The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness

by Joel ben Izzy

  STORY ORIGIN: FINLAND

  The Vow of Silence

  There was once a man who decided to enter monastery. On his arrival, he took a vow of silence. He was not to utter a single word for five years, at which time he would be granted a five-minute interview with the abbot.

  Five years later, the abbot summoned him.

  “What do you have to say of your time here?”

  The monk thought for a moment, then said, “At first, I had a problem with the concept of the holy trinity, but have now come to understand it. Also, it has been difficult to awaken each morning at four o’clock, but I have grown used to it.”

  “Is that all you have to say?” asked the abbot.

  The man nodded.

  “Very well, our next meeting will be in five years.”

  Five years later, the man went to see the abbot.

  “What do you have to say?”

  “Well, it has not been easy to accept the truth of the catechism, but I have done so. Also, it’s been hard to be content eating only one bowl of gruel each day.”

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  The man nodded.

  “Very well, our next meeting will be in five years.”

  Five years later, the man went again to see the abbot.

  “What do you have to say?”

  “It has been a challenge to accept the idea of divine grace, but I have done so. Also, it has been somewhat uncomfortable sleeping on a stone floor with no mattress for all these years, but I have grown used to it.”

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  “No, there is one more thing. I’m leaving the monastery.”

  “Well, it’s about time! You’ve done nothing but bitch and moan since you got here!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Vow of Silence

  I STOOD THERE, staring at Lenny, amazed by how old he looked. Were it not for his voice, I would not have recognized him. The skin hung loosely from his face, except around his dark, puffy eyes. His once full head of hair was all but gone, and what remained hung down from the sides in long, gray strands that blended with his unkempt beard. But his face beamed.

  “What’s it been?” he said, counting to himself. “Almost twenty years, and not even a hello?” His voice was loud, and several heads turned to look at us. “I’ve been looking forward to this. I thought you’d be glad to see me.”

  I reached out to shake his hand, doing my best to smile and say, “How are you?”

  “Would you speak up?” He spoke to the gathering crowd. “I can’t hear a word he’s saying, can you?” Turning back to me, he said, “What’s with the mumbling? Can’t you talk?” As I fumbled for an answer, I was relieved to see the bar mitzvah boy’s mother coming toward us.

  “Here’s the check,” she said, giving Lenny a sideways glance, then disappearing. I nodded politely as I took it but, a moment later, Lenny snatched it from my hand. “My God!” he exclaimed, holding the check out at arm’s length, his eyes squinting. Then, leaning forward, he whispered, “Am I reading this right? Look at what they pay you! And for what you did up there?”

  I’d had enough. I grabbed the check, picked up my story bag, and headed for the door.

  “Hey, where are you going?” he called. I could hear him explaining himself to the crowd. “He was my student. I haven’t seen him in almost twenty years, and now he doesn’t even talk to me!”.

  Glancing over my shoulder, I could see those around him looking curious and confused, as they had when I’d been onstage. Leaving him there, I made my way through the lobby, beyond the din of the music and outside into the rain. But a moment later I heard him call. I turned to see him waving one arm at me and limping quickly in my direction.

  I had no desire to see Lenny, or anyone else, but there was nothing else to do. I waited until he arrived at my car, out of breath. “Joel, why are you running?” he said. “Here I’ve been, looking forward to seeing you, and you won’t even say ‘hello.’”.

  “Hello,” I whispered. He shrugged, waiting for more. “Look, I . . . really can’t talk.”

  “So it seems!” he shouted. He leaned toward me and whispered, “What, is it some sort of secret?” Raindrops splattered off his bald head.

  “Lenny,” I whispered as loudly as I could, “it’s good . . . to see you. You look well. I wish I . . . could stay . . .”

  He shook his head. “Joel, you’re lying. You can’t even talk and you’re telling me lies! I look like shit, and you just want to get out of here as fast as you can.”

