The Thief of Bagdad/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
Ahmed, too, was traveling swiftly; traveling East, always East, toward the rising sun of the world, the rising sun of his soul. The end of the fifth moon, he said to himself, and his goal was not yet in sight. His feet were stepping down the hard, long road. His soul fol lowed where his feet led. Deep streams of longing swept over him as with the force of a great wind. A journey of the body, this; but also a journey of the spirit. Adventures of the body; but also high, clanking adventures of the spirit.
Farther and farther, each day, he drew away from the earth as he had known it heretofore; from life as he had lived it heretofore. Deeper and deeper he advanced into a gigantic, cosmic fairyland of which, gradually, he was beginning to feel the inner meaning of its symbolical expression and lessons and secrets. And yet, leaving behind him all formerly known and realized experiences, entering upon this vast and unknown realm of the spirit, he was conscious of a greater, subtler energy than he had ever known before; was commencing to see himself whole, measured against a more spacious scale of time—a scale of time where a month might be a fleeting, unimportant second, and a thousand years pass into the shadow like a single day.
Yet, straight through, the thought of Zobeid never left him. It was in his brain like a strange, wild ecstasy that suffused him utterly—like the sweet and facile running of a brook over a mountainside.
But—came the doubt—would he ever reach back to her?
Five months were already gone, never to be regained, and he was beginning to be afraid of Fate, to doubt the outcome; was longing for resignation.
Resignation to Fate!
And he remembered what the tree in the Enchanted Garden had told him: that he would have to consult the Old Man of the Midnight Sea—the Sea of Resignation to Fate.
So he traveled on.
The valley below him was filled with mist. Above the mist, the sky vaulted tight and steel-blue, clear but for a cloud bank of a sickly, olive-green color that stretched across from North to South; stretched there like a solid obstacle, daring Ahmed to hurdle across and into the unknown. He half turned, looking over his shoulder. There, in back of him, the mountains rose and surged superbly. They sang there during the day, and at night whispered the praises of Allah to the hiving, green stars. On the other side of these mountains was life as he had lived it. He was going away from it now, into the unknown, the valley that, suffused with the sun’s red and gold flames, turned radiant through its mist of running tints.
Something down there in that misty valley urged him on; it caught at his soul with a deep and puissant suction. He hurried—hurried toward the fringe of ultimate vision and understanding.
Gradually, as he descended the valley, the mist lifted. It vanished. He crossed a rhododendron forest, purple with clustering blossoms. The sun rays trembled in the leaves like wavering music in a wind of night. Very suddenly, as he turned the corner of a gigantic rock, he saw the valley cleft in two by a shimmering surface: a great lake offering its steaming expanse to the fiery face of the sun. There stretched miles upon miles of flat, monotonous beach with an occasional, grey, dry bush, like a Chinese water-color, silhouetting the far verge above the yellow surf. Farther to the West was a league-long tongue of sand whence slender, tufted jets of palms etched the vacant, azure spaces. There was not a sign of life; not even a zumming of sun-drunk insects, nor a circling and winging of birds; only, a few feet from shore, a very old, white-bearded man was rocking in a frail boat, rowing aimlessly with a single, oval-bladed oar, hardly moving.
Lonely it seemed; terribly lonely; just as if the world had come to an end here, and there was no beyond, no future. The loneliness invaded Ahmed’s soul. He needed the consolation, the reassurance of the human voice. So he called out to the old man in the boat:
“Hey, there! Hey, there!”
No answer; and Ahmed raised his voice a shrill octave:
“Hey, there! Say something, will you? Hey, there—you in the boat—old white-beard! Be you Moslem or unbeliever, man or ghost?”
Still the man remained silent, kept on aimlessly rowing. And Ahmed, prey to the huge loneliness, sat down near the shore, tired in body and soul. The sky above him blushed rose, trembled, flamed, sank to the booming of oncoming evening. A stray wind stirred and fluttered the watery vapors that sheeted the surface of the lake.
“Oh, Allah!” prayed Ahmed. “Teach me resignation to Fate—Fate which is the breath of Thy Divine Will!”
Sleep overcame him.
When he awakened, it was night; night, complete, swathing, pitch-black, with only a single elfin wedge of moonlight that outlined sharply the old man who was still aimlessly rowing his frail boat—seemed not to have moved as much as an inch. Then, all at once, the conviction came to Ahmed that this was the Old Man of the Midnight Sea, and that this lake was none other than the Sea of Resignation to Fate. He rose. Again, cupping his mouth with his hands, he called out to the old man, this time with a peremptory spice in his voice of challenge and impatience:
“Are you the Old Man of the Midnight Sea?”
