THE GRAND VIZIER’S DAUGHTERS

“The Plough?” said my uncle’s voice from the front gate. “Do you mean to
say you don’t know the Plough?  That’s the Plough, man, up there. And
over there, low down, above the lighthouse—d’ye see?—the ruffian with
the red head, that’s Orion. Just so! Irish, of course; an old Tipperary
family, armed to the teeth.”

I chuckled as his maudlin voice called it all up: the starlight over the
sleeping town of which he was Town Clerk; the world’s worst Town Clerk,
but that’s neither here nor there. For an hour or more I lay listening
to himself and the maid gossiping in the kitchen, and their mumbling
voices and the hissing of the range half lulled me to sleep. Then I
heard him get up, and Nora began to whisper in protest till he grew
crotchety. “Now, can’t you—?” I heard him hiss. “I’m all right, girl. I
won’t say anything to her.” I wondered which of the girls he wanted to
talk to. He came upstairs quietly; I knew he wasn’t coming to bed
because he hadn’t locked the doors,

As I heard him try the handle of the girls’ door I slipped out of bed
and put on a dressing-gown.

“Halloaaa,” he said at last in a long, whimsical, insinuating drawl.

“Hallo,” piped my cousin Josie in her high-pitched, timid voice.

“Is Mon asleep?” he asked.

“She is. ... No, she isn’t, though. You’re after waking her.”

“Oh, dear, dear!” he said.

“Is that you, daddy?” said Monica, sleepy and cross, “what time is it?”

Curiosity was too much for me. I opened my bedroom door. He heard it,
rushed out and clawed me in after him, beaming at me. I knew from the
smell he must have been on the skite again. He was a tall, gaunt,
melancholy- looking man. I worshipped him and he never saw it, the old
idiot. Often when we met in town he went by without noticing me, lost in
his own thoughts, his hands behind his back, his head bowed into the
collar of his overcoat, while his lips moved as if he were talking to
himself.  If I stopped him he started out of his reverie with an
animation and a wealth of gesture that was entirely fictitious; a laugh
too loud, a glare of the deep-set fanatical eyes, a flush on the hollow
temples and high cheek-bones, while he leaned forward or sideways like a
yacht in a gale in a long, raking, astonished line, clawing madly at his
hat or at the flapping skirts of his coat. It wasn’t wishing to me to
break in on him.

“Come in, Willie,” he said, laughing, “come in, boy!  I was only just
saying to Nora that I hardly ever get the chance of a talk with ye.”

The candle on the dressing-table exaggerated the slashing line of his
head with the high, bald, narrow cranium, the high cheek-bones and
sunken temples and eyes—the face of an El Greco saint. He swept the
chair clean with a wave of his hand and held it out to me.  Then he sat
himself on the end of the bed and gave each of us a quizzical look, his
mouth puckered up and his eyes in slits as if he was trying to keep in
his laughter.

“And now what are we going to talk about?” he asked archly. “Here we
are, the whole family. We have everything: the setting, the time, the
company. What are we going to discuss?”

“Tell us a story, can’t you?” said Josie. She had continued to gape at
him with her big, scared brown eyes, the bed-clothes drawn close under
her chin, from modesty.  I was sorry for her. She was always afraid of
him when he had a drop taken. She was like that; a gentle, nunlike soul,
not like Monica who went through town with a sailor stride, north-east,
north-west, cracking jokes with everyone. On Sunday mornings poor Josie
would come tapping at the Boss’s door to tell him he’d be late for Mass,
and then stand uncertainly in the hall with a flush on her cheeks and
the same wide, uncomprehending stare in her great brown cyes. I liked
Josie and I could have killed that little sugar, Hennessey, when he let
her down.

“Story?” said the Boss with a laugh, drawing away from her in mock
surprise. “Sure, my goodness, ye’re too big for stories.”

“Not for good ones,” said Monica.

“What sort of story?” he asked, frowning and sucking in his cheeks till
the whole hollow cage of his skull stood out.

“Well, for instance, what you and Owney Mac were up to tonight,” Monica
said saucily.

“Me and Owney—?” he exclaimed with a worried look. “No, no, Mon, ’pon my
soul, I wasn’t. I just happened to drop in for a minute.” Then his face
cleared; he smiled and winked. “Go away, you ruffian!” he said.

“A story?” he continued musingly with his head in the air. “I wonder now
could I think of a little story that came into my head tonight. Let me
think! What was it?  About a young fellow, a rather simple young fellow,
but nice. ... I want you to remember that. He was nice. ... Damn it, who
was it told me or did I read it somewhere?  Never mind, ’twill come back
to me. ...  And a long time ago he came to live in a certain town.  He
had a job there; a good enough job for the town, but nothing much
outside. Of course, he was hoping for promotion.  We’ll call him the
Grand Vizier.”

