A trembling fell on mountain and on plain,
The earth, unstable as a juggler's ball,
Became a rolling sphere. The dust rose up
High to the collar of heaven. The clarion of the wind
Roused shock on shock, and from the valley's streams
The fish, out-cast, lay gasping. Lightning flash
On lightning flash split the wide sky; the sinking rocks,
Disjointed, filled with water, and the hills,
Clasping each other, squeezed themselves to death.
--Nizami.
Khodadâd Khan, Tarkhân, sate at the head of his supper cloth, with the dazed look of one who has taken drugs in his eyes. And in truth he had drugged himself body and soul to the uttermost. He had passed from one pleasure to another, and all the while he had raged inwardly at the necessity for seeking yet further forgetfulness; since after all what had he to forget? Only the shock of seeing deformity; for the rest was dead as the past years which had contained it. And yet he could not forget! Even as he had come hither to this last stimulant to jaded appetite--an al fresco entertainment out in the desert stretches beyond the city, where all the wallowing wickedness of humanity would show up the more alluringly vicious against that pure background of solitude and silence--even then he had shrunk back as from a snake before a glimpse that had come to him in the bazaar of a dead face. It could not be the same girl from whom he had turned horror-struck that morning, for his practised eye noted in a second all those graceful contours of budding womanhood, which showed above the shallow coffin. Besides, why should she die? He had barely kissed her, and--he laughed cynically, as the thought came to him--where was the woman who objected to a kiss, who was the worse for it? Were they not made for it?
He flung his arm round Yasmeena who lolled on the cushions beside him and kissed the heart-shaped curve of skin which her swelling, filmy bodice left exposed below her dimpled chin. She slapped him lightly on the cheek and the company laughed at his frown.
"None can escape
Wounds in the Red Rose garden where no Rose
But arms with thorns her Beauty"
quoted one of the guests. "My lord is over hasty. Our stomachs are not yet satisfied, though by the twelve Imâms, this saffron pillau of tender chicken filters fast to my vitals." He leered at Siyah Yamin, who threw up her dainty little head disdainfully.
"Keep thy spiced sentiment to thyself, fool," she replied archly, "I desire no forced feeling of fowl."
The laugh at her retort ran round boisterously, and even Khodadâd joined in it. But it was a mirthless laugh. Still as the hours went on the fun waxed fast and furious, and the stars above must have been glad of the widespread square canopy of tent which hid some of the doings of man from High Heaven. It was well on into the night ere the first guest, excusing himself, jingled in his palanquin back cityward. So, by ones and twos, the party dispersed until Khodadâd was left alone looking contemptuously down at Mirza Ibrahîm, whose senses had deserted him in the long orgie, and who lay helpless amid wine cups, torn shreds of muslin, and all the indescribable beastliness of uncontrolled amusement.
"Take the fool home, slaves," said the Tarkhân thickly, "And bring a bed here. I stop; the night air will cool my brain."
So in the midst of all the refuse of vicious humanity, they set a dirty string bed, and covered it with satin quilts. As he lay on it he formed fit matching to its hidden squalor.