The Arabian Nightmare

by Robert Irwin

  Only once were my solitary meditations made to pause. One day we put in at a port on the Baluchi coast to avoid storms. It was there that I attained the summit of my happiness and there too, though I did not realize it at the time, that the seed of my present troubles was sown. On shore leave in the port, I was accosted by a Baluchi girl.

  ‘Your face is like an ape’s,’ she said. ‘Do not mistake me. Your eyes are large. Your cheeks swell and glow with health. The whole face has an animal innocence. Your face is indeed beautiful. Do not mistake me again; I am not a whore. I am a respectable girl of a good family in these parts, but...’

  ‘“And here,” said the wolf-boy to the djinn, “the professional letter writer refused to read on. He maintained that as there were women and children in the audience, it would not be proper. There was heated debate amongst the audience about his prudery. It ended with the letter writer turning several pages and picking up the story at this point.”’

  The following morning we reaffirmed those promises and I reembarked to sail on further east. If only I had known what my captain’s purpose was or in what circumstances I should return! As we left the Baluchi coast—

  ‘Hold on a moment, Yoll,’ said Balian. ‘Just because the letter writer was not prepared to reveal what went on between the ape-boy and the Baluchi girl, it doesn’t mean that you can’t tell us.’

  ‘Tradition does not relate,’ said Yoll. Then, after a very long pause, ‘Though intelligence may surmise. To return to the narrative of the ape man as it was read by the letter writer to the wolf-boy and retold by him to the djinn...’

  As we left the Baluchi coast and the birds that had been scavenging for the ship’s refuse dropped away, men’s minds turned to speculation on our unknown destination, east of Sumatra. There are many traditions among sea-faring men about what lies at the edge of the world, and every one of these traditions had at least one supporter among the crew. Some said that the world was encircled with a wall of bronze. Some said that we should sail on until we encountered a mirror world of our own and that we should meet ourselves coming the other way. Some believed that at the edge of the world was a primal darkness from which all forms are created. Others said that there was simply a smelly sea without a shore.

  Finally the opinion of the Chief Mate was sought. (Though clearly the close confidant of our taciturn and demented captain, he had nevertheless contrived to acquire a remarkable ascendancy over the rest of the crew.) He gave his opinion reluctantly.

  ‘Such questions are bootless. To ask what it is like at the edge of the world is like asking what will you feel like after you are dead. It is like trying to feel the edge of your dream with your hand.’

  The captain kept his silence. I was content. There seemed no reason to me for our voyage ever to end. Would that it never had! Nevertheless, of course, it was I who signalled our journey’s end, though when I first saw it from my lofty vantage point, the island seemed small and ordinary enough. The captain directed that we anchor off the island and, in a fever of excitement, issued the instructions to land. As we drew nearer it was clear that the island was all rocks and soil. Only a solitary withered tree, rising from the bare soil, stood out against the sky like a spreading crack in the blue.

  So we set foot on the bathetic little island.

  ‘This is the island at the end of the World,’ said the mate.

  The captain only nodded. The crew surged around him and I among them. After the long voyage and all our hardships, was this all? For a moment it seemed as if we were about to lynch him there and then. Little enough difference it would have made, as it turned out.

  But here the mate intervened and answered our still unspoken thought.

  ‘Yes, this is all. And it is more than enough. This is journey’s end and its reward. Do you see that tree over there?’ (How could we not? It was the only thing on the island.) ‘That is the tree of incubation. A Hidden Master inhabits the island. He is all-wise but he is also invisible. That tree over there is, as it were, the door that admits one to his presence. The hero who quests after forbidden knowledge may rest in its shade. Once he is asleep and dreaming, he may approach the Hidden Master and ask any question he wishes, here under this tree and at no other place in the world.’

  Here the captain strode forward and took his place under the tree. He was nervous, yet determined. He composed himself to sleep there and then, though it was hours before he actually suceeded in falling asleep. We none of us slept, but we watched him sleeping and we wondered. He awoke late the following morning. We crowded round him excitedly. He was still drowsy. He told us his story in a relaxed manner and it seemed to me also that he now spoke to us with the authority of one who has found fulfilment.

