, and this
evening Kara will dance in the courtyard as she promised you. That
is worth waiting for, Giorgi. If I were a young fellow, I would
rather do that than lurk the corners of Pera. Heh-heh!"
He stepped aside, and waved us permission to go; and we walked
through the courtyard to the crumbling wall which rimmed the
Bosphorus at one point, its base a rubble-heap, its battlements in
fragments, its platform overgrown with weeds. From its top we could
look down on the margin of beach, loaded with bowlders, and the ruins
of what had been a jetty enclosing a little harbor for the Imperial
pleasure galleys.
"It would not be difficult to climb up here," I said idly, pointing
to the gaps between the stones, and the sloping piles of bowlders.
"Does he suspect us, Nikka?"
"No, that is only his Gypsy caution. He thinks we are too good to be
true. He needed what we seem to be--and behold, we arrive! He has
waited long. He feels he can wait a little longer."
"I'm afraid he may wait a little too long for us," I answered.
"There's a chance," Nikka admitted after a moment's reflection. "But
we've got to risk it. In the meantime you must let me do all the
talking. I'll tell everybody you are a sulky devil, a killer whose
deeds haunt him. They'll leave you alone. Gypsies respect
temperamental criminals. But come along, we mustn't stay by
ourselves. We'll be suspected of considering ourselves too highly or
else having something to conceal. We can't afford any suspicions or
even a dislike."
So we strolled over to the young men's quarters, and while I wrapped
myself in a gloomy atmosphere that I considered was typical of a
temperamental killer, Nikka swapped anecdotes of crime with the
others who drifted in and out. I looked for Kara, but she was
nowhere in view. After Nikka had once established my character, the
Gypsies gave me a wide berth, and I had nothing to do but smoke and
appear murderous. And I must say I got sick of the part. I was the
first man up when Mother Kathene swung the stew-pot out of the
chimney and old Zitzi and Lilli began to distribute tin plates and
cups in an irregular circle on the floor. It was poor food, but
plenty, and anyway, it broke the monotony of being an abandoned
criminal.
With the passing of the twilight the young men moved to the
courtyard. In the middle of the open space was a black smirch on the
paving, and here they built a fire of driftwood collected from the
beach under the wall. It was a tribute to the immemorial habits of
their race. Even here in the crowded city they must close the day
with a discussion of its events around a tribal blaze, exactly as
they would have done upon the road, exactly as thousands of other
Gypsy tribes were doing at that very moment on the slopes of the
Caucasus, in the recesses of the Kilo Dagh, in the pine forests of
the Carpathians, on the alien flanks of the Appalachians far across
the sea.
A buzz of talk arose. The primitive Gypsy fiddles and guitars began
to twang softly. Nikka was the center of a gossiping group. Men and
women from the opposite side of the court joined the circle. Young
girls, with the lithe grace of the Gypsy, as unselfconscious as
animals, sifted through the ranks of the bachelors. Beran Tokalji,
himself, a cigarette drooping sardonically from the corner of his
mouth, stalked out and sat down with Nikka.
In the changing shadows beyond the range of the firelight children
dodged and played unhindered by their elders. High overhead the
stars shone like fireflies under a purple vault. And from the
spreading mass of Stamboul echoed a gentle hum, the hum of a giant
hive, a myriad voices talking, singing, praying, laughing, shouting,
cursing, screaming. None of the discordant night noises of the West.
No whistle-blasts, no shrieking of flat wheels on tortured rails, no
honking of motor-horns, no clamor of machinery. Only the drone of
the hive.
A man raised his voice in a song, and the exultantly melancholy pæan
to beauty blended with the other sounds like a skillfully woven
thread in a tapestry. It died away so gradually as to seem as if it
had never been. The fiddles sighed to silence in a burst of expiring
passion.
Nobody spoke for several moments. Music was bred in the bone of
these wild folk. It held them as could nothing else.
"What of Giorgi Bordu?" said Tokalji presently. "Does he sing or
play or dance?"
Nikka reached out his hand almost eagerly.
"I will play, if you wish. I vowed not to touch the fiddle again,
but--"
His fingers closed lovingly on the crude instrument, and he cuddled
it under his chin. His bow swept the strings in a torrent of
arpeggios. He stood up and strode into the firelight as if upon a
stage. And then he began to play, plaintively, at first, in a minor
key. There were the noises of the night, a crackling fire, animals
stirring, the cry of a child, awakening. The music brightened,
quickened, became joyous. You felt the rays of the sun, and comfort
of work. Men and women danced and sang. A harsh note intervened.
There was a quarrel. Anger yelled from the strings. Turmoil ensued.
Faster and faster went the tune. And then peace, and the measure
became slower, almost stately.
The caravan had passed on. A forest encompassed it. Boughs clashed
overhead, birds twittered and sang. Cool shadows fell athwart the
path. But the way grew steep. The music told of the rocks and the
slippery mud where a stream had overflowed, of the steady climb, of
the endurance required. The caravan reached the height. A chill
wind blew, but fair before them stretched a pleasant land, and the
descent was easy to the warm, brown road that wound across the plain.
Sunset and camp again, firelight, the moon overhead, talk of love,
the sensuous movement of a dance. Then, languorous and slow, the
coming of sleep.
