THE BAPTISM OF SOUND
WHAT had happened at Israel's house during Israel's absence is a story
that may be quickly told. On the day of his departure Naomi wandered
from room to room, seeming to seek for what she could not find, and in
the evening the black women came upon her in the upper chamber where her
father had read to her at sunset, and she was kneeling by his chair and
the book was in her hands.
“Look at her, poor child,” said Fatimah. “See, she thinks he will come
as usual. God bless her sweet innocent face!”
On the day following she stole out of the house into the town and made
her way to the Kasbah, and Ali found her in the apartments of the wife
of the Basha, who had lit upon her as she seemed to ramble aimlessly
through the courtyard from the Treasury to the Hall of Justice, and from
there to the gate of the prison.
The next day after that she did not attempt to go abroad, and neither
did she wander through the house, but sat in the same seat constantly,
and seemed to be waiting patiently. She was pale and quiet and
silent; she did not laugh according to her wont, and she had a look of
submission that was very touching to see.
“Now the holy saints have pity on the sweet jewel,” said Fatimah. “How
long will she wait, poor darling?”
On the morning of the day following that her quiet had given place to
restlessness, and her pallor to a burning flush of the face. Her hands
were hot, her head was feverish, and her blind eyes were bloodshot.
It was now plain that the girl was ill, and that Israel's fears on
setting out from home had been right after all. And making his own
reckoning with Naomi's condition, Ali went off for the only doctor
living in Tetuan--a Spanish druggist living in the walled lane leading
to the western gate. This good man came to look at Naomi, felt her
pulse, touched her throbbing forehead, with difficulty examined her
tongue, and pronounced her illness to be fever. He gave some homely
directions as to her treatment--for he despaired of administering drugs
to such a one as she was--and promised to return the next day.
About the middle of that night Naomi became delirious. Fatimah stood
constantly by her bed, bathing her hot forehead with vinegar and water;
Habeebah slept in a chair at her feet; and Ali crouched in a corner
outside the door of her room.
The druggist came in the morning, according to his promise; but
there was nothing to be done, so he looked wise, wagged his head very
solemnly, and said, “I will come again after two days more, when the
fever must be near to its height, and bring a famous leech out of
Tangier along with me!”
Meantime, Naomi's delirium continued. It was gentle as her own
spirit tent there was this that was strange and eerie about her
unconsciousness--that whereas she had been dumb while her mind in its
dark cell must have been mistress of itself and of her soul, she spoke
without ceasing throughout the time of her reason's vanquishment. Not
that her poor tongue in its trouble uttered speech such as those that
heard could follow and understand, but only a restless babble of empty
sounds, yet with tones of varying feeling, sometimes of gladness,
sometimes of sorrow, sometimes of remonstrance, and sometimes of
entreaty.
All that night, and the next night also, the two black women sat
together by her bedside, holding each other's hands like little children
in great fear. Also Ali crouched again like a dog in the darkness
outside the door, listening in terror to the silvery young voice that
had never echoed in that house before. This was the night when Israel,
sleeping at the squalid inn of the Jews of Wazzan, was hearing Naomi's
voice in his dreams.
At the first glint of daylight in the morning the lad was up and gone,
and away through the town-gate to the heath beyond, as far as to the
fondak, which stands on the hill above it, that he might strain his
wet eyes in the pitiless sunlight for Israel's caravan that should soon
come. On the first morning he saw nothing, but on the second morning he
came upon Israel's men returning without him, and telling their lying
story that he had been stripped of everything by the Sultan at Fez, and
was coming behind them penniless.
Now, Israel was to Ali the greatest, noblest, mightiest man among men.
That he should fall was incredible, and that any man should say he had
fallen was an affront and an outrage. So, stripling as he was, the lad
faced the rascals with the courage of a lion. “Liars and thieves!”
he cried; “tell that story to another soul in Tetuan, and I will go
straight to the Kaid at the Kasbah, and have every black dog of you all
whipped through the streets for plundering my master.”
