The Innocents Abroad. Марк Твен

suppose we really do not know what fear is. I inquired the name of the garrison of the fortress of Malabat, and they said it was Mehemet Ali Ben Sancom. I said it would be a good idea to get some more garrisons to help him; but they said no, he had nothing to do but hold the place, and he was competent to do that, had done it two years already. That was evidence which one could not well refute. There is nothing like reputation.

      Every now and then my glove purchase in Gibraltar last night intrudes itself upon me. Dan and the ship’s surgeon and I had been up to the great square, listening to the music of the fine military bands and contemplating English and Spanish female loveliness and fashion, and at nine o’clock were on our way to the theater, when we met the General, the Judge, the Commodore, the Colonel, and the Commissioner of the United States of America to Europe, Asia, and Africa, who had been to the Club House to register their several titles and impoverish the bill of fare; and they told us to go over to the little variety store near the Hall of Justice and buy some kid gloves. They said they were elegant and very moderate in price. It seemed a stylish thing to go to the theater in kid gloves, and we acted upon the hint. A very handsome young lady in the store offered me a pair of blue gloves. I did not want blue, but she said they would look very pretty on a hand like mine. The remark touched me tenderly. I glanced furtively at my hand, and somehow it did seem rather a comely member. I tried a glove on my left and blushed a little. Manifestly the size was too small for me. But I felt gratified when she said:

      “Oh, it is just right!” Yet I knew it was no such thing.

      I tugged at it diligently, but it was discouraging work. She said:

      “Ah! I see you are accustomed to wearing kid gloves – but some gentlemen are so awkward about putting them on.”

      It was the last compliment I had expected. I only understand putting on the buckskin article perfectly. I made another effort and tore the glove from the base of the thumb into the palm of the hand – and tried to hide the rent. She kept up her compliments, and I kept up my determination to deserve them or die:

      “Ah, you have had experience! [A rip down the back of the hand.] They are just right for you – your hand is very small – if they tear you need not pay for them. [A rent across the middle.] I can always tell when a gentleman understands putting on kid gloves. There is a grace about it that only comes with long practice.” The whole after-guard of the glove “fetched away,” as the sailors say, the fabric parted across the knuckles, and nothing was left but a melancholy ruin.

      I was too much flattered to make an exposure and throw the merchandise on the angel’s hands. I was hot, vexed, confused, but still happy; but I hated the other boys for taking such an absorbing interest in the proceedings. I wished they were in Jericho. I felt exquisitely mean when I said cheerfully:

      “This one does very well; it fits elegantly. I like a glove that fits. No, never mind, ma’am, never mind; I’ll put the other on in the street. It is warm here.”

      It was warm. It was the warmest place I ever was in. I paid the bill, and as I passed out with a fascinating bow I thought I detected a light in the woman’s eye that was gently ironical; and when I looked back from the street, and she was laughing all to herself about something or other, I said to myself with withering sarcasm, “Oh, certainly; you know how to put on kid gloves, don’t you? A self-complacent ass, ready to be flattered out of your senses by every petticoat that chooses to take the trouble to do it!”

      The silence of the boys annoyed me. Finally Dan said musingly:

      “Some gentlemen don’t know how to put on kid gloves at all, but some do.”

      And the doctor said (to the moon, I thought):

      “But it is always easy to tell when a gentleman is used to putting on kid gloves.”

      Dan soliloquized after a pause:

      “Ah, yes; there is a grace about it that only comes with long, very long practice.”

      “Yes, indeed, I’ve noticed that when a man hauls on a kid glove like he was dragging a cat out of an ash hole by the tail, he understands putting on kid gloves; he’s had ex – ”

      “Boys, enough of a thing’s enough! You think you are very smart, I suppose, but I don’t. And if you go and tell any of those old gossips in the ship about this thing, I’ll never forgive you for it; that’s all.”

      They let me alone then for the time being. We always let each other alone in time to prevent ill feeling from spoiling a joke. But they had bought gloves, too, as I did. We threw all the purchases away together this morning. They were coarse, unsubstantial, freckled all over with broad yellow splotches, and could neither stand wear nor public exhibition. We had entertained an angel unawares, but we did not take her in. She did that for us.

      Tangier! A tribe of stalwart Moors are wading into the sea to carry us ashore on their backs from the small boats.

      CHAPTER VIII

      This is royal! Let those who went up through Spain make the best of it – these dominions of the Emperor of Morocco suit our little party well enough. We have had enough of Spain at Gibraltar for the present. Tangier is the spot we have been longing for all the time. Elsewhere we have found foreign-looking things and foreign-looking people, but always with things and people intermixed that we were familiar with before, and so the novelty of the situation lost a deal of its force. We wanted something thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign – foreign from top to bottom – foreign from center to circumference – foreign inside and outside and all around – nothing anywhere about it to dilute its foreignness – nothing to remind us of any other people or any other land under the sun. And lo! In Tangier we have found it. Here is not the slightest thing that ever we have seen save in pictures – and we always mistrusted the pictures before. We cannot anymore. The pictures used to seem exaggerations – they seemed too weird and fanciful for reality. But behold, they were not wild enough – they were not fanciful enough – they have not told half the story. Tangier is a foreign land if ever there was one, and the true spirit of it can never be found in any book save The Arabian Nights. Here are no white men visible, yet swarms of humanity are all about us. Here is a packed and jammed city enclosed in a massive stone wall which is more than a thousand years old. All the houses nearly are one-and two-story, made of thick walls of stone, plastered outside, square as a dry-goods box, flat as a floor on top, no cornices, whitewashed all over – a crowded city of snowy tombs! And the doors are arched with the peculiar arch we see in Moorish pictures; the floors are laid in varicolored diamond flags; in tesselated, many-colored porcelain squares wrought in the furnaces of Fez; in red tiles and broad bricks that time cannot wear; there is no furniture in the rooms (of Jewish dwellings) save divans – what there is in Moorish ones no man may know; within their sacred walls no Christian dog can enter. And the streets are oriental – some of them three feet wide, some six, but only two that are over a dozen; a man can blockade the most of them by extending his body across them. Isn’t it an oriental picture?

      There are stalwart Bedouins of the desert here, and stately Moors proud of a history that goes back to the night of time; and Jews whose fathers fled hither centuries upon centuries ago; and swarthy Riffians from the mountains – born cut-throats – and original, genuine Negroes as black as Moses; and howling dervishes and a hundred breeds of Arabs – all sorts and descriptions of people that are foreign and curious to look upon.

      And their dresses are strange beyond all description. Here is a bronzed Moor in a prodigious white turban, curiously embroidered jacket, gold and crimson sash, of many folds, wrapped round and round his waist, trousers that only come a little below his knee and yet have twenty yards of stuff in them, ornamented scimitar, bare shins, stockingless feet, yellow slippers, and gun of preposterous length – a mere soldier! – I thought he was the Emperor at least. And here are aged Moors with flowing white beards and long white robes with vast cowls; and Bedouins with long, cowled, striped cloaks; and Negroes and Riffians with heads clean-shaven except a kinky scalp lock back of the ear or, rather, upon the after corner of the skull; and all sorts of barbarians in all sorts of weird costumes, and all more or less ragged. And here are Moorish women who are enveloped from head to foot in coarse white robes, and whose sex can only be determined by the fact that they only leave one eye visible and