by John Barth
I have presumed already that Scheherazade will have timed her ultimatum to her father for a period between periods, so to speak. If, as seems reasonable, she plans to get herself pregnant as fast as possible before menstruation puts her dangerously out of action, she will have scheduled her liaison with Shahryar to begin not long after her last virginal menses, both to preclude an inconvenient and counterstrategic menstruation on, say, the second or third night, and to guarantee her fertility early on in their connection. Her ultimatum takes her father by surprise, but his plight will not have taken her by surprise: Just as she’s been boning up in her library for the task ahead, I see Scheherazade cannily monitoring the moon and her menstrual cycle with an eye to the most opportune “window,” as the NASA people say. It cannot be too much emphasized that this young woman is smart: When she tells the tale of the slave-girl Tawaddud, for example—a beautiful and sexy polymath who confounds all the sultan’s experts with her mastery of syntax, poetry, jurisprudence, exegesis, philosophy, music, religious law, mathematics, scripture and scriptural commentary, geometry, geodesy, medicine, logic, rhetoric, composition, dancing, and the rules of sex—Scheherazade gives us the complete 27-night oral examination (Nights 436-462); and all that Tawaddud knows is only part of what Scheherazade knows.
To get down to it, between no fewer than seven and no more than thirteen days before Night 1, she will have begun her final maiden menses, and will have put them tidily by from one to seven days before her ultimatum. She can then expect to ovulate somewhere from one to four nights into this first sexual affair of hers, though ovulation could possibly occur later: by Rhythm Method calculations, anywhere from Night 1 to Night 10, if she began her last menses on Night Minus 7. (I use the phrase “expect to ovulate” as a manner of speaking: The people of The Arabian Nights do not speak of sperm and ova as such, but they are rich in folk wisdom about fertility and barrenness. A number of Scheherazade’s stories are concerned with the subject.)
I’m going to presume further that Scheherazade did indeed conceive successfully upon this first post-virginal ovulation. Just as in Greek mythology “the embrace of a god is never fruitless,” so there is ample precedent in Arab storytelling for the idea that powerful or favored men get their women pregnant on the night they deflower them: One need look no farther than Scheherazade’s Tale of Núr al-Dín Alí (Nights 20-24), in which two brothers, sons of the vizier, both impregnate their brides on their joint wedding night and become fathers on the same day exactly nine months thereafter. If conception occurred between Nights 1 and 10, our storyteller will have guessed the fact by Nights 14 to 21, when she will have skipped her next menses; she will know it pretty certainly by Nights 42-49, when she will have missed two straight periods and begun to show the other early signs of pregnancy. By Night 145, the night of that startling lapse from the formula, Scheherazade will have been plumply half through the second trimester of her first pregnancy: I think I know why the king dozes off cheerfully, and I feel as relieved as little Dunyazade at the way things are working out between them.
Now, assuming the average normal human gestation of 266 days plus or minus two weeks, Scheherazade will have delivered her #1 son no earlier than Night 253 (if she conceived on Night 1 and delivered a fortnight early) and no later than Night 290 (if she conceived on Night 10 and delivered a fortnight late). Her median EDC, as the obstetricians call it (Estimated Date of Confinement), would be about Night 271: i.e., 266 days after Night 5. Considerations of storytelling lead me to prefer conception on Night 1 and confinement on Night 267, right on the button.
Thereafter, The Merck Manual reports, it would be possible though gynecologically inadvisable for her to conceive #2 as early as fourteen days after delivering #1: i.e., on Night 281 if she delivered #1 on Night 267. She would thereby postpone menstruating in the king’s company for another nine months. But surely she has by now passed successfully the critical test of narration without copulation, in the period immediately prior to, during, and after her first childbirth. What’s more, if she conceives #2 on Night 281 and delivers him exactly 266 days later (Night 547), the boy will be fifteen months old on Night 1001: very late indeed to be “crawling,” as the text specifies (the average healthy baby, Dr. Spock reports, begins to walk between twelve and fifteen months of age). And she could conceivably conceive #3 as early as fourteen days after delivering #2 and deliver him 266 days thereafter (Night 827); but then by Night 1001, while he’d still be nursing, at just under six months he’d very possibly be crawling as well (the average crawler is six to twelve months old) while his two older brothers walked.
