Mission: Earth "The Enemy Within" (5 page)

Melahat knocked at the door of the room. An iron bar slid aside. The door opened the tiniest crack and then slammed quickly.

The housekeeper turned to me, perplexed. Then she apparently heard a whisper from the other side of the door. Melahat left the patio. The iron bar clanked back in place.

Then there was another clank!

The garden door! She had let Melahat in the garden door! Oh, of course. When Utanc had opened the patio door, she had seen a man—me. And naturally, she had withdrawn.

There were whisperings in the room and it was hard to tell they were indeed whisperings, even though I had my ear pressed to the door.

The garden portal opened and closed. I saw Melahat in the yard. She was beckoning. Two of the small boys ran up to her. She bent over and whispered to them.

The boys ran to the other side of the house. There was a clank and the garden door opened and then a clank as it was closed and barred.

Melahat came to me in the patio. "She said..."

"You've seen her?" I demanded. "How does she look?"

"She was behind a drape," said Melahat. "She said there were no servants provided for her and she'd seen the two small boys through the garden window and she wanted them to be assigned to her as servants."

"Oh, of course," I said. "A wild desert girl. She would feel lonely without servants."

"I knew you would approve," said Melahat, "so I assigned them for now."

"Oh, assign them permanently. She will be here a long time." And, indeed, she would. I owned her, body and soul.

The shower seemed to be running again. "She seems to be taking another bath," I said.

"I think it was the small boys," said Melahat. "They were pretty dirty."

And, indeed, it must have been. In about ten minutes, one of the small boys went out the garden door and came around to the patio. It was the one I had kicked most. His hair was plastered with water and he looked two shades lighter. He was wearing a pair of embroidered pants and an embroidered jacket. Where had those come from? Turkish national dress! Oh, of course, the wild people of the desert!

"Utanc," said the boy, impudently, "says that Sultan Bey better take a bath and put a turban on. That he looks too scruffy to be sung to!"

I started to kick him and then thought better of it. The meaning of the message sank in. Aha! She was going to get right on the job!

I hurried off. I took a bath. I went into my costume department and found a cloth to wind into a turban and also a caftan to wear.

Finally I went out. Melahat and Karagoz and the two small boys had been doing things to the salon. I was glad now I had let Karagoz buy all those new rugs. The servants had set up a little raised dais with cushions on it. They indicated I was to sit there. There was a pile of pillows in the middle of the floor, some distance from and lower than where I was to sit.

Karagoz, apparently on instructions, turned the lights very low. Two oil lamps were set up to drift a soft yellow-orange flame light through the room.

The staff stole away.

I sat on the dais, cross-legged, and waited for Utanc.

In about twenty minutes, the salon door cracked open slightly. I was aware that an eye was at the slit. But I knew how shy, modest and bashful she must be and I was afraid to frighten her with sudden movements so I sat still.

The door opened a trifle wider. Like a shadow, she slid through it. She halted. The yellow-orange flame light reached her.

She was dressed in baggy pantaloons and a very tight vest that hid her breasts but left her throat and belly bare. She wore no slippers and her toenails were bright scarlet. She had a band of flowers around her raven-black hair. She was veiled!

But her eyes, slightly slanted, very large, were fixed on me in what might be fear.

She had one hand up under her veil and I could see that one fingertip must be gripped bashfully between her teeth.

I beckoned for her to come on in.

She very nearly fled.

I stopped my motion. A minute went by. Gradually, she seemed to gather courage and came fully into the room. In her left hand she bore a couple of musical instruments.

Timidly, she approached the pillows in the center of the room. I could see her better. Her skin was a tawny color. I could not see her face because of the veil but her eyes, downcast and flicking up only occasionally, were beautiful.

She put down one instrument—I saw that it was about eighteen inches in diameter, a sort of tambourine.

