Serial Monogamy (10 page)

“Very well. Snowflakes and rhubarb then. ‘I,' said the Prince, ‘am the Prince of Persia.'

“ ‘Then why,' she demanded quite reasonably, ‘are you dressed like a woodcutter?' ”

“She sounds a rather sensible sort.”

“Rather like you, my dear. Imminently sensible and exquisitely beautiful. Shall I continue now?”

“Please do.”

“The Prince looked down at his dirty work clothes. Confronted by this wondrous room and this wonderful lady, he had quite forgotten his own situation. ‘Well,' he replied, putting down the rough log carrier he bore on his back, ‘it really is an extraordinary story. Would you like to hear it?'

“The lady thought for a bit. ‘I find myself unoccupied at the moment. You may sit down there'—she pointed at the divan farthest from her—‘and tell me your story.'

“So, the Prince began to relate the story of his journey, his escape from the bandits, his arrival in Takshashila and his rescue by the kind tailor who sent him to work as a woodcutter. So skilled an orator was the Prince and so engrossed was the lady by the story that with each subsequent chapter she moved closer and closer to the teller so that, by the time the Prince was relating his discovery of her cave, she sat but inches away from him gazing into his face.

“ ‘Oh,' she said finally, ‘that is indeed the most remarkable tale.'

“ ‘Now you must tell me your story,' the Prince said. ‘How does such a beautiful lady come to be living in a cave under the ground?'

“At that, the lady gave a little gasp and a tear came into her eye.

“ ‘Why, good lady, what is wrong?' asked the Prince.

“ ‘I am also of royal blood,' she said, wiping away the tear. ‘I am the Princess of Samarkand, and for five long years I have been held a prisoner here.' ”

“I thought Scheherazade was the Princess of Samarkand.”

“It's one of those places with many princesses.

“And so the Princess of Samarkand began to relate her own story, but since the Prince rather than the Princess is our chief concern here, you will excuse me if I give you only a summary of her tale.”

“I just want to know how she came to be living in the cave.”

“Yes, of course. I am getting to that. Goodness, you are an impatient little thing. Yes, so, the Princess had been travelling with her attendants in the forests near her home, gathering wild strawberries or some other ladylike activity, when one member of the party disturbed some shrubs, causing a mighty genie to appear. The genie rose before them, terrifyingly large, frightened all her attendants away and left her standing there at his mercy. He picked her up and carried her miles through the forest on his giant legs until he brought her to this cave, where
he has kept her prisoner ever since. For nine days the genie is nowhere to be seen, off doing some mysterious and demonic business the nature of which we would not even want to guess, but on the tenth day, he comes to the Princess and spends the night at her side. That day he had just left when the Prince arrived.

“ ‘So,' said the beautiful Princess with a shy smile, ‘you are safe here for nine days and may stay with me.'

“ ‘No,' said the Prince, horrified at such an unmaidenly suggestion. ‘I will not stay, but I will take you with me. Come, we will mount the stairs and journey through the forest and somehow find a way to return to our fathers and our lands.' ”

“Quite the proper thing to do, I expect. Imagine attending the pleasure of such a wicked creature!”

“Unthinkable. Nonetheless, it was the Princess's plight. Now, where was I? You have me all tangled. Oh yes, she rejects his plan because, says the Princess, sadly, ‘I think you will find the stairs are no longer there.'

“The Prince turned to where he had come through the tunnel into her rich chamber and indeed there was now only an impenetrable stone wall at the spot he had entered.

“ ‘The wall only parts when the genie comes to visit,' she explained. ‘It shuts again as soon as he leaves. You must somehow have slipped down the stairs before the rock closed them off again.'

“ ‘Have you never tried to run up behind him when he leaves?' the Prince could not help asking.”

“That's clever of him. He's got a point there.”

