Chapter 3

Black Lust

The sun was setting in splendour behind the crest of the hills. There was a moment of pale, fleeting twilight, then a sort of fluttering shudder, the death agony of the expiring day, and in an instant all was dark. The sombre heavens, which had assumed an almost greenish hue, were studded with stars, among which rode the circle of the full-orbed moon.

The flat terrace roofs on the tops of the houses grew populous with moving shadows. Then presently the voice of the Meuzzin was heard melodiously calling the Faithful to evening prayer, while the bells of the Mission Church rang out the Angelus. Instantly the streets were thronged with a hurrying multitude making for the Mosque; the great doors swallowed the crowd of True Believers, and once more the streets fell silent and lonely. A crowd of vultures come flying over the city. Every night they arrived without fail, crossing the Blue Nile from the Island of Tuti and descending on Khartoum. Their bald necks craned eagerly forward, and their hooked beaks rattled against the bones of the carrion they fed on. Nothing came amiss to these birds of prey; greedily they turned over the heaps of offal and garbage in the roadways and battened their fill. Passers-by were few and far between, and paid little heed. In fact their voracity made them excellent scavengers, and rather than interrupt their horrible banquet, every good Mussulman made a point of stepping out of their way.

Grace sat on the housetop, her arms resting on the parapet, gazing out into space. She felt weary and full of self-pity. In her Uncle's house, in this far-off land of Africa, she had found a mere copy of common-place European society in full swing, with all its faults and defects unaltered,-a sham sociability and an artificial, self-interested hospitality. Society was made up of consuls and merchants,-and their wives, most of whom had been highly educated in fashionable schools. Identically the same conventional ideas prevailed,-what was the proper thing to do and not to do, and identically the same petty preoccupations as in London or Paris, the same entertainments, with their vapid phrases and studied attitudes. These things, together with rivalries of dress; bitter-sweet compliments and feline amenities; spite masquerading as good-nature and envy as ardent admiration, filled up the days. Snobbery, more or less modified and mitigated, was the dominant key-note.

For instance, there was Mrs. Watson, the rich American trader's wife, who wore diamonds in her mouth!-yes! real, actual diamonds. Indeed she was for ever laughing without rhyme or reason merely in order to display them, as women do who have pretty teeth. She come from the South of the States, as the smallness of her hands and feet testified. The excessive use of candies and other sugary sweetmeats had ruined her teeth. The gaps were stopped with gold, gold everywhere, in which she had had diamonds set,-three solitaire stones, a big one in the middle and two smaller ones as pendants on either side! And a more hideous sight could hardly be seen than as displayed by a pretty woman thus smiling her yellow smile, shot with the iridescent flash of the gems her mouth was paved with!

Then there were others. The Austrian Consul's wife could think of nothing else in the world but her husband's indigestions. The poor man's diet was limited to different kinds of soups, and she was forever in eager and anxious search for new recipes. The Greeks talked Music, and nothing else in all the wide world! As for the native ladies, they knew no language but their own. Grace learned Arabic for the sake of being able to converse with them, but found them utterly devoid of ideas. Moreover she was always uncomfortable in their vicinity, on account of the heavy perfumes with which they saturated their hair and indeed the whole of their persons.

The men were more extraordinary still. The Sudanese were invariably grave, solemn, and taciturn; while the consuls on the other hand were by way of setting up for wits. Watson was a mere uneducated boor, without a thought beyond money and figures; his sole and only concern was with the current price of cotton! Garilopoulos, the Greek merchant, affected the most ludicrous airs of an Adonis bent on conquest. The only man of them all who was really at all agreeable was Dufour, a Parisian banished to the Sudan in the interest of a Marseilles house of business. He was bright and amusing, and Grace was glad of his company. There was certainly nothing whatever here to make her realize any change from the old commonplace Europe she had left behind.

On the other hand the negroes exercised and interested her greatly, causing her to feel attraction and repugnance at one and the same time. A curiosity, which she fully realized to be morbid, kept urging her to spy upon their life and habits. She knew enough colloquial Arabic by this time to talk to the servants without difficulty. Sometimes she would pry into every household detail, while at others she would get in a sudden panic and for whole days together avoid all intercourse with her black dependents. Somehow she could not get to like them, they were such mere animals. Sensual gratifications were the sole and only object of their ambition. Even their Religion aimed merely at the ultimate attainment of Mahomet's Paradise of purely physical delights. All their cupidity, their simple-minded worship of wealth and power, were directed simply towards the satisfaction of the cravings of the belly. At the same time their calm, deliberate cruelty revolted her; and she could make nothing of the passive resignation of the women, their timid, cringing humility before man, the undisputed lord and master of their lives.

