Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange (Hardcover Classics) (55 page)

When the prince heard this, his countenance changed and he said to himself: ‘We have escaped one form of death only to meet another and there is nothing we can do to help ourselves.’ He got up, and telling himself that death was inevitable, he tucked the bottom of his robe securely into his belt and looked over the side, intending to jump into the sea, swim to the idol and remove it from its place. The captain took hold of him, saying: ‘It was for your sake that we left our wives and our sons and do you now want to kill yourself? By God, that is not going to happen even if we ourselves all die! We shall sacrifice our lives for you.’

He went to the crew and asked: ‘Which of you is going to go to that mountain, climb up to the cave and smash that idol? He can have as much wealth from me as he wants.’ After he had encouraged them all with offers of money, one of them got up, jumped into the sea and swam off until he was near the side of the mountain. At first he could find nowhere to approach the cave but after going round very slowly he discovered a suitable place and climbed until he was close to it. Then suddenly, as he was on the final section, he fell head first into the sea and was killed. One man after another climbed after him until, when ten had been, no one else would go.

At this point the prince got up, tightened his belt, fastened his sword over his shoulder and then, without saying anything to the captain, he jumped into the sea and swam off. The captain shouted at him to come back but he paid no attention and climbed up until when he was close to the cave he saw unscalable rock which gleamed like a steel mirror and dazzled the eye with its brightness. He went back down to the shore and called to the captain to give him an axe or a hammer with which he could cut himself a stance, as no one could climb there thanks to the intensity of the light.

The captain gave him an axe and, taking this with him, he climbed to the smooth section in which he began to cut steps big enough for his feet, going on until he had reached the cave. What met his eyes was a remarkable sight, a wide cave buttressed with smooth stone, at whose upper end was a brass statue on a chair of Chinese steel, with sapphire eyes and a hand held up to face the sea. The prince made towards this and when he reached it he sat beneath its feet and dug away with his axe until, as had been destined, it collapsed on its face. In so doing it crushed the hand that held the talisman, which broke off and fell down into the sea.

As soon as it reached the water, the ship moved off like a lightning flash. The captain turned and said: ‘Wait for your master’s son,’ but, try as they would, the crew could not control it and it sailed off like a cloud. The prince looked after them and exclaimed: ‘They have left me and gone off, but, by God, this was not of their own choice, for it was only the statue that was holding back the ship.’ He then fell on his knees, saying: ‘There is no might and no power except with the Great God!’

He began to walk on the mountain and after a while he saw something dark in the distance and went on towards it. When he got near what he saw was a region full of trees and streams, with bulbuls and other birds. The trees were in leaf and the streams were fast flowing; the plants were scented with saffron and the soil with amber. He came down from the mountain and walked all that day until sunset, when he stayed where he was until dawn.

At daybreak he got up and walked on until he came to the first of these meadows, where he ate the fruit and drank from the water, looking around him with joy at what he could see. When evening came he slept in a tree, getting up and starting off again next morning. For three days he went on, walking through the thickets from dawn till dusk and then sleeping wherever he was. On the fourth day he said to himself: ‘How long am I going to be here? I must press on until I get to the end of this wood.’ After another full day’s worth of walking, he had again slept where he was until dawn. This time when he set off and it was nearly noon, he emerged from the trees and looked out over open ground, at the top end of which was something dark in the distance, obscured by smoke.

He hurried on towards it, telling himself that there might be something there that he could buy to eat as he was tired of eating plants, and he arrived at sunset. What he found was a city with high towers and
solid walls, teeming with inhabitants. He entered and had set off in search of a hostel when he came on an old man sitting on a bench. He went up to him and said: ‘Sir, I should like you to direct me to a lodging.’ ‘To hear is to obey,’ the man replied and he got to his feet, took the prince by the hand and led him to a house which he opened for him. When the prince went in he could see nothing there on which to sit and he asked the old man whether he had any mat. ‘No, master,’ said the man, at which the prince removed the ring from his finger and passed it to him, saying: ‘Keep this till tomorrow in pledge for a mat.’ At that the man spread out a mat for him and left him to pass the night there.

