Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

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Bokhara

 

41 The Bokharian Dervish Hadji-Asvatz-Troov

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“Once while traveling over the continent Asia in that part of it called ‘Bokhara,’ I chanced to meet and get on friendly terms with a certain three-brained being belonging to the group inhabiting that part of the surface of your planet, who was by profession what they call there a ‘dervish’ and whose name was ‘Hadji-Zephir-Bogga-Eddin.’

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“And so, my boy, once when I was talking with this dervish Hadji-Zephir-Bogga-Eddin about the ancient Chinese science Shat-Chai-Mernis, he, in the course of conversation, proposed that I should go with him to another dervish, a friend of his, a great authority on this ancient Chinese science, to talk about it with him.

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“He told me that his friend resided in ‘Upper Bokhara,’ far away from everyone, and was there occupied with certain experiments concerning that same science.

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“Having no special business in that town where we then happened to be, and as his friend resided just among those mountains the nature of which I had long intended to see, I at once agreed and on the very next day we set off.

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“Finally, high up in the mountains of Upper Bokhara, we stopped at a small gorge.

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“This part of ‘Bokhara’ is called ‘Upper’ because it is very mountainous and much higher than that part of Bokhara which, to distinguish it, is called ‘Lower Bokhara.’

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Hadji-Asvatz-Troov continued:

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“‘At first we made our experiments with the aid of this vibrosho alone, but one day when my friend Kerbalai-Azis-Nuaran was in the Bokharan town of X on business, he happened to see a grand piano there at an auction sale of a number of things belonging to a Russian general who had left, and noticing by chance that its strings were made of just the metal needed for our experiments, he bought it and afterwards, of course with great difficulty, brought it up here into the mountains.

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“‘“There is only one way out for you—devote yourself to religion.”

“‘Having said this, he walked away uttering some prayer and left my house forever.

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“‘The next day I began to divide and distribute all my wealth among my relatives and the poor, and in two weeks I left my native country forever and came here to Bokhara.

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“‘Once here in Bokhara, I chose one of the numerous brotherhoods of dervishes and entered it, selecting just that brotherhood whose dervishes were known among the people for the severity of their mode of life.

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“Then he began to unroll these colored materials consisting of what is called ‘Bokharan-silk,’ color by color; and with each piece of material, all of one color, he covered by means of specially constructed rollers not only all the walls and the ceiling but even the floor of this section of the cave, owing to which it appeared that the whole interior was draped with the material of that given color. And each of the colored materials changed the vibration number of all the forms of ‘life.’

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“I stayed in the underground domain of this truly learned being four terrestrial days, after which, with the dervish Bogga-Eddin, I returned again to that Bokharan town from which we had come; and thus ended my first meeting with him.