“Yes, it's all that learning, you see. At that suggestion, however, the Princess looked even more pained: ‘The genie is an angry master. He has threatened me with the most gruesome fate if I ever try to follow him out of the chamber,' she said. ‘As long as I obey him, he brings me books to read and delicacies to eat, thread for my sewing and jewels to wear. If I crave a pomegranate to eat or need oil for my hair, I have only to call him and he will come.'

“ ‘How do you call him?' the Prince asked.

“The Princess led him over to a corner of the chamber farthest from the stone where he had entered and showed him an inscription carved into the wall in some ancient script that even the Prince, erudite though he was, could not read.

“ ‘I have only to touch these words and the genie will appear,' she said.

“ ‘Then let us call him and I will battle him until he releases you,' the Prince said, reaching out his hand toward the inscription.

“ ‘No,' the Princess shrieked in horror, grabbing his arm to pull it away from the wall. ‘You will never be able to conquer a jinn; his body is the size of two men and his magic is too powerful for any mortal to fight.'

“ ‘Better to fight honourably than to live a captive soul,' cried the Prince, thinking as much of his own enslavement to woodcutting as of the Princess's sad plight. And so saying, he reached out with his other arm and touched the magic inscription.

“Instantly a roaring sound filled the air and plumes of smoke billowed into the room. Rocks crashed away from the wall where the Prince had first entered and gradually the wall itself fell apart. Into the room stepped a creature who was, just as the Princess had warned, the height of two men, with a bare chest the size of a tabletop and legs as thick as tree trunks. ‘You have called me back, my Princess. What can your jiin provide?' But as he said these words, he caught sight of the Prince and now bellowed out, ‘Who is this?'

“ ‘I am a lowly woodcutter who stumbled into this cave,' the Prince replied.

“ ‘Liar,' cried the genie. ‘You are her lover.' And he turned now on the Princess. ‘You harlot! You have hidden him here even while I visited. Have I not provided you with everything a woman could ever need or want, given you jewels and entertainment, fed you delicacies and protected you from harm, and yet you have betrayed me with this common man.'

“He pounced on the Prince, displaying the agility of a cat despite his huge size, and seized him up in his massive hands.

“ ‘I will kill you, you foul human, but first I will torture her until she confesses her crime and I will make you watch as she suffers.' He set down the Prince, who might have been tempted to bolt up the open staircase were it not that the monster now took hold of the Princess, whose piteous cries filled the Prince's heart with dread. Looking
about in desperation for some way in which he could stop the genie, he spied the axe that he had set down when he was telling the Princess his story. He grabbed it up, took a wide swing and plunged it into the genie's leg.”

“Oh, that's it. That's the way. He'll get him now.”

“Not as easy as that, my dear. The genie gave a cry of pain but the Prince saw that his mighty blow had barely scratched the creature's leg. Nonetheless, as the genie roared in anger, he put down the Princess so that he could stop the Prince, who darted out of his grasp and ducked behind the largest of the divans. The thought occurred to him, with what little mental capacity he had that was not devoted to his immediate survival, that if the mighty genie had to struggle so clumsily to determine how he might hold on to both his captives simultaneously, then whatever powers this monster possessed, those of the intellect were not among them. So, as the genie plunged forward and was about to rip the piece of furniture out of his path, the Prince stood up from behind it and cried loudly, ‘Hold, oh great and mighty genie. In the name of Allah, I promise you the lady has not been unfaithful to you. I am only a lowly woodcutter who ventured down the stairs to this chamber in error and would never dare to meddle with a power as large as yours. You could kill me and torture the lady until she expires too, but then you would have lost the thing you most prize.'

“The genie stared at him now. ‘Then I will just kill you,' he said and he started forward.

“ ‘No doubt you can do that in an instant, oh powerful one, for the strength of a genie is legendary,' said the Prince. ‘Is it true you can also change shapes at will?'

“ ‘I can double my size like this,' replied the genie, beginning to swell toward the ceiling of the chamber as his body grew in every direction.

“ ‘Be careful, great one, you will break the roof and burst out of this cave,' the Prince warned, and the genie, like a deflating balloon, returned again to his already monstrous size.

