We Others (39 page)

O
ld man’s hour: heat and shade of late afternoon. Green hands, blue shadows, a slight oppression in the chest. Behind the eyelids rings of light, red-yellow, dancing. Bone-weariness and a dull drumming in the ears. The voyages are rings of red light dancing. There are no voyages, only the worm-thick veins on the back of the hand. Only the heavy body, the laboring heart, blossoms rotting under the sun. Dead hour: his hands green corpses. The stench of corpses, the groans of the dying in the cavern under the mountain. His dead wife beside him, rotting in her jewels. A pitcher of water and seven cakes of bread. He swings the leg bone and crushes the skull. He lifts the stone and crushes the skull of the old man with buffalo-hide legs. A shrill cry cuts him like a blade. Bright blue sky, the cry of the blackbird. Heat, shade: old man’s hour.

Sinbad addresses his tales to a double audience: a company of lords and nobles, who are his friends, and a poor porter, also named Sinbad, who is a stranger and whose melancholy verses recited outside the gate have incited Sinbad the merchant to narrate his seven voyages. Sinbad’s immediate purpose is to persuade the poor porter that he became wealthy only after hardship and misfortune, as represented by the voyages; that is, to persuade the poor man that the merchant’s immense wealth is deserved. To put it another way, Sinbad is attempting to justify his life. His purpose in narrating the voyages to the lords and nobles is less clear. We know that Sinbad has been struck by the identity of his name and that of the poor porter, because he asserts it for all to hear; a moment later he greets the porter as “brother.” Perhaps, then, in the presence of the poor man Sinbad feels a need to set himself apart from his wealthy friends, to insist on his difference. It is evident that he has never spoken to them of his voyages before; they are his secret. In this sense the narration of the voyages to the lords and nobles is a form of confession. It is difficult to state precisely the nature of this confession, but surely it has to do with Sinbad’s restlessness, his craving for violent adventure, his inner wildness and boredom—everything, in short, that separates him from the sober and respectable, everything that secretly undermines his shrewd merchant’s nature. In any case, Sinbad requires for the recital of his story the presence of both the wealthy company and the poor porter; each morning the porter arrives early at Sinbad’s house and is made to wait for the rest of the company before the story of the next voyage begins. We may imagine Sinbad now directing a sharp glance at Sinbad the porter as he relates the details of a shipwreck or a fit of despair, now lowering his eyes modestly as he describes a cunning stratagem, now casting a broad gaze over the company of lordly friends as he recounts the story of his marriage to a beautiful and wealthy woman of noble lineage, the ruby cup, the audience with the caliph.

Now though I trusted them not, I cried down to them, “How may I come down to you? For I know not how to manage this steed, and would come among you as a friend.” With that I took forth from a fold in my robe one of the jewels I had gathered from the sea bottom, and let it fall among them as earnest of my good will; whereupon the men at the looms called up to me in friendly voices, and urged me to come down to them, which I might do by turning down the corner of my carpet beside my right hand. Now when I heard those words I was loath to come down, but grasping the corner of my carpet I pulled it upward, and behold, I rose high above them. Then the old men began shouting at me in anger, but I flew all about them, making my carpet go higher and lower as I desired, till seeing another opening at the base of the cavern I directed my way thither and entered in. There I found myself in a long passageway with doors of brass and silver on both sides. One of the brazen doors being open, I directed my way within, where I discovered a stately garden with trees bearing red and yellow fruits, and a great mountain beyond the garden; and being hungry I flew low to pluck a piece of fruit, but the red fruit were rubies, and the yellow fruit topazes, whereat I rejoiced and seized as many as I could from the thick-fruited branches. On the far side of the garden I came to the base of the great mountain, where I saw a fissure in the rock, and flying into the fissure I found myself in a vast and darksome cavern, wherein was no light save a faint glimmer high above.