I did not know it, but I was listening to the composition of
Zaranko's Gypsy Sonata Op. 27, which some day, I suppose, will be as
famous as the Revolutionary Etude or the Hungarian Rhapsody or
Beethoven's dream of the moonlight. But no audience will ever hear
it with greater appreciation than those ragged Gypsies who sat around
the fire in the dirty courtyard of the house in Sokaki Masyeri. As
Nikka resumed his place in the outer circle, only the whispering of
the flames broke the stillness. The very children were frozen on
their knees, drunk with the ecstasy of melody.
"Heh!" called Beran Tokalji, first to shake off the spell. "I do not
wonder you vowed not to touch the fiddle, if you like the open road.
With that bow of yours, Giorgi Bordu, you could wring hundreds of
gold pieces from the Franks. You play like the Redcoats in the khans
in Buda and Bucharest. Heh-heh! I have heard Niketu and Stoyan Mirko
and Karaji, and they were not to be compared with you. It is seldom
the bravest men have the touch of the fiddler."
Others spoke up readily in praise or asked questions as to Nikka's
opinion on moot points of harmony and the desirable methods of
interpreting various Gipsy songs. They would have had him play
again, but he refused. I think he was emotionally exhausted.
"We have no fiddler to match with you," remarked Tokalji, "and the
gaida[1] and the flute are not fit for real music. But our maidens
can dance. Heh, girls, come out, shy ones! Let the strangers view
your grace."
[1] Bagpipes.
They giggled amongst themselves, and swayed into a group that was as
spontaneously instinct with rhythm as an old Greek temple frieze.
But suddenly they split apart.
"Kara will dance," they cried. "Let Kara dance for the strangers."
And Kara floated into the circle of firelight like a spirit of the
forest. She still wore only the scanty madder-red skirt and torn
bodice. The cloud of her hair tumbled below her waist. Her tiny
naked feet barely touched the ground. Slowly she whirled, and the
Gipsy fiddles caught her time. A man with cymbals clashed an
accompaniment. A flute whistled soprano. She increased the tempo;
she varied her steps. She was a flower shrinking beneath the grass.
She was a dove pursued by a falcon. She was a maiden deserted by her
lover. She was a fairy hovering above the world.
We who watched her were breathless with the joy of the spectacle, and
when she sank to the ground in a little pile of rags and hair as the
music ended, I thought she must be worn out. But she bounded up at
once, breathing regularly, radiating vitality.
"Now I will dance the Knife Dance!" she exclaimed. "Who will dance
with me?" And before any could answer her, she seized a blazing
stick from the fire, and ran around the circle waving it overhead
until she came to where Nikka sat. "Ho, Giorgi Bordu, you who do not
fear the knife, will you dance the Knife Dance with me?"
Every eye in the circle was fixed on Nikka, for, although I did not
know it then, to have refused her invitation would have been a deadly
insult, equivalent to a declaration of enmity toward her family and
tribe. Similarly, acceptance of it amounted to an admission that he
considered her favorably as a wife, without definitely committing him
to matrimony.
Nikka did not hesitate. He stepped to her side. She slipped one arm
around his waist, and with the other swung her torch in air until it
showered sparks over the circle.
"Hi!" she cried.
"Hi!" echoed Nikka.
And they pranced around the fire while the music commenced an air so
fiercely wild that it made the blood tingle to listen to it. Then
she flung down her torch, and tore free from Nikka's arm. He
followed her. She eluded him. Bound and round they tore, keeping
step the while. Now she accepted him, now she rejected him. At last
he turned from her, arms folded, contemptuously unmoved. She wooed
him with rhythmic ardor. He denied her. She drew her knife; he drew
his. Eyes glaring, lips pinched, they circled one another, feinting,
striking, leaping, posturing.
"Click!" The blades struck together.
"Hi! Hi!" they cried.
"Click! Clack! Click!" went the knife-blades.
"Ho! Ho!" they shouted.
The game was to see how near you could come without cutting. To
avoid hurt the dancers required quick eyes and agile bodies. The
blades flashed like meteors in the shifting light, wheeling and
slashing and stabbing. In the beginning Kara forced the pace. Nikka
retired before her, rather than risk doing her harm. But slowly he
assumed the mastery. His knife was always at her throat, and active
as she was, he refused to be shaken off. She fended desperately,
panting now, bright-eyed and flushed. But he pressed her. Their
blades clashed, he gave his a twist and hers dropped from her hand.
He seized her, forcing her back across his knee, knife up-raised to
strike, while the fiddles clutched at one's nerves and the cymbals
clanged with wicked glee. The scene--Nikka's tall figure, with the
poised knife, and the lithe, slender form he held, expressing in
every curve and line its tempestuous, untamed soul--brought to my
memory the song I had heard him sing one morning in the music-room at
Chesby:
And best of all, I shall hear
The wild, mad Tzigane songs,
Cruel and gay and lustful,
Like fiddles and clanging gongs.
And in the glare of the campfires
I shall see the Tziganes dance--
Women with lithe, round bodies,
Men straight as a heiduck's lance.
And perhaps a wild brown maiden
Will seek me--
Crash! boomed a knock on the street-door. And rap-rap-rap! it was
repeated. Crash! again.
The music stopped. Nikka released his partner, and Kara stooped
quickly and snatched up her knife, tossing the hair out of her eyes,
heedless as usual of the rags that slipped off her shoulders.
Men looked at each other uncertainly. Hands crept to waist-sashes.
"Heh!" said Tokalji. "Who can it be in such a hurry at this hour?"'
Crash! The door resounded under the battering of a pistol-butt.