Czytaj książkę: «Castle in the Air»
Illustrated by Tim Stevens
DEDICATION
For Francesca
CONTENTS
COVER
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
CHAPTER ONE In which Abdullah buys a carpet
CHAPTER TWO In which Abdullah is mistaken for a young lady
CHAPTER THREE In which Flower-in-the-Night discovers several important facts
CHAPTER FOUR Which concerns marriage and prophecy
CHAPTER FIVE Which tells how Flower-in-the-Night’s father wished to raise Abdullah above all others in the land
CHAPTER SIX Which shows how Abdullah went from the frying pan into the fire
CHAPTER SEVEN Which introduces the genie
CHAPTER EIGHT In which Abdullah’s dreams continue to come true
CHAPTER NINE In which Abdullah encounters an old soldier
CHAPTER TEN Which tells of violence and bloodshed
CHAPTER ELEVEN In which a wild animal causes Abdullah to waste a wish
CHAPTER TWELVE In which the law catches up with Abdullah and the soldier
CHAPTER THIRTEEN In which Abdullah challenges Fate
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Which tells how the magic carpet reappeared
CHAPTER FIFTEEN In which the travellers arrive at Kingsbury
CHAPTER SIXTEEN In which strange things befall Midnight and Whippersnapper
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN In which Abdullah at last reaches the Castle in the Air
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Which is rather full of princesses
CHAPTER NINETEEN In which a soldier, a cook and a carpet seller all state their price
CHAPTER TWENTY In which a djinn’s life is found and then hidden
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE In which the castle comes down to earth
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CHAPTER ONE In which Abdullah buys a carpet
Far to the south of the land of Ingary, in the Sultanates of Rashpuht, a young carpet merchant called Abdullah lived in the city of Zanzib. As merchants go, he was not rich. His father had been disappointed in him and, when he died, he had only left Abdullah just enough money to buy and stock a modest booth in the north-west corner of the Bazaar. The rest of his father’s money, and the large carpet emporium in the centre of the Bazaar, had all gone to the relatives of his father’s first wife.
Abdullah had never been told why his father was disappointed in him. A prophecy made at Abdullah’s birth had something to do with it. But Abdullah had never bothered to find out more. Instead, from a very early age, he had simply made up daydreams about it. In his daydreams, he was really the long-lost son of a great prince, which meant, of course, that his father was not really his father. It was a complete castle in the air and Abdullah knew it was. Everyone told him he had inherited his father’s looks. When he looked in a mirror, he saw a decidedly handsome young man, in a thin, hawk-faced way, and knew he looked very like the portrait of his father as a young man – always allowing for the fact that his father wore a flourishing moustache, whereas Abdullah was still scraping together the six hairs on his upper lip and hoping they would multiply soon.
Unfortunately, as everyone also agreed, Abdullah had inherited his character from his mother – his father’s second wife. She had been a dreamy and timorous woman, and a great disappointment to everyone. This did not bother Abdullah particularly. The life of a carpet merchant holds few opportunities for bravery and he was, on the whole, content with it. The booth he had bought, though small, turned out to be rather well placed. It was not far from the West Quarter where the rich people lived in their big houses surrounded by beautiful gardens. Better still, it was the first part of the Bazaar the carpet-makers came to when they came into Zanzib from the desert to the north. Both the rich people and the carpet-makers were usually seeking the bigger shops in the centre of the Bazaar, but a surprisingly large number of them were ready to pause at the booth of a young carpet merchant when that young merchant rushed out into their paths and offered them bargains and discounts with most profuse politeness.
In this way, Abdullah was quite often able to buy best quality carpets before anyone else saw them, and sell them at a profit too. In between buying and selling he could sit in his booth and continue with his daydream, which suited him very well. In fact, almost the only trouble in his life came from his father’s first wife’s relations, who would keep visiting him once a month in order to point out his failings.
“But you’re not saving any of your profits!” cried Abdullah’s father’s first wife’s brother’s son, Hakim (whom Abdullah detested), one fateful day.
Abdullah explained that, when he made a profit, his custom was to use that money to buy a better carpet. Thus, although all his money was bound up in his stock, it was getting to be better and better stock. He had enough to live on. And, as he told his father’s relatives, he had no need of more, since he was not married.
“Well you should be married!” cried Abdullah’s father’s first wife’s sister, Fatima (whom Abdullah detested even more). “I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again – a young man like you should have at least two wives by now!” And, not content with simply saying so, Fatima declared that this time she was going to look out for some wives for him – an offer which made Abdullah shake in his shoes.
“And the more valuable your stock gets, the more likely you are to be robbed, or the more you’ll lose if your booth catches fire – have you thought of that?” nagged Abdullah’s father’s first wife’s uncle’s son, Assif (a man whom Abdullah hated more than the first two put together).
He assured Assif that he always slept in the booth and was very careful of the lamps. At which all three of his father’s first wife’s relatives shook their heads, tut-tutted and went away. This usually meant they would leave him in peace for another month. Abdullah sighed with relief and plunged straight back into his daydream.
The daydream was enormously detailed by now. In it, Abdullah was the son of a mighty prince who lived so far to the east that his country was unknown in Zanzib. But Abdullah had been kidnapped at the age of two by a villainous bandit called Kabul Aqba. Kabul Aqba had a hooked nose like the beak of a vulture and wore a gold ring clipped into one of its nostrils. He carried a pistol with a silver-mounted stock with which he menaced Abdullah, and there was a bloodstone in his turban which seemed to give him more than human power. Abdullah was so frightened that he ran away into the desert, where he was found by the man he called his father now. The daydream took no account of the fact that Abdullah’s father had never ventured into the desert in his life: indeed, he had often said that anyone who ventured beyond Zanzib must be mad. Nevertheless, Abdullah could picture every nightmare inch of the dry, thirsty, footsore journey he had made before the good carpet merchant found him. Likewise, he could picture in great detail the palace he had been kidnapped from, with its pillared throne room floored in green porphyry, its women’s quarters and its kitchens, all of the utmost richness. There were seven domes on its roof, each one covered with beaten gold.
Lately, however, the daydream had been concentrating on the princess to whom Abdullah had been betrothed at his birth. She was as highborn as Abdullah and had grown up in his absence into a great beauty with perfect features and huge misty dark eyes. She lived in a palace as rich as Abdullah’s own. You approached it along an avenue lined with angelic statues and entered by way of seven marble courts, each with a fountain in the middle more precious than the last, starting with one made of chrysolite and ending with one of platinum studded with emeralds.
But that day Abdullah found he was not quite satisfied with this arrangement. It was a feeling he often had after a visit from his father’s first wife’s relations. It occurred to him that a good palace ought to have magnificent gardens. Abdullah loved gardens though he knew very little about them. Most of his experience had come from the public parks of Zanzib – where the turf was somewhat trampled and the flowers few – in which he sometimes spent his lunch hour when he could afford to pay one-eyed Jamal to watch his booth. Jamal kept the fried-food stall next door and would, for a coin or so, tie his dog to the front of Abdullah’s booth. Abdullah was well aware that this did not really qualify him to invent a proper garden, but since anything was better than thinking of two wives chosen for him by Fatima, he lost himself in waving fronds and scented walkways in the gardens of his princess.
Or nearly. Before Abdullah was fairly started, he was interrupted by a tall dirty man with a dingy-looking carpet in his arms.
“You buy carpets for selling, son of a great house?” this stranger asked, bowing briefly.
For someone trying to sell a carpet in Zanzib, where buyers and sellers always spoke to one another in the most formal and flowery way, this man’s manner was shockingly abrupt. Abdullah was annoyed anyway because his dream garden was falling to pieces at this interruption from real life. He answered curtly, “That is so, oh king of the desert. You wish to trade with this miserable merchant?”