The men shouted in derision and passed on, firing their matchlocks as a
mock salute. But Ali had his will of them; they told their tale no
more, and when they entered Tetuan, and their fellows questioned them
concerning their journey, they took refuge in the reticence that sits by
right of nature on the tongues of Moors--they said and knew nothing.
While Ali was on the heath looking out for Israel, the doctor out of
Tangier came to Naomi. The girl was still unconscious, and the
wise leech shook his head over her. Her case was hopeless; she was
sinking--in plain words, she was dying--and if her father did not come
before the morrow he would come too late to find her alive.
Then the black women fell to weeping and wailing, and after that to
spiritual conflict. Both were born in Islam, but Fatimah had secretly
become a Jewess by persuasion of her mistress who was dead. She was,
therefore, for sending for the Chacham. But Habeebah had remained a
Muslim, and she was for calling the Imam. “The Imam is good, the Imam
is holy; who so good and holy as the Imam?” “Nay, but our Sidi holds
not with the Imam, for our lord is a Jew, and our lord is our master, our
lord is our sultan, our lord is our king.” “Shoof! What is Sidi against
paradise? And paradise is for her who makes a follower of Moosa into a
follower of Mohammed. Let but the child die with the Kelmah on her
lips, and we are all three blest for ever--otherwise we will burn
everlastingly in the fires of Jehinnum.” “But, alack! how can the poor
girl say the Kelmah, being as dumb as the grave?” “Then how can she say
the Shemang either?”
Having heard the verdict of the doctor, Ali returned in hot haste and
silenced both the bondwomen: “The Imam is a villain, and the Chacham is
a thief.” There was only one good man left in Tetuan, and that was his
own Taleb, his schoolmaster, the same that had taught him the harp
in the days of the Governor's marriage. This person was an old negro,
bewrinkled by years, becrippled by ague, once stone deaf, and still
partially so, half blind, and reputed to be only half wise, a liberated
slave from the Sahara, just able to read the Koran and the Torah, and
willing to teach either impartially, according to his knowledge, for he
was neither a Jew nor a Muslim, but a little of both, as he used to say,
and not too much of either. For such a hybrid in a land of intolerance
there must have been no place save the dungeons of the Kasbah, but that
this good nondescript was a privileged pet of everybody. In his dark
cellar, down an alley by the side of the Grand Mosque in the Metamar,
he had sat from early morning until sunset, year in year out, through
thirty years on his rush-covered floor, among successive generations
of his boys; and as often as night fell he had gone hither and thither
among the sick and dying, carrying comfort of kind words, and often meat
and drink of his meagre substance.
Such was Ali's hero after Israel, and now, in Israel's absence and his
own great trouble, he tried away for him.
“Father,” cried the lad, “does it not say in the good book that the
prayer of a righteous man availeth much?”
“It does, my son,” said the Taleb “You have truth. What then?”
“Then if you will pray for Naomi she will recover,” said Ali.
It was a sweet instance of simple faith. The old black Taleb dismissed
his scholars, closed down his shutter, locked it with a padlock, hobbled
to Naomi's bedside in his tattered white selham, looked down at her
through the big spectacles that sprawled over his broad black nose, and
then, while a dim mist floated between the spectacles and his eyes, and
a great lump rose at his throat to choke him, he fell to the floor and
prayed, and Ali and the black women knelt beside him.
The negro's prayer was simple to childishness. It told God everything;
it recited the facts to the heavenly Father as to one who was far away
and might not know. The maiden was sick unto death. She had been three
days and nights knowing no one, and eating and drinking nothing. She was
blind and dumb and deaf. Her father loved her and was wrapped up in her.
She was his only child, and his wife was dead, and he was a lonely man.
He was away from his home now, and if, when he returned, the girl were
gone and lost--if she were dead and buried--his strong heart would be
broken and his very soul in peril.