Slowly the man in the boat turned his head.
“You have guessed it!” the laconic, slightly ironic reply drifted across the water.
“Come over here to me!” cried Ahmed.
“Why should I?”
“Because I need you.”
“Many need me. All need me. Only four, since the beginning of Allah’s creation, were those who did not need me. One was Moses—on Him peace! The second was the Lord Buddha—on Him peace! The third was Jesus—on Him peace! And the fourth was the Prophet Mohammed—on Him peace!”—and the Old Man turned his back on Ahmed and attended once more to his aimless rowing.
“But”—cried Ahmed, more loudly—“I cannot do without you! I am a poor, human soul in trouble!”
“Why did you not say so the first time?” said the old man, rather ill-naturedly. “I am coming.” The boat moved, quickly made shore. “Come aboard, Thief of Bagdad!” he invited.
“Oh” asked Ahmed, surprised, as he stepped over the gunwale. “You know me?”
“Of course I do. I know everybody. Am I not Kismet—Fate itself? Look out!”—as Ahmed shifted in his seat. “Have a care! Do not rock the boat! That has always been the chief trouble with you”—he grumbled—“all your life! You are forever rocking the boat. No, no!” as Ahmed moved again—“do keep quiet! I am having a hard enough time as it is, trying to hold this boat steady, with all those uncounted millions of foolish, querulous, pulling, whining mortals always challenging Fate and holding back my boat with their eternal, silly complaints! All right”—as Ahmed sat still—“and now tell me: What exactly do you want?”
“I want the magic silver chest.”
“Help yourself to it. I am not keeping you from getting it, am I?”
“Well—but where is it?”
The Old Man of the Midnight Sea pointed at the black, coiling, swirling waters. “Down there!” he said.
Ahmed leaned over the side of the boat and looked.
“I cannot see a thing,” he replied.
“Naturally not. The box is a hundred fathoms deep—at the very bottom of the lake.”
“Then—how can I get it?”
“You will have to dive for it. You will have to jump into the Sea of Resignation to Fate.”
Ahmed gave a little involuntary shudder; and the Old Man of the Midnight Sea took compassion on him.
“Thief of Bagdad,” he said, “be not afraid. Everything, sooner or later, must go down into the waters of this lake. All men and women and children—even the unborn children. The moon goes down there every morning when it is waning, and the sun every night when it has set on earth. At the bottom of the lake you will find a cave—a cave made of the shimmering, opal tears of man’s grief, with windows made of the milk-white crystals and bright-green emeralds of man’s laughter, and a gleaming red door, like an immense ruby, made of the heart’s blood of all those who have loved and who have suffered and sacrificed greatly for the sake of their love. If your own love for Zobeid be great enough, your resignation to God’s will sincere enough, you will find this door. You will open it. And, beyond the threshold, you will see the magic silver box.”
“What does the box contain?” demanded Ahmed.
“A very precious treasure. The most precious treasure in the world. Some men call it happiness. But emperors, fools, and wise men call it honor. It is the same thing. By the way,” he added as Ahmed stood up, about to dive into the lake—“the magic box is wrapped in the Cloak of Invisibility. If I were you I would bring the cloak along, too. It will come in handy in your future adventures.”
“How do you know?” asked Ahmed.
“Naturally I know, O fool!” chuckled the old man. “Did I not tell you that I am Kismet itself?”
“I beg your pardon,” Ahmed murmured, crestfallen but polite; and, the next second, he curved into the water in an audacious leap.
A splash—circles widening, breaking, dissolving—smoothness and indifference again where the waters closed over him—and down there, as he bored his way head foremost through the hundred fathoms, a myriad flecks of glittering gold.
He found the cave without much trouble. It shone like an immense jewel, opal and milk-white and emerald-green and ruby-red. He walked up to the door that was made of the heart’s blood of lovers who had suffered and sacrificed greatly because of their love; and his own love was like a sharp scimitar to the clutch of his hand, his resignation to the sendings of Fate, growing, steadily growing, was like a stout buffalo-hide shield to his elbow.
He laughed fearlessly, carelessly, when from rocks and clumps of coral at the bottom of the lake rose slimy, huge octopi that writhed about him with countless, sucking, pulpy tentacles. The sword of his love cut their bloated bodies to pieces. The shield of his resignation guarded him against their attack. The strength of his love opened for him the blood-red door. The vision of his resignation pierced for him the cloak of invisibility in which the silver box was wrapped.
