Theodore Dreiser

“ Know then, O excellent citizens of Hodeidah, that once, many years since, there lived in this very Yemen where now is Taif, then a much more resplendent city, a sultan by the name of Kar-Shem, who had great cities and palaces and an army, and was beloved of all over whom he ruled. When he—wilt thou be seated, O friend? And silence!—when he was but newly married and ruling happily a son was born to him, Hussein, an infant of so great charm and beauty that he decided he should be carefully reared and wisely trained and so made into a fit ruler for so great a country. ”

“ The very street! The very studio!
Although she was ignorant of the spirit or the technique of art she had been able to comprehend it and him, all that he represented as a portion of beauty itself, the vast and supernal beauty toward which the creative forces of life in their harsh and yet tender ways seem impelled at times.
Had she not understood very well that it was as beauty that she appealed to him, at first anyhow, an artistry of face and form plus a certain mood of appreciation or adoration or understanding which was of value to him? ”

“ On a given morning the air would be thick with bulbuls, sparrows, weaver birds, shrilly clamoring; they would rise and fall above the plants, picking at the tenderest leaves. “Allah be praised!” would cry the farmer in delight. “The leaves are sweet and ripe for the market!” And now he would call his women and the wives of his neighbors to the crop-picking. Under a bower of jasmine vines, with plumes of the sweet smelling rehan, the farmer and his cronies would gather to drink from tiny cups and smoke the hubbuk, while the womenfolk brought them armfuls of the freshly cut khat leaves. ”

“ And after him came Soudi and Parfi, carriers, an appetite for wonders besetting them; and then El-Jed, the vendor of kindling.
As they gathered about him Gazzar-al-Din ventured to thrum louder and louder, exclaiming: “A marvelous tale, O Company of the Faithful! A marvelous tale! Hearken! A tale such as has never yet been told in all Hodeidah—no, not in all Yemen! ‘A Prince Who was a Thief.’ A Prince Who Was a Thief! For a score of anna—yea, the fourth part of a rupee—I begin. And ah, the sweetness of it! As jasmine, it is fragrant; as khat, soothing. A marvelous tale!” ”

“ And then the lure of summer nights—Corybantic—dithyrambic—with kisses, kisses, kisses—under the shadow of the trees in King Lake Park, or in one of the little boats of its lake which nosed the roots of those same trees on the shore. And with the sensitive and sensual, and yet restricted and inexperienced Ida, growing more and more lost in the spell which youth, summer, love, had generated. ”

“ But with the arrival of this Edward Hauptwanger, there came a change. For here was a youth of definite and drastic impulses—a beau, a fighter, a fellow of infinite guile where girls of all sorts were concerned—and, too, a youth of taste in the matter of dress and manner—one who stood out as a kind of hero to the type of youthful male companions with whom he chose to associate. Did he not live in a really large, separate house on Grey Street? And were not his father’s coal-pockets and trucks conspicuously labelled outstanding features of the district? ”

“ In Harry’s case it had acted contrariwise. Some men were so, especially the old and rich, those from whom life was slipping away and for whom youth, their lost youth, seemed to remain a colored and enthralling spectacle however wholly gone. The gifts he had lavished upon her, the cars, the jewels, this apartment, stocks and bonds, even that house in Seadale for her sister and mother! And all because of a beauty that meant so little to her now that Vivian was gone, and in the face of an indifference so marked that it might well have wearied any man. ”

“ Pain, he said, he accepted as an incentive, an urge to life. Strife he liked because it hardened all to strength. And he believed in action as the antidote to too much thought, the way out of brooding and sorrow. Youth passes, strength passes, life forms pass; but action makes all bearable and even enjoyable. Also he wanted more labor, not less, more toil, more exertion, for humanity. And he insisted that through, not round or outside, life lay the way to happiness, if there was a way. ”

“ Chewing the life-giving weed, all were sure that they could perform prodigies of energy and strength, that life was a delicious thing, the days and years of their troubles as nothing.
But viewing this and having none, and trudging moodily along toward his waiting-place in front of the mosque, Ibn was truly depressed and out of sorts. The world was not right. Age and poverty should command more respect. To be sure, in his youth perhaps he had not been all that he might have been, but still, for that matter, had many others so been? ”

