The Tidewater Tales

by John Barth

  She burst into tears.

  Thank God, Shmah said dryly, but hurried to comfort her, as did Djean. Give me tears over metaphysics any time.

  Today is the day I was supposed to come back here, cried Scheherazade, and I can’t even leave! I want to go home! I hate this situation!

  Djean sighed: We all do, more or less. We’re sorry for us, much sorrier for you—but we’re stuck with one another, and we’ll see it out. Listen: I’ve got something to confess.

  Shall I leave the room? Shmah asked. Or is the confession for me?

  I should leave the room! wailed Scheherazade. I don’t want to come between you two! I don’t want to be in your way! Where can I go?

  Please listen, Djean said to both women. I think I’m more responsible for all this than I thought I was, and I’m not sure what’s to be done about it. Here’s the story:

  The story he had been in process of inventing last Monday, he now revealed (the one in which he’d hinted Scheherazade might once again appear), was literally that: a story in which a man who once magically visited Scheherazade now wishes that she could visit him, so that if what he’s done must be essentially what he’ll do, it might be done at least as spiritedly and wholeheartedly as before. In short, that story was this story, and, like this one, it was not only unfinished, but stuck.

  Sighed Shmah I should have known: postmodernism. Boyoboy.

  Yeah. When me and the guy in the story were trying to think up a way to bring Scheherazade here, I came up with the WYDIWYD trick, and Blam! There you were, in the story. That same afternoon, Blooey! There you were, in our boat. Then you didn’t fade, and it occurred to me that that was just the right complication for the story, so I put it in: how the novelty wears off, and the problem gets to be not only how to get you back home but what to do with you in the meantime. You know what I mean: what you’re to do with yourself till your time’s up.

  If it ever is! cried Scheherazade.

  Now look here, said Shmah: This is serious. I could let my feelings be hurt, but I’m not going to. . . .

  Please don’t, Djean urged her. There was nothing romantic about it, except the romantic idea of inspiration.

  Now you’re hurting her feelings, his wife pointed out. But better hers than mine. Let me see if I have this right. The WYDIWYD trick happened in your story first and then in our lives, but the no-fade problem happened to us before you put it in your story. If cause and effect are being passed back and forth, the ball’s in your court.

  Scheherazade wiped her eyes. You’re very sharp, Shmah.

  She is that, Djean agreed.

  Oh, I can analyze to beat the band, Shmah acknowledged. But invent? Forget it.

  I can’t do either, said Scheherazade. I only tell, tell, tell.

  Well, I invent, Djean declared, and so does the fellow in my story. Believe it or not, I invented him, too: We don’t have much in common besides Scheherazade and this problem. And the ball is in our court, evidently. The trouble is, it’s stuck there. You don’t just write WYDIWYD or TKTTTITT or Go away and make it happen; I’ve tried that, for all our sakes.

  He touched Scheherazade’s arm. In my opinion, WYDIWYD got you here because it was dramaturgically appropriate, excuse the expression. And your nonfading went into the story because it was appropriate, dramaturgically. But WYDIWYD pure and simple won’t get you home, because that isn’t good dramaturgy. He looked from one to the other of his listeners. We’re prisoners of dramaturgy.

  Do you mean to say, appalled Scheherazade began.

  Exactly. And they’ve thrown away the key.

  PRISONERS OF DRAMATURGY,

  OR,

  SCHEHERAZADE’S UNFINISHED STORY UNFINISHED

  At this point (Peter Sagamore says to Story’s logbook), May Jump said to us last night in K IV’s cockpit “At this point, Scheherazade said to me in Annapolis At this point. . . .”

  No need to say on, because the et cetera is clear: Until the fellow in “Djean’s” story, which is to say Djean himself in effect though not in fact, comes up with a dramaturgically appropriate return ticket, he and “Shmah” are stuck with their distinguished visitor, she’s stuck in their PTOR, and the story’s stuck period, or dot dot dot. No mere fiat or god on wires will save them, Q.E.D.: A bona fide, “inevitable” key, forged by the whole Story Thus Far, is the only thing that can turn the trick.