When dawn broke next day, the prince got up and called to the lodging keeper, telling him to go and sell his ring in the market. When the man got there he was told that this was a prince’s ring, worth a hundred dinars. He sold it, but only passed on a fraction of the money to the prince, and as the prince was of noble stock and of an honourable nature he said nothing to him about it. After a few days he had spent the money and nothing was left to him from the sale of the ring. He then started to unpick the braiding of his belt, one piece each day, giving it to the lodging keeper to sell. The man would spend the purchase money exactly as he wanted, while the prince would get no more than two
qirats
for each dinar. He knew this well enough, but was prevented by shame from saying anything.

This went on until there was no more of the belt left, after which he broke off his sword ring and sold that, followed by the sword strap. At last all he had left were the clothes he was wearing; he had no money left to spend while the lodging keeper had made a sizeable profit. When the prince had become penniless the man came to him and asked: ‘What spending money have you got for today?’ ‘I have nothing at all,’ the prince told him, but the man said: ‘Master, haven’t you heard what the poet says:

Young men strip naked and they then are clothed;

Only base-born strip naked with regret.

You are wearing a new satin gown that is worth a lot and if you sell it I can buy you another coarser one, and the same is true of your turban band, your chest protector and everything else you have on.’ ‘Do what you think will be best,’ the prince told him.

The man started to sell and spend, stealing half the price he got, until the prince was left with nothing at all. He stayed pounding the ground,
with his face covered with dust. His shirt had lost its warp and weft, the patches that had been used to widen it, its sleeves, its collar and its lower section. The turban band had no cushioning, centre or edges, and the trousers were fixed to the waistband.

Knowing that he had no money left to spend and nothing to sell he approached the lodging keeper who said to him: ‘Sir, you know that I run this lodging and I owe the sultan rent for it. Five days from tomorrow it will be a new month, and what are you going to give me?’ ‘By God, I have nothing at all left to give you,’ the prince told him and he replied: ‘You have five days left but after that you must leave me and go on your way.’ The prince silently cursed, saying: ‘He sold my clothes for whatever he wanted and I didn’t hold him to account, but every man acts according to his own background.’

He got up and left his lodging, choked with tears, and wandering distractedly, not knowing where he was going. He told himself: ‘If I sleep by a shop, it may be that ill luck will see that a hole is made in it and something is taken from it. Then people will say that this was taken by the stranger who is sleeping there.’ He walked a little further and said: ‘Shall I beg from the people? No, never!’ He then recited these lines based on those of ‘Ali son of Abi Talib, may God ennoble him:

To carry piles of rocks and harvest thorns without a scythe,

To plunge into the sea and weigh the sands,

And put cooked wheat back into the ear of grain,

To wear tight fetters and to gnaw leather,

And drive away the lions from their cubs,

All this is easier than to beg as a poor man.

By God, I shall never do that, even if I die miserably of hunger!’

He started to wander around until he came to an open mosque which he entered, thinking that he might pass the night there until morning, waiting for whatever God might decree. He had only been there for an hour when the muezzin came and asked who he was. ‘A poor stranger,’ the prince told him, ‘but the lord of the poor is Muhammad, may God bless him and give him peace.’ The muezzin refused to accept him and said: ‘Get up and leave the house of the Great and Glorious God. Don’t try to argue with me unless you can produce a tradition of the Prophet, and if you don’t go, I’ll break your head open with this wooden clog.’

The prince got up, his eyes brimming with tears, and said: ‘My Lord, You have driven me from my kingdom and brought this fate on me.
Praise be to You for Your decree.’ He walked on a little and came to the door of a furnace room, which he entered. A black man was sitting there stoking the furnace and the prince greeted him submissively and asked him whether he would allow him to spend the night there as he was a stranger. ‘Sit down,’ the man said, and when the prince had done this, he asked what his job was. ‘Tell me, are you a con man
,
a flayer of the dead or a crooner?’ ‘By God, I know nothing about these things,’ the prince told him. ‘How do you get anything to eat, then?’ the furnace man asked, and the prince told him that he had eaten nothing for two days. ‘And what are you going to eat tomorrow?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘What about working with me?’ ‘What would I have to do?’ ‘Fetch dry dung, wipe the sweat away from me, rake out the ashes, stir up the dung and buy us something from the market.’

