VII. UNCLE KÜHLEBORN. So, meditating luxu y, and leaving the bubbling waters, we stroll into the city, confessing with the Turkish poet, that green trees, and flowing waters, and beautiful faces combined, are an antidote against melancholy. Pausing at a small door, we enter the bath. For, as becomes a city so affluent in water, the baths of Damascus are the finest in the East, and so fantastic is the spectacle of their life, that you must needs fancy them temples of Undine's uncle Kühleborn. The lofty hall which we enter is lighted through a dome, and is paved with varied marbles. Three deep alcoves are raised above the court, in the sides of the hall, and in the centre of the pavement is a fountain, upon whose margin stand clusters of nargilehs, wreathed with their serpentine tubes. is spread for us in the most spacious alcove. holds a fine linen veil before us while we disrobe, and instantly an attendant girds us with linen over the shoulders and around the loins, and a flat turban A mat of the same is pressed upon our heads. Then carefully treading in clumsy wooden pattens, which slide upon the polished floor, we enter a small room. It is misty with steam, and warm, entirely bare, and of smooth marble walls and floor. We pass into another of the same kind, hotter and more misty, and a group of parboiled spectres regard us languidly as we advance. Then we emerge in a long oblong hall, reeking with moist heat, in which we gasp and stare at the figures-some steeped to the neck in a cauldron of steaming water, their shaven heads floating, like livid pipkins, upon the surface-some lying at full naked length upon the floor, in a torpor of sensual satisfaction-some sitting meekly upright upon little stools, and streaming with soap-suds, while nude official individuals with a linen fig-leaf, rush rapidly about with a black horse-hair mitten upon the right hand, making occasional sallies upon the spectres, and apparently flaying them with the rough hand of hair. These spectres are all shaven, and profoundly solemn. They undergo parboiling, boiling, soaping, and flaying, with the melancholy seriousness of western gentlemen dancing at a ball, heroically resigned to happiness. But we may not pause. Persuasive hands are urging us toward the cauldron. We are suddenly denuded, and hover affrighted on the very verge of the steaming abyss. But we will not be pipkins. We will not join that host of shaven Saracens, who look at us from the cauldron as lifelessly-for les extrèmes se touchent-as the victims in the ice glared upon Dante and his guide. We remember Hylas with an exquisite shudder. We gasp "la, la (no, no)," with an emphasis that makes us the focus of all the languid glances in the misty limbo. Then the persuasive hands urge us toward a door opening into a small marble chamber. A fountain gushes hot water at the side, a linen is suspended over the door, and we are removed from the view of the pipkins. The thick hot air is absorbed at every pore, and the senses are soothed as with opium fumes. We pant, resistless, sitting upon the floor, streaming with perspiration. Beyond, struggling, we see a hairy-handed spectre enter under the linen of the doorway. He rubs his finger upon our naked bodies, as a barber rubs the chin he is about shaving. The hairy-handed says, "Täib, täib (good, good)," and lays the Howadji flat upon his back. Sitting by his side, he dips the hair-glove into the running water, and rubs with a smooth, steady firmness the inside of the infidel arm. Not a spot escapes. You muse of almonds in the process of blanching, and are thus admitted to mysterious sympathies. You are no longer panting and oppressed. You respire heat and mist at every pore, and perceive yourself of the consistency of honey. The hairy-handed whispers coaxingly, as you sink more deeply in the sense of liquefaction, "Howadji, bucksheesh." You look at him with the languid solemnity of the pipkins in the cauldron, but are sure that you would only gurgle and bubble, should you attempt to speak. The hairy-handed turns you like a log, and like the statue of great Ramses at Memphis lying with its face in the mud, so lies the happy Howadji with his nose upon the wet marble floor, torpid with satisfaction, while his back is peeled in the same skillful manner. The ceremony of the glove is finished, and you lie a moment as if the vague, warm mist had penetrated your mind. mind. A stream of clear hot water is poured over you, and pleasure trickles through your very soul. Then lo! the hairy-handed, smiling upon you as you lie, and whispering, "Bucksheesh, Howadji," steps with his naked feet upon your spine, and stands on your body between your shoulders. But he has scarcely touched the back, than he slides off down the ribs, his large moist feet clinging to your back. So, sliding and slipping, and kneading your body, he advances toward the feet, accumulating in your misty mind new ideas of luxury, and revealing to your apprehension the significance of the Arabic word "kief," which implies a surfeit of sensual delight. He steps off and leaves you lying, and there you would willingly lie forever, but that he returns with a pan of soap and a mass of fibres of the palm-tree-the oriental sponge. The next moment you are smeared in suds, from the neck to the heels, and it is rubbed in with a vigor that makes you no longer Ramses in the mud of Memphis, but a Grecian wrestler, anointed and oiled with suppleness. He rolls you over, and your corporeal unctuation is completed. Then hairy-hand sits you upright upon the floor, like the mild-eyed lotus-eaters, who sit, sudded, upon stools in the vicinity of the pipkins, and suddenly the soap is planted in your hair, and you are strangling in the suds that stream over your face. You cannot speak or gasp; for the hairy-hand mercilessly rubs along your face up and down, as if you were merely Marsyas; and as you sit half-terrified, and with a ghostly reverie of anger at your heart— for positive emotions are long since melted-you |