Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish Part 12

"A proper precaution for a libertine like you! At any rate be quick, and let us see if I may know what that large paper is that your uncle has sent you. It looks like a bank-note from the other world."

While his wife was making these and other observations, the musician finished reading the letter, whose contents surprised him so greatly that he rose to his feet without the slightest effort.

Dissimulation was so habitual with him, however, that he was able to say, in a natural tone of voice:

"What nonsense! The wretched man is no doubt already in his dotage! Would you believe that he sends me this leaf from a Hebrew Bible, in order that I may look for some Jew who will buy it, the foolish creature supposing that he will get a fortune for it. At the same time," he added, to change the conversation, putting the letter and the parchment into his pocket,-- "at the same time, he asks me with much interest if we have any children."

"He has none himself," cried Pepita quickly. "No doubt he intends to leave us something."

"It is more likely the miserly fellow thinks of our leaving him something.

But hark, it is striking eleven. It is time for me to go tune the organ for vespers. I must go now. Listen, my treasure; let dinner be ready by one, and don't forget to put a couple of good potatoes into the pot. Have we any children! I am ashamed to tell him we have none. See, Pepa," said the musician, after a moment, having in mind, no doubt, the Arabic doc.u.ment, "if my uncle should make me his heir, or if I should ever grow rich by any other means, I swear that I will take you to the Plaza of San Antonio in Cadiz to live, and I will buy you more jewels than Our Lady of Sorrows of Granada has. So good-bye for a while, my pigeon."

And, pinching his wife's dimpled chin, he took his hat and turned his steps--not in the direction of the cathedral, but in that of the poor quarter of the town in which the Moorish citizens of Ceuta for the most part live.

VI.

In one of the narrowest streets of this quarter, seated on the floor or rather on his heels, at the door of a very modest but very neat whitewashed house, smoking a clay pipe, was a Moor of some thirty-five or forty years of age, a dealer in eggs and chickens, which the free peasants of Sierra Bullones and Sierra Bermeja brought to him to the gates of Ceuta, and which he sold either in his own house or at the market, with a profit of a hundred per cent. He wore a white woollen chivala and a black woollen, hooded Arab cloak, and was called by the Spaniards, Manos-gordas, and by the Moors, Admet-Ben-Carime-el-Abdoun.

When the Moor saw the Chapel-master approaching, he rose and advanced to meet him, making deep salaams at every step, and when they were close together, he said cautiously:

"You want a little Moorish girl? I bring to-morrow little dark girl of twelve--"

"My wife wants no more Moorish servants," answered the musician stiffly.

Manos-gordas began to laugh.

"Besides," continued Don Bonifacio, "your infernal little Moorish girls are very dirty."

"Was.h.!.+" responded the Moor, extending his arms crosswise and inclining his head to one side.

"I tell you I want no Moorish girls," said Don Bonifacio. "What I want to-day is that you, who know so much that you are Interpreter of the Fortress, should translate this doc.u.ment into Spanish for me."

Manos-gordas took the doc.u.ment, and at the first glance murmured:

"It is Moor--"

"Of course, it is in Arabic. But I want to know what it says, and if you do not deceive me I will give you a handsome present--when the business which I am about to entrust you with is concluded."

Meantime Admet-Ben-Carime glanced his eye over the doc.u.ment, turning very pale as he did so.

"You see that it concerns a great treasure?" the Chapel-master half-affirmed, half-asked.

"Me think so," stammered the Mohammedan.

"What do you mean by saying you think so? Your very confusion tells plainly that it is so."

"Pardon," replied Manos-gordas, a cold sweat breaking out over his body.

"Here words modern Arabic--I understand. Here words ancient, or cla.s.sic Arabic--I no understand."

"What do the words that you understand signify?"

"They signify GOLD, they signify PEARLS, they signify CURSE OF ALA. But I no understand meaning, explanations, or signs. Must see the Dervish of Anghera--wise man and translate all. I take parchment to day and bring parchment to-morrow, and deceive not nor rob Senor Tudela. Moor swear."

Saying which he clasped his hands together, and, raising them to his lips, kissed them fervently.

Don Bonifacio reflected; he knew that in order to decipher the meaning of this doc.u.ment he should be obliged to take some Moor into his confidence, and there was none with whom he was so well acquainted and who was so well disposed to him as Manos-gordas; he consented, therefore, to confide the ma.n.u.script to him, making him swear repeatedly that he would return on the following day from Anghera with the translation, and swearing to the Moor on his side that he would give him at least a hundred dollars when the treasure should be discovered.

The Mussulman and the Christian then separated, and the latter directed his steps, not to his own house, nor to the cathedral, but to the office of a friend of his, where he wrote the following letter:

"Senor Don Matias de Quesada y Sanchez, Alpujarra, Ugijar.

