The closing of my file
Next day who should come bouncing into my room but Pete? His sympathy and bonhomie cheered me up no end.
"How are you then?" he would ask. "There, there, everything will work out fine, just fine--you'll see. We were all so shocked to learn about your--er--accident..." Give him his due, Pete did a lot to help in practical ways. With his arrival everything somehow got cleared up. At the end of the week I was discharged.
Pete saw to the hospital bills. The police file was closed. According to their assessment, I had lost my bearings and had fallen into an acute anxiety state centering on the problems of time and money. That's why I discarded my wallet and watch before jumping into the river. One problem remained. If I had managed to swim back to the bank, why should I have fallen into a coma-state on dry land? They conceded that it was possible that "an unknown party," i.e. "the skeletal figure in a cleric's robes (here my state of mind would have to be taken account of) had rescued me before vanishing from the scene. He would have had his own reasons for not wanting to get involved. The whole way my case was treated struck me as odd, as though there something behind it I could not fathom. Even today, I am not sure which is the more impenetrable--the occult or bureaucracy.
Pete decided to have the bone-shaker scrapped on the spot. We flew back to Boston. I never asked who paid for the ticket I stayed with Pete and Hilda for a few days. I was given a terrific .send--off the day I flew back to London. No turbulence this time. Very smooth.
Seated next to me was an impeccably dressed gentleman of about fifty. His swarthy face sported a pert moustache that neatly bordered his upper lip like a line drawn in black ink. His English was too good to be that of a native speaker. He was, in fact, an Egyptian professor of English who had just completed a sabbatical tour in the United States. I engaged him in conversation by commenting that Robert Browning was one of my favorite poets. I had noticed that he had "The Pied Piper of Hamelin in front of him. Not only this: he was actually underlining parts of it in differ colors of ink. I made a mental note of those lines marked in red:
"What's dead can't come to life, I think"
"He never can cross that might top"
"And ere he blew three notes..."
It was good to find someone else shared my view that the poem had not received the serious attention it warranted. Even if it did not count as one of Browning's difficult works, it could still be read at more than one level of meaning. The professor explained that the origins of the legend went back to the age of the Plague and the Black Death. In the early Latin versions of the story, the hill to which the Pied Piper led the children was Mount Calvary.
Suddenly I thought of the Arabs who fell into a panic during the turbulence on the flight over. What was it they shouted? Something like Check Mate or Sheikh something. The professor was able to put me right.
With an uncanny smile he said: "I think you mean Sheikh Maut--the Lord of Death in Arabian folklore." As it happens I have a copy of a translation of a poem in Arabic referring to this figure. Yes, the original author is anonymous but we know who the translator was, an eccentric scholar and minor poet by the name of Dr. Percy Roderick Askew. Not much known outside the field, you know. Had rather an ambiguous standing in view of the undisclosed, some thought dubious nature of his sources. Wrote articles on Chatterton and Macpherson, the 'translator' of ancient texts in Gaelic. Here I have a spare copy." (see attachment).
Looking out of the window ,I surveyed the banks of cumulus below and imagined I could see in them sleeping giants or fairy castles in a far-off land beyond the reach of fear and death and war. Funny, only when we were preparing to land did I notice something on the middle finger of the professor's right hand. It was a gold ring carrying a large red stone. I had seen one very like it somewhere else not so long before.
FROM HAMELIN'S DESOLATION
Who is like the Pied Piper
In his coat of red and gold?
who is like the minstrel
that sings away our gnawing cares,
and drowns them in the rivers
that wash the green-blue sea?
Who is like the physician
healing of plagues in Egypt land?
Or who like the prophet
leading out his children bound?
Who is like the chastener
that humbles the proud and vain?
Who is like the victor
that 'can cross that mighty top'?
Who is like the player that breathed
sweetly as a bird of dawn
three notes upon his pipe?
Who is like the skull-capped dancer
Out-dancing the dancer Death?
Can we, feet-frozen, answer?
Who is like the Pied Piper
in his coat of red and gold,
whose eyes like salted flames
absorb green seas and golden shores,
who leads away his children
to a joyous, promised land,
who like the sun in red and gold
dies but to rise again?
Whither he passed we do not know,
nor guess his kith and kin?
He is like Melchizedek,
Musician, Priest and King,
He is the Lord of summer. of autumn, winter, sprlng.
Attachment 2. Dr. P.R. Askew's Translation of anonymous Arabic Poem.
What was that?
A cat’s shadow by moonlight?
Or what was that
Now scudding past my sight?
He who rides, who rides
At dead of night?
So told this tale a desert pilgrim to his son:
"That day the sun seemed from my brow
a camel's hair away. Below my feet
burning liquid gold. Upon a dune
a figure stood like none I ever saw.
But for Allah's mercy
I that day had died where on my knees
I fell.
Was this Sheikh Maut,
of whom once Abdul spake
in fearful tone.’ The night
Infant brother died, I saw
an angel's shape lowering over the cradle
where he lay and snatched
me thought his very breath away? '
And many more have told such tales.
Some say in black,
some say in white
some say in garbs of
gold an purple stripe
Sheikh Maut appears in palaces,
or where the beggar cries:’ For Allah,
and His mercy's sake a coin, a coin.'
I heard no voice save that
of sand and wind:
'Here all is one, the endless sea of land,
but not to mock, he preaches unto deaf and blind.
It is to teach the brotherhood of Man'"
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This is the final episode of THE STRANGE HISTORY OF DANIEL MORTIMER Julian Scutts (to be found by searching on major search engine such as GOOGLE or YAHOO, etc.
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