"At this point I interrupted my sister as usual to say, 'You have a way with words, Scheherazade. This is the thousandth night I've sat at the foot of your bed while you and the King made love and you told him stories, and the one in progress holds me like a genie1's gaze. I wouldn't dream of breaking in like this, just before the end, except that I hear the first rooster crowing in the east, et cetera, and the King really ought to sleep a bit before daybreak. I wish I had your talent.'
"And as usual Sherry replied, 'You're the ideal audience, Dunyazade. But this is nothing; wait till you hear the ending, tomorrow night! Always assuming this auspicious2 King doesn't kill me before breakfast, as he's been going to do these thirty-three and a third months.'
" 'Hmp,' said Shahryar. 'Don't take your critics for granted; I may get around to it yet. But I agree with your little sister that this is a good one you've got going, with its impostures that become authentic3, its ups and downs and flights to other worlds. I don't know how in the world you dream them up.'
" 'Artists have their tricks,' Sherry replied. We three said good night then, six goodnights in all. In the morning your brother went off to court, enchanted4 by Sherry's story. Daddy came to the palace for the thousandth time with a shroud5 under his arm, expecting to be told to cut his daughter's head off; in most other respects he's as good a vizier as he ever was, but three years of suspense6 have driven him crackers7 in this one particular -- and turned his hair white, I might add, and made him a widower8. Sherry and I, after the first fifty nights or so, were simply relieved when Shahryar would hmp and say, 'By Allah, I won't kill her till I've heard the end of her story'; but it still took Daddy by surprise every morning. He groveled gratitude9 per usual; the King per usual spent the day in his durbar, bidding and forbidding between man and man, as the saying goes; I climbed in with Sherry as soon as he was gone, and per usual we spent our day sleeping in and making love. When we'd had enough of each other's tongues and fingers, we called in the eunuchs, maidservants, mamelukes, pet dogs and monkeys; then we finished off with Sherry's Bag of Tricks: little weighted balls from Baghdad, dildoes from the Ebony Isles10 and the City of Brass11, et cetera. Not to break a certain vow12 of mine, I made do with a roc-down tickler from Bassorah, but Sherry touched all the bases. Her favorite story is about some pig of an ifrit who steals a girl away on her wedding night, puts her in a treasure-casket locked with seven steel padlocks, puts the casket in a crystal coffer, and puts the coffer on the bottom of the ocean, so that nobody except himself can have her. But whenever he brings the whole rig ashore13, unlocks the locks with seven keys, and takes her out and rapes14 her, he falls asleep afterward16 on her lap; she slips out from under and cuckolds him with every man who passes by, taking their seal rings as proof; at the end of the story she has five hundred seventy-two seal rings, and the stupid ifrit still thinks he possesses her! In the same way, Sherry put a hundred horns a day on your brother's head: that's about a hundred thousand horns by now. And every day she saved till last the Treasure Key, which is what her story starts and ends with.
"Three and a third years ago, when King Shahryar was raping17 a virgin18 every night and killing19 her in the morning, and the people were praying that Allah would dump the whole dynasty, and so many parents had fled the country with their daughters that in all the Islands of India and China there was hardly a young girl fit to fuck, my sister was an undergraduate arts-and-sciences major at Banu Sasan University. Besides being Homecoming Queen, valedictorian-elect, and a four-letter varsity athlete, she had a private library of a thousand volumes and the highest average in the history of the campus. Every graduate department in the East was after her with fellowships -- but she was so appalled20 at the state of the nation that she dropped out of school in her last semester to do full-time21 research on a way to stop Shahryar from killing all our sisters and wrecking22 the country.
"Political science, which she looked at first, got her nowhere. Shahryar's power was absolute, and by sparing the daughters of his army officers and chief ministers (like our own father) and picking his victims mainly from the families of liberal intellectuals and other minorities, he kept the military and the cabinet loyal enough to rule out a coup23 d'état. Revolution seemed out of the question, because his woman-hating, spectacular as it was, was reinforced more or less by all our traditions and institutions, and as long as the girls he was murdering were generally upper-caste, there was no popular base for guerrilla war. Finally, since he could count on your help from Samarkand, invasion from outside or plain assassination24 were bad bets too: Sherry figured your retaliation25 would be worse than Shahryar's virgin-a-night policy.
"So we gave up poly sci (I fetched her books and sharpened her quills27 and made tea and alphabetized her index cards) and tried psychology-- another blind alley28. Once she'd noted29 that your reaction to being cuckolded by your wife was homicidal rage followed by despair and abandonment of your kingdom, and that Shahryar's was the reverse; and established that that was owing to the difference in your ages and the order of revelations; and decided30 that whatever pathology was involved was a function of the culture and your position as absolute monarchs31 rather than particular hang-ups in your psyches32, et cetera -- what was there to say?
"She grew daily more desperate; the body-count of deflowered and decapitated Moslem33 girls was past nine hundred, and Daddy was just about out of candidates. Sherry didn't especially care about herself, you understand -- wouldn't have even if she hadn't guessed that the King was sparing her out of respect for his vizier and her own accomplishments34. But beyond the general awfulness of the situation, she was particularly concerned for my sake. From the day I was born, when Sherry was about nine, she treasured me as if I were hers; I might as well not have had parents; she and I ate from the same plate, slept in the same bed; no one could separate us; I'll bet we weren't apart for an hour in the first dozen years of my life. But I never had her good looks or her way with the world-- and I was the youngest in the family besides. My breasts were growing; already I'd begun to menstruate: any day Daddy might have to sacrifice me to save Sherry.
"So when nothing else worked, as a last resort she turned to her first love, unlikely as it seemed, mythology35 and folklore36, and studied all the riddle/puzzle/secret motifs38 she could dig up. 'We need a miracle, Doony,' she said (I was braiding her hair and massaging40 her neck as she went through her notes for the thousandth time), 'and the only genies41 I've ever met were in stories, not in Moormans'-rings and Jews'-lamps. It's in words that the magic is -- Abracadabra42, Open Sesame, and the rest -- but the magic words in one story aren't magical in the next. The real magic is to understand which words work, and when, and for what; the trick is to learn the trick.'
"This last, as our frantic43 research went on, became her motto, even her obsession44. As she neared the end of her supply of lore37, and Shahryar his supply of virgins45, she became more and more certain that her principle was correct, and desperate that in the whole world's stock of stories there was none that confirmed it, or showed us how to use it to solve the problem. 'I've read a thousand tales about treasures that nobody can find the key to,' she told me; 'we have the key and can't find the treasure.' I asked her to explain. 'It's all in here,' she declared -- I couldn't tell whether she meant her inkstand or the quill26 she pointed46 toward it. I seldom understood her any more; as the crisis grew, she gave up reading for daydreaming47, and used her pen less for noting instances of the Magic Key motif39 in world literature than for doodling the letters of our alphabet at random48 and idly tickling49 herself.
" 'Little Doony,' she said dreamily, and kissed me: 'pretend this whole situation is the plot of a story we're reading, and you and I and Daddy and the King are all fictional50 characters. In this story, Scheherazade finds a way to change the King's mind about women and turn him into a gentle, loving husband. It's not hard to imagine such a story, is it? Now, no matter what way she finds -- whether it's a magic spell or a magic story with the answer in it or a magic anything-- it comes down to particular words in the story we're reading, right? And those words are made from the letters of our alphabet: a couple-dozen squiggles we can draw with this pen. This is the key, Doony! And the treasure, too, if we can only get our hands on it! It's as if -- as if the key to the treasure is the treasure!'
"As soon as she spoke51 these last words a genie appeared from nowhere right there in our library-stacks. He didn't resemble anything in Sherry's bedtime stories: for one thing, he wasn't frightening, though he was strange-looking enough: a light-skinned fellow of forty or so, smooth-shaven and bald as a roc's egg. His clothes were simple but outlandish; he was tall and healthy and pleasant enough in appearance, except for queer lenses that he wore in a frame over his eyes. He seemed as startled as we were -- you should've seen Sherry drop that pen and pull her skirts together! -- but he got over his alarm sooner, and looked from one to the other of us and at a stubby little magic wand he held in his fingers, and smiled a friendly smile.
