The Tidewater Tales

by John Barth

  Within the space of this paragraph, they’ll see her—and hear her, too, for her alarm is already in her throat—and be properly astonished. Before they do, it is important to get said that while Scheherazade could no more decipher her friend’s alphabet and language than he could decipher hers, speech between them had never been a problem, in this sense: Everything Djean said sounded like “Arabic” to her; everything she said sounded “English” to him. Magic. What she now cried out was pure fright in any language. Mrs. Djean replied with a smaller cry of pure alarmed surprise. The helmsman bolted up, put both hands on the wheel, did a double-take (his eyes had been upon the sails, the windvane, something), grinned with almost pure delight, and exclaimed, in the perfect “Arabic” of which he swore he knew not one word: Scheherazade! How in the world? Welcome aboard!

  Inshallah! Scheherazade cried back. There is no god but God! Allah spare us!

  The near-naked woman now said dryly Shmah Yisroel et cetera, and held out her hand. Since you’re here, come on up where the view is better.

  What had happened? Where was she? And was it possible that these people were actually enjoying themselves? They were. The vessel was theirs, she would learn presently, and they would have her believe that it was in fact not about to sink or even tip over; that it sailed safely and normally at that dismaying angle when “beating to windward” in a good breeze; that they were out there doing what they were doing, not to reach any port of refuge or deliver some precious cargo or accomplish any other riskworthy mission but simply for the sport of it. They found what they were doing fun! For their new passenger’s sake, however, they took in some sail and changed course homeward (they were not at sea, they assured her, but in a branch of water just before their house). Once the wind was behind them, as if by magic the day turned suddenly warmer and calmer; Scheherazade’s terror subsided, if not her consternation.

  Well, now, said “Shmah”—that was not Mrs. Djean’s name, any more than her friend’s was “Djean,” precisely, or her own was “Scheherazade”; but it sounded plausibly Arabic, it was close enough, and it stuck in Scheherazade’s head as the first word she’d heard the woman say—I’ve heard so much about you, I almost feel as if et cetera. Do you want to slip out of that wet thing? I’ve got another top that might fit you.

  Once up on the boat’s high side (but there was no high or low now, Allah be praised), Scheherazade had put her hand to her chest to cover the telltale ink stain. Now, when she said No, thank you; this will soon dry out, she saw with relief that either the sea spray or her sudden transportation to Djean’s PTOR had removed the blot entirely. She saw him see that, too, and smile.

  So! they all more or less said, and more or less sized one another up, and began more or less to relax. Somehow or other, she had managed to make the journey that she and Djean had so often speculated upon (Shmah knew at least something about it, too, evidently, from her husband’s stories of what he called his Metaphorical Excursions in the other direction). That meant that Scheherazade had a little time with them before she faded back to where she’d come from. It’s terrific to see you again! Djean said, and seemed quite to mean it. And here! We’ve got to figure out how you did it, so Shmah and I can show you around a bit in the future.

  As they addressed this question, Djean politely asked her permission to remove his shirt, for comfort; the day was unseasonably warm. Scheherazade colored and said Of course, understanding that customs differed. He peeled it off . . . she was sure his wife was reading her mind. . . . But Shmah said Me too, and actually bared her breasts! Which were, obviously, as accustomed to the sun as was the rest of her. The woman was attractive, even by Thousand-and-One-Night standards; also cheerful, cordial, energetic, and rather more trim and fit than Scheherazade was. Feel free, Shmah said, if you change your mind.

  Djean said nothing.

  Well, going smockless would have been more comfortable, certainly, though the wet cotton felt cool on her skin. But beyond the fact that she was still a modest daughter of Islam and somewhat stunned by what had happened to her, Scheherazade was particularly disinclined to undress before either of those two, not to mention both, and especially to shed that particular garment in nonpassionate circumstances. Again she demurred, and as they sailed “homeward” (Djean now and then checking his wristwatch in a familiar way that made her heart catch), she told them a suitably abridged and seemly version of what had led up to her transportation: her visit to her sister in Samarkand—no mention of its motive—and Dunyazade’s ambiguous, oracular remark, with whose sense she had been wrestling when she found herself with them.

