by Isak Dinesen
When she had gone, the Prince once more turned to the beggar. “You are wrong,” he said. “No beggar of the town has sat by the wall for three days and has been given nothing. I have asked for alms myself, you know, and have never been without food even for the length of a day. The people of Teheran are not so hardhearted nor so indigent as to let the meanest of beggars starve for three days.” To this the beggar answered not a word.
It was now growing colder. The great space above our heads was still glass-clear and filled with sweet light; innumerable bats had come out from holes in the wall and were noiselessly cruising within it, high and low. But the earth and everything belonging to it lay in a blue shadow, as if it had been finely enamelled with lazulite. The beggar drew his old cloak round him and shivered. “It would be better for us,” I said, “to seek a little shelter in the gate itself.” “Nay, I shall not go there,” said the beggar. “The gatekeepers chase away beggars from the gate with a bastinado.” “You are wrong once more,” said the Prince. “I, who am a beggar myself, have sought shelter in the gates, and no gate-keeper has ever told me to go away. For it is the law that poor and homeless people may sit within the gates of my city, when the traffic of the day is done.”
The beggar for a minute thought his words over; then he turned his head and looked at him. “Are you the Prince Nasrud-Din?” he asked him.
Prince Nasrud-Din was startled and confused by the beggar’s straight question; his hand went to his knife, as my hand to my own. But after a second he haughtily looked him in the face. “Yes, I am Nasrud-Din,” he said. “You must know my face, since you have counterfeited it. You must have followed me for a long time, and closely, in order to assume my part in the eyes of my people with so much skill. I have known about your game, too, for some time. Your motive for playing it, only, I do not know. I have come here tonight to learn it from your own lips.”
The beggar did not answer at once; then again he shook his head. “Heigh-ho, my gentle lord,” he said. “May you rightly say so, when I have donned that very attire and semblance, which you yourself think most dissimilar to your own, and most likely to conceal you, and to beguile the people of your town? Might not I as justly charge you yourself with having, in your greatness, mimicked my humble countenance, and embezzled my beggar’s appearance? Aye, it is true that I have once seen you, at a distance, in your mendicant’s clothes, but I have learned more from those who followed and watched you. It is true, too, that I have made use of the likeness that God deigned to create between you and me. I have profited by it to be proud, and grateful to God, where before I was cast down. Will a Prince blame his servant for that?”
“And whom,” asked the Prince with a penetrating glance at the beggar, “do the people of the market-place and the streets believe you to be?” The beggar threw a quick, furtive glance round him to all sides. “Hush, my lord, speak low,” he said. “The people of the market-place and the streets dare not for their lives let me know who they believe me to be. Did you not see them turning away their heads and cast down their eyes as they passed by or spoke to me? They know that I will not be known; they are afraid that, if ever I find out who they believe me to be, my wrath against them shall be so terrible that I shall go away, never to come back to them.”
At these words the Prince coloured and became silent. At last he said gravely: “They all believe you to be Prince Nasrud-Din?” The beggar for a moment showed his white teeth in a smile. “Yes, they believe me to be Prince Nasrud-Din,” he said. “They think that I have got a palace to live in, and may go back there whenever I wish. They believe that I have got a cellar filled with wine, my table laid with rich food, my chests filled with garments of silk and fur.”
“Who, then,” the Prince asked, “are you, who have been made proud and thankful to God in playing to be me?” “I am what I look,” said the beggar. “I am a beggar of Teheran. As such I was born. My mother was a beggarwoman, and she thrashed the profession into me before I weighed as much as a cat. I have asked for alms in the streets, and by the walls of the city all my life.” “What is your name, beggar?” the Prince asked. “I am named Fath,” said the beggar.
“And have you not,” the Prince asked after a silence, “planned to get into that palace of which you speak, upon the strength of the likeness between you and me?” “No,” said Fath. “Have you not endeavoured,” the Prince asked again, “to gain influence and power with the people and to serve your ambition by means of that likeness?” “No,” said Fath. He sat for a while in thought; then he said: “No. I am a beggar, and may be clever in the trade of a beggar. But about the other things I know not, and I care for none of them. I should be sadly troubled if I were to deal with them. I have gained power over the people, that is true, and it is likely that they would do what I wish, but what would I wish them to do?”
“What have you been doing, then,” asked the Prince, “after you had so cleverly studied my looks and ways and had made the people of Teheran believe that you are Prince Nasrud-Din?” “I have,” said Fath, “been asking for alms in the streets, and by the walls of the city.” He looked at the Prince, and exclaimed: “What have you done to the mole on your cheek?” The Prince held his hand to his cheek. “I have had it removed,” he said. Fath lifted his own hand to his cheek, “The people will not like that,” he said gravely.