" 'Are you really Scheherazade?' he asked. 'I've never had a dream so clear and lifelike! And you're little Dunyazade-- just as I'd imagined both of you! Don't be frightened: I can't tell you what it means to me to see and talk to you like this; even in a dream, it's a dream come true. Can you understand English? I don't have a word of Arabic. O my, I can't believe this is really happening!'
"Sherry and I looked at each other. The Genie didn't seem dangerous; we didn't know those languages he spoke of; every word he said was in our language, and when Sherry asked him whether he'd come from her pen or from her words, he seemed to understand the question, though he didn't know the answer. He was a writer of tales, he said -- anyhow a former writer of tales -- in a land on the other side of the world. At one time, we gathered, people in his country had been fond of reading; currently, however, the only readers of artful fiction were critics, other writers, and unwilling52 students who, left to themselves, preferred music and pictures to words. His own pen (that magic wand, in fact a magic quill with a fountain of ink inside) had just about run dry: but whether he had abandoned fiction or fiction him, Sherry and I couldn't make out when we reconstructed this first conversation later that night, for either in our minds or in his a number of crises seemed confused. Like Shahryar's, the Genie's life was in disorder53 -- but so far from harboring therefore a grudge54 against womankind, he was distractedly in love with a brace55 of new mistresses, and only recently had been able to choose between them. His career, too, had reached a hiatus which he would have been pleased to call a turning-point if he could have espied56 any way to turn: he wished neither to repudiate57 nor to repeat his past performances; he aspired58 to go beyond them toward a future they were not attuned59 to and, by some magic, at the same time go back to the original springs of narrative60. But how this was to be managed was as unclear to him as the answer to the Shahryar-problem was to us -- the more so since he couldn't see how much of his difficulty might be owing to his own limitations, his age and stage and personal vicissitudes61; how much to the general decline of letters in his time and place; and how much to the other crises with which his country (and, so he alleged62, the very species) was beset63-- crises as desperate and problematical, he avowed64, as ours, and as inimical to the single-mindedness needed to compose great works of art or the serenity66 to apprehend67 them.
"So entirely68 was he caught up in these problems, his work and life all had come to a standstill. He had taken leave of his friends, his family, and his post (he was a doctor of letters), and withdrawn69 to a lonely retreat in the marshes71, which only the most devoted72 of his mistresses deigned73 to visit.
" 'My project,' he told us, 'is to learn where to go by discovering where I am by reviewing where I've been -- where we've all been. There's a kind of snail74 in the Maryland marshes -- perhaps I invented him -- that makes his shell as he goes along out of whatever he comes across, cementing it with his own juices, and at the same time makes his path instinctively75 toward the best available material for his shell; he carries his history on his back, living in it, adding new and larger spirals to it from the present as he grows. That snail's pace has become my pace -- but I'm going in circles, following my own trail! I've quit reading and writing; I've lost track of who I am; my name's just a jumble76 of letters; so's the whole body of literature: strings77 of letters and empty spaces, like a code that I've lost the key to.' He pushed those odd lenses up on the bridge of his nose with his thumb -- a habit that made me giggle78 -- and grinned. 'Well, almost the whole body. Speaking of keys, I suspect that's how I got here.'
"By way of answer to Sherry's question then, whether he had sprung from her quill-pen or her words, he declared that his researches, like hers, had led him to an impasse79; he felt that a treasure-house of new fiction lay vaguely80 under his hand, if he could find the key to it. Musing81 idly on this figure, he had added to the morass82 of notes he felt himself mired83 in, a sketch84 for a story about a man who comes somehow to realize that the key to the treasure he's searching for is the treasure. Just exactly how so (and how the story might be told despite all the problems that beset him) he had no chance to consider, for the Instant he set on paper the words The key to the treasure is the treasure, he found himself with us-- for how long, or to what end, or by what means, he had no idea, unless it was that of all the storytellers in the world, his very favorite was Scheherazade.
" 'Listen how I chatter86 on!' he ended happily. 'Do forgive me!'
"My sister, after some thought, ventured the opinion that the astonishing coincidence of her late reveries and his, which had led them as it were simultaneously87 to the same cryptic88 formulation, must have something to do with his translation to her library. She looked forward, she said, to experimenting whether a reverse translation could be managed, If the worst came to worst, to spirit me out of harm's way; as for herself, she had no time or use for idle flights of fancy, however curious, from the gynocide that was ravaging89 her country: remarkable90 as it was, she saw no more relevance91 to her problems than to his in this bit of magic.
" 'But we know the answer's right here in our hands!' the Genie exclaimed. 'We're both storytellers: you must sense as strongly as I that it has something to do with the key to the treasure's being the treasure.'
"My sister's nostrils92 narrowed. 'Twice you've called me a storyteller,' she said; 'yet I've never told a story in my life except to Dunyazade, and her bedtime stories were the ones that everybody tells. The only tale I've ever invented myself was this key-to-the-treasure one just now, which I scarcely understand. . .'
" 'Good lord!' the Genie cried. 'Do you mean to say that you haven't even started your thousand and one nights yet?'
"Sherry shook her head grimly. 'The only thousand nights I know of is the time our pig of a king has been killing the virgin daughters of the Moslems.'
"Our bespectacled visitor then grew so exhilarated that for some time he couldn't speak at all. Presently he seized my sister's hand and dumbfounded us both by declaring his lifelong adoration93 of her, a declaration that brought blushes to our cheeks. Years ago, he said, when he'd been a penniless student pushing book-carts through the library-stacks of his university to help pay for his education, he contracted a passion for Scheherazade upon first reading the tales she beguiled94 King Shahryar with, and had sustained that passion so powerfully ever since that his love affairs with other, 'real' women seemed to him by comparison unreal, his two-decade marriage but a prolonged infidelity to her, his own fictions were mimicries, pallid97 counterfeits98 of the authentic treasure of her Thousand and One Nights.
" 'Beguiled the King with!' Sherry said. 'I've thought of that! Daddy believes that Shahryar would really like to quit what he's doing before the country falls apart, but needs an excuse to break his vow without losing face with his younger brother. I'd considered letting him make love to me and then telling him exciting stories, which I'd leave unfinished from one night to the next till he'd come to know me too well to kill me. I even thought of slipping in stories about kings who'd suffered worse hardships than he and his brother without turning vindictive99; or lovers who weren't unfaithful; or husbands who loved their wives more than themselves. But it's too fanciful! Who knows which stories would work? Especially in those first few nights! I can see him sparing me for a day or two, maybe, out of relief; but then he'd react against his lapse100 and go back to his old policy. I gave the idea up.'
"The Genie smiled; even I saw what he was thinking. 'But you say you've read the book!' Sherry exclaimed. 'Then you must remember what stories are in it, and in which order!'
" 'I don't have to remember,' said the Genie. 'In all the years I've been writing stories, your book has never been off my worktable. I've made use of it a thousand times, if only by just seeing it there.'
"Sherry asked him then whether he himself had perhaps invented the stories she allegedly told, or would tell. 'How could I?' he laughed. 'I won't be born for a dozen centuries yet! You didn't invent them either, for that matter; they're those ancient ones you spoke of, that "everybody tells": Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin's Lamp, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. . .'
" 'What others?' Sherry cried. 'In which order? I don't even know the Ali Baba story! Do you have the book with you? I'll give you everything I have for it!'