He stuffed the cloak—it was as light as thistledown—into his waist shawl—and picked up the magic box. It was small and square. It did not look much like anything precious: just a plain silver box, oxidized by the water, and neither carved nor ornamented.
He rose again through the hundred fathoms, swimming upward steadily, with a full, keen stroke of his powerful shoulders, until he reached the surface of the lake.
He looked about him.
The Old Man of the Midnight Sea had disappeared. So had the boat. It was day. The sun shimmered down with a thousand splintering, golden lances; and, as he swam ashore, he saw there a splendid, snow-white horse, a horse with two immense silver wings, that pawed the ground impatiently with dainty feet and neighed when it saw Ahmed.
Ahmed thought and acted at the same fraction of a second. He jumped on the horse’s back.
“Off with you!” he cried. “Carry me West—across the Enchanted Garden, the Valley of the Monsters, the Hill of Eternal Fire, and the Valley of the Seven Temptations!”
And the horse spread its silver wings and rose through the air—and we may mention here that the Arab chronicle from which this tale is taken refers to this horse as “the Winged Horse of Imagination.”
“For,” says this chronicle, “what is love if not imagination? Do we not always imagine the loved one’s body and soul to be the most beautiful on earth? Such, doubtless, were Ahmed’s thoughts about Zobeid. Nor was he the only one. By the teeth of the Prophet—on Him the salute!—I myself, the scribe of this tale, met in Samarkand a woman, seventy years old, stupid, and who looked exactly like a well-fed pig. Yet I met a man in Samarkand who swore upon the Koran that this woman was so beautiful that she caused the moon to blush with envy and jealousy. Love is indeed as blind as a puppy-dog!”
But, if love is as blind as a puppy-dog, how blind then is conceit? Conceit of three Princes of Asia, meeting at the little oasis of Terek-el-Bey, not far from Bagdad!
Of the three, the Persian’s conceit was the most childish. He waddled about the oasis—as the Mongol Prince whispered to a confidential Manchu clerk of his retinue—“looking for all the world exactly like a cross-breed between a hog and a peahen, having inherited the former’s bloated, exaggerated, excessive, indecent paunch and the latter’s superb, if quaint, vanity.”
Indeed that morning, with the help of various servants, slaves, eunuchs, majordomos, coiffeurs, perfumers, dressers, barbers, masseurs, slipper-bearers, turban-twisters, valets, color experts, silk experts, velvet experts, skin experts, gland experts, manicurists, chiropodists, chiropractors, and jewelers, the obese little descendant of tough-thewed Iranian warriors had adorned himself as became a Prince and a bridegroom.
They had carefully shaved, painted, and powdered his cheeks and chin, except for cute little sidewhiskers that curled like question marks. They had trimmed, pointed, waxed, and scented his mustache. They had arched his eyebrows by plucking out the fine hairs around them with tweezers. They had dyed his hair a gorgeous indigo-blue, training two long, curly lovelocks to hang gracefully down either side of his face like a handsome frame to a handsome painting. They had enlarged the pupils of his eyes by using an infusion of belladonna. They had heightened the color of his lips with the help of betel-nut juice. They had whitened his plump neck by a mysterious Egyptian cosmetic worth its weight in gold. They had reddened the tips of his ears by squeezing them. They had caused his teeth to shine by rubbing copper powder into the roots. They had pointed and gilt his finger-nails and toe-nails. They had stained the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet a delightful and delicate rose with Turkish henna. They had spent seven hours in twisting about his bullet shaped head a silken turban, blending peach-red with apricot-yellow, sky-blue with sea-green, the whole adorned with a cunning design of bleeding, interlacing lovers’ hearts. They had robed his stout body with simple, almost severe magnificence, in a robe of cloth-of-gold embroidered all over with white and yellow diamonds and opening over another robe of the same chaste magnificence, made of cloth-of-silver striped with purple and rose-madder and embroidered over the heart with a design of uncut emeralds that spelled out: “I love thee, Zobeid!” in both the Persian and the Arabic language. His jewels—finger-rings and toe-rings and ear-rings, pendants and necklaces and bracelets and turban aigrettes—were the pick of his treasury; and having never used a weapon in all his life except knife and fork, perhaps occasionally a toothpick, he had hung about his substantial person a number of wicked-looking weapons.