The phrase “one walking, one crawling, and one suckling,” together with the presumption of even minimal consideration on Shahryar’s part for the welfare of his chief source of sexual and narrative entertainment, suggests that the king permitted Scheherazade a more reasonable interval between her pregnancies—though it cannot in the best of cases have been as long as the “several months” recommended by modern gynecologists for complete recovery from uterine wear and tear. Further reflection (and a bit of exercise with the calculator) suggests that if on Night 1001 Child #1 is walking (i.e., is at least a year old; but given the existence of two younger brothers he must be at least eighteen months old), and Child #2 is crawling (i.e., is between six and twelve months old; but given the existence of one younger brother he’s more likely between ten and twelve months old), and Child #3 is suckling but not yet crawling (i.e., is comfortably under six months old), then the three pregnancies were indeed spaced about equally through the period. It suggests further that if—as Child #1’s age and Scheherazade’s likely strategy argue—her first conception occurred within the first ten nights and her third sometime between nights 552 and 735 (any earlier and #3 would likely be crawling; any later and he’ll have been premature)—then these intervals between her three pregnancies and/or following the third of them will have been long enough virtually to guarantee her having menstruated at least once, and most likely more than once, by Night 1001: If she is not reimpregnated at her first postpartum ovulation, declares the Merck, a woman normally resumes menstruation six to eight weeks after childbirth.§
So what? you ask. I’ll tell you so what, after adding one final presumption: that Scheherazade is not pregnant again, or in any case does not know that she is, on Night 1001. If she were, she’d surely add that circumstance to her plea for her life: one walking, one crawling, one suckling, and one in the oven. Let us proceed.
From these several considerations and constraints, plus the Arab storyteller’s fondness for formal regularity and symmetry, a sensible pattern suggests itself: Scheherazade first conceives at that first ovulation; she ovulates and menstruates once after each of her successful deliveries; and she is reimpregnated promptly upon her next ovulation following each of those menstruations—at least following the first and second. Assuming a perfectly average fourteen days between the onset of menses and ovulation (and another fourteen, where applicable, between ovulation and the next onset of menses) and perfectly average 266-day pregnancies, and assuming further that her first conception occurred on Night 1, we can generate a large number of feasible schedules for Scheherazade’s gynecological-obstetrical events, depending on the interval we allow between deliveries and the resumption of menses. I shall consider here only three of those schedules, and then choose my favorite.
The low limit of that normal interval (six weeks, or 42 days) gives the following result:
The children are in their proper age brackets: The walker is four days past two years old, the crawler thirteen months and seventeen days (just a touch tardy, but you know how it is with Middle Children), the suckler three months. But the “end-game”—while it has a remarkable feature about it that I’ll come back to—is finally uninteresting: Whether Scheherazade is 34 days pregnant with her fourth child or twenty days past her fourth menses, Night 1001 is, except for its portentous number, a night like any other. And the point of these investigations is to ask
of Night 1001 what the Jews ask of the first night of Passover: How is this night different from all other nights?
