“Please, Mr. Storyteller,” said the expert. “One more time. Count to five.”
Suddenly I heard numbers, loud numbers, echoing through the room. “One, two, three . . .” I stopped, and they stopped—there was just the echo of “three.” I started again, and they came out loud and clear, filling the room—I was shouting! The room filled with applause. When I got to ten, I called out “YES!”
“Excellent! And now, please, tell us a story.”
Maybe it was the drugs. Or maybe it was the shock of hearing my own voice. But, for the life of me, I could not come up with a thing. He’d asked for a story, any story, and I could not think of a single one. I could hear the silence as everyone waited and then, very softly, I felt a story tap me on the shoulder. A moment later, a picture came into mind, of a desert, and in the distance, a palace. Through the doorway of the palace I could see a crowd of people and, before them, on a throne, sat a king.
“Let me tell you a tale of long ago, from the old city of Jerusalem, back in the days when Solomon was king . . .” The room erupted in applause and cheering. I wanted to go on but I heard something that made me stop. Somewhere, in the midst of the clapping and shouting, I heard a voice, a still, quiet voice, laughing. I strained my eyes to find its source, but could see only the towel.
“Enough!” said the expert. All the noise stopped. Then I heard the surgeon’s soft voice say, “Sutures.”
I COULD NOT contain my euphoria as they rolled me into the recovery room.
“Hi, there!” I said to the nurse. “Nice day, isn’t it! I like the hat! Great hospital you got here.” Then, to a patient, “Wow, that’s some cast you got there! Hope it heals soon!” I blathered to the right of me and to the left of me, to everyone in the room. When I was moved to a corner and all alone for a moment, I broke into “Singin’ in the Rain,” which stopped abruptly when I spotted the expert across the room.
“Hey, doctor!” I shouted. “You looking for me? I’m over here!”
He had a huge grin on his face. “So,” he said. “About that story . . .”
“You want to hear it? Let me tell you! It’s about King Solomon and how he was tricked into removing his ring by Ashmodai, King of the Demons . . .”
He motioned for me to stop. “It seems,” he said, “the procedure is a success. But there is something you must understand. In order for us to place the device in your throat, we needed to give you anti-inflammatory drugs. We gave you just enough to last through the operation. Within a few minutes they will wear off, and swelling will set in, as is to be expected. The swelling will last for approximately three weeks. And then, you will have the voice you have now.
“But—and this is very important—during these three weeks, you must not talk, or even try to talk.”
I stared at him.
“You see, the placement of the device is very precise. Listening to your voice now, and comparing it to the voice on your tapes, I believe we have an excellent correction, as good as any I have ever heard. But to keep it that way, it must heal into place exactly as we set it. Any talking during this time—even whispering, as you have been doing until now—could dislodge it. And I am afraid that could permanently damage your voice.”
It took a moment for his words to register. “You mean that now that I can talk, I can’t talk?”
He nodded.
“But there’s so much I want to say! To tell everything . . .”
He stopped me again, with a motion of his hand. “I have a gift for you.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pen, which he handed to me. “This is for you. So now you can tell the whole story, about King Solomon and everything else.”
STORY ORIGIN: SUFI MUSLIM, TURKEY.
The Secret of Happiness
Nasrudin is known as much for his wisdom as his foolishness, and many are those who have sought out his teaching.
One devotee tracked him down for many years before finding him in the marketplace sitting atop a pile of banana peels—no one knows why.
“Oh great sage, Nasrudin,” said the eager student. “I must ask you a very important question, the answer to which we all seek: What is the secret to attaining happiness?”
Nasrudin thought for a time, then responded. “The secret of happiness is good judgment.”
“Ah,” said the student. “But how do we attain good judgment?”
“From experience,” answered Nasrudin.
“Yes,” said the student. “But how do we attain experience?”
“Bad judgment.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Secret of Happiness
THAT WAS FIVE YEARS AGO. When I look back at those three weeks, they seem like the moment just after waking from a dream, when you can close your eyes and slip back into it.
Even as I counted the minutes until I would again be able to speak, I knew that I would be losing something. Just as I had lost my voice some five hundred days before, I would now be losing a certain quiet, a loss that had given me so much. So I spent much of my anxious, self-enforced silence trying to remind myself of those lessons I’d learned, writing down those things I wanted to remember when I awoke.
Three weeks to the day after surgery was the first night of Hanukkah. We gathered around the menorah Elijah and I had made out of small brass elbow-joints. Taly held Michaela’s hand as she lit the first candle. We sang the blessings, then Elijah asked for a story.
“A story?” I said. “Alright, I’ll tell you the story of Hanukkah.”
My voice felt and sounded exactly as it had in the hospital during the second surgery, just as it had before the first.
I told them the story of a miracle, of a light that, by all rights, should have burned out—but did not. Instead, it burned for eight days and nights, and it was burning at that moment on the windowsill, reflected in their faces. They stood there for a time, looking at the glass, before Michaela asked for another story. I thought for a time before it came to me.
“Have I ever told you about your Great-Grandpa Izzy—and how he used to love catsup?”
