Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange (Hardcover Classics) (11 page)

‘I was going round in circles and when I stopped for a rest I heard him say: “What’s wrong with that wretched mule? He’s not moving normally tonight, and we have a lot of grain to be milled, so when is it going to be finished?” He got up and went to the mill, where he poured grain in the hopper before coming to me with a whip with which he kept on striking my legs as I ran while shouting at me in the darkness as the grain was being ground. He kept pretending not to know me until it was almost dawn, and whenever I wanted to rest he would come up and strike me painfully, saying: “Miserable beast, what’s wrong with you tonight that you can’t go round?”

‘When dawn broke he went back up to his own quarters, and I stopped like a dead man, still fastened to the ropes and the wooden pole. The maid then came, exclaiming how sorry she was for what had happened to me. “Neither I nor my mistress could sleep last night because we were so worried about you,” she told me, but I couldn’t make any reply. So I left, half-dead with exhaustion and my beating, and when I got home I found that my teacher who had written the charm was there. He greeted me, blessed me and said: “I can read happiness, coquetry, kisses and embraces in your face.” I cursed him for a liar and a cuckold and told him that I had spent the night grinding grain in the place of a mule and being beaten until morning. “Tell me your story,” he said, and when I did he told me: “Your star does not accord with hers, but if you want I shall alter the charm.” I told him that there was another piece of his material in the house which he wanted me to tailor for him, and I then went to the shop, where I sat waiting for someone to bring me some work that might help me out of my difficulties.

‘While I was sitting there the maid came. “How are you, sir?” she asked. “My mistress sends you a special greeting as her heart is consumed by fire. But don’t be sad as the way is open for you.” I told her to go away
as all the grain must have been milled. “Glory to God,” she exclaimed, “it looks as though you suspected my mistress of being responsible for this!” “Leave me,” I told her, “for God may send me someone for whom I can do some work and so earn some spending money. I don’t want to speak to your mistress or to have her speak to me.”

‘The maid went off and told the lady what I had said and before I knew it she came out on the balcony with her hand on her cheek pretending to weep and saying: “Delight of my eyes, how are you?” I made no reply but when she came up swearing a great oath that she had had nothing to do with what happened to me, when I looked at her lovely face, I enjoyed this so much that I forgot the pain of my beating and accepted her excuse, telling myself: “No lie can come from a face as beautiful as this.” So we exchanged greetings and talked for a long time, after which I went on working for her without pay.

‘Some days later the maid came back and said: “My mistress greets you and says that my master intends to spend the night with a missing friend. She says that when she knows that he has got there, she will get you to come to her house and when the entrances are locked she will bring you out and you can enjoy the best of nights in exchange for your earlier sufferings, and you will receive in full all that you missed.”

‘In fact, her husband had said: “The hunchback has regretted his friendship with you,” to which she had replied: “Let me play one more trick on him that will make him notorious throughout the city without my knowing anything about it.” In the evening the maid came and brought me into the house and concealed me there until the entrances were locked and there were no passers-by. Then I was taken out, and when the lady saw me she welcomed me and exclaimed: “God knows what love I have for you in my heart. By God, I really long for you and tonight you will get all that you missed and be freed from grief.” She had food brought in, but I told her to give me a quick kiss as she was dearer to me than life itself. Before I had finished speaking out came her husband from one of the rooms. He caught hold of me and said: “You vicious fellow, is this how you reward me? I introduced you into my house and chose you over all the others and now you have come to betray and disgrace me. By God, I’m not going to let you go until I’ve taken you before the police chief.”

‘In the morning I was taken out and given a hundred lashes, after which I was paraded round the town on the back of a camel, while a man shouted out: “This is a criminal who assaults men’s wives.” I was
then driven out of the city and went off not knowing where to go until I found these fellow sufferers and joined them.’

The king laughed so heartily at this story that he almost fainted and he then placed the hunchback on one side. This is his tale.