  Not knowing what to do, I unlocked the door, went around to the trunk, and loaded my story bag. By the time I closed the trunk, he was gone. My eyes scanned the parking lot and the rain, but in the darkness there was no sign of him. I breathed a sigh of relief and opened the car door. I gasped. He was in the driver’s seat.

  I stood there looking at him looking up at me. “Well?” he asked. “You going to get in, or stand there, like a turkey in the rain?”

  He stared at me in a puzzled way, then a look of understanding came over his face, and he nodded. “Oh. I see. Good point. You’d better drive. They took away my license. This eye—” he pointed to the right one “—completely blind.” He climbed over the armrest to the passenger side and motioned me in, patting the seat. It was ridiculous, but I was getting soaked. I climbed into the car, wondering how to get him out.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, as he slid the seat back. “You’ll remember when you get there. Just drive.” When I didn’t respond, he gave an exasperated sigh and said, “Alright, 280 down to Highway 17, south to the Ben Lomond exit, left at the stop sign. Then you go about three miles until you reach the dirt road . . .”

  I sat there, awestruck by his nerve. Directions. He hadn’t even bothered to ask. He expected me to give him a ride. His cabin in Ben Lomond was at least an hour and a half away, more like two in this rain, in exactly the wrong direction.

  For a moment I stared at him, and he stared back at me. He made no sign of leaving, and as I sat wondering what to do, it struck me that driving him home might be the easiest way to get rid of him. Besides, how else would he get home? It would be a good deed, I told myself as I started the engine, and perhaps a good deed would turn into good luck, which I could certainly use. Pulling out the cell phone, I called and left a message for Taly, saying I’d be late.

  As I drove, Lenny rambled. The bar mitzvah boy, it turned out, was his second cousin, but he couldn’t stand the kid, the parents, or the rest of the whole family. “Not a one of them deeper than a puddle. Still,” he added, picking at something between his teeth, “the food wasn’t bad.”

  He had gotten a ride to the bar mitzvah with another relative, but had managed to get into a fight with her, which explained why he needed me to give him a ride home. The bar mitzvah boy’s mother had called him some months back and asked if he would tell some stories at the reception. “But I’m retired now. Storyteller emeritus. I only tell stories when I want to, and I don’t do bar mitzvahs anymore. I knew you lived in Berkeley because of the articles in the papers, so I gave her your name. That’s how you got the gig.”

  He paused here, as though expecting gratitude from me. When I didn’t respond, he shrugged and went on talking. This was fine by me; I had nothing to say to him, nor could I have made myself heard over the rain pounding on the roof of the car.

  He’d stopped performing publicly shortly after I’d left. Things had not gone well for him. “You catch me at a good time,” he said, coughing. “Between heart attacks. January 27 last year was the first one. I don’t know when the next will be. Then there’s the diabetes. They made me stop drinking. You mind if I take off my shoes? My feet are killing me.”

  I turned off the highway and found my way to the dirt road that wound through the woods to his cabin. He’d been right about one thing; I did remember the road as I got closer, and I thought back to the anticipation I’d once felt, riding my bike through the fog to his cabin on summer afternoo
ns. The rains had turned the road to mud, and I wove my way between the puddles as he talked on about his life. Finally, the cabin appeared in my headlights, looking not so much like the cozy cabin in the woods I remembered, but a haunted house. I pulled into the gravel driveway and left the engine running. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “So?” he said, “What about you?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “I’ve done all the talking. And you sit there saying nothing. Are you going to tell me your story or what?”

  I tapped the clock on the dashboard. It was already past midnight. “I’d love . . . to visit,” I whispered, “but it’s late. Why don’t . . . I give you . . . a call . . .”

  Disappointment spread across his face. He shook his head. “Call me? Why would you? I don’t even have a phone! You haven’t called me in eighteen years!” He opened the door and stepped out into the rain, muttering.

