Arabian Nights

Then the Portress stood up and proceeded to remove the table service and the remnants of the banquet; and renewed the pastilles and cleared the middle of the saloon. Then she made the Kalandars sit upon a sofa at the side of the estrade, and seated the Caliph and Ja’afar and Masrur on the other side of the saloon; after which she called the Porter, and said, ‘How scant is thy courtesy! now thou art no stranger; nay, thou art one of the household.’ So he stood up and, tightening his waist-cloth, asked, ‘What would ye I do?’ and she answered, ‘Stand in this place.’ Then the Procuratrix rose and set in the midst of the saloon a low chair and, opening a closet, cried to the Porter, ‘Come help me.’ So he went to help her and saw two black bitches with chains round their necks; and she said to him, ‘Take hold of them;’ and he took them and led them into the middle of the saloon.

Then the lady of the house arose and tucked up her sleeves above her wrists and, seizing a scourge, said to the Porter, ‘Bring forward one of the bitches.’ He brought her forward, dragging her by the chain, while the bitch wept, and shook her head at the lady who, however, came down upon her with blows on the sconce; and the bitch howled and the lady ceased not beating her till her forearm failed her. Then, casting the scourge from her hand, she pressed the bitch to her bosom and, wiping away her tears with her hands, kissed her head.

Then said she to the Porter, ‘Take her away and bring the second;’ and, when he brought her, she did with her as she had done with the first. Now the heart of the Caliph was touched at these cruel doings; his chest straitened and he lost all patience in his desire to know why the two bitches were so beaten. He threw a wink at Ja’afar wishing him to ask, but the Minister turning towards him said by signs, ‘Be silent!’

Then quoth the Portress to the mistress of the house, ‘O my lady, arise and go to thy place that I in turn may do my devoir.’ She answered, ‘Even so’; and, taking her seat upon the couch of juniper-wood, pargeted with gold and silver, said to the Portress and Cateress, ‘Now do ye what ye have to do.’ Thereupon the Portress sat upon a low seat by the couch side; but the Procuratirx, entering a closet, brought out of it a bag of satin with green fringes and two tassels of gold. She stood up before the lady of the house and shaking the bag drew out from it a lute which she tuned by tightening its pegs; and when it was in perfect order, she began to sing these quatrains:

‘Ye are the wish, the aim of me

And when, O love, thy sight I see

The heavenly mansion openeth;

But Hell I see when lost thy sight

From thee comes madness; nor the less

Comes highest joy, comes ecstasy:

Nor in my love for thee I fear

Or shame and blame, or hate and spite

When Love was throned within my heart

I rent the veil of modesty;

And stints not Love to rend that veil

Garring disgrace on grace to alight;

The robe of sickness then I donned

But rent to rags was secrecy:

Wherefore my love and longing heart

Proclaim your high supremest might;

The tear-drop railing adown my cheek

Telleth my tale of ignomy:

And all the hid was seen by all

And all my riddle ree’d aright

Heal then my malady, for thou

Art malady and remedy!

But she whose cure is in thy hand

Shall ne’er be free of bane and blight;

Burn me those eyne that radiance rain

Slay me the swords of phantasy:

How many hath the sword of Love

Laid low, their high degree despite?

Yet will I never cease to pine

Nor to oblivion will I flee.

Love is my health, my faith, my joy

Public and private, wrong or right.

O happy eyes that sight thy charms

That gaze upon thee at their gree!

Yea, of my purest wish and will

The slave of Love I’ll aye be hight.’

When the damsel heard this elegy in quatrains she cried out ‘Alas! Alas!’ and rent her raiment, and fell to the ground fainting; and the Caliph saw scars of the palm-rod on her back and welts of the whip; and marvelled with exceeding wonder. Then the Portress arose and sprinkled water on her and brought her a fresh and very fine dress and put it on her. But when the company beheld these doings their minds were troubled, for they had no inkling of the case nor knew the story thereof; so the Caliph said to Ja’afar, ‘Disd’t thou not see the scars upon the damsel’s body? I cannot keep silence or be at rest till I learn the truth of her condition and the story of this other maiden and the secret of the two black bitches.’