  To her surprise, she saw Djean and Shmah smile more and more merrily as she spoke. Now they took each other’s hands and declared the mighty mystery solved. The key to the treasure, said laughing Shmah, is my husband’s T-shirt. Holding it up, she explained that the bold blue letters across its front—WYDIWYD—were an acronym for an anonymous, unpostmarked message that had come to Djean in the mails after the publication of his last book. (Another one about you, Shmah told her candidly. Infidelity with fictional characters doesn’t give me any problems, by the way; I get crushes on Djean’s male leads all the time.)

  Nothing really indiscreet in there, smiling Djean assured her. There’s a copy waiting for you on my desk. Now I understand that that letter must have been from your sister, though God knows how it got from Samarkand to here. It’s hard enough to get my royalty statements from New York.

  Wherever it came from, the message had been the same: What you’ve done is what you’ll do. And at first it had depressed him, for professional reasons, as Dunyazade’s had depressed Scheherazade for personal. Nothing ahead but repetition or silence? But he was so far from finished saying what he wanted to say—even about Scheherazade; maybe especially about Scheherazade—and so determined to tell along, tell along, whether with or against the winds of fashion, until the Destroyer of Delights crashed his Macintosh for keeps, that what had initially sounded like the knell of doom had come in his and Shmah’s house, and on their boat, to be a slogan of encouragement. So much so, they had abbreviated it to a kind of catchword, which Shmah had caused to be lettered upon what in their PTOR was called a T-shirt, as a surprise gift for him: WYDIWYD. Just a little while ago, when in the course of their afternoon sail (he having spent the morning tapping away at his latest yarn, into which he could not promise that present company would not materialize) they had turned into the wind, he had called down to his wife in the cabin to fetch him a shirt from his seabag when she came on deck, and Abracadabra! The moment he’d recognized the acronym and pronounced the sentence aloud like a wry mantra, Scheherazade had appeared, white smock and all. Clearly they’d said the same words at the same time, as had happened with certain other words before. It was a hypothesis, in any case, easy enough to test.

  As they approached their dock, the broad river narrowed, and the traffic of other boats increased: some pleasure craft like theirs, some obviously workboats, whose crews had the no-nonsense look of working watermen everywhere. Shmah stepped below to cover herself more properly, by their standards. In her brief absence, Djean and Scheherazade spoke volumes to each other with one long glance—his eyes smiling, questioning, and serious, hers merely serious.

  Shmah emerged wearing a T-shirt of her own—TKTTTITT—and now Scheherazade was at ease enough with them, with the situation, and with herself to share the joke. Once the boat was secured at their dock and she dared to move, they showed her around it: one of the sort Djean had described to her, more or less, and in face of its exotic, complicated reality, Scheherazade dismissed her solo-Sindbad fantasy forever. Nowhere in the Islands of India and China did such materials exist, or workmen to fashion them into such astonishments. (Check again, Shmah advised: Half of this stuff comes from Japan and the other half from Taiwan.) In any case, she began to believe, it would be quite enough for her to make this voyage, from her PTOR to theirs and back . . . a number of times . . . to supply her with a bus
y old-ageworth of new stories for her grandchildren.

  Next they wanted to show her their little country house: No servants, Djean warned her, but wait till she saw the gadgetry! In particular he wanted to demonstrate for her the device he’d bought to replace his old fountain pen, which after decades of faithful service had taken to leaking all over the page. . . . But he declared with a glance at his watch that all that would have to wait for another visit. Fifty minutes had passed already since Scheherazade’s appearance; it was a wonder she hadn’t begun to fade home. I’ve enjoyed meeting you, Shmah said, shaking her hand. You do want to come back, don’t you? Djean asked. If so, we’d better make arrangements fast. There’s so much for you to see!

