Bedtime Stories

by Johnson, Jean

  There is no use for it, the aging man thought, shrugging his shoulders helplessly. I suppose I have too many coins.

  A look around his cottage—which only qualified as a cottage because it had a wooden floor, otherwise it would have been a mere hut—showed there was nowhere else for the coins to go. Smoked meat and onions hung from the rafters, a barrel of rice for his morning porridge stood in the corner by the hearth, and there were a couple of shelves to hold his pots and a half-eaten loaf of wheat bread. He had two chairs at his table, for himself and a guest, and his bed sat in the corner across from the hearth, a simple, grass-stuffed pallet covered with linen and wool. On the wall by the door hung two scythes; below them sat a grinding wheel, while just outside sat his wooden wheelbarrow, sheltered by the thatching of his roof.

  Everything was exactly where he wanted it and where he liked it, for Wali Daad was a simple man with a simple life and simple needs. Not simple in the sense of being a fool, but simple in the sense of being content with his life. Except the trapdoor would not shut. He had too many coins.

  One wouldn’t think a simple grass cutter would have too many coins, but Wali Daad had never married, had no offspring to feed, and no relatives dependent upon his income. His parents had perished in a flood some fifty years before, leaving him their mud-caked home and a few surviving tools with which to make his living. It was a good living, too.

  His home lay near the junction of three roads and three kingdoms, one to the east, one to the west, and one to the north, with several green fields leading down to the river, which lay to the south. Merchants traveled up and down those roads all year round, bringing caravans of hungry, laden camels and horses past Wali Daad’s home. Plus there was a well in the yard between the house and the three roads, a deep well filled with fresh, sweet water. Wali Daad charged the merchants a penny for every troughful of hay, which took three to four wheelbarrow loads to fill, but he did not charge anything for the water, no matter how many times he pulled the bucket up from its depths, or how many horses and camels and men wanted a drink.

  These things made his home a popular resting point for many a caravan, though there wasn’t much of anything else here to entice people to settle this far from a town. No orchards, no gardens, just the river, the grass, the house, and the well. But he had enough customers to pay for his simple needs, and enough left over to tuck his unspent pennies into the cache in the floor.

  Which would not shut.

  “Too many pennies,” Wali Daad muttered aloud. “I have too many pennies. I don’t even need them! I just kept putting them in there because that was what Mother and Father would do. What am I to do with them?”

  He tried closing the door one more time, but it jutted up a tiny bit, enough to be noticeable. It wasn’t that he needed the money, but he didn’t want some passing traveler to notice the uneven floorboards and think to attack and rob him. He liked his simple life, but he was no fool. Sighing, Wali Daad took out the coins he had just put in, plus a few more, and closed the trapdoor. Once it was flush with the floor, he dragged the table back into place, rearranged the chairs just so, and took the coins over to the barrel of rice. Lifting the lid, he dropped the pennies onto the grains, sighed at the copper brown blotches they made on the tan and white kernels, and sealed the barrel again.

  Something had to be done with his money. Something good, Wali Daad thought. Something . . . well, not something for me, but something for someone else. The only questions are what should I do, and for whom? Wali Daad stared around his simple home, with its simple needs, and couldn’t think of a thing.

  Noise in the distance made him discard his thought. Noise meant travelers, and travelers usually meant a need for water and hay. Sighing again, the grass cutter stepped outside. Coming up the road from the West Kingdom was a caravan of twenty horses and fifty camels. Their leader was a man with a blue-dyed turban wrapped around his head and a green and white striped aba, the loose but comfortable traveling robe of the Westerners.

  “Ah! Hassim! Hassim! Welcome back, Hassim!” Clapping his hands together in delight, Wali Daad lifted and shook them over his head in acknowledgment that he saw his Northern-born merchant friend coming, then hurried to fetch his wheelbarrow and head for the hay shed. He loaded up his barrow with several bundles of grass, then brought them out to the long wooden troughs that served his caravan customers as mangers. By the time he had brought half a dozen loads of grass to the troughs, the caravan handlers had already sorted out their charges and were pulling water up from the well, pouring it by the bucketful into the long stone troughs for both man and beast to have a drink.