  “I see how it is. I take you on as my student, try to teach you what I know about storytelling, put up with your naïveté, and what do I ask in return? Money? Acknowledgment? No, nothing. Then comes the day when I ask you to tell me a story—one story—and what do I get?” He screwed up his face, put his hands around his neck, and imitated my hoarse whisper. “We’ll . . . do . . . lunch . . .” Shaking his head, he slammed the car door shut and stomped through the rain to his cabin. As he stepped onto the porch and entered the house, I sighed in relief. Angry as I was, there was something else—a twinge of sadness. Meeting him that evening had tarnished a picture that I’d long carried in my mind, of a once great storyteller who had wrestled with his own darkness. Clearly, the darkness had won out. Now I would remember him as a pathetic old man, blathering in the rain. I waited a moment, then pulled out and drove back to the highway, sure I would not see him again.

  But as I neared the highway, I found myself starting to fidget, feeling unsettled. It felt wrong to leave things this way. Just before the on ramp, I turned the car around. By the time I pulled back into the driveway, the cabin was dark. I walked through the mud to the porch and stood there for several minutes, hearing nothing. I had just decided to leave when I heard Lenny’s voice call from inside.

  “It’s open.”

  I entered and saw him crouched before the potbellied stove, lighting an empty egg carton, which flared up. He didn’t seem at all surprised that I’d come back. “Have a seat,” he said, without looking up. There were two large armchairs facing the stove, just as there had always been. I took the closer one, which had stuffing coming out of one arm. My eyes scanned the room as best they could, the only light other than the fire coming from a kerosene lantern on the kitchen table. His cabin had always been cramped, filled with books stacked on every available surface. Now, those piles had grown, and I could see their shadows on the slate floor, swaying in the light from the stove. There were also stacks of old newspapers, boxes, and an old yellow suitcase. Dust was everywhere, and its dry smell filled the room as the fire caught.

  Lenny said nothing as he goaded the fire with a poker. Finally he got up and went to the kitchen. A minute later he came back with a can of mixed nuts and two glasses of water. I stared at the can, which looked like it might have a spring-loaded snake inside, and then at the glasses of water. Mine was a normal drinking glass, but his was a very delicate pink wineglass, with lines swirling up the sides.

  “My grandmother’s,” he explained, when he saw me looking at it. “Beautiful, isn’t it? She brought it all the way from Poland. There used to be four, but this is the only one left.”

  He sat down across from me and helped himself to a handful of nuts. I watched him for a time, still angry for the way he’d humiliated me at the bar mitzvah. Angry as I was, my pity won out. I wanted to help him.

  “Well, aren’t you going to say anything?” he finally said. “Or are you going to sit there and stare at me?”.

  “How can . . . I help . . . you?”

  “I already told you. I want to hear your story.”

  “My story?”

  “What else?” he sounded impatient. “Look, Joel, I can tell from your face that you’ve been through hell. I have no idea what’s happened to you, but from the looks of it, someone has reached down your throat and yanked out your soul. You’re a mess! But,” he added, looking me up and down, “that’s a great-looking suit.”

  The reference took me a moment to get; I had told him my father’s joke years before, and it touched me that he remembered it. I felt suddenly overwhelmed. I looked into the fire for a time, then looked back up to see him sitting there, wide-eyed, waiting.

  “It’s a . . . long story.”

  “Good,” he said, grabbing another handful of nuts. “That’s how I like them.”

  “I don’t know . . . where to begin.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Wherever you start, that’s the beginning. Keep on going and the ending will find you.”

  I sat there, groping for words to describe the pictures that sprang into my mind. Finally I gave up and began to whisper whatever came to mind. “Lost my voice,” I began.

  “So it seems. Go on.”

  In two- and three-word phrases, I explained all that I could. It wasn’t easy. The words stung my throat and left me gasping for breath, but it felt good to say them just the same. Once I began I couldn’t stop, the story all coming out at once. I rambled on, stopping every few words to catch my breath, until I got to that evening’s bar mitzvah. “And that . . . you saw.”