  Scheherazade considered. I’d like to try it once more, anyhow, if you’re willing.

  Friday at five p.m., Djean said positively. We’re both here then, and our week’s work is done. This coming Friday at five sharp we’ll do what we’ve just done and take it from there.

  Scheherazade agreed. Making these arrangements (whose unspoken voltage was more amusing now than painful) had taken several minutes; she was pleased they’d gotten things straight before she left, and not a little surprised to be with them still, on their boat, at their pier, as substantial as ever in her slowly drying smock. Had Djean’s visits to her ever lasted so long, back when they’d both have given much for a quarter-hour more?

  One o’clock passed; their conversation thinned. One-fifteen.

  Well, said Shmah: It seems that Wydiwyd’s got more staying power than Tikittity-Titty ever did. I’m going to say good-bye now, Scher, and catch a swim. You two probably have things to say before you split.

  Not really, they both assured her. But please go on with your afternoon, said Scheherazade. Both of you. I can’t imagine why I’m still here.

  As Djean’s watch approached one-thirty, she grew uneasy indeed. He wouldn’t hear of leaving her to fade alone; on the other hand, their talk was strained under the circumstances, neither party confident of finishing any given sentence. Djean’s wife stepped onto the pier and, to Scheherazade’s astonishment, peeled not only out of her T-shirt, but out of that scanty swimsuit-bottom as well, and dived naked into the water. Nobody here but us, she called back when she surfaced, and the river’s still warm. You’ll have to try it next Friday.

  Your wife is both attractive and friendly, Scheherazade said when Shmah swam off.

  Thank you, said Djean. She’s also smart, high-principled, firm-charactered, and other good things. He smiled and took her hand: A friend. You’ll get used to our ways, Scheherazade. I had the advantage of having read the Nights before I came to visit.

  She much wanted to ask him, apropos of Shmah’s earlier remark, not only whether he had in fact told his wife, if not his readers, the whole story of their Month of Mondays—as it certainly appeared he had—but (more important to her) whether she herself really had seemed to him, even at the time, not a flesh-and-blood woman but a fictional character, insubstantial as Tawaddud the Slave Girl or Fatimah the Turd in the stories she’d told Shahryar. If so, little wonder he’d not held on! Yet such insubstantiality ought to cut both ways, and except in the moments of his fading, Djean had never seemed fictional to her. Was it a fiction who once had . . . But if such questions were to be raised at all, this was not the time to raise them.

  At one forty-five, Djean asked Would you like something to drink? There’s beer and Coke and iced tea in the cooler.

  No thank you, Scheherazade murmured to her fingernails. You go ahead.

  At two, Shmah climbed from the wide river and rinsed herself in the spray from a long, snakelike tube that produced fresh water at her wish without anyone’s pumping or pouring. Then she wrapped herself in a towel and rejoined them, saying brightly It turns out we could’ve showed you the house after all. Shall we give it a try?

  Allah help me! Scheherazade wailed. Is this my punishment, never to return to my children and grandchildren? What have I done? What shall I do?

  Shmah took her arm and said firmly You’ll come inside with us, to start with. You’ll get out of those wet clothes and into something comfortable: I’ve got two caftans and a djellaba up there for you to choose from. You’re to stay for dinner at least, and for as long after that as you need to. There’s plenty of room.

  Scheherazade wept.

  We’ll take an extra Cornish hen out of the freezer, Shmah went on, and I’ll bet you anything that just when it’s thawed and we put it on the barbecue, you’ll take off.

  Her manner was joking, as usual, but her sympathy and hospitality were seconded by Djean, and abundantly implemented. Shmah demonstrated the marvels of showerbath, flush toilet, underarm spray, and electric hair dryer. To make their guest feel more at home, she and Djean donned caftans too, which they had picked up in their travels. Djean caused authentic Arabian music to sound from a remarkable music-machine; also a piece composed in her honor and bearing her name, the work of some Tatar. Shmah, who did her own cooking, even produced a creditable harira to precede the lamb kabobs and pita bread (the Cornish hens, she said, can wait), and persuaded Scheherazade to bend Islamic custom enough to take a glass of wine with them in honor of Omar the Tentmaker—who, if Shmah remembered correctly, did not say A loaf of bread, a jug of mint tea, and thou.