“But wherefore do you slander my people,” asked the Prince, “and make out the lot of the beggars of my town harder than it is? Why did you tell that a beggar had sat for three days by the wall, and had received nothing, and that you yourself wished to know what he felt thereby?” “As God lives,” said Fath, “it is no slander, but the truth.” “Who,” the Prince asked him severely, “was the beggar who was so cruelly treated?” “My lord, it was I, myself,” said Fath, “in the days before I had seen you.”
“But now tell me, for that I do not understand,” said the Prince, “why you will accept nothing from the townsfolk by this time, when you have brought them to offer you the best they have got? Why did you refuse the loaf of bread which the old woman took to you and send her away so sad?” Fath thought his words over. “Good, my lord,” he said. “With your permission, I perceive that you know but little about beggary. You, I suppose, all your life have had as much as you wanted to eat. If I take what they offer me, how long will they go on offering it? And how long will they believe, then, that I have got, in my palace, the richest food, and all the delicacies of the world, from the east to the west?”
The Prince was silent for a while; then he began to laugh. “By the tombs of my fathers, Fath,” he said, “I took you for a fool, but now I think that you are the shrewdest man in my kingdom. For see, my courtiers and my friends demand from me offices, distinctions and gold, and when they have got them they leave me in peace. But a beggar of Teheran has harnessed me to his waggon, and from now on, awake or asleep, I shall be labouring for Fath. If I conquer a province, if I shoot a lion, if I write a poem, or if I marry the daughter of the Sultan of Zanzibar—it will all be one: it will all serve to the greater glory of Fath.”
Fath looked at the Prince beneath his long eyelashes. “It may be said,” he said, “and now you have said it. But I may hold, as against that, that you yourself have made Fath, and all there is of him. You did not, when you walked the streets as a beggar, endeavour to be any wiser or greater, any nobler or more magnanimous than the other beggars of the town. You made yourself just one of them, and took good care not to differ from them in any way, in order to hoax your people, and to listen, unobserved, to their talk. Therefore, now, I am no more than a common beggar either. Awake or asleep I am but the beggar’s mask of Prince Nasrud-Din.” “That, too, may be said,” said the Prince.
“I beseech you, Prince,” Fath went on solemnly, “to conquer provinces, to kill lions, to write poems. I have seen to it that the name of Prince Nasrud-Din, and that the renown of his loving-kindness, have been great with the paupers of Teheran. See to it now that the name of Fath, and his re
putation for gallantry and wit, be great amongst the Kings and the Princes. As you kill a lion, remember that the heart of Fath rejoices at your bravery. And when you have married the Sultan’s daughter, how highly will not the people think of you, as they still watch you sitting by the wall, all through the cold night, in order to share their hard lot. How highly will they not think of you when, to partake of the sorry fate of the poorest, you still sit down and talk with the prostitutes of these streets.” “Do the prostitutes of these streets,” the Prince asked, “embrace you with ardour, now, and shiver with ecstasy in your arms? Come, you ought to tell me, since I myself know nothing about it, and since their shiverings are in some way my own due.” “Nay, I cannot tell you,” said Fath. “I know no more about it than you do. I dare not embrace them; they are wise, and may know the embrace of a great lord.” “So you stand in awe of my women, Fath?” said the Prince. “You, who showed no fear when I denounced myself to you.” “My lord,” said Fath, “man and woman are two locked caskets, of which each contains the key to the other.”
“Hold out your hands, Fath,” said the Prince, and as the beggar did so he lifted his mendicant’s wallet from his belt and emptied it into the outstretched hands. Fath kept the coins in his palms, and looked at them. “Is that gold?” he asked. “Yes,” said the Prince. “I have heard of it,” said Fath. “I know it to be very powerful.”
He hung his head, and sat for a long time, mournfully, in deep silence. “I see now,” he said at last, “why you have come here tonight. You mean to put an end to my grandeur. You will have me sell my honour, and my great name with the people, for this mighty and dangerous metal.” “No, by my sword,” said the Prince, “I had no such thing in my mind.” “What am I to do with the gold, then?” Fath asked. “Indeed, Fath,” said the Prince, somewhat embarrassed, “that is a question which I have not been asked before. If you have no use for it yourself, you may give it to the poor of the market-place.” Fath sat still, gazing at the gold. “I might,” he said, “like the man in the tale of the forty thieves, ask for the loan of a beggar’s bowl, and when I give it back by mistake leave a piece of gold at the bottom of it, so as to convince the people of my opulence. But my lord, it would do myself, or them, no good. They would want more, and more than you have given me, and more than you could ever give me. They would no longer love me, as they do now, and no more believe in my compassion, or in my wisdom. Take it back, the beggar begs you. The gold is better with you than with me.”