Such was the Taleb's prayer, and such was the scene of it--the dumb
angel of white and crimson turning and tossing on the bed in an aureole
of her streaming yellow hair, and the four black faces about her, eager
and hot and aflame, with closed eyelids and open lips, calling down
mercy out of heaven from the God that might be seen by the soul alone.
And so it was, but whether by chance or Providence let no man dare to
tell, that even while the four black people were yet on their knees by
the bed, the turning and tossing of the white face stopped suddenly and
Naomi lay still on her pillow. The hot flush faded from her cheeks; her
features, which had twitched, were quiet; and her hands, which had been
restless, lay at peace on the counterpane.
The good old Taleb took this for an answer to his prayer, and he shouted
“El hamdu l'Illah!” (Praise be to God), while the big drops coursed down
the deep furrows of his streaming face. And then, as if to complete
the miracle, and to establish the old man's faith in it, a strange and
wondrous thing befell. First, a thin watery humour flowed from one of
Naomi's ears, and after that she raised herself on her elbow. Her eyes
were open as if they saw; her lips were parted as though they were
breaking into a smile; she made a long sigh like one who has slept
softly through the night and has just awakened in the morning.
Then, while the black people held their breath in their first moment
of surprise and gladness, her parted lips gave forth a sound. It was
a laugh--a faint, broken, bankrupt echo of her old happy laughter. And
then instantly, almost before the others had heard the sound, and while
the notes of it were yet coming from her tongue, she lifted her idle
hand and covered her ear, and over her face there passed a look of
dread.
So swift had this change been that the bondwomen had not seen it, and
they were shouting “Hallelujah!” with one voice, thinking only that
she who had been dead to them was alive again. But the old Taleb cried
eagerly, “Hush! my children, hush! What is coming is a marvellous thing!
I know what it is--who knows so well as I? Once I was deaf, my children,
but now I hear. Listen! The maiden has had fever--fever of the brain.
Listen! A watery humour had gathered in her head. It has gone, it has
flowed away. Now she will hear. Listen, for it is I that know it--who
knows it so well as I? Yes; she will be no longer deaf. Her ears will be
opened. She will hear. Once she was living in a land of silence; now
she is coming into the land of sound. Blessed be God, for He has wrought
this wondrous work. God is great! God is mighty! Praise the merciful God
for ever! El hamdu l'Illah!”
And marvellous and passing belief as the old Taleb's story seemed to be,
it appeared to be coming to pass, for even while he spoke, beginning in
a slow whisper and going on with quicker and louder breath, Naomi turned
her face full upon him; and when the black women in their ready faith,
joined in his shouts of praise, she turned her face towards them also;
and wherever a voice sounded in the room she inclined her head towards
it as one who knew the direction of the sounds, and also as one who was
in fear of them.
But, seeing nothing of her look of pain, and knowing nothing but one
thing only, and that was the wondrous and mighty change that she who had
been deaf could now hear, that she who had never before heard speech now
heard their voices as they spoke around her, Ali, in his frantic delight
laughing and crying together, his white teeth aglitter, and his round
black face shining with tears, began to shout and to sing, and to dance
around the bed in wild joy at the miracle which God had wrought in
answer to his old Taleb's prayer. No heed did he pay to the Taleb's
cries of warning, but danced on and on, and neither did the bondwomen
see the old man's uplifted arms or his big lips pursed out in hushes,
so overpowered were they with their delight, so startled and so joy
drunken. But over their tumult there came a wild outburst of piercing
shrieks. They were the cries of Naomi in her blind and sudden terror
at the first sounds that had reached her of human voices. Her face
was blanched, her eyelids were trembling, her lips were restless, her
nostrils quivered, her whole being seemed to be overcome by a vertigo of
dread, and, in the horrible disarray of all her sensations her brain,
on its wakening from its dolorous sleep of three delirious days, was
tottering and reeling at its welcome in this world of noise.
Then Ali ended suddenly his frantic dance, the bondwomen held their
peace in an instant, and blank silence in the chamber followed the
clamour of tongues.