  The look on Lenny’s face was not one I expected; he was clearly shaken by my tale. When he saw me staring at him, he turned aside quickly, reaching his arm under the right side of his chair, and fished around until he came up with a wooden cigar box. He peered in the box for some time before choosing a cigar and biting off the end, which he spit into the potbellied stove. At last he lit it, took a few puffs, then settled back in his chair.

  “Alright,” he said, with a wave of his hand. “Go on.”

  I shrugged. There was nothing more to say.

  His cigar hand motioned me onward. “Go on. I’m listening.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve got my attention. Now what?”

  “That’s it.”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s not. The story’s not over. There’s more.”

  I shrugged again and drank from my glass of water.

  “C’mon, what’s the point?” He waited. “Every story has a point, a message, a moral. Otherwise there’s no reason to tell it. So, what’s the point?”

  “No point.”

  “Sure there’s a point. There has to be.”

  I shifted in my chair.

  “Here’s a point for you. Life has kicked you in the butt.” He blew a wobbly smoke ring. “It had to happen, didn’t it?” He used the cigar to point to the door. “When you walked out of that door so long ago, I knew you’d be back. And here you are, with your head down and your tail between your legs.”

  I stared at him, too stunned to respond. Then I slammed down the glass of water and stood to leave.

  “What, running away again?” he called out, as I made my way to the door. “You don’t like the truth?”

  “I don’t . . . like you!”

  “Maybe not,” he shrugged, “but you need me.”

  “Bullshit,” I tried to shout as I opened the door, but got only a honk.

  “Yes, you do,” he said, ignoring me. “Because without me, you will become me.”

  I looked back through the doorway to see him standing, his face flushed. His words felt like a curse, yet another one atop the pile of curses that had built up over the past months. It was just as I stepped onto the porch that I heard him shout out a single word.

  “ONCE!”

  I waited. He said it again, more quietly.

  “Once.” And then, a third time, whispering. “Once . . . upon . . . a . . . time.” There was a long pause. “On the edge of a forest, there was a palace.”

  I waited. “It was a magnificent palace. Inside
this palace lived a prince. He had a happy life, this prince, but he was told, from the time he was a child, that whatever he did, he must not go into the forest, for it was enchanted. ‘If you go in, you will be lost,’ his parents had said, ‘and we won’t be able to come find you.’ And so it was, his whole life he had done just that, and stayed out of the forest.”

  I found myself pulled through the doorway and into the story. “One sunny day, as he walked near the forest, the prince’s curiosity overcame him. What harm could there be to peek inside? Even from the edge he could hear strange and wonderful sounds and see birds with magnificent plumage. He walked a few steps in to see trees laden with fruits he’d never seen before, alongside bubbling streams. He found himself drawn deeper into the forest until, after several hours, it was time to return. Only then did he realize he had become hopelessly lost. Frantically, he went from one path to another, trying to retrace his steps, with no luck. That night he slept in the forest, alone and afraid. The next day he resumed his wandering, desperately looking for some way out. He searched all that day, and the following day as well, but could not find it. By the end of the third day, he reached the point of despair. Just as he was on the verge of losing all hope, he spied a very old man.

  “‘Thank God I’ve found you,’ said the prince, running to him. ‘I can’t find my way out. I’ve been lost in these woods for three days!’

  “‘Three days?’ laughed the old man. ‘I’ve been lost here for three years!’

  “The prince’s hopes fell. ‘Then you’re no use to me,’ he said.

  “‘Ah,’ said the old man. ‘That is where you’re wrong. For though I do not know which path leads out of these woods, I know a hundred paths that do not. Come, together we will find our way.’”

  I found myself sitting, once again, across from Lenny.

  “You told me what happened,” he said quietly. “But you didn’t tell me why.”

  “I . . . don’t . . . know why.”

  “No, you don’t. And without a reason you don’t have a story. Just more misery. Misery without meaning. Raw suffering—of that, I’ve had enough. More than enough. The world is filled with it, and if I ever run out, I just read a newspaper.”