THE INVENTIVENESS OF SEMMEYA HANOUM
It was from curiosity rather than from friendship that I accepted
Semmeya Hanoum’s pressing invitation to spend a few days with her,
shortly after Nashan’s wedding. As I said in a previous chapter, we
had never looked on Semmeya as one of us. We did not trust her, and
where there is no trust how can there be friendship? Still, since I
was burning to know what sort of a wife she had made, I replied to her
pressing invitation with alacrity.
I did not have to wait very long before I knew that Semmeya Hanoum was
the same as ever--that she would rather cheat than play fair. She was
the mother of a dear, little boy; and it was easy to see that Sendi Bey
was the slave of his wife. At the same time it required no cleverness
on my part to discover that he did not trust her, and did not believe
her word.
I have always wondered, and I suppose that I shall continue to wonder
till I die, and learn the explanation of many riddles, how it is that a
good, upright man can remain in love with a woman whom he cannot trust.
On the contrary, it often seems as if the less confidence a man has in
his wife, the more in love he remains with her.
On the second morning of my arrival, nature outside was making
herself beautiful as if to pose for her portrait. We had finished our
breakfast, and were sitting on a couch together when her husband came
in, a dark cloud on his forehead. He gave his wife a severe look, which
Semmeya met with the candour of an angel.
“I am delighted to see you so early, my Bey Effendi,” she said sweetly.
“I hope you have slept well,” and as he remained standing, she
continued: “Won’t you sit down by us, my Effendi?”
“Beauty!” thundered the man, “why did you misbehave yesterday afternoon
while you were out driving?”
An expression of utter amazement overspread her features.
“Don’t trouble yourself to deny it--you know that it is true,” the
husband continued, striving to master his anger.
She shrugged her slim shoulders, and the impertinent movement was
attractive. Intrinsically she was not a beautiful woman, but she had
charm, and the man speaking to her was in love with her. And she knew
it.
“You know you did it,” he persisted.
Impatiently she tapped the floor with her satin-clad foot. I hate to
witness marital disagreements, so I rose to go; but Semmeya caught my
dress and imperiously pulled me back into my seat.
“Beauty,” the man reiterated, with rising anger, “you know you did it.”
She continued to look out of the latticed window, down on the waters of
the Golden Horn. Her profile was turned to her husband. This was the
prettiest view of her, and the one she always presented to him when
she wished to dominate him--she told me so herself. Her wavy hair was
loosely combed back on her neck, and a red rose was carelessly placed
a little below her pretty ear. She was dressed in a soft green silk
garment, the diaphanous sleeves displaying her well-shaped arms. Her
slim but well-rounded neck was bare, and one could see that she was in
a temper by the way the veins stood out on her throat.
“You did it, Beauty,” the man persisted in an even monotone that
sounded like the approach of the storm.
I rose for the second time to go, but the hand, more imperious than
before, pulled me down again; then the owner of the hand snapped out:
“Since you believe the word of the eunuch against mine, and you are
so certain I did it, why do you wish me to verify it? Begone, man,
begone!”
“But I want you to tell me why you threw the flowers at the
Englishman,” her husband demanded. He turned to me and asked, “Do you
think it is nice for a woman to throw flowers at a strange man?”
Before I could reply, she calmly said, “It is not true.”
“That you threw flowers at a man?”
She nodded.
“Did she or did she not?” he asked me.
“She did,” I answered.
“You wretch!” Semmeya Hanoum cried. “I only threw a rose, and a rose is
singular, not plural. Besides, how do you know that I threw it at the
man? I might have just thrown it away--and it might have happened to
strike his face by accident.”
“I suppose you happened to kiss the rose by accident, too?” Sendi Bey
inquired grimly.
“Why not? I often kiss roses.” She looked at him with laughing
defiance. “And now what will you do, my lord?”
“I should like to give you a good thrashing.”
“You can’t. It is forbidden by the Koran.”
