The Shaving of Shagpat, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> The Shaving of Shagpat, Complete

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The King looked at Shagpat, perplexed; but the eye of Shagpat gazed as
into the distance of another world. Then said he, 'We shall hear nought
from the mouth of Shagpat till he is avenged, and till then he is silent
with exceeding wrath.' Hearing this, Noorna ran quickly to a window of
the Hall, and let loose a white dove from her bosom.

Then came there that flash which is recorded in old traditions as the
fourth of the flashes of thunderless lightnings, after the passing of
which, hundreds of fakirs that had been awaiting it saw nothing further
on this earth. Down through the Hall it swept; and lo! when the Kings and
the people recovered their sight to regard Shagpat, he was, one side of
him, clean shorn, the shaven side shining as the very moon!

Surely from that moment there was no longer aught mortal in the combat
that ensued. For now, while amazement and horror palsied all present, the
Genie Karaz, uttering a howl of fury, shot down the length of the Hall
like a black storm-bolt, and caught up Shagpat, and whirled off with him
into the air; and they beheld him dive and dodge the lightnings that
beset him from upper heaven, catching Shagpat from them, now by the
heels, now by the hair remaining one side his head. This lasted a full
hour, when the Genie paused a second, and made a sheer descent into the
earth. Then saw they the wings of Koorookh, each a league in length,
overshadow the entire land, and on the neck of the bird sat Shibli
Bagarag cleaving through the earth with his blade, and he sat on Koorookh
as the moon sits on the midnight. There was no light save the light shed
abroad by the flashes of the blade, and in these they beheld the air
suffocated with Afrites and Genii in a red and brown and white heat,
followers of Karaz. Strokes of the blade clove them, and their blood was
fire that flowed over the feathers of Koorookh, lighting him in a
conflagration; but the bird flew constantly to a fountain of earth below
and extinguished it. Then the battle recommenced, and the solid earth
yawned at the gashes made by the mighty blade, and its depths revealed
how Karaz was flying with Shagpat from circle to circle of the
under-regions, hurrying with him downward to the lowest circle, that was
flaming to points, like the hair of vast heads. Presently they saw a
wondrous quivering flash divide the Genie, and his heels and head fell
together in the abysses, leaving Shagpat prone on great brasiers of penal
flame. Then the blade made another hissing sweep over Shagpat, leaving
little of the wondrous growths on him save a topknot.

But now was the hour struck when Rabesqurat could be held no longer
serving the ferry in Aklis; and the terrible Queen streamed in the sky,
like a red disastrous comet, and dived, eagle-like, into the depths,
re-ascending with Shagpat in her arms, cherishing him; and lo, there were
suddenly a thousand Shagpats multiplied about, and the hand of Shibli
Bagarag became exhausted with hewing at them. The scornful laugh of the
Queen was heard throughout earth as she triumphed over Shibli Bagarag
with hundreds of Shagpats, Illusions; and he knew not where to strike at
the Shagpat, and was losing all sleight of hand, dexterity, and cunning.
Noorna shrieked, thinking him lost; but Abarak seized his bar, and
leaning it in the direction of Aklis, blew a pellet from it that struck
on the eye of Aklis, and this sent out a stretching finger of beams, and
singled forth very Shagpat from the myriads of semblances, so that he
glowed and was ruddy, the rest cowering pale, and dissolving like
salt-grains in water.

Then saw earth and its inhabitants how the Genie Karaz re-ascended in the
shape of a vulture with a fire beak, pecking at the eyes of him that
wielded the Sword, so that he was bewildered and shook this way and that
over the neck of Koorookh, striking wildly, languidly cleaving towers and
palaces, and monuments of earth underneath him. Now, Shibli Bagarag
discerned his danger, and considered, 'The power of the Sword is to sever
brains and thoughts. Great is Allah! I'll seek my advantage in that.'

