Erik Destler

Throngs there certainly were, The little Tartar horse could barely make headway against the tide of traffic that was sweeping out of the fair. No Persian bazaar could compare with this chaos, crowds on foot, in carriages, and on horseback, droves of cattle, carts laden with jars and casks and boxes of every description. Rain teemed down steadily, and the horse was up to its fetlocks in a quagmire of mud that suggested such torrential downpours were a depressingly regular occurrence. But neither the rain nor the mud discouraged the remarkable number of devots. On virtually every street comer there was a sacred shrine or image, surrounded by hysterical men and women, all flinging themselves down in the mud before the lighted candles and crossing themselves with feverish urgency, as though their lives depended on the gestures.

This area was situated at the farthest westem extremity of the fair and was given over entirely to the pursuit of dubious pleasures. As darkness closed in, groups of drunken, riotous revelers lurched out of the eating houses and began to pick fights with each other on their way to the gambling dens and the whorehouses,

An hour later Nadir tumed a comer and came face-to-face with the very sight he was looking for- the Kirghiz tent that had been described in such painstaking detail by the Samarkand fur trader: Oval shaped, like an enormous beehive, the huge black shadow seemed stark and rather sinister amid its gaudy and disreputable surroundings. Nadir was surprised and unnerved to find that. Having struggled so far to come upon this moment, his first impulse should be to tum and run. As he stood in that half-lit street he was overwhelmed by a powerful presentiment of ill omen and tragedy, unlike anything Persian had ever experienced before. All his instincts wamed him against stepping into that domed tent which suddenly seemed so strangely and irresistibly threatening, legs were like lead as Nadir bade Darius remain where he was and hesitantly lifted the rush matting that served as a door.

It was like stepping into a mysterious womb. Everything before my eyes was red, the walls, the rich Persian carpet on the floor, the pennants suspended from the concave roof. Soft, subdued candlelight and a heady aroma of fragrant oils and incense made the atmosphere weigh down upon me like an enchanting cloud. A strange, heavy lethargy began to creep over Nadir, and he had to blink to clear head before he could focus on the man who reclined upon the floor cushions.

In stark contrast to the warm opulence of his surroundings, Erik was dressed from head to foot in black, and his face was entirely concealed behind a white mask. The effect suggested power, a cold and thrilling majesty; it was as though he had stumbled upon one of the ancient gods of mythology. Erik did not look up when Nadir entered, and for a long time he continued to tinker with an intricate trick casket, while Persian hovered by the doorway, troubled by a growing sense of invisibility.

Erik ignored him so completely that he began to be persuaded that Erik was quite unaware of his presence, and consequently Nadir allowed himself to stare at him with vulgar curiosity. He could not help noticing Erik's fingers, which were extraordinarily thin, scarcely more than bones. They were of positively inhuman length and they moved with a graceful skill and dexterity that was oddly fascinating. Mesmerized, Nadir stood and stared; and then suddenly he became aware that Erik was watching him stare. The scrutiny of those unblinking eyes behind the mask made him very nervous. There was something sinister, almost reptilian, in the stillness of that black-clad figure, something that reminded Nadir uncomfortably of a cobra poised to strike.

"The performance is over for tonight," Erik said in faultless Russian. "If you wish to see my skills you must come back tomorrow."

Even in that cold, clipped comment its astonishing beauty was quite unmistakable. Only those who heard him speak and sing will ever know just what a voice could be, for it was necessary to hear the extraordinary resonance and depth of timbre to truly understand the magnitude of his power.

"I heg your purdon for this intusion," Nadir said hustily, lapsing into Persian in his confusion, "Pleuse understand that I do not come here simply as amother credulous spectator, impertinent enough to expect a private performance.”

"You are certainly impertinent," Erik retoned coldly, in Nadir's native tongue. "State your business with me and be brief."

Erik spoke to with wit him with the arogance of a king, and involuntarily Nadir found myself slipping into the automatic deference that normally reserved for the shah.

"Sir, your fame has carried many miles, even farther than you may have imagined. I have come from Persin to extend to you the pensonal invitation of the shah."

Erik laughed softly, a sound which made all the hairs on the back of Nadir's hand stand on end.

"So you think I come and go on the whim of kings, like other men?" Erik challenged.

"No," Nadir said quietly, "I can see already that you are not like other men." Erik leaned back on the cushions, studying him with some curious emotion that I could not fathom.