“I know it, and I am very sorry. But, Beauty, your actions are getting
unbearable; and I am going to put a stop to them. For a month you are
not to leave this house without my permission.” With these words he
marched out of the room.
She turned to me. “I should like to find out whether he will really
give orders that I am not to leave the house. Make ready to go out, and
we shall see.”
She was waiting for me with a slave when I came to her room, and
together we went down the hall. There stood the eunuch with his back to
the door, looking determined to die at his post, if necessary.
“Silly, come with us. We are going out for a walk,” Semmeya said
casually.
He salaamed to the floor, but did not stir. She spoke to him more
sharply, and again he salaamed. No matter what she said, he salaamed.
Ignominiously at last she retreated to her room. She sat down and
pondered over the situation earnestly. For once, I thought, she would
have to acknowledge herself beaten.
At length she sprang to her feet, and I looked up expectantly, but she
only told me to take off my wraps, since we should be unable to go out.
She stepped out of the room, and I heard her whispering to her slave
outside. Presently she re-entered the room briskly.
“When the eunuch comes up, tell him to wait a minute, if I am not here.
And meanwhile make yourself as comfortable as you can.”
I took a French novel from the table, became interested in it, and had
quite forgotten our state of siege when the eunuch spoke to me.
“Wait a minute.” I answered, hardly hearing what he said. “Semmeya
Hanoum will be back in a minute.”
He took up his station in the doorway, commanding both the room and
the hall, and waited, listening intently. After a long while he went
downstairs.
Again I was absorbed in my book when the eunuch returned, panting and
frightened.
“My mistress! My mistress!” he shouted.
“What is it, stupid? What has happened to your mistress?”
“She has gone!”
“Gone where?”
“Away! Out of the house!” he wailed. “She has outwitted both of
us--myself and Yussuf at the gate of the garden. He was called away for
a minute, and when he came back, my mistress had disappeared. Ai! ai!
it was magic.”
“Well, don’t stand there wailing; run and tell your master,” I said
impatiently.
He looked at me in abject terror. “My master! I dare not. He would kill
me.”
“Then send for him, and I will tell him.”
“And you will tell him that I faithfully obeyed his orders,” he
implored, “and that she did not escape through any negligence on my
part?”
Even after I had reassured him on these points he departed trembling,
and I went down to the parlour to await Sendi Bey. In a few minutes he
came, and I told him what had happened. He cross-examined me, became
convinced that I knew nothing of his wife’s movements, and sent for the
unhappy man at the gate, Yussuf.
“Why did you not run after your mistress?” he demanded sternly.
“I did, your Excellency, but she was nowhere to be seen. There was not
a house where she could have entered, or a place where she could have
hidden; but she was not in sight. I do not see how she could have run
so fast. It is magic!”
Sendi Bey dismissed the man, then called the slaves and the eunuch, and
ordered them to search the house, which they did without result. Then
he gave orders that no one was to enter or leave the house without his
permission, and that when the mistress returned she was to wait at the
gate till he had spoken to her.
After we were alone together again, he exclaimed gleefully: “For once
she has put herself in my power. On her return I shall go to the gate
and make my conditions, and if she does not agree to them, she cannot
come in.”
“But suppose she does not agree to them, and prefers not to come in?” I
asked.
He laughed. “For once,” he repeated, “she has put herself in my power.
If she does not agree, she will lose all her rights over her boy,
since she left the house against my orders. She loves the boy, and she
will agree. Now is the time to put an end to her coquettishness.”
Whatever satisfaction Sendi Bey and the absent, rebellious Semmeya
Hanoum might find in the situation, for me it was rather uncomfortable.
I was not able to go even into the garden, and ate a solitary luncheon
and then dinner, all the slaves being at their posts to prevent any
entry or egress. After finishing my novel, I was just preparing to go
to bed when a slave came to me.
“My master would like to see you downstairs if you will be so good,”
she said.