“Not trade – sell, oh master of a stack of mats,” the stranger corrected him.
Mats! thought Abdullah. This was an insult. One of the carpets on display in front of Abdullah’s booth was a rare floral tufted one from Ingary – or Ochinstan, as they called that land in Zanzib – and there were at least two inside, from Inhico and Farqtan, which the Sultan himself would not have disdained for one of the smaller rooms of his palace. But of course Abdullah could not say this. The manners of Zanzib did not let you praise yourself. Instead, he bowed a coldly shallow bow.
“It is possible that my low and squalid establishment might provide that which you seek, oh pearl of wanderers,” he said, and cast his eye critically over the stranger’s dirty desert robe, the corroded stud in the side of the man’s nose and his tattered headcloth, as he said it.
“It is worse than squalid, mighty seller of floor-coverings,” the stranger agreed. He flapped one end of his dingy carpet towards Jamal, who was frying squid just then in clouds of blue fishy smoke. “Does not the honourable activity of your neighbour penetrate your wares,” he asked, “even to a lasting aroma of octopus?”
Abdullah seethed with such rage inside that he was forced to rub his hands together slavishly to hide it. People were not supposed to mention this sort of thing. And a slight smell of squid might even improve that thing the stranger wanted to sell, he thought, eyeing the drab and threadbare rug in the man’s arms.
“Your humble servant takes care to fumigate the interior of his booth with lavish perfumes, oh prince of wisdom,” he said. “Perhaps the heroic sensitivity of the prince’s nose will nevertheless allow him to show this beggarly trader his merchandise?”
“Of course it does, oh lily among mackerel,” the stranger retorted. “Why else should I stand here?”
Abdullah reluctantly parted the curtains and ushered the man inside his booth. There he turned up the lamp which hung from the centre pole, but, upon sniffing, decided that he was not going to waste incense on this person. The interior smelt quite strongly enough of yesterday’s scents. “What magnificence have you to unroll before my unworthy eyes?” he asked dubiously.
“This, buyer of bargains!” the man said and, with a deft thrust of one arm, he caused the carpet to unroll across the floor.
Abdullah could do this too. A carpet merchant learnt these things. He was not impressed. He stuck his hands in his sleeves in a primly servile attitude and surveyed the merchandise. The carpet was not large. Unrolled, it was even dingier than he had thought – although the pattern was unusual, or it would have been if most of it had not been worn away. What was left was dirty and its edges were frayed.
“Alas, this poor salesman can only stretch to three copper coins for this most ornamental of rugs,” he observed. “It is the limit of my slender purse. Times are hard, oh captain of many camels. Is the price acceptable in any way?”
“I’ll take FIVE HUNDRED,” said the stranger.
“What?” said Abdullah.
“GOLD coins,” added the stranger.
“The king of all desert bandits is surely pleased to jest?” said Abdullah. “Or maybe, having found my small booth lacking in anything but the smell of frying squid, he wishes to leave and try a richer merchant?”
“Not particularly,” said the stranger. “Although I will leave if you are not interested, oh neighbour of kippers. It is of course a magic carpet.”
Abdullah had heard that one before. He bowed over his tucked-up hands. “Many and various are the virtues said to reside in carpets,” he agreed. “Which one does the poet of the sands claim for this? Does it welcome a man home to his tent? Does it bring peace to the hearth? Or maybe,” he said, poking the frayed edge suggestively with one toe, “it is said never to wear out?”
“It flies,” said the stranger. “It flies wherever the owner commands, oh smallest of small minds.”
Abdullah looked up into the man’s sombre face, where the desert had entrenched deep lines down each cheek. A sneer made those lines deeper still. Abdullah found he disliked this person almost as much as he disliked his father’s first wife’s uncle’s son. “You must convince this unbeliever,” he said. “If the carpet can be put through its paces, oh monarch of mendacity, then some bargain might be struck.”
“Willingly,” said the tall man and stepped upon the carpet.
At this moment, one of the regular upsets happened at the fried-food stall next door. Probably some street boys had tried to steal some squid. At any rate, Jamal’s dog burst out barking; various people, Jamal included, began yelling, and both sounds were nearly drowned by the clash of saucepans and the hissing of hot fat.
Cheating was a way of life in Zanzib. Abdullah did not allow his attention to be distracted for one instant from the stranger and his carpet. It was quite possible the man had bribed Jamal to cause a distraction. He had mentioned Jamal rather often, as if Jamal were on his mind. Abdullah kept his eyes sternly on the tall figure of the man and particularly on the dirty feet planted on the carpet. But he spared a corner of one eye for the man’s face and he saw the man’s lips move. His alert ears even caught the words “two feet upwards” despite the din from next door. And he looked even more carefully when the carpet rose smoothly from the floor and hovered about level with Abdullah’s knees, so that the stranger’s tattered headgear was not quite brushing the roof of the booth. Abdullah looked for rods underneath. He searched for wires that might have been deftly hooked to the roof. He took hold of the lamp and tipped it about, so that its light played both over and under the carpet.
The stranger stood with his arms folded and the sneer entrenched on his face while Abdullah performed these tests. “See?” he said. “Is the most desperate of doubters now convinced? Am I standing in the air, or am I not?” He had to shout rather. The noise was still deafening from next door.
Abdullah was forced to admit that the carpet did appear to be up in the air without any means of support that he could find. “Very nearly,” he shouted back. “The next part of the demonstration is for you to dismount and for me to ride that carpet.”
The man frowned. “Why so? What have your other senses to add to the evidence of your eyes, oh dragon of dubiety?”
“It could be a one-man carpet,” Abdullah bawled. “As some dogs are.” Jamal’s dog was still bellowing away outside, so it was natural to think of this. Jamal’s dog bit anyone who touched it, except Jamal.
The stranger sighed. “Down,” he said, and the carpet sank gently to the floor. The stranger stepped off and bowed Abdullah towards it. “It is yours to test, oh sheik of shrewdness.”
With considerable excitement, Abdullah stepped on to the carpet. “Go up two feet,” he said to it – or rather yelled. It sounded as if the constables of the City Watch had arrived at Jamal’s stall now. They were clashing weapons and bawling to be told what had happened.
And the carpet obeyed Abdullah. It rose two feet in a smooth surge which left Abdullah’s stomach behind it. He sat down rather hastily. The carpet was perfectly comfortable to sit on. It felt like a very tight hammock. “This woefully sluggish intellect is becoming convinced,” he confessed to the stranger. “What was your price again, oh paragon of generosity? Two hundred silver?”
“Five hundred gold,” said the stranger. “Tell the carpet to descend and we will discuss the matter.”
Abdullah told the carpet, “Down, and land on the floor,” and it did so, thus removing a slight nagging doubt in Abdullah’s mind that the stranger had said something extra when Abdullah first stepped on it, which had been drowned in the din from next door. He bounced to his feet and the bargaining commenced.
“The utmost of my purse is one hundred and fifty gold,” he explained, “and that is when I shake it out and feel all round the seams.”
“Then you must fetch out your other purse or even feel under your mattress,” the stranger rejoined. “For the limit of my generosity is four hundred and ninety-five gold and I would not sell at all but for the most pressing need.”
“I might squeeze another forty-five gold from the sole of my left shoe,” Abdullah replied. “That I keep for emergencies, and it is my pitiful all.”
“Examine your right shoe,” the stranger answered. “Four-fifty.”