“It must have been in Turkey so,” Monica cried, lifting herself on her
elbow.

“Exactly!” my uncle exclaimed excitedly, punching his left palm with his
fist. “’Pon my word, Mon, you have it! Turkey! The very place. The name
of the town will come back to me too in a minute. Not that ’twould mean
anything to ye; a miserable place; a dirty old Eastern town with houses
falling down at every step; mountains of dirt in the streets, and the
unfortunate people living on top of one another, in filthy holes and
corners, like savages—the way they live in Turkey. And this young
fellow—he was a bit foolish, I told you that— thought he’d be a great
fellow and change it all.”

“And marry the Sultan’s daughter,” chimed in Monica with her ringing
laugh.

“what Sultan’s daughter?” my uncle exclaimed testily.  “I said nothing
about a Sultan’s daughter! Now, my goodness, can’t you let me tell the
story my own way?  This young fellow was married already—sure, I told ye
he was simple.”

“Oh!” said Monica. She was disappointed.

“He was from Constantinople,” my uncle said impatiently, articulating
every syllable and emphasising it with his fist while his forehead took
on a certain resem- blance to Crewe Junction: “And as well as that he
was after travelling a good deal: Paris, Vienna, Rome; the whole
blooming shoot! Oh, he was none of your stick-in- the-muds at all, none
of your country yobs, but a jing-bang, up-to-the-minute, Europeanised
Young Turk with plus-fours and horn-rimmed specs! He knew what he
wanted; a fine, big, open town with wide streets and boulevards, big
houses, libraries, schools and gardens; something he could show his
butties from Paris.”

My uncle paused and looked away into a corner of the room while the
brows darkened over his deep fanatical eyes.

“But there was one class of people in this town,” he went on gravely,
“who didn’t like what the Grand Vizier was up to. They were a very
curious class of people. The like of them didn’t exist outside
Turkey. Muftis, they were called; men muftis and women muftis, and they
lived in big houses like barracks all round the town.  They never did
anything for their living only go on pilgrimages to Mecca, and they were
never happy only when they were spending millions building big, ugly old
mosques or muezzins or whatever the devil they called them. A queer sort
of life! Every evening up on top of their old chimney-stacks with their
two arms out chanting ‘La laha, il Allah.’

“So begor, the Grand Vizier had a look at his books and what did he
notice, only that for ten years the muftis weren’t paying a ha’penny in
taxes. The poor people were paying it for them. And there and then he
sat down and he sent them a—they have a word for it!”

“They have,” said Monica, racking her brains.

“A fiat,” said my uncle. “No, that’s not it. A firman!  I have it
now. He sent them a firman, and what do you think the muftis said? They
said the Grand Vizier was trying to make the poor people restless,
taking their minds off chimney-stacks and giving them notions above
their station.”

“Ah, what ould guff you have!” Nora shouted from the kitchen. “Trouble
enough I’ll have trying to root you out to work in the morning!”

“Well, one day,” my uncle went on hastily, pretending not to hear, “one
day while the Grand Vizier was sitting in state in his——his what you may
call it——”

“Palace,” whispered Josie.

“I forget the Turkish word but that’s what it comes to —there was a
knock at the door. The young Grand Vizier opens the door himself, and
who does he see only the Grand Mufti; a big, fat, red-faced man with a
high fez on him and an umbrella tucked under his arm. Like this!” And my
uncle raised his nose superciliously and held his arm as though he were
clutching an umbrella.

“I didn’t know they had umbrellas in Turkey,” said Monica suspiciously.

“Now, now, now, now,” shouted my uncle in anguish, shaking his fist at
her, “order please, order! Of course they had umbrellas. The umbrella
was a sacred thing, like the fez. ’Tis distinctly mentioned in all the
history books. Rolled up of course, under the arm, just as I say.”

“Ah, this is a queer old story,” Josie said restlessly, her great brown
eyes fixed on him in alarm.

“But, God Almighty, when ye won’t listen to me!  How the blazes can I
tell the story at all if ye keep on interrupting me? Now I’m after
forgetting it all again.  Where was I?”

“In the palace,” Monica replied, a little subdued.

“I remember now.” My uncle bowed his head and fingered his chin. “’Twas
when he opened the door and saw the Grand Mufti outside on the
landing. There was a big stairs at each side.”

