Aladdin Page 5

  The next morning she returned to the palace, but she found the divan closed and learned that the council only sat every other day. She brought this news to her son, who was forced to renew his patience. She went back six times on the appointed days, and might have returned a hundred times just as uselessly if the sultan, who saw her standing before him at every session, had not noticed her.

  One day, the sultan said to his grand vizier: “Some time ago I began to notice a certain woman, who attends every session of the council, always carrying a bundle wrapped in cloth. She stands for the full length of the hearing and is always careful to place herself in front of me. Do you know what she wants?”

  The grand vizier, who knew no more than the sultan, felt he ought to say something, and replied: “Your Majesty is aware that women often complain about nothing. This woman has no doubt come to carp about the bad flour she was sold, or some other trivial matter.”

  The sultan was not satisfied with this answer.

  “Call her next time,” he said, “and let us hear her.”

  The vizier’s only reply was to kiss his hand and raise it above his head, to indicate that he was prepared to lose his head if he failed to obey.

  At the next session Aladdin’s mother was called forward. She walked after the usher up to the sultan’s throne, and, following the example of the others, she knelt and pressed her forehead to the carpet until the sultan told her to rise. “Good woman,” he said, “I have seen you often in this divan, standing before me from beginning to end. What brings you here?”

  “King of kings,” she said, “before I reveal the reason for my presence before your throne, I beg your pardon for the boldness of the question I have come to ask. It is so unusual that I tremble with shame at the thought of submitting it to my sultan.” The sultan sent away all but the grand vizier, and told her she could speak without fear.

  Once Aladdin’s mother had taken all the precautions that her delicate mission required, she told the sultan how Aladdin had seen Princess Badr al-Budur, how that encounter had roused him to an irresistible passion, how he had confessed his love to her, and how she had done all she could to talk him out of an infatuation “no less insolent to Your Majesty,” she said, “than to the princess. But he persisted, and even threatened to commit some desperate act if I did not come and ask Your Majesty for the princess’s hand. After a terrible struggle I accepted. Now I beg you to forgive not only myself, but my son Aladdin.”

  The sultan listened to her with great gentleness, without the slightest sign of outrage or even of derision, and asked what she had in her bundle of cloth. She unwrapped the gift and laid the jewels at the foot of the throne.

  One could not describe the sultan’s surprise when he saw so many precious stones assembled in that bowl, for they were larger, brighter, more precious, and more perfect than any he had seen before. For a while he was so amazed he could not move. When he recovered his composure, he took the gift from Aladdin’s mother’s hands and gave a cry of joy: “How beautiful these are! How rich!” After picking up and admiring almost every stone in turn, and noting what distinguished each of them, he turned to his grand vizier and said: “Look at these, and tell me if there is anything more precious on this earth. Is this gift not worthy of my daughter, and should I not give her to whoever values her at such a price?”

  These words threw the grand vizier into a strange turmoil. Some time before, the sultan had hinted that he wished to marry his daughter to one of the vizier’s sons. Now he feared that the beauty of this gift would change his mind.

  “No one can deny,” he said, “that this present is worthy of the princess. But I implore Your Majesty to grant me three months before making a decision. I hope that by then my son will be able to offer you a gift even more precious than Aladdin’s.”

  The sultan, convinced that his grand vizier could never find his son a present to match this one, still granted him that grace, and told Aladdin’s mother that he consented to the marriage, and that she should return after three months.

  Aladdin’s mother, who had thought an audience with the sultan impossible, returned home overjoyed. When Aladdin saw his mother enter, both earlier than usual and with smiling eyes, he asked her if he could live in hope.

  “My son,” she said, “put an end to your agony. Far from thinking of death, you have every reason to rejoice.” She went on to relate how she had been heard before anyone else, the precautions she had taken before putting her offer to the sultan, and the favorable response he had given. She added that, as far as she could judge, the gift had impressed him and moved him to approval. “I did not expect it,” she said, “as the grand vizier had whispered something into his ear just before he answered me, and I feared that the vizier would turn him away from his good intentions.” Aladdin, elated, resolved himself to patience, and counted the hours and days that kept him from his beloved.

