“Que Dios remate tu nombre,” exclaimed the Mulatto; “may Allah blot out your name, Joanna, and may he likewise blot out that of your maid Johar. It is more than fifteen minutes that I have been seated here, after having poured out into the tinaja the water which I brought from the fountain, and during all that time I have waited in vain for one single word of civility from yourself or from Johar. Usted no tiene modo, you have no manner with you, nor more has Johar. This is the only house in Tangier where I am not received with fitting love and respect, and yet I have done more for you than for any other person. Have I not filled your tinaja with water when other people have gone without a drop? When even the consul and the interpreter of the consul had no water to slake their thirst, have you not had enough to wash your wustuddur? And what is my return? When I arrive in the heat of the day, I have not one kind word spoken to me, nor so much as a glass of makhiah offered to me; must I tell you all that I do for you, Joanna? Truly I must, for you have no manner with you. Do I not come every morning just at the third hour; and do I not knock at your door; and do you not arise and let me in, and then do I not knead your bread in your presence, whilst you lie in bed, and because I knead it, is not yours the best bread in Tangier? For am I not the strongest man in Tangier, and the most noble also?” Here he brandished his barrel over his head, and his face looked almost demoniacal. “Hear me, Joanna,” he continued, “you know that I am the strongest man in Tangier, and I tell you again, for the thousandth time, that I am the most noble. Who are the consuls? Who is the Pasha? They are pashas and consuls now, but who were their fathers? I know not, nor do they. But do I not know who my fathers were? Were they not Moors of Garnata (Granada), and is it not on that account that I am the strongest man in Tangier? Yes, I am of the old Moors of Garnata, and my family has lived here, as is well known, since Garnata was lost to the Nazarenes, and now I am the only one of my family of the blood of the old Moors in all this land, and on that account I am of nobler blood than the sultan, for the sultan is not of the blood of the Moors of Garnata. Do you laugh, Joanna? Does your maid Johar laugh? Am I not Hammin Widdir, el hombre mas valido de Tanger? And is it not true that I am of the blood of the Moors of Garnata? Deny it, and I will kill you both, you and your maid Johar.”
“You have been eating hashish and majoon, Hammin,” said Joanna Correa, “and the Shaitan has entered into you, as he but too frequently does. I have been busy, and so has Johar, or we should have spoken to you before; however, mai doorshee (it does not signify), I know how to pacify you now and at all times, will you take some gin-bitters, or a glass of common makhiah?”
“May you burst, O Joanna,” said the Mulatto, “and may Johar also burst; I mean, may you both live many years, and know neither pain nor sorrow. I will take the gin-bitters, O Joanna, because they are stronger than the makhiah, which always appears to me like water; and I like not water, though I carry it. Many thanks to you, Joanna, here is health to you, Joanna, and to this good company.”
She had handed him a large tumbler filled to the brim; he put it to his nostrils, snuffed in the flavour, and then applying it to his mouth, removed it not whilst one drop of the fluid remained. His features gradually relaxed from their former angry expression, and looking particularly amiable at Joanna, he at last said:
“I hope that within a little time, O Joanna, you will be persuaded that I am the strongest man in Tangier, and that I am sprung from the blood of the Moors of Garnata, as then you will no longer refuse to take me for a husband, you and your maid Johar, and to become Moors. What a glory to you, after having been married to a Genoui, and given birth to Genouillos, to receive for a husband a Moor like me, and to bear him children of the blood of Garnata. What a glory too for Johar, how much better than to marry a vile Jew, even like Hayim Ben Atar, or your cook Sabia, both of whom I could strangle with two fingers, for am I not Hammin Widdir Moro de Garnata, el hombre mas valido be Tanger?” He then shouldered his barrel and departed.
“Is that Mulatto really what he pretends to be?” said I to Joanna; “is he a descendant of the Moors of Granada?”
“He always talks about the Moors of Granada when he is mad with majoon or aguardiente,” interrupted, in bad French, the old man whom I have before described, and in the same croaking voice which I had heard chanting in the morning. “Nevertheless it may be true, and if he had not heard something of the kind from his parents, he would never have imagined such a thing, for he is too stupid. As I said before, it is by no means impossible: many of the families of Granada settled down here when their town was taken by the Christians, but the greater part went to Tunis. When I was there, I lodged in the house of a Moor who called himself Zegri, and was always talking of Granada and the things which his forefathers had done there. He would moreover sit for hours singing romances of which I understood not one word, praised be the mother of God, but which he said all related to his family; there were hundreds of that name in Tunis, therefore why should not this Hammin, this drunken water-carrier, be a Moor of Granada also? He is ugly enough to be emperor of all the Moors. O the accursed canaille, I have lived amongst them for my sins these eight years, at Oran and here. Monsieur, do you not consider it to be a hard case for an old man like myself, who am a Christian, to live amongst a race who know not God, nor Christ, nor anything holy?”
“What do you mean,” said I, “by asserting that the Moors know not God? There is no people in the world who entertain sublimer notions of the uncreated eternal God than the Moors, and no people have ever shown themselves more zealous for his honour and glory; their very zeal for the glory of God has been and is the chief obstacle to their becoming Christians. They are afraid of compromising his dignity by supposing that he ever condescended to become man. And with respect to Christ, their ideas even of him are much more just than those of the Papists, they say he is a mighty prophet, whilst, according to the others, he is either a piece of bread or a helpless infant. In many points of religion the Moors are wrong, dreadfully wrong, but are the Papists less so? And one of their practices sets them immeasurably below the Moors in the eyes of any unprejudiced person: they bow down to idols, Christian idols if you like, but idols still, things graven of wood and stone and brass, and from these things, which can neither hear, nor speak, nor feel, they ask and expect to obtain favours.”
“Vive la France, Vive la Guadeloupe,” said the black, with a good French accent. “In France and in Guadeloupe there is no superstition, and they pay as much regard to the Bible as to the Koran; I am now learning to read in order that I may understand the writings of Voltaire, who, as I am told, has proved that both the one and the other were written with the sole intention of deceiving mankind. O vive la France! where will you find such an enlightened country as France; and where will you find such a plentiful country as France? Only one in the world, and that is Guadeloupe. Is it not so, Monsieur Pascual? Were you ever at Marseilles? Ah quel bon pays est celui-la pour les vivres, pour les petits poulets, pour les poulardes, pour les perdrix, pour les perdreaux, pour les alouettes, pour les becasses, pour les becassines, enfin, pour tout.”
“Pray, sir, are you a cook?” demanded I.