The Tidewater Tales

by John Barth

  So she tells us after Rocinante, to our surprise, powers gingerly past the granary after all, runs aground, backs off, pokes a fair way farther usward into Back Creek, runs aground again, backs off, and sensibly anchors where she is in the unmarked channel, a few hundred yards away. We wave; captain and passenger wave back. Over dinner we wonder among other things how they’re hitting it off, and what that amalgamation of Popeye the Sailorman and the Knight of Rueful Countenance must be like in bed. Kate’s inclined to respect Carla B Silver’s judgment in such matters, but agrees with Pete that in this instance Carla too seems not quite to have made up her mind.

  We see them fire up their barbecue grill as we have fired up ours, and then disappear below. Says Chip I think she’s making up her mind. He puts down the binoculars and sighs Sex.

  A while later, Capn Don comes up alone, wearing fresh Bermuda shorts. He puts meat on the grill, returns below, comes back up to mind the cooking. Then Carla emerges in a white pants suit—the day is welcomely cooling down—with her hands full of dishes, and they dine in the cockpit, as we’re doing. Afterward they dinghy over to say good night.

  Standing now arms akimbo in Story’s cockpit, Carla looks around her at the long light quivering in the trees and acknowledges This does beat working. Are you okay? she asks Katherine closely, who smiles and says Sure. You?

  Never mind me. There is fine perspiration on her lightly mustached lip; the sun fires her bracelets and gold earrings. A very together woman, in our opinion. Ask me tomorrow, she suggests.

  Says Capn Don Ask me tomorrow. She makes a damn fine vinaigrette; we’ve established that.

  But can she tell a story? asks Peter Sagamore, having taken nightcap orders. She promised us one by Scheherazade herself.

  And she’ll deliver it, says Carla B Silver, though not as expertly as our friend May Jump, who told it to me.

  May! cries happy Katherine. I should’ve known.

  Nods Carla There’s a storyteller for you. In fact, I’m going to let May tell that one herself: the What Am I Doing Here story. May Jump swears she met Scheherazade in person last September in Annapolis and took her to that ASPS thing in Kitty Hawk.

  Laments K The one I missed. . . .

  Capn Don affirms that that’s where he met her, all right, and Miss May Jump, too: damn fine storytellers both. And he joined their little club, amigos, and hopes he gave one-half as good as he got.

  Touching Kath’s shoulder, Peter says proudly We have here that society’s founder: the Mother of Invention. But it’s Carla B Silver’s trick at the helm, no?

  That it is, skipper, says C.D.Q. That it is.

  Says Carla B Silver to Andrew “Chip” Sherritt, once our refreshments are in hand. This is an R-rated story, comrade, but I guess we can assume your parents’ consent. Quips Chip We’re outside their three-mile limit; all I need is the captain’s consent. Peter declares We’re all consenting adults, sexually educated and dramaturgically mature. Chip knows that denouements don’t come from distress-flare canisters.

  Talk like that, says Carla B Silver, is over her head, but never mind. Her story’s not sexually explicit anyhow, just gynecological—and latently statistical. ¡Ole! cheers Donald Quicksoat. Carla regards him over imaginary reading-glasses and says I’m calling it

  THE STORY OF SCHEHERAZADE’S FIRST SECOND MENSTRUATION.

  Kath groans. Another menstruation story! This Bay is nothing but menstruation stories.

  Says aplombful Carla No wonder, all these moons and tides. To us all she announces I’m going to dedicate this story to Katherine Sherritt Sagamore. Here’s to her safe and speedy delivery before this weekend’s done.

  Says Capn Don Hear hear.

  That realization thrills us; we sip to it. But Chip wonders aloud First second?

  Attaboy, says Carla seriously. Now then, we hear you’re good with numbers. Let’s check out your statistical sex education.

  Quick Chip, who is being permitted half a Molson’s ale as well as the impending story, gamely grins and touches his sister’s belly: One on one makes two? He gets himself kissed, hissed, and groaned at.

  Still to blushing Andrew, Carla B Silver declares The normal human female menstrual cycle is a lunar month, right?