And so it went on. An hour later the stranger departed from the booth with two hundred and ten gold pieces, leaving Abdullah the delighted owner of what seemed to be a genuine – if threadbare – magic carpet. He was still mistrustful. He did not believe that anyone, even a desert wanderer with few needs, would part with a real flying carpet – albeit nearly worn out – for less than four hundred gold pieces. It was too useful – better than a camel, because it did not need to eat – and a good camel cost at least four hundred and fifty in gold.
There had to be a catch. And there was one trick Abdullah had heard of. It was usually worked with horses or dogs. A man would come and sell a trusting farmer or hunter a truly superb animal for a surprisingly small price, saying that it was all that stood between himself and starvation. The delighted farmer (or hunter) would put the horse in a stall (or the dog in a kennel) for the night. In the morning it would be gone, being trained to slip its halter (or collar) and return to its owner in the night. It seemed to Abdullah that a suitably obedient carpet could be trained to do the same. So, before he left his booth, he very carefully wrapped the magic carpet round one of the poles that supported the roof and bound it there, round and round, with a whole reel of twine, which he then tied to one of the iron stakes at the base of the wall.
“I think you’ll find it hard to escape from that,” he told it, and went out to discover what had been going on at the food stall.
The stall was quiet now, and tidy. Jamal was sitting on its counter, mournfully hugging his dog.
“What happened?” asked Abdullah.
“Some thieving boys spilt all my squid,” Jamal said. “My whole day’s stock down in the dirt, lost, gone!”
Abdullah was so pleased with his bargain that he gave Jamal two silver pieces to buy more squid. Jamal wept with gratitude and embraced Abdullah. His dog not only failed to bite Abdullah: it licked his hand. Abdullah smiled. Life was good. He went off whistling to find a good supper while the dog guarded his booth.
When the evening was staining the sky red behind the domes and minarets of Zanzib, Abdullah came back, still whistling, full of plans to sell the carpet to the Sultan himself for a very large price indeed. He found the carpet exactly where he had left it. Or would it be better to approach the Grand Vizir, he wondered while he was washing, and suggest that the Vizir might wish to make the Sultan a present of it? That way, he could ask for even more money. At the thought of how valuable that made the carpet, the story of the horse trained to slip its halter began to nag at him again. As he got into his nightshirt, Abdullah began to visualise the carpet wriggling free. It was old and pliable. It was probably very well trained. It could certainly slither out from behind the twine. Even if it did not, he knew the idea would keep him awake all night.
In the end, he carefully cut the twine away and spread the carpet on top of the pile of his most valuable rugs, which he always used as a bed. Then he put on his nightcap – which was necessary, because the cold winds blew off the desert and filled the booth with draughts – spread his blanket over him, blew out his lamp and slept.
CHAPTER TWO In which Abdullah is mistaken for a young lady
He woke to find himself lying on a bank, with the carpet still underneath him, in a garden more beautiful than any he had imagined.
Abdullah was convinced that this was a dream. Here was the garden he had been trying to imagine when the stranger so rudely interrupted him. Here the moon was nearly full and riding high above, casting light as white as paint on a hundred small fragrant flowers in the grass around him. Round yellow lamps hung in the trees, dispelling the dense black shadows from the moon. Abdullah thought this was a very pleasing idea. By the two lights, white and yellow, he could see an arcade of creepers supported on elegant pillars, beyond the lawn where he lay; and from somewhere behind that, hidden water was quietly trickling.
It was so cool and so heaven-like that Abdullah got up and went in search of the hidden water, wandering down the arcade, where starry blooms brushed his face, all white and hushed in the moonlight, and bell-like flowers breathed out the headiest and gentlest of scents. As one does in dreams, Abdullah fingered a great waxy lily here, and detoured deliciously there into a dell of pale roses. He had never before had a dream that was anything like so beautiful.
The water, when he found it beyond some big fern-like bushes dripping dew, was a simple marble fountain in another lawn, lit by strings of lamps in the bushes which made the rippling water into a marvel of gold and silver crescents. Abdullah wandered towards it raptly.
There was only one thing needed to complete his rapture and, as in all the best dreams, it was there. An extremely lovely girl came across the lawn to meet him, treading softly on the damp grass with bare feet. The gauzy garments floating round her showed her to be slender, but not thin, just like the princess from Abdullah’s daydream. When she was near Abdullah, he saw that her face was not quite a perfect oval as the face of his dream princess should have been, and nor were her huge dark eyes at all misty. In fact, they examined his face keenly, with evident interest. Abdullah hastily adjusted his dream, for she was certainly very beautiful. And when she spoke, her voice was all he could have desired, being light and merry as the water in the fountain and the voice of a very definite person too.
“Are you a new kind of servant?” she said.
People always did ask strange things in dreams, Abdullah thought. “No, masterpiece of my imagination,” he said. “Know that I am really the long-lost son of a distant prince.”
“Oh,” she said. “Then that may make a difference. Does that mean you’re a different kind of woman from me?”
Abdullah stared at the girl of his dreams in some perplexity. “I’m not a woman!” he said.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “You are wearing a dress.”
Abdullah looked down and discovered that, in the way of dreams, he was wearing his nightshirt. “This is just my strange foreign garb,” he said hastily. “My true country is far from here. I assure you that I am a man.”
“Oh no,” she said decidedly. “You can’t be a man. You’re quite the wrong shape. Men are twice as thick as you all over and their stomachs come out in a fat bit that’s called a belly. And they have grey hair all over their faces and nothing but shiny skin on their heads. You’ve got hair on your head like me and almost none on your face.” Then, as Abdullah put his hand rather indignantly to the six hairs on his upper lip, she asked, “Or have you got bare skin under your hat?”
“Certainly not,” said Abdullah, who was proud of his thick wavy hair. He put his hand to his head and removed what turned out to be his nightcap. “Look,” he said.
“Ah,” she said. Her lovely face was puzzled. “You have hair that’s almost as nice as mine. I don’t understand.”
“I’m not sure I do either,” said Abdullah. “Could it be that you have not seen very many men?”
“Of course not,” she said. “Don’t be silly – I’ve only seen my father! But I’ve seen quite a lot of him, so I do know.”
“But – don’t you ever go out at all?” Abdullah asked helplessly.
She laughed. “Yes, I’m out now. This is my night garden. My father had it made so that I wouldn’t ruin my looks going out in the sun.”
“I mean, out into the town, to see all the people,” Abdullah explained.
“Well, no, not yet,” she admitted. As if that bothered her a little, she twirled away from him and went to sit on the edge of the fountain. Turning to look up at him, she said, “My father tells me I might be able to go out and see the town sometimes after I’m married – if my husband allows me to – but it won’t be this town. My father’s arranging for me to marry a prince from Ochinstan. Until then I have to stay inside these walls of course.”
Abdullah had heard that some of the very rich people in Zanzib kept their daughters – and even their wives too – almost like prisoners inside their grand houses. He had many times wished someone would keep his father’s first wife’s sister Fatima that way. But now, in this dream, it seemed to him that this custom was entirely unreasonable and not fair on this lovely girl at all. Fancy not knowing what a normal young man looked like!
“Pardon my asking, but is the prince from Ochinstan perhaps old and a little ugly?” he said.
“Well,” she said, evidently not quite sure, “my father says he’s in his prime, just like my father is himself. But I believe the problem lies in the brutal nature of men. If another man saw me before the prince did, my father says he would instantly fall in love with me and carry me off, which would ruin all my father’s plans, naturally. He says most men are great beasts. Are you a beast?”
“Not in the least,” said Abdullah.
