East, West Page 4

  The children, then, could look after themselves.

  He and his wife would be off soon with the jewel-boxes of the moneylender’s women. It was a timely chance indeed that had brought the beautiful bruised girl into his corner of the town.

  That night, the large house on the shore of the lake lay blindly waiting, with silence lapping at its walls. A burglar’s night: clouds in the sky and mists on the winter water. Hashim the moneylender was asleep, the only member of his family to whom sleep had come that night. In another room, his son Atta lay deep in the coils of his coma with a blood-clot forming on his brain, watched over by a mother who had let down her long greying hair to show her grief, a mother who placed warm compresses on his head with gestures redolent of impotence. In a third bedroom Huma waited, fully dressed, amidst the jewel-heavy caskets of her desperation.

  At last a bulbul sang softly from the garden below her window and, creeping downstairs, she opened a door to the bird, on whose face there was a scar in the shape of the Nastaliq letter sín.

  Noiselessly, the bird flew up the stairs behind her. At the head of the staircase they parted, moving in opposite directions along the corridor of their conspiracy without a glance at one another.

  Entering the moneylender’s room with professional ease, the burglar, Sín, discovered that Huma’s predictions had been wholly accurate. Hashim lay sprawled diagonally across his bed, the pillow untenanted by his head, the prize easily accessible. Step by padded step, Sín moved towards the goal.

  It was at this point that, in the bedroom next door, young Atta sat bolt upright in his bed, giving his mother a great fright, and without any warning – prompted by goodness knows what pressure of the blood-clot upon his brain – began screaming at the top of his voice:

  ‘Thief! Thief! Thief!’

  It seems probable that his poor mind had been dwelling, in these last moments, upon his own father; but it is impossible to be certain, because having uttered these three emphatic words the young man fell back upon his pillow and died.

  At once his mother set up a screeching and a wailing and a keening and a howling so earsplittingly intense that they completed the work which Atta’s cry had begun – that is, her laments penetrated the walls of her husband’s bedroom and brought Hashim wide awake.

  Sheikh Sín was just deciding whether to dive beneath the bed or brain the moneylender good and proper when Hashim grabbed the tiger-striped swordstick which always stood propped up in a corner beside his bed, and rushed from the room without so much as noticing the burglar who stood on the opposite side of the bed in the darkness. Sín stooped quickly and removed the vial containing the Prophet’s hair from its hiding-place.

  Meanwhile Hashim had erupted into the corridor, having unsheathed the sword inside his cane. In his right hand he held the weapon and was waving it about dementedly. His left hand was shaking the stick. A shadow came rushing towards him through the midnight darkness of the passageway and, in his somnolent anger, the moneylender thrust his sword fatally through its heart. Turning up the light, he found that he had murdered his daughter, and under the dire influence of this accident he was so overwhelmed by remorse that he turned the sword upon himself, fell upon it and so extinguished his life. His wife, the sole surviving member of the family, was driven mad by the general carnage and had to be committed to an asylum for the insane by her brother, the city’s Deputy Commissioner of Police.

  Sheikh Sín had quickly understood that the plan had gone awry.

  Abandoning the dream of the jewel-boxes when he was but a few yards from its fulfilment, he climbed out of Hashim’s window and made his escape during the appalling events described above. Reaching home before dawn, he woke his wife and confessed his failure. It would be necessary, he whispered, for him to vanish for a while. Her blind eyes never opened until he had gone.

  The noise in the Hashim household had roused their servants and even managed to awaken the night-watchman, who had been fast asleep as usual on his charpoy by the street-gate. They alerted the police, and the Deputy Commissioner himself was informed. When he heard of Huma’s death, the mournful officer opened and read the sealed letter which his niece had given him, and instantly led a large detachment of armed men into the light-repellent gullies of the most wretched and disreputable part of the city.

  The tongue of a malicious cat-burglar named Huma’s fellow-conspirator; the finger of an ambitious bank-robber pointed at the house in which he lay concealed; and although Sín managed to crawl through a hatch in the attic and attempt a roof-top escape, a bullet from the Deputy Commissioner’s own rifle penetrated his stomach and brought him crashing messily to the ground at the feet of Huma’s enraged uncle.