So began the stories I told them, and tell them, to this day. My voice is fine now, strong and healthy. There has been no sign of the cancer. I’m back at work, telling stories. And when I look back at those days when my voice was missing, they seem like time spent in another world.
In that world, my mother is alive and well. Lenny is talking in riddles and playing his tricks. Elijah is, once again, that five-year-old boy with curly blond hair and Michaela is a baby. Taly and I sit on the back porch of our house, watching the leaves fall, basking in an innocence that we don’t even realize we have.
Once you open doors backward through time, other doors appear. Behind one stands my father, tall and handsome, in his white dinner jacket, playing the violin. And my mother is that young, bright-eyed girl in Cleveland, sitting at the feet of my Grandpa Izzy, listening to a story.
And so I drift back and forth between this world and that, looking for answers to the same questions I have asked all along: Why did this happen? Was it all meant to be, part of some great plan?
That’s what Lenny thought. I can still hear his voice: “Is there a reason? Of course! Everything has a reason. You, me, we’re all part of a magnificent story, in which each of us plays a part. It’s a tapestry with so many threads winding in and out that only God-on-high could ever weave it.”
I’d like to believe he’s right. That would explain why God laughs; there is a reason, and if only we knew the reason, we’d laugh, too.
Taly thinks the idea is ridiculous. “No way. Even if God does exist, she’s not up there micromanaging the details of your life.”
She’s right, of course. To imagine God up there, pulling strings on a bazillion stories here on earth—it’s far too complicated. And way too simple. No, I just can’t believe it.
But I can’t go the other way, either, saying that things happen for no reason at all. To do so would mean leaping into a void filled with randomness and mea
ninglessness.
Here is what I’ve come to: I still believe that things in this world do, indeed, happen for a reason. But sometimes that reason comes only after they happen. It is not a reason we find, but one we carve, sculpted from our own pain and loss, bound together with love and compassion. As hard as we may search, we can only see it when we stop to wonder, looking back to see where we’ve been and what we’ve learned. It’s a grueling process, this forging a reason from the stuff of life, but it’s all we can do. And what we get for our efforts is a story.
WHAT, THEN, OF the secret of happiness? I know stories that touch upon it and even one by that name. But for me, the secret of happiness sits atop a long list of life’s secrets. Perhaps that’s the secret—there is no secret of happiness. Yet, we keep searching, maybe because the simple act of looking for it makes us happy.
As for the beggar king—that’s another story.
EPILOGUE
The Beggar King
IT WAS AFTER A LIFETIME of wandering that Solomon found himself alone, in a boat—an old man adrift at sea. He spent his days fishing, and marveling on all that had happened since that distant day, so many years before, when Ashmodai had cast him halfway across the world, to the midst of a vast desert.
He had been forced to make his way as a beggar, wandering from place to place, trying to find someone who would believe that he was really a king. Finally he gave up and simply tried to convince them he was hungry. He lived off the scraps of food he could beg, and he eventually found work, as a cook for another king. But he lost that job in shame and was banished to die in the wilderness. He would have, too, had he not been captured as a prisoner by a band of thieves, who sold him as a slave to a blacksmith. It was after seven long years that he earned his freedom, along with a single bag of gold. This, he used to buy a boat, hoping it would carry him back to his beloved Jerusalem.
He had set sail with fair winds, but those had died just one month into his journey. Nor had they returned, and with no land in sight, it slowly began to dawn upon him that it was here, at sea, lost and forgotten, that his life would end.
The realization surprised him, as had every twist and turn his journey had taken. Yet nothing surprised him quite so much as what he had come to feel—a simple sense of peace. At last, he had come to accept what life had handed him.
It happened one day, as he sat lost in thought, that he felt a tug on his line. It came from a huge fish, so large, in fact, that it dragged the boat back and forth, this way and that, for many hours, before Solomon pulled in a huge shark—the largest he had ever seen. As he cleaned it out, he saw that its belly contained other fish it had eaten, including one of a sort he had never seen before, a small blue fish. Though old and on the verge of death, he was still curious to learn. He cut this fish open, too—and stopped. For inside he saw something shiny, something golden—a ring. His ring.
He held it up to the light, recognizing the writing on the inside, the secret name of God. Then, ever so slowly, he slid the ring onto his finger.
Instantly, he found himself dressed in fine robes, seated in a comfortable chair, inside a magnificent palace. All around he saw guards, standing at attention, with Beniah, his chief guard, to his right. And to his left stood a tall blue demon—Ashmodai—locked in chains, who spoke.
“Well, your highness. We’re waiting! Are you going to answer the question?”
Solomon was too stunned to speak. Finally, he said, “Question? What question?”
“Why, the question I asked you nearly one hour ago!”
“One hour? Why, it’s been nearly fifty years . . .”
Beniah spoke up. “Your highness, I’m afraid you have been sitting there, in silence, for one hour. You may wish to answer the question . . .”
“The question. Yes, Ashmodai, would you repeat the question?”
“Certainly, your highness. Have you learned something about illusion?”
