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Do you wish to enrich the already overstocked British Museum at my expense? But I do not mind revealing to you that I am now really on my way to Mohamera." "H'm," let out Ganz slowly. "My dear fellow, haven't you heard that there is a war in Europe?" "I must confess, my good Ganz, that I have. But what has Europe to do with Mohamera?" "God knows," said Ganz.
"Tell me: Why shouldn't you take me down, ahead of my tub? Eh? Or to Sablah, if Mohamera is too far? It would not delay you so much, after all. You can tell them any story you like at Sheleilieh. Otherwise I am sure we can make a satisfactory arrangement." He put his hand suggestively into his pocket. Gaston considered it between sips.
"It is not Rome that burns! And I notice, Mr. Ganz, that you seem to be of a forgetful as well as of an inquiring disposition. I would have been in Mohamera long ago if it had not been for your son of Papa, with his interest in unspoiled towns. I will thank you to issue no more letters to the Father of Swords without remembering me.
"What is my barge to you, dear Gaston? Besides, it is no longer mine. It now belongs to the Sheikh of Mohamera with whatever objects of virtue it still contains. He has long teased me for it. And none of them can read the note they are carrying to him! Didn't I tell you I was going to give them a little surprise? Well, there it is. I am not a man, you see, to be tied to objects of virtue.
"And I suppose you will end by getting a million, eh?" "No such luck! But I'm getting a piano. Did I tell you? A Blüthner. It's already on the way up from Mohamera." "A Blüthner! In Shuster! God in heaven! Why did you wait until I had gone?" "Well, aren't you still here?" The fact of Magin's being still there, so unexpectedly, hung in his mind.
And Britannia is a fat old woman! Also a rich one, who doesn't put her hand into her pocket to please her neighbors. Besides, I have a little affair with the Sheikh of Mohamera objects of virtue, indigo, who knows what? As you know, I am a versatile man." And swinging around on his stool, Magin began to play again. "But even fat old women sometimes know how to bite," objected Ganz.
It made a strange picture in the moonlight, with its black-curved beak and its spectral crew. They shifted to the other rail as the motor-boat came about, watching silently. "To your oars!" shouted Magin at them. "Row, sons of burnt fathers! Will you have me wait a month for you at Mohamera?"
He looked at his glass, holding it up to the light. "I travel too slowly." Gaston smiled. "In Persia, who cares?" "Well, it happens that at this moment I do. I have affairs at Mohamera. And in this tub it will take me three days more at the best without considering that I shall have to wait till daylight to get through the rocks at Ahwaz." He lowered his glass and looked back at Gaston.
I imagined you at Mohamera, by this time, or even in the Gulf." This remark, it may not be irrelevant to say, was in German as spoken in the trim town of Zurich. "And so I should have been," replied the polyglot Magin in the same language, mounting the steps of the portico and shaking his friend's hand, "but for all sorts of things. If we ran aground once, we ran aground three thousand times.
Then among the Bakhtiaris there is an Ilkhani, at Mohamera there is the Sheikh of the Cha'b, and in the valleys of Pusht-i-Kuh none is above the Father of Swords. I do not forget, either, the Emirs of Mecca and Afghanistan, or the Sultan in Stambul. And among them what Firengi shall say who is the greatest? And so it is in Firengistan.
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