“ This bazaar was in the principal street of the merchants, and at times he was to be seen there, his legs crossed upon his pillows. But let a merchant of wealth appear, a stranger, and although he might wish only to ask prices Yussuf would offer some rug or cloth so low that even a beggar would wish to take it. When the stranger, astonished at its price, would draw his purse a hand-clap from Yussuf would bring forth slaves from behind hangings who would fall upon and bind him, take his purse and clothes and throw his body into the river. ”

“ Mersereau was always saying, when Davidson would listen to him at all—which he wouldn’t often—that he would get him yet, that he would make him pay, or charging him with fraud and murder.
“I’ll choke you yet!” The words seemed to float in from somewhere, as if he were remembering that at some time Mersereau had said just that in his angry, savage tone—not as if he heard it; and yet he was hearing it of course.
“I’ll choke you yet! You can’t escape! You may think you’ll die a natural death, but you won’t, and that’s why I’m poisoning your food to weaken you. You can’t escape! ”

“ The princess, troubled to think that the one whom she had so much admired might indeed be the great thief whose life her father sought, and yet wavering between duty to her father and loyalty to her ideal, replied: ‘So will I, but upon one condition: should it be that thou art he upon whom thou sayst I looked with favor and yet he who also has committed these great crimes in my father’s kingdom, know that thou mayst take thy pardon and thy gold and depart; but only upon the condition that never more wilt thou trouble either me or my father. ”

“ Justus just entering her car—a simple, home-loving little woman, who would never dream of the treacheries and eccentricities of Idelle; who, if she even guessed what manner of woman she was, would never have anything more to do with her. Why couldn’t he have loved a girl like her—why not? And just beyond, the large quiet house of the Walterses, those profoundly sober people of the very best ways and means, always so kind and helpful, anxious to be sociable, of whom Idelle could think of nothing better to say than “stuffy.” ”

“ The escorted khat looked too enticing. Bismillah! There must be some one who would throw him a leaf on so festal an occasion, surely! By a slow and halting process therefore he came finally before the gate of the residence, into which already the camel had disappeared. Before it was the usual throng of those not so vastly better than himself who had come to rejoice for a purpose, and within, the sound of the tom-tom and voices singing. Over the gate and out of the windows were hung silken carpets and jasmine sprays, for old Bhori was by no means poor in this world’s goods. ”

“ The cruelty—the evil! There is something cruel and evil in it all, in all wealth, all ambition, in love of fame—too cruel. I must get out! I must think no more—see no more.”
And hurrying to the door and down the squeaking stairs, he walked swiftly back to the costly car that was waiting for him a few blocks below the bridge—that car which was so representative of the realm of so-called power and success of which he was now the master—that realm which, for so long, had taken its meaningless lustre from all that had here preceded it—the misery, the loneliness, the shadow, the despair. ”

“ On the roads leading to the few cities of Arabia, and in the cities themselves, it may be seen being borne on the backs of camels to the market-place or the wedding feast—the wet and dripping leaves of the shrub. The poor and the well-to-do at once crave and adore it. They speak of it as ‘the strength of the weak,’ ‘the inspiration of the depressed,’ ‘the dispeller of sorrow and too deep care.’ All who may, buy and chew it, the poor by the anna’s worth, the rich by the rupee. The beggar when he can beg or steal it—even he is happy too. ”

“ But it also chanced that as this cavalcade passed through the streets of Baghdad, Abou, hearing a great tumult and the cries of the multitude and the drivers and the tramp of the horses’ feet and the pad of the camels’, came to the door of his bazaar, his robes of silk about him, a turban of rare cloth knitted with silver threads upon his head. He had now grown to be a youth of eighteen summers. ”

“ Yet one day as he and Abou passed the treasury on their way to the mosque for the look of honor, Yussuf said to Abou: ‘Bethink thee, my son; here is a marvelous building, carefully constructed and guarded. How wouldst thou come to the store of gold within?’ Abou, whose thoughts were not upon the building but upon Yanee, betrayed no look of surprise at the request, so accustomed was he to having difficult and fearsome matters put before him, but gazed upon it so calmly that Yussuf exclaimed: ‘How now? Hast thou a plan?’ ‘Never have I given it a thought, O Yussuf,’ replied Abou ”

“ Their figures side by side were somewhat incongruous—he with his dignity and years and almost military bearing, as so many told him, she with that air of extreme youthfulness and lure which always brought so many of the younger set to her side wherever they happened to be. Only there was the other galling thought: That she did not wholly belong to him and never had. She was too interested in other men, and always had been. Her youth, that wretched past of hers, had been little more than a lurid streak of bad, even evil—yes, evil—conduct. ”