  Two months had passed when his mother, going into the city one evening to buy oil, found everyone rejoicing and all the shops illuminated. The streets were thick with palace officials in ceremonial dress, mounted on richly caparisoned horses and surrounded by a multitude of footmen who came and went. She asked her oil merchant what was going on. “Where have you been, my good lady?” he said. “Do you not know that the son of the grand vizier is to marry the princess tonight? She will soon be leaving the baths, and the officials that you see all around will escort her back to the palace for the ceremony.”

  Aladdin’s mother ran home. Her son was unprepared for the terrible news she brought.

  “All is lost!” she cried. “You hoped for the sultan’s beautiful daughter, but it was not to be.”

  “How could the sultan have broken his promise?” said Aladdin. “How do you know?”

  “Tonight,” replied his mother, “the grand vizier’s son will marry Princess Badr al-Budur at the palace.”

  She told him the story, in such detail that it left no room for doubt.

  Any other man would have given up hope, but a secret jealousy kept Aladdin from despair. Without a single word against the sultan, the vizier, or his son, he simply said: “Mother, the grand vizier’s son will perhaps not be as happy as he expects this evening.” He went to his room, took the magic lamp he kept there to hide it from his mother, and rubbed it in the same spot his mother had rubbed it before. At once the jinni appeared before him.

  “What is your command?”

  “The sultan has broken his promise to me, and is marrying the princess to another. I command you to bring me the bride and groom tonight.”

  “As you wish, master,” said the jinni.

  Aladdin went back to his mother, and ate as calmly as usual. After supper, he spoke to her a little about the princess’s marriage, as though the matter no longer concerned him. He returned to his room, and, while his mother went to bed, he stayed up waiting for the jinni to do his work.

  A Wedding Interrupted

  Meanwhile, at the palace, the celebrations went on well into the night. At last the grand vizier’s son was led into his bride’s chamber by the chief eunuch, and went to bed first. Before long the sultana, surrounded by her handmaidens, brought in her daughter. The daughter made a great show of resisting, as is the custom with new brides. The sultana helped her undress, and, after kissing her daughter good night, she withdrew with all her women. The last one to leave closed the door.

  No sooner was the door shut than the jinni, before the couple had even had time to embrace, transported them, still in their bed, in an instant to Aladdin’s bedroom. “Take this man,” said Aladdin to the jinni, “lock him in the outhouse, and come back tomorrow at daybreak.” The jinni removed the grand vizier’s son from the bed in his nightshirt and left him out in the cold, after casting a spell over him to keep him still.

  For all his passion, Aladdin did not say much when he found himself alone with the princess. “Have no fear,” he said. “You are safe here. If I have been forced to these extreme measures, it was not to offend
you, but to prevent an unworthy rival from possessing you, since your father had promised you to me.” The princess, who knew nothing of the matter, barely took in these words, and was in no state to reply. The shock of her strange adventure had left her speechless. Aladdin did not stop there: he undressed, and took the place of the grand vizier’s son in bed, his back turned to the princess, having placed a sword between them to indicate that he deserved its punishment should he dare to offend her honor.

  Delighted to have deprived his rival of the happiness he had flattered himself would be his, Aladdin slept soundly, while the princess passed the most miserable night of her life. Should one remember the state in which the jinni had left the grand vizier’s son, one might suppose that his was hardly more restful.

  In the morning, Aladdin did not need to rub the lamp to call the jinni. At the appointed hour it appeared, fetched the bridegroom, laid him down by the princess, and returned the bed to the palace. It should be noted that neither the princess nor the grand vizier’s son saw the jinni; a glimpse of its hideous form might have killed them. Nor did they hear any of what was said between it and Aladdin. All they perceived was the jolt of hurtling from one place to the next, and this was quite enough to terrify them.

