Ollie's Cloud (47 page)

Chapter 5

Aqasi faces a dilemma, a political spark that he fears may ignite the dry kindling on which his brittle nation is built. Emissaries of a new self-proclaimed prophet have been popping up everywhere, announcing a “new Qu’ran,” stirring the people into a state of perturbation. Some imbeciles have become followers of this “Rasul” despite stern warnings from the mullas about the imposter. Tensions are growing. Until now Aqasi has believed that this mild religious tempest works in his favor, for he can drift effortlessly above the fray on prevailing currents like an eagle awaiting an opportunity for a meal. While this instability preoccupies the mullas, the shah’s court can in many subtle ways increase its power unchallenged by the religious authorities.

But now the instability has pricked the finger of Aqasi, drawing blood. As he considers the problem, he wrinkles up his nose in disgust. Another mess to clean up. And this one is politically delicate. A famous mujtahid who has converted to the Rasulí cause has been arrested in Shiraz and tortured for his heresy. A great uprising has occurred in the city. To quell the rioting, Aqasi has decided to order the governor to have the Rasul arrested in Bushire and tried by the clergy in Shiraz. In that way, he can wash his hands of the Rasul’s certain fate.

Six days later the populace of Shiraz is astonished at the sight of the Rasul on his horse, riding free and unfettered, leading the governor’s mounted escort directly to the seat of government.

The governor of Shiraz, Husayn Khan, has heard of the public spectacle created by the Rasul’s cavalcade through the city streets, angrily described by some as a “triumphant return.” Infuriated by the timid behavior of his guards, who were sent to bring the Rasul back in chains, the governor channels his anger toward the impudent young merchant who is now seated in a hard wooden chair at the center of an imposing chamber. Among the divines present is the city’s leading mujtahid, Mulla Turab, a lean, white-bearded man with penetrating eyes and a hawk-like beak for a nose.

The governor is incensed by the Rasul’s calm demeanor. Unable to restrain himself, he shouts, “Do you realize what a great mischief you have created?” His voice echoes in the solemn hall.

The Rasul looks up at the governor but remains silent.

“Are you aware what a disgrace you have become to the holy Faith of Islam, and to the august person of our sovereign?”

The Rasul patiently looks at the governor, as if waiting for all the questions to be asked before responding. His silence provokes the governor to bolt from his seat and stomp to the Rasul’s chair. After circumambulating the captive, and failing to melt the man into submission through the sheer heat of his presence, the governor speaks into the Rasul’s ear: “Are you not the man who claims to be the author of a new revelation that annuls the sacred precepts of the Qu’ran?”

The Rasul lowers his head, then looks up at the governor and calmly replies, “‘If any bad man come unto you with news, clear up the matter at once, lest through ignorance you harm others, and be speedily constrained to repent of what you have done.’”

Taking great offense at this remark, the red-faced governor shouts, “What! You take it upon yourself to accuse us of evil and ignorance?”

With the flat of his hand, the governor swats the captive in the face. The Rasul’s green turban flies onto the floor. The governor marches back to his ornate chair and sits down, angry and frustrated.

Dismayed by the governor’s rude behavior, Mulla Turab stands abruptly and orders one of the other mullas to place the turban back onto the head of the Rasul, which is done immediately. And then Abu-Turab invites the Rasul to take a seat next to his own. The governor does not dare to chastise this powerful cleric, but he is confused by the Shaykh’s sudden kindness toward the imposter.

Turning toward the governor, Mulla Turab speaks with great authority: “This youth has quoted a verse from the Qu’ran,” he explains. “Apparently you did not recognize it.”

The governor, a secular Muslim who has not consulted the Qu’ran in many years, shifts uneasily in his chair.

“This particular verse has made a profound impression on me,” Abu-Turab continues, “for it tells us that even if a bad man brings us news, we ought to investigate the truth of it. The wise course, I feel, is to inquire into this matter with great care, and to judge this young man by the precepts of the holy Book.”

“Inquire, then. I will not prevent you,” the governor replies. In truth, he is relieved that Mulla Turab has taken the matter into his own hands. There is less chance now that the governor will err and shatter the fragile balance of power between the government and the clergy.

For ten minutes Mulla Turab questions the prisoner, sometimes so intimately that no one else can hear their exchanges.

As the governor grows restless and appears ready to terminate the interrogation, Mulla Turab stands and faces the governor. “I am completely satisfied,” he announces. “The young man has denied the claim of being either the representative of the promised Qa’im, or the intermediary between Him and the faithful.”

The governor sits up straight, astonished that the imposter would so easily recant his claims.

