Balthasar's Odyssey by Amin Maalouf Read Free Book Online Page B

shade. But they were moving fast, and flogging their beasts as if in a hurry to get away from us. When we reached the copse they’d already disappeared over the horizon.
    Hatem was the first to yell:
    â€œBrigands! Highwaymen!”
    A man was lying in the shade of a walnut tree. Naked, and showing no sign of life. We called out to him as soon as we saw him, but he didn’t stir. We could already see that his brow and beard were streaked with blood. But when Marta cried, “My God, he’s dead!” and let out a sob, he sat up, apparently reassured by hearing a woman’s voice, and hastily covered his nakedness with his hands. Until then, he told us, he’d been afraid his attackers had come back to finish him off.
    â€œThey’d laid a branch across the road, and I thought that might signal some danger further on, so I turned off along this path. But it was here that they were lying in wait. I was on my way back from Tripoli, where I’d been to buy cloth. I’m a tailor by trade. My name’s Abbas. They took all I had: two asses and their load, my money, my shoes, and my clothes! God curse them! May everything they stole from me stick in their throats like a fishbone!”
    I turned to Boumeh.
    â€œSo you thought that branch was a warning from Heaven, did you? Well, it was only a highwayman’s trick!”
    But he wouldn’t change his mind.
    â€œIf we hadn’t taken this path, God knows what would have become of this poor man! It was because they saw us coming that the robbers made off!”
    Hatem had just offered the victim one of my shirts, and he said as he put it on:
    â€œOnly Heaven could have sent you here to save me! You are decent people — I can tell by your faces. And only honest folk travel with women and children. Are these two fine young men your sons? May God watch over them!”
    He was talking to Marta, who was wiping his face with a moistened handkerchief.
    â€œHis nephews,” she answered after a slight hesitation and a quick apologetic glance in my direction.
    â€œGod bless you,” the man repeated. “God bless you all. I shan’t let you go on without offering each of you a suit of clothes. Don’t say no — it’s the least I can do. You saved my life! And you shall spend tonight at my house, and nowhere else!”
    We couldn’t refuse, especially as it was nightfall by the time we reached his village. We’d made a detour to take him home; after all he’d been through, we couldn’t let him travel on alone.
    He was very grateful, and despite the late hour insisted on giving a veritable feast in our honour. From every house in the village, people brought us the most delicious food, some with meat and some without. The tailor is loved and respected by everyone, and he described us — my nephews, my clerk, my “wife” and me — as his saviours, the noble instruments of Providence to whom he’d be beholden for the rest of his life.
    We could not have imagined a more congenial place to stay: it has made us forget the annoyances that beset the beginning of our journey, and smoothed away the tensions between me and my companions.
    When it was time to retire, our host swore an oath that my “wife” and I must sleep in his room, while he and his wife would spend the night in the main room with their son, my nephews, my clerk, and their elderly maidservant. It was too late, of course, for me to reveal that the person travelling with me was not my wife: I would have gone down in the estimation of all these folk who had just been singing my praises. No, I couldn’t do that. It was better to go on pretending until the morning.
    So the “widow” and I found ourselves together in the one room, with only a curtain separating us from the others, but very much alone, and for the whole night. By the light of the candle our host had left us, I could see the laughter in Marta’s