‘Stand up!’
Milus got to his feet. Edrisi felt the pain in his chest return more insistently as he noticed for the first time the broken black teeth, the warty brow, the roomy smile for which Milus was renowned. Tendrils of spit trembled and fell from his bottom lip. Uncontrollably he heaved and shook. He cackled, wept, beat his chest; and then, unsteadily, with the tip of his big toe, sketched in the dust the words, Get Lost.
Calling vainly for a guard, Edrisi brought down an elbow on Milus’ shoulder. As the poet’s legs gave way once again, Edrisi spat, ‘I’ll come to your quarters tomorrow at three. Insult me again and you won’t have a chance to get back to your feet.’
‘Come in,’ said a voice, next day, as Edrisi approached the doorless entrance. Milus lay on a hemp mat on the floor and instructed Edrisi to sit.
‘Let me be frank,’ he began. His grin was hideous but submissive. ‘I could give you the fancy screed about storytelling, about the ancestors and heroes and the imparting of wisdom. I could tell you that one can learn the art of storytelling only from one’s roots in the soil.
‘But I see,’ grinning and winking at Edrisi, ‘you are not a man for whom a poet’s trickery will work its charm. I’ll speak plainly,’ he said, moving closer. ‘We rhymesters are liars. You hear? Liars and cheats. Give me a copper coin and I’ll compose a lampoon that’ll have your enemies writhing in their robes. A silver one and I’ll make the earthworm in your pants grow into a snake. A gold coin will buy you a tale to seduce a princess. Tell me. Why do you want to learn to tell stories?’
Edrisi got to his feet and twice circled the room.
‘I’m in love with a woman who is in love with stories.’
Once again Milus roared with delight. He struck his palms against his thighs.
‘But will she love the storyteller as much as the story?’
‘A fair point,’ Edrisi conceded.
‘You have two options.’ Milus placed a knot of bark on to his tongue and began to chew. ‘You could attempt to learn the storyteller’s art, although this will be tricky. You are one who holds great authority, one who need not look over your shoulder. And that is the weakness of power.’
Edrisi said nothing.
‘Tell me a story.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Then come back tomorrow.’
And, next day, ‘There are two types of story. Those that are distant in time and those that are distant in space. The first are ancient tales, tales of our past heroes. And the primary tellers of these are sedentary people. The second are told by travellers of one kind or another. Which are you?’
‘Traveller,’ Edrisi said enthusiastically.
‘Tell me a story.’
After a long pause, Edrisi declared in a loud and breathy voice, ‘One day …’
‘A good start.’
‘One day … there was … a boat owned by a king. The boat was full of soldiers dressed in garments of war. They were about to set sail for Alexandria … when … when a wave swept them to sea … and they all died.’
‘Tell me another.’
‘One day …’
‘Not all stories start with One day. Try, for example, There was once …’
‘There was once … there was … a small boy lost in a desert sandstorm. When he was more dead than alive, an old griot arrived with a skein of fresh water attached to his hip. The griot attacked him then ate him.’
The storyteller Milus closed his eyes. ‘You will never charm your lady with storytelling.’
‘You said there were two options,’ Edrisi said after some time. ‘Tell me the second.’
Milus spread his hands out before him. ‘To write. Set down on paper. Woo your love with words on the page. No doubt, it’s a base alternative. When I speak I draw the largest of crowds. A dense throng of listeners squat on the ground, and even the town idiot, to whom my words mean nothing, is captured and rooted to the spot. To write, however, is to substitute living words for empty scrawl. It is to filch and deceive. There is nothing natural in it — a parasitic, masturbatory art! But, my stubborn apprentice, my incompetent griot, it’s all you’ve got. Steal from the writings of others in order to spin your tale. Pinch from a thousand sources, anything that fits. You don’t know how to look but you’re well versed in deceit. My proposaclass="underline" Write it down!’
Edrisi took this advice. He embarked on his greatest attempt to woo Abila. As his starting point he took the silver globe. He decided to create a text illustrating in words each of the seven climes. He would call it the Kitab Rujjar or Book of Entertainment for One Desirous to Go Round the World and present it as an advancement of geographical knowledge. In addition to notes from his own travels, Edrisi began to collect information from written sources: the Kitab surat al-ard of Al-Khwarizmi, Al-Battani’s Astronomy, works by al-Istakhri, al-Kashgari, and the Periploi. Then he contacted merchants, seamen, diplomats, itinerants of all kinds. He despatched envoys accompanied by draftsmen. The tone, he decided, would be narrated through the mode of curiosity. In addition to the mapping of the seven climes, he would describe the conditions of the lands and countries, their inhabitants, their customs, appearance, clothes and language, their seas, mountains and measurements, their crops and revenues and all sorts of buildings, the works they had produced, their economy and their merchandising. But at its heart, in addition to being a lexical map of the world, would be wonderful tales. The Kitab Rujjar would serve the primary purpose of telling stories.
Amid the description of the first climate, with its bitter fishes and coarse blue cloth, Edrisi wrote about the African princess who required her meals to be floated to her on a leaf. He mentioned that certain rich mandarins owned bathtubs made out of mollusc shells that measured over a yard in length. After cataloguing the races in the land of Mallel, with its strict though benevolent king, he inserted the legend of Gog and Magog. He narrated, by sleight of hand, as it were, including, as an objective summary of the land of Nubia, the story of the Mountains of the Moon, of the monstrous races that lined the banks of the Nile. He discoursed on the intelligence of elephants, on the city of Wangara, the source of all the gold in Africa. He wrote of the gardens in Tripoli whose plants, once sown, germinate to maturity in thirty minutes, of the Indian paper roses that open in water, and of the subterranean passages in the fifth climate from where an elderly woman, sitting at an unusual keyboard instrument, calls forth the sound of Japan at dawn, Christmas in Ethiopia, the Chinese selling tea, prayers in Medina.
As Edrisi worked on the Kitab Rujjar, he found that he no longer understood his feelings for Abila. She had acquired free rein of the palace, and every time he saw her, passing in one of the high-ceilinged corridors, or else viewing her from a distance as she walked in the gardens, he felt an unbearable sadness. He had his title changed from Chief Vizier to Geographer Royal. He no longer sprinted or took virgins into his chamber, although he remained loyal to his bees. And his desire for Abila became more complicated, less sure and insistent, confused with the emptiness in his chest, that void which was snaking its way through his inner organs. Still he laboured with his book, and, as more envoys returned to Palermo — bringing news of the Iberian peninsula, or a description of the city of Lemlem, or a hint or beginning of a story — he continued to add to what he had written, or else, when he had completed the description of a particular climate, a merchant would arrive to contradict the initial report. And so Edrisi came to understand that he would never finish annotating his map, because the world was always moving. It was at this point, having failed with Abila, Edrisi decided to travel back to his childhood city.