  “Good evening, Wali Daad, and good fortune to you!” Hassim called out, hurrying to clasp arms with the grass cutter.

  His robes weren’t plain linen, but fine cotton from the Eastern lands, which were further trimmed with bits of silk from the Western ones, proof of how his merchanting travels had allowed him to prosper. He had bracelets on his wrists and brooches on his riding boots, and a necklace of rare red coral strung around his throat. Even his beard was waxed and perfumed, forming a curly point as was currently popular in the Eastern lands. But for all of his finery, Hassim greeted the simply clad Wali Daad as an equal and a friend, for he had long been a merchant who visited the grass cutter’s resting point.

  “Good fortune indeed,” Wali Daad agreed as they clasped forearms, thinking briefly of his collection of too many pennies, “and better fortune still to you! Come, drink, eat, and feed your animals my finest, fresh-culled grass!”

  “A delight, as always,” the merchant master replied, grinning at his old friend. “No journey from west to east or from east to west is ever complete without a visit to your house. How have you been, this last month and a half?”

  “Quite good; the sun has not been too hot, the rain has not been too heavy . . .” By chance, Wali Daad’s gaze fell upon one of his friend’s bracelets. It was crafted from bronze with inlays of silver, and quite lovely. Tucking his arm around the merchant’s shoulders, Wali Daad guided him toward the cottage. “Hassim, my dear friend . . . I have a request to make of you. Would you accept the hospitality of my humble home, and hear of my problem?”

  “It would be my honor to listen, and my privilege if there is anything I can do to help you,” Hassim agreed readily. Pausing just long enough to give his caravan handlers their instructions, Hassim left them to feed and water their beasts. Accompanying Wali Daad into his home, he accepted the mug of water Wali Daad offered, and the bit of bread with a little pot of ghi for dipping. Once the matter of hospitality had been attended to, Hassim spoke again. “So, my old friend. What troubles you?”

  “You are an honest merchant, my friend. Every caravan master from the East to the West, and even to the mountains in the North, speaks of how honest and honorable you are. I consider myself privileged to be considered your friend,” Wali Daad stated.

  “And that you are,” Hassim agreed, bowing his turbaned head. “Your praise humbles me, coming from a man as honorable and wise as yourself. How can I assist you?”

  “It is because of your honesty that I wish to ask a great favor of you,” Wali Daad stated.

  “Name it, and if it is in my power, I shall do it,” Hassim agreed immediately. “What is this favor?”

  Wali Daad rose and approached his rice barrel. Opening the lid, he reached inside and extracted the pennies he had dropped in there earlier. “It is a simple thing. You see, I have too many pennies.”

  Hassim eyed the eight or nine small coins in the older man’s work-callused hand and blinked. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “I have a hiding place,” Wali Daad explained, returning to his seat at the table. “And I have too many pennies to fit into it. These are the ones that would not fit. I live a simple life, with simple needs, and simple expenses. I do not need so many pennies as I have saved over the years, and I would like to do something with them. But I did not know what, until I saw you.”

  “What did
you have in mind?” Hassim asked, intrigued.

  “I would like you to take my pennies to a jeweler. The best of the ones you know,” Wali Daad stated. “I want you to take my pennies to this jeweler and have him make the most beautiful bracelet he can, given the money he will receive—and for your trouble, I would like you to keep a hundred pennies for yourself,” Wali Daad added. “Would you be willing to do this task for me, my friend?”

  “I had thought when you first asked that I would be given a difficult task,” Hassim said, chuckling. “But this! This is an easy thing. There is a very fine jeweler I know in the East; in fact, he is the royal jeweler to Prince Kavi himself. As I am already headed eastward, your request is a simple enough matter. I will take your pennies to him, let him create whatever he may while I carry out my business, then pick it up again when it is time for me to come back. So! Tonight we shall count out your pennies and put them in my strongest coffers, and I shall treat you to the cooking of my best chef, and we shall pay for several more bundles of your best grass, to start replacing what you are about to spend. Or would you prefer to add them to your order?”

