Joe Hornstog told me this story--the first part of it; the last part of
it came to me in a way which proves how small the world is.
Joe belongs to that conglomerate mass of heterogeneous nationalities
found around the Golden Horn, whose ancestry is as difficult to trace
as a gypsy's. He says he is a "Jew gentleman from Germany," but he
can't prove it, and he knows he can't.
There is no question about his being part Jew, and there is a strong
probability of his being part German, and, strange to say, there is not
the slightest doubt of his being part gentleman--in his own estimation;
and I must say in mine, when I look back over an acquaintance covering
many years and remember how completely my bank account was at his
disposal and how little of its contents he appropriated.
And yet, were I required to hold up my hand in open court, I would have
to affirm that Joe, whatever his other strains might be, was, after
all, ninety-nine per cent. Levantine--which is another way of saying
that he is part of every nationality about him.
As to his honesty and loyalty, is he not the chosen dragoman of kings
and princes when they journey into far distant lands (he speaks seven
languages and many tribal dialects), and is he not today wearing in his
buttonhole the ribbon of the order of the Mejidieh, bestowed upon him
by his Imperial Highness the Sultan, in reward for his ability and
faithfulness?
I must admit that I myself have been his debtor--not once, but many
times. It was this same quick-sighted, quick-witted Levantine who
lifted me from my sketching stool and stood me on my feet in the plaza
of the Hippodrome one morning just in time to prevent my being trodden
under foot by six Turks carrying the body of their friend to the
cemetery--in time, too, to save me from the unforgivable sin among
Orientals, of want of reverence for their dead. I had heard the tramp
of the pall-bearers, and supposing it to be that of the Turkish patrol,
had kept at work. They were prowling everywhere, day and night, and
during those days they passed every ten minutes--nine soldiers in
charge of an officer of police--all owing to the fact that some five
thousand Armenians, anxious to establish a new form of government, had
been wiped out of existence only the week before.
Once on my feet (Joe accomplished his purpose with the help of my
suspenders) and the situation clear, I had sense enough left to uncover
my head and stand in an attitude of profound reverence until the
procession had passed. I can see them now--the coffin wrapped in a
camel's-hair shawl, the dead man's fez and turban resting on top. Then
I replaced my hat and finished the last of the six minarets of the
mosque gleaming like opals in the soft light of the morning.
This act of courtesy, due so little to my own initiative, and so
largely to Joe's, gained for me many friends in and about the
mosque--not only those of the dead man, one of whom rowed a caique, but
among the priests who formed the funeral cortege--a fact unknown to me
until Joe imparted it. "Turk-man say you good man, effendi," was the
way he put it. "You stoop over yourselluf humble for their dead."
On another occasion Joe again stood by my side when, with hat off and
with body in a half kotow, I sat before the Pasha, who was acting chief
of police after that stormy Armenian week--it was over really in five
days.
"Most High Potentate," Joe began, translating my plain Anglo-Saxon
"Please, sir," into Eastern hyperbolics, "I again seek your
Excellency's presence to make my obeisance and to crave your permission
to transfer to cheap paper some of the glories of this City of
Turquoise and Ivory. This, if your Highness will deign to remember, is
not the first time I have trespassed. Twice before have I prostrated
myself, and twice has your Sublimity granted my request."
"These be troublous times," puffed his Swarthiness through his
mustache, his tobacco-stained fingers meanwhile rolling a cigarette; a
dark-skinned, heavily-bearded Oriental, this Pasha, with an eye that
burned holes in you. "You should await a more peaceful season, effendi,
for your art."
"On account of the Armenians, your Excellency?" I ventured to inquire
with a smile.
"Yes." This, in translation by Joe, came with a whistling sound, like
the escaping steam of a radiator.
"But why should I fear these disturbers of the peace, your Supreme
Highness? The Turk is my friend, and has been for years. They know me
and my pure and unblemished life. They also know by this time that I
have been one of the chosen few among nations who have enjoyed your
Highness's confidence, and to whom you have given protection." Here my
spine took the form of a horseshoe curve--Moorish pattern. "As to these
dogs of Armenians" (this last was Joe's, given with a growl to show his
deep detestation of the race--part of his own, if he would but
acknowledge it), "your Excellency will look out for them." He WAS
looking out for them at the rate of one hundred a day and no questions
asked or answered so far as the poor fellows were concerned.