“Like the Town Hall?” said Monica, who couldn’t be repressed.

“Precisely! Only grander, of course, all gilt and fancy work. A little
barbaric but very handsome, very handsome.  Well, the Grand Vizier
salaamed.” My uncle raised his hands to his temples and bowed his head
to his knees in an attitude of abject reverence. “‘Salaam, effendi,’ he
says, and he tried to take the umbrella and fez from the Grand
Mufti. But the Grand Mufti gave a wicked little grunt and walked in past
him with his fez on his pate. ... Now, the Grand Vizier, as I explained
to you, was a Constantinople man, and all Constantinople men have the
divil’s own temper. You wouldn’t know you were after insulting one of
them before you got a knife in your ribs; and in Constantinople to walk
into another man’s room with your fez on was as much as to say you
thought he was no better than a Christian.  But the Grand Vizier, being
young and inexperienced, thought he’d better wait and see. So he
salaamed again.  ‘Grand Mufti,’ he says, ‘what can the least of the
servants of Allah do for you?’ ’The least of the servants of Allah,’
says the Grand Mufti, ‘will have to stop preaching his subversive
doctrines.’ ‘Most Excellent’”—my uncle joined his hands and bowed his
head meekly— “ ’utterance is obedience, as the Prophet says.’ ‘No more
foreign notions!’ says the Grand Mufti. ‘No more infidel Christian
ideas!’ ‘My Lord Steeplejack,’ says the Grand Vizier, ‘obedience is
forgetfulness.’ ‘Well, remember it,’ says the Grand Mufti, ‘for one word
more out of you about taxes, and so help me, Allah, off comes your
head.’

“Now, I won’t swear to the exact words,” my uncle continued excitedly,
clawing the air with his hands. “I heard the story so long ago, and
Turkish is a very con- fusing language. But those were the sentiments—
off comes your head!”

“Goodness!” cried Josie, so round-eyed with consternation that Monica
and I both laughed outright at her.

She stared from one to the other of us in confusion and blinked. My
uncle smiled and paused to wipe his face in a large handkerchief.

“Well,” he continued, “this, I needn’t say, wasn’t the sort of language
the young Grand Vizier was accustomed to in Paris. He couldn’t take his
eyes off the—” He tapped his forehead.

“Fez,” supplied Monica.

“’Twas very high; a most remarkable headgear, only worn by the
steeplejacks. ’Twas a terrible temptation, but what kept him back was
that shocking passage in the Koran about what happens anyone that lays
irreverent hands on a mufti’s fez. Seven different damnations!  But just
at that moment the Grand Mufti thumped his umbrella on the floor and
said, ‘Rakaki skulati dinjji.”

“What does that mean?” asked Josie with a frown.

“‘Nuff said?’” explained my uncle. “And then the Grand Vizier imagined
what his pals in Paris would say if they saw him then, taking back-chat
from a fat old mufti, and the Constantinople blood boiled in his veins.
He opened the door behind him with his left hand and with his right he
reached out and took hold of the fez— like this.”

“And threw it out the door,” cried Monica with her ringing laugh.

“Down the full length of the palace stairs and along the hall,” said my
uncle eagerly, leaning half across the bed towards her. “And two
out-of-works that were keeping up the palace door, discussing tips for
the two-thirty, nearly jumped out of their skins when it landed between
them. Imagine it, at their very feet, the sacred fez of a mufti! But
listen now! Listen to this! This is good! The next thing they saw
shooting through the air on top of them was the Grand Mufti’s
umbrella. And then—then what do you think they saw?”

“The Grand Mufti himself?” gasped Josie.

“They saw the Grand Vizier dragging the Grand Mufti, body and bones, by
the collar of the coat and the slack of the breeches across the
landing. He was too heavy to throw, but the Grand Vizier laid him neatly
on the top step and gave him one good push with his boot that sent him
rolling down like a barrel. And then the Grand Vizier went in and
slammed the door behind him, and even from the hall they could hear him
laughing like a madman, to think he was the first Mussulman in history
to get hold of a mufti by the slack of the breeches.”

“And did they kill him then?” asked Josie eagerly.

“My goodness, can’t you let me tell the story my own way?” my uncle said
irritably. “They didn’t kill him at all; ’twas out of fashion at the
time, but the steeplejacks tipped the wink to the Caliph, and the Caliph
had a few words with the Sultan, and the Sultan passed it on to all the
provincial Emirs. That’s the way things were done in Turkey then. They
found it worked grand. Nothing crude, nothing bloodthirsty; nobody said
a cross word; the thing was never mentioned again, and everyone was all
salaams and smiles, but the Grand Vizier knew his goose was cooked.”

