The Arabian Nights (New Deluxe Edition) (61 page)

Then they set some food, and when they began to eat, my brother heard a stranger chewing beside him. He said to them, “By God, there is a stranger among us,” and, stretching his hand, grabbed the intruder's hand, and while my brother caught hold of him, his comrades fell on the intruder, boxing and beating him. After they gave him beating enough, they cried out, “O Muslims, a thief has entered our house to steal our property!” When a large crowd began to gather, the intruder caught hold of them and, shutting his eyes, pretended to be blind, so that none would doubt him, accused them of what they had accused him, saying “I appeal to God and the king to judge between us.” Suddenly the watchmen came and, seizing them, dragged them all, together with my brother, to the chief of the police, who had them brought before him and asked, “What is the matter with you?” The intruder, who was not blind, replied, “God bless the king. Even though you can see, you will not find out anything, except by torture. Begin by beating me; then beat this man, who is our chief,” pointing to my brother. They threw the man down, O Commander of the Faithful, and gave him four hundred blows. When he began to smart under the blows . . .

But morning overtook Shahrazad, and she lapsed into silence. Then Dinarzad said to her sister, “Sister, what a strange and entertaining story! What an amazing story!” Shahrazad replied, “What is this compared with what I shall tell you tomorrow night if the king spares me and lets me live!” King Shahrayar said to himself, “By God, I will not kill her until I hear the rest of the story of the insufferable barber and his brothers and find out what happened between the king of China and the Jewish physician and the Christian broker and the steward. Then I will kill her, as I did the others.”

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The following night Shahrazad said:

I heard, O happy King, that the tailor told the king of China that the barber told the guests that he said to the caliph:

The chief of police gave the intruder four hundred blows on his arse, and when he began to smart, he opened one eye, and as the pain increased with the blows, he opened the other. The chief asked, “What is this, you devil?” The man replied, “Give me your seal ring of pardon and I will tell you what is going on.” When the chief gave him the ring, he said, “My lord, we are four fellows who pretend to be blind, so that we may enter people's houses and gaze on their women and corrupt them. In this way, we have made ten thousand dirhams, but when I said to my comrades, ‘Give me my share of two thousand and five hundred dirhams,' they refused and beat me and took away my money. I appeal to God and to you for protection, and it is better that you keep my share than they. If you wish to verify what I have said, beat each of them twice as much as you have beaten me, and they will surely open their eyes.” The chief ordered the three to be beaten, starting with my brother, whom they tied to a ladder. Then he said to them, “You vicious men, do you deny God's gift to you and pretend to be blind?” My brother replied, “By God, by God, O lord, there is none among us who can see.” But they beat him until he fainted. Then the intruder said to the chief, “Leave him until he revives; then beat him again, for he can stand more beating than I.” The chief ordered the other two to be beaten, and each of them received more than three hundred blows, while the intruder kept saying, “Open your eyes, or you will be beaten anew.”

At last he said to the chief, “Prince, send someone with me to fetch the money, for these fellows will not open their eyes, for fear of being exposed before the people.” The chief sent someone to fetch the money, gave the intruder two thouand and five hundred dirhams, his supposed share, and took the rest for himself. Then he banished the three men from the city. I, O Commander of the Faithful, went out after my brother and, overtaking him, asked him about his plight, and he told me the story I have just related to you. I took him secretly back into the city and arranged for his upkeep, without letting anyone know.

When the caliph heard my story, he laughed and said, “Give him a gift and let him go.” But I said to him, “By God, O Commander of the Faithful, I am a man of few words and great generosity, and I must relate to you the stories of my other brothers, in order to prove it to you.”

[The Tale of the Fourth Brother, the One-Eyed Butcher]

MY FOURTH BROTHER,
the one-eyed one, was a butcher in Baghdad, who raised rams and sold meat. The prominent and the wealthy used to buy their meat from him, so that he acquired houses and property and amassed a great wealth. He continued to thrive for a long time until one day, as he was sitting in his shop, an old man with a long beard came up to him, gave him some money, and said, “Give me meat for this amount.” My brother cut for him his money's worth of meat, and the old man went away. My brother looked at the silver coins the old man had given him and, finding them brilliantly white, put them aside by themselves. The old man continued to come to my brother for five months, and my brother continued to put the money he received from him into a separate chest.