"What is your position?" he demanded unexpectedly.

Nadir made him an inonic litle bow of courtesy, "I am the daroga of Mazanderan."

His mood had changed abruptly with Nadir's ignoble confession. Erik was still playing with him, as a cat plays with a mouse, but gently now, with sheathed claws.

"What does the shah offer in return for my services?" be inquired abruptly. Nadir took a gulp of the scakling tea for courage.

"Wealth...honor..." Erik made a gesture of impatience, as though these things were of no interest to him, and Nadir took a deep beeath as he baited final hook. "Power."

Erik placed the teapot back on the charcoal and swung around to look at him, "Power?" The resonance of his single word quivered in the air between us, and Nadir knew that at last he had struck the right chord.

"If you please the shah and the khanum, your word would be law."

"For a time."

"For a time," Nadir agreed, knowing it was useless to lie...

"Come tomorrow."

Erik snapped his fingers imitably. Retuming the following evening in good time to witness the performance, Nadir was truly staggered by the sights which met his eyes. Such ingenuity and hafling sleight of hand as virually defied belief I was dizzied by the assaut on his visual senand his brain reeled as all his concepts of gravity and time were tumed upside down and inside out in merciless sud laws which govern the universe were challenged within that tent. Some of the illusions were positively sapematural, and long before the show was at an end, Nadir was quietly convined that he stood in the presence of a genie, created from fire more than two thorusand years before Adam. The crowd in the tent became hysterical when the performance ended, surging forward, showering the floor with coins and clamoring for more marvels like greedy, wide-eyed children. But Erik tumed away, telling them, with a note of weariness in his voice, that they had seen all he was prepared to show today.

They refused to go. Closing in around him like a pack of hungry animals, they began to demand, with mounting frenzy, that Erik should take off his mask and sing for them.

"Show us your face!" they shouted "Show us your face, Erik, and let us hear the devil sing!"

Erik's thin hands clenched convulsively into fists of rage and Nadir felt a moment of stark fear that he would refuse; for if he did, Nadir expected to be trampled in the ugly mob violence that woold surely follow. Then, without waming, Erik's hands sprang open and stripped the mask away. The silence that descended was awesome; it was as though everyone in the tent had ceased to breathe. Nadir was standing very close to Erik, close enough to feel himself sway a little with shock when that homfic skull was revealed before his bulging eyes.

The fur trader from Samarkand had never spoken of this; perhaps he had been afraid that it would discredit atale already larger than life, for certainly no one who had not seen would ever have believed in such living horror. Nadir stood and stared like a mannerless peasant, aghast by an unparalleled, inhuman ugliness that was made somehow all the more terrible by the hatred that looked out of Erik's sunken eyes and the pain that twisted his grotesquely deformed lips, In that tense moment before Erik began to sing, Nadir sensed his deep and overwhelming loathing of the crovd.

Nothing Nadir had seen till now could compare with the wonderful alchemy that turned sound into liquid gold within his ears and washed him out of that dimly lit tent on a swift moving tide of ecstasy. For Erik sang of love, and with every nuance of his voice Nadir saw Rookheeya reaching out to him across the endless void which separated them.

Then silence fell once more and the vision was gone. When the song ended the crowd drifted from his tent in soundless wonder. There could not have been a single person present who was not severely shaken and deep in private thought. Erik had conjured every remembered sadness from our racial memories and distilled it to a peak of unbearable beauty. No human mind could have tolerated more pain that evening; he had been revenged upon us all. When the tent was empty, Nadir watched Erik replace the mask mechanically with hands that trembled with emotion, and wondered what terrible anguish of the past enabled him to express such an exquisite refinement of grief.

A remarkable physical change came over him as soon as Erik's hideous face was out of sight. His shoulders straightened and his entire frame once more exuded the mysterious strength and power that Nadir had sensed last night. A moment before Erik had seemed like an old man; now he might have shed thirty years in as many seconds, and Nadir was once more aware that Erik was in the prime of manhood, probably a few years younger than Nadir.

"You have come for your answer, I suppose," Erik said grimly, when Nadir continued to linger pointedly by the velvet-covered table.

"You will be greatly honored in Persia," Nadir reminded him. "Anything you desire will be yours."

"No one in this world can give me what I desire," he said shortly, "not even the shah of Persia."

"But... you will come with me?"

Erik raised his shoulders in an elegant, scornful shrug. "Apparently."