There was no one in the parlour when I arrived there, but presently the
master came in from the _selamlik_.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“Why, nothing,” I replied. “I am perfectly comfortable, although the
situation is not.”
He looked at me with a puzzled air.
“Why did you send for me?”
“I didn’t. I was told that you wished to see me.”
“There must be some mistake,” he said, and pulled the velvet rope of
the bell. As if in answer to the ring, in sauntered Semmeya Hanoum, as
cool as a cucumber, cigarette in hand, and apparently just back from
her expedition, since she was still in outdoor dress.
We both stared at her in amazement.
“Hullo, Blossom,” she said to me. “Sorry to have left you alone all
day.”
She elaborately ignored her husband. After an instant’s stupefaction he
strode across the room, took her chin in his hand, and lifted her face.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
She snatched her head away from his hand, and dropped him an
extravagant French curtsy. “Where I pleased, my master.”
The man was shaking with anger.
“How did you get in?”
She waved her gloved hand towards the hall. “Ring the bell--call in
your servants--find out.”
“To make a bigger fool of myself?”
“Why not, since you were willing to belittle me before them, by your
silly orders this morning? You told the eunuch not to let me go out,
and when I returned, I had to use a ruse to enter my own home, where
my baby boy is. You are a brute and a jealous fiend, and I am the most
unhappy of wives,” and thereupon she burst into the most pathetic
sobbing, and threw herself upon me, holding me fast to her.
“Why, Beauty,” he expostulated in tender tones, “you know I have never
been unkind to you, and this is the first time I have even thought of
punishing you.”
She continued to sob without abatement. He came near us, and timidly
tried to take her in his arms. To my surprise she went to him like a
lamb, kissing him and crying, and I slipped out of the room, once more
convinced that men were mere babes in the hands of designing women.
That night I waited in vain for her to come and tell me where she had
been, and while waiting I fell asleep. After breakfast the next morning
she came to my room, beaming, and looking prettier than ever.
“Siege is raised,” she cried, sitting down cross-legged on the rug.
“Blossom of the almond-tree, we can go for a picnic to any cemetery we
like, and I am to have a pair of horses all my own, and the loveliest
low victoria that France can manufacture.” She put her finger-tips
together, and looked up at me enjoying the effect of her words, and
continued: “I am also going to have a bigger allowance, and when I have
a little girl, I may give her a French name. In exchange, I shall not
throw kissed roses to anyone, and I am not going to fib for a long,
long time.”
She swayed forward till her forehead touched the floor, and giggled so
delightedly that I had to join her.
“The poor dear!” she went on, after her laughter had subsided. “If I
told him the truth for a week, he would cease to find me interesting. I
should be a tame creature--not the woman he is in love with. Oh, dear!
all men are alike.”
“You don’t know so very many men.” I suggested.
“Not actually, Blossom mine, not actually; but a woman retains the
knowledge of her previous existences far better than a man. That is
what her intuition is. I have been a wife for thousands of years. Think
of the husbands I have had! I know all about men. Why, sometimes I can
write down Sendi’s words before they leave his lips; and, as for his
actions, I know them before he even conceives them.”
“But what I want to know is how you got out of the house yesterday, and
then how you got in again.”
She looked at me with amused pity.
“Blossom, you are just about as stupid as a man--just about. I never
left the house; I couldn’t.”
I stared. “But they searched high and low----”
“Not very low, my dear, not very low; for if they had, they would have
found us down in the cistern, in the baskets we keep the things cool
in. We almost touched the water--and we were cool, I can tell you.” And
she went into peals of infectious laughter that carried me along with
her.
“Did you tell him?” I asked when our amusement had subsided.
“Oh, what a goose you are, dear! Of course I did not. He will have
that riddle in the depths of his heart to torment him--until I give him
a fresh one.”
I attempted to lecture her, but she closed my lips with a kiss and
adjured me not to be a simpleton until nature turned me into a man.