One day he wanted to take out the money to buy some sheep, but when he opened the chest, he found nothing inside but paper cut round. He beat his head and cried out, and when the people gathered around him, he told them his story. Then he rose and, slaughtering a ram as usual, hung it up inside the shop. Then he cut off some pieces of meat and hung them up outside the shop, saying to himself, “Perhaps that wretched old man will come back.” Soon up came the old man, holding his money in his hand. My brother rose and, catching hold of him, cried out, “O Muslims, come and hear what happened to me at the hands of this crooked old man!” When the old man heard his words, he asked him, “What do you prefer, to let go of me or to have me expose you before everybody?” My brother asked him, “Expose me for what?” The old man replied, “For selling human flesh for mutton.” My brother said, “You are lying, you cursed man.” The false old man cried out, “He has a man hanging up in his shop.” My brother replied, “If you are telling the truth, my property and my life are forfeit.” The old man said, “O fellow citizens, if you wish to prove the truth of my words, go into his shop.” The people rushed into the shop, and instead of the ram, saw the carcass of a man hanging up there. They seized my brother, crying out, “O infidel! O villain!” and even his best friends began to beat him, saying to him, “You have given us human flesh to eat.” Moreover, the old man struck him on the eye and put it out. Then they carried the carcass to the chief of the police, to whom the old man said, “Prince, we have brought you a man who slaughters people and sells their flesh for mutton. Carry out on him the justice of the Almighty God.” My brother tried to tell the chief what the old man had done and how the silver pieces he received had turned out to be pieces of paper, but the chief would not listen and ordered him to be flogged, and he was given nearly five hundred painful blows. Then the chief confiscated everything, his money, his property, his sheep, and his shop, and had he not been able to offer a bribe, he would have been put to death. They paraded him for three days throughout the city and banished him.

My brother wandered until he came to a great city, where, being also a skilled cobbler, he opened a shop to earn his living. One day, as he went out on some business, he heard a clamor and the tramping of horses behind him, and when he inquired, he was told that the king was going out to hunt. He stopped to look at the king's handsome dress, when the king's eye chanced to meet his, and the king bowed his head, saying “May God protect me from the evil of this day,” and, drawing the bridle, rode back, followed by all his men. Then he gave an order to his attendants, who seized my brother and gave him a painful beating until he nearly died, without telling him the reason. He returned to his shop in a sad state, and he went to see a man who was a servant in the king's household. Seeing my brother's condition, the man asked him, “What is the matter with you?” When my brother told the man what had happened to him, the man laughed until he fell on his back and said, “Friend, the king cannot endure the sight of a one-eyed man, especially if he is blind in the right eye, and he will not rest until he puts him to death.” When my brother heard this explanation, he decided to run away.

But morning overtook Shahrazad, and she lapsed into silence. Then Dinarzad said to her sister, “What a strange and entertaining story!” Shahrazad replied, “What is this compared with what I shall tell you tomorrow night if the king spares me and lets me live!”

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The following night Shahrazad said:

I heard, O happy King, that the tailor told the king of China that the barber told the guests that he said to the caliph:

My brother decided to run away from that city and go to a place where none would recognize him. He left, settled down in another city, and began to thrive until one day he went out to divert himself, when he heard the tramping of horses behind him. He exclaimed, “The judgment of God is upon me,” and looking for a place to hide, found nothing but a closed door. When he pushed it, the door opened, and he fell forward, finding himself in a long hallway. But hardly had he advanced, when two men seized him and said, “Praise be to God, who has delivered you into our hands, O enemy of God. For three nights you have robbed us of peace and sleep and made us taste the agonies of death.” My brother said, “Fellows, what is your problem?” They replied, “You have been tormenting us and plotting to kill the master of the house. Is it not enough that you and your friends have made him a beggar? Give us the knife with which you have been threatening us every night.” Then they searched him and found a knife tucked in his belt. He said to them, “Fellows, for God's sake, treat me kindly, for my story is a strange one,” saying to himself “I will tell them my tale,” in the hope that they would let him go, but they paid no attention to him and refused to listen. Instead, they beat him and tore off his clothes and, finding on him the marks of former beating, said, “Cursed man, these are marks of punishment.” Then they took my brother to the chief of the police, while my brother said to himself, “I am undone for my sins. Now no one can save me but the Almighty God.” The chief said to my brother, “Villain, what made you enter their house and threaten them with death?” My brother replied, “I beg you, for God's sake, to listen to me and hear my story, before you hasten to condemn me.” But the two men said to the chief, “Will you listen to a thief who beggars people, a man who bears the scars of punishment?” When the chief saw the scars on my brother's back, he said to him, “They would not have done this to you were it not for a grave crime.” Then he sentenced him, and they gave him a hundred lashes and paraded him on a camel throughout the city, crying out, “This is the reward of those who break into people's houses.” Then the chief banished my brother from the city, and he wandered until I went out after him and found him. When I questioned him, he told me his tale. Then I carried him secretly back to Baghdad and made him an allowance to live on. It was out of the utmost generosity that I treated my brothers in this fashion.

The caliph laughed until he fell on his back and ordered a gift for me. But I said, “By God, my lord, even though I am not a man of many words, I must complete the stories of my other brothers, so that our lord the caliph will be acquainted with all their tales and have them recorded and kept in his library, and so that he may discover that I am not a garrulous man, O our lord and caliph.”

But morning overtook Shahrazad, and she lapsed into silence. Then Dinarzad said to her sister, “What a strange and entertaining story!” Shahrazad replied, “What is this compared with what I shall tell you tomorrow night if I stay alive!”