  ‘It seemed to me that I slept and that, as I slept, this withered tree shot out leaves, and a forest of similar trees grew up around it, and a mountain rose up over the forest. I looked and a pathway presented itself, leading gently up the mountain. I resolved to climb the mountain and set off in high spirits, for the walk was cool and shady and paradisal birds sang out from the trees. Later the sun’s heat bore down upon me. The ascent steepened. I heard the sounds of heavy animals crashing through the foliage and several times I thought of turning back. Successively I confronted a wild cat, a cobra and some singing thing that was not quite a human and tried to lure me off the path, but I pressed on, determined to reach the summit, and they all turned and fled in the end. To cut a long story short’ (indeed, we had never heard our captain so voluble before) ‘at length, just short of the summit, I arrived at a cave and there at its entrance sat a venerable sage, naked and unadorned save for a crown of dancing lights.

  ‘He had seen me coming from afar. “O quester after knowledge, speak! Ask what you will. Ask any question, no matter how obscure, obscene or difficult. Speak!”

  ‘“Venerable sage, where is my son? Shall I ever find him again?”’

  Here the captain fell silent. We waited. Finally one of us asked, ‘Well, what did he say?’

  ‘Oh, it never occurred to me that he was supposed to say anything! I’d asked my question, so I just turned and came back down the mountain again and, when I had found my original tree, I woke up.’ It was too much. To have come so far, to have sailed to an island at the end of the world, to have braved so many dangers at the behest of a man who, now he had spoken, had proved himself the biggest idiot of us all! In our fury we beat him to death with stones (and I confess that my stone was at least as heavy as any man’s).

  ‘What a waste,’ said the mate, looking down regretfully on the captain’s corpse.

  ‘What, I wonder, was this man’s story?’

  ‘Who was this son of his?’

  ‘Now we shall never know.’

  The cries rose from all sides. The mate stilled the clamour. ‘Perhaps not, but I should tell you that I have observed that he kept a book locked up in a brass-banded box in his cabin. Perhaps there is a clue there. The key is in his pocket.’

  We found the key, hurried back to the ship and opened the box. The mate snatched at the book and began to read. He read it easily enough. It seemed to me then that he was already familiar with its contents. What he read from was no log book, which was what we had been expecting, but the story of the captain’s past life. It was as follows.

  ‘“Now I should say,” said the wolf-boy, “that the letter writer had been reading slowly and that there had been many pauses for discussion of the wonders of the story. It was now therefore late, and the letter writer said that he was exhausted. He would retire and read the rest of the story in private, and tomorrow morning, when we were all refreshed, he would retell it to us. With that his audience had to be content and the crowd broke up. I was given a meal (my first ever of cooked meat, as it happens) and went promptly to sleep.

  ‘“The following morning, as soon as I awoke, I hurried to the house of the professional letter writer. This time the whole village was assembled there. The scribe had been talking to them, and there
were angry looks in my direction. The letter writer, whom I had previously taken to be an amiable fellow, threw the two letters at my feet, saying, ‘These letters are yours by right and the story is yours, but I am not prepared to read any more of it to you.’ Then, at his signal, stones began to fly. The whole village pursued me with stones and I was lucky to escape with my life. So here I am with all my wounds and bruises and an unfinished story.” The wolf-boy looked expectantly at the djinn.

  ‘“Give me the letter,” said the djinn, and he began to read in the longer of the two letters where the scribe had left off, but before he had got more than a few words into the story of the dead captain, the wolf-boy stopped him.

  ‘“Wait! Something is wrong here. You told me, before I left the cave with the letter you gave me, that you could not read!”