“I thought not,” she said, and looked up at him with great concern. “You do not seem to me to be a beast. This makes me quite sure that you can’t really be a man.” Evidently she was one of those people who like to cling to a theory once they have made it. After considering a moment, she asked, “Could your family, perhaps, for reasons of their own, have brought you up to believe a falsehood?”
Abdullah would have liked to say that the boot was on the other foot, but, since that struck him as impolite, he simply shook his head and thought how generous of her it was to be so worried about him, and how the worry on her face only made it more beautiful – not to speak of the way her eyes shone compassionately in the gold and silver light reflecting from the fountain.
“Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that you are from a distant country,” she said, and patted the edge of the fountain beside her. “Sit down and tell me all about it.”
“Tell me your name first,” said Abdullah.
“It’s rather a silly name,” she said nervously. “I’m called Flower-in-the-Night.”
It was the perfect name for the girl of his dreams, Abdullah thought. He gazed down at her admiringly. “My name is Abdullah,” he said.
“They even gave you a man’s name!” Flower-in-the-Night exclaimed indignantly. “Do sit down and tell me.”
Abdullah sat on the marble kerb beside her and thought that this was a very real dream. The stone was cold. Splashes from the fountain soaked into his nightshirt, while the sweet smell of rosewater from Flower-in-the-Night mingled most realistically with scents from the flowers in the garden. But since it was a dream, it followed that his daydreams were true here too. So Abdullah told her all about the palace he had lived in as a prince and how he was kidnapped by Kabul Aqba and escaped into the desert, where the carpet merchant found him.
Flower-in-the-Night listened with complete sympathy. “How terrifying! How exhausting!” she said. “Could it be that your foster father was in league with the bandits to deceive you?”
Abdullah had a growing feeling, despite the fact that he was only dreaming, that he was getting her sympathy on false pretences. He agreed that his father could have been in the pay of Kabul Aqba, and then changed the subject. “Let us get back to your father and his plans,” he said. “It seems to me a little awkward that you should marry this prince from Ochinstan without having seen any other men to compare him to. How are you going to know whether you love him or not?”
“You have a point,” she said. “This worries me too sometimes.”
“Then I tell you what,” Abdullah said. “Suppose I come back tomorrow night and bring you pictures of as many men as I can find? That should give you some standard to compare the prince with.” Dream or not, Abdullah had absolutely no doubt that he would be back tomorrow. This would give him a proper excuse.
Flower-in-the-Night considered this offer, swaying dubiously back and forth with her hands clasped round her knees. Abdullah could almost see rows of fat bald men with grey beards passing in front of her mind’s eye.
“I assure you,” he said, “that men come in every sort of size and shape.”
“Then that would be very instructive,” she agreed. “At least it would give me an excuse to see you again. You’re one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”
This made Abdullah even more determined to come back tomorrow. He told himself it would be unfair to leave her in such a state of ignorance. “And I think the same about you,” he said shyly.
At this, to his disappointment, Flower-in-the-Night got up to leave. “I have to go indoors now,” she said. “A first visit must last no longer than half an hour, and I’m almost sure you’ve been here twice as long as that. But now we know one another, you can stay at least two hours next time.”
“Thank you. I shall,” said Abdullah.
She smiled and passed away like a dream, beyond the fountain and behind two frondy flowering shrubs.
After that, the garden, the moonlight and the scents seemed rather tame. Abdullah could think of nothing better to do than wander back the way he had come. And there, on the moonlit bank, he found the carpet. He had forgotten about it completely. But since it was there in the dream too, he lay down on it and fell asleep.
He woke up some hours later with blinding daylight streaming in through the chinks in his booth. The smell of the day before yesterday’s incense hanging about in the air struck him as cheap and suffocating. In fact the whole booth was fusty and frowsty and cheap. And he had earache because his nightcap seemed to have fallen off in the night. But at least, he found while he hunted for the nightcap, the carpet had not made off in the night. It was still underneath him. This was the one good thing he could see in what suddenly struck him as a thoroughly dull and depressing life.
Here Jamal, who was still grateful for the silver pieces, shouted outside that he had breakfast ready for both of them. Abdullah gladly flung back the curtains of the booth. Cocks crowed in the distance. The sky was glowing blue, and shafts of strong sunlight sliced through the blue dust and old incense inside the booth. Even in that strong light, Abdullah failed to discover his nightcap. And he was more depressed than ever.
“Tell me, do you sometimes find yourself unaccountably sad on some days?” he asked Jamal as the two of them sat cross-legged in the sun outside to eat.
Jamal tenderly fed a piece of sugar pastry to his dog. “I would have been sad today,” he said, “but for you. I think someone paid those wretched boys to steal. They were so thorough. And on top of that, the Watch fined me. Did I say? I think I have enemies, my friend.”
Though this confirmed Abdullah’s suspicions of the stranger who sold him the carpet, it was not much help. “Maybe,” he said, “you should be more careful about whom you let your dog bite.”
“Not I!” said Jamal. “I am a believer in free will. If my dog chooses to hate the whole human race except myself, it must be free to do so.”
After breakfast, Abdullah looked for his nightcap again. It was simply not there. He tried thinking carefully back to the last time he truly remembered wearing it. That was when he lay down to sleep the previous night, when he was thinking of taking the carpet to the Grand Vizir. After that came the dream. He had found he was wearing the nightcap then. He remembered taking it off to show Flower-in-the-Night (what a lovely name!) that he was not bald. From then on, as far as he could recall, he had carried the nightcap in his hand until the moment when he had sat down beside her on the edge of the fountain. After that, when he recounted the history of his kidnapping by Kabul Aqba, he had a clear memory of waving both hands freely as he talked and he knew that the nightcap had not been in either one. Things did disappear like that in dreams, he knew, but the evidence pointed, all the same, to his having dropped it as he sat down. Was it possible he had left it lying on the grass beside the fountain? In which case—
Abdullah stood stock-still in the centre of the booth, staring into the rays of sunlight which, oddly enough, no longer seemed full of squalid motes of dust and old incense. Instead, they were pure golden slices of heaven itself.
“It was not a dream!” said Abdullah.
Somehow, his depression was clean gone. Even breathing was easier.
“It was real!” he said.
He went to stand thoughtfully looking down at the magic carpet. That had been in the dream too. In which case—“It follows that you transported me to some rich man’s garden while I slept,” he said to it. “Perhaps I spoke and ordered you to do so in my sleep. Very likely. I was thinking of gardens. You are even more valuable than I realised!”
CHAPTER THREE In which Flower-in-the-Night discovers several important facts
Abdullah carefully tied the carpet round the roof pole again and went out into the Bazaar, where he sought out the booth of the most skilful of the various artists who traded there.
After the usual opening courtesies, in which Abdullah called the artist prince of the pencil and enchanter with chalks, and the artist retorted by calling Abdullah cream of customers and duke of discernment, Abdullah said, “I want drawings of every size, shape and kind of man that you have ever seen. Draw me kings and paupers, merchants and workmen, fat and thin, young and old, handsome and ugly, and also plain average. If some of these are kinds of men that you have never seen, I require you to invent them, oh paragon of the paintbrush. And if your invention fails, which I hardly think likely, oh aristocrat of artists, then all you need do is turn your eyes outward, gaze and copy!”
Abdullah flung out one arm to point to the teeming, rushing crowds shopping in the Bazaar. He was moved almost to tears at the thought that this everyday sight was something Flower-in-the-Night had never seen.
The artist drew his hand dubiously down his straggly beard. “For sure, noble admirer of mankind,” he said. “This I can do easily. But could the jewel of judgement perhaps inform this humble draughtsman what these many portraits of men are needed for?”
“Why should the crown and diadem of the drawing board wish to know this?” Abdullah asked, rather dismayed.