At this the distinguished Oriental finished rolling his cigarette,
looked at me blandly--it is astonishing how sweet a smile can
overspread the face of a Turk when he is granting you a favor or
signing the death warrant of an infidel--clapped his hands, summoning
an attendant who came in on all fours, and whispered an order in the
left ear of the almost prostrate man. This done, the Pasha rose from
his seat, straightened his shoulders (no handsomer men the world over
than these high-class Turks), shook my hand warmly, gave me the Turkish
salute--heart, mouth, and forehead touched with the tips of flying
fingers--and bowed me out.
Once through the flat leather curtain that hid the exit door of the
Pasha's office, and into the bare corridor, I led Joe to a corner out
of the hearing of the ever-present spy, and, nailing him to the wall,
propounded this query:
"What did the High-Pan-Jam say, Joe?"
Hornstog raised his shoulders level with his ears, fanned out his
fingers, crooked his elbows, and in his best conglomerate answered:
"He say, effendi, that a guard of ein men, Yusuf, his name--I know
him--he is in the Secret Service--oh, we will have no trouble with
him--" Here Joe chafed his thumb and forefinger with the movement of a
paying teller counting a roll. "He come every morning to Galata Bridge
for you me. He say, too, if any trouble while you paint I go him--ah,
effendi, it is only Joe Hornstog can do these things. The Pasha, he
know me--all good Turk-men know me. Where we paint now, subito? In the
plaza, or in the patio of the Valedee, like last year?"
"Neither. We go first to the Mosque of Suleiman. I want the view
through the gate of the court-yard, with the mosque in the background.
Best place is below the cafe. Pick up those traps and come along."
Thus it was that on this particular summer afternoon Joe and I found
ourselves on the shadow side of a wall up a crooked, break-neck street
paved with rocks, each as big as a dress-suit case, from which I got a
full view of the wonderful mosque tossing its splendors into the still
air, its cresting of minarets so much frozen spray against the blue.
The little comedy--or shall I say tragedy?--began a few minutes after I
had opened my easel--I sitting crouched in the shadow, my elbow
touching the plastered wall. Only Joe and I were present. Yusuf, the
guard, a skinny, half-fed Turk in fez and European dress, had as usual
betaken himself to the cafe fronting the same sidewalk on which I sat,
but half a block away; far enough to be out of hearing, but near enough
to miss my presence should I decamp suddenly without notifying him.
There he drank some fifty cups of coffee, each one the size of a
thimble, and smoked as many cigarettes, their burned stubs locating his
seat under the cafe awning as clearly as peanut-shells mark a boy's at
the circus. I, of course, paid for both.
So absorbed was I in my work--the mosque never was so beautiful as on
that day--I gave no thought to the fact that in my eagerness to hide my
canvas from the prying sun I had really backed myself into a small
wooden gate, its lintel level with the sidewalk--a dry, dusty,
sun-blistered gate, without lock or hasp on the outside, and evidently
long closed. Even then I would not have noticed it, had not my ears
caught the sound of a voice--two voices, in fact--low, gurgling
voices--as if a fountain had just been turned on, spattering the leaves
about it. Then my eye lighted, not only on the gate, but upon a seam or
split in the wood, half-way up its height, showing where a panel was
sometimes pushed back, perhaps for surer identification, before the
inside wooden beam would be loosened.
So potent was the spell of the mosque's witchery that the next instant
I should have forgotten both door and panel had not Joe touched the toe
of my boot with his own--he was sitting close to me--and in explanation
lifted his eyebrow a hair's breadth, his eyes fixed on the slowly
sliding panel--sliding noiselessly, an inch at a time. Only then did my
mind act.
What I saw was first a glow of yellow green, then a mass of blossoms,
then a throat, chin and face, one after another, all veiled in a
gossamer thin as a spider's web, and last--and these I shall never
forget--a pair of eyes shining clear below and above the veil, and
which gazed into mine with the same steady, full, unfrightened look one
sometimes sees on the face of a summer moon when it bursts through a
rift in the clouds.