  The jinni had just returned the nuptial bed to its place when the sultan entered to wish his daughter good morning. The grand vizier’s son, until now still frozen after his long night, jumped up and ran to his dressing room as he heard the door open.

  The sultan approached the princess’s bed, kissed her between the eyes according to custom, and asked after her night. As he stood back and looked at her more closely, he was astonished to see only a deep melancholy in her eyes, and no other sign that might have set his mind at ease. His daughter would not say a word. As he imagined that she did so out of shyness, he withdrew. Yet he could not help but think there was something strange in her silence, and made straight for the sultana’s apartments. “Your Majesty must not be alarmed,” she told him. “All brides are shy the day after their wedding. Give her two or three days, then she will receive her father properly. I will go to her now, and would be very much surprised if she gives me the same welcome.”

  The sultana dressed and went to her daughter, and found her not only speechless but with a look of such dejection that she was alarmed. “Why is it, child, that you hang so limply in my arms? Is it right to treat your mother and father like this? What is the matter?”

  At last Princess Badr al-Budur broke the silence with a great sigh.

  “Ah, dear Mother,” she cried, “forgive me if I have failed to honor you as I must! My mind is haunted by the strange happenings of last night, and my body has not recovered from its shock. I struggle even to recognize myself.”

  Then she related in the most vivid terms how, the moment she and her groom had laid their heads on the pillow, the bed had been snatched away and transported at once to a dark and dirty room, where she found herself alone without her husband, and where a young man, after saying a few words that fright stopped her from catching, lay down beside her in her husband’s place, having put a saber between them, and that in the morning her husband had reappeared and the bed returned to its place in an instant.

  “All this had only just happened,” she went on, “when my father the sultan entered the room. Such was my stupor and alarm that I could not say a single word. No doubt he is offended by the way I repaid the honor of his visit, but I hope he will forgive me when he learns of my miserable adventure.”

  The sultana listened calmly to the princess’s tale and believed none of it. “You did well to hold your tongue around your father,” she said. “Be careful not to mention any of this to others: they would think you mad. Now get up, and shake these dreams from your mind. It would not do for such a fantasy to get in the way of your wedding celebrations. Can you not hear the fanfare already, the trumpets, the cymbals, and the drums? Their music will drive these fancies from your spirit.”

  The festivities went on all day in the palace. The sultana stood by her daughter and did all she could to buoy her up, yet it was plain to see that her mind was elsewhere. The grand vizier’s son was no less preoccupied after his awful night, but ambition drove him to dissemble, and no one doubted that he was a happy husband.

  Aladdin had no intention of letting the couple rest, and as soon as night had fallen he turned to the lamp again. “Jinni,” he said, “the vizier’s son and the princess will sleep together tonight. Go, and when they are in bed, bring them to me as you did yesterday.”

  The jinni served Aladdin as faithfully as he had the night before, the grand vizier’s son was just as cold and uncomfortable as he had been the first time, and the princess was just as mortified to find herself in bed with Aladdin, with only a saber between them. At first light the jinni reappeared and restored them to the palace chamber.

  The sultan, anxious to know how she had spent the night, paid his daughter an early visit. The grand vizier’s son, even more appalled by this last misadventure than by the first, threw himself into his dressing room as soon as he heard the sultan approach.

  The sultan greeted his daughter, and, after his usual embrace, said: “Well, my child, is your temper as foul today as it was yesterday? Will you tell me how you slept?” But again she refused to say a word. Only after he threatened to cut off her head did she speak.

  “My dear father and sultan,” she pleaded, on the edge of tears, “I hope that you will change anger for compassion once you have heard my account of last night and the night before.”

