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Read Ebook: Fin Tireur 1905 by Hichens Robert
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Ebook has 98 lines and 5807 words, and 2 pages
"They are often very handsome," I said.
He choked, ground his teeth on his cigar stump, let it drop, and stamped out the glowing end on the brick floor with his heel.
"She served them, m'sieu," he resumed, after clearing his throat. "But I was mostly there, and I don't see how--but women can always find the way. Well, one day she went to what they call a sand-diviner. She didn't pretend anything. She told me she wanted to go, and I was ready. I was always ready that she should have any little pleasure. I couldn't leave the caf?, so she went off alone to a room he had by the Garden of the Gazelles, at the end of the dancing-street."
"I know--over the place where they smoke the kief."
"She didn't answer, but went and sat down under the arbour, opposite to where they wash the clothes. I followed her, for she looked ill.
"'Did he read in the sand for you?' I said.
"'Yes,' she said; 'he did.'
"'What things did he read?'
"She turned, and looked right at me. 'That my fate lies in the sand,' she said--'and yours, and hers.'
"And she pointed at little Marie, who was playing with a yellow kid we had then just by the door.
"'What's that to be afraid of?' I asked her. 'Haven't we come to the desert to make our fortune, and isn't there sand in the desert?'
"'Not much by here,' she said.
"And that's true, m'sieu. It's hard ground, you know, at Beni-Mora."
"Yes," I said, offering him another cigar.
He refused it with a quick gesture.
"She never would say another word as to what the sand-diviner had told her; but she was never the same from that day. She was as uneasy as a lost bitch, m'sieu; and she made me uneasy too. Sometimes she wouldn't speak to our little one when the child ran to her, and sometimes she'd catch her up, and kiss her till the little one's cheek was as red as if you'd been striking it. And then one day, after dark, she went."
"Went!"
His face set rigidly.
"And her mother knew I should be all night at the Hammam," he said. "Fin Tireur--yes, it was coming back, and finding my little one left like that in such a place, made me earn the name."
He fell suddenly into a moody silence. I broke it by saying: "It was the sand-diviner?"
He looked at me sharply. "I don't know."
"You never found out?"
"At Beni-Mora the women go veiled," he said harshly.
Suddenly I realised the horror of the situation: the deserted husband living on with his child in the midst of the ordained and close secrecy of Beni-Mora, where many of the women never set foot out of doors, and those who do, unless they are the public dancers, are so heavily veiled that their features cannot be recognised.
"What did you do?" I asked.
"I searched, as far as one can search in an Arab town, and found out nothing. I wanted to tear the veil from every woman in the place; and then I was sent away from Beni-Mora."
"The French authorities, my own countrymen," he laughed bitterly. "To save me from getting myself murdered, m'sieu."
"You would have been."
He paused.
"And the sand-diviner?"
"I left him at Beni-Mora. He smiled, and said he knew no more than I; and perhaps he didn't. How was I to tell?"
"But your name of Fin Tireur?"
He looked across at me hard.
"Veiled women?" I repeated.
"When they got to the well they made the camels kneel for the women to get down; and one of the women, when she was down, caught sight of Marie standing there, with her little hand shading her eyes. That woman gave a great cry behind her veil. I heard it, m'sieu, as I stood by the window there, and I saw the woman run at the little one."
He got up from his seat slowly, and stood by the wooden shutter, against which the sand was driven by the wind.
"In a place like this, m'sieu, one keeps a revolver here."
He put his hand to a pocket at the back of his breeches, brought out a revolver, and pointed it at the shutter.
"When I heard the woman cry I took my revolver out. When I saw the woman run I fired, and the bullet struck the veil."
He put the revolver back into his pocket, and sat down again quietly.
"And that's why they call me Fin Tireur."
I said nothing, and sat staring at him.
"When the camels had been watered the caravan went on."
"The Ca?d had the body tied across a donkey--they told me."
"You didn't see?"
"No. I took the little one in. She was screaming, and I had to see to her. It was two days afterwards, when I was at the market, that a scorpion stung her. She was dead when I came back. Well, m'sieu, are you sorry you ate your supper?"
Before I could reply, the door opening into the courtyard gaped, and the driver entered, followed by a cloud of whirling sand grains.
He pulled off his coat, turned it upside down, and shook the sand out of the pockets, while Fin Tireur went over to the corner of the kitchen where the bottles stood in a row against the earthen wall.
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