Omar Khayyam - a life by Harold Lamb Read Free Book Online Page A

this exchange of compliments when they were seated on the guest carpet, with fruit and sherbet piled before them. For one thing, he could not check the flow of Tutush's voice; for another, he knew little about his visitor except that Tutush was the agent of the Minister, who in turn was Master Ali's patron. In Nisapur they said that he collected turquoises and delicate porcelain and old manuscripts. But he admitted to no title and no one seemed to remember where he lived.
    When they had discussed the progress of Master Ali's book for an hour, Tutush asked to see a graduate student named Omar Khayyam. Master Ali pricked up his ears, and watched the two men covertly after Omar had appeared from the garden and had seated himself on a corner of the rug with his arms folded politely in his sleeves.
    "In the last moon," observed Tutush casually, "we had tidings from the east. Romanus Diogenes, the Emperor of the Christians, was seized by his own people and blinded so savagely that he died of his hurt."
    Omar looked up with a frown. It reminded him of the battle and his milk-brother.
    "It is strange," added Tutush, glancing at him, "that this king was spared by our lord the Sultan—may he live forever—and then slain by his own people. Who could have foreseen that?" And he looked at Omar.
    "No one," observed Omar, since an answer seemed to be expected of him.
    After Omar had been dismissed from the presence of the elder men, Tutush sat in silence for the first time, playing with an ivory rosary at his throat as if musing upon something.
    "Believest thou," he asked idly, "in the science of prognostication? Is it possible, O Master, to foretell what is to be?"
    But Master Ali was not to be drawn into such an admission, least of all by the secret agent of his powerful patron.
    "By my faith, all is possible with Allah. As for me, my poor knowledge is devoted to the perfection of my book."
    Tutush murmured assent. "Suppose that a certain man should predict three things. Would it be possible—I seek the answer from thy wisdom—for all three to come to pass by accident?"
    This touched the old teacher's instinct. "Two such happenings might transpire by chance, but never three. Yet where would a soothsayer be found foolish enough to make a threefold prediction?"
    "Where? Hast thou not among thy disciples at least one who is skilled in casting horoscopes? This young student to whom I spoke just now?"
    "Omar?" Master Ali's beard quivered curiously, as if he had almost smiled. "That is the last thing I would expect him to do."
    "My soul! Then what does he do?"
    "He solves cubic equations as easily as thou, O my guest, dost slip those ivory beads upon the silk string."
    "Eh? Then he hath skill of a kind? What does he in his leisure?"
    "He reads all my books; he wanders along the desert's edge alone; he eats pomegranates and plays at backgammon, and says little enough. And," Master Ali added, not without malice, "he makes calculations that he hides in a chest."
    "Why should a young man walk about the desert? W'allah —our blood, O Mirror of Wisdom, is thin and cool after these many years, but the blood of a youngling is hot. Perhaps this student hath found him a comely maid in your wilderness."
    'There is no woman about, other than the laundry hags who are full of fleas and warts."
    Tutush grimaced. He seemed to be irresolute as a man who seeks a garden and finds himself in an empty courtyard, and still looks for the garden. The beads of the rosary clicked under his fingers and his brown eyes snapped. "Eh, eh. This is a strange student, with his skill and his silence. Perhaps his gift is of the Invisible—or, it may be, of a devil. Now it behooves One whom thou knowest to ascertain if any here makes secret practice of the arts of a devil. Wilt thou test this skill of the man of the Tentmakers to the utmost, and discover what he seeks to do with it? Write down his skill upon paper, seal it and put it in his hand to bring to me in one month,