The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (5 page)

I followed the negress along corridor after corridor until we reached a well-lit room in the middle of which stood a table laden with oriental bowls and carafes made of rock crystal, with three places set. At the end of the room was a magnificent bed. Many negresses were there, all eager to be of service; I saw them fall back respectfully as two ladies came in, whose pink-and-white complexions formed a perfect contrast with the ebony hue of their maidservants. They were holding each other by the hand. Both were dressed in a strange manner: strange, that is, as it then seemed to me, but in fact the style of their dress is common to several towns on the Barbary coast, as I have since discovered on my travels. Their attire was as follows: it consisted of a shift and a bodice. The shift was made of linen above the waist, but of Meknes gauze below it; such a gauze as would be wholly transparent if broad silk ribbons woven into its fabric had not caused it to veil those feminine charms which are best imagined and not seen. The sleeveless bodice, richly embroidered with pearls and adorned with diamond clasps, moulded itself closely to the bosom. The gauze sleeves of the shift were lifted back and fastened in a knot behind the neck. On their bare arms the ladies wore bracelets, both at the wrist and above the elbow. Had they been she-devils, their feet would have been cloven or armed with talons; they were not at all like that, but bare, and encased in small embroidered slippers. Their legs were adorned with anklets studded with large diamonds.

The two strangers approached me with an easy and sociable air. They were perfect beauties; one was tall, slim, dazzling; the other tender and shy. The elder was statuesque; she had a fine figure, with fine features to match. The younger of the two was well-rounded, with slightly pouting lips and half-closed eyelids, revealing but a small part of the pupils through extraordinarily long lashes.

The elder addressed me in Castilian: ‘Señor caballero, we are grateful for the kindness you have shown in accepting our invitation to share this light repast. If I am not mistaken, you must be in need of it.'

She said these last words in such a mischievous way that I almost suspected her of having contrived the abduction of my pack animal; but the proffered meal was such a good substitute for my provisions that I could not find it in my heart to be angry with her.

We sat down to table; the same lady moved an oriental bowl towards me and said, ‘Señor caballero, you will find in here an
olla podrida
⁹
containing all sorts of meat with one exception, for we are of the number of the faithful, that is to say, we are Muslims.'

‘Fair stranger,' I replied, ‘I think you have spoken the truth; you are indeed of the number of the faithful, but of those who profess the religion of love. Please satisfy my curiosity before my hunger, and tell me who you are.'

‘Please eat, Señor caballero,' said the Moorish beauty. ‘We will not conceal our identity from you. I am Emina and this is my sister Zubeida; we come from Tunis, but our family is originally from Granada, and some of our relatives have stayed behind in Spain, where they continue to profess in secret the religion of their fathers. We left Tunis a week ago; we came ashore near Málaga on a deserted beach. We travelled up into the mountains between Loja and Antequera and have since come to this isolated spot to change our attire and to take such precautions as are necessary for our safety. As you can see, Señor caballero, the fact that we have journeyed here is an important secret which we have disclosed to you; we rely upon your discretion.'

I assured the two ladies that they had no indiscretion to fear on my part, and began to eat, somewhat greedily, it is true, but with the restraint and good manners which befit a young gentleman finding himself alone in the company of women.

When it was clear that the edge of my hunger had been blunted and that I had turned my attention to what in Spain are called
los dulces
,
¹⁰
Emina told the negresses to perform for me the dance of their country. There could have been no command more agreeable to them; they obeyed with an abandon which approached licentiousness. I
even believe that it would have been difficult to bring their dance to an end if I had not asked their beautiful mistresses whether they also did not occasionally dance. They did not reply to my question, but rose up and asked for castanets. The steps they danced resembled the Murcia
bolera
and the
fofa
as it is performed in the Algarve. I say this to give people from those places an idea of their dance; but even then they will not be able to picture the charm which the grace and beauty of the two African strangers, enhanced as it was by their diaphanous garments, added to their movements.

I watched them for some time almost dispassionately; but their movements became more rapid and insistent, and everything both in me and around me – the hypnotic effect of the Moorish music, my heightened senses inflamed by the unexpected repast – conspired to befuddle my mind. I no longer knew whether I was in the company of women or of seductive succubi. I neither dared nor desired to watch them; I covered my eyes with my hands, and felt overcome by dizziness.

The two sisters came over to me; each took one of my hands. Emina asked me whether I felt unwell. I assured her that I did not. Zubeida then asked me what the medallion was she saw on my chest and whether it was a portrait of my beloved.

‘It is a locket,' I replied, ‘which was given to me by my mother, and which I have promised always to wear; it contains a fragment of the true cross.'

I saw Zubeida recoil and grow pale as I uttered these words.

‘You are upset,' I said to her, ‘but the true cross only inspires dread in the spirit of darkness.'

Emina replied on her sister's behalf and said, ‘Señor caballero, we are Muslims, as you know; you must not be surprised that my sister was visibly distressed. I am also troubled; we are both extremely displeased to discover that you, our closest relative, are a Christian. I see that my words have amazed you; but was not your mother a Gomelez? We are members of the same family, which itself is but one branch of the Abencerrages. But let us sit down on the sofa, and I will tell you more.'