  Wali Daad chuckled and shook his head. “I should probably keep a few, in case my grinding stone should break, or I should need a new fishing hook, or one of my scythes should break. But only a few, as my needs are simple, and my life is quite happy for it.”

  “Then we shall save out a few, and tomorrow I shall take the rest of your too many pennies with me to the Kingdom of the East, along with your request for the finest bracelet the jeweler Pramesh can possibly make. Are we agreed?” Hassim asked, holding out his palm.

  “We are agreed,” Wali Daad said, clasping hands with his merchant friend. “Come, let us move the table,” he added quietly, “and I shall show you my problem of too many pennies.”

  Hassim raised his brows, but obligingly moved his chair out of the way and helped shift the modest table. His brows rose a second time when Wali Daad lifted up a section of floor . . . and rose so high they all but disappeared under the edge of his turban the moment he saw the large opening stuffed full of copper coins. “I see . . . You do have too many pennies, my friend. I shall have a struggle to find enough room in my coffers to carry even half of this wealth.”

  “Well, I cannot keep it here any longer. I am left putting pennies into my rice, and I should not like to mistake coin for corn in my porridge on the wrong sleepy morning. This jeweler, Pramesh, will have a very fine commission headed his way,” Wali Daad agreed, closing the trapdoor. “And I want every single penny I send with you to be spent on this bracelet he is to make. The finest bracelet my pennies could possibly buy.”

  “I will consult with him personally on the matter,” Hassim promised, “and I shall not return until the bracelet is perfection itself.”

  THREE months later, when the summer sun blazed very hot and high in the sky, when the grass which had been so green just a season before was now yellow and brittle, Wali Daad spotted the green and white aba of his merchant friend at the head of the caravan coming up along the eastern road. The deep blue cloth coiled around Hassim’s head had been replaced with a pale blue one, soaked with water as well as sweat in the effort to keep its wearer cool.

  This time, Wali Daad hurried to lift buckets of water into the stone troughs first, for man and beast were undoubtedly parched. Though the river in the distance was low from the lack of rain, the well had been dug down deep and provided cool, clean water for his visitors to drink. This time, the caravan handlers unpacked their tents for much-needed shade as the very first thing, setting them up before the grass cutter had finished distributing dry but still green grass into the wooden troughs.

  This time, when Hassim followed Wali Daad to his small cottage, the merchant was carrying a stout, iron-bound box. Once the door was shut and bread and water had been shared, Hassim centered the box on the table, unlocked it with a key from his pouch, and turned it to face his grass cutter friend.

  “Here it is, my friend. You not only had a handful more pennies than you could fit into your hiding hole, you had a handful more pennies than a single horse could comfortably carry. So when I brought them all to Pramesh the jeweler, he made not one bracelet, but two. As perfectly matched as he could make,” Hassim related, nodding at the casket. “You will not find better outside of a royal palace, I’ll wager.”

  When Wali Daad just sat there, Hassim gestured at the lid.

  “Well? Go on! Open it and see what all your hard labor and careful savings have bought you. Every penny has been accounted for, I assure you. Even the hundred you would have given me has gone to buy this casket to help keep them further safe for you. Open it, and wear your new bracelets in good health and great fortune!”

  Wali Daad lifted the lid and stared at the contents for a long, long moment. Then he smiled and shook his head slowly, carefully closing the lid again. “Your generosity and friendship warms me more than any hearth fire could during the coldest of monsoons, my friend. But I did not buy these bracelets for myself. I thank you deeply for the trouble you have gone to on my behalf . . . but I must task your generosity with one more request.”

  Puzzled, Hassim scratched the side of his waxed and pointed beard. “Another request? I would be pleased to fulfill it, if again it is within my power but . . . What request?”

  “Bracelets of such incomparable beauty are not meant for a man like me. I live a simple life, and I am blessed with deep contentment by it, as you know,” Wali Daad told his friend. “When I saw your bracelets on your last visit, I knew what I could do with my money . . . but it wasn’t really my money, for I had no use for it. Do you see?”