The king then summoned the one-eyed man, and this was his tale. After calling down God’s blessing on the king he said: ‘The story that I have to tell is wonderful and strange. I was a butcher in my town selling meat and raising rams, which I fattened up before slaughtering them. My customers were important and wealthy men who vied with one another for my meat because of its excellence, so that I became very rich and acquired houses and estates. This went on for a time, but one day when I was in my shop selling meat an old man with a huge beard stopped and pushed money towards me, telling me to give him some of it. I was happy to do this and when I had given him good meat I looked at his coins and found that they were beautifully engraved and almost translucently white. I put them aside but when I opened their box, wanting to bring them out and use them to buy sheep, all that I found in it was bits of paper shaped to look like dirhams. I slapped my face and began to laugh until a crowd collected and I surprised them by telling them what had happened.

‘Then I went on with my business and slaughtered a large ram, which I hung up within my shop, while I took out slices of meat from it and fastened them by the shop door, saying to myself that I hoped that the old man would come. Shortly afterwards he did, and I took hold of him and called the people to come and listen to my story, describing him as a shameless rogue. When he heard this, the man said: “Which would you prefer, to let me go or to have me disgrace you?” “How could you do that, you rogue?” I asked, to which he replied: “You sell human flesh and say that it comes from a ram.” “That’s a lie, damn you,” I retorted, but he then claimed that hung up in the shop was a human corpse. “If what you say is true,” I told him, “the sultan can have my blood and my wealth.” He then called to the people that if they wanted to check that he was telling the truth they should go into the shop. They rushed in and found that the ram that I had slaughtered had turned into a man and was hanging there.

‘They shouted at me and, taking hold of me, they began to beat me and slap me, while the old man struck out my eye. Then they took the corpse to the chief of police, and the old man accused me of slaughtering people and passing off their flesh as mutton. “We have brought him to you, so punish him as God’s justice requires.” I tried to speak, but the police chief would not listen, and he immediately ordered that I be tied to the whipping post and given three hundred lashes. My flesh was lacerated by the whip, and I fainted. Then all that I owned was seized, and I spent a long time in prison. When I was released I was expelled from the city and wandered off until I came to a large city, where, as I was a skilful cobbler, I opened a shop and started working to earn a livelihood.

‘One day I went out on some errand and heard behind me the sound of horsemen and footmen, with others clearing the way for them. I went off the road and asked some people who these were. “The emir is going hunting,” they told me, and I started to look at how handsome and well dressed he was. Our eyes met, and he then looked down, saying: “I take refuge with God from the ill fortune of this day!” He turned his horse and rode back with all his men but not before he had given orders to one of his servants, who seized me, threw me down and gave me a hundred blows, almost killing me.

‘I didn’t know the reason for this, and when I had made my painful way back home I treated my injuries until I was able to sit up. Then I struggled step by small step to a friend of mine, who was one of the emir’s entourage. When he saw me he asked me what had happened, and I told him of my encounter with the emir. He laughed so heartily that he fell over backwards and I said furiously: “By God, you are laughing at what has caused me the greatest pain.” “Brother,” he said, “the emir cannot bear to look at a one-eyed man as he thinks that this is an evil omen, particularly if it is the right eye that has been lost, and he can only content himself by doing what he did.” I thought about how much I was earning through my work and I moved away to another part of the city where there was no one that I feared.

‘After a time I had put my affairs to rights and had made money. Then one day I heard the sound of hooves behind me and, after crying out in alarm, I looked for a hiding place. The horses had almost caught up with me, and I didn’t know what to do, but then I saw a closed door. I gave it a violent push, and it fell open, showing a long hall, which I entered to let the riders go by. Then, before I knew what was happening, two men jumped out and took hold of me. “Praise be to God Who has
put you in our power!” they exclaimed, adding: “for these last three nights you have allowed us no sleep or rest, enemy of God, and we have tasted the pains of death.” I asked them what this was all about, and they said: “You abuse us and try to kill the owner of the house, and isn’t it enough for you that you and your friends have reduced him to poverty? Show us the knife with which you have been threatening us every night.” They searched my waist and discovered a large knife that I had been carrying for fear of people I might meet. I cried out to God and told them that mine was a strange story, but when I started to tell it to them they would not listen but gave me a painful beating and tore my clothes. They could then see the scars of my earlier beating and exclaimed: “Enemy of God, these marks have been left by a whip, and you can only have been beaten because you are a habitual thief.”