"MY DEAREST UNCLE,--Thanks be to G.o.d that we have at last received news of you and of Aunt Encarnacion, and as good news as Josefa and I could desire. We, my dear uncle, although younger than you and my aunt, are full of ailments and burdened with children, who will soon be left orphans and compelled to beg for their bread.

"Whoever told you that the doc.u.ment you sent me bore any reference to a treasure deceived you. I have had it translated by a competent person, and it turns out to be a string of blasphemies against our Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Virgin, and the Saints, written in Arabic verses, by a Moorish dog of the Marquisate of El Cenet, during the rebellion of Aben-Humeya.

In view of its sacrilegious nature, and by the advice of the Senor Penitentiary, I have just burned this impious testimony to Mohammedan perversity.

"Remembrances to my aunt; Josefa desires to be remembered to you both; she is now for the tenth time in an interesting condition, and your nephew, who is reduced to skin and bone by the wretched affection of the stomach, which you will remember, begs that you will send him some a.s.sistance.

"BONIFACIO.

"CEUTA, January 29, 1821."

VII.

While the Chapel-master was writing and posting this letter, Admet-el-Abdoun was gathering together in a bundle all his wearing apparel and household belongings, consisting of three old hooded mantles, two cloaks of goat's wool, a mortar for grinding alcazuz, an iron lamp, and a copper skillet full of pesetas, which he dug up from a corner of the little yard of his house. He loaded with all this his one wife, slave, odalisque, or whatever she might be, a woman uglier than an unexpected piece of bad news, and filthier than her husband's conscience, and issued forth from Ceuta, telling the soldier on guard at the gate opening on the Moorish country that they were going to Fez for change of air, by the advice of a veterinary; and as from that day--now more than sixty years ago--to this no one in Ceuta or its neighborhood has ever again seen Manos-gordas, it is obvious that Don Bonifacio Tudela y Gonzalez had not the satisfaction of receiving from his hands the translation of the doc.u.ment, either on the following, or on any other day during the remainder of his existence; which, indeed, cannot have been very long, since, according to reliable information, it appears that his adored Pepita took to herself, after his death, another husband, an Asturian drum-major residing in Marbella, whom she presented with four children, beautiful as the sun, and that she was again a widow at the time of the death of the king, at which epoch she gained, by compet.i.tion in Malaga, the t.i.tle of gossip and the position of matron in the custom-house.

And now let us follow Manos-gordas and learn what became of him and of the mysterious doc.u.ment.

VIII.

Admet-ben-Carime-el-Abdoun breathed freely, and even danced a few steps for joy, without dancing off his ill-fastened slippers, however, as soon as he found himself outside the ma.s.sive walls of the Spanish fortress and with all Africa before him.

For Africa, for a true African like Manos-gordas, is the land of absolute liberty; of a liberty anterior and superior to all human const.i.tutions and inst.i.tutions; of a liberty resembling that enjoyed by the wild rabbits and other wild animals of the mountain, the valley, or the desert.

By this I mean to say that Africa is the paradise of evil-doers, the safe asylum, the neutral ground of both men and beasts, protected here by the intense heat and the vast extent of the deserts. As for the sultans, kings, and beys who fancy they rule here, and the authorities and soldiers who represent them, it may be said that they are for such subjects what the hunter is for the hare or for the stag--a misadventure which one in a hundred may chance to meet with, and which may or may not result fatally; if he who meets it dies, he is remembered on the anniversary of his death; and if he does not die, he takes himself off to a sufficient distance from the scene of his mishap--and no more is thought about the matter. With this digression we will now resume the thread of our story.

"This way, Zama!" cried the Moor to his weary consort, as if he were calling to a beast of burden.

And instead of turning eastward, that is to say toward the gap of Anghera, in quest of the holy sage, in accordance with his promise to Don Bonifacio, he proceeded southward along a ravine overgrown with wild brambles and forest trees which soon brought him to the Tetuan road; that is to say, to the indistinct footpath which, following the indentations of the coast, leads to Cape Negro by the valley of the Tarajar, the valley of the Castillejos, Mount Negro, and the lakes of Azmir River, names which are now heard by every true Spaniard with love and veneration, but which at the time of our story had not yet been p.r.o.nounced either in Spain or in any other part of the civilized world.

When Ben-Carime and Zama had reached the little valley of the Tarajar, they sat down to rest for a while at the edge of the rivulet which, rising in the heights of Sierra Bullones, runs through it, and in this wild and secluded spot, that seemed as if it had come fresh from the Creator's hand and had never yet been trod by the foot of man, looking out on the solitary ocean, whose waters were untracked save, on an occasional moonlight night, by some pirate caravel or government vessel sent from Europe in pursuit of it, the Moorish woman proceeded to make her toilet, performing her ablutions in the stream, and the Moor unfolded the ma.n.u.script and read it again, manifesting no less emotion than he had shown on the previous occasion.

The contents of the Arabian ma.n.u.script were as follows:

"May the benediction of Allah rest on all good men who read these lines!