It was at this great moment that Israel, returning from his journey in
the jellab of a Moor, knocked like a stranger at his outer door. When he
entered the chamber, still clad as a torn and ragged man, too eager to
remove the sorry garments which had been given to him on the way, Naomi
was resting against the pillar of the bed. He saw that her countenance
was changed, and that every feature of her face seemed to listen. No
longer was it as the face of a lamb that is simple and content, neither
was it as the face of a child that is peaceful and happy; but it was hot
and perplexed. Fear sat on her face, and wonder and questioning; and
as Fatimah stood by her side, speaking tender words to comfort her, no
cheer did she seem to get from them, but only dread, for she drew away
from her when she spoke, as though the sound of the voice smote her ears
with terror of trouble. All this Israel saw on the instant, and then
his sight grew dim, his heart beat as if it would kill him, a thick
mist seemed to cover everything, and through the dense waves of
semi-consciousness he heard the dull hum of Fatimah's muffled voice
coming to him as from far away.
“My pretty Naomi! My little heart! My sweet jewel of gold and silver!
It is nothing! Nothing! Look! See! Her father has come back! Her dear
father has come back to her!”
Presently the room ceased to go round and round, and Israel knew that
Naomi's arms surrounded him, that his own arms enlaced her, and that her
head was pressed hard against his bosom. Yes, it was she! It was Naomi!
Ali had told him truth. She lived! She was well! She could hear! The old
hope that had chirped in his soul was justified, and the dear delicious
dream was come true. Oh! God was great, God was good, God had given him
more than he had asked or deserved!
Thus for some minutes he stood motionless, blessing the God of Jacob,
yet uttering no words, for his heart was too full for speech, only
holding Naomi closely to him, while his tears fell on her blind face.
And the black people in the chamber wept to see it, that not more dumb
in that great hour of gladness was she who was born so than he to whose
house had come the wonderful work that God had wrought.
No heed had Israel given yet to the bodeful signs in Naomi's face, in
joy over such as were joyful. When he had taken her in his arms she had
known him, and she had clung to him in her glad surprise. But when she
continued to lie on his bosom it was not only because he was her father
and she loved him, and because he had been lost to her and was found, it
was also because he alone was silent of all that were about her.
When he saw this his heart was humbled; but he understood her fears,
that, coming out of a land of great silence, where the voice of man
was never heard, where the air was songless as the air of dreams and
darkling as the air of a tomb, her soul misgave her, and her spirit
trembled in a new world of strange sounds. For what was the ear but a
little dark chamber, a vault, a dungeon in a castle, wherein the soul
was ever passing to and fro, asking for news of the world without?
Through seventeen dark and silent years the soul of Naomi had been
passing and repassing within its beautiful tabernacle of flesh, crying
daily and hourly, “Watchman, what of the world?” At length it had found
an answer, and it was terrified. The world had spoken to her soul and
its voice was like the reverberations of a subterranean cavern, strange
and deep and awful.
In that first moment of Israel's consciousness after he entered the
room, all four black folks seemed to be speaking together.
Ali was saying, “Father, those dogs and thieves of tentmen and muleteers
returned yesterday, and said--”
And the bondwomen were crying, “Sidi, you were right when you went
away!” “Yes, the dear child was ill!” “Oh, how she missed you when
you were gone.” “She has been delirious, and the doctor, the son of
Tetuan--”
And the old Taleb was muttering, “Master, it is all by God's mercy. We
prayed for the life of the maiden, and lo! He has given us this gateway
to her spirit as well.”
Then Israel saw that as their voices entered the dark vault of Naomi's
ears they startled and distressed her. So, to pacify her, he motioned
them out of the chamber. They went away without a word. The reason of
Naomi's fears began to dawn upon them. An awe seemed to be cast over her
by the solemnity of that great moment. It was like to the birth-moment
of a soul.
