THE RAINBOW SIGN
While this bad work had been going forward in the Kasbah a great
blessing had fallen on the town. The long-looked for, hoped for, prayed
for--the good and blessed rain--had come at last. In gentle drops like
dew it had at first been falling from the rack of dark cloud which had
gathered over the heads of the mountains, and now, after half an hour of
such moisture, the sky over the town was grey, and the rain was pouring
down like a flood.
Oh! the joy of it, the sweetness, the freshness, the beauty, the odour!
The air overhead, which had been dense with dust, was clearing and
whitening as if the water washed it. And the ground underfoot, which
had reeked of creeping and crawling things, was running like a wholesome
river, and bearing back to the lips a taste as of the sea.
And the people of the town, in their surprise and gladness at the
falling of the rain, had come out of their houses to meet it. The
streets and the marketplace were full of them. In childish joy they
wandered up and down in the drenching flood, without fear or thought
of harm, with laughing eyes and gleaming white teeth, holding out their
palms to the rain and drinking it. Hailing each other in the voices of
boys, jesting and shouting and singing, to and fro they went and came
without aim or direction. The Jews trooped out of the Mellah, chattering
like jays, and the Moors at the gate salaamed to them. Mule-drivers
cried “Balak” in tones that seemed to sing; gunsmiths and saddle-makers
sat idle at their doors, greeting every one that passed; solemn Talebs
stood in knots, with faces that shone under the closed hoods of their
dark jellabs; and the bareheaded Berbers encamped in the market-square
capered about like flighty children, grinned like apes, fired their long
guns into the air for love of hearing the powder speak, often wept, and
sometimes embraced each other, thinking of their homes that were far
away.
Now, it was just when the town was alive with this strange scene that
the procession which had been ordered by Ben Aboo came out from
the Kasbah. At the head of it walked a soldier, staff in hand and
gorgeous--notwithstanding the rain--in peaked shasheeah and crimson
selham. Behind him were four black police, and on either side of the
company were two criers of the street, each carrying a short staff
festooned with strings of copper coin, which he rattled in the air for a
bell. Between these came the victims of the Basha's order--Naomi first,
barefooted, bareheaded, stripped of all but the last garment that
hid her nakedness, her head held down, her face hidden, and her eyes
closed--and Israel afterwards, mounted on a lean and ragged ass. A
further guard of black police walked at the back of all. Thus they came
down the steep arcades into the market-square, where the greater body of
the townspeople had gathered together.
When the people saw them, they made for them, hastening in crowds from
every side of the Feddan, from every adjacent alley, every shop, tent,
and booth. And when they saw who the prisoners were they burst into loud
exclamations of surprise.
“Ya Allah! Israel the Jew!” cried the Moors.
“God of Jacob, save us! Israel ben Oliel!” cried the people of the
Mellah.
“What is it? What has happened? What has befallen them?” they all asked
together.
“Balak!” cried the soldier in front, swinging his staff before him to
force a passage through the thronging multitude. “Attention! By your
leave! Away! Out of the way!”
And as they walked the criers chanted, “So shall it be done to every man
who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and
a cheat.”
When the people had recovered from their consternation they began to
look black into each other's face, to mutter oaths between their teeth,
and to say in voices of no pity or rush, “He deserved it!” “Ya Allah,
but he's well served!” “Holy Saints, we knew what it would come to!”
“Look at him now!” “There he is at last!” “Brave end to all his great
doings!” “Curse him! Curse him!”
And over the muttered oaths and pitiless curses, the yelping and barking
of the cruel voices of the crowd, as the procession moved along, came
still the cry of the crier, “So shall it be done to every man who is an
enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a cheat.”
Then the mood of the multitude changed. The people began to titter,
and after that to laugh openly. They wagged their heads at Israel; they
derided him; they made merry over his sorry plight. Where he was now
he seemed to be not so much a fallen tyrant as a silly sham and an
imposture. Look at him! Look at his bony and ragged ass! Ya Allah! To
think that they had ever been afraid of him!
As the procession crossed the market-place, a woman who was enveloped in
a blanket spat at Israel as he passed. Then it was come to the door of
the Mosque, an old man, a beggar, hobbled through the crowd and struck
Israel with the back of his hand across the face. The woman had lost her
husband and the man his son by death sentences of Ben Aboo. Israel
had succoured both when he went about on his secret excursions after
nightfall in the disguise of a Moor.
“Balak! Balak!” cried the soldier in front, and still the chant of the
crier rang out over all other noises.
At every step the throng increased. The strong and lusty bore down the
weak in the struggle to get near to the procession. Blind beggars and
feeble cripples who could not see or stir shouted hideous oaths at
Israel from the back of the crowd.