  But how could Scheherazade savor their food and hospitality (and Shmah’s wit); how could she assimilate the astonishments of dials, keyboards, lighted screens, automobiles, and airplanes, while hoping every moment to transmigrate from their patio or porch back to her library? Maybe if you held your breath and pushed, Shmah suggested over dessert—but who could tell when that woman was being serious?

  She did not fade; not that night or the next day or the day after that. What she’d done, it began to appear, she could not undo: The passkey WYDIWYD admitted one into the treasury of wonders that was Djean and Shmah’s PTOR, but not out again. She despaired: never to see her sister, whom she still prized despite the changes in her! Never again to be with her husband, the father of her children, whom she had scarcely imagined she could so much miss! Her hosts tried to console her, and she for her part tried to be consoled: It was not a foregone conclusion that her translation was irreversible; they simply didn’t know how long it would last. We’ve had houseguests like that before, said Shmah.

  Scheherazade was used enough to her manner now to understand that she was only teasing again, and not to doubt her and Djean’s concern and their assurances that she was welcome. But she knew too that no guest is welcome indefinitely, especially one who once had a very special relationship with one of her hosts. Accustomed to a palaceful of servants instead of a houseful of labor-saving machines, she couldn’t really pull her own weight. Djean and Shmah were both working people, schoolteachers, busy with their new semester; Djean moreover spent all of every morning at his word machine, printing out stories that, like Dunyazade, he made up in his head, to be read silently off the page. No matter how they protested otherwise, she knew she was in their way.

  On the fifth evening, as they dined on those Cornish hens that Shmah had mentioned earlier, Djean speculated seriously that the difference between his visits to Scheherazade’s library and hers to Chesapeake Bay were perhaps related to the difference between past time and future time, though he could not say quite how so. Certainly the two were very different things. For the reality of the past, there was abundant empirical evidence: We infer from Burton’s 1885 edition of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, for example, that there once was a year 1885 and a brilliant odd fellow named Richard Burton, though neither exists presently; from the Nights themselves we infer that in another PTOR there once was a king named Shahryar, et cetera: merely inferences, but reasonably well grounded. The future, in Djean’s view, was a camel of another color: Though he was no philosopher, it seemed to him that there was no empirical evidence for its reality at all, only a reflex expectation. Fallible and insubstantial as memory might be, it struck Djea
n as much solider stuff than anticipation; he had more confidence in the reality of yesterday than in the reality of tomorrow. Besides, he concluded, I’ve visited the past. And a nice place to visit it was, though et cetera.

  It’s a matter of perspective, isn’t it? Shmah suggested, though she too disclaimed any philosophical expertise. From Scher’s point of view, you came from the future—a real piece of empirical evidence, by the way, for the future’s reality. Your little get-togethers were in the present, at the time, though we all presume they’re in the past now, don’t we. When Scher gets home again, this scintillating conversation and her whole visit will be in the future, from her viewpoint, not in the present—though in another sense I guess they’ll be in the past, since she’ll be remembering them. I say to hell with it. What do you think, Scher?

  Scheherazade admitted that she had read the philosophers—though from her present perspective they were ancient philosophers indeed, and in a different order of reality besides. But now that she’d been with Shmah and Djean a few days, it seemed to her that motions and emotions in the islands of Chesapeake Bay were not very different from those in the Islands of India and China. Here as there, night followed day; people smiled when they were pleased and fretted when they were not . . . et cetera, as her hosts were fond of saying. She therefore imagined that what she’d read long ago in her library might be as true now as it was then: namely, that past and future are like the world above the sea’s surface and the world beneath it, or like fact and fiction: really different, but not really opposite, and both of them really real in their very different ways, as is their . . . meeting place.