The Tidewater Tales

by John Barth

  She’s pregnant again? Captain Donald ventures. Nah: That’d be nothing new.

  Three times two hundred sixty-six, begins Peter Sagamore, trying to remember his log-note of a few days back. No: a thousand and one nights divided by three sons? Math isn’t my long suit.

  She’s not pregnant again? Kath wonders. I’m remembering what you called this story. . . .

  You’re getting warm, Carla tells her. Then we all sit silent in Story’s cockpit in warm Back Creek on the lovely Sassafras, under a moon that only the calendar can tell is one night shy of full, watching Chip Sherritt, his eyes closed, clickety-buzzing his chin and fingers, now and then rejecting something with jerk of head or wince of brow, until at last he pauses, opens his eyes, and lights up like that moon.

  I think Mister Chip has got it, says C. B Silver.

  Yes ma’am.

  ANDREW “CHIP” SHERRITT CRUNCHES THE NUMBERS ON

  SCHEHERAZADE.

  But first I need to know the average age when a Moslem child begins to walk.

  Grins Carla Muslim shmuslim: Kids are kids. Lee was ten months; Mim-sele was closer to a year. Their brother was nearly one and a half. Call it a year.

  Doctor Spock says twelve to fifteen months, Kath confirms, who is closer to such scriptures. Did you happen to see him out by Ordinary Point, by the way, just in case?

  How about crawling? Chip asks next. When does that usually start and stop? The women consult: Carla’s daughters by her late husband were both crawling like mad by six months; her missing son by the missing Prince of Darkness skipped crawling altogether and went tardily from flailing on the rug to walking sturdily upright. Kath remembers Andy’s crawling at, oh, between six months and a year—and she trusts her memory, because she used to hop over from College Park to Nopoint Point every chance she got, to spend time with him. Six months to a year, say?

  All right. Clickety buzz. Chip blinks a long blink. To begin with, I guess Scheherazade would schedule Night One not just for when she’s finished with her menstrual period, but somewhere in the two weeks—I mean the ten days or so between when she finishes her period and when she ovulates. ‘Cause if she’s already ovulated, she’s going to have her period again in less than two weeks, but if she gets pregnant right away, she won’t have her next period for nine months, plus or minus two weeks plus six to eight weeks more—assuming she doesn’t, you know, lactate, and assuming she doesn’t get pregnant again right away at her first ovulation after the birth of her first son. Which as a matter of fact we know she doesn’t. Okay?

  We are accustomed to Andrew Sherritt’s feats. Captain Donald, on the other hand, gives his head a shake as if a genie has foamed from his beer bottle. How do we know she doesn’t, young fellow?

  Chip nods in his direction. ‘Cause if she got pregnant on Night One and had her baby on Night Two Sixty-seven, which would be her median EDC, and then got pregnant again on Night Two Eighty-one or so and had that baby on Night Five Forty-seven, he’d be fifteen months old by Night Ten Oh One and walking like his older brother. Then if she got pregnant for the third time on Night Five Sixty-one, which is fourteen days after Five Forty-seven, and delivered Number Three on Eight Twenty-seven, that one would be nearly six months old on Night Ten Oh One and probably crawling while his two older brothers walked. The walking son has to be nearly a year old at least, right? But since he has two younger brothers, he’s got to be at least eighteen to twenty months old. The crawling son is probably between six and twelve months old, since he’s crawling, but since he has a younger brother, then he’s going to be more like ten to twelve months old. And if the third son is nursing but not crawling yet, then he’s probably less than six months old. Could I have a Pepsi, please?

  Donald Quicksoat commands us to give that boy a Pepsi.

  That’s not all, is it, Mister Chip?

  Chip Sherritt replies politely that that’s not anything, yet: It’s just what isn’t the case. He doesn’t believe Scheherazade to be pregnant again on Night 1001, by the way, but that opinion is dramaturgical, not mathematical. If she were, and knew it, he believes she would mention that fact as part of her plea: one walking, one crawling, one nursing, and one in the works.

  On with the story, gently coaches Peter Sagamore: So we think that Ms. Scheherazade’s pregnancies were spaced about evenly through the thousand and one nights, with the first one probably beginning sometime between Nights One and Ten, and the third one late enough so that the child isn’t crawling yet at the end, but probably not so late that he’s premature. . . .

