Halil the Pedlar: A Tale of Old Stambul by Mór Jókai (reading an ebook txt) 📕

and the guest observing that these were the very things he had noticed in the room below, exclaimed to Halil Patrona:

"Oh, humane Chorbadshi, you have given me your own carpet and pillow; on what will you sleep, pray?"

"Do not trouble your head about me, muzafir! I will bring forth my second carpet and my second cushion and sleep on them."

Janaki peeped through a chink in the roof, and observed how vigorously Halil Patrona performed his ablutions, and how next he went through his devotions with even greater conscientiousness than his ablutions, whereupon he produced a round trough, turned it upside down, laid it upon the rush-mat, placed his head upon the trough, and folding his arms across his breast, peacefully went to sleep in the Prophet.

The next morning, when Janaki awoke and descended to Halil, he gave him a piece of money which they call a golden denarius.

"Take this piece of money, worthy Chorbadshi," said he, "and if you will permit me to remain beneath your roof this day also, prepare therewith a mid-day meal for us both."

Halil hastened with the money to the piazza, bargained and chaffered for all sorts of eatables, and[Pg 28] made it a matter of conscience to keep only a single copper asper of the money entrusted to him. Then he prepared for his guest pilaf, the celebrated Turkish dish consisting of rice cooked with sheep's flesh, and brought him from the booths of the master-cooks and master-sugar-bakers, honey-cakes, dulchas, pistachios, sweet pepper-cakes filled with nuts and stewed in honey, and all manner of other delicacies, at the sight and smell of which Janaki began to shout that Sultan Achmed could not be better off. Halil, however, requested him not to mention the name of the Sultan quite so frequently and not to bellow so loudly.

That night, also, he made his guest mount to the top of the roof, and having noticed during the preceding night that the Greek had been perpetually shifting his position, and consequently suspecting that he was little used to so hard a couch, Halil took the precaution of stripping off his own kaftan beforehand and placing it beneath the carpet he had already surrendered to his guest.

Early next morning Janaki gave another golden denarius to Halil.

"Fetch me writing materials!" said he, "for I want to write a letter to someone, and then with God's help I will quit your house and pursue my way further."

Halil departed, went a-bargaining in the bazaar,[Pg 29] and returned with what he had been sent for. He calculated his outlay to a penny in the presence of his guest. The kalem (pen) was so much, so much again the mürekob (ink), and the mühür (seal) came to this and that. The balance he returned to Janaki.

As for Janaki he went up on to the roof again, there wrote and sealed his letter, and thrust it beneath the carpet, and then laying hold of his stick again, entreated Halil, with many thanks for his hospitality, to direct him to the Pera road whence, he said, he could find his way along by himself.

Halil willingly complied with the petition of his guest, and accompanied him all the way to the nearest thoroughfare. When now Janaki beheld the Bosphorus, and perceived that the road from this point was familiar to him, so that he needed no further assistance, he suddenly exclaimed:

"Look now, my friend! an idea has occurred to me. The letter I have just written on your roof has escaped my memory entirely. I placed it beneath the carpet, and beside it lies a purse of money which I meant to have sent along with the letter. Now, however, I cannot turn back for it. I pray you, therefore, go back to your house, take this letter together with the purse, and hand them both over to the person to whom they are addressed—and God bless you for it!"[Pg 30]

Halil at once turned round to obey this fresh request as quickly as possible.

"Give also the money to him to whom it belongs!" said the Greek.

"You may be as certain that it will reach him as if you gave it to him yourself."

"And promise me that you will compel him to whom the letter is addressed to accept the money."

"I will not leave his house till he has given me a voucher in writing for it, and whenever you come back again to me here you will find it in my possession."

"God be with you then, honest Mussulman!"

"Salem alek!"

Halil straightway ran home, clambered up to the roof by means of the rope-ladder, found both the letter and the money under the carpet, rejoiced greatly that they had not been stolen during his absence, and thrusting them both into his satchel of reeds without even taking the trouble to look at them, hastened off to the bazaar with them, where there was an acquaintance of his, a certain money-changer, who knew all about every man in Stambul, in order that he might find out from him where dwelt the man to whom the letter entrusted to him by the stranger was addressed.

Accordingly he handed the letter to the money-[Pg 31]changer in order that he might give him full directions without so much as casting an eye upon the address himself.

The money-changer examined the address of the letter, and forthwith was filled with amazement.

"Halil Patrona!" cried he, "have you been taking part in the Carnival of the Giaours that you have allowed yourself to be so befooled? Or can't you read?"

"Read! of course I can. But I don't fancy I can know the man to whom this letter is directed."

"Well, all I can say is that you knew him very well indeed this time yesterday, for the man is yourself—none other."

Halil, full of astonishment, took the letter, which hitherto he had not regarded—sure enough it was addressed to himself.

"Then he who gave me this letter must needs be a madman, and there is a purse which I have to hand over along with it."

"Yes, I see that your name is written on that also."