“ ‘You can make yourself huge, but I don't suppose you can make yourself small,' said the Prince. ‘I wonder how you can possibly fit down the opening at the top of the stairs.'

“ ‘I can make myself any size or shape I care to,' boasted the genie. ‘I have made myself as light as a feather and flown over the world on a breeze; I have made myself twice the size of this room and strode across continents.'

“ ‘Really. As light as a feather? I find that difficult to believe,' said the Prince. Then, pointing to an ornate box with a lid of inlaid pearl that sat at the end of one divan, he continued, ‘I mean, a lowly human like me could crawl into a space as small as that chest over there and hide himself from a great genie like you, but I doubt a great genie could hide himself from me.'

“ ‘Of course I can make myself that small. Just watch.' And at that he began to shrink down to the size of a child and slip inside the chest.

“ ‘Quick, sit on it,' cried the Prince to the Princess as he ran for his rope, wrapped it several times around the chest and tied it with the tightest of knots. Inside, the genie fumed at his captors but could not unknot his own limbs enough to swell his body back to his regular size.

“ ‘Run,' cried the Prince as he grasped the Princess by the hand and led her toward the opening in the stone wall. So, they ran up the stairs, through the forest and back to the tailor's shop in Takshashila. The next day, they set out to sell a few of the Princess's many jewels so they could pay the kind tailor, buy horses and start the journey for Persia.

“By the time they arrived back in the Prince's kingdom, he had secured a promise of marriage from the Princess, and his father, the King, was overjoyed not only to be reunited with his son who had been missing for many months but also to welcome his prospective bride, even if she was not one of the five beautiful daughters of the King of Hind.”

“You said three before.”

“Did I? No, I think he had five daughters. At any rate, the King of Persia was just as happy to see his court allied with that of Samarkand, and following the solemn ceremony and lavish feast that marked their marriage, the happy couple made a triumphant visit to her kingdom to meet her long-lost family. And what do you think happened next?”

“They lived happily ever after.”

“H
ow dare you?” Al looks up from the Saturday paper. He is so calm and smooth a personality, so rarely angry, that for a second I don't realize he is serious and mistake his tone for ironic awe.

“You like it?” I ask but before I have even finished the words I know I've got it wrong. It was a risky play; I wanted to woo Stanek and Jonathan and
The Telegram
readers; I was convinced by my own cleverness and conveniently ignored where I got my clever idea. Al quickly slaps me down.

“I think it's appallingly presumptuous.”

“But you all complained it was just about Ellen Ternan. I decided to let Dickens get a word in,” I say, but it now sounds unconvincing even to my own ears.

“I'll leave others to judge your talent for pastiche. It's the story he tells…”

“ ‘The Second Dervish's Tale.' ”

“It's one thing to do Dickens. You studied him before
you quit; he's still one of the most popular writers in the language. I can't pretend to own him, although I do think you are treading in pretty well-worn territory here…”

“But you own
The Thousand and One Nights
? Is that it?” I sound angry.

“No, but I am the leading, the only, scholar who has really traced the influence of
The Nights
on Dickens.” Al's assessment of his scholarship is perfectly accurate, but when he puffs himself up like this I always remember my mother saying in her acerbic way, “If you are really good, you don't need to boast.”

“That's my stuff,” Al continues. “You're stealing from me.”

Part of me knows he's right and that I should acknowledge it now and make peace, but intellectual sparring comes far more easily to both of us. “Come on. I may be using your research as a jumping-off point but you didn't just stay up to midnight two nights in a row trying to write a retelling of ‘The Second Dervish's Tale' in the style of
The Pickwick Papers
.”

“Oh, is that what you were doing? Well, the point you are making is mine.”

“So, your work inspires me. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” Flattery, this is where I should have started, before publication. Last week, after my six-month checkup. I got the all-clear. Al and I went out to dinner to celebrate; he smiled at me in his old way. Things were looking good and now I've blown it.

“You've got your bestsellers, for Christ's sake. That's your turf. Why do you have to come poaching on mine?”