For his chief barber had told him:
“O Great Shah-in-Shah! O Lion of Allah! It has been my experience in life—a life,” he had smirked, “not untrodden by narrow, dainty, scented feet of many women—that the ladies admire a warrior, a hero, a clanking, rattling, bullying, swaggering fighting man!”
He had added:
“Wah!” The magic, flying carpet? You will hardly need it. Your face and figure alone—without mentioning your soul—are the greatest, rarest gift in the world! Just look into the mirror and convince yourself!”
And the Persian had looked into the mirror—and had been convinced.
The Indian Prince’s conceit, while matching the other’s, was more simple, more stolid and hard. He was cousin to all the gods. In him Ganesha, the god of wisdom, was reincarnate, as was Shridat, the god of fortune, and Maya, the goddess of illusion.
Having been rather a gay blade during his bachelor years, fond of wine, woman, and song, he had given oath that morning that, as soon as he was married and returned from his honey moon trip, he would be a model husband and model Rajah.
“By Doorga, the Great Mother!” he had exclaimed. “By the Father of the Elephant’s Trunk! I give solemn oath that hereafter I shall turn over a new leaf! Every day of my life I shall perform the proper duties of a Rajah as ordered in the Vedas. I shall rise before daybreak and finish my ablutions! I shall worship the gods, and do obeisance to the Brahmins! I shall not permit my wife, the Princess Zobeid, to contradict me! I shall listen to her advice, and then I shall go and do the opposite! I shall judge my people according to the Shastras and the Laws of Manu, keeping in subjection lust, anger, folly, avarice, drunkenness, and pride! I shall not yield to my desire for dancing, singing, playing on musical instruments, gaming, and the chase! I shall refrain from sleep during daytime, from molesting men of worth and women of virtue and from useless traveling! I shall live such an exemplary life that future historians will refer to me as the Father of my country and the Grand Old Man of Hindustan! And in their books these historians shall devote a couple of pages, perhaps an appendix, to the sweetness and beauty of the Princess Zobeid, whom I graciously permitted to share my throne and my life! Ho, Doorga! Ho, Devi! Ho, Smashana Kali!”
But it was the Mongol Prince’s conceit which was most justified by fact.
For messengers, traveling post-haste from Bagdad, had brought him news that Fount-in-the-Forest had done her work well. She had succeeded in giving slow poison to her mistress. Even now the latter was on the threshold of death.
The greatest physicians, sorcerers, faith healers, apothecaries, and leeches of Bagdad, Damascus, Constantinople, and Cairo had been summoned to her bedside. Moses Maimonides, the eminent Jewish philosopher and savant, had made the long journey East from the Moorish University of Cordova, where he lectured, to add his skill and sagacity; from Wittelsbach, thanks to the good offices of the Emperor of Germany, had come the famous Doctor Johannes Erasmus von Thunichtsgut, whose culture was so colossal that, besides being the greatest German physician, he spoke seven dead languages and not a single living one; the Holy Father in Rome had despatched a saintly and sapient Franciscan monk, Padre Chrysostom, a wonderful exorcist who on three occasions had driven away the Devil by prayers and marvelous spells; and the Bourbons of France had sent M. le docteur Henri Toussaint Je-M’en-Moque, who hid his trenchant talents and penetrating perspicacity under mincing manners and a tremendous, white-powdered wig.
All these wise men had come, accompanied by hundreds of tutors, teachers, mathematicians, schoolmasters, preceptors, dry-nurses, mentors, docents, and assistants. They had brought immense quantities of drugs, pills, instruments, bandages, and scientific tomes. Arrived in Bagdad, they had examined Zobeid. Then, promptly, as is the habit of scientific gentlemen and mild, tolerant scholars the world over, they had disagreed with each other —some even with themselves—on every single, solitary point. They had argued and counter-argued, by inference and comparison, by revelation and tradition, by theories physical and metaphysical, analytical and synthetical, philosophical and biological, rational and inspirational. Some, being gnostics, had seen in every experiment a hundred things which they did not see. Others, being agnostics, had refused to see what they did see. They had wound up by calling each other bad names:
“Fool!”
“Liar!”
“Charlatan!”
“Unscientific jackass!”
“Medicaster!”
“Humbug!”
“Quacksalver!”
“Sophist!”
“Dunce!”
“Unprincipled scoundrel!”
The insults had been as thick as pea-soup.