And when the black people were gone from the room, Israel closed the
door of it that he might shut out the noises of the streets, for women
were calling to their children without, and the children were still
shouting in their play. This being done, he returned to Naomi and rested
her head against his bosom and soothed her with his hand, and she put
her arms about his neck and clung to him. And while he did so his heart
yearned to speak to her, and to see by her face that she could hear.
Let it be but one word, only one, that she might know her father's
voice--for she had never once heard it--and answer it with a smile.
“Daughter! My dearest! My darling.”
Only this, nothing more! Only one sweet word of all the unspoken
tenderness which, like a river without any outlet, had been seventeen
years dammed up in his breast. But no, it could not be. He must not
speak lest her face should frown and her arms be drawn away. To see that
would break his heart. Nevertheless, he wrestled with the temptation.
It was terrible. He dared not risk it. So he sat on the bed in silence,
hardly moving, scarcely breathing--a dust-laden man in a ragged jellab,
holding Naomi in his arms.
It was still the month of Ramadhan, and the sun was but three hours set.
In the fondak called El Oosaa, a group of the town Moors, who had fasted
through the day, were feasting and carousing. Over the walls of the
Mellah, from the direction of the Spanish inn at the entrance to the
little tortuous quarter of the shoemakers, there came at intervals a
hubbub of voices, and occasionally wild shouts and cries. The day was
Wednesday, the market-day of Tetuan, and on the open space called the
Feddan many fires were lighted at the mouths of tents, and men and
women and children--country Arabs and Barbers--were squatting around the
charcoal embers eating and drinking and talking and laughing, while the
ruddy glow lit up their swarthy faces in the darkness. But presently the
wing of night fell over both Moorish town and Mellah; the traffic of the
streets came to an end; the “Balak” of the ass-driver was no more heard,
the slipper of the Jew sounded but rarely on the pavement, the fires on
the Feddan died out, the hubbub of the fondak and the wild shouts of the
shoemakers' quarter were hushed, and quieter and more quiet grew the air
until all was still.
At the coming of peace Naomi's fears seemed to abate. Her clinging arms
released their hold of her father's neck, and with a trembling sigh she
dropped back on to the pillow. And in this hour of stillness she
would have slept; but even while Israel was lifting up his heart in
thankfulness to God, that He was making the way of her great journey
easy out of the land of silence into the land of speech, a storm broke
over the town. Through many hot days preceding it had been gathering in
the air, which had the echoing hollowness of a vault. It was loud and
long and terrible. First from the direction of Marteel, over the four
miles which divide Tetuan from the coast, came the warning which the sea
sends before trouble comes to the land--a deep moan as of waters falling
from the sky. Next came the moan of the wind down the valley that opens
on the gate called the Bab el Marsa, and along the river that flows to
the port. Then came the roll of thunder, like a million cannons, down
the gorges of the Reef mountains and across the plain that stretches
far away to Kitan. Last of all, the black clouds of the sky emptied
themselves over the town, and the rain fell in floods on the roof of the
house and on the pavement of the patio, and leapt up again in great loud
drops, making a noise to the ear like to the tramp, tramp, tramp of a
hidden multitude. Thus sound after sound broke over the darkness of the
night in a thousand awful voices, now near, now far, now loud, now
low, now long, now short, now rising, now falling, now rushing, now
running--a mighty tumult and a fearsome anarchy.
At last Naomi's terror was redoubled. Every sound seemed to smite her
body as a blow. Hitherto she had known one sense only, the sense of
touch, and though now she knew the sense of hearing also, she continued
to refer all sensations to feeling. At the sound of the sea she put out
her arms before her; at the sound of the wind she buried her face in
her palms; and at the sound of the thunder she lifted her hands as if to
protect her head.
Meanwhile, Israel sat beside her and cherished her close at his bosom.
He yearned to speak words of comfort to her, soft words of cheer, tender
words of love, gentle words of hope.