  Allah knows he tried, poor Djean, Scher told us that night at Kitty Hawk. May Jump said. The burden was on him, not simply because he was responsible for the situation, or felt himself to be, but because Shmah and I were out of our element. He begged my forgiveness; I said Forget it: I’d wanted to make the trip even more than he’d wanted me to. What’s more, he must see that I had failed him, too. Need I explain?

  Anyhow, as he kept reminding me, this whole prisoner-of-dramaturgy idea was no more than a working hypothesis, and work at it he did. To verify it, he would have to come up with the key and make me disappear; if I suddenly found myself back home, I could presume he had regained his powers of invention, which would mean that I had regained mine of inspiration, whether or not I ever learned what I had inspired him to.

  Meanwhile, there was no reason for me to go on camping in their laps until that happened, if it ever did, and there was good reason not to. So I reminded Djean of that storyteller’s group he had once mentioned to me. I wondered whether they might take me in for a while, and whether I could somehow pay my way by telling them my stories.

  The ASPS! said Shmah. That’s a terrific idea! She explained to me that they were not exactly an ashram or other sort of community, just an association of oral storytellers in which Djean had taken some interest since its founding, and to which he’d been elected an honorary member even though his medium was writing. They had no clubhouse, only a small central office, but they were a most hospitable group—whose annual fall get-together was scheduled for the weekend after this one. She and Djean would introduce me to their chief executive officer; I would tell her my story, and we would see what happened next.

  What happened next? Nothing. As storytellers themselves (Scheherazade declared at Kitty Hawk to her last audience), they must understand the distinction Djean once made to her, as valid in talespinning as in physics, between effort and work. Things went on, things went on, but nothing happened, dramaturgically speaking. The next day, for example, Saturday, Djean and Shmah drove her to Annapolis to meet the executive secretary of the ASPS, as well as to do some shopping and sightseeing. So responsible did Djean feel for his role in her predicament, sometime in midweek he had established a checking account in her name with the money paid him for a story he’d invented about the birth of her three sons. Shmah promised to show her, in Annapolis, how such money is used. To calm her apprehension during the hour’s drive—the longest she’d made in their machine, and across an impossibly high bridge over Chesapeake Bay—they made up endings to the story-in-progress, half hoping one would work. Suppose for example the ASPS turned out to have just acquired an anonymous new sponsor: an Arab oil sheik, who supports the organization as a tax write-off on his American interests as well as in honor of Islam’s most renowned storyteller. Word reaches him of Scheherazade’s miraculous presence-in-the-present, and of her plight; he comes forward and reveals himself to be . . . not the Aga Khan, Jr. (patron of The Paris Review), but King Shahryar, transmigrated here by some magic of his own. Embracing his lost companion, he declares: “Treasure is the key to everything.”

  Et cetera. Nothing happened. They toured the United States Naval Academy and the old town; then Djean went off to inspect some new sailboat designs, and the women shopped for a few simple items of clothing to supplement Scheherazade’s white smock and to replace the borrowed caftan. She could not bring herself to wear knee-length skirts, not to mention shorts, but consented to white corduroys and blue denim jeans like Shmah’s, two blouses, a hooded sweatshirt, and, as a lark, a freshly printed, bright orange WYDIWYD T-shirt. To step for
th publicly in such garb, even among people all similarly costumed, required all her courage. What I’m doing, she said to Shmah, I’ve never done before.

  Nothing happened. At afternoon’s end, May Jump reported last night, they donned their various T-shirts and went to my favorite bar in Annapolis, as we’d arranged by telephone, to meet the executive secretary of the American Society for the Preservation of Storytelling—that’s me—and we hit it off right away. To make Scher feel at home, the bartender and I had invented a drink called the Flying Carpet—hot mint tea with vodka—and over two of those, Scher updated her story, which I’d heard the main part of from Miz Shmah. I never doubted the truth of it: Would we storytellers make up stories? I proposed that she move in with me, at least till after our eleventh-anniversary fest in Kitty Hawk. She could help me with the last-minute conference arrangements and then tell her Story Thus Far to the ASPS in plenary session. If a whole congress of storytellers couldn’t come up with the right ending—which maybe they couldn’t, I warned her, ‘cause they’re really tellers, like Scher herself and yours truly, not inventors like Mister Djean and Mister Peter Sagamore—then at least they might come up with the next move: some kind of a job, someplace to live.

