The Tidewater Tales

by John Barth

  Nothing happened. But then Scheherazade, musing upon her precocious sister’s aperçu, repeated it with a slightly different emphasis—”The key to the treasure is the treasure . . .”—and Wham! A tall, bespectacled genie materialized right there in the library stacks.

  The rest of the story is well-known. He was no genie, the fellow declared when he’d collected himself, but a storyteller—and not only from another place and time, as his appearance testified, but from another order of reality, where he happened to have been thinking for the thousandth time about his favorite storyteller in the world, Scheherazade, and the book of her thousand and one nights with King Shahryar.

  The young women had no idea what he was talking about.

  It had occurred to him, he explained, that the stories with which she beguiled and cured the king were not only the solution to the problem—hers, the king’s, her father’s, the country’s—but also her reward for having solved it, as was made manifest by the king’s ordering them published in the same breath with which he revoked his decree of death and proposed marriage. In more ways than one, the genie had said to himself, the key to the treasure is the treasure—and immediately upon saying those words he had found himself transported from his writing room in the United States of America to the Islands of India and China and the presence of two very consternated young women.

  Well, it didn’t take sharp Dunyazade long to realize that if their visitor was truly from the future, where there existed a book with a happy ending about herself and Shah Zaman and Scheherazade and Shahryar, then et cetera and voilà. The genie not only told Scher what to do—which is to say, he reported to her that what she had done in the story was tell the king stories—but told her as well which stories she told, and in what order, and where to interrupt them to best dramatic effect by the dawn’s early light. At Dunyazade’s suggestion, he and her sister repeated the magic formula together exactly at noon (local time) every day for the next thousand and one days. The genie would then appear for half to three-quarters of an hour in Scher’s library, read her the next installment of The Thousand Nights and a Night from Richard Burton’s 1885 edition, and dematerialize back to his writing desk in Genieland, where he had problems of his own to deal with when he wasn’t helping Scher with hers on his lunch break. The story goes that he wound up writing a story about the key to the treasure’s being the treasure, which not only solved his problem for the time being, but demonstrated the proposition itself.

  End of flashback; on with the story.

  Scheherazade herself mightn’t have told it just that way, but never mind. The point just now was that when all that was done with and the country was saved and the sisters had married the brothers and The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night was in transcription, she and the Genie (as she still called him, out of affectionate habit and because she couldn’t get his real name right) had ended their daily tête-à-têtes. Each was beginning a new life-story, so to speak; at least a new chapter in his/her ongoing one. But they agreed to repeat their magic formula once every thousand and one nights, in order to say hello and see how each other fared.

  And so they had done, the first two or three times. But an “anniversary” that recurs only once in nearly three years, and never at the same time of year, is easily lost track of when one is busy raising three children, managing a palace, advising a chief of state, and supervising publication of a thirty-volume opus, all at the same time. On one occasion, Scheherazade forgot until the thousand-and-second noontime, which was too late; she recited the formula, solo, and nothing happened. The time after that, she remembered but was absolutely too busy at the key moment even to stop and say the magic words, not to mention have a half-hour conversation. The time after that, she was neither forgetful nor particularly busy, but she felt so ashamed of herself for having missed their previous two dates, so to speak, that she guiltily let this one go by as well.

  The truth is, Scheherazade told her sister in Samarkand, Djean was always rather more interested in me than I in him.

  Djean?

  Short for genie, which is how they say djinn where he comes from. It’s as close as I can come to his real name. I don’t mean to sound snobbish, Dun, but you and I are vizier’s daughters who married royalty and also happen to tell stories, or used to once upon a time. I don’t know what your social calendar looks like, but mine is so full I can’t keep up with it, and every day (till Shahryar Junior took over) I used to make decisions that affected all the Islands of India and China—which owe their political stability to the stories I once told Shahryar. Djean, on the other hand, as far as I could gather, did nothing but scribble away all morning at his stories, sail around in a little boat with his wife in the afternoon, and sit home nearly every evening, reading books and sipping beer.

  That sounds like me, said Dunyazade, except for the wife and the boat and the beer. Kuzia Fakan likes to dance, but I’ll take a hot tub and a good book over your whole social calendar.

  No criticism intended, Scheherazade hastened to say. I’m here because I’ve put all that behind me. Anyhow, I’m confessing, not defending myself. Another thing was that I’d always felt there was something romantic, or at least erotic, in Djean’s interest in me, you know?

  I question that, Scher, Dunyazade objected, if it’s the Nights days you’re speaking of. He never made a pass at you, either physically or verbally, and the way he used to go on about his girlfriend sounded convincing to me.

  Scheherazade agreed. He had married the woman, by the way, she added, not long after the sisters’ own wedding, and she understood the marriage to be a good one. Nevertheless, his interest in her had a prurient aspect, in her opinion, along with its more innocent and flattering aspects, that made their interviews a touch uncomfortable. At their third anniversary rendezvous, for example, he barraged her with questions about her menstrual cycle, of all impertinent things, back in her storytelling period!

