Page:Oriental Stories v01 n01 (1930-10).djvu/92

 Now, Kairouan is two cities. The first is the enigmatic Arab stronghold peopled with strange beings and mystery and age-old dirt. Seven pilgrimages here equal one trip to Mecca itself; and even as in Mecca the citizens have their own harsh laws and their own discrimination in enforcing them.

The second city is not so much a city as it is a tenuous human stream of travelers come with guide-book and camera to glimpse the land which they have formerly known only in geographies and company pamphlets. This second, smaller city is as decorous and rigidly policed as any metropolis on the Continent; and a man may no more go unpunished here than he could in Paris or London.

Weiss did not realize this. He trailed gingerly along behind the guide, noted the dark brown eyes and light gray eyes that stared at the party with indolent hatred, gazed fearfully into caverns of bazaars, saw murder written in the face of every inoffensive rug-vendor. And he glanced again at Danchcrman's wife.

As they went, the guide told stories of violent deeds done in the secretive-looking buildings that lined the alleylike streets. Achmed spoke English with an Oxford accent, and spent his time out of tourist season in Vienna; but now he was dressed in burnoose and fez, and inspired repressed horror in the lady tourists when he came too close to them. And Weiss' sheltered nerves quivered and his delicate, musician's fingers tingled to their tips.

In the market-place, where the wares of the meat stalls hang flyblown and glistening in the African sun, a crowd was collected. Snatches of one-sided conversation floated over the circle of heads, as though someone were talking to himself in the coughing, explosive manner of the Arabic language. This was succeeded now and again by a thin wailing of some musical instrument and the beat of a drum.

The guide led the way to the crowd and pushed aside a segment of the human circle until his tourist flock could see into the ring.

The magnet of attraction was a snake-charmer. His thin, dirt-crusted arms darted out toward and away from several sluggish, fat cobras. He talked to them, crooned to them, danced around them in time to the drum. He lifted them and dragged them in the dust, rebuking and laughing as though addressing human things. And the cobras swayed lazily and turned their hooded necks to face him always as he moved about them.

Weiss stared, hypnotized. The muscles of his soft body crawled, and he felt as though someone had emptied his white skin and poured it full of ice water. He had never seen a snake before, not even in the zoo of his habitual city. The supple, dirt-colored things were horrible to him—horrible!

When the snake-charmer's bare hand touched the repulsive flesh, his own hand ached from the vicarious contact. As the performer clutched one of the wriggling things just under the head, Weiss could feel fire running through his body in anticipation of the poison fangs that might be sunk next instant into the charmer's arm. Once when the largest cobra shook off its drugged coma for an instant and made a lightning dart at the figure that danced about it, Weiss too drew back as though his own body had been threatened. And as he bumped hysterically against the big man beside him—a cattleman on a vacation—the big man smiled with tolerant disdain.

But the musician's newly discovered fear of snakes didn't numb his mind to the growing feeling of outlawry that was