“Be not afraid, my daughter! It is only the wind, it is only the rain;
it is only the thunder. Once you loved to run and race in them. They
shall not harm you, for God is good, and He will keep you safe. There,
there, my little heart! See, your father is with you. He will guard you.
Fear not, my child, fear not!”
Such were the words which Israel yearned to speak in Naomi's ears,
but, alas! what words could she understand any more than the wind which
moaned about the house and the thunder which rolled overhead? And again
and again, alas! as surely as he spoke to her she must shrink from the
solace of his voice even as she shrank from the tumult of the voices of
the storm.
Israel fell back helpless and heartbroken. He began to see in its
fulness the change which had befallen Naomi, yet not at once to realise
it, so sudden and so numbing was the stroke. He began to know that with
the mighty blessing for which he had hoped and prayed--the blessing of a
pathway to his daughter's soul--a misfortune had come as well. What was
it to him now that Naomi had ears to hear if she could not understand?
And what was this tempest to the maiden new-born out of the land of
silence into the world of sound, yet still both blind and dumb, but
a circle of darkness alive with creatures that groaned and cried and
shrieked and moved around her?
Thus nothing could Israel do but watch the creeping of Naomi's terror,
and smooth her forehead and chafe her hands. And this he did, until at
length, in a fresh outbreak of the storm, when the vault of the heavens
seemed rent asunder, a strong delirium took hold of her, and she fell
into a long unconsciousness. Then Israel held back his heart no longer,
but wept above her, and called to her, and cried aloud upon her name--
“Naomi! Naomi! My poor child! My dearest! Hear me! It is nothing!
nothing! Listen! It is gone! Gone!”
With such passionate cries of love and sorrow; Israel gave vent to his
soul in its trouble. And while Naomi lay in her unconsciousness, he knew
not what feelings possessed him, for his heart was in a great turmoil.
Desolate! desolate! All was desolate! His high-built hopes were in
ashes!
Sometimes he remembered the days when the child knew no sorrow, and when
grief came not near her, when she was brighter than the sun which she
could not see and sweeter than the songs which she could not hear, when
she was joyous as a bird in its narrow cage and fretted not at the
bars which bound her, when she laughed as she braided her hair and came
dancing out of her chamber at dawn. And remembering this, he looked down
at her knitted face, and his heart grew bitter, and he lifted up his
voice through the tumult of the storm, and cried again on the God of
Jacob, and rebuked Him for the marvellous work which He had wrought.
If God were an almighty God, surely He looked before and after, and
foresaw what must come to pass. And, foreseeing and knowing all, why had
God answered his prayer? He himself had been a fool. Why had he craved
God's pity? Once his poor child was blither than the panther of the
wilderness and happier than the young lamb that sports in springtime. If
she was blind, she knew not what it was to see; and if she was deaf, she
knew not what it was to hear; and if she was dumb, she knew not what it
was to speak. Nothing did she miss of sight or sound or speech any more
than of the wings of the eagle or the dove. Yet he would not be content;
he would not be appeased. Oh! subtlety of the devil which had brought
this evil upon him!
But the God whom Israel in his agony and his madness rebuked in this
manner sent His angel to make a great silence, and the storm lapsed to a
breathless quiet.
And when the tempest was gone Naomi's delirium passed away. She seemed
to look, and nothing could she see; and then to listen, and nothing
could she hear; and then she clasped the hand of her father that lay
over her hand, and sighed and sank down again.
“Ah!”
It was even as if peace had come to her with the thought that she was
back in the land of great silence once again, and that the voices
which had startled her, and the storm which had terrified her, had been
nothing but an evil dream.
In that sweet respite she fell asleep, and Israel forgot the reproaches
with which he had reproached his God, and looked tenderly down at her,
and said within himself, “It was her baptism. Now she will walk the
world with confidence, and never again will she be afraid. Truly the
Lord our God is king over all kingdoms and wise beyond all wisdom!”
Then, with one look backward at Naomi where she slept, he crept out of
the room on tiptoe.