  We four moved on then to a proper restaurant for dinner; not even two Flying Carpets could make my friend Djean feel at home in that particular bar. Over oysters Rockefeller, he seconded my Kitty Hawk proposal, but said he still suspected it was up to him to unlock the door he’d never meant to lock. More than once, in time past, he had been uncertain of his next narrative move: Witness those first visits of his to Scheherazade, years ago. But never since the day he first took up his professional pen had he really been stopped cold, stymied altogether, as he felt himself presently to be. His mistake, he believed, had been to work this time from life: to put himself into the story, however transmogrified. Be that as may, what he’d done was what he’d done; he couldn’t chuck the thing now without turning his back on Scheherazade, and that he would never do.

  Nothing happened. Dinner proceeded. Djean himself could not attend Kitty Hawk Eleven, as the ASPS conference was called; he planned to spend that weekend at his word processor, searching for Scher’s return ticket Shmah hadn’t planned to go, but began to think she might, if she could find a ride. I invited her to come with us: I was flying down with a friend who has her own plane. At the end of the evening, Scheherazade thanked Mister and Missus Djean for their kindness and declared again that Djean’s responsibility for her predicament was no greater than her own. Then she took from her wrist a terrific gold bracelet set with gemstones and gave it to Shmah by way of special thanks for her understanding and her hospitality. The bracelet was the work of Shahryar’s chief goldsmith, she said, and the stones were opals, sapphires, and carnelians. The king had given it to her on Night Two Hundred Sixty-seven, when she went into labor with their first child: The opals stood for fertility; the sapphires and carnelians insured a safe delivery. She hoped Shmah would have good use of the bracelet’s powers someday, as she had had.

  Yes, well, said Missus Djean: It’s a knockout, all right. But I only analyze, remember? Neither conception nor delivery is in my line. She accepted the gift, which really was a magnificent piece of work, but she wouldn’t put it on her arm. She would safekeep it, she said; if things worked out in Kitty Hawk and Scheherazade took off for home, she would prize the bracelet as a souvenir of her visit with them. Otherwise, when Scher’s little bank account ran dry she’d arrange to sell the bracelet and deposit the proceeds in that account.

  All “effort,” Scheherazade reported to her listeners; no dramaturgical work. In the week after that dinner meeting, she and May Jump became close friends. Scheherazade was able to help with the thousand and one details of the conference arrangements, and on the Friday, which happened to be Columbus Day, Shmah joined them for the flight from Annapolis down to Kitty Hawk. Now Scheherazade learned how Sindbad must have felt, carried aloft by Roc! More frightened than she’d been aboard Djean’s sailboat, she was at the same time as exhilarated as if truly carpet-borne. The Bay below spread out like the map on Djean’s study wall: In her free-speaking way, Shmah had called it the Vagina of Virginia, or the next thing to it, and had demonstrated what she meant by comparing that map of the Chesapeake to Figure 570 of Gray’s Anatomy. The little plane rose higher, over yet other waters and along the seacoast, climbing for the sake of the view to the very limits of its safe altitude; the pilot then brought it down in one terrifying swoop—much enjoyed by all except Scheherazade—to the sandy birthplace of powered flight itself, where the ASPS were assembling in their multitudes.

  But though she had flown faster than any wind (Scheherazade would tell them presently), covering two hundred miles in less time than it takes to relate her story thus far, that story moved forward not an inch: She was as solid there on the dunes of Kitty Hawk as she’d been in the cockpit of Djean’s boat. Effort, but not work; motion, but not progress. She would have despaired, but for May Jump’s confidence in the ASPS and Shmah’s in Djean. They walked the dunes and beach together; her friends spoke of the evolution of flying machines from Leonardo da Vinci through the brothers Wright to great rockets that will more likely destroy the Earth than carry people to the stars. As Scheherazade listened, shaking her head at such progress, she idly picked up souvenirs: seashells from the beach, a sea-bird feather from the dunes. Djean had urged her to keep him posted, and so she literally did: To show the ASPS how writing was done in her PTOR, she sharpened the feather into a quill, and on a picture postcard of the Wright Brothers Memorial she wrote in Arabic Much glorious motion, dear fellow prisoner, but as yet no progress. Below this inscription she drew the curve of her flight: that low, flat glide over his home waters; the slow, exhilarating climb; the precipitous descent and last-minute landing. She then asked Shmah to take the feather (which May Jump identified as an osprey’s) and a single small shell (which Shmah identified as a kind of sea snail’s, called the oyster drill) back to Djean at the conference’s end, without explanation. To her, the feather stood for high-flying effort that accomplishes no work; the shell, their mutual hope of real progress even if at a snail’s pace. But let him figure them out.