  From the dead thief’s pocket rolled a vial of tinted glass, cased in filigree silver.

  The recovery of the Prophet’s hair was announced at once on All-India Radio. One month later, the valley’s holiest men assembled at the Hazratbal mosque and formally authenticated the relic. It sits to this day in a closely guarded vault by the shores of the loveliest of lakes in the heart of the valley which was once closer than any other place on earth to Paradise.

  But before our story can properly be concluded, it is necessary to record that when the four sons of the dead Sheikh awoke on the morning of his death, having unwittingly spent a few minutes under the same roof as the famous hair, they found that a miracle had occurred, that they were all sound of limb and strong of wind, as whole as they might have been if their father had not thought to smash their legs in the first hours of their lives. They were, all four of them, very properly furious, because the miracle had reduced their earning powers by 75 per cent, at the most conservative estimate; so they were ruined men.

  Only the Sheikh’s widow had some reason for feeling grateful, because although her husband was dead she had regained her sight, so that it was possible for her to spend her last days gazing once more upon the beauties of the valley of Kashmir.

  West

  YORICK

  Thank the heavens! – or the diligence of ancient-time papersmiths – for the existence upon our earth of the material known as strong vellum; which, like the earth upon which I have supposed it to exist (although in point of fact its contacts with terra firma are most rare, its natural habitations being shelves, wooden or not wooden, some dusty, others maintained in excellent order; or letter-boxes, desk drawers, old trunks, the most secret pockets of courting lovers, shops, files, attics, cellars, museums, deed-boxes, safes, lawyers’ offices, doctors’ walls, your favourite great-aunt’s seaside home, theatrical property departments, fairy tales, summit conferences, tourist traps), … like the earth, I say again in case you have forgot my purpose, this noble stuff endures – if not for ever, then at least till men consciously destroy it, whether by crumpling or shredding, through the use of kitchen scissors or strong teeth, by actions incendiary or lavatorial, – for it’s a true fact that men take an equal pleasure in annihilating both the ground upon which they stand while they live and the substance (I mean paper) upon which they may remain, immortalised, once this same ground is over their heads instead of under their feet; and that the complete inventory of such strategies of destruction would over-fill more pages than my ration, … so then to the devil with that list and on with my story; which, as I had begun to say, is itself the tale of a piece of vellum, – both the tale of the vellum itself and the tale inscribed thereupon.

  Yorick’s saga, of course; that same ancient account which fell, near enough two hundred and thirty-five years ago, into the hands of a certain – no, a most uncertain – Tristram, who (although Yseult-less) was neither triste nor ram, the frothiest, most heady Shandy of a fellow; and which has now come into my possession by processes too arcane to detain the eager reader. Truly, a velluminous history! – which it’s my present intent not merely to abbreviate, but, in addition, to explicate, annotate, hyphenate, palatinate & permanganate – for it’s a narrative that richly rewards the scholar who is competent to apply such sens
itive technologies. Here, dusty-faced and inky-fingered, lurk beautiful young wives, old fools, cuck-oldry, jealousy, murder, juice of cursed hebona, executions, skulls; as well as a full exposition of why, in the Hamlet of William Shakespeare, the morbid prince seems unaware of his own father’s real name.

  Very well then:–

  It appears that in the latter part of the reign of the illustrious King Horwendillus of Denmark, his chief jester, one Master YORICK, took to wife a toothsome goldhair waif, by name ‘Ophelia’; and thereafter began all the trouble … What’s this? Interruptions already? Did I not tell you, have I not just this moment set down, that the bardic Hamlet, that’s to say Amlethus of the Danes, is quite mistaken in believing the Ghost’s name to be Hamlet too? – An error not only unusual but unfilial, not only unfilial but downright unsaxogrammatical, one may say, for it is contradicted by no less an authority than Saxo-Grammaticus’s History of the Danes! – But were you to be silent and hear me out you’d learn it was no mistake whatsoever, but rather the cryptic key by which our tale’s true meaning may most swiftly be unlocked.