But Ja’afar answered, ‘O our lord, they made it a condition with us that we speak not of what concerneth us not, lest we come to hear what pleaseth us not.’ Then said the Portress, ‘By Allah, O my sister, come to me and complete this service for me.’ Replied the Procuratrix, ‘With joy and goodly gree;’ so she took the lute; and leaned it against her breasts and swept the strings with her finger-tips, and began singing:

‘Give back mine eyes their sleep long ravished

And say me wither be my reason fled:

I learnt that lending to thy love a place

Sleep to mine eyelids mortal foe was made.

They said, “We held thee righteous, who waylaid

Thy soul” “Go ask his glorious eyes,” I said.

I pardon all my blood he pleased to spill

Owning his troubles drove him blood to shed.

On my mind’s mirror sun-like sheen he cast

Whose keen reflection fire in vitals bred:

Waters of Life let Allah waste at will

Suffice my wage those lips of dewy red:

An thou address my love thou’lt find a cause

For plaint and tears or ruth or lustihed.

In water pure his form shall greet your eyne

When fails the bowl nor need ye drink of wine.’

Then she quoted from the same ode:

‘I drank, but the draught of his glands, nor wine;

And his swaying gait swayed to sleep these eyne:

’Twas not grape-juice gript me but grasp of Past

’Twas not bowl o’erbowled me but gifts divine:

His coiling cur-lets my soul ennetted

And his cruel will all my wits outwitted.’

After a pause she resumed:

‘If we ’plain of absence what shall we say?

Or if pain afflict us where wend our way?

An hire a truckman to tell my tale

The lovers’ plaint is not told for pay:

If I put on patience, a lover’s life

After loss of love will not last a day:

Naught is left me now by regret, repine

And tears flooding cheeks for ever and aye:

O thou who the babes of these eyes hast fled

Thou art homed in heart that shall never stray:

Would heaven I wot hast thou kept our pact

Long as stream shall flow, to have firmest fay?

Or hast forgotten the weeping slave

Whom groans afflict and whom griefs waylay?

Ah, when severance ends and we side by side

Couch, I’ll blame thy rigours and chide thy pride.’

Now when the Portress heard her second ode she shrieked aloud and said, ‘By Allah! ’tis right good!’ and laying hands on her garments tore them, as she did the first time, and fell to the ground fainting. Thereupon the Procuratrix rose and brought her a second change of clothes after she had sprinkled water on her. She recovered and sat upright and said to her sister the Cateress,

‘Onwards, and help me in my duty, for there remains but this one song.’ So the Provisioneress again brought out the lute and began to sing these verses:

‘How long shall last, how long this rigour rife of woe

May not suffice thee all these tears thou seest flow?

Our parting thus with purpose fell thou dost prolong.

Is’t not enough to glad the heart of envious foe?

Were but this lying world once true to lover-heart

He had not watched the weary night in tears of woe:

Oh pity me whom overwhelmed thy cruel will

My lord, my king, ’tis time some ruth to me thou show:

To whom reveal my wrongs who murdered me?

Sad, who of broken troth the pangs must undergo!

Increase wild love for thee and phrenzy hour by hour

And days of exile minute by so long, so slow;

O Moslems, claim vendetta for this slave of Love

Whose sleep Love ever wastes, whose patience Love lays low:

Doth law of Love allow thee, O my wish! to lie

Lapt in another’s arms and unto me cry “Go!?”

Yet in thy presence, say, what joys shall I enjoy

When he I love but works my love to overthrow?’

When the Portress heard the third song she cried aloud; and, laying hands on her garments, rent them down to the very skirt and fell to the ground fainting a third time, again showing the scars of the scourge. Then said the three Kalandars ‘Would heaven we had never entered this house, but had rather nighted on the mounds and heaps outside the city! for verily our visit hath been troubled by sights which cut to the heart.’ The Caliph turned to them and asked, ‘Why so?’ and they made answer, ‘Our minds are sore troubled by this matter.’ Quoth the Caliph, ‘Are ye not of the household?’ and quoth they, ‘No; nor indeed did we ever set eyes on the place till within this hour.’