  ‘“Ah, yes. So I did,” replied the djinn. “Well, while you have been away, I have been teaching myself to read. I discovered that my inability to do so was really a nervous disorder. Impatience and apprehension warred within me when confronted with such a document as this. I suffered then from an inability to get the elements in the right order. I was unable to follow the letters, words, sentences and sections on the page in their proper sequence. However, I think that I am mastering the trick now.”

  ‘The wolf-boy did not look convinced, but the djinn picked up the story again and proceeded to read with surprising competence.’

  What he read from was no log book, which was what we had been expecting, but the story of the captain’s past life. It was as follows.

  ‘As I pen this narrative we are, I calculate, within a week’s journey of the island and I look back on the strange chain of events that has led me towards it, and I try also, as I sit here in my cabin, to picture in my mind’s eye who will read my story and in what circumstances. But perhaps it is pointless to speculate. To begin. The tale I have to tell is a tale of mountain fastnesses, of gipsy girls, of men more savage than any carnivore of the jungle. It is a tale of hidden paradise and wasted youth. It is a tale of—but why go on? You shall judge for yourself.’

  (As I listened to the mate reading out the story of our late captain it struck me what a fine literary style our captain had written in, and I resolved, there and then, if I should ever write a similar narrative, to imitate that style, in so far as it lay within my limited abilities.)

  But to return to the book that the mate was reading.

  ‘It is in my paternity that the mystery of my life lies and in the unravelling of that mystery that my story is to be found. I knew neither a father nor a mother; at least I could not remember them. I was a foundling in the wilderness and I was raised among bears. I cannot complain of my foster parents; they were as kind as, no kinder than, any humans I have since met. The day came, however, when I learnt to walk upright and to ask a man’s questions. How was I born, and why was I different from the other cubs? Who were my natural parents?

  ‘At last the bears told me that I had outgrown their guardianship and that, if I wanted to know the answers, I should go ask the black bear who haunted a certain pool on the edge of the wilderness.

  ‘I saw no bear when I arrived there, only a man fishing in the deep pool. “You have come to ask me questions.”

  ‘“I have come to ask the bear.”

  ‘“I am he. Actually I am a djinn. I appear to bears as a bear and to men as a man.”

  ‘“So I am a man?”

  ‘“Of course you are. Is that all you wanted to know?”

  ‘“Who were my parents?”

  ‘“Does it really matter? Man’s infancy is always animal however he is reared. The answer lies within you anyway. When you were born, your mother was certainly there. Your father probably was as well. You have simply repressed your memory of them.”

  ‘“How can it be my memory if I can’t remember it?”

  ‘“If the memory won’t come to you, I shall take you to it.” ‘With that the djinn picked me up in a whirlwind and set me down some distance from a squat colonnaded temple sitting in the sun and pointed to it. “That is the Memory Theatre. It is not a playhouse but a building adapted to intellectual exercise and demonstration. It will be ideal for pursuing your genealogical researches. I must warn you of two things, however. First, whatever you do, don’t let yourself be seduced by the woman at the door. Secondly, inside the theatre you may eat, but do not drink.”

  ‘Then the djinn left me. He had not warned me that the lady at the door would be naked, and she smiled at me so sweetly that I found I preferred to enter her before entering the theatre.

  ‘At length I entered the Memory Theatre. Here, inscribed in hieroglyphs on concentric stacked tiers of wood, were the archetypes of all the planets, animals, ships, engines, stones, movements of the body, rhetorical tropes and topoi, classified and cross-classified. I made a nervous circuit of the hall. Then I passed through another door and entered the Chamber of Involuntary Memory. Ah, what horrors! What monstrous images were racked from me there—the Club-footed Ogre, the Ratman, the Vulture, the Sphinx and the Horned Prophet. It was there, however, that I heard the truth about my origins, for amid the clamour of ancestral voices I heard my father speaking to me. “Listen carefully, my son, for the story I am about to tell is long and difficult...”

  ‘I advanced to a table in the centre of the chamber where food and drink had been laid out, and I ate and drank as I listened. The voice continued rustling in my head.