  I repeat:–

  Horwendillus. Horwendillus Rex … – Still more questions? – Sir, of course the jester had a wife; she may not feature in the great man’s play, but you’ll concede that a woman’s a necessary apparatus if a man would make a dynasty, and how else? – answer me that? – could the antique Fool have produced that Line, that veritable Monologue of Yoricks of whom the ill-named Tristram person’s parson was but one single syllable? Well! You don’t need ancient vellum to see the truth of THAT, I think. – Good Lord; her name? Sir, you must take it upon my word. But where’s the puzzle? Do you imagine that this ‘Ophelia’ was so blasted uncommon a name in a land where men were called such things as Amlethus, Horwend&c., yes, and Yorick, too? So, so. Let’s get on.

  Yorick espoused Ophelia. There was a child. Let’s have no more disputes.

  In the matter of this Ophelia: she’d less than half his years and more than twice his looks, so it will instantly be perceived that what follows may be ascribed to divisions and multiplications. An arithmetical tragedy, in sum. A grave tale, fit for gravesides.

  How did it come about that this old wintry fool got himself such a springtime of a bride? – A noisome gale blows across the ancient vellum hereabouts. It is Ophelia’s breath. The rottenest-smelling exhalation in the State of Denmark; a tepid stench of rats’ livers, toads’ piss, high game-birds, rotting teeth, gangrene, skewered corpses, burning witchflesh, sewers, politicians’ consciences, skunk-holes, sepulchres, and all the Beelzebubbling pickle-vats of Hell! Thus every time this youthful beauty, the frail perfection of whose features brought moisture to men’s eyes, made so bold as to open her mouth, – why, then there was cleared all around her an open ground some fifty feet in radius at the least. So Yorick’s path to wedlock was unobstructed, and a poor Fool must get what wife he can.

  He courted her with a wooden peg on his nose. On their wedding day the king, who loved Yorick, gave the jester a thoughtful gift: a pair of silver nose-plugs. That’s how it happened; first pegged, then plugged, our Fool in love assuredly looked his part.

  So that’s made clear.

  [Enter young Prince Amlethus, bearing a riding whip.]

  The scene’s a poor bedchamber at Elsinore. Yorick and his lady lie fast asleep in their cot. In disarray upon a nearby chair: a cap, bells, motley, &c. Somewhere, a sleeping infant. Picture the boy Hamlet now, tiptoeing to the bedside; where he tenses, crouched; until at last he leaps! And now,

  Yor. (awakes) O, a! What whoreson Pelion’s this, that, tumbling down from Ossa, so interrupts my spine?

  … I interrupt myself, for there occurs to me a discordant Note: would any man, awakened from deepest slumber by the arrival on his back of a seven-year-old princeling, truly retain such a command of metaphor and classical allusion as is indicated by the text? It may be that the vellum is not wholly to be relied upon in this regard; or it may be that Denmark’s fools were most uncommon learned. Some things may never be known …

  (Back now to our Muttons.)

  Ham. Yorick, the day’s awake! Let’s raise a chorus to the dawn.

  Oph. (aside) My husband never loved this prince; a spoiled short brat, and cursed with sleeplessness, which plague he passes on to us. Here’s how we wake each morning, with royal fists a-tearing at our hair, or heir-apparent buttocks jig-jogging on our necks. Were he my child … good morrow, sweet my prince!

  Ham. Ophelia, it is. A dawn chorus, Yorick, come!

  Yor. That’s for the birds. I’m of too venerable feather, that’s the truth. My years long since encrowed me, or made of me an owl. I sing no more, but only caw or hoot in most unseemly form.

  Ham. Soft! None of this. Your prince would have a song.

  Yor. Still hear me out. Age, Hamlet, is a setting sun, and in my occidental years it is not right I hymn the orient day.

  Ham. No more. Up, sing. I’ll ride upon your back and hear you croon.

  Oph. (aside) At seven he’s the Old Man of the Sea; who knows, at twenty-seven, what he’ll be?

  Yor. (sings) In youth when I did love, did love, Methought it was very sweet, To contract, O! the time, for-a my behove, O! methought there was nothing meet. But age, with his stealing steps, Hath claw’d me in his clutch …

  Ham. Cease, Yorick, this foul caterwaul; instanter, hold your peace.

  Yor. Did I not tell you true?

