‘Mirza Reza, lost child of Persia! Would that you had simply been mad, would that you had just been wise! If only you had been content to betray me or to remain faithful to me, to inspire tenderness or revulsion! How can we love or hate you? And God Himself, what will He do with you? Will He raise you up to the victims’ Paradise or relegate you to hangman’s hell?’
He came and sat down again, exhausted, with his face buried in his hands. I remained silent, and even made myself breathe more quietly. Jamaladin sat up. His voice seemed calmer and his mood more lucid.
‘The words I read are indeed Mirza Reza’s. Until now I still had my doubts, but I do not any more. He is definitely the assassin. He probably thought he was acting to avenge me. Perhaps he thought he was obeying me. However, contrary to what he believes, I never gave him an order to murder. When he came to Constantinople to tell me how he had been tortured by the Shah’s son and his cohorts his tears were flowing. Wanting to shake him out of it, I told him: “Now stop whining! People will say that you just want them to feel sorry for you, that you would even mutilate yourself so that they will feel sorry for you!” I told him an old legend: when the armies of Darius confronted those of Alexander the Great, the Greek’s counsellors brought to his attention that the troups of the Persians were much more numerous than his. Alexander kept his poise and shrugged. “My men,” he said, “fight to win. The men of Darius fight to die!”’
Jamaladin seemed to be racking his memory.
‘That is when I told Mirza Reza: “If the Shah’s son is persecuting you, destroy him, instead of destroying yourself!” Was that really a call to murder? Do you, who know Mirza Reza, really think that I could have entrusted such a mission to a madman whom a thousand people may have met here in this very house?’
I wanted to be honest.
‘You are not capable of the crime they are attributing to you, but your moral responsibility cannot be denied.’
He was touched by my frankness.
‘That I admit. Just as I admit that daily I wished that the Shah would die. But what use is it for me to defend myself. I am a condemned man.’
He went over to a small chest and took out a sheet with some fine calligraphy on it.
‘This morning I wrote my will.’
He placed the text in my hands and I read it with emotion:
‘I do not suffer from being kept prisoner. I have no fear of death being near. My only source of sorrow is having to state that I have not seen blossom the seeds I have sown. Tyranny continues to oppress the peoples of the Orient and obscurantism still stifles their freedom cry. Perhaps I would have been more successful if I had planted my seeds in the fertile soil of the people rather than in the arid soil of royal courts. And you, people of Persia, in whom I placed my greatest hopes, do not think that by eliminating a man you can win your freedom. It is the weight of secular tradition that you must dare to shake.’
‘Keep a copy of it and translate it for Henri Rochefort. L’lntransigeant is the only newspaper which still holds me innocent. The others treat me as an assassin. The whole world wants my death. Let them be reassured — I have cancer. Cancer of the jaw.’
As with every time that his resolve weakened and he complained, he tried to make up for it on the spot by giving a forced laugh of unconcern and making a learned jest.
‘Cancer, cancer, cancer,’ he repeated as if in warning. ‘In the past doctors attributed illnesses to the conjunctions of the stars, but only cancer has kept its astrological name, in all languages. The fear is still there.’
He remained pensive and melancholy for a few moments, but then hurried to carry on, in a happier vein which was blatantly affected but, for all that, more poignant.
‘I curse this cancer. Yet nothing says that it is the cancer which will kill me. The Shah is demanding my extradition: the Sultan cannot hand me over since I am still his guest, but be cannot let a regicide go unpunished. He has hated the Shah and his dynasty to no avail, plotted against him every day, but members of the brother-hood of the great of this world bolster each other against an intruder like Jamaladin. What is the solution? The Sultan will have me kill myself, and the new Shah will be comforted, since, in spite of his repeated requests for my extradition, he has no wish to stain his hands with my blood at the outset of his reign. Who will kill me? The cancer? The Shah? The Sultan? Perhaps I will never have the time to know. But you, my friend, you will know.’
He then had the gall to laugh!
In fact I never knew. The circumstances surrounding the death of the great reformer of the Orient remained a mystery. I heard the news a few months after my return to Annapolis. A notice in the 12 March 1897 edition of l’Intransigeant informed me of his death three days earlier. It was only towards the end of the summer, when the promised letter from Shireen arrived, that I heard the version of Jamaladin’s death which was current among his disciples. ‘For some months he had been suffering from raging tooth-ache,’ she wrote, ‘no doubt caused by his cancer. That day, as the pain had become unbearable, he sent his servant to the Sultan who sent over his own dentist who listened to Jamaladin’s chest, unwrapped a syringe which he had already prepared and gave him an injection in the gums while explaining that the pain would soon die down. Hardly a few seconds passed before the Master’s jaw swelled up. Seeing him suffocating, the servant ran off to bring back the dentist, who had not yet left the house, but instead of coming back the man started to run as fast as he could towards the carriage which was waiting for him. Sayyid Jamaladin died a few minutes later. In the evening, agents of the Sultan came to take away his body, which was hurriedly washed and buried.’ The princess’s account finished, without any transition, by quoting words from Khayyam which she had carefully translated: ‘Those who have amassed so much information, who have guided us towards knowledge, are they themselves not swamped by doubt? They tell a story and then go to bed.’
As to the fate of the Manuscript, which was her purpose in writing to me, Shireen informed me in rather terse terms: ‘It was in fact amongst the murderer’s belongings. It is now with me. You may consult it at your leisure when you return to Persia.’
Return to Persia, where I had aroused so many suspicions?
CHAPTER 33
I had retained from my Persian adventure nothing but cravings. It had taken me one month to get to Teheran and three months to get out. I had spent a few days, which were both brief and numb, in its streets, having hardly had the time to breathe in the smells, or to get to know or see anything. Too many images were still calling me toward the forbidden land: my proud kalyan smoker’s sluggishness, lording it over the whisps of smoke rising from the charcoal in the copper holders; my hand closing around Shireen’s, a promise; my lips on breasts chastely offered by my mother of an evening and more than anything else, the Manuscript which awaited me lying in its guardian’s arms with its pages open.
To those who may never have contracted the obsession with the Orient, I scarcely dare mention that on Saturday at dusk I took myself out for a walk on a stretch of the Annapolis beach that I knew would be deserted, wearing a pair of Turkish slippers, my Persian robe and a lambskin kulah hat. There was no one on the beach, and immersed in my daydreams on my way back I made a detour via Compromise Road which was not at all quiet. ‘Good evening Mr Lesage,’ ‘Have a nice walk. Mr Lesage.’ ‘Good evening Mrs Baymaster, Miss Highchurch,’ the greetings rang out, ‘Good evening Reverend.’ It was the pastor’s raised eyebrows which brought me back to myself. I stopped dead in order to look contritely at myself from my chest to my feet, to feel my headgear and hurry on my way. I think I even ran, draped in my aba as if to cover my nakedness. Once home I tore off my attire, rolled it up with a gesture of finality and then tossed it angrily to the back of a broom cupboard.