The Turnstile

by A. E. W. Mason

Mr. Benoliel nodded and shifted in his chair.

"You have also very possibly heard a good many speculations about my origin?"

"A good many," said Cynthia.

"Well, here's the truth. I am a Barbary Jew. I come out of Morocco, the one country where you'll find the East to-day. Already in Tangier, the city given over to the foreigner, you will come across some traces of it. But ride for a few hours out of Tangier, straight to the south, pay your dues and cross the Red Hill, and you'll have both feet planted in the East, and may breathe in some of its enchantment. Go forward for another day or so, and you may pass perhaps some tall Arab, striding through the crowd outside El Ksar, carrying a stick stretched across his shoulder-blades. He'll speak to no one, stop for nothing, and all will make way for him. That's the Imperial Courier, on his way to the coast from Fez. He'll not sleep upon the way, and he'll take no food lest he should sleep. He'll be in Tangier three days after he has left Fez. He's the penny post. Ride on still further, cross the Sebou, travel over a vast plain by a track beaten by the feet of men and animals, yet strangely enough a track which never runs straight, though the plain is bare, but winds and turns, and winds again over the face of the country." Mr. Benoliel's eyes were fixed upon the fire; he spoke, lingering upon his words. He had grown forgetful of the purpose which drove him to reveal himself. Another and a strange aspect of him was presented suddenly to Cynthia. The dilettante and the exquisite had vanished. He spoke with a kind of yearning in his voice. His thoughts had drifted out through the doorway of his abominable villa. He was walking in the starshine over the wide empty plain of the Sebou, steeped in the enchantment of which he had spoken. Dimly she foresaw whither he was leading her.

"Yet a day and you come to a wall of hills. Right ahead of you a cleft opens--that's the pass to Fez--a troublesome place, by the way, for Barbary Jews, since the Z'mur tribe has a way of taking toll in that narrow pass," Benoliel explained with a smile, and seemed to become once more aware of Cynthia's presence.

"But a little further to the right from a break in the sky-line of the wall, a regular broad staircase seems to descend. It becomes a track, it zigzags across the face of the cliff, like a piece of string, to the plain. That's the road to my home," and he suddenly threw back his head and sat alert--"the city of Mequinez--the most eastern of the cities of the East, where the great gateway of mosaic, built by Christian captives, crumbles slowly to ruin, and the Jew must not wear shoes in the street, must walk barefoot with a black gaberdine upon his body, and a black cap upon his head. I ought to resent that, eh, Cynthia?"

He looked at her, and answered the question himself. "But I was born there," and to him the answer was sufficient.

"In Mequinez!" said Cynthia, striving to bridge the distance between this actual house in the green of Warwickshire and that distant city with the great mosaic gate in Barbary. Mr. Benoliel helped her a little to see it.

"Yes, in the Mellah of Mequinez, Cynthia. That's where the Jews are crowded; an evil-smelling place you would call it, close and airless, with narrow alleys and houses huddling together, and a reek of rancid cookery. Yet it's a town of spaces; there's a good square before the gate. There are great silent palaces, with gardens and lakes. There's room in Mequinez--but not for us. We were shut up in the Mellah at six o'clock at night like children. And we were not all poor. The Mellah was gaudy with the bright handkerchiefs and dresses of the women, and their satin and silk scarves. There was a great deal of money in the Mellah of Mequinez, and a great deal more owed to it by its Moorish lords and masters in the city. But that didn't make any difference. Remember you are in the East in Mequinez, and a Moor who owed me a thousand pounds would make me strip off my shoes in the street, if he met me wearing them. A pretty picture of dignity, eh, Cynthia?"

Cynthia did not answer. She was puzzled by Benoliel now, and she did not wish to interrupt him. He sat beside her, neat and trim and scrupulously clothed, with no jewellery but a pearl stud in his shirt-front, and pearl links at his cuffs, a person utterly modern and used to good manners. Yet he spoke of the Mellah in Mequinez not with the air of one recollecting unclean days, now, thank God, altogether done with, but rather with a kind of relish and contentment that such places should be. She had to cast an eye about that flamboyant hall before she could in any way reconcile Mr. Benoliel with his words.