My anger, tamped down to get by, returns to me in full force. “You are always sneering at my books. You think they're just romance novels. And here, when I'm doing something more literary…” Lost in my own sense of grievance now, I'm surprised when he comes right back at me: “This is so like you. It's always about the needs of your story, never mine.”

Al has hit at the heart of something there. I stumble towards the table where he sits and grope for a chair, collapsing into it. He starts up towards me, anxiety instantly subduing him.

“Are you okay?” He touches my back. “You're not well enough to be working yet. I hate to see you exhausting yourself.”

His concern somehow infuriates me more; I am tired of his pity and worry; they are no replacement for passion.

“That's not true. You just hate to see me working.”

“What are you yelling about, Mummy?”

Anahita has come into the kitchen. She sounds more inquisitive than alarmed, but she has heard us. We are trying so hard to give the girls stability after all that has happened, to let them trust in their home and their parents again.

“Oh, nothing, sweetie. Daddy and I were just arguing about Dickens.”

“Charles Chickens,” Anahita replies. “Stupid old Charles Chickens. Can I have some hot chocolate?”

She is easily distracted by the prospect of her hot drink, but as I stick the mug in the microwave I am fighting back tears. Al grabs his tablet off the kitchen table and removes himself upstairs to his office, shutting the door behind him. He doesn't come out until lunch, which he eats in silence before preparing to depart with the girls for a birthday party. I dress them up in their new velveteen pants and frilly blouses, press colourfully wrapped packages for the birthday girl into their hands, shut the door and start to cry. I had wanted Al to like the serial, to understand that writing was part of getting better. I wanted to be somebody other than a patient; I wanted to be me, the old me he used to love. In my convenient fantasy, the serial was going to draw us together again, revive our mutual interest in literature, make daily life about something more than getting by without a fight. But with “The Second Dervish's Tale” I had only got his attention by treading on his toes. I had misjudged my audience again.

I want to phone Becky, seek solace and rehash the rights and wrongs of the situation, but I know she won't welcome the call. Becky does casseroles, she does babysitting, she does hand-holding, but she has made it very clear that she doesn't do marriage counselling any more.

It was a breach in our friendship that happened before Al returned to the house. I was well launched into one of my regular phone calls with Becky, asking for the umpteenth time how anyone who had so wanted children would jeopardize his relationship with his precious daughters by betraying their mother and gambling that some babe twenty years his junior was going to stick by him beyond next year when Becky said something that brought me up short.

“I guess he wasn't happy.”

“What do you mean? How could he not be happy? He had everything he said he wanted, me, the house, the girls, the big job. A week before he told me about the affair, we had been talking about finally making a trip to Iran.”

“Just because people have the things they want doesn't mean they are happy. Maybe he wasn't happy with you. People drift apart sometimes.”

“We had a date night every week. We still had sex.”

“It's not really about sex. It's about being connected or something. We're all so busy, you know, with the kids and work. Maybe something got lost in the shuffle. Anyway, he seems to have found something he was missing.”

“Oh, he has, has he?”

I was angry again, angry at Al, angry at Becky, although I knew what she was saying was half true. At least after the girls were born. We had made the unspoken, incremental pact of parents with young children: we will love each other a little less so that we can love
them more. Love is only infinite in stories; in real life, there are only so many hours in the day.

“Do you really believe that?” I continued haughtily.

“Well, I think there are two sides to—”

“And which one are you on?”

“I don't want to take sides, Sharon. David and I want to remain friends with both of you. I don't want to do he said, she said.”

“Great. Thanks. Okay. What do you want to talk about then?”

“What did we used to talk about? Our jobs. The kids. Our mothers.”

“Our husbands.”

“Yeah, but, I don't know, the environment. Municipal politics. The ballet. We used to talk about lots of stuff and now all we ever talk about is Al and the blessed student.”

“Yeah.”

“So let's just try talking about something else, okay?”

“Nice weather we've been having lately.”

The next time I called her it was to tell her that I had cancer.