T
here is peace in Sinbad’s garden. Sunlight falls on the date trees and orange trees; in sun and shade, the waters of marble fountains fall. A hidden fountain stands in a walnut grove; a pomegranate tree burns in the sun. Sinbad can distinguish the songs of blackbirds, ringdoves, and nightingales. He listens for turtledoves and mockingbirds. He has even purchased twelve parrots, which reveal themselves from time to time among the dark leaves as vivid flashes of orange and yellow. At this moment, in the warm shade of the orange tree, the voyages are bereft of enchantment. The flight through the air, the giant’s eyeteeth like boar’s tusks, the old man clinging to his back, the serpents the size of palm trees in the Valley of Diamonds, all are banal and boring images, of no more interest than someone else’s dream or the fantasies of young children, and tainted by suspicious resemblances to the commonplace reports of all voyagers. They cannot compare with the cry of the blackbird, the sunstruck dome of a mosque, the creak of rigging in the harbor ships, the miraculous structure of a pomegranate or a camel, the shouts of the sellers of dried fruits, the beating out of copper basins in the market of the coppersmiths, the trembling blue shadow cast by falling water on a marble fountain’s rim, the immense collection of precise details that compose the city of Baghdad at this moment.

The story of Sinbad is set during the reign of the Caliph Haroun al Raschid, who himself is the hero of a cycle of stories in
The Arabian
Nights
. In the third chapter of
Ulysses
, Stephen Dedalus walks along the beach at Sandymount and thinks:

After he woke me up last night same dream or was it? Wait. Open hallway. Street of harlots. Remember. Haroun al Raschid.

Leopold Bloom, falling asleep beside his wife, thinks of Sinbad and the roc’s egg. Earlier we learn that Bloom once attempted to write a song called
If Brian Boru could but come back and see old Dublin now
, to be “introduced into the sixth scene, the valley of diamonds, of the second edition (30 January 1893) of the grand annual Christmas pantomime
Sinbad the Sailor.
” If Bloom is Ulysses, he is also Sinbad, setting forth on a voyage through the perilous seas of Dublin. During a single day in June 1904, both Bloom and Stephen think of characters in
The Arabian Nights
; it is another of the spiritual habits that secretly unite them. Molly Bloom, toward the end of her immortal monologue, remembers her girlhood in Gibraltar: the handsome Moors with turbans, the sailors playing “All Birds Fly,” the Arabs, the Moorish wall. These memories, which seem to carry her away from the husband sleeping beside her, secretly unite her with Bloom-Sinbad, the returned voyager, the sailor home from the sea.

Then I directed my carpet upward toward the gleam, but though I flew higher and higher I could not reach that height. And I could have cried out for weariness and heart-sorrow, when suddenly I drew near the light, which was an opening in the rock; and I flew out through a cave into blue sky above the salt sea. Then I rejoiced that I had escaped from the land beneath the sea, and gave thanks to Allah Almighty for my deliverance. Yet was I sore dismayed to see the empty ocean reaching away, and to feel my precarious mount under me; whereupon I directed my carpet down to the shore of the sea, there to rest me and take counsel with myself. But so eager was I to set my feet on earth, that I took no care to secure the carpet, which rose into the air without me and returned into the opening in the cliff. So I blamed myself for my folly, yet could do naught but abide there till it should please Almighty Allah to send me relief by means of some passing ship. Thus I abode for many days and nights, feeding on wild berries that grew on bushes at the base of the cliff, till one day I caught sight of a ship; and removing my turban and placing it on the end of a branch I waved it to and fro till they espied me, and sent a boat to fetch me to them.

B
eyond the warm shade of the orange tree, the late afternoon sun burns on the garden grass. The shadow of the sundial extends to the rim of the hexagon of red sand. With half-closed eyes Sinbad broods over his half-remembered voyages. If all the voyages taken together are defined as a single vast collection of sensations, is it necessary to order them chronologically? Are not other arrangements possible? Sinbad imagines the telling of other tales: a tale of shipwrecks, a tale of odors, a tale of monsters, a tale of clouds, a tale of breakfasts, a tale of murders, a tale of jewels, a tale of wives, a tale of despairs, a tale of Mondays, a tale of fauna and flora, a tale of eyes (eyes of the roc, eyes of wives, eyes of the giant, merchants’ eyes).