"The Genie replied that inasmuch as he'd been holding her book in his hand and thinking about her when he'd written the magic words, and it had not been translated to her library along with him, he inferred that he could not present her with a copy even if the magic were repeatable. He did however remember clearly what he called the frame-story: how Shahryar's young brother Shah Zaman had discovered his bride's adulteries, killed her, abandoned the kingdom of Samarkand, and come to live with Shahryar in the Islands of India and China; how, discovering that Shahryar's wife was equally unfaithful, the brothers had retreated to the wilderness101, encountered the ifrit and the maiden102, concluded that all women are deceivers, and returned to their respective kingdoms, vowing103 to deflower a virgin every night and kill her in the morning; how the Vizier's daughter Scheherazade, to end this massacre104, had volunteered herself, much against her father's wishes, and with the aid of her sister Dunyazade -- who at the crucial moment between sex and sleep asked for a story, and fed the King's suspense by interrupting the tale at daybreak, just before the climax105 -- stayed Shahryar's hand long enough to win his heart, restore his senses, and save the country from ruin.
"I hugged my sister and begged her to let me help her in just that way. She shook her head: 'Only this Genie has read the stories I'm supposed to tell, and he doesn't remember them. What's more, he's fading already. If the key to the treasure is the treasure, we don't have it in our hands yet.'
"He had indeed begun fading away, almost disappeared; but as soon as Sherry repeated the magic sentence he came back clearly, smiling more eagerly than before, and declared he'd been thinking the same words at the same moment, just as we'd begun to fade and his writing-room to reappear about him. Apparently106, then, he and Sherry could conjure107 the phenomenon at will by imagining simultaneously that the key to the treasure was the treasure: they were, presumably, the only two people in the history of the world who had imagined it. What's more, in that instant when he'd waked, as it were, to find himself back in the marshes of America, he'd been able to glance at the open table of contents of Volume One of the Thousand and One Nights book and determine that the first story after the frame-story was a compound tale called 'The Merchant and the Genie' -- in which, if he remembered correctly, an outraged108 ifrit delays the death of an innocent merchant until certain sheiks have told their stories.
"Scheherazade thanked him, made a note of the title, and gravely put down her pen. 'You have it in your power to save my sisters and my country,' she said, 'and the King too, before his madness destroys him. All you need to do is supply me from the future with these stories of the past. But perhaps at bottom you share the King's feelings about women.'
" 'Not at all!' the Genie said warmly. 'If the key trick really works, I'll be honored to tell your stories to you. All we need to do is agree on a time of day to write the magic words together.'
"I clapped my hands -- but Sherry's expression was still cool. 'You're a man,' she said; 'I imagine you expect what every man expects who has the key to any treasure a woman needs. In the nature of the case, I have to let Shahryar take me first; after that I'll cuckold him with you every day at sunset if you'll tell me the story for the night to come. Is that satisfactory?'
"I feared he'd take offense109, but he only shook his head. Out of his old love for her, he gently declared, and his gratitude for the profoundest image he knew of the storyteller's situation, he would be pleased beyond words to play any role whatever in Scheherazade's story, without dreaming of further reward. His own policy, moreover, which he had lived by for many nights more than a thousand, was to share beds with no woman who did not reciprocate110 his feelings. Finally, his new young mistress, to whom he had been drawn70 by certain resemblances to Scheherazade -- delighted him utterly111, as he hoped he did her; he was no more tempted112 to infidelity than to incest or pederasty. His adoration of Scheherazade was as strong as ever -- even stronger now that he'd met her in the lovely flesh -- but it was not possessive; he desired her only as the old Greek poets their Muse113, as a source of inspiration.
"Sherry tapped and riddled114 with her quill. 'I don't know these poets you speak of,' she said sharply. 'Here in our country, love isn't so exclusive as all that. When I think of Shahryar's harem-full of concubines on the one hand, and the way his wife got even with him on the other, and the plots of most of the stories I know -- especially the ones about older men with young mistresses -- I can't help wondering whether you're not being a bit na?ve, to put it kindly115. Especially as I gather you've suffered your share of deceit in the past, and no doubt done your share of deceiving. Even so, it's a refreshing116 surprise, if a bit of a put-down, that you're not interested in taking sexual advantage of your position. Are you a eunuch?'
"I blushed again, but the Genie assured us, still unoffended, that he was normally equipped, and that his surpassing love for his young lady, while perhaps invincibly117 innocent, was not na?ve. His experience of love gone sour only made him treasure more highly the notion of a love that time would season and improve; no sight on earth more pleased his heart, annealed as it was by his own passions and defeats, than that rare one of two white-haired spouses118 who still cherished each other and their life together. If love died, it died; while it lived, let it live forever, et cetera. Some fictions, he asserted, were so much more valuable than fact that in rare instances their beauty made them real. The only Baghdad was the Baghdad of the Nights, where carpets flew and genies sprang from magic words; he was ours to command as one of those, and without price. Should one appear to him and offer him three wishes, he'd be unable to summon more than two, inasmuch as his first -- to have live converse119 with the storyteller he'd loved best and longest -- had already been granted.
"Sherry smiled now and asked him what would be the other two wishes. The second, he replied, would be that he might die before his young friend and he ceased to treasure each other as they did currently in their saltmarsh retreat. The third (what presently stood alone between him and entire contentment) would be that he would not die without adding some artful trinket or two, however small, to the general treasury120 of civilized121 delights, to which no keys were needed beyond goodwill122, attention, and a moderately cultivated sensibility: he meant the treasure of art, which if it could not redeem123 the barbarities of history or spare us the horrors of living and dying, at least sustained, refreshed, expanded, ennobled, and enriched our spirits along the painful way. Such of his scribblings as were already in print he did not presume to have that grace; should he die before he woke from his present sweet dream of Scheherazade, this third wish would go unfulfilled. But even if neither of these last was ever granted (and surely such boons125 were rare as treasure keys), he would die happier to have had the first.
"Hearing this, Sherry at last put by her reserve, took the stranger's writing-hand in her own, apologized for her discourtesy, and repeated her invitation, this time warmly: if he would supply her with enough of her stories to reach her goal, she was his in secret whenever he wished after her maiden night with Shahryar. Or (if deception126 truly had no more savor127 for him), when the slaughter128 of her sisters had ceased, let him spirit her somehow to his place and time, and she'd be his slave and concubine forever -- assuming, as one was after all realistically obliged to assume, that he and his current love would by then have wearied of each other.
"The Genie laughed and kissed her hand. 'No slaves; no concubines. And my friend and I intend to love each other forever.'
" 'That will be a greater wonder than all of Sinbad's together,' Sherry said. 'I pray it may happen, Genie, and your third wish be granted too. For all one knows, you may already have done what you hope to do: time will tell. But if Dunyazade and I can find any way at all to help you with your tales-to-come in return for the ones you've pledged to us -- and you may be sure we'll search for such a way as steadfastly129 as we've searched for a way to save our sex -- we'll do it though we die for it.'
"She made him promise then to embrace his mistress for her, whom she vowed65 to love thenceforth as she loved me, and by way of a gift to her -- which she prayed might translate as the precious book had not -- she took from her earlobe a gold ring worked in the form of a spiral shell, of which his earlier image had reminded her. He accepted it joyfully130, vowing to spin from it, if he could, as from a catherine-wheel or whirling galaxy131, a golden shower of fiction. Then he kissed us both (the first male lips I'd felt except Father's, and the only such till yours) and vanished, whether by his will or another's we couldn't tell.