“What can I do for you, then?” the Prince asked. Fath thought his words over, and his face lightened up, like the face of a child.
“Listen, my great lord,” he said. “There is one scene which I have often pictured to myself; you can make it come true if you want to. Some day let the finest regiment of your horsemen ride through the market-place, your captain at the head of it. Then I shall seat myself in the place, and when they come I shall not move, or get out of their way. So command your captain, as he sees me, to pull up his horse in great surprise and dread, and to stop the whole regiment, in order that they shall not touch me; yes, to stop it so suddenly that the fiery horses all rear at it. But command him further, when I make a sign with my hand, to ride on, and over me, all the same—only tell him to use a little caution, so that the horses shall not hurt me. This is what you can do for me, my lord.”
“What wild fancy of yours is that, Fath?” the Prince asked and smiled. “It has never happened that my horsemen have ridden over one of the people in the streets, or in the market-place.” “Yes, it has happened, my lord,” said Fath; “in that way my mother was killed.”
The Prince sat for some time in thought. “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity,” he said in the end. “I have before now, at Court, learned much about the vanity of men. But I have learned more from you, a beggar, tonight. It seems to me, now, that vanity may feed the starving, and keep warm the beggar in his ragged cloak. Is it so, Fath?” “You see, my lord,” said Fath, “it will be written in the books, in a hundred years, that Nasrud-Din was such a Prince, and ruled his kingdom of Persia in such a way, that his poorest subjects did hold their vanity fully gratified as they starved, in their beggars’ cloaks, by the walls of Teheran.”
The Prince once more draped his cloak about him and drew it over his head.
“I shall go back now,” he said. “Good night, Fath. I should have liked to come here again, on an evening, to talk with you. But in the end my visits would ruin your prestige. I will see to it that you shall sit in peace, from now, by your wall. And God be with you.”
As he was about to go, he stopped. “One more word, before I go,” he said with some hauteur. “It has come to my ear that you visit the woman who, in the tavern of the market-place, gives performances with a donkey. It is well that the people should learn of my wish to know their conditions, and even to share them with them. But you are taking a great liberty with our person when you make us tread, so to say, in the footsteps of an ass. From tonight you must see the woman no more.” I had not guessed this particular instance in the beggar’s scheme to have impressed itself so deeply on the Prince’s mind; now I saw that it had shocked and offended him, and that he felt Fath to have made light of things really great and elevated. But then he was not only a Prince, but a young man.
At his word Fath looked highly bewildered and dismayed; he gazed down and wrung his hands. “Oh, my lord,” he cried, “this command of yours comes hard on me. The woman is my wife. It is by the gains of her craft that I live.”
The Prince stood for a long time looking at him. “Fath,” he said at last, in a very gentle and royal manner, “when, in the matter between you and me, I give in to you in everything, I cannot myself say whether it be from weakness, or from some kind of strength. Tell me, my beggar of Teheran, what in your heart you hold it to be.” “My master,” said Fath, “you and I, the rich and the poor of this world, are two locked caskets, of which each contains the key to the other.”
As we walked back in the late evening I felt that the Prince was thoughtful and disturbed in his soul. I said to him: “You will, Your Highness, tonight have learned something new as to the greatness and the power of Princes.” Prince Nasrud-Din did not answer me for a while. But when we had come out of the narrow, evil-smelling streets and were entering the richer and statelier quarters of the city, he said: “I shall no more walk in my town in disguise.”
In this way we came back to the Royal Palace about midnight, and had supper there together.
Here Æneas finished his story. He leaned back in his chair, took out cigarette-paper and tobacco, and rolled himself a cigarette.
Charlie had listened to the tale observantly, without a word, his eyes on the table. At the silence of his friend he looked up, like a child waking from its sleep. He remembered that there was tobacco in the world, and after Æneas’ example he slowly rolled and lighted a cigarette. The two small gentlemen, each at his side of the table, smoked on in peace, and gazed at the faint blue tobacco smoke.
“Yes, a good tale,” said Charlie, and after a little while added: “I shall go home now. I believe that I shall sleep tonight.” But when he had come to the end of his cigarette he, too, leaned back in his chair thoughtfully. “No,” he said. “Not a very good tale, really, you know. But it has moments in it that might be worked up, and from which one might construct a fine tale.”
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