“I see no reason to inter him,” Mulla Turab explains. And then he turns to the Rasul and says, “We request, however, that you present yourself on Friday in the Mosque of Vakíl where you can proclaim publicly your denial.”

On Friday, as promised, the Rasul arrives at the Mosque. He enters the cavernous chamber just as Mulla Turab is ascending the steps to the pulpit-top. As the mujtahid turns to face his congregation, he sees the Rasul standing below. He smiles with the pride of a man who has shut down a rebellion.

“I would like to welcome Siyyid Salih, whom I see among you today,” he announces.

Immediately the gathering begins to buzz excitedly, for they all know the name of the heretic who falsely calls himself the Rasul.

Mulla Turab extends his hand toward the Rasul and says, “It is time for you to publicly repudiate your claim.”

The Rasul steps onto the first stair and prepares to address the congregation.

“Come up higher,” Mulla Turab urges.

The Rasul takes another two steps up and turns. “Praise be to God, who hath in truth created the heavens and the earth,” he begins.

An impatient voice calls out, “Enough idle chatter. Declare the thing you intend to say!”

Mulla Turab steps forward and shouts, “Hold your peace! And be ashamed of your impertinence.” Stroking his long white beard, Mulla Turab then leans toward the Rasul and whispers, “Be quick about it. This crowd may get excited.”

The Rasul looks out on the expectant, angry faces of the congregation and begins again. “The condemnation of God be upon him who regards me as a representative of the Twelfth Imam,” he says, and this beginning seems much more satisfying to the mob below. He continues: “The condemnation of God also be upon whoever accuses me of having denied the unity of God, the Prophet-hood of Muhammad, the truth of any of the messengers of old, or the guardianship of ‘Ali, the Commander of the Faithful.”

The Rasul turns and climbs the rest of the stairs to the pulpit-top, warmly embracing Abu-Turab. As the young man begins his descent to the floor of the Mosque, Mulla Turab shudders with the sudden realization of what has just transpired. This young man has masterfully succeeded in silencing his most formidable opponents with a denial of what he is
not
. He is not the “gate” or representative of anyone—this much the young man could freely admit because his true station is much higher.

His real claim is to be the promised Qa’im. In reality, then, this public statement has been less a denial and more a clarification of what he
is
, though few will understand.

Mulla Turab is about to demand that the Rasul expand his denial to include any claim of being the Promised One, but as he watches the young man reach the floor of the mosque and prepare himself for the traditional Friday prayer, Mulla Turab smiles instead, and his thoughts inexplicably turn to protecting the young man from harm.

Chapter 6

Latin is now the official language of the Chadwick mansion in Belgravia, except for conversations of a personal nature between Ollie and Isaac. These are held in the rich, chocolaty Farsi tongue with a spicy dash of Arabic stirred in for good measure.

Through disuse, Oliver finds that his Latin has atrophied. The words now lie limp and lifeless on his tongue. Isaac, who has just begun his Latin studies and is years behind the other young men at the Charterhouse, struggles to find a pulse in the dead language;
arduum
sane
munus
—a truly arduous task. Phebe complains that English is becoming a lost language in the household, and Jonathon—who had finally picked up a few words of Farsi—now finds himself humorously intermixing it with the basic Latin vocabulary that has been pounded into his head by the insistent drone of conversations limited to fifty or sixty Latin words.

Through the summer months, while his schoolmates vacation, Isaac drills under the instruction of a dusty old tutor of Latin, Wilfred Brown, who speaks with a breath as stale as the language itself and believes, quite honestly, that he has been imbued with a supernatural understanding of the peculiar enunciation used by the original speakers of that dead tongue.

“They did not speak Latin with the broad, rude flatness of us Englishmen—oh yes, and you Americans, who are even ruder in your diction,” he often tells Isaac. “They brought a music, a lilt, to their articulation, which is embedded into the language itself but is not apparent in the written form. Now watch the shape of my mouth and my tongue as I conjugate these verbs…”

How Wilfred Brown has divined these lost sounds remains a mystery, but Isaac suspects that a sufficient volume of Italian wine (in which the old man’s brain perpetually marinates) might serve as a kind of cosmic medium that enables communication with past ages. By listening to his tutor, Isaac has concluded that ancient Romans frequently
slurred
their words, and sometimes stuttered and belched, and most often sounded as if they were, to be blunt, quite drunk.

In an experiment one afternoon, Isaac discovers that he can most successfully duplicate the original accent of the Romans after consuming four glasses of wine.