  What happened next? Nothing. All that evening and next morning, more ASPS arrived; before their first plenary session on the Saturday evening, they foregathered in small, shifting groups to swap songs and stories. They were mostly women, Scheherazade observed, though a substantial minority were men.They were of diverse races—not, apparently, including hers: The ones called Indians, as they themselves made clear, were miscalled. Their costumes were even more various than their skins, and their stories more various than their costumes. She began rather to hope that she would not disappear at once.

  That evening, after sundry preliminaries, May Jump publicly introduced her, declaring that even as they wondered how Scheherazade got to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, she was wondering how to get back home to The Thousand Nights and a Night: an unfinished tale whose telling May would leave to its principal character at evening’s end. On with the stories!

  There followed a grand narrative hoedown on Kill Devil Hill itself, governed by the ASPS’s conference-competition procedure. The public address system was plugged into an automatic timer; each storyteller was given one minute of introduction by May Jump and nine minutes to tell or sing a story. At the end of that time, a bell rang, the microphone clicked off, and the next teller came onstage: six tellers an hour for two hours. Some were cut off in mid-denouement; others told two or three quick ones and had time left over. The best came right down to the wire; the winner, by acclamation, told a story about the winning story in a storytelling contest, whose final word and punch line, delivered exactly on the beat, was the sound of the timer’s ding.

  Then all hands called for the timer to be disconnected so that Scheherazade could tell her story. But that lady (who had borrowed Shmah’s TKTTTIT-shirt for this occasion) reminded them that throughout her narrat
ive career she had told against time, one eye ever upon the king, one upon the bedroom window for the first sign of dawn’s early light. She’d feel more at home, she declared, with the timer running, and home was where she hoped her tale would take her. A full two hours, then, May proposed. No? An hour at least! Make it fifty minutes, said Scheherazade.

  She then told a version of Djean’s Key-to-the-Treasure story: the secret history of The 1001 Nights. In her telling, the tale divided into three parts, each shorter than the one before, in a certain proportion: The first set forth, in half an hour, the reign of terror in Shahryar’s kingdom; Scheherazade’s dilemma; the Genie’s magical visitation, and his proposal to assist her by reading to her, each afternoon, her story-of-the-evening. The second (in twenty minutes) carried forth that program through the story of Ma’aruf the Cobbler and his wife Fatimah the Turd; the Genie’s announcement that that was the last story in his edition of the Nights; and Scheherazade’s consternation at that news—compounded by unmistakable signs of her impending first second menstruation and her realizing that she was not pregnant again on schedule, as she had assumed she would be. Part Three of the story would have taken exactly ten minutes to tell—but at the very period of Part Two, as Scheherazade had planned, the timer rang, the microphone went dead, and, though she was a Muslim, she bowed to her audience Hindu-style, her palms pressed together as if in prayer.

  Such applause! May Jump reported. If any were skeptical of their guest’s identity, their skepticism no longer mattered to them: If she was not who she said she was, she deserved to be! Scheherazade’s hope had been that they would demand the story’s continuation tomorrow, like Shahryar in years gone by, so that she could wind it up in her first ten minutes and launch into the one that mattered: WYDIWYD, the Genie’s second round of visits (she had a version that would spare Shmah’s feelings), and her inadvertent transportation to late-twentieth-century America. But these were the ASPS, not a sleepy sultan: All Sunday morning she heard them, in their little groups, working over her Story Thus Far, and that afternoon, at the rate of six per hour for a full three hours, she was presented with one-and-a-half-dozen endings to it. Several she liked even better than the truth (which also turned up in a couple of versions); at least one she thought not inferior to Djean’s own, in which the Genie himself simply steps onstage and makes a brief, affectionate farewell to her and Dunyazade, concluding with the maxim The key to the treasure is the treasure.