Jonathan Levi - Septimania

The Story of the Crying Princess was one I knew well, that Ja’afar had told me many times. Of how first he, as my father’s Ambassador, took this red-haired and red-faced infant onto his lap and quieted her sobs by reciting the Story of Khalifah the Fisherman. No sooner had he finished, however, than the baby’s wails resumed at twice the volume. And so the Treasurer, my uncle Aziz, took the baby onto his lap and told her the Story of the Hunchback. Once again the girl quieted, bewitched either by our Arabic tongue, the story itself, or a desire that one day, she too might become part of a story. But it shortly became clear that Charlemagne, his Queen, his court, his army, and the population of Marseilles and its environs, would make our entire embassy, ten strong, recite all night and into the next days and weeks as long as this infant daughter wailed at the finish of each story, crying for another. Ja’afar and my uncle and all the rest had sailed from Baghdad across the sea, so it seemed, to become a chorus of Scheherazades, doomed to death should the music of their stories ever cease.

“I no longer cry,” the Princess said. But I could see liquid anxiety at the rims of her eyes. She had been brought like a sacrificial lamb to the stable of the shochet and left alone while her future was weighed above.

“And after today,” I said, “you shall have further cause for rejoicing. Your father has come to marry you to our young Prince.”

“I heard he was a Jew,” Aldana said.

“Not just any Jew,” I cautioned her.

“Are there different types?” she asked.

“There are even types that contain other types,” I said.

“Like crates that contain other crates?” She leaped off the side of mine with a lightness of step and a quickness of mind that made me look again at that shock of red hair peering from under her cape.

“I know what you want,” I laughed.

“And that is?” she laughed back.

“You want a story, greedy girl.”

“Perhaps,” she said, suddenly aware that it was not entirely appropriate for the daughter of Charlemagne to flirt in a stable with the Ambassador of the Caliph of Baghdad, like a milkmaid with a blacksmith.

“Do you remember the Tale of Judar the Son of Omar?” I asked.

“I was only a few days old …” she protested.

“Do you remember?” I pressed her.

“Of course I remember!” She lifted her pale chin upwind, scenting the air of mid-September, deciding direction.

“So you remember how Judar, the poor fisherman went casting his net in the Lake of Karoon?” I asked.

“And how the three brothers, the Three Moors came to him, one after the other on three successive days, with instructions to bind their arms and legs behind them and throw them into the lake?” she answered.

“Very good!” I congratulated her. “So you remember how the first two Moors drowned, but the third survived and brought Judar with him back to the Maghreb …”

“Because the Moor knew that only Judar the Son of Omar could open the Treasure of Al-Shammardal that lay below the sea, the treasure that had been stolen from the great magician, the father of the Moor, by the Red and the Black Princes, and that had already cost the lives of his father and two of his brothers.” Her eyes were glistening even brighter with the excitement of the story than with fear of her upcoming betrothal. I knew, with a mixture of both anticipation and sadness, that all I needed do was spin out the story and she would do with me what the girl in the chest did with Shahryar and his brother. And that the remorse I would feel at falling in love with the Princess and allowing her to fall in love with me would be worse than the punishment of any djinni. So I cut the story short.

“Do you remember,” I asked her, “what present the Moor gave to Judar in return for his help?”

“The Bag,” the Princess answered immediately. “The Magic Saddle Bag. All Judar had to do was to ask the djinni hidden inside the Bag for any dish to eat — chicken with prunes, lamb with steamed rice and dates, pheasant in a sauce of tamarind and honey eggs — and the dish would come out on a silver plate, steaming hot and ready to eat.”

“A silly choice, perhaps,” I added carelessly.

“Silly?” she said. “I cannot imagine a better gift!”

“Then you will be very happy,” I said. “Your Jewish Prince is just such a Magic Bag.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. Indeed, my shift in direction had pulled the carpet out from below her feet and left her struggling for balance. Little did I know how my glib metaphor would also unbalance me. During my seven-day sea crossing, even as the elephant changed from blue to green to red, a truth cast a clear, steady light through my own milky waters: the Jewish Prince is, in fact, the perfect gift. Gan contains my stories, all my stories. All the stories I have imagined, all the stories I might imagine, and even the ones I cannot. He is not only the garden, he is the apple tree. He is the fruit and he is the leaf and he is the seed. He is the Pip. I was giving away this Pip to a girl who would rather have the axe. And I was the double loser.

“Aldana!” a voice called from the stair.

“Coming!” she called back but made no move to go.

“Go now,” I said. “Insha’allah one day I shall return to ask what you have learned.”

“Please,” she said, “I need to know the answer to one question. Now.”

“Yes?”

“If I reach my hand into the bag and ask for a dish from Baghdad …”

I am the one who is leaving and returning to Baghdad.

I am the axe.

I have uprooted him from the garden.

I uprooted the tree from the garden.

Why?

For a Frankish king who sent me nothing I did not have already?

To graft my Prince to this red-haired Princess, this crying baby who softens only at the sound of a Muslim voice and a good story? To uproot this Princess, to show her that a single bag can hold many dishes, many gods, many men?

Before I grafted her to myself?

I uproot my own heart. I carry it back onto the ship bound for Baghdad lest my right hand awake like a djinni of my own creation and slice my own self into a thousand pieces. I leave behind an elephant, turning all shades of the rainbow, large enough to move mountains, small enough to fit in the Bag of Judar the Son of Omar.

Malory looked up. Settimio was still standing by his chair.

“Who has read this book?”

“From the beginning, the key to Septimania has been discretion,” Settimio said. “When Charlemagne heard that his future son-in-law was named Gan, he said, ‘What kind of a Frankish name is that? In the future you will be named Aimery. You will be King of Septimania. You will have lands and property and subjects — but quietly, pian piano .’ Both Charlemagne and Gan understood that a certain amount of secrecy was proper. And as the offspring of Aimery and Charlemagne’s daughter continued the dynasty down through the centuries, the marriage of secrecy to power was sanctified in Septimania.”

“Aimery?” Malory asked. “As in Emery? As in Mrs. Emery?”

“Both your grandmother and your mother were known to this house as Mrs. Emery,” Settimio acknowledged. “But since the Rule of Succession does not permit a woman to reign supreme over Septimania, both women were permitted only the name and certain other rights and privileges. The throne, however, remained vacant until her death. Since a male heir had, after all, been produced.”