THE STORY OF THE PORTER WITH THE YOUNG LADIES
Source
The second saâlouk spends some wonderful time with the underground girl, but he makes a mistake and it ends up badly.
**
ON THE ELEVENTH NIGHT
Sheherazade said:
The second saâlouk continued his story:
I told the girl in the underground everything that had happened to me, from the beginning to the end. And that really hurt her a lot for me, because she cried and said to me: “I too will tell you my story:
“Know then that I am the daughter of King Aknamus, the last king of India, master of the Isle of Ebony. He had married me to my uncle's son. But on the very night of my wedding, before I had lost my virginity, an efreet kidnapped me, whose name was Georgirus, son of Rajmus, son of Eblis himself! He picked me up and flew away and set me down in this place, where he carried everything I could want in terms of jams and sweets, dresses, precious fabrics, furniture, food, and drink. Since that time, he comes to see me every ten days, sleeps with me one night, right here, and leaves in the morning. He also warned me that, if I needed him during the regular ten days that he spent away from me, all I had to do, day or night, was to touch these two lines that are written there, under the cupola of this room. And, indeed, since then, as soon as I touch this inscription, I see it appear. This time, it has already been four days since he came, and he still has six days to go. So you could stay with me for five days and then leave a day before he arrives. »
And I answered: “Certainly! I can." Then she was very happy; she stood up straight, took my hand, led me through an arched door, and finally led me to a nice and pleasant hammam full of a sweet atmosphere. Then, immediately, I undressed, and she also undressed quite naked; and we both entered the bath. After the bath, we sat down on the platform of the hammam, she next to me, and she began to offer me a drink of musk syrup and she placed delicious pastries in front of me. Then we continued to talk nicely and eat of all that was the good of the efreet, his captor.
Then she said to me: "For tonight you are going to sleep and rest well from your fatigue so that you can be well rested afterward." »
And I, my mistress, wanted to sleep well, after having thanked her very much. And I forgot, in truth, all my cares!
When I woke up, I found her sitting next to me, and she was pleasantly massaging my limbs and feet. So I invoked Allah to call upon her all blessings, and we sat down to talk for an hour, and she said very nice things to me. She said to me, “By Allah! before, all alone in this underground palace, I was very sad and I felt my chest shrink, because I could not find anyone with whom to talk, and that for twenty years! But praise be to Allah! May He be glorified for having thus led you close to me! »
Then, in her soft voice, she sang me this stanza:
If of your coming
"We had been warned in advance,*
"For carpet at your feet, we would have laid"
The pure blood of our hearts and the black velvet of our eyes!
We would have spread the coolness of our cheeks
And the young flesh of our silken thighs
*As a bed, O traveler of the night!"
Because your place is above our eyelids!
On hearing these verses, I thanked her, my hand on my heart; and her love was embedded even more violently in me; and my cares and sorrows flew away. Then we began to drink from the same cup, and that until nightfall: then, that night, I lay down with her, in bliss. And never in my life had I had a night like that night. So when morning came, we arose very pleased with each other and blissful indeed!
So, I, all fired up again and above all to lengthen my happiness, I said to her: “Do you want me to bring you out of the earth and get rid of that genie like this?" Then she began to laugh, and said to me: "Shut up, and be content with what you have!" Let's see! this poor efreet will only have one day out of ten, and you, I promise you the other nine days every time! "So I, carried away by the ardor of passion, went very far in words, for I said to her: “Not at all! I will immediately destroy this cupola from top to bottom where these magical inscriptions are engraved so that the efreet comes within my reach and I can kill it! Because, for a long time, I've been used to making a game of the massacre of all the efreets above and below ground!"
At these words, and to calm me down, she began to recite these lines to me:
O you who ask for a delay before separation, and who find distance hard,
Do you not know that it is the sure way not to get attached, but simply to love?
Don't you know how to think and tell yourself that weariness is the very rule of all attachment,
And that rupture is the conclusion of all friendship!...
But I, without paying attention to these verses she recited to me, I gave a violent kick to the dome!…
When then, O my mistress, I extended this violent kick to the dome, the woman said to me, “Here is the efreet! It happens to us! Didn't I warn you? But, by Allah! you lose me! Yet think, you, to save yourself, and leave by the same place from which you came!"
So I rushed up the stairs. But unfortunately, because of the violence of my terror, I forgot my sandals and my axe. So, as I had hardly climbed a few steps of the staircase, I turned around a little to take a last look at my sandals and my axe; but I saw the earth half open and a large, horribly hideous efreet come out of it, which said to the woman: “Why this terrible shock with which you have just terrified me? What misfortune is befalling you?" She answered: "No misfortune, in truth, except that just now I felt my chest shrink from my loneliness, and I got up to go and drink some refreshing drink which made my chest expand, and, as I rose too abruptly to do so, I slipped and fell against the dome." But the efreet said to her: “O brazen libertine! how you know how to lie! Then he began to look in the palace, to the right, to the left, and he finally found my sandals and my axe. So he exclaimed: “Hey! what do these utensils mean? Say! Where do you get these human objects from?" She replied: “You just showed them to me! I have never seen them before! Probably they were hung behind your back, and you will have brought them here yourself. Then the genie, in the height of rage, exclaimed: “What absurd, shady, and twisted words! They can have no hold on me, O debauched woman!"
At these words he stripped her naked, placed her on the cross between four stakes driven into the ground, and, having put her to the torture, he began to question her about what had happened. But I couldn't bear it any longer or hear her crying; and I quickly ascended the stairs, trembling with terror; and, having arrived at last outside, I replaced the lid as it was, and I concealed it from view by covering it with earth. And I repented of my action bordering on repentance. And I began to think of the girl, of her beauty, and of the tortures inflicted on her by that cursed one when she had already been with him for twenty years. And above all, I was very pained at the thought that he was torturing her because of me. And, at that moment, I began to think also of my father and his kingdom and of the miserable condition of a lumberjack in which I was, and, while weeping, I recited a verse on this sad subject.
At this point in her narration, Sheherazade saw the morning appear and quietly fell silent.
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