  So ask him about his erections, Dunyazade advised, or the regularity of his bowels: tit for tat. Anyhow, if he loves his wife a thousand out of every thousand and one nights, but wouldn’t mind jumping into the tub with you every thousand-and-first, what’s the big deal? But of course, if you’re simply not interested . . .

  Well, she simply wasn’t, Scheherazade declared: At least she hadn’t been, back then. After all, it was Shahryar’s insane jealousy that had caused all the trouble in the first place! Which is why she’d never told him a word about her genie friend. But not so long ago, it happened that one of those thousand-and-one-night “anniversaries” almost coincided with her forty-second birthday, and from the perspective of her new restlessness—and the early termination of her menses—she’d found herself thinking about her former comrade in a different way.

  Aha.

  Yes, well. Djean did more for me—for both of us, Dun—than I’ve ever done for him, though he gallantly claims the opposite. He’s hardly what you’d call handsome, as you remember, but he isn’t bad-looking either. The last time I’d seen him, ten or twelve years ago, he was still tall and trim, whereas Shahryar was going to fat already . . .

  Mm hm.

  I admit it: As the day approached, it was more and more on my mind how shabbily I’d treated the fellow while I was busy being Superwife and Supermom. But all that was done with now, and when Shahryar retired from the throne, he retired from one or two other things, too—jealousy included. Though of course he had his reputation to think about, and so did I.

  Of course. But it occurred to you that a little fling with a genie from another order of reality might be something else, as we say in Samarkand: more interesting and less risky than a roll in the hay with the prince next door. You have my attention, Scher.

  Remember, I’d stood him up three times in a row: Four thousand and four nights had gone by since we’d seen each other! I had no reason to imagine that he was still sitting by the phone, as they say in his country. And even if he were, who knew what he’d be like so ma
ny years later?

  I’m on the edge of my silk-embroidered cushion.

  For that matter, who knew what he’d think of me at forty-two? Standards of female beauty are different where he comes from.

  In my opinion, said Dunyazade, you and I are graced with a timeless beauty that transcends cultural differences and laughs at years. But on with the story, please. You decided that if the guy was still faithfully watching the calendar after all that time—and if he hadn’t turned into an absolute scarecrow—you’d give him a different kind of lock to turn his key in. I’m with you.

  You’re ahead of me. Maybe you’re an old hand at these things, Dun, but I’m strictly an amateur. When the morning came (it happened to be a Monday), I must have changed clothes and hairdos half a dozen times. Would he like me better in madras or paisley, or maybe just a simple solid color? Should I unbraid my hair or leave it for him to unbraid if he wanted to? Maybe I should pretend I didn’t think he’d show up, and let him catch me wearing nothing but harem pants?

  Ai yi, said Dunyazade. How old did you say you are?

  That morning I was about fifteen, going on sixty. At eleven a.m. I told everybody in the house that I had three hours’ homework to do on our budget for the new fiscal, and I hung a big DO NOT DISTURB sign on the library door. At eleven-thirty I decided that the whole idea was change-of-life madness, and that if Djean really appeared, we’d just salaam and have a cup of tea and catch up on each other’s lives. At a quarter till twelve I realized that I was wearing the wrong earrings entirely to go with the white smock I’d decided at the last minute to wear instead of the harem pants. . . .

  White smock!

  Wait till you hear. I’d decided that instead of dressing sexy, I’d pretend it was just another morning and that I’d been working as usual in the stacks when I happened to remember what day it was and gave our magic key another turn just for old times’ sake. But get this: Under the white smock? Nothing.

  Ten till twelve, said Dunyazade. Five till twelve. High noon.

  Sit or stand? asked Scheherazade. Legs crossed or uncrossed? Pretend to be reading you-know-what or stop playing games? And suddenly I really really needed to use the chamberpot! When I heard the muezzins start their noon prayer-call, I was standing in the middle of the room in that frumpy-looking smock, on the verge of tears, with an earring in one hand and a book in the other, one braid up and one unbraided, wishing I were up in the nursery giving my grandson his bottle. I wondered whether I’d even remember the words.

  But you did.

  I did.

  Scher?

  Hey, Scher?

  The key to the treasure is the treasure, Dun. It really is. There he sat—even his desk chair had got transported somehow this time, and a strange-looking object it was. But Djean wasn’t strange-looking at all, not to me. A little older, sure: more lines around his eyes, more wrinkles on his brow, and as much gray as brown in his mustache. But he was my Djean, all right, still trim and fit as he’d been at my age, when I first met him. He was more surprised than I was! He told me later he’d all but given up on me. But whereas I felt like sinking through the floor, he wasn’t flustered a bit, just surprised and pleased. He sprang to his feet, Dun, and if you could’ve seen the delight in that man’s face! I told him later—

  Later later, smirked Dunyazade. Tell me later what you told each other later. What’d he say then? What happened next?

  What happened next was that he held out his arms and said Scheherazade, and it didn’t matter in the least whether my hair was up or down and what I was wearing or not wearing. No comments, Dun, please.

  Who’s commenting? I’m envious. Tell along.

