AMMALÁT BEK.
A TRUE TALE OF THE CAUCASUS. FROM THE RUSSIAN OF MARLÍNSKI.
CHAPTER X.
"Will you hold your tongue, little serpent?" said an old Tartar woman to her grandson, who, having awakened before daylight, was crying for want of something better to do. "Be quiet, or I will kick you into the street."
This old woman was Ammalát's nurse: the hut in which she lived stood close to the tents of the Begs, and had been given to her by her foster-son, Ammalát. It was composed of two clean whitewashed rooms, the floor of both was strewed with coarse mats, (ghasil;) in niches close to each other, for the room was without windows, stood boxes bound with iron, and on them were arranged a feather-bed, blankets, and all the utensils. On the cornices, at half the height of the wall, were ranged porcelain cups for pillau, having tin covers in the form of helmets, and little plates hanging side by side on wires: the holes with which they were pierced showing that they served not for use, but for ornament. The face of the old woman was covered with wrinkles, and expressed a sort of malicious sorrow: the usual consequence of the lonely pleasureless life of a Mussulman woman. As a worthy representative of persons of her age and country, she never for a moment ceased scolding her grandson from under her blanket, and to grumble to herself. "Kess," (be quiet,) she cried at length, yet more angrily, "or I will give you to the ghaóuls, (devils!) Do you hear how they are scratching at the roof, and knocking at the door for you?"
It was a stormy night; a thick rain pattering on the flat roof which served as a ceiling, and the roaring of the wind in the chimney, answered to her hoarse voice. The boy became quiet, and straining his eyes, hearkened in a fright. It really seemed as if some one was knocking at the door. The old woman became frightened in her turn: her inseparable companion, a dirty dog, lifted up his head from sleep, and began to bark in a most pitiful voice. But meanwhile the knocking at the door became louder, and an unknown voice cried sternly from without, "Atch kapini, akhirin akhirici!" (open the door for the end of ends.) The old woman turned pale. "Allah bismallah!" she exclaimed, now addressing heaven, then threatening the dog, and then quieting the crying child. "Sh, accursed beast! Hold your tongue, I say, kharamzáda, (good-for-nothing son of shame!) Who is there? What honest man will enter, when it is neither day nor dawn, into the house of a poor old woman? If you are Shaitán, go to neighbour Kitchkína. It has been long time to show her the road to hell! If you are a tchaóuth, (tax-gatherer,) who, to say the truth, is rather worse than Shaitán, then go about your business. My son-in-law is not at home; he serves as nóuker at Ammalát Bek's; and the Bek has long ago freed me from taxes; and as for treating idle travellers, don't expect from me even an egg, much less a duck. Is it in vain, then, that I suckled Ammalát?"
"Will you open, you devil's distaff?" impatiently exclaimed the voice, "or I will not leave you a plank of this door for your coffin."
The feeble doors shook on their hinges.