  ‘“Indeed, I am perplexed as to where I should begin. Perhaps I should start in the middle? Yes, that seems best. Listen carefully then... The night was dark and stormy and I had almost given up hope when I saw a distant light. I struggled up the exposed mountain side to find two dark and hairy men squatting by a fire in a cave. I asked if I might shelter with them. They assented and even offered me food, as their laws of hospitality obliged them to. As we ate, I trembled inwardly lest the story of my childhood among the leopards be known here too. Then one of them belched and, turning to me, said, ‘Tell ”’

  The mate who, you will remember, was reading this narrative of the dead captain to the crew, including myself, on the island, turned the page and stared at it with exasperation. Then he turned another and another, until he had passed through most of the book in silence. We stood around him expectantly. Then he swore. ‘Now, by the Seal of Solomon and the Seven Sleepers in the Cave, this tale goes on for ever! I cannot and will not read all this. I propose to omit most of it and come to the conclusion.’

  ‘Here the wolf-boy interrupted the djinn’s reading. “The story cannot literally have gone on for ever, for God’s creation is finite.”

  ‘“True, but Man has since invented infinity,” replied the djinn and returned with impatience to the story.

  We all protested but the mate insisted and resumed his reading on the last page.

  ‘When I came out, the woman closed the door behind me. I did not recognize her at first and then stared at her with astonishment. She had aged, her belly sagged and there were deep lines in her face. “Yes, I am the same woman. Memory plays funny tricks. You have been in the Theatre for fourteen years. While you were in there, did you eat and drink?”

  ‘I nodded. She laughed for a long time until it was painful for her to laugh any more. I waited for her to finish. “You have been chewing on the biscuit of memory and swigging from the flask of nepenthe,” she wheezed, “or, to speak more plainly, you have been remembering the past and forgetting the time.”

  ‘I stared at her aghast, but she continued, “Oh yes, and, while you were in there, I conceived and bore you a child.”

  ‘“What happened to him?”

  ‘“Oh, I left him on the edge of the forest. I have a job to do here.” ‘Some way off stood the djinn, who appeared as a bear to bears and as a man to men. “You were a long time. You were surely not so foolish as to ignore my warnings?”

  ‘“If you had not given me those warnings, I should never have realized that the woman was ready to be seduced o
r been aware that the drink was there to tempt me.”

  ‘“Ah, well,” replied the djinn. “That is often the way of things. Let me give you another warning now, though, one that I hope that you will heed better than my previous warnings. Your son lives. He was snatched away by apes from the edge of the forest and reared by them as one of them. It is predicted that he will kill you. It seems to me that your only chance is to identify him and kill him first.”

  ‘“But how can I find him? It is impossible, for I know nothing of him.”

  ‘“I do not know. I cannot help you. Unless... there is an island at the edge of the world, where a Hidden Master is to be found of whom any question may be asked.”

  ‘With that our interview ended. Years passed before I had amassed a sufficient fortune to charter a ship to take me to my destination. However, I worked hard and, though I saw no more of the djinn, he and his final warning are in my mind all the time, and, of course, I have always the memory of the awful fate of my father to spur me on. The ship I have chartered seems seaworthy enough, though its crew are the dregs of the earth and thoroughly untrustworthy. Only the mate knows anything of my history and the purpose of this voyage; he seems an honest and reliable fellow. I feel in my bones that I am now very close to success. As I write this, I hear the boy in the crow’s nest calling out “Land ho! Land ho!”’

  ‘Well, that’s that.’ And with those words the mate sent the book skimming into the sea and the tides swept it away without trace. I was suspicious and I do not think that I was the only one. Frustrated and annoyed with the mate, we returned to the ship and set sail for home. The mate took over the running of the ship and he was a competent enough master, too competent indeed, for he had only to whistle and a wind would come running up, like an obedient dog, and drive us on towards Sumatra and the lands of the West. Then one day, towards the end of our journey, one of the crew pointed out that we had caught no fish since we had left the island and that every bird avoided the ship.