  I know very well you’re going to write this all down as one of your stories and pass it around, so all I’m going to say about what happened next is that the key to the treasure is the treasure, period and Amen. Also that language is a more amazing thing than flying carpets and crystal palaces, but wordlessness can be eloquent, too. When we got around to talking, we got a lot said, Allah be praised, before the spell wore off. But we also said a few things before we talked, and Allah be praised for that as well.

  There is no god but God, said Dunyazade, and he is an incorrigible romantic. On with the story, Scher; don’t hold back.

  Well. Since these visits never lasted as long as a full hour, and we had so much to say to each other, we met regularly for a while, till we got things more or less said.

  The Thousand and One Lunch Breaks.

  I wish. But there were scheduling problems on both ends, for one thing. For another, we couldn’t abide the idea that inevitably, sooner or later, one of us was going to want to break off the connection. We were middle-aged people, basically satisfied with our lives—Djean especially, but me too, despite my itch for something very different, and I don’t mean just him. The fact that we were important to each other in a special way didn’t mean that either of us was kicking over the traces. What’s more, we didn’t want to wear out the specialness of our connection. So we decided to meet once a week, at noon on the Monday, for an arbitrary period, say half a year, and then to end the affair absolutely except for our thousand-and-first-night anniversaries, which weren’t liable to cause any problems on either end. Djean is moie of an Arab formalist than I am; he proposed a lunar month of Mondays: twenty-eight Mondays, starting with that first one. But I had learned from him that the calendar in his place had months as long as thirty-one days, and so I persuaded him to make it thirty-one Mondays, not counting the first one. That gave us four extra times together.

  To me, said Dunyazade, the whole program sounds like coitus interrupts on the larger scale. Tell me more.

  Not about that part. But it really was like a quick daytime replay of the Nights, except that nobody’s life was on the line, and the stories we were telling were nonfiction.

  But you did make love, no? Or was the sex on some other plane of reality too, like Sahib Djean there?

  Scheherazade stood fast: Storytellers don’t always kiss and tell. What we did or didn’t do before we talked (and while we talked: something Shahryar never thought of) is between Djean and me. It has nothing to do with this story, which concerns a different key, to a different treasure. I told him all about my situation and my crazy ambition to do something like what Sindbad had done, but for a better reason, and to do it myself, not as a first-class passenger in a deck chair, even if I had to disguise myself as a man to do it. But I didn’t know where to start, and in all of Islam there was nobody to teach me what I needed to know. Anyhow, I wanted to do the thing alone, not in charge of a crew of rowdy sailors who would take charge of the ship and me as soon as we were out of sight of land, and do the usual things with both of us.

  Djean said that he didn’t find the idea crazy; it was simply impossible where I was. His wife, he said, sometimes took their boat out by herself for a short sail; in his place and time it was not unknown, though it remained unusual, for women to cross oceans singlehanded, even to circle the globe. But their doing so depended upon instruments and materials so exotic as to seem magical, though they were not, and they went in vessels far sea-worthier and easier to manage than anything currently available in the Islands of India and China. There was no way for him to provide me with such things; even his desk chair never “came over” with him after that first Monday, nor did several books he tried to bring me about women solo sailors. It was only Djean himself who materialized, pen in hand, as the Mondays flew by. That pen itself, I should say—which had become as familiar and dear a sight to me as its owner, was in fact as peculiar a gadget as those nautical ones he spoke of. We have nothing like it here.

  No comment, said Dunyazade.

  With it, Djean told me, he had begun another story about me, inspired by our Mondays . . .

  Tell along.

  . . . in which he swore to be exactly as discreet about us as I’m being right now. Its plot was the situation and problem I’ve just described, and Djea
n’s reasoning was that what had worked once before, in our thousand and one nights, might work again before our month of Mondays ran out. Since we were coming together from different orders of reality, if he could invent a story in which my problem was solved, that invention might somehow solve it in fact. What I couldn’t quite tell him, out loud, was that as those Mondays approached their end, my problem had changed.

  I could see that coming, said Dunyazade. Don’t forget, I’m in the story business myself.

  So am I, said Scheherazade, but I didn’t see it coming. And I never told him, either; not in words. We nattered on about sailboats, for God’s sake, and what he calls high technology, as if I cared at all any more about Sindbadding around by myself. On my end, at least, the whole voyage idea had become a code word for what I really wanted—but I didn’t want it if he didn’t want it. Our time was almost up, and I heard no suggestions from Mister Djean that we open-end our Month of Mondays ad infinitum.

  Anyhow, declared Dunyazade, that wasn’t what you wanted either, by then. You wanted more than just more of the same. I wish Kuzia Fakan could hear this.

  She doesn’t have to hear it; she’ll be reading it soon enough. You’ll write it up to the point where Djean had written it by our twenty-ninth Monday. We’d agreed the week before that there was no way I could quote Do What I Wanted to Do close quote in my place and time and order of reality—PTOR, as we came to call it. I would have to resort to a higher technology yet, of a sort that his PTOR lacked altogether, but mine was rich in: magic. With that hi-tech, he said, I should be able to cruise the world by rug or Roc-back, or (what was closer to the mark than he knew) contrive to cross in reverse not only the time barrier, but the fact/fiction barrier, whichever one wanted to call which. In short, come over to his PTOR as he’d come to mine.