Hereat the Caliph marvelled and rejoined, ‘This man who sitteth by you, would he not know the secret of the matter?’ and so saying he winked and made signs at the Porter. So they questioned the man and he replied, ‘By the All-might of Allah, in love all are alike! I am the growth of Baghdad, yet never in my born days did I darken these doors till today and my companying with them was a curious matter.’ ‘By Allah,’ they rejoined, ‘we took thee for one of them and now we see thou art one like ourselves’ Then said the Caliph, ‘We be seven men, and they only three women without even a fourth to help them; so let us question them of their case; and, if they answer us not, fain we will be answered by force.’ All of them agreed to this except Ja’afar who said, ‘This is not my reckoning; let them be; for we are their guests and, as ye know, they made a compact and condition with us which we accepted and promised to keep: wherefore it is better that we be silent concerning this matter; and, as but little of the night remaineth, let each and every of us gang his own gait.’ Then he winked at the Caliph and whispered to him, ‘There is but one hour of darkness left and I can bring them before thee tomorrow, when thou canst freely question them all concerning their story.’ But the Caliph raised his head haughtily and cried out at him in wrath, saying, ‘I have no patience left for my longing to hear of them: let the Kalandars question them forthright.’ Quoth Ja’afar, ‘This is not my rede.’

Then words ran high and talk answered talk; and they disputed as to who should first put the question, but at last all fixed upon the Porter. And as the jangle increased the house-mistress could not but notice it and asked them, ‘O ye folk! on what matter are ye talking so loudly?’ Then the Porter stood up respectfully before her and said, ‘O my lady this company earnestly desire that thou acquaint them with the story of the two bitches and what maketh thee punish them so cruelly; and then thou fallest to weeping over them and kissing them; and lastly they want to hear the tale of thy sister and why she hath been bastinado’d with palm-sticks like a man. These are the questions they charge me to put, and peace be with thee.’

Thereupon quoth she who was the lady of the house to the guests, ‘Is this true that he saith on your part?’ and all replied, ‘Yes!’ save Ja’afar who kept silence. When she heard these words she cried, ‘By Allah, ye have wronged us, O our guests, with grievous wronging; for when you came before us we made compact and condition with you, that whoso should speak of what concerneth him not should hear what pleaseth him not. Sufficeth ye not that we took you into our house and fed you with our best food? But the fault is not so much yours as hers who let you in.’ Then she tucked up her sleeves from her wrists and struck the floor thrice with her hand crying, ‘Come ye quickly;’ and lo! a closet door opened and out of it came seven negro slaves with drawn swords in hand to whom she said, ‘Pinion me those praters’ elbows and bind them each to each.’

They did her bidding and asked her, ‘O veiled and virtuous! is it thy high command that we strike off their heads?’ but she answered, ‘Leave them awhile that I question them of their condition, before their necks feel the sword.’ ‘By Allah, O my lady!’ cried the Porter, ‘slay me not for another’s sin; all these men offended and deserve the penalty of crime save myself. Now by Allah, our night had been charming had we escaped the mortification of those monocular Kalandars whose entrance into a populous city would convert it into a howling wilderness.’ Then he repeated these verses:

‘How fair is ruth the strong man deigns not smother!

And fairest fair when shown to weakest brother.

By Love’s own holy tie between us twain,

Let one not suffer for the sin of other.’

When the Porter ended his verse the lady laughed.

1Mendicant Monks.

1Wine-drinking, at all times forbidden to Moslems, vitiates the Pilgrimage-rite.

CHAPTER 4 The Hunchback’s Tale

It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that there dwelt during times of yore, and years and ages long gone before, in a certain city of China, a Tailor who was an open-handed man that loved pleasuring and merry-making; and who was wont, he and his wife, to solace themselves from time to time with public diversions and amusements. One day they went out with the first of the light and were returning in the evening when they fell in with a Hunchback, whose semblance would draw a laugh from care and dispel the horrors of despair. So they went up to enjoy looking at him and invited him to go home with them and converse and carouse with them that night.

He consented and accompanied them afoot to their home; whereupon the Tailor fared forth to the bazar (night having just set in) and bought a fried fish and bread and lemons and dry sweetmeats for dessert; and set the victuals before the Hunchback and they ate. Presently the Tailor’s wife took a great fid of fish and gave it in a gobbet to the Gobbo, stopping his mouth with her hand and saying, ‘By Allah, thou must down it with a single gulp; and I will not give thee time to chew it.’ So he bolted it; but therein was a stiff bone which stuck in his gullet, and, his hour being come, he died.