"Sherry and I hugged each other excitedly all that night, rehearsing every word that had passed between the Genie and ourselves. I begged her to test the magic for a week before offering herself to the King, to make sure that it -- and her colleague from the future -- could be relied upon. But even as we laughed and whispered, another of our sisters was being raped132 and murdered in the palace; Sherry offered herself to Shahryar first thing in the morning, to our father's distress133; let the King lead her at nightfall into his fatal bed and fall to toying with her, then pretended to weep for being separated from me for the first time in our lives. Shahryar bid her fetch me in to sit at the foot of the bed; almost in a faint I watched him help her off with the pretty nightie I'd crocheted134 for her myself, place a white silk cushion under her bottom, and gently open her legs; as I'd never seen a man erect135 before, I groaned136 despite myself when he opened his robe and I saw what he meant to stick her with: the hair done up in pearls, the shaft137 like a minaret138 decorated with arabesques139, the head like a cobra's spread to strike. He chuckled140 at my alarm and climbed atop her; not to see him, Sherry fixed141 her welling eyes on me, closing them only to cry the cry that must be cried when there befell the mystery concerning which there is no inquiry142. A moment later, as the cushion attested143 her late virginity and tears ran from her eye-corners to her ears, she seized the King's hair, wrapped about his waist her lovely legs, and to insure the success of her fiction, pretended a grand transport of rapture144. I could neither bear to watch nor turn away. When the beast was spent and tossing fitfully (from shame and guilt145, I hoped, or unease at Sherry's willingness to die), I gathered my senses as best I could and asked her to tell me a story.
" 'With pleasure,' she said, in a tone still so full of shock it broke my heart, 'if this pious146 and auspicious King will allow it.' Your brother grunted147, and Sherry began, shakily, the tale of the Merchant and the Genie, framing in it for good measure the First Sheik's Story as her voice grew stronger. At the right moment I interrupted to praise the story and say I thought I'd heard a rooster crowing in the east; as though I'd been kept in ignorance of the King's policy, I asked whether we mightn't sleep awhile before sunrise and hear the end of the story tomorrow night-- along with the one about the Three Apples, which I liked even more. 'O Doony!' Sherry pretended to scold. 'I know a dozen better than that: how about the Ebony Horse, or Julnar the Sea-Born, or the Ensorcelled Prince? But just as there's no young woman in the country worth having that the King hasn't had his fill of already, so I'm sure there's no story he hasn't heard till he's weary of it. I could no more expect to tell him a new story than show him a new way to make love.'
" 'I'll be the judje of that,' said Shahryar. So we sweated out the day in each other's arms and at sunset tried the magic key; you can imagine our relief when the Genie appeared, pushed up his eyeglasses with a grin, and recited to us the Second and Third Sheiks' Stories, which he guessed were both to be completed on that crucial second night in order, on the one hand, to demonstrate a kind of narrative inexhaustibility or profligacy148 (at least a generosity149 commensurate to that of the sheiks themselves), while, on the other hand, not compounding the suspense of unfinished tales-within-tales at a time when the King's reprieve150 was still highly tentative. Moreover, that the ifrit will grant the merchant's life on account of the stories ought to be evident enough by daybreak to make, without belaboring151, its admonitory point. The spiral earring152, he added happily, had come through intact, if anything more beautiful for the translation; his mistress was delighted with it, and would return Sherry's embrace with pleasure, he was confident, as soon as the memory of her more contemporary rivals was removed enough, and she secure enough in his love, for him to tell her the remarkable story of the magic key. Tenderly then he voiced his hope that Scheherazade had not found the loss of her maidenhood154 wholly repugnant to experience, or myself to witness; if the King was truly to be wooed away from his misogyny, many ardent155 nights lay ahead, and for the sake of Scheherazade's spirit as well as her strategy it would be well if she could take some pleasure in them.
" 'Never!' my sister declared. 'The only pleasure I'll take in that bed is the pleasure of saving my sisters and cuckolding their killer156.'
"The Genie shrugged157 and faded; Shahryar came in, bid us good evening, kissed Sherry many times before caressing158 her more intimately, then laid her on the bed and worked her over playfully in as many positions as there are tales in the Trickery-of-Women series, till I couldn't tell whether her outcries were of pain, surprise, or -- mad as the notion seemed -- a kind of pleasure despite herself. As for me, though I was innocent of men, I had read in secret all the manuals of love and erotic stories in Sherry's library, but had thought them the wild imaginings of lonely writers in their dens159, a kind of self-tickling with the quill such as Sherry herself had fallen into; for all it was my own sister I saw doing such incredible things in such odd positions, it would be many nights before I fully95 realized that what I witnessed were not conjured160 illustrations from those texts, but things truly taking place.
" 'On with the story,' Shahryar commanded when they were done. Unsteadily at first, but then in even better voice than the night before, Sherry continued the Merchant-and-Genie story, and I, mortified161 to find myself still moistening from what I'd seen, almost forgot to interrupt at the appropriate time. Next day, as we embraced each other, Sherry admitted that while she found the King himself as loathsome162 as ever, the things he did to her were no longer painful, and might even be pleasurable, as would be the things she did to him, were he a bedpartner she could treasure as our Genie treasured his. More exactly, once the alarm of her defloration and her fear of being killed in the morning began to pass, she found abhorrent163 not Shahryar himself -- undeniably a vigorous and handsome man for his forty years, and a skillful lover -- but his murderous record with our sex, which no amount of charm and tender caressing could expunge164.
" 'No amount at all?' our Genie asked when he appeared again, on cue, at sunset. 'Suppose a man had been a kind and gentle fellow until some witch put a spell on him that deranged165 his mind and made him do atrocious things; then suppose a certain young lady has the power to cure him by loving him despite his madness. She can lift the spell because she recognizes that it is a spell, and not his real nature. . .'
" 'I hope that's not my tale for tonight,' Sherry said dryly, pointing out that while Shahryar may once upon a time have been a loving husband, even in those days he gave out virgin slave-girls to his friends, kept a houseful of concubines for himself, and cut his wife in half for taking a lover after twenty years of one-sided fidelity96. 'And no magic can bring a thousand dead girls back to life, or unrape them. On with the story.'
" 'You're a harder critic than your lover,' the Genie complained, and recited the opening frame of the Fisherman and the Genie, the simplicity166 of which he felt to be a strategic change of pace for the third night-- especially since it would lead, on the fourth and fifth, to a series of tales-within-tales-within-tales, a narrative complexity167 he described admiringly as 'Oriental.'
"So it went, month after month, year after year; at the foot of Shahryar's bed by night and in Scheherazade's by day, I learned more about the arts of making love and telling stories than I had imagined there was to know. It pleased our Genie, for example, that the tale of the Ensorcelled Prince had been framed by that of the Fisherman and the Genie, since the prince himself had been encased (in the black stone palace); also, that the resolution of the story thus enframed resolved as well the tale that framed it. This metaphorical168 construction he judged more artful than the 'mere169 plot-function' (that is, preserving our lives and restoring the King's sanity170!) which Sherry's Fisherman-tale and the rest had in the story of her own life; but that 'mere plot-function,' in turn, was superior to the artless and arbitrary relation between most framed and framing tales. This relation (which to me seemed less important than what the stories were about) interested the two of them no end, just as Sherry and Shahryar were fascinated by the pacing of their nightly pleasures or the refinement171 of their various positions, instead of the degree and quality of their love.
"Sherry kissed me. 'That other either goes without saying,' she said, 'or it doesn't go at all. Making love and telling stories both take more than good technique -- but it's only the technique that we can talk about.'
"The Genie agreed: 'Heartfelt ineptitude172 has its appeal, Dunyazade; so does heartless skill. But what you want is passionate173 virtuosity174.' They speculated endlessly on such questions as whether a story might imaginably be framed from inside, as it were, so that the usual relation between container and contained would be reversed and paradoxically reversible -- and (for my benefit, I suppose) what human state of affairs such an odd construction might usefully figure. Or whether one might go beyond the usual tale-within-a-tale, beyond even the tales-within-tales-within-tales-within-tales which our Genie had found a few instances of in that literary treasure-house he hoped one day to add to, and conceive a series of, say, seven concentric stories-within-stories, so arranged that the climax of the innermost would precipitate175 that of the next tale out, and that of the next, et cetera, like a string of firecrackers or the chains of orgasms that Shahryar could sometimes set my sister catenating.