Increasing the normal delivery-menstruation interval to its upper limit (eight weeks, or 56 days) produces the following interesting result:
The kids are still in the right age brackets: two years four days; thirteen months three days; two months. Scheherazade, just winding up the third postpartum menstruation of her career, is ready to resume sex with the king, as indeed the frame-story tells us she does: “… according to his custom, [Shahryar] went in to his wife Scheherazade” (it has been yet another constraint upon these calculations not to have her menstruating at bedtime on Night 1001). If things continue according to Shahryar’s custom, Scheherazade can look forward to a fourth conception on Night 1015, a fourth confinement on Night 1281, etc. almost ad infinitum, or until the king tires of her. Her plea for exemption from his deadly vow will by this schedule have been prompted by the coincidence of three factors, none mentioned in the text but two already discussed here: (1) The turning up on the tale’s odometer of the magic number 1001, signifying both “plenty and then some” and the inauguration of another cycle. (2) The circumstance of that number’s equalling (perhaps exceeding by one) the number of nights through which Shahryar has enforced his murderous policy. Each morning that he hasn’t killed Scheherazade is symbolic penance for his having killed one of her predecessors; on the 1001st night that penance is complete. It is as opportune a moment for Scheherazade to ask for rescindment of his vow as Night 1001 of that vow was opportune for her entering his life. And (3) to clinch the matter: her having borne his third child, duly menstruated, and faithfully re-presented herself for his further sexual pleasure. It is a fortuitous coincidence indeed: Dayenu, as the Passover song declares: The first two factors alone “would have been enough”; the third adds an appropriate dimension of sexual fidelity to the resolution of a plot which begins in sexual infidelity. But to arrive at this happy coincidence we have departed from our principle of strict averages. What happens to the schedule if, along with exact average ovulation and gestation times, we apply the exact average interval (seven weeks, or 49 days) between childbirth and the resumption of menstruation? In my opinion, the result is even more interesting||:
The children remain of appropriate ages: two years four days; thirteen months ten days; two and a half months. The coincidence of the number 1001 with the number of Scheherazade’s predecessors and the rest remains in force. But a new element, dramatic and unprecedented in the story, presents itself: For the first time in nearly three years, Scheherazade has completed a menstrual cycle in the normal lunar month! For the first time since her maiden night with Shahryar 1000 nights ago, the king has not impregnated her upon her first ovulation after her preceding menstruation. And although any number of premenstrual symptoms may have forewarned Scheherazade of this circumstance, the king himself must be apprised of it no later than Night 1002, when he will find that by Moslem practice he cannot “go in to Scheherazade,” as their whole past history will have led him to expect to do, because—a mere 28 days since her previous menses, instead of the accustomed 329 (14 + 266 + 49)—she’s menstruating again! (Granted, the same thing might have happened e.g., in Schedule 1; but there the moment came meaninglessly on Night 981.)
It is a delicate moment indeed. (We need not assume, by the way, that she is “a day early”: If, as Burton argues and the crucial first night attests, Scheherazade does her storytelling in the hours between midnight and dawn, then the “1001st night” is actually the 1002nd morning, and our schedule is intact.) We recall another element in the formula: At first light, Scheherazade normally breaks off her story in progress and sleeps with the king “in mutual embrace till day fully breaks.” If, as may be imagined, this unprecedented, abnormally normal menstrual period or some unequivocal sign of its immediate onset comes upon her as she winds up the tale of Ma’aruf the Cobbler and Fatimah the Turd, there is no time to be lost. Scheherazade must either launch at once into another story—and it had better be a good one—or do something as extraordinary as her menstruating twice in a row.
Here is the place to wonder how it may be that this extraordinary thing has come to pass. Has the king become infertile? Or—after deflowering at least 1002 virgins (his first wife, presumably, plus the murdered 1000, plus Scheherazade)—has he become impotent, as the sexologists tell us Don Juan would likely have become? Can it be that his appetite for the pleasures of narrative has supplanted more physical appetites? Alternatively, and more alarming, can he in these latter weeks, except for this 1001st night, have turned his sexual attentions elsewhere, coming in to Scheherazade only for his pre-dawn narrative fix?
The text will not help us: So outspoken on all matters physical regardless how delicate or indelicate, it is silent on this. In the absence of any supporting evidence, all such speculations as the above are farfetched, though any would constitute a danger which Scheherazade’s new menstruation would serve to focus and perhaps bring to a head—her head. So too, possibly more so, would a less farfetched imaginable state of affairs predicated from this hypothetical menstruation: an alternative case that much appeals to my own imagination, and which will fetch us to the moral of these impolite investigations.