Seeing this the Tailor cried aloud. ‘There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah! Alas, that this poor wretch should have died in so foolish fashion at our hands!’ and the woman rejoined, ‘Why this idle talk? Hast thou not heard his saying who said:

‘Why then waste I my time in grief, until

I find no friend to bear my weight of woe?

How sleep upon a fire that flames unquenches?

Upon the flames to rest were hard enow!’

Asked her husband, ‘And what shall I do with him?’ and she answered, ‘Rise and take him in thine arms and spread a silken kerchief over him; then I will fare forth, with thee following me, this very night and if thou meet anyone say: “This is my son, and his mother and I are carrying him to the doctor that he may look at him.”’ So he rose and taking the Hunchback in his arms bore him along the streets, preceded by his wife who kept crying, ‘O my son, Allah keep thee! what part paineth thee and where hath this small-pox attacked thee?’ So all who saw them said, ‘’Tis a child sick of small-pox.’ They went along asking for the physician’s house till folk directed them to that of a leech which was a Jew.

They knocked at the door, and there came down to them a black slave-girl who opened and, seeing a man bearing a babe, and a woman with him, said to them, ‘What is the matter?’ ‘We have a little one with us,’ answered the Tailor’s wife, ‘and we wish to show him to the physician: so take this quarter-dinar and give it to thy master and let him come down and see my son who is sore sick.’ The girl went up to tell her master, whereupon the Tailor’s wife walked into the vestibule and said to her husband, ‘Leave the Hunchback here and let us fly for our lives.’ So the Tailor carried the dead man to the top of the stairs and propped him upright against the wall and ran away, he and his wife. Meanwhile the girl went in to the Jew and said to him, ‘At the door are a man and a woman with a sick child and they have given me a quarter-dinar for thee, that thou mayest go down and look at the little one and prescribe for it.’

As soon as the Jew saw the quarter-dinar he rejoiced and rose quickly in his greed of gain and went forth hurriedly in the dark; but hardly had he made a step when he stumbled on the corpse and threw it over, when it rolled to the bottom of the staircase. So he cried out to the girl to hurry up with the light, and she brought it, whereupon he went down and examining the Hunchback found that he was stone dead. So he cried out, ‘O for Esdras! O for Moses! O for Aaron! O for Joshua, son of Nun! O the Ten Commandments! I have stumbled against the sick one and he hath fallen downstairs and he is dead! How shall I get this man I have killed out of my house? O by the hoofs of the ass of Esdras!’ Then he took up the body and, carrying it into the house, told his wife what had happened and she said to him, ‘Why dost thou sit still? If thou keep him here till daybreak we shall both lose our lives. Let us two carry him to the terrace-roof and throw him over into the house of our neighbour, the Moslem, for if he abide there a night the dogs will come down on him from the adjoining terraces and eat him up.’

Now his neighbour was a Reeve, the controller of the Sultan’s kitchen, and was wont to bring back great store of oil and fat and broken meats; but the cats and rats used to eat it, or, if the dogs scented a fat sheep’s tail they would come down from the nearest roofs and tear at it; and on this wise the beasts had already damaged much of what he brought home. So the Jew and his wife carried the Hunchback up to the roof; and, letting him down by his hands and feet through the wind-shaft into the Reeve’s house, propped him up against the wall and went their ways. Hardly had they done this when the Reeve, who had been passing an evening with his friends hearing a recitation of the Koran, came home and opened the door and, going up with a lighted candle, found a son of Adam standing in the corner under the ventilator. When he saw this, he said, ‘Wah! By Allah, very good forsooth! He who robbeth my stuff is none other than a man.’ Then he turned to the Hunchback and said, ‘So ’tis thou that stealest the meat and the fat! I thought it was the cats and dogs, and I kill the dogs and cats of the quarter and sin against them by killing them. And all the while ’tis thou comest down from the house terrace through the wind-shaft. But I will avenge myself upon thee with my own hand!’