"This last comparison -- a favorite of theirs -- would lead them to a dozen others between narrative and sexual art, whether in spirited disagreement or equally spirited concord176. The Genie declared that in his time and place there were scientists of the passions who maintained that language itself, on the one hand, originated in 'infantile pregenital erotic exuberance177, polymorphously perverse,' and that conscious attention, on the other, was a 'libidinal178 hypercathexis' -- by which magic phrases they seemed to mean that writing and reading, or telling and listening, were literally179 ways of making love. Whether this was in fact the case, neither he nor Sherry cared at all; yet they liked to speak as if it were (their favorite words), and accounted thereby180 for the similarity between conventional dramatic structure -- its exposition, rising action, climax, and dénouement -- and the rhythm of sexual intercourse181 from foreplay through coitus to orgasm and release. Therefore also, they believed, the popularity of love (and combat, the darker side of the same rupee) as a theme for narrative, the lovers' embrace as its culmination182, and post-coital lassitude as its natural ground: what better time for tales than at day's end, in bed after making love (or around the campfire after battle or adventure, or in the chimney corner after work), to express and heighten the community between the lovers, comrades, co-workers?
" 'The longest story in the world --' Sherry observed, 'The Ocean of Story, seven hundred thousand distichs -- was told by the god Siva to his consort183 Parvati as a gift for the way she made love to him one night. It would take a minstrel five hundred evenings to recite it all, but she sat in his lap and listened contentedly184 till he was done.'
"To this example, which delighted him, the Genie added several unfamiliar185 to us: a great epic186 called Odyssey187, for instance, whose hero returns home after twenty years of war and wandering, makes love to his faithful wife, and recounts all his adventures to her in bed while the gods prolong the night in his behalf; another work called Decameron, in which ten courtly lords and ladies, taking refuge in their country houses from an urban pestilence188, amuse one another at the end of each day with stories (some borrowed from Sherry herself) as a kind of substitute for making love -- an artifice189 in keeping with the artificial nature of their little society. And, of course, that book about Sherry herself which he claimed to be reading from, in his opinion the best illustration of all that the very relation between teller85 and told was by nature erotic. The teller's role, he felt, regardless of his actual gender190, was essentially191 masculine, the listener's or reader's feminine, and the tale was the medium of their intercourse.
" 'That makes me unnatural,' Sherry objected. 'Are you one of those vulgar men who think that women writers are homosexuals?'
" 'Not at all,' the Genie assured her. 'You and Shahryar usually make love in Position One before you tell your story, and lovers like to switch positions the second time.' More seriously, he had not meant to suggest that the 'femininity' of readership was a docile192 or inferior condition: a lighthouse, for example, passively sent out signals that mariners193 labored194 actively195 to receive and interpret; an ardent woman like his mistress was as least as energetic in his embrace as he in embracing her; a good reader of cunning tales worked in her way as busily as their author; et cetera. Narrative, in short -- and here they were again in full agreement -- was a love-relation, not a rape15: its success depended upon the reader's consent and cooperation, which she could withhold196 or at any moment withdraw; also upon her own combination of experience and talent for enterprise, and the author's ability to arouse, sustain, and satisfy her interest -- an ability on which his figurative life hung as surely as Scheherazade's literal.
" 'And like all love-relations,' he added one afternoon, 'it's potentially fertile for both partners, in a way you should approve, for it goes beyond male and female. The reader is likely to find herself pregnant with new images, as you hope Shahryar will become with respect to women; but the storyteller may find himself pregnant too. . .'
"Much of their talk was over my head, but on hearing this last I hugged Sherry tight and prayed to Allah it was not another of their as if's. Sure enough, on the three hundred eighth night her tale was interrupted not by me but by the birth of Ali Shar, whom despite his resemblance to Shahryar I clasped to my bosom197 from that hour as if I had borne instead of merely helping198 to deliver him. Likewise on the six hundred twenty-fourth night, when little Gharíb came lustily into the world, and the nine hundred fifty-ninth, birthday of beautiful Jamilah-Melissa. Her second name, which means 'honey-sweet' in the exotic tongues of Genieland, we chose in honor of our friend's still-beloved mistress, whom he had announced his intention to marry despite Sherry's opinion that while women and men might in some instances come together as human beings, wives and husbands could never. The Genie argued, for his part, that no matter how total, exclusive, and permanent the commitment between two lovers might turn out to be, it lacked the dimensions of spiritual seriousness and public responsibility which only marriage, with its ancient vows199 and symbols, rites200 and risks, provided.
" 'It can't last,' Sherry said crossly. The Genie put on her finger a gift from his fiancée to her namesake's mother -- a gold ring patterned with rams'-horns and conches, replicas201 of which she and the Genie meant to exchange on their wedding day -- and replied, 'Neither did Athens. Neither did Rome. Neither did all of Jamshid's glories. But we must live as if it can and will.'
" 'Hmp,' said Sherry, who over the years had picked up a number of your brother's ways, as he had hers. But she gave them her blessing202 -- to which I added mine without reservations or as if's -- and turned the ring much in the lamplight when he was gone, trying its look on different hands and fingers and musing as if upon its design.
"Thus we came to the thousandth night, the thousandth morning and afternoon, the thousandth dipping of Sherry's quill and invocation of the magic key. And for the thousand and first time, still smiling, our Genie appeared to us, his own ring on his finger as it had been for some forty evenings now -- an altogether brighter-looking spirit than had materialized in the book-stacks so long past. We three embraced as always; he asked after the children's health and the King's, and my sister, as always, after his progress toward that treasury from which he claimed her stories were drawn. Less reticent203 on this subject than he had been since our first meeting, he declared with pleasure that thanks to the inspiration of Scheherazade and to the thousand comforts of his loving wife, he believed he had found his way out of that slough204 of the imagination in which he'd felt himself bogged205: whatever the merits of the new work, like an ox-cart driver in monsoon206 season or the skipper of a grounded ship, he had gone forward by going back, to the very roots and springs of story. Using, like Scheherazade herself, for entirely present ends, materials received from narrative antiquity207 and methods older than the alphabet, in the time since Sherry's defloration he had set down two-thirds of a projected series of three novellas, longish tales which would take their sense from one another in several of the ways he and Sherry had discussed, and, if they were successful (here he smiled at me), manage to be seriously, even passionately208, about some things as well.
" 'The two I've finished have to do with mythic heroes, true and false,' he concluded. 'The third I'm just in the middle of. How good or bad they are I can't say yet, but I'm sure they're right. You know what I mean, Scheherazade.'
"She did; I felt as if I did also, and we happily re-embraced. Then Sherry remarked, apropos209 of middles, that she'd be winding210 up the story of Ma'aruf the Cobbler that night and needed at least the beginning of whatever tale was to follow it.
"The Genie shook his head. 'My dear, there are no more. You've told them all.' He seemed cruelly undisturbed by a prospect211 that made the harem spin before my eyes and brought me near to swooning.
" 'No more!' I cried. 'What will she do?'
" 'If she doesn't want to risk Shahryar's killing her and turning on you,' he said calmly, 'I guess she'll have to invent something that's not in the book.'
" 'I don't invent,' Sherry reminded him. Her voice was no less steady than his, but her expression -- when I got hold of my senses enough to see it -- was grave. 'I only recount.'
" 'Borrow something from the treasury!' I implored212 him. 'What will the children do without their mother?' The harem began to spin again; I gathered all my courage and said: 'Don't desert us, friend; give Sherry the story you're working on now, and you may do anything you like with me. I'll raise your children if you have any; I'll wash your Melissa's feet. Anything.'
"The Genie smiled and said to Sherry, 'Our little Dunyazade is a woman.' Thanking me then for my offer as courteously213 as he had once Scheherazade, he declined it, not only for the same reasons that had moved him before, but also because he was confident that the only tales left in the treasury of the sort King Shahryar was likely to be entertained by were the hundred mimicries and retellings of Sherry's own.
" 'Then my thousand nights and a night are ended,' Sherry said. 'Don't be ungrateful to our friend, Doony; everything ends.'
"I agreed, but tearfully wished myself -- and Ali Shar, Gharíb, and little Melissa, whom all I loved as dearly as I loved my sister -- out of a world where the only happy endings were in stories.