  Those were the days, sighs K. C.B S. agrees and turns back to Chip. Now, my friend: Do you remember exactly how many days the so-called nine-month normal human pregnancy averages out to?

  Yes’m, Chip answers at once, upon whom our familiar arithmetic has not been lost: Two hundred sixty-six, plus or minus fourteen. Pour le sport he adds That’s nine and a half lunar months exactly, or . . . buzz buzz clickety click . . . eight point seven two of our months, if we call the average month thirty and a half days long. Thirty point four four something, actually.

  His sister and brother-in-law look at each other, as we are wont to do in prodigy’s presence. Cool Carla says Right you are, I bet. You like the story so far? Now: Does anybody happen to know how long it normally takes a lady to get back into the ovulation/menstruation business after she’s given birth?

  Chip passes. Me too, says Peter Sagamore, but whistle a few bars, and we’ll fake it. Capn Don confesses that if he ever knew that particular fact of life, he has forgotten it. Queries Katherine Doesn’t it depend on whether she’s breast-feeding?

  It can, says Carla, and in certain times and places that depends on whether she’s a lady. Scheherazade told May Jump that upper-class Muslim women where she comes from—which is someplace called the Islands of India and China—don’t do their own wet-nursing. Couple of months, isn’t it? Damn if I can remember that far back.

  Katherine says Six to eight weeks if you’re not lactating. She imagines, correctly, that Peter is wondering whether this so-called story has a plot or is all Pampers and Kotex, numbers and nursing pads. It is late in the day, friends, late in the cruise, late in our Tidewater Tales and our pregnancy for a shaggy-menstruation story.

  Okay, says Carla B Silver: What Scheherazade told May Jump last fall was the story of how and why she got herself involved with King Whatsisname in the first place, King Shahryar there, just exactly at the time she did. I mean, for years the guy’d been popping a virgin every night and then killing her in the morning so she’d never be unfaithful to him, and young Scheherazade was not one of your Shiite kamikazes: She wanted to straighten the king’s head out and save her country, which was going to ruin, and protect herself and her kid sister too. Turns out she had good reasons for making her move exactly when she made it and then for hanging it up one thousand and one nights later, instead of a hundred and one or two thousand and two or any other number.

  The parents of Pete and Repeat exchange another, different glance, remembering our Nights talk on Day Zero and our recent dizzy conviction that where Huckleberry Findley, Odysseus Dmitrikakis, and Captain Donald Quicksoat have crossed wakes, Scheherazade must in some guise soon sail by.

  Once upon a time, says C.B S. (in a new tone now, behind whose resonance we imagine Rimsky-Korsakov’s solo violin transcribed for cello), there were two kings, brothers, both of whom considered themselves happily married. But the younger brother, Shah Zaman of Samarkand, comes across his wife one day smack in the act with a minor member of the kitchen staff. Not even the chef! He draws his scimitar and skewers the pair of them on the spot, but he’s so shocked he can’t cope. He turns the government of Samarkand over to his prime minister and takes what

  I guess you’d call psychological refuge in his brother’s palace over in the Islands of India and China, wherever they are.

  Ceylon and Taiwan? Chip wonders. Quemoy and Matsu?

  Long Ago and Far Away is how May Jump puts it, says Carla B Silver. Our children perk up their ears.

  So Shahryar, the older one, sees that his brother’s wrecked, all right, but can’t persuade him to say what his problem is, until one fine day when he’s out of the house on business, Shah Zaman sees his sister-in-law go to it in the palace courtyard wit
h a low-class blackamoor that she actually calls down out of the trees. Lots of racism and classism in this story, no? Which, so far, is right out of the book, but who remembers the book?

  All hands’ hands go up, in fact, except Chip’s and Chip ‘n’ Dale’s. But this is a tale we don’t mind rehearing, we assure her.