  Clickety buzz, Chip replies: Third conception no earlier than Night Five Fifty-two, and no later than Night uh Seven Thirty-five.

  Which means she almost certainly wasn’t breast-feeding them herself, observes Katherine, who intends to if she can handle Betwixt and Between at the same time. Otherwise she wouldn’t likely have turned them out so fast. Breast-feeding is a famous method of birth control.

  Not to be an absolute dummy, Peter says, I here point out that as far as we know, the king had no children by his fickle first wife. So it would be doubly smart of young Scheherazade to get herself pregnant as early in the game as possible.

  Katherine Sherritt, greenish-brown-belt raconteuse and collector of stories, bets the girl got herself pregnant on Night One and delivered exactly nine months later, since she’s the sultan’s girlfriend and a character in a Persian/Arab story. But what does all this arithmetic have to do with Scheherazade’s first second menstruation, she’d like to know, whatever that odd phrase means, and with the Other Reason why there are a thousand and one nights instead of some other number?

  Chip Sherritt raises one forefinger and quietly fanfares: Ta-da! We give him the floor and his head, knowing the lad to be, while anything but a show-off, as thorough as he is prodigious.

  Looking over the spreadsheet, he tells us, and bearing in mind the constraints of “one walking, one crawling,” et cetera, and assuming that Scheherazade got pregnant at her first ovulation after um losing her virginity, it seems pretty clear to him that she must have ovulated and menstruated once after each of her three babies was born, and that she then got pregnant again at the very next ovulation after each of those menstruations—at least after the first and second of them. Otherwise the kids come out to be the wrong ages at the end. So-o-o . . . he guesses that whatever Moslem taboos apply with respect to coitus during menstruation, the king was pleased enough with Scheherazade by the time their first son was born to do without for a while and just listen to stories. Now, then: Assuming for the sake of simplicity and, you know, symmetry, that she first got pregnant on Night One, as Kath has suggested, and that all three of her pregnancies were of exactly average length—two hundred sixty-six days—and that the interval between each childbirth and her next menstruation after each, uh, postnatal ovulation was the exact average forty-nine days for . . . non-nursing women (Kath said six to eight weeks, right? So let’s make it seven weeks on the button), a-a-and remembering that Scheherazade isn’t pregnant again on Morning Ten Oh Two and that Ms. Silver called this story The Story of Scheherazade’s First Second Menstruation . . .

  Yes?

  Chip grins. Lost and Found hold hands, understanding little of this but dazzled by their favorite uncle. She delivers Number One on Night Two Six Seven. That makes him two years and four days old on Night Ten Oh One; he’s been walking for maybe a year. Seven weeks later, on Night Three Sixteen, she menstruates, having ovulated two weeks before. Two weeks after that, on Night Three Thirty, she gets pregnant for the second time, and she delivers Son Number Two exactly two hundred sixty-six days later, on Night Five Ninety-six. That’ll make him thirteen months, ten days old on Night Ten Oh One: not too late to be crawling still, right? Seven weeks later she menstruates again, on Night Six Forty-five—you could call that her second first menstruation—and two weeks after that she gets pregnant for the third time. On Night Nine Twenty-five she delivers her third son, so he’s just two and a hal
f months old at the end of the story: nursing, but not crawling yet. Seven weeks later she menstruates again, just as she did after her other two pregnancies—and if things kept on going as they’d gone before, she’d get pregnant again on Night Nine Eighty-eight and be two weeks into her fourth child at the end of the story. Which of course would be too early for her to know for sure, and that could be why she doesn’t mention it. But the thing to notice is that if she ovulated right on schedule on Night Nine Eighty-eight there and didn’t get pregnant—which would be the first time such a thing ever happened in her three years with King Shahryar—then she’s going to menstruate again on Night Ten Oh Two. As a matter of fact, since she always tells her stories just before daybreak, Night Ten Oh One is really Morning Ten Oh Two, and it could be that she ends that cobbler-king story the way she ends it and then calls in the children and pleads for her life because she realizes that for the first time in a thousand and one nights she’s having a normal twenty-eight-day menstrual period. The king hasn’t made her pregnant again on schedule: It’s her first second menstruation.