"The Genie touched my shoulder. 'Let's not forget,' he said, 'that from my point of view -- a tiresome214 technical one, I'll admit -- it is a story that we're coming to the end of. All these tales your sister has told the King are simply the middle of her own story -- hers and yours, I mean, and Shahryar's, and his young brother Shah Zaman's.'
"I didn't understand -- but Sherry did, and squeezing my other shoulder, asked him quietly whether, that being the tiresome technical case, it followed that a happy ending might be invented for the framing-story.
" 'The author of The Thousand and One Nights doesn't invent,' the Genie reminded her; 'he only recounts how, after she finished the tale of Ma'aruf the Cobbler, Scheherazade rose from the King's bed, kissed ground before him, and made bold to ask a favor in return for the thousand and one nights' entertainment. "Ask, Scheherazade," the King answers in the story -- whereupon you send Dunyazade to fetch the children in, and plead for your life on their behalf, so that they won't grow up motherless.'
"My heart sprang up; Sherry sat silent. 'I notice you don't ask on behalf of the stories themselves,' the Genie remarked, 'or on behalf of your love for Shahryar and his for you. That's a pretty touch: it leaves him free to grant your wish, if he chooses to, on those other grounds. I also admire your tact153 in asking only for your life; that gives him the moral initiative to repent215 his policy and marry you. I don't think I'd have thought of that.'
" 'Hmp,' said Sherry.
" 'Then there's the nice formal symmetry --'
" 'Never mind the symmetry!' I cried. 'Does it work or not?' I saw in his expression then that it did, and in Sherry's that this plan was not news to her. I hugged them both, weeping enough for joy to make our ink run, so the Genie said, and begged Sherry to promise me that I could stay with her and the children after their wedding as I had before, and sit at the foot of her bed forever.
" 'Not so fast, Doony,' she said. 'I haven't decided yet whether or not I care to end the story that way.'
" 'Not care to?' I looked with fresh terror to the Genie. 'Doesn't she have to, if it's in the book?'
"He too appeared troubled now, and searched Sherry's face, and admitted that not everything he'd seen of our situation in these visions or dreams of his corresponded exactly to the story as it came to him through the centuries, lands, and languages that separated us in waking hours. In his translation, for example, all three children were male and nameless; and while there was no mention of Scheherazade's loving Shahryar by the end of the book, there was surely none of her despising him, or cuckolding him, more or less, with me and the rest. Most significantly, it went without saying that he himself was altogether absent from the plot -- which, however, he prayed my sister to end as it ended in his version: with the double marriage of herself to your brother and me to you, and our living happily together until overtaken by the Destroyer of Delights and Severer of Societies, et cetera.
"While I tried to assimilate this astonishing news about myself, Sherry asked with a smile whether by 'his version' the Genie meant that copy of the Nights from which he'd been assisting us or the story he himself was in midst of inventing; for she liked to imagine, and profoundly hoped it so, that our connection had not been to her advantage only: that one way or another, she and I and our situation were among those 'ancient narrative materials' which he had found useful for his present purposes. How did his version end?
"The Genie closed his eyes for a moment, pushed back his glasses with his thumb, and repeated that he was still in the middle of that third novella in the series, and so far from drafting the climax and dénouement, had yet even to plot them in outline. Turning then to me, to my great surprise he announced that the title of the story was Dunyazadiad; that its central character was not my sister but myself, the image of whose circumstances, on my 'wedding-night-to-come,' he found as arresting for taletellers of his particular place and time as was my sister's for the estate of narrative artists in general.
" 'All those nights at the foot of the bed, Dunyazade!' he exclaimed. 'You've had the whole literary tradition transmitted to you -- and the whole erotic tradition, too! There's no story you haven't heard; there's no way of making love that you haven't seen again and again. I think of you, little sister, a virgin in both respects: All that innocence216! All that sophistication! And now it's your turn: Shahryar has told young Shah Zaman about his wonderful mistress, how he loves her as much for herself as for her stories -- which he also passes on; the two brothers marry the two sisters; it's your wedding night, Dunyazade. . . But wait! Look here! Shahryar deflowered and killed a virgin a night for a thousand and one nights before he met Scheherazade; Shah Zaman has been doing the same thing, but it's only now, a thousand nights and a night later, that he learns about Scheherazade -- that means he's had two thousand and two young women at the least since he killed his wife, and not one has pleased him enough to move him to spend a second night with her, much less spare her life! What are you going to do to entertain him, little sister? Make love in exciting new ways? There are none! Tell him stories, like Scheherazade? He's heard them all! Dunyazade, Dunyazade! Who can tell your story?'
"More dead than alive with fright, I clung to my sister, who begged the Genie please to stop alarming me. All apologies, he assured us that what he was describing was not The Thousand and One Nights frame-story (which ended happily without mention of these terrors), but his own novella, a pure fiction -- to which also he would endeavor with all his heart to find some conclusion in keeping with his affection for me. Sherry further eased my anxiety by adding that she too had given long thought to my position as the Genie described it, and was not without certain plans with respect to our wedding night; these, as a final favor to our friend, she had made written note of in the hope that whether or not they succeeded, he might find them useful for his story; but she would prefer to withhold them from me for the present.
" 'You sense as I do, then,' the Genie said thoughtfully, 'that we won't be seeing each other again.'
"Sherry nodded. 'You have other stories to tell. I've told mine.'
"Already he'd begun to fade. 'My best,' he said, 'will be less than your least. And I'll always love you, Scheherazade! Dunyazade, I'm your brother! Good night, sisters! Fare well!'
"We kissed; he disappeared with Sherry's letter; Shahryar sent for us; still shaken, I sat at the bed-foot while he and Sherry did a combination from the latter pages of Ananga Ranga and Kama Sutra and she finished the tale of Ma'aruf the Cobbler. Then she rose as the Genie had instructed her, kissed ground, begged boon124; I fetched in Ali Shar, walking by himself now, Gharib crawling, Jamilah-Melissa suckling at my milkless breast as if it were her mother's. Sherry made her plea; Shahryar wept, hugged the children, told her he'd pardoned her long since, having found in her the refutation of all his disenchantment, and praised Allah for having appointed her the savior of her sex. Then he sent for Daddy to draft the marriage contract and for you to hear the news of Scheherazade and her stories; when you proposed to marry me, Sherry countered with Part Two of our plan (of whose Part Three I was still ignorant): that in order for her and me never to be parted, you must abandon Samarkand and live with us, sharing your brother's throne and passing yours to our father in reparation for his three-years' anguish217. I found you handsomer than Shahryar and more terrifying, and begged my sister to say what lay ahead for me.
"'Why, a fine wedding-feast, silly Doony!' she teased. 'The eunuchs will perfume our Hammam-bath with rose-and willow-flower water, musk-pods, eagle-wood, ambergris; we'll wash and clip our hair; they'll dress me like the sun and you the moon, and we'll dance in seven different dresses to excite our bridegrooms. By the end of the wine and music they'll scarcely be able to contain their desire; each of us will kiss the other three good night, twelve good-nights in all, and our husbands will hurry us off toward our separate bridal-chambers218 --'
" 'O Sherry!'