My uncle brought out the last phrase with sudden savagery. He drew a
deep breath through his nose, then rose and drew the curtains. I saw the
sudden match-flare of the lighthouse spurting in the black water.

“Wisha, bad cess to you, you ould show, are you going to be there all
night?” shouted Nora from the foot of the stairs.

“This minute, Nora,” he replied with a laugh.

“And what happened him after?” asked Monica.

“Who?” he asked innocently. “Oh, the Grand Vizier?  He took to drinking
raki.”

“Whiskey?”

“No, raki. The same sort of thing but more powerful.  It made him talk
too much. He ended up as an old bore.”

“Go on,” said Monica quietly.

“But my goodness,” he protested with his roguish laugh, “that’s all
there is. Nothing more. A simple story about a simple fellow. Ah, I
didn’t tell it right, though. I used to know it better—all the glamour
of the East. ...  Well,” he added briskly, “I’d better let ye get some |
sleep.”

“That’s not all of it,” Monica said in the same quiet’ way.

“But, my goodness, girl,” he shouted in exasperation, “when I tell you
it is!”

He glared down at her, a tall, raking galoot of a man with his clenched
fists held stiffly out.

“Ah, that’s a queer old story,” Josie said uneasily. “You used to have
better stories than that.”

“Tell us the rest of it,” Monica said challengingly.

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” he said in
bewilderment. “What ails you? What more do you want?”

“The Grand Vizier had two daughters,” she cried, kneeling up in the bed,
her long bare arm stretched out accusingly.

“I never said he had two daughters,” he snarled.

“But he had!”

“He hadn’t.”

“And I tell you he had.”

“You’re mixing it up, girl,” he said savagely. “You’re thinking of a
different story altogether.”

Then his head went up with a little jerk, he drew a deep breath through
his nose and looked at the ceiling.  His voice dropped to a whisper and
faltered incredulously.

“One moment,” he said as though he were speaking to himself. “My memory
isn’t what it was. Maybe you’re right. Maybe he had a daughter. “’Pon my
soul, Mon, I believe you are. One daughter at any rate. Now what did I
hear about her?”

He sank back on the end of the bed and clutched his lean skull in his
hands. When he spoke again it was in the same low, faltering voice as
though recollecting something he’d heard many years before. I began to
shiver all over violently. It was very queer.

“He had a daughter,” he went on, “and she went to a school where the
women muftis were teaching. But that must have been a long time
after. She’d only have been a baby when all this occurred. Her father
wouldn’t tell her, of course. He wouldn’t ask for pity. He’d be too
proud. And she—’tis coming back to me!—she was attracted by a young
fellow in the town, a shopkeeper’s son. She was afraid to ask him to the
house because she didn’t want him to meet her disreputable old father—a
respectable boy like that! The old Grand Vizier saw it all but he said
nothing. He was too proud. Then the young fellow’s father, the tool of
the steeplejacks, the old bloodsucker, interfered; the boy took up with
another girl, and the women muftis she was always in and out to told the
Grand Vizier’s daughter that ’twas only what she might expect on account
of her father; a drunken, blasphemous old man, no better than a
Christian. And the Grand Vizier’s daughter ... ”—my uncle slowly raised
his head, joined his hands and looked at the ceiling as though he were
snatching the words out of the air— “the Grand Vizier’s daughter mooned
and cried for weeks on end ... because she was ... ashamed of her
father.”

“I’m not ashamed,” Monica shouted angrily.

With eyes that seemed to see nothing, my uncle rose and moved towards
the door like a man in a trance. For a moment I forgot that he was only
an adorable, cranky, unreliable old gasbag of a man who had just been
out boozing with Owney Mac in Riordan’s disreputable pub on the
quays. He looked like a king: a Richard or a Lear. He filled the room,
the town, the very night with his presence. Suddenly he drew himself
erect, head in air, and his voice rang like thunder through the house.

“God help us,” he said bitterly, “she was ashamed of her father.”

“They wouldn’t say it to me,” Monica shouted hysterically, the tears
starting from her eyes. “I’d tear their eyes out, the smug old bitches!”

My uncle didn’t reply but we heard his heavy tread down the stairs to
the kitchen. Suddenly Josie sprang clean out of bed and rushed after
him. Her great brown eyes were starting from her head with terror. Her
face was like the face of a little child left alone in a strange place.

“Daddy, daddy,” she cried, “I’m not ashamed. Oh daddy, I’ll never do it
again! Daddy, come back to me!  Come back!”