“Assuredly, the chieftain of customers will understand that this crooked worm needs to know what medium to use,” the artist replied. In fact, he was simply curious about this most unusual order. “Whether I paint in oils on wood or canvas, in pen upon paper or vellum, or even in fresco upon a wall, depends on what this pearl among patrons wishes to do with the portraits.”
“Ah – paper, please,” Abdullah said hastily. He had no wish to make his meeting with Flower-in-the-Night public. It was clear to him that her father must be a very rich man who would certainly object to a young carpet merchant showing her other men beside this prince of Ochinstan. “The portraits are for an invalid who has never been able to walk abroad as other men do.”
“Then you are a champion of charity,” said the artist, and he agreed to draw the pictures for a surprisingly small sum. “No, no, child of fortune, do not thank me,” he said when Abdullah tried to express his gratitude. “My reasons are three. First, I have laid by me many portraits which I do for my own pleasure, and to charge you for those is not honest, since I would have drawn them anyway. Second, the task you set is ten times more interesting than my usual work, which is to do portraits of young women or their bridegrooms, or of horses and camels, all of whom I have to make handsome, regardless of reality; or else to paint rows of sticky children whose parents wish them to seem like angels – again regardless of reality. And my third reason is that I think you are mad, my most noble of customers, and to exploit you would be unlucky.”
It became known almost immediately, all over the Bazaar, that young Abdullah the carpet merchant had lost his reason and would buy any portraits that people had for sale.
This was a great nuisance to Abdullah. For the rest of that day he was constantly being interrupted by persons arriving with long and flowery speeches about this portrait of their grandmother which only poverty would induce them to part with; or this portrait of the Sultan’s racing camel which happened to fall off the back of a cart; or this locket containing a picture of their sister. It took Abdullah much time to get rid of these people – and on several occasions he did actually buy a painting or drawing, if the subject was a man. Which of course kept people coming.
“Only today. My offer extends only until sunset today,” he told the gathering crowd at last. “Let all with a picture of a man for sale come to me an hour before sunset and I will buy. But only then.”
This left him a few hours of peace in which to experiment with the carpet. He was wondering by now if he was right to think that his visit to the garden had been any more than a dream. For the carpet would not move. Abdullah had naturally tested it after breakfast by asking it to rise up two feet again, just to prove that it still would. And it simply lay on the floor. He tested it again when he came back from the artist’s booth, and still it just lay there.
“Perhaps I have not treated you well,” he said to it. “You have remained with me faithfully, in spite of my suspicions, and I have rewarded you by tying you round a pole. Would you feel better if I let you lie free on the floor, my friend? Is that it?”
He left the carpet on the floor, but it still would not fly. It might have been any old hearthrug.
Abdullah thought again, in between the times when people were pestering him to buy portraits. He went back to his suspicions of the stranger who had sold him this carpet and to the enormous noise that just happened to break out in Jamal’s stall at the precise moment when the stranger ordered the carpet to rise. He recalled that he had seen the man’s lips move both times, but had not heard all that was said.
“That is it!” he cried out, smashing his fist into his palm. “A code word needs to be spoken before it will move, which for reasons of his own – no doubt highly sinister – this man withheld from me. The villain! And this word I must have spoken in my sleep.”
He rushed to the back of his booth and rummaged out the tattered dictionary he had once used at school. Then, standing on the carpet, he cried out, “Aardvark! Fly, please!”
Nothing happened, either then or for any word beginning with A. Doggedly, Abdullah went on to B, and when that did no good, he went on again, through the whole dictionary. With the constant interruptions from portrait sellers, this took him some time. Nevertheless, he reached zymurgy in the early evening without the carpet having so much as twitched.
“Then it has to be a made-up word or a foreign one!” he cried out feverishly. It was that, or believe that Flower-in-the-Night was only a dream after all. Even if she was real, his chances of getting the carpet to take him to her seemed slimmer by the minute. He stood there uttering every strange sound and every foreign word he could think of, and still the carpet made no move of any kind.
Abdullah was interrupted again an hour before sundown by a large crowd gathering outside, carrying bundles and big flat packages. The artist had to push his way through the crowd with his portfolio of drawings. The following hour was hectic in the extreme. Abdullah inspected paintings, rejected portraits of aunts and mothers, and beat down huge prices asked for bad drawings of nephews. In the course of that hour he acquired, beside the hundred excellent drawings from the artist, eighty-nine further pictures, lockets, drawings, and even a piece of a wall with a face daubed on it. He also parted with almost all the money he had left over after buying the magic carpet – if it was magic. By the time he finally convinced the man, who claimed that the oil painting of his fourth wife’s mother was enough like a man to qualify, that this was not the case, and pushed him out of the booth, it was dark. He was by then too tired and wrought up to eat. He would have gone straight to bed had not Jamal – who had been doing a roaring trade selling snacks to the waiting crowd – arrived with tender meat on a skewer.
“I don’t know what has got into you,” Jamal said. “I used to think you were normal. But mad or not, you must eat.”
“There is no question of madness,” Abdullah said. “I have simply decided to go into a new line of business.” But he ate the meat.
At last he was able to pile his hundred and eighty-nine pictures on to the carpet and lie down among them.
“Now listen to this,” he told the carpet. “If by some lucky chance I happen to say your command-word in my sleep, you must instantly fly with me to the night garden of Flower-in-the-Night.” That seemed the best he could do. It took him a long time to get to sleep.
He woke to the dreamy fragrance of night flowers and a hand gently prodding him. Flower-in-the-Night was leaning over him. Abdullah saw she was far lovelier than he had been remembering her.
“You really did bring the pictures!” she said. “You are very kind.”
I did it! Abdullah thought triumphantly. “Yes,” he said. “I have one hundred and eighty-nine kinds of men here. I think this ought to give you at least a general idea.”
He helped her unhook a number of the golden lamps and put them in a ring beside the bank. Then Abdullah showed her the pictures, holding them under a lamp first, and then leaning them up against the bank. He began to feel like a pavement artist.
Flower-in-the-Night inspected each man as Abdullah showed them, absolutely impartially and with great concentration. Then she picked up a lamp and inspected the artist’s drawings all over again. This pleased Abdullah. The artist was a true professional. He had drawn men exactly as Abdullah asked, from a heroic and kingly person evidently taken from a statue, to the hunchback who cleaned shoes in the Bazaar, and had even included a self-portrait halfway through.
“Yes, I see,” Flower-in-the-Night said at last. “Men do vary a lot, just as you said. My father is not at all typical – and neither are you of course.”
“So you admit I am not a woman?” said Abdullah.
“I am forced to do so,” she said. “I apologise for my error.” Then she carried the lamp along the bank, inspecting certain of the pictures a third time.
Abdullah noticed, rather nervously, that the ones she had singled out were the handsomest. He watched her leaning over them with a small frown on her forehead and a curly tendril of dark hair straying over the frown, looking thoroughly intent. He began to wonder what he had started.
Flower-in-the-Night collected the pictures together and stacked them neatly in a pile beside the bank. “It is just as I thought,” she said. “I prefer you to every single one of these. Some of these look far too proud of themselves and some look selfish and cruel. You are unassuming and kind. I intend to ask my father to marry me to you, instead of to the prince in Ochinstan. Would you mind?”
The garden seemed to swirl round Abdullah in a blur of gold and silver and dusky green. “I – I think that might not work,” he managed to say at last.
“Why not?” she asked. “Are you married already?”
“No, no,” he said. “It is not that. The law allows a man to have as many wives as he can afford, but—”
The frown came back to Flower-in-the-Night’s forehead. “How many husbands are women allowed?” she asked.