" 'Then,' she went on, no tease in her voice now, 'on the very threshold of their pleasures I'll stop, kiss ground, and say to my lord and master: "O King of the Sun and the Moon and the Rising Tide, et cetera, thanks for marrying me at last after sleeping with me for a thousand and one nights and begetting219 three children on me and listening while I amused you with proverbs and parables220, chronicles and pleasantries, quips and jests and admonitory instances, stories and anecdotes221, dialogues and histories and elegies222 and satires223 and Allah alone knows what else! Thanks too for giving my precious little sister to your brute224 of a brother, and the kingdom of Samarkand to our father, whose own gratitude we'll hope may partially225 restore his sanity! And thanks above all for kindly ceasing to rape and murder a virgin every night, and for persuading Shah Zaman to cease also! I have no right to ask anything further of you at all, but should be overjoyed to serve your sexual and other interests humbly226 until the day you tire of me and either have me killed or put me by for other, younger women -- and indeed I am prepared to do just that, as Dunyazade surely is also for Shah Zaman. Yet in view of your boundless227 magnanimity Q.E.D., I make bold to ask a final favor." If we're lucky, Shahryar will be so mad to get me into bed that he'll say "Name it" -- whereupon I point out to him that a happy occasion is about to bring to pass what a thousand ill ones didn't, your separation from me till morning. Knowing my husband, I expect he'll propose a little something à quatre, at which I'll blush appropriately and declare that I'm resigned after all to the notion of losing you for a few hours, and wish merely thirty minutes or so of private conversation with you before you and your bridegroom retire, to tell you a few things that every virgin bride should know. "What on earth is there in that line that she hasn't seen us do a hundred times?" your delicate brother-in-law will inquire. "Seeing isn't doing," I'll reply: "I myself have pretty intensive sexual experience, for example, but of one man only, and would be shy as any virgin with another than yourself; Shah Zaman has the widest carnal acquaintance in the world, I suppose, but no long and deep knowledge of any one woman; among the four of us, only you, King of the Age, et cetera, can boast both sorts of experience, having humped your way through twenty years of marriage, a thousand and one one-nighters, and thirty-three and a third months with me, not to mention odd hours with all the concubines in your stable. But little Dunyazade has no experience at all, except vicariously." That master of the quick retort will say "Hmp" and turn the matter over to Shah Zaman, who after bringing to it the full weight of his perspicacity228 will say, in effect, "Okay. But make it short." They'll withdraw, with the grandest erections you and I have ever shuddered229 at -- and then I'll tell you what to do in Part Three. After which we'll kiss good night, go in to our husbands, and do it. Got that?'
" 'Do what?' I cried-- but she'd say no more till all had fallen out as she described: our wedding-feast and dance; the retirement230 toward our chambers; her interruption and request; your permission and stipulation231 that the conference be brief, inasmuch as you were more excited by me than you'd been by any of the two thousand unfortunates whose maidenheads and lives you'd done away with in the five and a half years past. You two withdrew, your robes thrust out before; the moment your bedroom doors closed, Sherry spat232 in your tracks, took my head between her hands, and said: 'If ever you've listened carefully, little sister, listen now. For all his good intentions, our Genie of the Key is either a liar or a fool when he says that any man and woman can treasure each other until death -- unless their lifetimes are as brief as our murdered sisters'
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genie
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| n.妖怪，神怪 | |
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auspicious
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| adj.吉利的；幸运的，吉兆的 | |
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authentic
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| a.真的，真正的；可靠的，可信的，有根据的 | |
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enchanted
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| adj. 被施魔法的，陶醉的，入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词 | |
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shroud
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| n.裹尸布，寿衣；罩，幕；vt.覆盖，隐藏 | |
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suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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crackers
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| adj.精神错乱的，癫狂的n.爆竹( cracker的名词复数 )；薄脆饼干；（认为）十分愉快的事；迷人的姑娘 | |
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widower
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| n.鳏夫 | |
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gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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isles
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| 岛( isle的名词复数 ) | |
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brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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rapes
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| n.芸苔( rape的名词复数 )；强奸罪；强奸案；肆意损坏v.以暴力夺取，强夺( rape的第三人称单数 )；强奸 | |
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rape
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| n.抢夺，掠夺，强奸；vt.掠夺，抢夺，强奸 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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raping
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| v.以暴力夺取，强夺( rape的现在分词 )；强奸 | |
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virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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appalled
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| v.使惊骇，使充满恐惧( appall的过去式和过去分词)adj.惊骇的；丧胆的 | |
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full-time
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| adj.满工作日的或工作周的，全时间的 | |
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wrecking
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| 破坏 | |
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coup
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| n.政变；突然而成功的行动 | |
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24
assassination
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| n.暗杀；暗杀事件 | |
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25
retaliation
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| n.报复，反击 | |
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26
quill
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| n.羽毛管；v.给（织物或衣服）作皱褶 | |
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quills
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| n.（刺猬或豪猪的）刺( quill的名词复数 )；羽毛管；翮；纡管 | |
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28
alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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29
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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30
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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31
monarchs
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| 君主，帝王( monarch的名词复数 ) | |
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32
psyches
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| n.灵魂，心灵( psyche的名词复数 ) | |
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33
Moslem
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| n.回教徒，穆罕默德信徒；adj.回教徒的，回教的 | |
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34
accomplishments
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| n.造诣；完成( accomplishment的名词复数 )；技能；成绩；成就 | |
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35
mythology
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| n.神话，神话学，神话集 | |
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36
folklore
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| n.民间信仰，民间传说，民俗 | |
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37
lore
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| n.传说；学问，经验，知识 | |
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38
motifs
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| n. （文艺作品等的）主题( motif的名词复数 )；中心思想；基本模式；基本图案 | |
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39
motif
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| n.(图案的)基本花纹，(衣服的)花边；主题 | |
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40
massaging
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| 按摩，推拿( massage的现在分词 ) | |
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41
genies
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| n.（阿拉伯神话故事中的）神怪，妖怪( genie的名词复数 )；（形容将对人们的生活造成永久性的、尤指负面影响的事件已经发生）妖怪已经放出魔瓶了 | |
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42
abracadabra
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| n.咒语，胡言乱语 | |
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43
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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44
obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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45
virgins
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| 处女，童男( virgin的名词复数 )； 童贞玛利亚（耶稣之母） | |
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46
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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47
daydreaming
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| v.想入非非，空想( daydream的现在分词 ) | |
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48
random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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49
tickling
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| 反馈，回授，自旋挠痒法 | |
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50
fictional
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| adj.小说的，虚构的 | |
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51
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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52
unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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53
disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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54
grudge
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| n.不满，怨恨，妒嫉；vt.勉强给，不情愿做 | |
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55
brace
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| n. 支柱,曲柄,大括号; v. 绷紧,顶住,(为困难或坏事)做准备 | |
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56
espied
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| v.看到( espy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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57
repudiate
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| v.拒绝，拒付，拒绝履行 | |
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58
aspired
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| v.渴望，追求( aspire的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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59
attuned
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| v.使协调( attune的过去式和过去分词 )；调音 | |
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60
narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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61
vicissitudes
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| n.变迁，世事变化；变迁兴衰( vicissitude的名词复数 )；盛衰兴废 | |
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62
alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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63
beset
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| v.镶嵌；困扰，包围 | |
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64
avowed
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| adj.公开声明的，承认的v.公开声明，承认( avow的过去式和过去分词) | |
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65
vowed
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| 起誓，发誓（vow的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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66
serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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67
apprehend
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| vt.理解，领悟，逮捕，拘捕，忧虑 | |
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68
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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69
withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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70
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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71
marshes
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| n.沼泽，湿地( marsh的名词复数 ) | |
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72
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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73
deigned
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| v.屈尊，俯就( deign的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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74
snail
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| n.蜗牛 | |
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75
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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76
jumble
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| vt.使混乱，混杂；n.混乱；杂乱的一堆 | |
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77
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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78
giggle
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| n.痴笑，咯咯地笑；v.咯咯地笑着说 | |
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79
impasse
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| n.僵局；死路 | |
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80
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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81
musing
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| n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式 | |
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82
morass
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| n.沼泽，困境 | |
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83
mired
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|
| abbr.microreciprocal degree 迈尔德（色温单位）v.深陷( mire的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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84
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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85
teller
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| n.银行出纳员；(选举)计票员 | |
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86
chatter
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| vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战 | |
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87
simultaneously
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|
| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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88
cryptic
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|
| adj.秘密的，神秘的，含义模糊的 | |
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89
ravaging
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| 毁坏( ravage的现在分词 )； 蹂躏； 劫掠； 抢劫 | |
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90
remarkable
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|
| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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91
relevance
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| n.中肯，适当，关联，相关性 | |
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92
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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93
adoration
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| n.爱慕，崇拜 | |
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94
beguiled
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|
| v.欺骗( beguile的过去式和过去分词 )；使陶醉；使高兴；消磨（时间等） | |
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95
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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96
fidelity
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| n.忠诚，忠实；精确 | |
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97
pallid
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| adj.苍白的，呆板的 | |
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98
counterfeits
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| v.仿制，造假( counterfeit的第三人称单数 ) | |
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99
vindictive
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| adj.有报仇心的，怀恨的，惩罚的 | |
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100
lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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101
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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102
maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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103
vowing
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| 起誓，发誓（vow的现在分词形式） | |