A sudden clamour without made her start, and leaning over the parapet, she looked down into the street. A tall Nubian, clad in Rowing white robes, had just knocked a woman down. He had then lifted up her petticoats, and was now engaged in thrashing her on the buttocks with a huge kourbash, a heavy thong of hippopotamus hide. The victim was howling and praying for mercy. When the policeman had methodically completed her dozen lashes, he gave her a sound kiuk, and the woman, suddenly sobered, got to her feet, and crying and groaning, made off with all possible speed. Grace knew the poor old woman by sight. She had had two sons killed in the war against the Malidi, while serving in the Khedive's army, and had for years been a widow. The moment she had succeeded in amassing by dint of importunity,-her trade was begging,-a few small coins than she was off to drink: "marissa," the date wine of the country, and was soon reeling about the streets quite drunk. She would hurl imprecations at every passerby, until a police officer came across her and promptly administered the regulation dozen. Then she would make tracks for home, screaming and crying all the way and rubbing her poor backside.

Grace watched the scene with mingled feelings of pity and amusement, and could not help recalling a somewhat similar sight she had witnessed one Sunday in London,-likewise during the hours of divine service. On that occasion also a drunken woman had come into contact with the police. A tiny, emaciated creature, weakened by poor living, she was horribly and abominably intoxicated. Some of the neighbouring goodwives, standing at their house doors, had dared to laugh at her. The woman replied by a torrent of abuse, standing tottering on her feet and storming. Her balance was uncertain, but her tongue went nineteen to the dozen, and a fine flow of choice Billingsgate poured from her lips. The neighbours only laughed the louder. Suddenly a policeman, a huge, solidly built fellow, with a phlegmatic air, appeared round the corner of the street, his hands behind his back, and approached with a slow and steady tread that never quickened in the least.

"Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" he said to the drunken woman. "Co along home with you! That's the best thing you can do."

"Yes, sir! certainly, sir! You're quite right, sir, quite right ... Now I'll tell you all about it....."

But her sentence was never finished. His hands still behind his back, the colossus, with one shove of his big stomach, had sent her staggering ten yards down the street. Knocked silly for a moment, she soon recovered her footing and began again:

"Please, sir! you must know, sir!. . . " Corporation well to the front, the man overtook her again. She stumbled, recovered her balance, tried once more to have her say, but was a second time cut short by the big-bellied policeman with a repetition of the ames manoeuvre. And so it went on, till the woman had turned the angle of the street, and was out of sight and beyond reach of the voices of her sarcastic neighbours. Then, right about face, and the good-natured constable left the poor woman, in spite of all her protests and objurgations, to make the best of her way home. The absurd recollection made Grace laugh. What a wide difference between the two cities!. . . Oh! for the chivalrous respect strong, manly men owe to women's weakness!

Meantime Uncle Dick had appeared on the terrace. He sank down on a heap of cushions, and crossed his legs a la Turque. A servant brought him his nargileh, stuffed it full of latakieh, the black tobacco of Smyrna, and finally laid on top of the bowl a lighted pastille of scented charcoal.

Kneeling down and puffing out his cheeks, the man blew hard to get the pipe well alight. Uncle Dick breathed in the fragrant smoke with a smile if placid content. All the same he had news to tell, and presently removing the flexible tube from his lips, he announced:

"He arrives to-morrow."

"Who?" inquired Grace. "Gordon?"

"Gordon be hanged! Everybody knows,-and you know quite well yourself,-he is not even expected till next week. And he would be doing just as well not to come at all!"

"Why?"

"Because he is coming alone."

"But you said he was as good as an army in himself. His prestige..."

"Yes! yes! his prestige! ... Only the Malidi's eclipses it now! The pacificator of the Sudan, as they call Gordon, reckons on the gratitude of those he benefited in former days, and no doubt their numbers would constitute an army. But if he relies seriously on any help from them, how little he understands the Arab, and still less the negro, character ... For advantages to come they are ready enough to devote themselves, as good Apostles should but for advantages received already..., never! never!"

"Still all this does not tell me who is arriving to-morrow."

"You can't guess?"

"I'm afraid to!"

"Well! for my part, I can make nothing of your fears! Now come ... honor bright ... is there any way of arranging these little difficulties?"

Seeing she did not answer, he went on:

"I tell you again, I know nothing whatever about the nature of your disagreement. James has been just as discreet as you. At the same time I have my shrewd suspicions as to what it may have been ... and when I spoke to you on the subject on board the dahabieh as we were coming up the Nile, you said nothing ... So then my conjectures are right. But in that case, why so desperately obstinate? You love him still, now don't you? As for him, he worships the very ground..."

