Дэвид Гудис - Caravan to Tarim

“My word is this-you will leave Tarim with the new caravan. You will be unmolested during your journey to the sea. This time you will bring back a treasure greater than any in the past. And once again you will meet me in the desert. There will be no fighting. You will tell your men to surrender. We will take their rifles and camels.”

“And my men?”

“They will die in the desert. Under the sun. Thirsting.”

Kelney put down the tube of his water pipe. “Must they die?”

“They are from the city,” Nadi said. “They would happily see my tribe die the slow death. We will likewise be happy to see them crawling across the desert, their tongues black.”

“What about me?” Kelney said. “How can I murder my own men?”

“Speak now!” Nadi was standing. “Your life is no longer your own. The knives of my women are waiting.”

Deep inside, Kelney shivered. He said, “It is agreed.”

He would start out the following morning. There were no complex details. A single Bedouin would accompany him.

Alone in his tent, Kelney laughed without sound. He had never expected it would be this easy. He had given his word to Nadi, but Nadi was a bandit and a killer and you’re not obliged to keep promises to the Nadis.

Kelney was awakened at dawn by an old Bedouin, who informed him that his camel was ready. He was offered food and gulped it down hurriedly. Walking towards the camel, he turned to the man and said, “Sheik Nadi?”

“Gone,” the old Bedouin said. “Out of the desert, waiting for another caravan. A great one, our chief.”

“Yes,” Kelney said. “And very clever.”

“Cleverer than you think,” the old man said.

After a moment the old man nodded. “You will keep your word. Because I will tell you that Nadi is a man of honour and he believes that honour means more than life itself. There have been those who have broken their word to Nadi, and they have died. I could tell you how they died but I will let you imagine it for yourself. They thought they had tricked Nadi; they thought once they were out of the desert they were free of him. But he followed them. And eventually he caught them. One by one. When Nadi decides to pursue a man, the man never gets away.”

It hit Kelney with the force of a hammer. He had the ability to recognise profound truth when he heard it, and he was hearing it now.

The old man was saying, “Your fellow traveller will be the tongueless fool who waits now on his camel.”

Kelney got a look at the man who would journey with him for two hundred miles across sand. It wasn’t a pleasant look. The ragged Bedouin had a face that could turn a stomach. Some terrible disease had left scars, blotches and pulpy masses that distorted his features into a hideous mask. The diseased one opened his mouth to speak and his lips moved but he made gurgling sounds and nothing more.

Shuddering, Kelney said, “I must travel with that?”

The old man grinned. “It is the wish of Sheik Nadi.”

Kelney was climbing onto his camel. His body jerked violently as the beast rose from a placid crouch, shook itself to get blood into its legs.

The old Bedouin looked up at Kelney. “Your camel is strong,” he said. “May your will have the same strength.”

Kelney nodded slowly. He really meant it as he said, “Thanks for the tip.”

And the two camels, bearing silent riders, went eastward, towards Tarim.

Short and fat and sloppy, Mezar wallowed in his wealth. Once he had been a whining, begging seller of spices. In a miserable, hollowed-out space, he had made his living not on routine sales, but on certain practices that at times offered themselves when a customer was careless.

Slowly Mezar had pulled himself up, and now he had wealth. He was powerful and he had many persons working for him and it was good to think about all this, particularly the efficient white men he had working for him, this Kelney, this Tiggs, with their crisp, clear way of doing business. In short time, if things kept on the way they were going, his wealth would be doubled.

A servant came in, babbled loud and fast.

“Send him in!” Mezar said.

Kelney came in. His jacket and white linen breeches were rags. His pith helmet was cracked. He limped. But it was his face that made Mezar stare. His face was pale; the eyes had deepened in green until they were almost black.

The Arabian leaped up and almost choked on a mouthful of figs.

Kelney was in there first. He waved wearily at the fat merchant, he folded his arms and gazed at the floor and said, “Bedouins.”

“But the shipment-“

“I had more luck than the others,” Kelney said. His nerves were a sunbroiled mass dangling from an ever-thinning thread. He wanted to hit Mezar in the face.

“The shipment!” Mezar screeched. He was leaping around the silk-curtained room. “The shipment is gone! Why did you let the Bedouins-“ He coughed on the figs. His eyes were glass. Then he saw the silent man standing in the doorway and he looked at the pulpy, scarred face and he said, “Who is that?”

“The man saved me,” Kelney said, just as he had rehearsed it. “I do not know who he is. He has no tongue.”

Mezar was slowing down. His eyes were retreating into the fat folds of his face. He walked past Kelney, kept walking towards the mute. As he did so, he clapped his hands, twice.

Then he stood in front of the mute, hitting his palms together lightly, smiling as he stood there waiting.

“He befriended me,” Kelney said.

Two tall, half-naked Arabians entered the room. They were sweating, breathing hard. When you worked for Mezar you were always sweating, always groping for more energy.

Mezar pointed to the mute and said, “Take him.”

Kelney saw the mute struggling in the grasp of the two big men. He pushed Mezar’s elbow and said, “Leave him be. Reward him and let him go.”

“He is a Bedouin,” Mezar said.

Kelney was very tired. He was nearly broken in two. He said, “If any harm comes to the mute one, I will leave your employ. The Englishman is dead, and you will have no one to get the low prices. Hear me, Mezar.”

“But he is a Bedouin!” Mezar insisted. “Can you know how I hate them? Can you understand what a plague they are?”

“This one is sick and harmless,” Kelney said.

“I will make sure that he will always be harmless,” Mezar replied, and now his smile had enjoyment in it. Gesturing towards the writhing, gurgling Bedouin, the fat merchant addressed the tall men and said, “Take him out and cut off his ears and the tip of his nose.”

Then, as Mezar changed the smile to a laugh, Kelney cursed. He sensed himself going across the room, his hands shaping a couple of fists. He landed a hard one on an Arabian’s chest and the tall man lurched. The other man moved towards Kelney and at that point the mute became an eel, went sliding away. His gurgling was now an awful sort of laughter, fading quickly as he made his escape down a narrow street.

Kelney had nothing to do and no place to go and he stood there and waited until the two tall men came back. They looked at Mezar. And Mezar nodded.

Mezar had seated himself and now he studied Kelney’s face. He said, “You seem to like the Bedouins.”

“There are good and bad in all tribes.”

“I do not understand.”

“It’s very necessary to understand,” Kelney said. “Every nation and every tribe has its good people and its bad. Does it take much intelligence to get that?”

Mezar rubbed a finger across a huge carbuncle amethyst that dangled from his neck. “All Bedouins are fiends,” he said. “You know that, as I do. But you helped the mute one to escape. I want to know why.”

Biting his lip, Kelney looked at Mezar and let out a sigh and said, “I told you why.”