“Only one!” Abdullah said, rather shocked.
“That is extremely unfair,” Flower-in-the-Night observed, musingly. She sat on the bank and thought. “Would you say it is possible that the prince in Ochinstan has some wives already?”
Abdullah watched the frown grow on her forehead and the slender fingers of her right hand tapping almost irritably on the turf. He knew he had indeed started something. Flower-in-the-Night was discovering that her father had kept her ignorant of a number of important facts. “If he is a prince,” Abdullah said rather nervously, “I think it entirely possible that he has quite a number of wives. Yes.”
“Then he is being greedy,” Flower-in-the-Night stated. “This takes a weight off my mind. Why did you say that my marrying you might not work? You mentioned yesterday that you are a prince as well.”
Abdullah felt his face heating up, and he cursed himself for babbling out his daydream to her. Though he told himself that he had had every reason to believe he was dreaming when he told her, this did not make him feel any better. “True. But I also told you I was lost and far from my kingdom,” he said. “As you might conjecture, I am now forced to make my living by humble means. I sell carpets in the Bazaar of Zanzib. Your father is clearly a very rich man. This will not strike him as a fitting alliance.”
Flower-in-the-Night’s fingers drummed quite angrily. “You speak as if it is my father who intends to marry you!” she said. “What is the matter? I love you. Do you not love me?”
She looked into Abdullah’s face as she said this. He looked back into hers, into what seemed an eternity of big dark eyes. He found himself saying, “Yes.” Flower-in-the-Night smiled. Abdullah smiled. Several more moonlit eternities went by.
“I shall come with you when you leave here,” Flower-in-the-Night said. “Since what you say about my father’s attitude to you could well be true, we must get married first and tell my father afterwards. Then there is nothing he can say.”
Abdullah, who had had some experience of rich men, wished he could be sure of that. “It may not be quite that simple,” he said. “In fact, now I think about it, I am certain our only prudent course is to leave Zanzib. This ought to be easy, because I do happen to own a magic carpet – there it is, up on the bank. It brought me here. Unfortunately, it needs to be activated by a magic word which I seem only able to say in my sleep.”
Flower-in-the-Night picked up a lamp and held it high so that she could inspect the carpet. Abdullah watched, admiring the grace with which she bent towards it. “It seems very old,” she said. “I have read about such carpets. The command-word will probably be a fairly common word pronounced in an old way. My reading suggests these carpets were meant to be used quickly in an emergency, so the word will not be anything too out of the way. Why do you not tell me carefully everything you know about it? Between us we ought to be able to work it out.”
From this Abdullah realised that Flower-in-the-Night – if you discounted the gaps in her knowledge – was both intelligent and very well educated. He admired her even more. He told her, as far as he knew them, every fact about the carpet, including the uproar at Jamal’s stall which had prevented him hearing the command-word.
Flower-in-the-Night listened and nodded at each new fact. “So,” she said, “let us leave aside the reason why someone should sell you a proven magic carpet and yet make sure you could not use it. That is such an odd thing to do that I feel sure we should think about it later. But let us first think about what the carpet does. You say it came down when you ordered it to. Did the stranger speak then?”
She had a shrewd and logical mind. Truly he had found a pearl among women, Abdullah thought. “I am quite sure he said nothing,” he said.
“Then,” said Flower-in-the-Night, “the command-word is only needed to start the carpet flying. After that, I see two possibilities. First, that the carpet will do as you say until it touches ground anywhere. Or second, that it will in fact obey your command until it is back at the place where it first started—”
“That is easily proved,” Abdullah said. He was dizzy with admiration for her logic. “I think the second possibility is the correct one.” He jumped on the carpet and cried experimentally, “Up, and back to my booth!”
“No, no! Don’t! Wait!” Flower-in-the-Night cried out at the same instant.
But it was too late. The carpet whipped up into the air and then away sideways with such speed and suddenness that Abdullah was first thrown over on his back, with all the breath knocked out of him, and then found himself hanging half off over its frayed edge at what seemed a terrifying height in the air. The wind of its movement took his breath away as soon as he did manage to breathe. All he could do was to claw frantically for a better grip on the fringe at one end. And before he could work his way back on top of it, let alone speak, the carpet plunged downwards – leaving Abdullah’s newly-gained breath high in the air above – barged its way through the curtains of the booth – half-smothering Abdullah in the process – and landed smoothly – and very finally – on the floor inside.
Abdullah lay on his face gasping, with dizzy memories of turrets whirling past him against a starry sky. Everything had happened so quickly that, at first, all he could think of was that the distance between his booth and the night garden must be quite surprisingly short. Then, as his breath did at last come back, he wanted to kick himself. What a stupid thing to have done! He could at least have waited until Flower-in-the-Night had had time to step on the carpet too. Now Flower-in-the-Night’s own logic told him that there was no way to get back to her but to fall asleep again and, once more, hope he chanced to say the command-word in his sleep. But as he had already done it twice, he was fairly sure that he would. He was even more certain that Flower-in-the-Night would work this out for herself and wait in the garden for him. She was intelligence itself – a pearl among women. She would expect him back in an hour or so.
After an hour of alternately blaming himself and praising Flower-in-the-Night, Abdullah did manage to fall asleep. But, alas, when he woke he was still face down on the carpet in the middle of his own booth. Jamal’s dog was barking outside, which was what had woken him up.
“Abdullah!” shouted the voice of his father’s first wife’s brother’s son. “Are you awake in there?”
Abdullah groaned. This was all he needed.
CHAPTER FOUR Which concerns marriage and prophecy
Abdullah could not think what Hakim was doing there. His father’s first wife’s relatives usually only came near him once a month, and they had paid that visit to him two days ago. “What do you want, Hakim?” he shouted wearily.
“To speak to you of course!” Hakim shouted back. “Urgently!”
“Then part the curtains and come in,” said Abdullah.
Hakim inserted his plump body between the hangings. “I must say, if this is your vaunted security, son of my aunt’s husband,” he said, “I don’t think much of it. Anyone could come in here and surprise you as you slept.”
“The dog outside warned me you were there,” Abdullah said.
“What use is that?” asked Hakim. “What would you propose to do if I proved to be a thief? Strangle me with a carpet? No, I cannot approve the safety of your arrangements.”
“What did you wish to say to me?” asked Abdullah. “Or did you only come here to find fault as usual?”
Hakim seated himself portentously on a pile of carpets. “You lack your normal scrupulous politeness, cousin by marriage,” he said. “If my father’s uncle’s son were to hear you, he would not be pleased.”
“I am not answerable to Assif for my behaviour or for anything else!” Abdullah snapped. He was thoroughly miserable. His soul cried out for Flower-in-the-Night, and he could not get to her. He had no patience with anything else.
“Then I shall not trouble you with my message,” Hakim said, getting up haughtily.
“Good!” said Abdullah. He went to the back of his booth to wash.
But it was clear that Hakim was not going away without delivering his message. When Abdullah turned round from washing, Hakim was still standing there. “You would do well to change clothes and visit a barber, cousin by marriage,” he told Abdullah. “At present you do not look a suitable person to visit our emporium.”
“And why should I visit there?” Abdullah asked, somewhat surprised. “You all made it clear long ago that I am not welcome.”
“Because,” said Hakim, “the prophecy made at your birth has come to light in a box long thought to contain incense. If you care to present yourself at the emporium in proper apparel, this box will be handed over to you.”
