Chapter XV: A Piglet Acts for Garram

The Liman wagged a skinny forefinger under the nose of Goshi, the stout trader. “Since he brought us both to shame, it is we who should bring this heretic Garram to account.”

Goshi, made tolerant, perhaps, by his girth and his wealth, looked round the dimly lighted room as if in search of an excuse and did not seem to notice the wagging forefinger. The little earthenware saucer with cotton wick and vegetable oil, which served as a flickering lamp, occupied his attention for lack of anything more thrilling in the small bare hut with its rough mud walls and its flat ceiling which barely cleared his head as he stood.

“It is for this purpose that I summoned you,” the harsh, weak voice of the Liman continued; “for, though it is the duty of all good Mohammedans of the city to punish such _kafurchi_ [heathenness]”--he almost spat the word--“with death, yet the softness of this generation is such that no longer can we stone infidels to death publicly or convert them at the point of the sword.”

Goshi’s attention had been caught by the black shadows of the Liman’s arm sawing up and down the wall. It was like a venomous snake swaying, about to strike. The trader’s round face showed its disgust. If he could have caught Garram in that headlong pursuit in the market place, he would have given him, weapons or no weapons, a detailed and most effective spanking. For the trader was as brave as he was fat. But that was more than three months ago. His only feeling now was a poignant regret that he had arrived a moment or so too late to witness the Liman’s own discomfiture. He grunted vaguely in reply.

The Liman’s cracked and excited voice went on. “We wait now only for the Ladan and two friends who can be trusted. Then I will unfold my plan. We must act quickly, for each moon sees Garram, this child of the Devil, more firmly established with the people and in deeper favor with the Emir himself.”

Goshi looked at the matting covered door as if considering a way out. The exhibition of hate made by the skinny old religious enthusiast was not to his taste. But his dislike of underhand deals made him wait. If he knew the plan, he might later be of assistance to the mischievous young hunter, whom he had grown rather to admire. To free himself from the obsession of that shadowy snake he took the lamp from the niche in the wall and set it on the black polished floor.

Then, with whispered greeting and sidelong glances the three remaining conspirators entered. In this half-ruined hut, in the corner of the Liman’s compound, they still appeared fearful of being overheard.

As the Liman’s voice again sawed away in exhortation Goshi’s attention wandered. He could have sworn he heard the flat roof of mud and timber creak as if under a footstep. Then there was a small sound like the leap of a heavy cat onto a neighboring roof. In a pause in the harangue a faint scuffle outside came to his ears, and a muffled squeal which puzzled him. Could there be a small pig, such as he had sometimes seen in his travels, in this town?

“Three days ago I spoke with the Emir himself concerning this same Garram and his evil ways, his levity, and his lack of true belief in Allah. The Emir was nearly persuaded by me. But when later this child of the Devil went away, the Father of our People sent for me and called me many evil names, saying I had driven away this boy who had become to him as a son. Alas that the Father of our country should call a heretic and unbeliever ‘Son’!” The vengeful bigot paused for effect.

“And now that he has returned safe, and bringing with him Ibrahim, whom he saved from death, not only people of the market place and common people, but even courtiers and nobles of the land call a blessing on him when he passes.”

Goshi was still but vaguely attending, waiting for the time when the real plot should be unfolded. The gentle thud as of a leaping cat was approaching again. He could hear the roof give a faint creak.

“Shaitan the Evil One,” the Liman was haranguing away, “Shaitan aids Garram, the son of Shaitan, for does not the Devil always help his own? Shaitan----” With a crash the roof opened and a small black shape fell with a gentle bump among the conspirators, overturning and extinguishing the lamp. Overhead a boy’s leg scrambled wildly for a foothold in the hole in the roof, pulled itself up. A gentle thud told that the owner of the leg had alighted safely on the ground outside the hut. In the darkness Goshi grinned. He had recognized Garram’s foot just as the light went out. But he alone had seen.

The room was in plain panic. Something small but terrible was circling the hut at an increasing pace, ever and anon encountering a pair of thin religious shanks. Then the owners of the shanks, without time even to commend themselves to Allah and his Prophet, sat down with a vigor that persuaded the small piglet that this was their way of trying to catch him.

Terror of this unknown thing circling in the dark upon the ground forced the Liman and his friends to their feet as rapidly as possible after each fall. Goshi, who alone realized the situation, lay still where he had fallen--as still as his rocking laughter would permit.

Determined not to be caught by these people who seemed trying to sit on him, the small pig increased his speed and the plotters had barely time to scramble to their feet before being felled again. Breathless invocations ceased, as no breath remained to the plotters. The only sounds were Goshi’s demoniacal laughter out of the darkness and the continual thud-thud of falling bodies.

Goshi, after a short time, could not have risen. Weak with laughter he groveled. First the feet of the piglet, passing over him, tickled him in the ribs. Then, as the small beast put more into it to increase his speed, the hoofs seemed to nudge him in the side, as if asking him to share in the joke. There was a yell of terror as the conspirators found what they took to be another and unexpected devil added to the first one. But it was only the same small pig seeking variety by turning to go round in the opposite direction.

One of the men made a temporary escape by seeking to hang from a roof beam. This had much to commend it. Unfortunately he let go again just as another had been bowled over beneath him. The Liman, by the voice, was the lower one, and feeling the weight of something still heavier dropping from the sky and the darkness robbed him of what little of his wits remained. Partly running, partly on all fours, he began to circle the hut, terror lending him marvelous speed.

His gasping yells sounded scarcely human to the other conspirators, and this final addition to the pig’s solo procession turned an excellent imitation madhouse into a realistic pandemonium. No longer were the evil spirits content with cleanly felling them and permitting them to rise again. Now when they fell, a second mass, even more terrifying, would fall upon them, strike them evilly with thin, flail-like limbs, and seem about to devour them as it gobbled wildly. It was only the Liman striving to surmount obstructions in his path, whooping and mewing as he sought breath and words for his feelings.

Then, to the fat trader’s keen regret, the small black pig found the doorway with its light matting cover and disappeared as suddenly as he had come. To the trader’s ears came the sound of a scuffle, as Garram, waiting outside the door for his pet, caught him and went his way. Gradually the disturbance in the hut died down, till only Goshi’s shaking sobs of laughter broke the silence. But even the best conspirators need breath to conspire properly. The weakness of the plotters, and their fear of the devil which they believed they had invoked, made further mischief that night improbable. Goshi found his way through the door which only darkness and blind terror had hidden before. The four conspirators tried to get through it together, jammed, but one by one followed him to the edge of the Liman’s compound, where they parted.

Goshi weakly zigzagged his way through the deserted market place, pausing, from time to time, to the scandal of the lean scavenging dogs, as hooting, snorting laughter caught him anew. “Wallahi! What an event!” he leaned up against a stall and informed a cat and two dogs. “How can I tell the story properly on the morrow when I heard only sounds and could not see the faces of the pious as they played on the ground with a piglet and to amuse it hung like bats from the roofing?”

His voice, worn to a whisper with much laughing, had a determined ring to it. “But justice shall be done to the story, though I perjure myself and swear to blue flames of hell or bright moonlight through the roof. Better the latter, since the Liman will have put the hell flames into his own story.”

He wove homeward through the night.

A STORY OF STORIES