  Carla says Hmp. The version she read to Short Jon Silver a hundred years ago must have been a spayed and dehydrated one with pictures by N. C. Wyeth, ‘cause all this adultery is news to her. Anyhow, she says directly to Chip, when young Shah Zaman there sees what he sees, it cheers him right up: Misery loves company, you know? He doesn’t tattle on the queen right away, but when his brother comes home he tells him the whole story of what went wrong back in Samarkand and what he did about it. And here’s the next number for your data base, Mister Chip: King Shahryar hears Shah Zaman out and shakes his head and says Is that all you did? Just blew away the guilty parties? By Allah, man, he swears: If my wife did a number like that on me, I’d kill a thousand women in revenge! Got that?

  And you’ve got us, says Peter Sagamore. On with the story.

  Says Carla May Jump says Scheherazade says Be careful what you up and swear when you’re playing the lead in an old-time tale, ‘cause the gods have got the whole scene wired.

  And Scheherazade’s right, affirms Katherine Sherritt, taking her husband’s hand. That’s how we got here.

  Um hum. So naturally Shah Zaman sets it up for his brother to see what he just saw—and there was more than I’m telling here, but we don’t want to lose our R rating, okay? Evidently the queen and half the house staff used to go to it every time Shahryar stepped out the front door. Now, here’s a nice touch for you: Despite his macho swaggering, when Shahryar sees that orgy in his own backyard, he’s too wiped out to do what Shah Zaman did. He doesn’t even confront his wife, much less butcher her and her apeman friend; he just turns the administration over to his grand vizier, the way Shah Zaman did, and gets the hell out of there. The two brothers go off together incognito to wander the world, shaking their heads and tisking their tongues.

  And that would be the end of their story right there, if it weren’t for a little X-rated adventure that they happen to stumble into on the very next page. We’re going to skip that one, too, alas, to get on with the arithmetic; also to encourage the innocent bystander here to go read the book for himself. The moral of this episode—for the two brothers, anyhow; not for me and May Jump and Scheherazade—is that their wives were no exception to the general rule, which is that all women are promiscuous.

  Capn Don, to our pleased surprise, drops his rubery to observe it’s not Rigoletto who sings “La donna è mobile”; it’s the horny Duke of Mantua.

  Bravo, says Carla B Silver. But there they are in Ayatollah Khomeini Land, so they decide to go back to their separate kingdoms, take a virgin to bed every night, and have her head chopped off in the morning before she can be unfaithful. Young Shah Zaman takes off for Samarkand, and we hear no more from him till ten volumes and Allah knows how many virgins later. Shahryar goes home and puts his wife and her group-sex crowd out of business for keeps and gives his grand vizier the same orders: a virgin a night or else, and off with her head before breakfast.

  So it goes, for the next three years. Can you do the body count, Mister Chip?

  His wheels already spinning, Chip asks Islamic years or Gregorian?

  Chuckles Donald Quicksoat Both, lad, both!

  Uh one thousand ninety-five virgins Gregorian, says Chip; ten ninety-six if one of those three years was a leap year. And um clickety buzz ten sixty-two Islamic, I think. I forget how Moslems do leap years.

  So do we, Katherine marvels.

  Says satisfied Carla B Silver Anyhow a thousand or so, right? So file that little datum away, ‘cause here comes Scheherazade into the story. Turns out the prime minister there has two virgin daughters himself. All we know about the younger one is that her name is Dunyazade and she hasn’t reached puberty yet, though she will by the end of the story. As for the older one, she’s got it all, like excuse me Miss Leah Allan Silver back in high school and college days. She’s as good-looking as Princess Kate here; she’s as brainy as Mister Andrew Sherritt; she’s talented every which way. And her name is Scheherazade, which doesn’t hurt either, ‘cause if it doesn’t mean “Born in the City,” it means “The One Who Sets the City Free,” and by this time the town is in an uproar, as you might imagine. So many of Shahryar’s taxpayers have voted with their feet—especially the ones with unmarried daughters—that toward the end of Year Three there’s not a virgin left in town fit to go to bed with.

  Except You Know Who, the pearl of the city, and now the plot thickens. We find out that the king has deliberately passed over this particular pearl out of respect for his prime minister. On the other hand, the P.M. is still under the ax if he doesn’t come up with the nightly morsel, and after three years the cupboard is bare.