Abdullah had not the slightest interest in this prophecy. Nor did he see why he had to go himself to collect it when Hakim could just as easily have brought it with him. He was about to refuse, when it occurred to him that if he succeeded in uttering the correct word in his sleep tonight (which he was confident he would, having done it twice before), then he and Flower-in-the-Night would in all probability be eloping together. A man should go to his wedding correctly clothed and washed and shaved. So, since he would be going to baths and barber anyway, he might as well drop in and collect the silly prophecy on his way back.
“Very well,” he said. “You may expect me two hours before sunset.”
Hakim frowned. “Why so late?”
“Because I have things to do, cousin by marriage,” Abdullah explained. The thought of his coming elopement so overjoyed him that he smiled at Hakim and bowed with extreme politeness. “Though I lead a busy life that has little time left in it for obeying your orders, I shall be there, never fear.”
Hakim continued to frown, and turned that frown on Abdullah back over his shoulder as he left. He was obviously both displeased and suspicious. Abdullah could not have cared less. As soon as Hakim was out of sight, he joyfully gave Jamal half his remaining money to guard his booth for the day. In return, he was forced to accept from the increasingly grateful Jamal a breakfast consisting of every delicacy on Jamal’s stall. Excitement had taken away Abdullah’s appetite. There was so much food that, in order not to hurt Jamal’s feelings, Abdullah gave most of it secretly to Jamal’s dog – which he did warily, because the dog was a snapper as well as a biter. The dog, however, seemed to share its master’s gratitude. It thumped its tail politely, ate everything Abdullah offered, and then tried to lick Abdullah’s face.
Abdullah dodged that piece of politeness. The dog’s breath was laden with the scent of elderly squid. He patted it gingerly on its gnarled head, thanked Jamal, and hurried off into the Bazaar. There he invested his remaining cash in the hire of a handcart. This cart he loaded carefully with his best and most unusual carpets – his floral Ochinstan, the glowing mat from Inhico, the golden Farqtans, the glorious patterned ones from the deep desert, and the matched pair from distant Thayack – and wheeled them along to the big booths in the centre of the Bazaar where the richest merchants traded. For all his excitement, Abdullah was being practical. Flower-in-the-Night’s father was clearly very rich. None but the wealthiest of men could afford the dowry for marrying a prince. It was therefore clear to Abdullah that he and Flower-in-the-Night would have to go very far away, or her father could make things very unpleasant for them. But it was also clear to Abdullah that Flower-in-the-Night was used to having the best of everything. She would not be happy roughing it. So Abdullah had to have money. He bowed before the merchant in the richest of the rich booths and, having called him treasure among traders and most majestic of merchants, offered him the floral Ochinstan carpet for a truly tremendous sum.
The merchant had been a friend of Abdullah’s father. “And why, son of the Bazaar’s most illustrious,” he asked, “should you wish to part with what is surely, by its price, the gem of your collection?”
“I am diversifying my trade,” Abdullah told him. “As you may have heard, I have been buying pictures and other forms of artwork. In order to make room for these, I am forced to dispose of the least valuable of my carpets. And it occurred to me that a seller of celestial weavings like yourself might consider helping the son of his old friend by taking off my hands this miserable flowery thing, at a bargain price.”
“The contents of your booth should in future be choice indeed,” the merchant said. “Let me offer you half what you ask.”
“Ah, shrewdest of shrewd men,” Abdullah said. “Even a bargain costs money. But for you I will reduce my price by two coppers.”
It was a long hot day. But by the early evening, Abdullah had sold all his best carpets for nearly twice as much as he had paid for them. He reckoned that he now had enough ready money to keep Flower-in-the-Night in reasonable luxury for three months or so. After that, he hoped either that something else would turn up, or that the sweetness of her nature would reconcile her to poverty. He went to the baths. He went to the barber. He called at the scent-maker and had himself perfumed with oils. Then he went back to his booth and dressed in his best clothes. These clothes, like the clothes of most merchants, had various cunning insets, pieces of embroidery and ornamental twists of braid that were not ornaments at all, but cleverly concealed purses for money. Abdullah distributed his newly earned gold among these hiding places and was ready at last. He went, not very willingly, along to his father’s old emporium. He told himself that it would pass the time between now and his elopement.
It was a curious feeling to go up the shallow cedar steps and enter the place where he had spent so much of his childhood. The smell of it, the cedarwood and the spices and the hairy, oily scent of carpets, was so familiar that, if he shut his eyes, he could imagine he was ten years old again, playing behind a roll of carpet while his father bargained with a customer. But, with his eyes open, Abdullah had no such illusion. His father’s first wife’s sister had a regrettable fondness for bright purple. The walls, the trellis screens, the chairs for customers, the cashier’s table and even the cash box had all been painted Fatima’s favourite colour. Fatima came to meet him in a dress of the same colour.
“Why, Abdullah! How prompt you are and how smart you look!” she said, and her manner said she had expected him to arrive late and in rags.
“He looks almost as if he was dressed for his wedding!” Assif said, advancing too, with a smile on his thin bad-tempered face.
It was so rare to see Assif smiling that Abdullah thought for a moment that Assif had ricked his neck and was grimacing with pain. Then Hakim sniggered, which made Abdullah realise what Assif had just said. To his annoyance, he found he was blushing furiously. He was forced to bow politely in order to hide his face.
“There’s no need to make the boy blush!” Fatima cried. Which of course made Abdullah’s blush worse. “Abdullah, what is this rumour we hear that you are suddenly planning to deal in pictures?”
“And selling the best of your stock to make room for the pictures,” added Hakim.
Abdullah ceased to blush. He saw he had been summoned here to be criticised. He was sure of it when Assif added reproachfully, “Our feelings are somewhat hurt, son of my father’s niece’s husband, that you did not seem to think we could oblige you by taking a few carpets off your hands.”
“Dear relatives,” said Abdullah, “I could not, of course, sell you my carpets. My aim was to make a profit and I could hardly mulct you, whom my father loved.” He was so annoyed that he turned round to go away again, only to find that Hakim had quietly shut and barred the doors.
“No need to stay open,” Hakim said. “Let us be just family here.”
“The poor boy!” said Fatima. “Never has he had more need of a family to keep his mind in order!”
“Yes, indeed,” said Assif. “Abdullah, some rumours on the Bazaar state that you have gone mad. We do not like this.”
“He’s certainly behaving oddly,” Hakim agreed. “We don’t like such talk connected to a respectable family like ours.”
This was worse than usual. Abdullah said, “There is nothing wrong with my mind. I know just what I am doing. And my aim is to cease giving you any chance to criticise me, probably by tomorrow. Meanwhile, Hakim told me to come here because you have found the prophecy that was made at my birth. Is this correct, or was it merely an excuse?” He had never been so rude to his father’s first wife’s relations before, but he was angry enough to feel they deserved it.
Oddly enough, instead of being angry with Abdullah in return, all three of his father’s first wife’s relations began hurrying excitedly round the emporium.
“Now where is that box?” said Fatima.
“Find it, find it!” said Assif. “It is the very words of the fortune teller his poor father brought to the bedside of his second wife an hour after Abdullah’s birth. He must see it!”
“Written in your own father’s hand,” Hakim said to Abdullah. “The greatest treasure for you.”
“Here it is!” said Fatima, triumphantly pulling a carved wooden box off a high shelf. She gave the box to Assif, who thrust it into Abdullah’s hands.
“Open it, open it!” they all three cried excitedly.
Abdullah put the box down on the purple cashier’s table and sprung the catch. The lid went back, bringing a musty smell from inside, which was perfectly plain and empty apart from a folded yellowish paper.
“Get it out! Read it!” said Fatima, in even greater excitement.
Abdullah could not see what the fuss was about, but he unfolded the paper. It had a few lines of writing on it, brown and faded, and definitely his father’s. He turned towards the hanging lamp with it. Now that Hakim had shut the main doors, the general purpleness of the emporium made it hard to see in there.