"But I have nothing to do with either the purse or the letter. Of a truth the man who confided them to me must have been a lunatic."

"It will be best if you break open the letter and read it, then you will know what you have got to do with it."[Pg 32]

This was true enough. The best way for a man to find out what he has to do with a letter addressed to him is, certainly, to open and read it.

And this is what was written in the letter.

"Worthy Halil Patrona!

"I told you that I was a poor man, but that was not true; on the contrary, I am pretty well to do, thank God! Nor do I wander up and down on the face of the earth in search of herds of cattle stolen from me, but for the sake of my only daughter, who is dearer to me than all my treasures, and now also I am in pursuit of her, following clue after clue, in order that I may discover her whereabouts and, if possible, ransom her. You have been my benefactor. You fought the drunken Janissary for my sake, you shared your dwelling with me, you made me lie on your own bed while you slept on the bare ground, you even took off your kaftan to make my couch the softer. Accept, therefore, as a token of my gratitude, the slender purse accompanying this letter. It contains five thousand piastres, so that if ever I visit you again I may find you in better circumstances. God help you in all things!

"Your grateful servant,

"Janaki."

"Now, didn't I say he was mad?" exclaimed Halil,[Pg 33] after reading through the letter. "Who else, I should like to know, would have given me five thousand piastres for three red onions?"

Meanwhile, attracted by the noise of the conversation, a crowd of the acquaintances of Halil Patrona and the money-changer had gathered around them, and they laid their heads together and discussed among themselves for a long time the question which was the greater fool of the two—Janaki, who had given five thousand piastres for three onions, or Halil who did not want to accept the money.

Yet Halil it was who turned out to be the biggest fool, for he immediately set out in search of the man who had given him this sum of money. But search and search as he might he could find no trace of him. If he had gone in search of someone who had stolen a like amount, he would have been able to find him very much sooner.

In the course of his wanderings, he suddenly came upon the place where three days previously he had had his tussle with Halil Pelivan. He recognised the spot at once. A small dab of blood, the remains of what had flowed from the giant's head, was still there in the middle of the lane, and on the wall of the house opposite both their names were written. In all probability the Janissary, when he picked himself up again, had dipped his finger in his own blood, and[Pg 34] then scrawled the names upon the wall in order to perpetuate the memory of the incident. He had also taken good care to put Halil Pelivan uppermost and Halil Patrona undermost.

"Nay, but that is not right," said Halil to himself; "it was you who were undermost," and snatching up the fragment of a red tile he wrote his name above that of Halil Pelivan.

He hurried and scurried about till late in the evening without discovering a single trace of Janaki, and by that time his head was so confused by all manner of cogitations that when, towards nightfall, he began chaffering for fish in the Etmeidan market, he would not have been a bit surprised if he had been told that every single carp cost a thousand piastres.

He began to perceive, however, that he would have to keep the money after all, and the very thought of it kept him awake all night long.

Next day he again strolled about the bazaars, and then directed his steps once more towards that house where he had chalked up his name the day before. And lo! the name of Pelivan was again stuck at the top of his own.

"This must be put a stop to once for all," murmured Halil, and beckoning to a load-carrier he mounted on to his shoulders and wrote his name high up, just beneath the eaves of the house on a spot where[Pg 35] Pelivan's name could not top his own again, from whence it is manifest that there was a certain secret instinct in Halil Patrona which would not permit him to take the lower place or suffer him to recognise anybody as standing higher than himself. And as he, pursuing his way home, passed by the Tsiragan Palace, and there encountered riding past him the Padishah, Sultan Achmed III., accompanied by the Grand Vizier, Ibrahim Damad, the Kiaja Beg, the Kapudan Pasha, and the chief Imam, Ispirizade; and as he humbly bowed his head in the dust before them, it seemed to him as if something at the bottom of his heart whispered to him: "The time will come when the whole lot of you will bow your heads before me in the dust just as I, Halil Patrona, the pedlar, do obeisance to you now, ye lords of the Empire and the Universe!"

Fortunately for Halil Patrona, however, he did not raise his face while the suite of the Lords of the Universe swept past him, for otherwise it might have happened that Halil Pelivan, who went before the Sultan with a drawn broadsword, might have recognised him, and certainly nobody would have taken particular trouble to inquire why the Janissary had split in two the head of this or that pedlar who happened to come in his way.[Pg 36]

CHAPTER II. GÜL-BEJÁZE—THE WHITE ROSE.

The booth of Halil Patrona, the pedlar, stood in the bazaar. He sold tobacco, chibooks, and pipe-stems, but his business was not particularly lucrative. He did not keep opium, although that was beginning to be one of the principal articles of luxury in the Turkish Empire. From the very look of him one could see that he did not sell the drug. For Halil had determined that he would never have any of this soul-benumbing stuff in his shop, and whenever Halil made any resolution he generally kept it. Oftentimes, sitting in the circle of his neighbours, he would fall to discoursing