Gracefully she sank, cross-legged, on a pillow. She put the other instrument in her lap. I recognized it as a cura irizva, a long-necked sort of lute with three strings and frets.

"O Master," she whispered, and I could barely hear her, "with your permission and at your command, I will sing."

I waved my hand in a lordly fashion. "Sing!" I commanded.

She flinched and I realized I had spoken too loudly.

Her eyes were downcast. She tuned the cura irizva. Then she began to play without singing. BEAUTIFUL! Traditional Turkish music is very oriental and it ends on indefinite upbeats and usually I don't like it. But such was the dexterity of her hands and so expert her rendition that the whole place seemed transported into a dream world. What an accomplished musician!

The last chord died away. I was afraid to applaud. She was now looking at me so shyly under her eyebrows that I was sure she thought she had been too bold.

Then she whispered, "There are no recording devices in this place, are there?"

It startled me. And then I realized why she was asking. The primitive Turks have a superstition that if you record their voices, they will lose them. It proved beyond doubt she was just a Kara Rum desert wanderer, a wild thing.

I said, "No, no. Of course not."

But she got up, her movements poetry itself, and went around the room looking behind things just to be sure. She came back and sat down. She picked up her cura irizva. "I did not feel bold enough to sing," she whispered, "but I will sing now."

She struck several chords and then she sang:

She rose like the moon into heaven's embrace.

She opened her mouth of the dew to taste.

And then came the sun!

She retreated in haste!

All scorched with the rays of your burning!

I was entranced! Her voice was low and husky, sensuous, insinuating! Her accent was Turkmen Turkish, identifiable even though Turkish, spoken all across Russia, varies hardly at all. Her voice had a thrilling effect upon me. It set my pulse surging.

To my disappointment, she put the cura irizva aside. With bowed head and downcast eyes, she whispered, "O

Master, with your permission and at your command, I will dance."

"Dance!" I permitted and commanded eagerly.

Again I had spoken too loud. She cowered. But then, presently, she took up the tambourine. This was unusual. Turkish dancers usually use finger castanets. But it was a Turkish drum.

She rose so sinuously and effortlessly that I scarcely realized she had stood.

I thought for a moment she was just standing there. And then I saw the muscles of that bare stomach!

In the flame light, her belly was moving and writhing without another single motion to her body. A real belly dancer!

The jacket covered her breasts. The pantaloons covered her thighs. But the nakedness in between was alive!

Then, in time to the moving muscles, she began to tap the drum. She tapped it harder and her legs began to sway. Harder and her whole body began to sway. Her stomach muscles bunched and writhed and her hips began to grind!

Oh, my Gods!

It was enough to drive a man MAD!

And all the time her eyes demurely cast down.

But now what was she doing? Between each time she used her hand to strike at the drum, she was giving a tug at her face.

She was unveiling!

Little by little, as one foot lifted and then the other foot, as her hips swung wider and wider, she was disclosing more and more of her face. She began to hum a wordless song in time to the drumbeat.

Suddenly, with a yell, she leapt into the air!

The veil flew away.

She came down, her hips grinding, grinding, her belly twitching and churning, her hands and arms writhing. Her eyes on me were steady and burning!

She was GORGEOUS!

Never had I seen such a face before!

I caught my breath. My heart was in my throat. I had never before in my life been so aroused.

She began to pick her feet up higher. The tambourine began to beat more savagely. She began to strike it against her elbow and hand alternately, and then she was AWAY!

She leaped through the flame light, turning in the air, spinning, coming down, pausing to grind—her eyes had an intensity that would drill holes in me!

She sprang in huge bounds into the air. The drum beat faster and faster. She spun and sprang faster and faster. She was a blur of motion in the yellow-orange fire!

I have never seen such dancing!

My own body began to jerk in rhythm to hers.

Suddenly, she sprang high in the air, let out a piercing cry and came down cross-legged on her pillow. Sitting, absolutely still.

But her eyes on me were like coals of fire!