  Dear gawd, whispers Capn Don, and not in awe of Scheherazade’s position. Chip sips Pepsi from the can. Dun & Bradstreet applaud; they’re not sure what, but they rate it Triple-A. Carla B Silver gives her narrative assistant an enormous hug and prophesies This fellow here is going to make some difference in the world. What prompted Scheherazade to tell May Jump this story in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, she then declares, was that some shmendrick at the ASPS convention asked her whether she’d stopped telling stories on the thousand-and-first night because she’d run out of gas, the way some storytellers do.

  We Sherritt-Sagamores do not exchange glances.

  Says Carla She wouldn’t dignify the shmuck with an answer. She assumed the main reason went without saying: that at the end of Night Ten Oh One, Shahryar had been a good boy for exactly as long as he’d been a bad one. It was the right time to make her move, even without the private extra reason.

  But that extra reason, says Captain Donald, is pretty important, no? Shahryar’s expecting business as usual tomorrow night—tonight, actually—a roll in the hay and on with the story. But he isn’t going to get it for nearly a week.

  Katherine declares, neutrally, that she’s relieved to hear it wasn’t a case of Storyteller’s Block. Knowing the Arabs’ fondness for formal design, she finds Chip’s numerical exercise both appealing and persuasive. What she’s wondering now is how it happened that the pattern broke down: What went wrong on Night Whichever, when the king was supposed to get her pregnant again and didn’t? Had the man lost interest? Become impotent? That impertinent person in Kitty Hawk wondered whether Scheherazade had run out of gas; Kath wonders whether maybe Shahryar did.

  Chip declares that that’s not his department—but for what it’s worth, he remembers our saying that the story ends happily with the double marriage of the two brothers and the two sisters. . . .

  Carla B Silver nods. We have Scheherazade’s own word for it that the king was no more out of gas than she was out of stories. She was pleased enough not to be pregnant again right away for a change, but she was still a healthy and good-looking young woman, and she fully expected that Child Number Four would come along sooner or later. She and the king were particularly looking forward to having a daughter somewhere down the line, now that they had three sons in the bank. . . .

  PETER SAGAMORE SAYS NOTHING.

  Well, then, excuse me, says Captain Donald Quicksoat presently, but I guess I’m wondering why you’ve told us this particular story. With all due respect to Mister Chip’s mathematical fireworks, what’s the point of Scheherazade’s so-called first second menstruation?

  Carla B Silver pats his knee. That is exactly what she herself asked May Jump, she declares. But did May Jump ask Scheherazade the same question? She did not. And why not? Carla flourishes her cigarillo, straightens her back, and looks directly at Story’s skipper. Because, Mister Sagamore: May Jump says that every real storyteller will get the message for him/herself. ¿Buenas noches time, Capn Don?

  DAY 13:

  WHY TO SASSAFRAS?

  Over breakfast next morning, Peter Sagamore levelly asks or declares to Andrew Christopher “Chip” Sherritt

  LET’S EMULATE THAT WISE OLD BIRD.

  Chip frowns at his pound cake, at his instant coffee, at his orange juice, at his glass of milk. What?

  Let’s emulate that wise old bird.

  Capn Donald Quicksoat?

  No. That owl we heard hooting last night in one of those white oak trees right over yonder. Let’s emulate that wise old bird.

  I didn’t hear any owl hooting last night in any white oak tree right over yonder. What’s going on?

  You didn’t hear that owl, says Peter sagely, because that owl quit hooting early. That owl sat in that wise old oak, and the more that owl saw, the less that owl spoke. Owls have good hearing as well as excellent night vision.

  Katherine’s grinning. Hoot ‘n’ Anny nudge each other and her as if they understand. But she decides that that’s enough teasing and explains to Chip that over the bar of the Owl Bar in the Belvedere Hotel on East Chase Street in Baltimore, where she and May Jump used to spend time in days gone by, is a locally famous stained-glass triptych, the first panel of which reads A wise old owl sat in an oak, and the second The more he saw, the less he spoke, and the third The less he spoke, the more he heard, and that May Jump had included that three-quarter quatrain along with other uncompleted verses in Katherine’s brown-belt exercise book in First-Level Invention.

  Oh, says Chip, and, contented, eats.