  Ham. Enough. Give me some jest. Yes, make it about a cat, just such a wauly mog as you just now surpassed.

  Yor. (aside) Now must I do this penance for doing what he willed. (Aloud) There’s life yet in this old dog you ride; so tell me, Hamlet, why cats have nine lives?

  Ham. I know it not, but why they have nine tails, that I know well, and you shall find it out quick if the riddle be slow.

  Oph. (aside) This prince is as sharp as his tongue; and poor Yorick blunter by the day.

  Yor. Then hear the answer. All cats will look at kings; but to gaze upon a monarch is to place one’s life in their hands; and lives held in such hands do often slip through fingers and are spilled. Now, Hamlet, count the spaces on your hands, I mean ’twixt finger and finger, and finger and finger, and finger and finger, and finger and thumb. On two hands, count eight chasms through which a life may fall. Only nine lives will ensure that one at least remain; and so our cat, king-watching, must have nine.

  Oph. Husband, a fine conceit.

  Ham. So now a dance! Discharge your jester’s office and let’s have a merry jig.

  Yor. You’ll hang upon my back the while?

  Ham. I will; there to ponder what I want.

  Yor. (aside, and dancing) Hamlet, you want for nothing: yet Yorick finds you wanting.

  And all this spoken with filigree’d plugs up the nose, up princely nostrils as well as Foolish ones! – The child, crying in his cradle, complains as much of his bunged proboscis as of the noise of Hamlet’s whip, whishing and whooshing through the air to encourage his dancing biped steed. – What are we to think of so enraged a prince? It’s sure he hated Ophelia; but for what? Her pestilential gusts? Her sovereignty over the Fool, who doted upon her very eyelashes? Or could it have been the swelling buds beneath her shift, her body that was not his to command? At seven, Prince Amlethus is disturbed by something in this girl, but cannot give it name. – So childish ardour turns to hate.

  Perhaps all three: her stink; her theft of Yorick’s heart, for as any fool knows the heart of a Fool is his prince’s possession, for who but a Fool would surrender his heart to a prince?; and, yes, her beauty, too. There’s no need to choose. Let’s be gluttonous in our understanding and swallow this trinity whole.

  We shall spare Hamlet too harsh a judgment. He was a lonely child, who saw in Yorick a father as well as a servant, viz. the best, the perfect father, for every son would make his father a slave. In Yorick, singing, jesting, dancing, the pallid prince sees Horwendillus tamed. He was a mother’s boy.

  The vellum hereab
outs, – I should say the ink upon it – or, more precisely still, the fist that held the pen – but the fist’s long dead, and it won’t do to speak ill of the departed – O, **********!, let me say the text begins to ramble, listing in gruesome detail all the crimes committed by the prince against the jester’s person: each imprint of royal boot upon his buttocks, complete with itemisations of cause, effect, location, costume, contingent circumstances (rain, sun, thundery conditions, hail, and other functions of nature; or the absence of Hamlet’s mother owing to the tyranny, even over queens, of natural functions), descriptions of the jester’s pratfalls, of the clump of turf with which his nose collided, of subsequent searches for dislodged nose-plugs; in brief, a most lamentable lack of brevity, which we shall rectify here without delay. The point’s well made, I think. To labour it further would be to emulate the prince, who belaboured Yorick with sticks and whips and the Lord knows what – and we would be rash to treat our Reader (being ourselves no Prince) as if he were a Fool. (And being no Prince, what business have I with this newly infiltrative ‘we’, this purple plural my sentences have presumed to put on? Off with it! Back to the common – the uncommon, because Cyclopean – singular I.)

  One story will suffice:-

  While riding Yorick, Hamlet with his whip parted the fool’s cheek’s fleshy curtains, to reveal the bony stage behind. It seems he was a feeling prince: enshouldered as he was, his gorge rose at the bloody sight. – Reader, the Prince of Denmark, on catching his first glimpse of a skull, puked generously on Yorick’s dingling cap.

  I have till now endeavoured to tell a delicate tale of private character, with many fine touches of psychology and much material detail; still I can no longer keep the great World from my pages, for what ended in Tragedy began in Politics. (Which will be small surprise.)