  She told him the true story of those two dreadful nights, in such a poignant manner that love and tenderness lanced through him as she spoke. “If you have the slightest doubt about the truth of my tale, ask the husband you have given me if it was not so.”

  The sultan sat brooding over the anguish such a strange adventure must have brought the princess. “My daughter,” he said, “you are very wrong not to have spoken up yesterday about this bizarre affair, which concerns me as much as it does you. I did not marry you to make you miserable, but rather to give you all the happiness one could have expected from a husband who seemed to suit you well. Now shake these awful visions from your spirit. I will see to it that the nights ahead are not so restless as the ones that have passed.”

  Back in his quarters, the sultan told the grand vizier to find his son. The grand vizier pressed him to set the story straight.

  “I cannot hide the truth from you, Father,” said the son. “All the princess has said is so. But she cannot have told you about the cruel treatment that was reserved for me. Since my wedding day I have spent two of the most brutal nights it is possible to imagine. I lack the words to describe the particular hell I endured, not to mention the horror of being whisked away by unseen hands no less than four times, without the first idea of how such a thing was possible. You shall form your own judgment of the state I was in, when I tell you that I spent two nights standing naked in my nightshirt in some narrow outhouse, unable to move or change position, though there seemed to be nothing stopping me. Though none of these trials has diminished the love I bear the princess, I would rather die than persist in this union, if the ordeal I have suffered is the price. And so I beg of you, Father, that you obtain from the sultan the annulment of our marriage.”

  Despite the grand vizier’s dreams of marrying his son to the princess, he did not think it appropriate, given his son’s resolve, to ask him to draw out his patience another few days. He left him and hurried back to the sultan, to whom he confessed that by his son’s own account the story was all too true. Before the sultan could talk of breaking off the marriage, which he seemed only too inclined to do, the vizier begged him to allow his son to withdraw from the palace and return home, lest the princess’s love for him should expose her to any further anguish.

  Prince Aladdin

  At once the sultan gave orders to end the celebrations in his palace and throughout the kingdom. Before long, all signs of joy and revelry had cea
sed. This sudden change fanned speculation in the city: some wondered what mishap had brought on the upheaval, others only noted that the grand vizier and his son were seen leaving the palace with long faces. Aladdin alone knew the secret, and he quietly thrilled at the triumph he owed to the lamp. Strangest of all was that neither the sultan nor the grand vizier, who both had forgotten all about Aladdin and his request, suspected that he might have had a hand in the mysteries that had ended the princess’s marriage.

  Still, Aladdin let the rest of the three months go by. He counted each day with care, and when they were spent, he sent his mother to the palace to remind the sultan of his promise. In sending her away for three months, the sultan believed he had seen the last of her, for despite the brilliance of her gift, he judged by the plainness and poverty of her appearance that the marriage she proposed was hardly suitable for the princess. Yet here she was, imploring him to keep his word. The sultan, ill at ease, played for time: turning to his grand vizier, he confessed his doubts about marrying the princess to a stranger he supposed to be destitute.

  The grand vizier was quick to volunteer his thoughts. “Majesty,” he said, “it strikes me that there is one way of avoiding such an ill-suited marriage without giving Aladdin cause for complaint. That is to set the princess at such a high price that his fortune, whatever it may be, could never match it.”

  The sultan was pleased, and turned to Aladdin’s mother. “Good woman,” he said, “sultans must keep their word, and I will keep mine, but first your son must send me forty vessels of solid gold, each filled to the brim with jewels, carried by forty black servants, led by as many white ones, all young, tall, well made, and splendidly dressed. I shall await his answer.”

  Aladdin’s mother bowed again before the sultan and withdrew. On the way home, she laughed to herself about her son’s wild ambition. “Where will he find all those gold vessels,” she thought, “and all that colored glass to fill them? Will he go back to the underground place to pick them from the trees? And all those servants, turned out as the sultan described, where will he get them? Where are his dreams now! I do not expect he will be pleased with my report.”