"It's a fair warning, and I'll return everything you said."
"Good for you. Now let me guess how you came to fall into the Pasha's tender hands. You're a Yank, and the hostilities that we heard were threatened have begun."
"That's a good guess."
"But it doesn't explain you and the other Yank and a Negro without rings in his ears or nose being sent to this extremely exclusive club."
"I didn't know why it was."
"I think that's a lie, but you've your own reasons for telling it, and I'll not gainsay you. Now I'll give you a free English translation of this club's Arabic name—the Sepulcher of Wet Bones. Pretty ugly, isn't it? But wet means only not yet dry. Very imaginative people, the Arabs. Your being sent here means you're never to be offered for ransom or for sale or associate with any prisoner who will live to tell the tale."
"What tale?"
"The one you might tell him—the one you may tell me."
"Is there always one?"
"In every case where the prisoner is something more than the dullest workhorse. This quarry belongs to the Pasha. It is well run and reasonably profitable, but your services here could be done by a Nubian Negro worth, in the great slave markets of Constantinople, about a hundred dinars. You would bring five hundred to become an attendant on some Central Asian sultan or artisan, or clerk for a merchant or manufacturer. Did you invade the harem of some noble Tripolitan? Did you cause a reis to lose face?"
"Our ship's company did. I'll tell you later. You say this quarry is well run. I don't see how that could be true if the slaves are worked or whipped or starved to death in a few years."
"We're not. We labor from sunrise to sunset—that's the Mohammedan law—which means from ten to fourteen hours, depending on the season. Going back and forth takes two hours more out of the day. We're given enough to eat to keep us lean but strong. We're whipped for any idleness or the slightest offense, but rarely more than twenty strokes, after which shock sets in and the man is not up to mark the following day. By the way, you get twenty every month whether you earn 'em or not. That's a matter of principle with our quarry master, Sidi el Aku". He thinks it keeps us out of temptation— maybe it does. He, too, is a Tripolitan—use the generic term Moor—as opposed to an Arab. I suppose you know they all speak Arabic."
"Yes."
"A sound man can last twenty years or more. The climate is quite healthful when you've become adapted to it. By turning into animals —not nearly as difficult as you think—men have lived and labored here for thirty, even forty years. Those who don't, go mad and are very soon destroyed."
"You said, too, the quarry was profitable. How could it be, if they have to transport marble on camelback for seventy miles—"
"You're a cool 'n. I wonder what the story is. The marble here is known as Carthage onyx, highly translucent, of very rich browns and yellows. It's in high demand all over the Orient for temples and palaces and is costly as alabaster, but the bed is not large and devilishly hard to work. We get it out in thin slabs with drills and wedges, and it's sent in five-hundred-pound loads by baggage camels. The men who want to live long—not necessarily the more intelligent-wear a cloth over their mouths and noses. It's hot and uncomfortable, but it stops most of the fine dust. Those who don't use it wear out fast. I can foretell you'll wear it."
"Yes."
"Now I've got a question to ask you. I'll explain its importance later. Are you a boozer?"
"I like a drink—"
"That isn't what I meant. Does booze count more with you than self-respect—life, women, everything?"
His voice changed, and his hands shook.
"Not one of those things, let alone all."
"It does with me. Indirectly, that's why I'm here. After a terrific bout in Lisbon, I found myself on a Dago ship without a passport. I jumped her in Tripoli, got some fig wine, and knocked down the Chiah in the palace kiffer—he's the direct representative of the Pasha and next to the Reis Effendi in rank. It's a wonder I wasn't hung alive on an iron hook. To avoid trouble for everybody, I was quietly shipped out here."
I nodded, waiting for the business.
"Every Friday—that's tomorrow—the Mohammedan Sabbath, we're issued a pint of palm toddy made from those wretched coconut trees. The quarry master believes that it 'thins our blood' and winks his eye at the fifteen or so per cent of alcohol. One pint gives about twenty minutes' glow. But I've a little jug hidden away, and if two people will give me their ration—and there is one left who does—I've enough for one night's drunk. It doesn't faze me the next day—not an old guzzler like me—and it gives me something to live for."
"The man who died today gave you his portion?"
"Sold it to me, rather."
"What will you give me for mine?"
"Good advice. Oriental sayings—in perfect Arabic—to please the foreman. I was once considered a rising Orientalist at Dublin University. I can be useful to you, Sittash, if you're my friend."
"I agree for the time being."
"Thank you. I can't thank you enough. If I could go to bed drunk every night—not soaked, not crazy, just gentlemanly drunk—I'd be happy as a king."
"Do you mean it?"
A deeply moving dignity came into his face.
"Why not? I'm a good workman—I get almost no disciplinary whippings—that one good dusting every month makes me remember public school and cleanses my soul. I've no fault to find with the hard labor and the simple food, for what would I be doing if I weren't here? One prolonged bout after another, ending in red spiders and white mice—jail sometimes, always disgrace, shaming every one who loves me. Now they believe me dead. I am dead in a sense more true than you know, most of us are—this is the Sepulcher of Wet Bones; I have all the advantages of being dead, yet I labor and eat and sleep —the last two the reward of the first—and when I can lay hand on the wherewithal, I can still get drunk."
"I see." But my eyes darkened, as though in prelude of death.
"What have you got to live for, Sittash?"
"A commemoration."
"That means an observance—or an action—in someone's memory."
"I'll let it go at that."
"Good night, Sittash."
"Good night, Kerry."
I lay down on my aba and went to sleep and began to dream. Before the stars began to pale, I was wakened by the beat of a kettledrum. The day had begun. The first day of how many? It would be unmanly to count in tens. , . . My common sense denied I could count in hundreds. . . . What remained but thousands?
The first thousand days had gone by.
As Murad Reis had told me, I needed no watch to tell the hours, no calendar to count the days. The procedures of the prison served as my sun dial, and in my dreams I heard shipbells thin and far away. My first thought in the morning was the sum of my days as a slave, yesterday's figure plus one more; and there was no use of cutting notches in a log or adding a pebble to a pile, since I never came even close to confusing the number.
The most marked change in me was a reshaping of my body that at first alarmed me. Although my one hundred and sixty pounds had been all brawn and bone, I gradually lost weight until Kerry guessed me at no more than one hundred and thirty-five. My flat muscles became longer and thinner, my legs and arms lost their look of power, and my torso was so gaunt that my shoulders appeared ungainly broad. But I came to believe at last that the transformation was the almost miraculous fulfillment of my needs. Kerry and I were invariably given the heaviest and hardest labor of the gang—I could credit no reason other than the quarry master's spite against imperious England and hence all English-speaking people—and since my teammate was not quite equal to it, I must be more than equal to save us both from nightly beatings by the guards.