  K confesses she’d been going to say That’s why he’s such a wise old bird.

  Wrong tense, Chip points out immediately. Right you are, Peter agrees. Kath kisses them both and says she sure misses May Jump. Carla B Silver’s story has got her thinking about her old friend. What’s the point of Peter’s finishing up that poem just now?

  What’s the point of Scheherazade’s first second menstruation? Peter asks in return. He’s filling in the blank in May Jump’s Belvedere Owl Bar poem, he declares, because this morning is Day 13, 28 June ‘80, full moon tonight, and tout le monde is converging upon the Sassafras, May Jump no doubt included, to watch us have our babies at last. Things could start popping any minute, any minute, and we have so many plot-chestnuts yet in the fire that it’s going to take a narrative miracle to fetch them all out by closing time. He thought he’d knock that little one off now, before things get busy. Wasn’t he a wise old bird?

  Goes without saying, in Chip’s opinion.

  I should’ve gone to that ASPS convention in Kitty Hawk! Kath laments. It’s the only one I’ve missed in eleven years. Wait till I see that Maze: She didn’t say a word to me in Annapolis about Scheherazade!

  We all swim. Then the born men swim some more while Katherine and the unborn radio their immediate ancestors. Today bids to be another bona fide Chesapeake summer item, maybe less hot than yesterday, but just as damp and hazy-sunny, with another light southerly to dry the sweat and move the action along. Definitely a clothes-off, dunk-in-the-river day; maybe even an awning day, if the breeze doesn’t pick up. We note with satisfaction, but know better than to mention, that Chip Sherritt is going native: This morning, for the first time in mixed company, he piles over Story’s stern sans swimsuit. Pubic hair just sprouting, like Five-O’Clock Shadow.

  Katherine presently announces to those in the creek that the K IV people are having a long English-style breakfast down in Fairlee Creek. No Sara Lee pound cake for them: scrambled eggs with cream cheese and chervil, toast with rough-cut marmalade, Canadian bacon and fried tomatoes and tea. They expect to reach Ordinary Point by late lunchtime; they hope we’ll join them for dinner.

  Says expansive Peter from the water Maybe we will, if the stork hasn’t struck by then. What else is new?

  On the doomsday front, K reports, the House of Representatives is expected to approve funding today
for the MX missile.

  Tick tick tick, worries Chip, floating so as not unduly to expose his crotch. They’re going to blow it up before I get to see it. His sister reminds him to put his he-knows-what on his he knows what, once he’s dried off.

  Isn’t the logic of that owl poem all mixed up? the lad now wonders to his brother-in-law. The second and third lines imply that the owl’s wisdom came from talking less and looking and listening more; but the first line establishes that he was wise already, before he did that.

  Peter Sagamore regards his remarkable young relative, cups one hand behind one ear, says nothing.

  THANK GOD IT’S SATURDAY,

  Captain Donald Quicksoat calls from his companionway a short while later as, Chip having sounded the conch for anchor aweigh, we glide by Rocinante IV on our way out of Back Creek. Low on ice and water, we have decided to poke upriver to Georgetown for a pit stop and then—unless etcetera et cetera—sail back to see what’s doing at Ordinary Point. A satisfied-looking hombre this a.m., Capn Don reports that his shipmate is sleeping in after a comfortable night, thank you. Their agenda is a daysail out on the Bay if the breeze permits, after which they too will probably return to the Sassafras to see who’s here and what’s what. Did Peter figure out what Scheherazade’s first second menstruation is supposed to mean? Be damned if he did.

  From the bow, where he’s dipping Story’s anchor clean, Peter calmly calls back Sure.

  Says Chip at the jib halyard winch You did?

  So tell me! hollers Capn Don, but we’ve already moved too far apart for talk. So tell me, says Katherine Sherritt at our tiller. She has banded her forehead with Lee Talbott’s paisley scarf trouvée; she looks like a pretty, pregnant pirate. Her husband reminds her, however, that while only a prodigy like Andrew Sherritt can crunch the numbers (at least in his head), we have May Jump’s word for it that every real storyteller will get Scheherazade’s message for him/herself. He himself got it, belatedly, just minutes ago, as he was hauling up our Danforth anchor; if they’ll excuse him now, he has writing to do. Let him know if any babies start being born.