As the procession went past the gates of the Mellah, two companies came
out into the town. The one was a company of soldiers returning to
the Kasbah after sacking and wrecking Israel's house; the other was a
company of old Jews, among whom were Reuben Maliki, Abraham Pigman, and
Judah ben Lolo. At the advent of the three usurers a new impulse seized
the people. They pretended to take the procession for a triumphal
progress--the departure of a Kaid, a Shereef, a Sultan. The soldier
and police fell into the humour of the multitude. Salaams were made
to Israel; selhams were flung on the ground before the feet of Naomi.
Reuben Maliki pushed through the crowd, and walked backward, and cried,
in his harsh, nasal croak--
“Brothers of Tetuan, behold your benefactor! Make way for him! Make way!
make way!”
Then there were loud guffaws, and oaths, and cries like the cry of the
hyena. Last of all, old Abraham Pigman handed over the people's heads a
huge green Spanish umbrella to a negro farrier that walked within; and
the black fellow, showing his white teeth in a wide grim, held it over
Israel's head.
Then from fifty rasping throats came mocking cries.
“God bless our Lord!”
“Saviour of his people!”
“Benefactor! King of men!”
And over and between these cries came shrieks and yells of laughter.
All this time Israel had sat motionless on his ass, neither showing
humiliation nor fear. His face was worn and ashy, but his eyes burned
with a piteous fire. He looked up and saw everything; saw himself mocked
by the soldier and the crier, insulted by the Muslimeen, derided by the
Jews, spat upon and smitten by the people whose hungry mouths he had fed
with bread. Above all, he saw Naomi going before him in her shame, and
at that sight his heart bled and his spirit burred. And, thinking that
it was he who had brought her to this ignominy, he sometimes yearned to
reach her side and whisper in her ear, and say, “Forgive me, my child,
forgive me.” But again he conquered the desire, for he remembered
what God had that day done for her; and taking it for a sign of God's
pleasure, and a warranty that he had done well, he raised his eyes on
her with tears of bitter joy, and thought, in the wild fever of his
soul, “She is sharing the triumph of my humiliation. She is walking
through the mocking and jeering crowd, but see! God Himself is walking
beside her!”
The procession had now come to the walled lane to the Bab Toot, the gate
going out to Tangier and to Shawan. There the way was so narrow and the
concourse so great that for a moment the procession was brought to a
stand. Seizing this opportunity, Reuben Maliki stepped up to Israel and
said, so that all might hear, “Look at the crowds that have come out to
speed you, O saviour of your people! Look! look! We shall all remember
this day!”
“So you shall!” cried Israel. “Until your days of death you shall all
remember it!”
He had not spoken before, and some of the Moors tried to laugh at his
answer; but his voice, which was like a frenzied cry, went to the hearts
of the Jews, and many of them fell away from the crowd straightway, and
followed it no farther. It was the cry of the voice of a brother. They
had been insulting calamity itself.
“Balak!” shouted the soldier, and the crier cried once more, and the
procession moved again.
It was the hour of Israel's last temptation. Not a glance in his face
disclosed passion, but his heart was afire. The devil seemed to be
jarring at his ear, “Look! Listen! Is it for people like these that you
have come to this? Were they worth the sacrifice? You might have been
rich and great, and riding on their heads. They would have honoured you
then, but now they despise you. Fool! You have sold all and given to the
poor, and this is the end of it.” But in the throes and last gasp of his
agony, hearing his voice in his ear, and seeing Naomi going barefooted
on the stones before him, an angel seemed to come to him and whisper,
“Be strong. Only a little longer. Finish as you have begun. Well done,
servant of God, well done!”
He did not flinch, but rode on without a word or a cry. Once he lifted
his head and looked down at the steaming, gaping, grinning cauldron
of faces black and white. “O pity of men!” he thought. “What devil is
tempting _them_?”
By this time the procession had come to the town walls at a point near
to the Bab Toot. No one had observed until then that the rain was no
longer falling, but now everybody was made aware of this at once by
sight of a rainbow which spanned the sky to the north-west immediately
over the arch of the gate.
Israel saw the rainbow, and took it for a sign. It was God's hand in the
heavens. To this gate then, and through it, out of Tetuan, into the land
beyond--the plains, the hills, the desert where no man was wronged--God
Himself, and not these people, had that day been leading them!
What happened next Israel never rightly knew. His proper sense of life
seemed lost. Through thick waves of hot air he heard many voices.
First the voice of the crier, “So shall it be done to every man who
is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a
cheat.”
Then the voice of the soldier, “Balak! Balak!”
After that a multitudinous din that seemed to break off sharply and then
to come muffled and dense as from the other side of the closed gate.
When Israel came to himself again he was walking on a barren heath that
was dotted over with clumps of the long aloe, and he was holding Naomi
by the hand.