As Isaac suffers these lessons in a dim, musty room on the nearly vacant grounds of the Charterhouse, Jonathon Fury rejoices in the atmosphere and architecture of London, finding that the city’s coal-infused fog often paints his daguerreotype subjects with a tincture of mystery that he considers quite artistic. He prefers making personal photographic experiments to the more practical work of illustrating news articles. Thanks to Oliver, however, the daguerreotype has quickly become a staple of illustration in the
Times
of London, and Jonathon its chief practitioner. Predictably, Jonathon is back to photographing public hangings and dour dignitaries at civic events.

Phebe has happily seized her role as mistress of the mansion, thriving on the power to procure food and other goods for the household by edict; much easier on the feet. While New York was big and modern and brutally brash, it seems now—in comparison to London—a cheap imitation of a city. This is the real thing. One can
smell
history in the damp air, and
touch
it on any excursion beyond the grounds of the Belgravia mansion. Only in the kitchen does Phebe long for the old days in her boarding house when she could cook and bake with her own strong hands. Her intractable English kitchen staff has demonstrated the uncanny ability to suck the flavor out of any dish, even when it is made from Phebe’s own time-tested recipe. Still, it is improper for the lady of the house to perform such menial tasks as cooking, so Phebe diverts her creative energies into tinkering with the furniture, a more ladylike avocation. She has discovered a knack for rearranging the manor’s movable objects into ever-changing constellations, much to the dismay of the males in her family who would prefer that the stars remain fixed for navigational purposes; the unpleasant result of these “reconfigurations” has been numerous stubbed toes, a few bruised shins, and torrents of profanity not always in Latin.

Still, it’s good to hear English around the house.

Oliver has not re-acclimated to London. He had thought that returning home would restore some of the warmth and comfort of his memories, but now he recognizes that he had seldom been warm and comfortable in London. This is where he had been jarringly sent away to school, segregated from his family like an amputated limb; where his mother had rejected him for the companionship of tawdry theater people, and his doting grandmother had abandoned him by dying; where a man of the cloth had molested him; and where he had been humiliated in front of London high society by his own father.

Why a return to London had ever seemed like a good idea still confounds Oliver as he makes his way by carriage to the George and Vulture to meet Jonathon for lunch. In the months since his return, Oliver has seldom dined out, preferring to seclude himself in his mansion except for an occasional mission: a Turkoman-like raid on the local clergy. He has exposed the folly and hypocrisy of a half-dozen London priests; but even before his conquests, these small-time sinners had been too remote from God for Oliver to extract any satisfaction. It is
God
that he wants to punish. These vain, deluded agents of God in sparkling hats and satin robes do not even provide good sport!

As summer draws to an end, Oliver mellows. His rage at the clergy has grown tepid. Only as he prepares for bed each evening—as he studies the photographs of Mary Rogers and his wife, and the illustration of his mother on the cover of her book—does he feel the sting of anger. If he did not find pleasure in this pain he would hide the pictures, but instead he keeps them on his nightstand to remind him of his goal to punish God. Unfortunately, he has found no worthy targets on this earthly plain.

All this changes, however, one evening in late August when Oliver picks up the day’s edition of the
Times
and reads:

MOHAMMEDAN SCHISM. -- A new sect has lately set itself up in Persia, at the head of which is a merchant who had returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca, and proclaimed himself a successor of the Prophet. The way they treat such matters at Shiraz appears in the following account (June 23): -- Two persons being heard repeating their profession of faith according to the form prescribed by the impostor, were apprehended, tried, and found guilty of unpardonable blasphemy. They were sentenced to lose their beards by fire being set to them. The sentence was put into execution with all the zeal and fanaticism becoming a true believer in Mahomet.

Not deeming the loss of beards a sufficient punishment, they were further sentenced the next day, to have their faces blacked and exposed through the city. Each of them was led by a mirgazah (executioner), who had made a hole in his nose and passed through it a string, which he sometimes   pulled with such violence that the unfortunate fellows cried out alternately for mercy from the executioner and for vengeance from Heaven.

It is the custom in Persia on such occasions for the executioners to collect money from the spectators, and particularly from the shopkeepers in the bazaar. In the evening when the pockets of the executioners were well filled with money, they led the unfortunate fellows to the city gate, and there turned them adrift. After which the mollahs at Shiraz sent men to Bushire, with power to seize the impostor, and take him to Shiraz, where, on being tried, he very wisely denied the charge of apostasy laid against him, and thus escaped from punishment.

Oliver knows that most readers of this article will dismiss the outrageous claim of this “merchant from Shiraz,” but Oliver shudders with the possibility that the Promised One, whom he and his best friend Jalal had dreamed of finding, had appeared at last. While Christians will certainly scoff at this “fairy tale,” Oliver hopes it is true, for if it is, then he has identified his quarry. If this Persian merchant speaks the truth, then Oliver knows how to punish God.

He will return to Persia. He will go home.