‘They took me to the police chief, and I said to myself: “My sins have brought me down, and it is only the Almighty God Who can save me.” The police chief said: “Evil man, what has led you to enter people’s houses, steal their goods and threaten to kill them?” I implored him in God’s name not to act hastily but to listen to my story. “Are you going to listen to the tale of a thief who has reduced people to poverty and who bears the scars of his punishment on his back?” my captors said, and when the man saw the scars he said: “It must have been because of a great crime that this was done to you.” On his orders I was tied to the whipping post and given a hundred lashes. Then I was mounted on a camel with a proclamation being made: “This is a criminal who breaks into people’s houses.”

‘I was expelled from the city and wandered aimlessly until I met these people and joined them. If the king wants to strike me and give me a hundred lashes, let him do so, for this is what I get from kings.’ The king laughed and ordered him to be given a reward and a robe of honour.

The king then summoned the blind man and asked him what story he had to tell. The man said: ‘Your Majesty, you must know that one day I went out to beg as usual, and fate led me to a large house on whose door I knocked, hoping to speak to its owner and beg something from him. The owner said: “Who is at the door?” and when I didn’t answer I could hear him coming down the stairs and repeating the question in a loud voice. I
still said nothing and I heard him coming to the door, and when he asked who was there and I said nothing he opened the door and said: “What do you want?” I asked for some of the remains of the food that Almighty God had given him. “Blind man,” he said, and when I answered he told me to hold out my hand. I did this, thinking that he was going to put something into it, but instead he took it and brought me into the house.

‘He led me up a series of stairs to the top of the house, and I was sure that he was going to give me something, but when he stopped, he repeated: “What do you want, blind man?” “I want you to give me some food,” I told him, but all he said was: “May God make things easy for you.” “Why didn’t you say that when I was at the door?” I asked, to which he answered: “Why didn’t you answer the first time I asked who was there?” “What are you going to do now?” I said, at which he told me that he was not going to give me anything. “Take me down the stairs,” I said, and he merely said: “The way is in front of you.”

‘I started going down as best I could but when I was about twenty steps from the bottom my foot slipped and I fell on my face, breaking open my head. I left the house in a daze and met a companion of mine, who asked me what I had got that day. “Leave me,” I said, “for I met a swine who did me down today, making me climb up three storeys. I fell on the way down and am in great pain.”

‘I had some money of my own and I wanted to take some of it and spend it on myself. The damned fellow who owned the house was following me and listening to what I was saying to my companion without my knowing it, and when I got to my lodging he came in behind me. I waited for my companions, and when they had all come in I told them to shut and lock the door and then to check the rooms in case there were any strangers there. When my man heard this, he took hold of a rope that was hanging from the roof without our noticing. One of my companions checked the rooms while the others started striking the walls with their sticks, and they went on doing this without coming across anything.

‘When they then came up to me I told them that I needed a share of what we had got, and each of them brought out what he had in his pocket. When it was all in front of us we weighed it out and found that it came to ten thousand dirhams. We left this in a corner and, after taking what we needed, we scattered earth on what was left. We brought out something to eat, and when we had all gathered round I heard beside me the sound of a stranger chewing. “By God, there is a stranger here!”
I told the others, and I stretched out my hand and took hold of his. There followed a fight which lasted for some time as I held on to the stranger, but later he called out: “People, a thief has come in wanting to play a trick on us and steal our money.” A large crowd gathered and he came up and attached himself to us as we had done to him and accused us as we had accused him, pretending to be blind like us lest he be suspected.