"Enough, Uncle, enough! Please stop! ... If I imagined for one instant you had asked him to come, I should start home this very night."

"My dear girl, how silly you are! Do you think you can leave Sudan just as if you were walking out of one room into another? And you're not over complimentary to me, either. I assure you, I never asked him to come. Besides, he is full of delicacy, is Elphin. He writes me, he is coming to pay us his respects, if this is agreeable to you; but if not, he will keep away altogether and entirely. He says moreover he is going to live at the Palace, where Gordon has had sleeping quarters prepared for him ... Now what answer am I to give him?"

"Do as you think best, Uncle."

"What an answer for a girl to give! Say yes or no!. . . Would it wound you to see him and talk to him?"

"Very well! let him come."

"Is there any hope for him? Time, you know..."

"Never! I will never marry him..."

All her apathy was gone, as with quivering nostrils and trembling lips, her graceful head thrown proudly back, she stood there, a picture of determination.

Uncle Dick was more amused than convinced, and indulged in a rather sceptical smile. He waved the flexible stem of his nargileh and muttered between his teeth:

"Good! good! the fine fellow has only to plead his own cause to gain the day. The moment she is ready to give him a fair hearing, the battle's more than half won."

But at this instant loud cries made themselves heard, a series of appalling screams coming from the compounds at the end of the garden. Uncle Dick signaled to the man who stood behind him using an enormous palm-leaf as a fan to keep the flies away. After a while the cries ceased and they heard loud laughing instead, the wild, noisy, bestial laugh of negroes scrimmaging amongst themselves. The servant now returned, pushing before him a gigantic negress and a little, thin, lank, long-legged Copt lad, a wee, puny, olive-skinned creature of eight. The child was crying bitterly, with half-stifled, frightened sobs, his whole small body trembling violently, as he lifted a pair of soft eyes full of terror to the negress's face. The woman, an enormous Dinka, with the muscular limbs of an athlete, stood stiff and motionless in contemptuous silence. Her great eyes, two balls of jet, sparkled in her pale face, while her white teeth flashed between her thick lips.

The native servant explained what had happened. Instead of yielding to love, like ordinary women, it appeared she preferred to impose it on others. She appropriated whatever man pleased her imagine, roughly repulsing all who tried to have their will of her. Not one of her lovers but had had to complain of her violence, brutality forming an essential part of lovemaking in her eyes. In her hands the roughest and coarsest fellows became supple and submissive instruments of her pleasure, which were never complete till she saw the blood flowing. Some days ago she had cast sheep's eyes on the wretched little Copt lad, whose virginity she coveted. She had begun by fondling and making much of the lad, till he never willingly left her side. This evening she had determined to make her final assault. It was rape, nothing more nor less. The instant she laid hands on the boy she set to work to effect her purpose roughly and brutally. The little fellow, terrified to death, dared not do a single thing to defend himself, but lay passive, and dumb with surprise and horror. Soon however the fury began to bite and scratch and tear his tender flesh like some beast of prey. This set him howling, in spite of her having thrust a gag of two into his mouth. Without paying the least heed to the negroes who had run up at the lad's screams, she went steadily on with her work, in which lust and cruelty played about equal parts. The strange thing was that in all this crowd of men and women, not a soul ever dreamt of interfering; they found the spectacle a great deal too diverting for that, and laughed till their sides ached. After all, the lad had reached the age of puberty, and what did it matter whether he was initiated into the mysteries by Aisha, or went out and turned up some little girl of his own age? Later on he would take full revenge, never fear, for having been roughly handled himself the first time,-there could be no doubt about that!

Uncle Dick shrugged his broad shoulders, while Grace, trembling with pity, wiped the poor little chap's eyes, casting looks of anything but affection at the tall Negress. The latter looked at her in turn, a flash of hate beaming in her eyes and setting her thick lips quivering. Meantime Uncle Dick gave sentence; the negress was to be ironed, and on the morrow, before the assembled servants, to receive her twenty strokes of the kourbash. The savage looking Dinka's stature seemed actually to increase, as scornful and contemptuous, she enveloped in one comprehensive glance of hatred the detested Christians who witnessed her degradation. Just before stepping from the terrace, she turned round once more and seemed to dart a silent curse of special malignity on Grace's unoffending head.

"Bah! that's how they all are!" exclaimed her Uncle, "beasts I call them rather than human beings. Simply a huge mistake, thinking of giving them their freedom!"