Sinbad recites each of his voyages from start to finish in an unbroken monologue during a single day. It is not clear at what time Sinbad the porter enters his house on the first day, but starting with the second day he arrives early in the morning and sits with Sinbad the merchant until the company of friends arrives. All are served breakfast, and the entire gathering listens to the recital of a complete voyage, after which they eat dinner and depart. Sinbad’s recital of the voyages therefore takes seven full days, from breakfast to dinner. But there is a second narrative movement that intersects this one. The story of Sinbad, who recites his story by day, is told by Scheherazade, who recites her story at night. There is something deeply pleasing about this scheme, which seems to permit the voyages to take place simultaneously during the day and night. But Scheherazade’s recital takes much longer than Sinbad’s: she begins the story at the very end of Night 536 and completes it toward the end of Night 566. It therefore takes Scheherazade thirty nights, from evening to dawn, to recite the seven voyages of Sinbad, who himself requires only seven days, from breakfast to dinner. This curious asymmetry provokes conjecture. Are we to imagine a number of unreported interruptions in Scheherazade’s story—for example, bouts of lovemaking—that account for the much greater time required for her story than for Sinbad’s identical one? Are we to imagine that Scheherazade speaks much more slowly than Sinbad, whose voice she adopts? Does Scheherazade perhaps begin very late at night, so that the total number of hours spent reciting the story of Sinbad is not more than the number of hours he himself requires? Are we to imagine that Scheherazade recites a much longer version of the voyages, which only the King is permitted to hear, and that we have been allowed to overhear only selected portions of those longer tales? However we account for the discrepancy, it remains true that the seven voyages narrated by Scheherazade are interrupted thirty times by the words: “And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say” (Burton). The break never comes at the end of a voyage. In the second voyage, for example, the first break comes in the middle of the opening sentence; in the third voyage, the first break comes several pages into the narrative, after the description of the frightful giant. There are thus two distinct narrative movements: that of the seven voyages, each of which forms a single narrative unit and takes a single day for Sinbad to recite, and that of Scheherazade’s recital, which breaks the voyages into thirty units that never coincide with the beginning or end of a voyage. There is also a third movement to be considered. The reader may complete the entire story of Sinbad at a sitting, or he may divide his reading into smaller units, which will not necessarily coincide with the narratives of Sinbad or Scheherazade, and which will change from one reading to another.

The captain of the ship was a merchant, who heard my tale with wonder and amazement and promised me passage to the Isle of Kullah, from whence I might take ship to Baghdad-city. So we pursued our voyage from island to island and sea to sea, till one day a great serpent rose from the waves and struck at our ship, cracking the mainmast in twain and turning the sails to tatters and staving in the ship sides. We were thrown into the sea, where some drowned and others were devoured by the serpent; but by permission of the Most High I seized a plank of the ship, whereon I climbed, bestriding it as I would a horse and paddling with my feet. I clung thus two days and two nights, helped on by a wind, and on the third day shortly after sunrise the waves cast me upon dry land, where I crawled onto high ground and lay as one dead. When I woke I fed on some herbs that grew on the shore, and at once fell into a deep sleep that lasted for a day and a night; and my strength returning little by little, I soon set out to explore the place whither Destiny had directed me. I came to a wood of high trees, of which many stood without tops, or lay fallen with their roots raised high, whereat I wondered greatly, till climbing a hill I saw below me a city on the shore of the sea. But a great calamity had befallen the city, for the houses stood without roofs to cover them, great ships lay half-sunk in the harbor, and carts lay overturned in the streets; and everywhere came a sound of lamenting from the inhabitants of that town.

T
he trunks of the date palms in the southwest corner of the garden are enclosed from root to top in carved teakwood, encircled with gilt copper rings. Sunlight flashes on the rings of the palm trees, on the white rim of the fountain, on the hexagon’s red sand. In the warm shade of the orange tree, in the northeast corner of the courtyard, it occurs to Sinbad that his voyages are nothing but illusions. He is attracted by the idea, which has come to him before. The fantastic creatures, such as the roc, the black giant, the serpents the size of palm trees, the Old Man of the Sea, are clearly the stuff of dream or legend, and dissolve into mist when set beside the sharp realities of a merchant’s life in Baghdad. True, travelers have often reported strange sights, but it is well known that such accounts tend toward exaggeration and invention. As if the implausible creatures themselves were not proof enough, there is the repeated pattern of shipwreck and rescue, of hairbreadth escapes, of relentless and improbable good fortune. And then there is the suspect number of voyages: seven, that mysterious and magical number, which belongs to the planets, the metals, the colors, the precious stones, the parts of the body, the days of the week. No, the evidence points clearly to illusion, and the explanation is not far to seek: the tedium of a merchant’s life, the long hours in the countinghouse, the breeding images of release. Impossible to say whether he imagined the voyages in his youth, and now remembers them as if they had actually taken place, or whether he imagined them in his old age and placed them back, far back, in a youth barely remembered. Does it matter? Sinbad is weary. On the rings of the palm trees, sunlight flashing.