Digging back in his past, he remembered a similar flood from his childhood. He recalled how it stopped all means of transport, blocking up the alleys and completely drowning rooms — and those in them — beneath porous roofs. He then went back to his desk, intent upon his work with the hotel records and expenditures, but he also issued orders to tighten the surveillance of the rooms and of the roof. He called for the head bellhop and asked him, “What news of room number twelve?”
“The singing and laughing show no sign of stopping,” the man said, twisting his lips. “They’re crazy in there!”
Blind Sayyid the undertaker loomed at the lobby’s door.
“Get back to your place!” shrieked the manager.
The man held up his hand in entreaty, and the manager yelled at him once more, “Not another word!”
The thunder clapped like bombs as the massive rain pounded the pavements with incandescent intensity. The manager mused that the old hotel wasn’t built with reinforced concrete — and the night warned of yet more travails.
Another bellhop told him, “There are complaints in room number twelve about the leaky roof and the water pouring in.”
“You mean they’ve stopped laughing and singing?” the manager demanded, exasperated. “Then let them all leave the room now!”
“But they can’t!” protested the bellhop.
The manager dismissed him once again and called the head bellhop, asking him about what his assistant had said. “The rooms are all leaking, so I’ve mobilized all the men to plug the holes in the roof with sandbags.”
“And what about room number twelve?”
“They’re all jammed in there too tightly. Their stomachs have inflated so much, they can’t open the door. They can’t even move!”
Cosmic ire was smiting the night outside, while inside a frenzied air of activity filled the hotel as the bellhops scurried about with sandbags to halt the invading rain.
Then a most peculiar thing happened: the people who’d been waiting in the lobby rushed voluntarily to aid in the effort. The manager watched all this with delight— made greater by the fact that Blind Sayyid the Corpse Washer did not take part.
After a while the head bellhop reported on the work’s progress. “They’re putting all they’ve got into it,” he said with pride. “But as for our friends in room number twelve, their condition is very bad — and getting worse and worse all the time.”
What the man said struck the manager like a shock— and amid the violent, pent-up tension of the entire day, he snapped. His anger taking hold of his flesh, his blood, and his nerves at once, he finally surrendered his last shred of sanity.
“Listen.” he said. “Remember exactly what I’m about to tell you….”
The bellhop stared at his face in terror as the manager shouted with stark resolve, “Ignore room number twelve and everyone in it!”
“Sir, the men are screaming and the women are crying!”
Bellowing like a beast, the manager railed, “Concentrate on the roof over the guest rooms — but as for room number twelve, leave it alone — and everyone inside it!”
The bellhop tarried for merely a second, and the manager foamed with an even more animal-like fervor, “Carry out my instructions to the letter — without dragging your feet!”
He moved to face the window and watched the storm crashing in the heart of the darkness, waxing more and more perilous with each passing moment. Yet he felt his great burden lighten, as his confidence returned with his clarity of mind.
The Garden Passage
After long hesitation, I decided to go.
The curtain dropped at nightfall. Engulfed by the waves of gloom that swept Virgo Star Alley, I knew my path by the backlight of memory — the destroyer of darkness and the sojourner’s guide. I squeezed through the iron gate that hung ajar, to be struck by the scent of a familiar incense. To my good fortune, I found no visitors in the house. She appeared to me alone, sitting cross-legged on her Persian divan, wrapped in a robe of many quiet colors embroidered with a pattern of crescent moons and flowers, drawn over the curves of a distinctly firm form. Her eyelids dangling like veils, in her fingertips she held some cards — she never grew bored peering into the Unseen on her own. She did not lift her eyes toward me, as though she knew who was coming by the sound of his footsteps, and as if she intended to pay him no heed. Sensing strongly that I was intruding, I did not offer her greetings, but sat in the chair nearest her, seeking refuge in silence. She continued reading her cards as I contemplated how to open our conversation, when all that I had prepared to say evaporated from my mind under the effect of this room, grave with the remains of days gone by. Suddenly she started, as though the cards had yielded an unusual revelation.
“I see a final assault upon his stubbornness!” she whispered.
She let out an “Oh!” of pleasure, muttering as she completed her vision, “A lead-tipped whip shall scourge his back!”
“What’s passed has passed. I must look toward tomorrow,” I said in recognition of her allusion to me.
“Your indulgence, my master!” she exclaimed, as though surprised by my presence.
“I came to settle my debts and to look toward tomorrow,” I replied, putting a medium-size envelope in front of her.
“He came to settle his debts and to look toward tomorrow,” she declaimed to her cards.
“Bread and salt have brought us together, and you are the mistress of those who know!”
Sounding straightforward at last, she replied, “Such things happen every day.”
“This is the time for but one request,” I said heatedly.
“Security,” she said quietly.
y “Security,” I echoed, feeling encouraged. “Whenever I consult a friend on the matter, they always point to just one man.”
Smiling, she replied, “He is the one who is always pointed to these days.”
“As he is known for his hatred of intermediaries, I have not found anyone to intercede for me,” I said with worry. “Yet they tell me that none of the great ever turn you aside.”
“This is true, if they have been my companions,” she admitted with pride.
Not knowing what to say, I simply sighed, when she said in a kindly tone, “You must find your own way.”
“You’re joking,” I said, a sarcastic laugh escaping my lips.
“If only he came one time to his queen, like the others,” she lamented. “Most of the patrons at the Moon Tavern are my minions — except for him.”
“If only this miracle would occur!” I said wistfully.
We stared at each other for quite a while, until her eyes widened with a dawning insight. She giggled, then asked me, “What do you think?”
I gazed at her questioningly.
“You will undertake a mission,” she declared.
“What mission?”
“That you bring him here to me.”
“But how?”
“He leaves the Moon Tavern at midnight,” she said. “Then he cuts through the Garden Passage to the square, where his car is waiting — the passage is the most fitting place for you to meet him.”
“But he doesn’t know me from Adam!”
“Use your manners as a man of good family to approach him,” she said, drowning in laughter, “and whisper to him, ‘Do you crave a tasty glass? A clean, well-hidden house?’”
I scowled as I turned my face away from her, seething with derision.
“My suggestion doesn’t please you?” she asked.
“Mock my predicament all you want!”
Earnestly she rejoined, “I’m quite serious, if security is truly what you seek.”