“ Besides on the night of that quarrel with Gil, that night he thought he saw her in Bergley Place and he had sworn that if ever he could prove anything he would take Tickles away from her, or, that he would kill her and Tickles and himself and Raskoffsky (Raskoffsky!) , it was then really that she had realized that she couldn’t do without Tickles—no, not for a time even. Her dream of a happier life would be nothing without him—she knew that. And so it was that she had fought there as she had to make Gil believe he was mistaken, even in the face of the fact that he actually knew he had seen her. ”

“ He paused and gazed speculatively about, holding out his tambour. His audience looked dubiously and curiously at him; who now was this latest teller of wonders, and from whence had he come? An anna was not much, to be sure, and a tale well told—well—yet there had been tellers of such whose tales were as dull as the yawn of a camel.
“An excellent tale, sayst thou?” queried Parfi cautiously. “Then, if it be so marvelous, why not begin? For a handful of anna one may promise anything.” ”

“ Beggar, ne’er-do-well, implorer of charity before the mosque, ex-water-carrier and tobacco seller in Mecca and Medina, from whence he had been driven years before by his extortions and adulterations, he now turned wearily, by no means anxious to rise although it was late. For why rise when you are old and weary and ragged, and life offers at best only a little food and sleep—or not so much food as (best and most loved of all earthly blessings) khat, the poor man’s friend? ”

“ Old Bursay Queeder, farmer and local ne’er-do-well in the agricultural line, had lived on his particular estate or farm for forty years, and at the time that Judge Blow was thus mysteriously proceeding to and fro and here and there upon the earth, did not know that the rocks against which his pair of extra large feet were being regularly and bitterly stubbed contained the very wealth of which he had been idly and rather wistfully dreaming all his life. ”

“ Were not all men weak, after their kind, or greedy or uncharitable? By Allah, they were, and as he had reason to know! Waidi, the water-seller? A thief really, no whit better than himself, if the world but knew. Hussein, the peddler of firewood; Haifa, the tobacco tramp—a wretched and swindling pack, all, not a decent loin- or shoulder-cloth among them, possessed of no better places of abode than his own really, yet all, even as the richest of men, had their khat, could go to their coffee places this night and enjoy it for a few anna. ”

“ And he lacked that stability and worth of temperament which even then she was beginning to sense as needful to her, whether art was present or not. He was handsomer than Byram, a gallant of sorts, active and ebullient, and always he seemed to sense, as might a homing pigeon, the direction in which lay his own best financial opportunities and to be able to wing in that direction. But beyond that, what? He was not brilliant mentally, merely a clever “mixer” and maker of money, and she was a little weary of men who could think only in terms of money. How thin some clever men really were! ”

“ A single trip to Wonderland, a single visit to one of its halls where music sounded to the splash of the waves and where he did his best to teach her to dance, a single meal in one of its gaudy, noisy restaurants, a taste of its whirly pleasures, and a new color and fillip were given to hope, a new and seemingly realizable dream of happiness implanted in her young mind. The world was happier than she had thought, or could be made so; not all people fought and screamed at each other. ”

“ And if thou art the rug-merchant’s son or the great thief, or both, and wishest thy pardon and the bag of dinars which here awaits thee, thou must relate to me how it was the treasury was entered, how the gold was taken from under the gibbet and my father’s camel from its drivers.’ ‘Readily enough, O Princess,’ replied Abou, ‘only if I am thus to reveal myself to thee must I not know first that thou art the maiden whom I saw? For she was kind as she was fair and would do no man an ill. ”

“ It had been, of course, because of the magic of her beauty—how well she knew the magic of that!—plus an understanding and sympathy she had for the miseries Harry had endured in his youth, that had caused him to pursue her with all the pathetic vehemence of a man of fifty. He was not at all like Vivian, who had been shy and retiring. Life had seemed to frighten poor Vivian and drive him in upon himself in an uncomplaining and dignified way. ”

“ At any rate, after having seen that other woman on that deck with Steele, I was offended by this one.
She seemed to me, after the other, too narrow, too methodical, too commonplace, too humdrum. She was a woman whose pulchritudinous favors, whatever they may have been, must have been lost at the altar. In heaven’s name, I thought to myself, how could a man like this come to marry such a woman? He isn’t so very good-looking himself, perhaps, but still.... No wonder he wanted to take his rooming-house landlady for an outing! ”