I could not catch my breath.

She reached out with a fast gesture and snatched at the cura irizva.

She clutched it to her.

She struck a chord.

Her eyes were hot—riveted upon me!

In a throbbing, passion-congested voice she sang:

The nightingale lay trembling

In his brutal hand,

Its throat that pulsed

With fear, Was strangled in a moment of coarse passion,

Dear—

Remember me when I am gone, If you would kill for love!

It was too much! I screamed at her, "No! No! Oh, Gods, I would never kill you!"

That did it.

Too loud!

She cowered back. She raced to the door, crying out in fear, opened it and was gone!

I raced after her.

I was too late.

Her room door was steel-barred from within.

I sat in the patio, aching with passion unfulfilled, drowned in remorse.

I sat there until dawn, watching that door.

She did not come out.

Throughout the following day, I was in a daze. I could only think of Utanc. But I couldn't think very clearly. Numerous ideas of how I might attract her attention and make amends for frightening her were all discarded.

The fence of her private garden had a small hole in it and in the afternoon I crouched there, longing for a glimpse of her.

In late afternoon, when it had become cool, she came out of her garden door. She was wearing an embroidered cloak. She was unveiled, unaware of scrutiny. Her face was so beautiful that I could not breathe. Her walk, so easy, so poised, was poetry itself.

She went back in her room.

That night I sat in vain in the salon. No boy came to inform me. She did not come.

I sat there all night, alert to the tiniest sounds.

In exhaustion, I fell into a sleep knifed with nightmares that she had only been a dream.

Around noon of the next day I woke. I took hardly any breakfast. I paced in the yard. I went in and tried to interest myself in something else. It was impossible.

About three, I went outside again.

Voices!

They were coming from her garden!

I quickly scrambled to the small hole in her fence and peered through.

There she sat!

She was unveiled. She was gorgeous. She was dressed in another cloak but it was fallen carelessly open. It revealed a brassiere and tight, short pants. Her legs and stomach were bare.

So magnetized were my eyes to her that at first I did not even notice the two small boys. They were sitting at her feet in the grass. They were wearing little embroidered jackets and pants. They were scrubbed and clean. Each was holding a little silver cup on his knee.

She said something I did not get and they both laughed. Smiling, she leaned back indolently, exposing more stomach and the inside of her thigh. She was reaching. It was toward a silver teapot and another silver cup on a silver tray.

With grace, she picked up the cup in one delicate hand and the teapot in another. She poured from the pot to the cup. Then she leaned over and poured into the cup each had on his knee.

A little tea party! How charming!

She raised her cup, the two small boys raised theirs. "Serefe!" she said, meaning "Here's to you" in Turkish. They all drank.

The tea must have been awfully hot and strong. The two small boys drank theirs and gasped and coughed. But they smiled and watched as she sipped hers.

"Now," said Utanc, in her low, husky voice, "we will get on with the next story."

The two small boys wriggled with delight and hitched themselves closer, fixing their eyes on her adoringly. How utterly charming she was—telling them fairy stories.

Utanc spread her arms along the top of the garden seat. "The name of this story is 'Goldilocks and the Three Commissars.'" She settled herself comfortably. "Once upon a time there was this beautiful little girl named Goldilocks. That means she had gold-colored hair. And she was ramming around in the woods getting into things. Nosy. So she came to this cottage and picked the lock and trespassed with illegal entry.

"Now this Goldilocks had a horrible appetite because she came from capitalistic parents and, as usual, she thought she was starved. And there on the table sat three bowls of porridge. So she decided it was a worker's cottage and she better exploit it.

"She sat herself down in the biggest chair and had at that porridge. But it was too hot. So she went to the next-sized chair and tried to wolf that porridge. But it was too cold. So she sat down in the smallest chair and, wow, that porridge was great. So her capitalist tendencies got the better of her and she ATE IT ALL UP. Left absolutely nothing.