Perhaps Shahryar is as potent a potentate as ever, as fertile as ever, as faithful as ever in his sexual attentions to Scheherazade. Perhaps even—though this is imagining much of a storybook sultan—he has, except in the neighborhoods of her previous menses and deliveries, “gone in to” no other woman besides Scheherazade (the text mentions no other); perhaps he has come to expect that her production of children by him, like her production of stories for him, will go on forever, or at least until “the Destroyer of Delights and Severer of Societies,” as the wonderful Arab formula puts it, “translates them both to the ruth of Almighty Allah, and their houses fall waste and their palaces lie in ruins.” Perhaps at very least he has come in all these nights to extend his unspoken vow from “By Allah, I will not kill her until I shall have heard the end of her story” to “By Allah, I will not kill her until I have heard the end of her stories.” And perhaps our Scheherazade—this very fountain of narrative production and biological reproduction—has gone dry.
Oh, not forever, of course; not yet forever. If one swallow does not a summer make, or a drunkard, one swallow the less doesn’t mean that winter’s here and the bar is closed. If Child #4 is not in the works this month, very likely he will be next, or the one after that. And there may be only thirty-six basic dramatic situations, as Georges Polti claims (in The 36 Dramatic Situations (1916): very close, by the way, to the number of coital positions recognized by the Kama Sutra—thirty-nine—and that, as Burton himself notes, to the “Quarante Façons” of French erotic tradition), but the number of interesting stories and copulations that these can generate is surely very very large, if after all not infinite. Polti calculates for example from his thirty-six situations that there are exactly 1,332 ways to be Taken by Surprise: Scheherazade could go on for another childsworth of nights yet on surprise-stories alone, even if she’d been telling no other kind at the rate of one a night since Night 1. As for biological fertility, I have no figures for well-born Moslem women of Scheherazade’s time and place—the time and place themselves are uncertain enough—but The Merck Manual informs me that a healthy modern American woman, in the years between her menarche and her menopause, will produce about the same number of ova as Scheherazade produces stories in the combined manuscript versions of the Nights: just “upwards of 400.” If we assume, as tradition permits, that precocious Scheherazade will not have been many years past puberty when she volunteered herself to the king, she has a good number of childbearing years left her beyond that 1002nd morning.
So unless Shahryar is just looking for an excuse to be rid of her, neither Scheherazade’s (speculative) first failure to conceive nor (what I’m just for a moment speculating further) her first inability to come up with the opening of her next story
immediately upon the close of her last—neither of these doubtless temporary lapses constitutes a grave present danger after all, if either of them “actually” occurs. Let us not forget that she survived Night 145, when the king fell asleep at intermission time.
What they do constitute, however, either or both of these lapses, is a warning, a foreshadow, which no one as percipient as our Scheherazade would likely ignore; which we ourselves may do well to perpend; and which I’m happy to imagine might—coincident with those two other, more evident special aspects of the number 1001—have prompted Scheherazade’s petition for tenure; for exemption from the publish-or-perish ultimatum under which she has lived (and produced) for so long.
The most fecund woman in the world will eventually reach her climacteric, if she lives so long.¶ The most potent man (no statistics available) will one day fail to get it up, if anybody’s still interested. And the most fertile, potent narrative imagination—out of which has come, in Shahryar’s own words, a whole world of “proverbs and parables, chronicles and pleasantries, quips and jests, stories and anecdotes, dialogues and histories and elegies and other verses…” (X:56)—even so fertile a narrator as Scheherazade, if she live long enough and produce long enough, must one day find herself in a case the reverse of what young John Keats feared: not that she “might cease to be / Before [her] pen hath gleaned [her] teeming brain,” but that she might continue to be after her pen hath gleaned her teeming brain. More precisely, the omen of her very first failure to conceive—a kind of biological Writer’s Block—could well serve to remind Scheherazade that on any morning after the night when her teeming brain shall finally have been gleaned, she might peremptorily cease to be.