The German doctor had pulled the Frenchman’s nose, and the latter had retaliated by drawing his rapier and painfully pinking the other in his generous stomach; and the Franciscan Padre had cursed Moses Maimonides by candle and book, while the Jew had repaid the compliment with black and cryptic curses from the Talmud and the Kabala.
All this had not been of the slightest help to the poor little Princess; and even now the people in the Caliph’s palace were making ready for the last solemn rites—with the slave women wailing and beating their breasts; the death gongs sobbing like lost souls astray on the outer rim of Creation and the reed pipes shrieking their shrill, dismal plaint; with white-robed, green-turbaned Moslem priests chanting the liturgy; and with the smoke from a hundred ceremonial fires mounting to the sky in thick streamers and hanging in ruddy, blood shot clouds above the palace and telling to all Arabistan that one of the dynasty of Bagdad was returning to Allah.
All this the Prince of the Mongols knew; and there was hidden laughter in the words with which he turned to the Prince of Persia:
“And so, Great Shah-in-Shah, you imagine that this flying rug of yours is the greatest rarity on earth?”
“Imagine? By Allah and by Allah—I know it!” replied the other. He asked his servants to spread out the carpet. “Look! Consider well! To travel through the air at one’s will! Ah—to travel—travel …” He was waxing lyrical, as fat men will at the slightest provo cation. “To travel! To see all the glorious, wondrous sights! Fragrant fields! Golden ribbons of rivers! Elegant pagodas! Mountains bee-black and lapis-blue! To travel—as I shall—side by side with the loved one, the darling, the apple of my eyes, my bride! Ah!”—addressing the Prince of India—“am I not right?”
“Quite right—in a way,” admitted the Indian, who, sure of his own success, could afford to be generous. “Traveling is a wonderful thing. My divine ancestors agree with you.” And, quoting from the words of Indra, the god of air:
“‘Indra is the friend of him who travels. Travel!
“‘Tor a traveler’s legs are like branches in flower, and he who travels grows like the tree and gathers his own fruit. All his wrongs vanish, destroyed by the exertion on the roadside. Travel!
“‘The fortune of a man who sits, sits also; it rises when he rises; it sleeps when he sleeps; it moves well when he moves. Travel!
“‘A man who sleeps is like the Iron Age. A man who awakes is like the Bronze Age. A man who rises is like the Silver Age. A man who travels is like the Golden Age. Travel!
“‘Look at the happiness of the sun who, traveling, never tires. Indra is the friend of him who travels. Travel!’”
“Yes,” continued the Indian. “To travel is delightful, and your flying rug is charming. Only”—he paused, smiled—“you were mistaken about your travel companion, your bride.”
“Mistaken?” echoed the Persian.
“Yes. For—I suppose—you referred to Zobeid?”
“Of course!”
“I am sorry,” went on the Prince of India. “But she cannot go with you!”
“And why not, pray?”
“Because she is going with me!”
“Oh,” demanded the Persian, sardonically, “is that so?”
“It is!” The Hindu held up the magic crystal. “For this—this globe which I hold in my hand—is the greatest rarity on earth! Here you can read and see whatever, wherever any thing is happening to anybody! A gift from Doorga herself—Doorga—that delightful, divine, six-armed relation of mine! Consider the marvel of it! A light from heaven! A fact of facile and fecund felicity! A thing of never-ending, ever-changing interest! A necessity for every married couple since, once and for all, it not only banishes every possibility of boredom, but permits the husband to see what his wife is doing when she is away—and vice versa!” He turned to the Mongol Prince. “Am I not right, O Great Dragon?”
The Mongol laughed disagreeably; replied as disagreeably:
“A wise Mandarin once remarked that to speak of honey will not make the mouth sweet. Personally I believe that you are both wrong. For I am sure that this little magic apple of mine will gain for me the hand of Zobeid if—ah—if she really means to keep her promise!”
“Eh?” came the Persian’s surprised exclamation.
“You see,” continued the Mongol, “during these last seven moons I have often wondered if Zobeid was simply playing with us, sending us on impossible errands, since, after all, she is a woman, thus perverse by instinct—or if she intended keeping her pledge!”
The Indian looked at the Persian, doubt sprouting in his brain as rice sprouts under the spring monsoon:
“Does she mean to keep her pledge? I wonder!”
“I wonder!” echoed the Persian.
“Let us find out!” suggested the Mongol.
“How?”
“By consulting the magic crystal!” replied the Mongol.
“Why not?” agreed the Prince of India.
“Why not indeed?” echoed he of Persia and of the paunch.