  Now, amigos, what do you think: Has Scheherazade been sitting on her hands all this time? Her father’s the grand fucking vizier, excuse my French; she knows very well what’s going on in the king’s bedroom and in the Islands of India and China. She sees that the guy’s been driven right ‘round the bend by his late wife’s misbehavior and that his crazy revenge is wrecking the country, and early in the game she hatched an idea how to save the show. In fact, she’s been in training for a long time already; she knows more songs and poems by heart than Miss May Jump does, even, and she’s got herself a private library with guess how many books in it, Mister Chip?

  Andrew is puzzled, but Peter Sagamore is delighted: A thousand books of histories, he recalls, quoting Sir Richard Burton’s English. I hadn’t noticed that little echo, Carla.

  Declares Carla B Silver Scheherazade told May Jump that that’s what gave her the idea. She was counting her collection one day back in Year Two, and the number of her storybooks reminded her of what her father once told her about the king’s vow to Allah just before he learned he was a cuckold. That’s when she set to work reading all the stories in the world, and practicing on little Dunyazade how to tell them.

  Peter Sagamore observes that that circumstance is not in any text of the Nights that he can remember. Text shmext, replies Carla B Silver; this is from the horse’s mouth. So the day her father comes home pissing and moaning that the jig is up ‘cause he’s out of virgins, young Scheherazade floors him by volunteering herself. She has a plan to end the massacre, she tells him, but she won’t say what it is: only that if it works, they’ll all be out of the woods, the king included, and if it doesn’t, they won’t be any farther in than they’re gonna be anyhow, unless Pop’s planning to join the boat people with her and Dunyazade that same day.

  Well, my friends, a father is a father. He tries to talk her out of suicide, as he sees it, by telling her a story with a certain moral to it. But not only does his story not change her mind; she plays the old guy like an accordion. If he won’t give her his permission, she says, she’s going to go straight to Shahryar and tell him she’d love to go to bed with him, but her father won’t let her.

  That is in the text, recollects pleased Peter.

  An offer he can’t refuse, remarks Donald Quicksoat.

  Says Carla Papa’s back is to the wall. He shakes his head and gnashes his teeth, but at last he goes in to his boss and tells him frankly the whole story of this hassle from start to finish, including his daughter’s threat. Now, then: Crazy as he is on the subject of women, Shahryar’s not out of his tree altogether where his self-interest is concerned. This is his faithful prime minister here, and his faithful prime minister’s prime daughter. Does Miss Scheherazade understand what she’s volunteering for? Does her father? I’m afraid we do, says Mister Grand Vizier, and I hate to think what the girl’s mother would say if she were alive to say it. But this is one determined young lady we’re dealing with. So Shahryar claps his hands, or whatever it is sultans do, and says Amen, my friend: Let her will be done
. Your daughter is one prize package, and I’ve been looking the other way for your sake. But don’t either of you imagine that I’m going to change the rules tomorrow morning.

  The grand vizier acknowledges that there is no god but God and goes to fetch his crazy daughter, who told May Jump by the way that the closest she came to panicking in all this was just a couple of paragraphs ago, when she realized that her father’s story hadn’t changed her mind. Do you get it, Mister Chip?

  Andrew shakes his head and apologizes; he was doing numbers.

  Smiles Carla Were you, now. What’d you come up with?

  Nothing, particularly. I just wondered whether Scheherazade was keeping count, or whether it’s just coincidence that she made her move right about when the king finished killing his thousand women in revenge. I guess it wouldn’t matter unless the king was keeping count too.

  Give that boy a Pee Aitch Dee, commands Carla B Silver. What does your text have to say about that, Peter Sagamore?

  Says Peter Not a word. But there it is: The king’s at least a thousand days into his vow.

  Katherine says she’s going to have to read that book again; she doesn’t remember Scheherazade’s worrying that since her father’s story didn’t change her mind, her stories might not change the king’s mind, which is what her life depends on.