“He can barely see!” said Fatima.
Assif said, “No wonder. There’s no light in here. Bring him into the room at the back. The overhead shutters are open there.”
He and Hakim took hold of Abdullah’s shoulders and pushed and hustled him towards the back of the shop. Abdullah was so busy trying to read the pale and scribbly writing of his father that he let them push him until he was positioned under the big overhead louvres in the living room behind the emporium. That was better. Now he knew why his father had been so disappointed in him. The writing said:
These are the words of the wise fortune teller. “This son of yours will not follow you in your trade. Two years after your death, while he is still a very young man, he will be raised above all others in this land. As Fate decrees it, so I have spoken.”
My son’s fortune is a great disappointment to me. Let Fate send me other sons to follow in my trade, or I have wasted forty gold pieces on this prophecy.
“As you see, a great future awaits you, dear boy,” said Assif.
Somebody giggled.
Abdullah looked up from the paper, a little bemused. There seemed to be a lot of scent in the air.
The giggle came again, two of it, from in front of him.
Abdullah’s eyes snapped forward. He felt them bulge. Two extremely fat young women stood in front of him. They met his bulging eyes and giggled again, coyly. Both were dressed to kill in shiny satin and ballooning gauze – pink on the right, yellow on the left one – and hung with more necklaces and bracelets than seemed probable. In addition, the pink one, who was fattest, had a pearl dangling on her forehead, just below her carefully frizzed hair. The yellow one, who was only just not fattest, wore a sort of amber tiara and had even frizzier hair. Both wore a very large amount of make-up, which was, in both cases, a severe error.
As soon as they were sure Abdullah’s attention was on them – and it was: he was riveted with horror – each girl drew a veil from behind her ample shoulders – a pink veil on the left and a yellow on the right – and draped it chastely across her head and face. “Greetings, dear husband!” they chorused from beneath the veils.
“What!” exclaimed Abdullah.
“We veil ourselves,” said the pink one.
“Because you should not look at our faces,” said the yellow one.
“Until we are married,” finished the pink.
“There must be some mistake!” said Abdullah.
“Not in the least,” said Fatima. “These are my niece’s two nieces who are here to marry you. Didn’t you hear me say I was going to look out for a couple of wives for you?”
The two nieces giggled again. “He’s ever so handsome,” said the yellow one.
After a fairly long pause, in which he swallowed hard and did his best to control his feelings, Abdullah said politely, “Tell me, oh relatives of my father’s first wife, have you known of the prophecy which was made at my birth for a long time?”
“Ages,” said Hakim. “Do you take us for fools?”
“Your dear father showed it to us,” said Fatima, “at the time he made his will.”
“And naturally we are not prepared to let your great good fortune take you away from the family,” Assif explained. “We waited only for the moment when you ceased to follow your good father’s trade – this surely being the signal for the Sultan to make you a Vizir or invite you to command his armies, or maybe to elevate you in some other way. Then we took steps to ensure that we shared in your good fortune. These two brides of yours are closely related to all three of us. You will naturally not neglect us as you rise. So, dear boy, it only remains for me to introduce you to the magistrate who, as you see, stands ready to marry you.”
Abdullah had, up to now, been unable to look away from the billowing figures of the two nieces. Now he raised his eyes and met the cynical look of the Justice of the Bazaar, who was just stepping out from behind a screen with his Register of Marriages in his hands. Abdullah wondered how much he was being paid.
Abdullah bowed politely to the Justice. “I am afraid this is not possible,” he said.
“Ah, I knew he would be unkind and disagreeable!” said Fatima. “Abdullah, think of the disgrace and disappointment to these poor girls, if you refuse them now! After they’ve come all this way, expecting to be married, and got all dressed up! How could you, nephew!”
“Besides, I’ve locked all the doors,” said Hakim. “Don’t think you can get away.”
“I am sorry to hurt the feelings of two such spectacular young ladies—” Abdullah began.
The feelings of the two brides were hurt anyway. Each girl uttered a wail. Each put her veiled face in her hands and sobbed heavily.
“This is awful!” wept the pink one.
“I knew they should have asked him first!” cried the yellow one.
Abdullah discovered that the sight of females crying – particularly such large ones, who wobbled with it everywhere – made him feel terrible. He knew he was an oaf and a beast. He was ashamed. The situation was not the girls’ fault. They had been used by Assif, Fatima and Hakim, just as Abdullah had been. But the chief reason he felt so beastly, and which made him truly ashamed, was that he just wanted them to stop, to shut up and stop wobbling. Otherwise he did not care two hoots for their feelings. If he compared them to Flower-in-the-Night, he knew they revolted him. The idea of marrying them stuck in his craw. He felt sick. But, just because they were whimpering and sniffing and flubbering in front of him, he found himself considering that three wives was perhaps not so many after all. The two of them would make companions for Flower-in-the-Night when they were all far from Zanzib and home. He would have to explain the situation to them and load them on to the magic carpet—
That brought Abdullah back to reason. With a bump. With the sort of bump a magic carpet might make if loaded with two such weighty females – always supposing it could even get off the ground with them on it in the first place. They were so very fat. As for thinking they would make companions for Flower-in-the-Night – phooey! She was intelligent, educated and kind, as well as being beautiful (and thin). These two had yet to show him that they had a brain cell between them. They wanted to be married and their crying was a way of bullying him into it. And they giggled. He had never heard Flower-in-the-Night giggle.
Here Abdullah was somewhat amazed to discover that he, really and truly, did love Flower-in-the-Night just as ardently as he had been telling himself he did – or more, because he now saw he respected her. He knew he would die without her. And if he agreed to marry these two fat nieces, he would be without her. She would call him greedy, like the prince in Ochinstan.
“I am very sorry,” he said, above the loud sobbings. “You should really have consulted me first about this, oh relatives of my father’s first wife, oh much honoured and most honest Justice. It would have saved this misunderstanding. I cannot marry yet. I have made a vow.”
“What vow?” demanded everyone else, the fat brides included, and the Justice added, “Have you registered this vow? To be legal, all vows must be registered with a magistrate.”
This was awkward. Abdullah thought rapidly. “Indeed, it is registered, oh veritable weighing-scale of judgement,” he said. “My father took me to a magistrate to register the vow when he ordered me to make it. I was but a small child at the time. Though I did not understand then, I see now it was because of the prophecy. My father, being a prudent man, did not wish to see his forty gold coins wasted. He made me vow that I would never marry until Fate had placed me above all others in this land. So you see—” Abdullah put his hands in the sleeves of his best suit and bowed regretfully to the two fat brides, “I cannot yet marry you, twin plums of candied sugar, but the time will come.”
Everyone said, “Oh, in that case—!” in various tones of discontent and, to Abdullah’s profound relief, most of them turned away from him.
“I always thought your father was a rather grasping man,” Fatima added.
“Even from beyond the grave,” Assif agreed. “We must wait for this dear boy’s elevation, then.”
The Justice, however, stood his ground. “And which magistrate was it, before whom you made this vow?” he asked.
“I do not know his name,” Abdullah invented, speaking with intense regret. He was sweating rather. “I was a tiny child, and he appeared to me an old man with a long white beard.” That, he thought, would serve as a description of every magistrate there ever was, including the Justice standing before him.
“I shall have to check all records,” the Justice said irritably. He turned to Assif, Hakim and Fatima and – rather coldly – made his formal goodbyes.
Abdullah left with him, almost clinging to the Justice’s official sash in his hurry to get away from the emporium and the two fat brides.
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