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104
massacre
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| n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀 | |
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105
climax
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| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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106
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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107
conjure
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| v.恳求，祈求；变魔术，变戏法 | |
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108
outraged
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| a.震惊的，义愤填膺的 | |
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109
offense
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| n.犯规，违法行为；冒犯，得罪 | |
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110
reciprocate
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| v.往复运动；互换；回报，酬答 | |
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111
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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112
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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113
muse
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| n.缪斯（希腊神话中的女神），创作灵感 | |
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114
riddled
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| adj.布满的；充斥的；泛滥的v.解谜，出谜题(riddle的过去分词形式) | |
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115
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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116
refreshing
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| adj.使精神振作的，使人清爽的，使人喜欢的 | |
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117
invincibly
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| adv.难战胜地，无敌地 | |
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118
spouses
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| n.配偶，夫或妻( spouse的名词复数 ) | |
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119
converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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120
treasury
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| n.宝库；国库，金库；文库 | |
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121
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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122
goodwill
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| n.善意，亲善，信誉，声誉 | |
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123
redeem
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| v.买回，赎回，挽回，恢复，履行（诺言等） | |
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124
boon
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| n.恩赐，恩物，恩惠 | |
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125
boons
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| n.恩惠( boon的名词复数 )；福利；非常有用的东西；益处 | |
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126
deception
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| n.欺骗，欺诈；骗局，诡计 | |
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127
savor
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| vt.品尝，欣赏；n.味道，风味；情趣，趣味 | |
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128
slaughter
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| n.屠杀，屠宰；vt.屠杀，宰杀 | |
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129
steadfastly
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| adv.踏实地，不变地；岿然；坚定不渝 | |
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130
joyfully
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| adv. 喜悦地, 高兴地 | |
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131
galaxy
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| n.星系；银河系；一群(杰出或著名的人物) | |
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132
raped
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| v.以暴力夺取，强夺( rape的过去式和过去分词 )；强奸 | |
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133
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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134
crocheted
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| v.用钩针编织( crochet的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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135
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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136
groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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137
shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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138
minaret
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| n.（回教寺院的）尖塔 | |
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139
arabesques
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| n.阿拉伯式花饰( arabesque的名词复数 )；错综图饰；阿拉伯图案；阿拉贝斯克芭蕾舞姿（独脚站立，手前伸，另一脚一手向后伸） | |
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140
chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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141
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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142
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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143
attested
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|
| adj.经检验证明无病的，经检验证明无菌的v.证明( attest的过去式和过去分词 )；证实；声称…属实；使宣誓 | |
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144
rapture
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| n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜 | |
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145
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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146
pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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147
grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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148
profligacy
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| n.放荡，不检点，肆意挥霍 | |
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149
generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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150
reprieve
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| n.暂缓执行（死刑）；v.缓期执行；给…带来缓解 | |
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151
belaboring
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| v.毒打一顿( belabor的现在分词 )；责骂；就…作过度的说明；向…唠叨 | |
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152
earring
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| n.耳环，耳饰 | |
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153
tact
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| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
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154
maidenhood
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| n. 处女性, 处女时代 | |
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155
ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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156
killer
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| n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者 | |
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157
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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158
caressing
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| 爱抚的，表现爱情的，亲切的 | |
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159
dens
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| n.牙齿，齿状部分；兽窝( den的名词复数 )；窝点；休息室；书斋 | |
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160
conjured
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| 用魔术变出( conjure的过去式和过去分词 )； 祈求，恳求； 变戏法； （变魔术般地） 使…出现 | |
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161
mortified
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| v.使受辱( mortify的过去式和过去分词 )；伤害（人的感情）；克制；抑制（肉体、情感等） | |
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162
loathsome
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| adj.讨厌的，令人厌恶的 | |
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163
abhorrent
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| adj.可恶的，可恨的，讨厌的 | |
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164
expunge
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| v.除去，删掉 | |
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165
deranged
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| adj.疯狂的 | |
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166
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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167
complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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168
metaphorical
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| a.隐喻的，比喻的 | |
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169
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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170
sanity
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| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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171
refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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172
ineptitude
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| n.不适当；愚笨，愚昧的言行 | |
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173
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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174
virtuosity
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| n.精湛技巧 | |
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175
precipitate
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| adj.突如其来的；vt.使突然发生；n.沉淀物 | |
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176
concord
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| n.和谐；协调 | |
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177
exuberance
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| n.丰富；繁荣 | |
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178
libidinal
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| adj.性欲的 | |
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179
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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180
thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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181
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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182
culmination
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| n.顶点；最高潮 | |
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183
consort
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| v.相伴；结交 | |
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184
contentedly
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| adv.心满意足地 | |
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185
unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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186
epic
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| n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的 | |
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187
odyssey
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| n.长途冒险旅行；一连串的冒险 | |
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188
pestilence
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| n.瘟疫 | |
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189
artifice
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| n.妙计，高明的手段；狡诈，诡计 | |
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190
gender
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| n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性 | |
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191
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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192
docile
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| adj.驯服的，易控制的，容易教的 | |
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193
mariners
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| 海员，水手（mariner的复数形式） | |
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194
labored
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| adj.吃力的，谨慎的v.努力争取(for)( labor的过去式和过去分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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195
actively
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| adv.积极地，勤奋地 | |
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196
withhold
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| v.拒绝，不给；使停止，阻挡 | |
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197
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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198
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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199
vows
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| 誓言( vow的名词复数 )； 郑重宣布，许愿 | |
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200
rites
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| 仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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201
replicas
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| n.复制品( replica的名词复数 ) | |
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202
blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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203
reticent
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| adj.沉默寡言的；言不如意的 | |
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204
slough
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| v.蜕皮，脱落，抛弃 | |
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205
bogged
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| adj.陷于泥沼的v.（使）陷入泥沼， （使）陷入困境( bog的过去式和过去分词 )；妨碍，阻碍 | |
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206
monsoon
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| n.季雨，季风，大雨 | |
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207
antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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208
passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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209
apropos
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| adv.恰好地；adj.恰当的；关于 | |
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210
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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211
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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212
implored
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| 恳求或乞求（某人）( implore的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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213
courteously
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| adv.有礼貌地，亲切地 | |
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214
tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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215
repent
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| v.悔悟，悔改，忏悔，后悔 | |
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216
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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217
anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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218
chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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219
begetting
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| v.为…之生父( beget的现在分词 )；产生，引起 | |
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220
parables
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| n.（圣经中的）寓言故事( parable的名词复数 ) | |
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221
anecdotes
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| n.掌故，趣闻，轶事( anecdote的名词复数 ) | |
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222
elegies
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| n.哀歌，挽歌( elegy的名词复数 ) | |
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223
satires
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| 讽刺，讥讽( satire的名词复数 )； 讽刺作品 | |
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224
brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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225
partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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226
humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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227
boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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228
perspicacity
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| n. 敏锐, 聪明, 洞察力 | |
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229
shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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230
retirement
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| n.退休，退职 | |
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231
stipulation
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| n.契约，规定，条文；条款说明 | |
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232
spat
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| n.口角，掌击；v.发出呼噜呼噜声 | |
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