In the Tail of the Peacock

by Isabel Savory

I called to Miss Z—— as I led Tahara into the courtyard. Her answering voice was all I would have prayed for at that moment. She was just starting with S`lam. Leading Tahara to the door, we found him on the threshold, with his old mother, whom he must have gone first to fetch—Maman, whom R. and I had ever distrusted: feeling that she was after no good the first time she came to the house, we had limited her visits.

I told S`lam to stay outside. He did not seem astonished at seeing his wife and myself, asking not a single question of either. Miss Z—— took Tahara upstairs into her bedroom, and I followed, explaining that Tahara did not want any one else to come in. For a moment or two, after we got her up into the room, all her old terror seemed to return; she was unable to speak, and collapsed upon the floor—a ghastly colour. Briefly explaining to Miss Z—— that Tahara believed herself to be poisoned, we knelt down on the floor and examined her. There were no apparent symptoms of poisoning—none; she was only cold and terrified beyond words. Miss Z—— did her best to calm her, and laughed away her fears, hoping to get rid of the state of panic which her condition suggested more than any poisoning.

The next thing to be done was to persuade Tahara to explain matters to Miss Z——. This might have been easy enough at Jinan Dolero with S`lam out of the way; but here, feeling that he and Maman were under the very windows, her terror was abject, and I almost gave up hope of getting a syllable out of her.

We shut every window, we shut the door, we pulled down the blinds, to satisfy her; we even stopped up the ventilation-holes; and then she still hesitated and trembled.

At last, crouched on the floor, Miss Z—— kneeling by her, Tahara, with her mouth at Miss Z——'s ear, murmured her tale in Arabic, while I wished I could understand. S`lam had given her poison. People in the city had spoken against her and said evil things about her. S`lam was jealous. He had been very angry. They had quarrelled, and he had poisoned her. But he must never, never, on any account, know that she had been to the tabiba's to tell the tale. If S`lam suspected that Tahara knew he had tried to poison her, and had told us of it—well, her life was not worth a flus. Even I knew that. Then in a fresh agony of terror she crouched on the floor. I told her to show Miss Z—— the bottle. Now to part with the bottle, or to run the faintest risk of S`lam's seeing it, was evidently a nightmare to the poor girl. If he ever found out that she had taken it and brought it to Miss Z—— . . .

We wasted many precious moments in trying to persuade Tahara to take it out of her belt, where it lay concealed, and show it to Miss Z——. She looked at the curtains, at the door. Could S`lam possibly see? At last, more or less by force, I got possession of it, handed it to Miss Z—— with one hand, and kept Tahara still on the floor with the other.

The stopper of the bottle, Miss Z—— thought, had a suspicious smell, but she gave it as her verdict that the bottle itself contained nothing but water. She recognized it at once as having belonged to S`lam's late master, who always kept drugs in his house, and the name of whose English chemist was on the label.

Miss Z—— poured a teaspoonful into a tumbler, and returned the bottle to Tahara, who was getting rabid at the delay. The teaspoonful we decided should be given to one of Miss Z——'s little chickens which she was rearing. I said I would come in the morning and hear her report.

Meanwhile, Tahara had refolded and hidden the precious bottle as it was before, and Miss Z—— had managed more or less to reassure her, promising her that she was not poisoned this time, and laughing at her panic. The pain of which she had complained had no doubt a natural cause: giddiness might come on through bending over the charcoal fire cooking dinner, Miss Z—— told her. Now Tahara's only terror was that S`lam should ever find out what had happened. The bottle must be taken home—must be replaced exactly where it had been found.

Unsatisfactory as such a course was, there was some risk in pursuing any other. S`lam, if he found out that his wife had betrayed him or had suspected him and come to us, might shoot her like a dog, in a passion, and be inside the borders of the Riff in a few hours. And who would blame him, if he gave as his reason for his whole line of conduct that his wife had been unfaithful to him, false though such a statement might be?