The prince agreed to this and after passing the night there he started on his work, fetching the dung and removing the ashes. This went on for a whole year after which the furnace man said to him: ‘What a dull fellow you are! After a year you still are no good at all with furnaces.’ ‘What do you want, sir?’ the prince asked and the man told him: ‘The brother of the senior con man has invited me to one of their feasts and I would not want to refuse, lest they accuse me of haughtiness and say: “He couldn’t bring himself to come to our feast.” ’ The prince told him to go and promised to look after the furnace for him. The man showed him what to do and went off, leaving him.

He sat stoking the furnace from dawn to dusk and on into the first third of the night. Just then he heard a loud commotion and there were four men with drawn swords standing behind him. One of them was about to strike off his head when another shouted: ‘Don’t kill him.’ One of them then took the startled prince out of the furnace room while the other three threw on the fire something that looked like a chest made of willow. ‘Are you the furnace man?’ they asked the prince. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I am his servant.’ ‘Well, tonight your blood has been spared,’ they said, ‘but keep to what you have and don’t quit. Stick to working with your furnace, for we know you but you don’t know us.’ After promising to give him some money next day they left him and went away.

The prince’s heart was fluttering in fear at what he had seen but as he sat stoking, with his eyes on the furnace, he could see that the flames had no effect on the chest that had been thrown into it but merely encircled it. This was in spite of the fact that, had a mountain been put in there, it would have been dissolved. He got up and looked outside the
furnace to right and left but there was no one to be seen. He went to the rake that he used for the ashes and putting it into the furnace he drew the chest out of the fire, looking as though it had never been in the flames at all.

He found it shut but opened it up to find clothes such as had never been seen, woven with gold and dazzling the furnace with their jewels. When he unwrapped them he discovered a most beautiful, shapely and deep-bosomed girl, straight as a spear, with a forehead bright as dawn, oval cheeks, dark eyes and heavy buttocks. Praise be to God Who created her from the vile drop, as the poet has said:

Created as she would have wished herself,

Well formed in beauty’s mould,

Neither too tall nor yet too short.

She was drugged and unconscious and the prince said to himself: ‘If I take the clothes and hide them, when she recovers I can say that the people who brought her here removed them.’ He then took them, together with the ornaments and robes that she was wearing and dug a hole for them at the side of the furnace, before going back to his place and starting to stoke.

Not long afterwards, the girl came to her senses and called out the names of her servants, leaving the prince to think that she must be mad or deranged. He asked her what had happened, at which she opened her eyes and found herself in the furnace room. ‘What is this?’ she asked the prince. ‘What brought me here and where are my clothes?’ ‘I didn’t see any,’ he said and he went on to tell her the whole story from start to finish, how she had been thrown into the fire and not burned and how he had pulled her out and lifted her up. ‘That is true,’ she acknowledged and she got to her feet. This was in the last third of the night and the girl was the queen of the city.

Next morning she told one of her servants to take one of the duty mules and go to such-and-such a furnace, taking the most splendid set of clothes from the store, and to bring back the furnace-man with all speed. The servant went to the furnace where the black furnace-man had returned and the prince had gone off on some errand. When the queen’s servant came in he said: ‘Sir, this is no proper place for you; you should not be doing this, so get up.’ The furnace-man was startled and said: ‘I’m not the man,’ but the servant repeated ‘get up,’ and went out with him to where the mule was waiting. There was a robe of honour
and other clothes and when the man had been dressed in these and mounted on the mule, the servant took him to the queen’s palace and after asking permission he brought him to the queen.