"Don't move and don't look," whispered Joe in my ear, a tone in his
voice of one who had just seen a ghost. "Allah! Ekber! Yuleima!"
"Who is she?" I answered, craning my neck to see the closer.
"No speak now--keep still," he mumbled under his breath.
It may have been the gossamer veil shading a rose skin, making pink
pearls of the cheeks and chin and lending its charm to the other
features; or it may have been the wonderful eyes that made me oblivious
of Joe's warning, for I did look--looked with all my eyes, and kept on
looking.
Men have died for just such eyes. Even now, staid old painter as I am,
the very remembrance of their wondrous size--big as a young doe's and
as pleading, their lids fringed by long feathery lashes that opened and
shut with the movement of a tired butterfly--sends little thrills of
delight scampering up and down my spine. Bulbuls, timid gazelles,
perfumed narghilehs, anklets of beaten gold strung with turquoise,
tinkling cymbals, tiny turned-up slippers with silk tassels on their
toes--everything that told of the intoxicating life of the East were
mirrored in their unfathomed depths.
Most of these qualities, I am aware, are found in many another pair of
lambent, dreamy eyes half-hidden by the soft folds of a yashmak--eyes
which these houris often flash on some poor devil of a giaour, knowing
how safe they are and how slim his chance for further acquaintance.
Strange tales are told of their seductive power and strange
disappearances take place because of them. And yet I saw at a glance
that there was nothing of all this in her wondering gaze. Her eyes, in
fact, were fixed neither on Joseph nor on me, nor did they linger for
one instant on the beautiful mosque. It was my canvas that held their
gaze. Men and mosques were old stories; pictures of either as
astounding as a glimpse into heaven.
Again Joe bent his head and whispered to me, his glance this time on
the mosque, on the hill, on the cafe, where Yusuf sat sipping his
coffee, talking to me all the time out of the corner of his mouth.
"Remember, effendi, if Yusuf come we go way chabouk. You look at your
picture all time--paint--no look at her. If Yusuf come and catch us it
make trouble for her--make trouble for you--make more trouble for me.
Police Pasha don't know she come to this garden--I think somebody must
help her. You better stop now and go cafe. I find Yusuf. I no like this
place."
With this Hornstog rose to his feet and began packing the trap, still
whispering, his eyes on the ground. Never once did he look in the
direction of the houri peering through the sliding panel.
The clatter of a horse's hoofs now resounded through the still air. A
mounted officer was approaching. Joe looked up, turned a light
pea-green, backed his body into the gate with the movement of an eel,
put his cheek close to the sliding panel, and whispered some words in
Turkish. The girl leaned a little forward, glanced at the officer as if
in confirmation of Joseph's warning, and smothering a low cry, sprang
back from the opening. The next instant my eye caught the thumb and
forefinger of a black hand noiselessly closing the panel. Joe
straightened up, pulled himself into the position of a sentinel on
guard, saluted the officer, who passed without looking to the right or
left, drew a handkerchief from his pocket, and began mopping his head.
"What the devil is it all about, Joe? Why, you look as if you had had
the wind knocked out of you."
"Oh, awful close, awful close! I tell you--but not here. Come, we go
'way--we go now--not stay here any more. If that officer see the lady
with us the Pasha send me to black mosque for five year and you find
yourself board ship on way to Tripoli. Here come Yusuf--damn him! You
tell him you no like view of mosque from here--say you find another
place to-morrow--you do this quick. Hornstog never lie."
On my way across the Galata Bridge to my quarters in Pera that same
afternoon Joe followed until Yusuf had made his kotow and we had made
ours, the three ending in a triple flight of fingers--waited until the
guard was well on his way back to the Pasha's office--it was but a
short way from the Stamboul end of the Galata--and drawing me into one
of the small cafes overlooking the waters of the Golden Horn, seated me
at the far end near a window where we could talk without being
overheard. Here Joe ordered coffee and laid a package of cigarettes on
the table.
"My! but that was like the razor at the throat--not for all the hairs
on my head would I had her look out the small hole in the door when
Serim come along. Somebody must be take care of you, you Joe Hornstog,
that you don't make damn big fool of yourselluf. Ha! but it make me
creep like a spider crawl."