  “Well, no . . . but you and I have different things in our lives which give us satisfaction. For you, it is living a simple life, watering and feeding the caravans who pass by your house day after day, year after year,” Hassim said. “For me, it is bringing news and new items to distant lands, to delight, entertain, brighten, and ease the lives of others. I love to travel, and I love to make a good bargain. Though I would not care to live your life, I do respect it, for it brings you happiness. So if you say this is so, I shall believe it for you, though it is not something I would believe for myself.”

  Wali Daad bowed his head. “Thank you. As I said, since I did not need it, I felt the money was not mine, so how could bracelets made with that money also be mine? No, my friend . . . as you do travel so extensively, and meet so many people, what I need now from you is a name. In specific, the name of a woman of incomparable intellect and virtue, a woman of great wisdom and compassion. A woman as beautiful in her mind and soul as these bracelets clearly are.”

  Hassim blinked. He hadn’t expected that question. While it is true that Wali Daad is an elderly man, of an age where most men are grand-fathers, he thought, I suppose even a man who lives a simple life could be interested in courting a woman . . .

  “Uh . . . the greatest woman who comes to my mind is the Princess Ananya, she who rules the West Kingdom. She is young—young enough to be your granddaughter—but her youth is tempered by a great maturity of mind, and a youthful wife is a good thing, if the man is still healthy. If your, er, sap can still rise to bedew her flower, I suppose she, or a woman like her, could bear your . . . You are blushing?”

  Wali Daad quickly shook his head, lifting his hands for emphasis. “No! No, no . . . I am healthy, yes, but I do not wish to take a wife! What woman of great learning and wisdom would want to live as a mere grass cutter’s wife? No, her knowledge and her compassion are best used where they are, serving the people she rules. I simply wish you to take these beautiful bracelets and give them to her as a gift. Tell her they come from an admirer for her wisdom and her worthiness, and that she should be adorned on her outside in a manner befitting her inside.

  “I am a simple man,” Wali Daad repeated, touching the unbleached linen covering his chest, faintly stained by years of wear and toil. “I wear simple clothes, for they are suitable to my life. But you are a fine merc
hant, and wear fine things to reassure people of your prosperity, which speaks in silent eloquence of the good deals you have to offer. How much more should a woman of incomparable virtue and enlightenment be adorned? Please, take these bracelets to Her Highness with my compliments and my purely spiritual admiration. I am too old and my life too content for anything more.”

  Nodding, not quite understanding but getting a glimpse of what his friend meant, Hassim turned the casket around, locked it again, and promised to take it to the capital of the West Kingdom, since that was conveniently where he was headed next.

  BOWING low with every step, Hassim entered the audience chamber of Her Royal Highness Princess Ananya, Flower of the Land and Light of the West. Such obsequience was more than what protocol demanded, but he could not help himself. Next to the opulence and riches of this palace, the visual delights of the carvings and the paintings, the gilding and draperies, the aural delights of songbirds and sweetly placed string instruments, the olfactory nirvana of a thousand flowers in riotous bloom, he felt as if his life were as simple as Wali Daad’s.

  “Hassim the Trader, caravan master of the Northlands,” the master of ceremonies announced, rapping his staff on one of the sections of pattern-tiled marble floor not covered in thick, ornately woven rugs. “Hassim comes before Your Highness with a gift of admiration and esteem.”

  Hassim, so busy bowing and bobbing, was startled by a soft, feminine chuckle as gentle as water babbling down a brook.

  “Come and rise, good trader,” the woman bid him. He lifted his head cautiously and found himself staring at a youngish woman clad in cloth of gold embroidered in bright hues and stitched with precious jewels. Her dark hair was draped with creamy gold pearls, and her dark eyes gleamed with good humor. The curve of her lips was a graceful, friendly curve, like a hunter’s bow that had been strung but not nocked with an arrow. “I would not have a traveler such as yourself lose his way in an excess of politeness, nor allow him to trip and injure himself. Lift your head and be the man you are, and honor me by it.”