So he snatched up a heavy hammer and set upon him and smote him full on the breast and he fell down. Then he examined him and, finding that he was dead, cried out in horror, thinking that he had killed him, and said, ‘There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah, the Glorious, the Great!’ And he feared for his life, and added, ‘Allah curse the oil and the meat and the grease and the sheep’s tails to boot! How hath fate given this man his quietus at my hand!’ Then he looked at the body and seeing it was that of a Gobbo, said, ‘Was it not enough for thee to be a hunchback, but thou must likewise be a thief and prig flesh and fat! O thou Veiler, deign to veil me with Thy curtain of concealment!’ So he took him upon his shoulders and, going forth with him from his house about the latter end of the night, carried him to the nearest end of the bazar, where he set him up on his feet against the wall of a shop at the head of a dark lane, and left him and went away.

After a while up came a Nazarene, the Sultan’s Broker who, much bemused with liquor, was purposing for the Hammambath as his drunkenness whispered in his ear, ‘Verily the call to matins is nigh.’ He came plodding along and staggering about till he drew near the Hunchback and squatted down to make water over against him; when he happened to glance around and saw a man standing against the wall. Now some person had snatched off the Christian’s turband in the first of the night; so when he saw the Hunchback hard by he fancied that he also meant to steal his head-dress.

There upon he clenched his fist and struck him on the neck, felling him to the ground, and called aloud to the watchman of the bazar, and came down on the body in his drunken fury and kept on belabouring and throttling the corpse. Presently the Charley came up and, finding a Nazarene kneeling on a Moslem and frapping him, asked, ‘What harm hath this one done?’ And the Broker answered, ‘The fellow meant to snatch off my turband.’ ‘Get up from him,’ quoth the watchman. So he arose and the Charley went up to the Hunchback and finding him dead, exclaimed, ‘By Allah, good indeed! A Christian killing a Mahometan!’

Then he seized the Broker and, tying his hands behind his back, carried him to the Governor’s house, and all the while the Nazarene kept saying to himself, ‘O Messiah! O Virgin! how came I to kill this fellow? And in what a hurry he must have been to depart this life when he died of a single blow!’ Presently, as his drunkenness fled, came dolour in its stead. So the Broker and the body were kept in the Governor’s place till morning morrowed, when the Wali came out and gave order to hang the supposed murderer and commanded the executioner make proclamation of the sentence.

Forthwith they set up a gallows under which they made the Nazarene stand and the torch-bearer, who was hangman, threw the rope round his neck and passed one end through the pulley, and was about to hoist him up when lo! the Reeve, who was passing by, saw the Broker about to be hanged; and, making his way through the people, cried out to the executioner, ‘Hold! Hold! I am he who killed the Hunchback!’ Asked the Governor. ‘What made thee kill him?’ and he answered. ‘I went home last night and there found this man who had come down the ventilator to steal my property; so I smote him with a hammer on the breast and he died forthright. Then I took him up and carried him to the bazar and set him up against the wall in such a place near such a lane’; adding, ‘Is it not enough for me to have killed a Moslem without also killing a Christian? So hang none other but me.’

When the Governor heard these words he released the Broker and said to the torchbearer, ‘Hang up this man on his own confession.’ So he loosed the cord from the Nazarene’s neck and threw it round that of the Reeve and, making him stand under the gallows-tree, was about to string him up when behold, the Jewish physician pushed through the people and shouted to the executioner, ‘Hold! Hold! It was I and none else killed the Hunchback! Last night I was sitting at home when a man and a woman knocked at the door carrying this Gobbo who was sick, and gave my handmaid a quarter-dinar, bidding her hand me the fee and tell me to come down and see him. Whilst she was gone the man and the woman brought him into the house and, setting him on the stairs, went away: and presently I came down and not seeing him, for I was in the dark, stumbled over him and he fell to the foot of the staircase and died on the moment. Then we took him up, I and my wife, and carried him on to the top terrace; and, the house of this Reeve being next door to mine, we let the body down through the ventilator. When he came home and found the Hunchback in his house, he fancied he was a thief and struck him with a hammer, so that he fell to the ground, and our neighbour made certain that he had slain him. Now it is not enough for me to have killed one Moslem unwittingly, without burdening myself with taking the life of another Moslem wittingly?’