The negresses withdrew. Emina had me sit on one end of the sofa, and sat down next to me, her legs folded under her. Zubeida sat on
my other side, leaning on my cushion. We were so close to each other that their breath mingled with mine.

For a moment Emina seemed lost in thought; then she looked at me with great attention, took my hand and said, ‘Dear Alphonse, there is no point in hiding from you that it was not chance which brought us here. We have been waiting for you; and if fear had made you choose another route, you would have lost our esteem for ever.'

‘You flatter me, Emina,' I retorted. ‘What possible interest could you have in whether I am courageous or not?'

‘We take a deep interest in you,' the Moorish beauty replied. ‘But you may well be less flattered when you learn that you are practically the first man we have ever met. What I have just said has astonished you, and you seem to doubt it. I promised to tell you the story of our ancestors; perhaps it would be better if I began with our own.'

This strong attachment seemed to grow as we did; it was strengthened by an incident which I shall tell you about. I was then sixteen, and my sister was fourteen years old. For a long time we had been aware that there were books which my mother carefully hid from us. At first we paid little attention to them, being profoundly bored by the ones used to teach us to read; but as we grew older, we became curious. On the first occasion when the forbidden cupboard was left open, we seized our opportunity and removed a small book which turned out to
be
The Loves of Madjnoun and Leila
,
¹¹
translated from the Persian by ben Omri. This sublime work, which describes in ardent terms the joys of love, inflamed our young imaginations. We were not able to understand it perfectly, because we had never encountered members of your sex, but we tried out on each other its expressions. We learned to speak the language of these lovers, and resolved eventually to court each other in the way they did. I played the part of Madjnoun, and my sister took that of Leïla. First, I declared my passion for her by arranging flowers in a certain way; this is a sort of secret code much used throughout Asia. Then I made my glances eloquent, I prostrated myself before her, I kissed the ground where her feet had trod, I begged the gentle breezes to carry to her my amorous complaint; I even thought that I could set them alight with the ardour of my sighs.

Zubeida faithfully followed the lessons of the author and allowed me to meet her. I threw myself down before her, kissed her hands, and bathed her feet with my tears; my mistress began by resisting gently, then allowed me to steal some favours and finally abandoned herself altogether to my eager passion. Our souls seemed really to melt one into the other and even now I do not know what could make us happier than we were then.

I can't remember for how long we enjoyed these passionate interludes, but in the end we allowed calmer sentiments to take their place. We acquired a taste for study, especially for the study of plants, which we pursued in the writings of the celebrated Averroës.

My mother, who believed that one couldn't do too much to ward off the tedium of harem life, saw with pleasure that we had acquired a taste for occupying ourselves. She summoned from Mecca a saintly person whose very name, Hazareta, meant ‘most holy'. Hazareta taught us the law of the prophet in that pure and harmonious language which the tribe of Koraish
¹²
speak. We could never grow tired of listening to her, and we learned by heart almost all the Koran. Then my mother taught us herself about the history of our family,
and placed in our hands a great number of memoirs, some in Arabic, some in Spanish. How odious your law seemed to us, dear Alphonse! How we hated your priests and their persecutions! And how strongly we sympathized on the other hand with their many illustrious victims whose blood flowed in our veins!

Sometimes our hearts went out to Said Gomelez, who suffered martyrdom in the prisons of the Inquisition, sometimes to his nephew Leiss, who for a long time lived a primitive life in the mountains which was scarcely different from that of a wild animal. Such persons predisposed us to love men; we would have loved to meet some, and we would often climb up to our terrace to gaze from afar at those embarking on the lake of La Goulette, or those on their way to the baths at Hammam Nef. And if we hadn't altogether forgotten the teachings of Madjnoun the lover, at least we did not rehearse them to each other any more. It even seemed to me that my love for my sister no longer had the character of a passion, but a fresh incident proved to me that I was wrong.

One day my mother introduced an older lady to us who was a princess from Tafilet. We received her as best we could. After she had left, my mother told me that she had asked for my hand for her son, and that my sister would marry a member of the Gomelez family. We were thunderstruck by this news, and our shock caused us to lose the power of speech. Then the misery of living apart from each other impressed itself with such force on our minds that we gave way to the most terrible despair. We tore out our hair, and filled the harem with the sound of our sobbing. Eventually these demonstrations of our distress became so extreme that my mother was alarmed by them and promised not to force us to do something contrary to our desires. She assured us that we could either remain unmarried or both marry the same man. These assurances brought us a measure of calm.

Some time later, my mother came to tell us that she had spoken to the head of our family, who had given his approval that we should marry the same husband, provided that he was of the Gomelez blood.

We did not respond to this at once, but as the days went by, we grew more and more attracted to the idea of having the same husband. We had never seen a man, whether old or young, except from far off, but as young women seemed to us more pleasant than
old women, we decided that we would like a young husband. We hoped also that he would explain to us some passages of ben Omri's book whose meaning was not clear to us…