Luke Williams - The Echo Chamber

Night after night Abila remains indifferent. Edrisi’s desire for her increases. Why? he thinks. She is only one among many beauties. It is true, she is able to bend her limbs extravagantly; but so can Sahart, Galla, Shari, Nufii, Zallah, Kawar and Alura. She is voluptuous and, I imagine, forgiving; though no more so than Ozala and O Abu’I-Bilma. Her legs rise from the round bulbs of her heels and stretch as far as Mount Etna. But Afno, Anbiya, Zayla and Sahart each have longer legs.

The nights of rejection continue. Edrisi begins to fear the day he might possess Abila almost as much as he longs for it. He doesn’t know what his feelings will be on that day, forever deferred. He buys her presents, displays his skills on the racetrack. Nothing works. Abila turns her back, laughs even. Edrisi, in a fit of ardour, decides to build her a silver map of the world. He reads the great works of cartography — Al-Mas’udi, Ibn Hauqal, Orosius, Ptolemy — combining his own experiences as a traveller with the universal scheme of the seven climes. He orders pure unalloyed silver from Germany, contracts metal smiths and an army of engravers.

‘The world is a ball floating in the clouds of Heaven, like the yolk of an egg,’ he tells the engravers. ‘We’ll produce a silver orb which will represent the world on a round surface. It will weigh forty thousand dirhams,’ Edrisi instructs them, ‘and when it is ready you’ll engrave on it a map of the seven climes with their lands and regions, their shorelines and hinterlands, gulfs and seas, watercourses and rivers, their inhabited and uninhabited parts, their known harbours and the distances between each locality.’

This is done. Edrisi summons Abila to his chamber and unveils the planisphere.

‘I present to you this silver globe.’

Abila says nothing.

‘What do you think?’

‘I think, sir, it’s a plaything.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It tells me nothing.’

‘But here is Sicily,’ implores Edrisi. ‘And here the Mediterranean is charted. Look, here is Africa, Egypt, Nubia .’

‘Where are the people?’

‘They are too small to depict, even on a map such as this.’

‘There are no stories.’

She leaves his chamber.

Edrisi despairs. Lying in his chamber by day, pacing the courtyard by night, he tugs ever harder at his beard.

Only when Milus, the travelling storyteller, arrives at court does Edrisi conceive his next plan. Abila wants stories, he thinks. By god, she’ll have a story!

It was late afternoon when Edrisi approached Milus’ chamber. The air was growing cold, pierced by the shiver-rustling of trees, catcalls, trumpets announcing sunset. He seized Milus, fixing his fist around his gaunt neck.

‘Teach me your storyteller’s art!’

Edrisi raised his eyes to the diminishing sky. Visible in the half-light were the masts of ships unhurriedly swaying to and fro, the cathedral spire, the barred windows of the leprosarium, railed parapets to which kites clung by their tails. Edrisi noticed none of the signs of the city. Instead he saw a crease in the sky, a faint and gauzy tear through which appeared a small though perfectly proportioned simulacrum of his Ceutan backyard. A shiver ran up from his toes, expanding in his chest to a tearing pain. He held the storyteller’s neck.

‘Teach me your storyteller’s art,’ he repeated without taking his eyes from the tear in the sky above Palermo, which now revealed the fascia of his favourite childhood sweetshop. He pictured the shopkeeper’s hairy arms and his fat fingers which nevertheless yielded wonderful sugar-beaded sweets. Milus rocked back and forward, his mouth drawn wide, gums as pink as a kitten’s. And Edrisi recalled the particular technique that as a child he had developed to eat sweetmeats, dropping one into his yawning mouth, then two, four, eight, sixteen if he could manage, until his tongue was forced against his palate and he spat the gummy sweetness on to the street, where one of the ragged dogs would gulp it down. The pain in his chest subsided, and Edrisi relaxed his hand. The storyteller collapsed on the ground. He was shaking violently and gasping for breath. Edrisi nudged him with his foot.

‘Stand up!’

Milus got to his feet. Edrisi felt the pain in his chest return more insistently as he noticed for the first time the broken black teeth, the warty brow, the roomy smile for which Milus was renowned. Tendrils of spit trembled and fell from his bottom lip. Uncontrollably he heaved and shook. He cackled, wept, beat his chest; and then, unsteadily, with the tip of his big toe, sketched in the dust the words, Get Lost .

Calling vainly for a guard, Edrisi brought down an elbow on Milus’ shoulder. As the poet’s legs gave way once again, Edrisi spat, ‘I’ll come to your quarters tomorrow at three. Insult me again and you won’t have a chance to get back to your feet.’

‘Come in,’ said a voice, next day, as Edrisi approached the doorless entrance. Milus lay on a hemp mat on the floor and instructed Edrisi to sit.

‘Let me be frank,’ he began. His grin was hideous but submissive. ‘I could give you the fancy screed about storytelling, about the ancestors and heroes and the imparting of wisdom. I could tell you that one can learn the art of storytelling only from one’s roots in the soil.

‘But I see,’ grinning and winking at Edrisi, ‘you are not a man for whom a poet’s trickery will work its charm. I’ll speak plainly,’ he said, moving closer. ‘We rhymesters are liars. You hear? Liars and cheats. Give me a copper coin and I’ll compose a lampoon that’ll have your enemies writhing in their robes. A silver one and I’ll make the earthworm in your pants grow into a snake. A gold coin will buy you a tale to seduce a princess. Tell me. Why do you want to learn to tell stories?’

Edrisi got to his feet and twice circled the room.

‘I’m in love with a woman who is in love with stories.’

Once again Milus roared with delight. He struck his palms against his thighs.

‘But will she love the storyteller as much as the story?’

‘A fair point,’ Edrisi conceded.

‘You have two options.’ Milus placed a knot of bark on to his tongue and began to chew. ‘You could attempt to learn the storyteller’s art, although this will be tricky. You are one who holds great authority, one who need not look over your shoulder. And that is the weakness of power.’

Edrisi said nothing.

‘Tell me a story.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Then come back tomorrow.’

And, next day, ‘There are two types of story. Those that are distant in time and those that are distant in space. The first are ancient tales, tales of our past heroes. And the primary tellers of these are sedentary people. The second are told by travellers of one kind or another. Which are you?’

‘Traveller,’ Edrisi said enthusiastically.

‘Tell me a story.’

After a long pause, Edrisi declared in a loud and breathy voice, ‘One day …’

‘A good start.’

‘One day … there was … a boat owned by a king. The boat was full of soldiers dressed in garments of war. They were about to set sail for Alexandria … when … when a wave swept them to sea … and they all died.’

‘Tell me another.’

‘One day …’

‘Not all stories start with One day . Try, for example, There was once …’

‘There was once … there was … a small boy lost in a desert sandstorm. When he was more dead than alive, an old griot arrived with a skein of fresh water attached to his hip. The griot attacked him then ate him.’

The storyteller Milus closed his eyes. ‘You will never charm your lady with storytelling.’

‘You said there were two options,’ Edrisi said after some time. ‘Tell me the second.’