The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-six (8 page)

One by one, they returned to work. Farmers farmed. Millers milled. Tradesmen began setting up in the marketplace again. Taxes were collected. The palace clock was reset and the calendar recast. Time resumed. But if its form was the same, its function was different: descriptive rather than prescriptive. Folks worked from experience with the seasons, choosing which crops to plant and when, yet rolled with the consequences of their decisions. They learned to gamble wisely, took their chances seriously.

Busier than ever, helping his subjects see the potential of each new situation they faced, the king staked all he still had on his little province. And so it happened that, one afternoon, while consulting his library on a matter of crop rotation—the books made much more sense when he saw apparently contradictory rules as alternate suggestions—he heard a clamor in the streets as if some unforeseen jackpot had been hit. He mounted a spiral of stairs to the palace observation post. The sentry murmured the word
princess
and pointed at a lone auburn-haired figure on horseback. She looked up. He dropped to his knees and extended a hand. Her whispered assent, a simple yes, was picked up by the voices of those nearest to her on the road, carried by folks around them, radiating in every direction until it spoke to everyone in the kingdom.

The girl was married in her lily gown. Around her neck shimmered countless diamonds as small as dewdrops. Folks were awed by her fortune—a king’s ransom—which became part of the crown when His Majesty made her his queen. And, for her part, she found herself so much happier than she’d been alone, so much more fulfilled, that she soon was pregnant.

Many years later, Gimmel the gambler passed through the region again. He had to ask the name of the country, for he didn’t recognize it. No longer did the kingdom resemble a widow’s vegetable garden. Houses of every color and shape stretched across the landscape. Folks shouted and bartered in the market, strolling around as if they owned the place. He didn’t need to show them how to play dice. In fact, they taught him a new game, called craps.

Some of the young men laughed at Gimmel because he didn’t know the latest casino lingo. They made fun of his missing eye and fingers, his penny-ante wagers, his cheap old dice that seemed never to roll his number. But an elderly farmer passing through the market recognized him, and told the boys that Gimmel had invented gambling. While that wasn’t strictly accurate, the impression it made was dramatic. They brought him food and wine, and called him Father, as if he’d founded a religion.

It wasn’t long before the king heard that such blasphemies were being spoken in his domain. He ordered the pretender captured and brought to him. The guards converged on the marketplace from every direction. They shackled Gimmel in irons. The king watched while they delivered him. The accused reached out a two-fingered hand.

— Gimmel?

— Your Majesty?

Waving away the shackles, the king offered the gambler a suite of rooms. He ordered a bath drawn.

For hours, a clutch of servants washed and scrubbed Gimmel. The water clotted into mud. A second bath was prepared, and then a third. Always more dirt. The servants wondered whether the gambler might erode to nothing, but no matter how many miles of mountain and valley they washed away, the man always looked like muck. They gave up. They put him back in his burlap frock, and showed him to the chamber where the royal family dined.

His Majesty was already there, seated at a small table set for four. He wore his longest cerulean robe, fringed in silver to match his great fronds of beard. The queen was opposite him, and, across from Gimmel, their sixteen-year-old girl. The princess wore her auburn hair in peasant braids, a style she’d learned from her mother, whose younger figure hers conjured like a reflection in fresh water. The gambler winced when he saw her.

— She has eyes the color of the dice you once gave me, Gimmel. Just like her mother. Now tell me, what did you do with all the money I lost to you that day?

— I gambled everything away.

— That must have taken a while.

— No, not at all.

The meal was served. The soup was made from blackberries and radishes, which, long after farmers had begun to grow a full range of crops again, were found in fact to be a tasty combination. After that, there was game hunted in the forest, and a salad of sweet white flowers raised by the princess. The wine was sweet as well, and, after a third glass, the gambler was enticed by His Majesty to tell what had become of the money. He glanced again at the princess—who’d taken to unknotting and reknitting her auburn braids in order to avoid his crooked cyclops gaze—and then at the aged queen herself. At last he said that his fortunes had turned less than an hour’s journey from the palace.

One of the wagons carrying his treasure hit a rut (he told the king), and while he labored to get it out, a peasant woman came over and asked what he was carrying. He said the cart held half a fortune, and the rest was in the other one. Since she wouldn’t believe him, he let her look beneath the covering, and told her where his bounty came from. Putting up her auburn braids, she tried on a diamond tiara. The fit was perfect. She sighed and declared that she was meant to be a princess.

Gimmel had to agree. So that she wouldn’t leave, he offered to share his fortune.

— And what do I have to do?

— Be my companion.

She looked him over, and shuddered. She exclaimed he was uglier than a fairy-tale frog. She said that if he wanted the chance to wed her, he’d have to gamble everything he had.

Without a moment’s hesitation, the gambler reached into his tobacco pouch. The girl set her emerald eyes on his wooden dice. She chose the number seven for luck. Gimmel chose two, the only number that mattered anymore.

They each took a die. She threw hers with eagerness. It came up one. His hand trembled, his will to win shaking, for the first time, the thrill of gambling. His die dropped. He looked. He’d rolled a royal six—and lost his chance to leap, so to speak, from frog to prince.

The girl kissed him anyway, once, on the lips. Nothing changed.

When Gimmel’s tale was through, the king wanted to know why he’d consented to bet his whole fortune instead of just one cart.

— Surely no peasant could be worth all that.

— She bet everything, Your Majesty. How could I not do the same?

— And what happened to this fortunate young girl? Why haven’t I heard of her, if she lives so near?

— You have. You married her.

The king looked at his wife. For a moment, under the sparkling tiara of chandelier light, her gray hairs seemed to tinge auburn. Her green eyes settled on him. His Majesty saw that the gambler spoke the truth.