Solomon said nothing for a long time. Then, slowly, he nodded to Ashmodai. “Yes, I have. You may go.”
With that, the Demon King laughed one last laugh and began to shrink, smaller and smaller, until he was no larger than a chicken. He slipped from his chains, flew three times around the palace, out of a window, and over the temple that Solomon had built, never to be seen again.
Solomon went back to ruling his kingdom, but was a different man. Gone was his arrogance, evaporated were his illusions of grandeur. From that day on, he showed a wisdom he had not known before—a wisdom of the heart. He knew how it felt to be loved by all and how it felt to be lost and alone, without a friend in the world. He knew what it was to have everything—and what it was to have nothing. For he had been both a beggar—and a king.
About the Stories
TRACING THE LINEAGE of folktales is a tricky business. They travel so much that, in the end, we’re usually left wondering just where, when, and how any given story first came to be told. In the following pages I tell a little about the stories that appear before each chapter of the book. I have tried to say something about their origin, when known, as well as how I first came to learn them.
The Beggar King (pages 1–10 and 213–16)
Originally from the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Gittin, this tale has appeared in many variations over the years. The legend of the magical stonecutting powers of the worm known as the Shamir seems to have grown out of the biblical restriction against using metal to build the holy arc of the covenant.
This tale echoes others known in Muslim countries, and the same Ashmodai may be from the Persian Asehma-Daeva, the demon Aeshma. In Jewish Folktales selected and retold by Pinhas Sadeh, (Anchor Books, 1989), the author speculates that the tale of Solomon’s wanderings may be a metaphoric recounting of King David’s wanderings among the Philistines, during which time he pretended to be insane.
In the abbreviated version of the story that appears in this book, I have drawn upon several different texts and included some touches of my own. I first learned of the story from Howard Schwartz’s groundbreaking work of Jewish folklore, Elijah’s Violin and Other Jewish Fairy Tales (Harper and Row, 1983), which I recommend along with Sadeh’s book to anyone who would like to read a fuller version of this story and other stories about Solomon and Ashmodai, king of the demons.
The Lost Horse (page 11)
Generally attributed to Lao Tzu, author of the Tao Te Ching, this tale expresses one of the core tenants of Taoism. The story seems to have been further shaped by the poet and prince Liu An, (179–122 B.C.E.) in his book Huai Nan Tzu.
I heard frequent references to this story during my travels in Hong Kong and China; when something went wrong people would say sai weng shih ma—the old man lost his horse.
I first heard the story from a psychic in the Mission District of San Francisco, and was later given a written version by storyteller Ruth Stotter.
The Cricket Who Jumped to the Moon (page 29)
This original tale was inspired by memories of my father. I also drew upon a motif I found in a Burmese folktale, “The Musician of Tagaung,” which told of a boy whose father dreamed he would someday become the greatest harp player Burma had ever known. The boy tried and tried to play the harp, but had no talent for it, breaking the strings and ruining harp after harp. It was many years later, long after his death, that people found the broken harps, and began to invent stories of his musical abilities. So it was, over time, that he became known as a great harp player.
Optimism and Pessimism (page 49)
Though this story is quite well known, tracking down its origins was quite a challenge. I finally found what seems to be its earliest known written ancestor in a strange little book, buried deep within the stacks of the San Francisco Main Library. The book seems to be a story in itself; its title page was so intriguing that it seems worth reprinting here:
Waggish Tales of the Czechs
Originally entitled
Gesta Czechorum
Done into English out of the original 15th Century C
zech manuscript of Rehor Frantisek, of Czaslau, sometime Almoner to the count of Zikmund, King over both Bohemia and Hungary, and Holy Roman Emperor, and later Master of the Wardrobe to the Magnata Bohdan Beverlik of Tynist by C. D. S. Feals, in an adaptation to the reading requirements of the American public by
Norman Lockridge
The Candide Press
1947
Therein lies a tale entitled “A Peasant Boy’s Faith,” in which three rich children attempt to play a dirty trick on a poor, but earnest, boy by leaving horse manure in his Christmas stocking. He responds by saying that he was given a horse by Santa.
I’ve known this story for many years, but cannot remember when I first heard it.
The Vow of Silence (page 61)
This appears to be a variant of a tale popular in Finland—also recorded in Norway and Ireland—known as “Too Much Talk,” about three men who retreat to a quiet glen at the far end of the world, taking a vow of silence. After seven years the first one speaks: “I heard a cow lowing.” The other two are angry but silent. Then, seven years later, the second says, “It was not a cow, but a bull!” Seven years after that the third says, “I’m leaving this place. There’s too much talk!”
I first heard the story, while I was a student at Stanford, from Nick Burbules, the resident associate in my co-op.
The Search for Truth (page 81)
Since hearing this story from Lenny, I have tried to track down its origins without success. Though I have found written versions of it, the authors of those have also been unable to track down the source, which seems to be as elusive as truth itself. I attribute it to India merely because the story mentions the country; I would welcome information from anyone who knows more.
The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness Page 14