Grace was still agitated and trembling, when visitors were announced. First of all, came Anser, the Austrian consul, and his wife. The latter was beaming. Cutting short the ordinary greetings of politeness, she dashed into an explanation of her state of delight. She had been given a recipe for a new soup, she said, and her husband's digestion was saved! There was no end to the details and all the precautions to be taken to ensure success. On Mrs. Watson's appearing presently on the terrace, accompanied by her husband, she was for beginning the whole story over again. But the lady of the diamonds talked her down, interrupting her again and again, till all the ingredients got hopelessly mixed up together. Next Carilopoulos, the young Greek merchant, arrived. He was a nightly visitor, and insisted on recounting in detail all his commercial operations, and giving all the particulars of every bargain that had turned out to his advantage. All the while he would be casting fond, languorous looks from his dark, velvety eyes at poor Grace, displaying an eagerness to oblige her and a degree of obsequiousness that made her fingers itch to box his ears. On this lofty terrace, beneath the deep, star-spangled sky of the East, it was all a mere repetition of a common-place, tiresome European evening party!

Presently the men began to speak of Gordon and the Malidi.

"What do you think about it?" inquired Uncle Dick of the company generally.

"What do you?" retorted the consul. "I am too anxious to know your opinion to trouble you with mine. For there is no one so capable as you of forming a sound judgment about things in the Sudan."

"For my own part," Garilopoulos interrupted in his headlong way, "I firmly believe the black fellows will be in only too great a hurry to make what amends they can. The instant they are assured Gordon is at Khartoum, all these valiant Emirs, all these ragged Princes, will desert their Malidi, and make the best of their way here, to give in their submission to the Egyptian Government."

"I am very much afraid you are mistaken. These 'Blacks,' as you call them, are a set of fanatics who believe in their Malidi as firmly as the Old Guard did in their Emperor. Moreover these same fanatics are brave and war-like men armed and eager for plunder. Gordon can do nothing."

"Just what I think," declared the consul; "I believe myself Gordon's coming will merely serve to precipitate the catastrophe."

Watson nodded assent, and put in his word:

"Now supposing my cotton plantations are wasted, what I want to know is, can I make either of the governments responsible, eh?"

"The British Government is on the best of terms with that of Egypt," Uncle Dick went on, "but you see all these excellent diplomatists are acting at a distance from the scene of action, depending entirely on what documents tell them. They are buoyed up, one and all, with false hopes, and utterly fail to realize how deep-seated the trouble here is. Upon my word! You would almost think Gordon himself does not suspect the truth! How can he suppose that after Hicks Pacha's disaster, diplomacy can be of the very slightest use? And if he means fighting, it's not with our garrison of Egyptians Gordon is going to repulse the malidi and his hordes, I can tell you!"

At the opposite end of the terrace the ladies were also engaged in conversation. Grace, still nervous and troubled at the look Aisha had given her, was relating the incident of that evening.

"I tell you, it was awful ... Think of it, a huge great devil of a Dinka woman! She frightened me to death, though I cannot say she's exactly ugly; for all her huge great limbs, she's like a statue to look at. Her arms are enormous; how strong she must be!-And wicked! it's positively disgusting. This very evening, she has been amusing herself torturing a child, a poor little Copt boy. You should have seen how he shook with terror! Whatever could she have been doing to him?"

The two married women exchanged a smile. Mrs. Watson answered:

"Oh! it was surprise, you know, my dear!"

"They are worse than the beasts that perish," continued Grace..."Now I have not the slightest desire to see a whipping given; I really believe each blow would hurt me as much as if it were laid on my own back. Nevertheless when it comes to that Aisha, I would like to see her flayed alive. Rather than such a wretch should escape punishment, I would take the executioner's place myself!"

"Shall we come and see her punished?" asked Mrs. Watson. "It amuses me to watch them being whipped; I never miss the sight, whenever I have one of our house servants thrashed. The faces they make strike me as so funny; and then, I can hardly explain how it is, but it is somehow pleasant to sit comfortable yourself and see someone else suffering ... When we lived at New-York, I was horribly afraid of the cold; yet when I was seated by a good fire, I loved to look out of window and watch the people in the street tramping through the snow."

"It's a vile country this" observed the consult's wife "but at any rate you can punish your servants properly. Now in America, venture on the smallest word of blame to a maid-servant, and she'll pitch her apron at your head, and as-likely as not a plate to follow."

"Well! it's settled then," insisted Mrs. Watson; "tomorrow morning we are to come to see the little Copt's tormentress whipped."

But on the morrow, when Grace and the two other ladies would have assisted at Aisha's punishment, they were informed the negress had found means to break her chains, and had escaped, no one could say where.