To show his gratitude, the king proposed that Gimmel take his daughter for a wife. The princess shrieked, but before she could escape the old frog, he declined. He left the palace that night, carrying only his wooden dice. Happily ever after might be fit for a king, but such was not a fate given to a gambler.

DALET THE THIEF

Dalet was a thief. He’d learned to be a thief from his father, who’d apprenticed under his father’s father, once upon a time: Thievery had been the family business for as long as anyone could remember. In his town, Dalet was the only thief, just as there was one family that produced coopers, while another raised each generation’s butcher.

Of course every town needs a thief, and for forty years Dalet’s father had fulfilled that role admirably well. The old man would filch the baker’s batter spoon, or swipe the shoemaker’s leather apron, and, later the same day, the baker or shoemaker would come to his door to take back spoon or apron in exchange for a couple of coppers. Dalet’s family had lived on that money. They’d never been wealthy, but they got by respectably, and when Dalet’s father died, a widower of fifty, he had a wooden casket at a funeral attended by everybody.

On the whole, the village was prosperous by then. What could go wrong? Because Dalet’s family was always to blame, nothing was ever missing for long. Nobody ever lost money or time. Folks spent their surplus on luxuries: gilded candlesticks and crystal goblets and gemstones for their unwed daughters. Tailors and tinkers threw lavish suppers simply so their neighbors could admire a serving platter or a saltcellar or some embroidered table linen. Market day became a pageant of mass affluence, and collective envy.

In at least one respect, Dalet was not a good thief. Given the vast wealth around him, he should swiftly have become rich. But Dalet lacked ambition. Only when he had to, would he take the shoemaker’s leather apron, and then he’d wait patiently for days before anyone would notice that it was gone. The village elders were worried about his behavior, concerned for the natural order. They summoned him to the town square.

— Why do you neglect your work, Dalet? Your father didn’t teach you its value?

— I stole something last week. I took Avram the baker’s batter spoon.

— Again?

— Why not?

— Avram has more batter spoons than he can remember. He buys so many, carved from mahogany and cherry, that he can’t be bothered to bake a batch of bread. All he does is spend money. One day he orders a pair of boots, the next day it’s a set of horses, while the batter sits in a vat and rots.

— I should steal a better spoon, then?

—One day you’ll want to marry, Dalet. You’ll have to provide for a family. You won’t be able to survive on batter spoons alone.

—I’ve also stolen Dov the shoemaker’s leather apron.

—Dov’s too busy chasing after Zev the carpenter about building a new home even to cobble Avram’s new boots for him. Why should he care if you take his smock? Listen, Dalet. Like any tradesman, a thief has to keep up with the times. You’ve got to steal what people need. Otherwise someone else might. And a village with more than one thief is more cursed than a country with two kings.

•   •   •

When Dalet got home that evening, he took the baker’s batter spoon from behind the stove. The spoon was over a century old, so often stolen by his family, over so many generations, that it was practically an heirloom. He knew its contour better than the shape of his own crooked face. It was beautiful to him like a woman. A living thing. A companion. Yet on that night, as darkness deepened around him, he saw that he was all alone.

He put on his father’s black cloak. Tradition held that the garment made him invisible to honest people, though he’d never told a lie and yet could plainly see himself. Still, Dalet was not one to question tradition, and he’d nothing else to keep him warm. He grasped the spoon and shut his door.

Dalet lived in a decrepit shack outside the town. The walk to the baker’s house took ten minutes under a full moon, and at least half an hour on a night as black as this. He passed the stables, followed by the town square, where Shlomo the watchman strolled past without a greeting. Guided by the light cast from Shlomo’s lantern, Dalet entered Avram’s home through the unlocked front door.

The family was asleep, all except the youngest daughter. Comely little Riva wore a slip of white lace, and several rings on slender adolescent fingers. She emerged from the larder, nibbling on a crust. Though drenched in honey, the bread was crummy, inevitably stale since the village imported baked goods from the city. She glanced at Dalet’s invisible cloak, and then his crooked face. Setting down the candle that she carried, she met his luminous eyes.

— What are you doing here?

— I’m returning your father’s spoon.

— Why? No one wants it.

— I know. I’m supposed to steal stuff that people care about.

— People care about stars. If you wish on them, they twinkle.

— I can’t filch stars. I’m afraid of heights.

— How about jewels? Everyone wants those. It’s why they sparkle.

— Do you mean you can actually see what people desire?

— Don’t you know, Dalet? Look around you.

Tossing the old spoon into the larder behind some bags of grain, she blew out the candle. Even in the darkness, Dalet saw her smile. He trembled, yet before he could extend a hand, she’d shuffled down a corridor. As her footsteps drifted off, the room faded black.

Standing in the dark, Dalet reckoned: Stars twinkled and jewels sparkled and when a girl was wed, when her groom met her at the altar, she had to hide behind a veil for fear of blinding him. Desire burned in everything, sometimes less, sometimes more, kindled by the beholder. But while children could perceive that flame plainly, adults felt it only indirectly, as the heat of envy, unless—

Haltingly, Dalet followed the hallway in the direction that the girl had gone, sensing a dim light ahead of him. As he approached, he whispered Riva’s name. No response. His hand touched the leg of a table, where she’d set out her rings for him. He left them. He continued to wander, exploring the constellation of desire.

The following room revealed more. Dalet discerned rows of dishes, ranks of silverware. He counted a dozen blown-glass goblets, each rim aglow like a small halo. Yet nothing dazzled like what he sensed below. He stretched out his hand, found that he had to open a cabinet, where something precious had been concealed behind piles of linen.

Smaller than he’d imagined, but burning more fiercely than he’d have believed: a decanter cut from a single rock crystal. Did it hold hellfire? Dalet checked that the stopper was tight, and, embracing his lot in life, made his escape.