So he whirled Koorookh thrice in the crimson smoke of the atmosphere, and
put the blade between the first and second thought in the head of
Rabesqurat, whereby the sense of the combat became immediately confused
in her mind, and she used her powers as the fool does, equally against
all, for the sake of mischief solely--no longer mistress of her own
Illusions; and she began doubling and trebling Shibli Bagarag on the neck
of monstrous birds, speeding in draggled flightiness from one point of
the sky to another. Even in the terror of the combat, Shibli Bagarag was
fair to burst into a fit of violent laughter at the sight of the Queen
wagging her neck loosely, perking it like a mad raven; and he took heart,
and swept the blade rapidly over Shagpat as she dandled him, leaving
Shagpat but one hair remaining on him; yet was that the Identical; and it
arose, and was a serpent in his head, and from its jaws issued a river of
fiery serpents: these and a host of Afrites besieged Shibli Bagarag; and
now, to defend himself, he unloosed the twin Genii, Karavejis and
Veejravoosh, from the wrist of that hand which wielded the Sword of
Aklis, and these alternately interwound before and about him, and were
even as a glittering armour of emerald plates, warding from him the
assaults of the host; and lo! he flew, and the battle followed him over
blazing cities and lands on fire with the slanting hail of sparkles.

By this time every soul in the City of Shagpat, kings and people, all
save Abarak and Noorna bin Noorka, were overcome and prostrate with their
faces to the ground; but Noorna watched the conflict eagerly, and saw the
head of Shagpat sprouting incessant fresh crops of hair, despite the
pertinacious shearing of her betrothed. Then she smote her hands, and
cried, 'Yea! though I lose my beauty and the love of my betrothed, I must
join in this, or he'll be lost.' So, saying to Abarak, 'Watch over me,'
she went into the air, and, as she passed Rabesqurat, was multiplied into
twenty damsels of loveliness. Then Abarak beheld a scorpion following the
twenty in mid-air, and darting stings among them. Noorna tossed a ring,
and it fell in a circle of flame round the scorpion. So, while the
scorpion was shooting in squares to escape from the circle, the
fire-beaked vulture flew to it, and fluttered a dense rain which
swallowed the flame, and the scorpion and vulture assailed Noorna, that
was changed to a golden hawk in the midst of nineteen other golden hawks.
Now, as Rabesqurat came scudding by, and saw the encounter, she made the
twenty hawks a hundred. The Genie Karaz howled at her, and pinioned her
to a pillar below in the Desert, with Shagpat in her arms. But, as he
soared aloft to renew the fight with Noorna, Shibli Bagarag loosed to her
aid the Slaves of the Sword, and Abarak marked him slope to a distant
corner of earth, and reascend in a cloud, which drew swiftly over the
land toward the Great Hall. Lo, Shibli Bagarag stepped from it through a
casement of the Hall, and with him Shagpat, a slack weight, mated out of
all power of motion. Koorookh swooped low, on his back Baba Mustapha, and
Shibli Bagarag flung Abarak beside him on the bird. Then Koorookh whirred
off with them; and while the heavens raged, Shibli Bagarag prepared a
rapid lather, and dashed it over Shagpat, and commenced shearing him with
lightning sweeps of the blade. 'Twas as a racing wheel of fire to see
him! Suddenly he desisted, and wiped the sweat from his face. Then
calling on the name of Allah, he gave a last keen cunning sweep with the
blade, and following that, the earth awfully quaked and groaned, as if
speaking in the abysmal tongue the Mastery of the Event to all men. Aklis
was revealed in burning beams as of a sun, and the trouble of the air
ceased, vapours slowly curling to the four quarters. Shibli Bagarag had
smitten clean through the Identical! Terribly had Noorna and those that
aided her been oppressed by the multitude of their enemies; but, in a
moment these melted away, and Karaz, together with the scorpion that was
Goorelka, vanished. Day was on the baldness of Shagpat.

CONCLUSION

So was shaved Shagpat, the son of Shimpoor, the son of Shoolpi, the son
of Shullum, by Shibli Bagarag, of Shiraz, according to preordainment.

The chronicles relate, that no sooner had he mastered the Event, than men
on the instant perceived what illusion had beguiled them, and, in the
words of the poet,--

The blush with which their folly they confess
Is the first prize of his supreme success.

Even Bootlbac, the drum-beater, drummed in homage to him, and the four
Kings were they that were loudest in their revilings of the spouse of
Kadza, and most obsequious in praises of the Master. The King of the City
was fain to propitiate his people by a voluntary resignation of his
throne to Shibli Bagarag, and that King took well to heart the wisdom of
the sage, when he says:

Power, on Illusion based, o'ertoppeth all;
The more disastrous is its certain fall!

Surely Shibli Bagarag returned the Sword to the Sons of Aklis, flashing
it in midnight air, and they, with the others, did reverence to his
achievement. They were now released from the toil of sharpening the Sword
a half-cycle of years, to wander in delight on the fair surface of the
flowery earth, breathing its roses, wooing its brides; for the mastery of
an Event lasteth among men the space of one cycle of years, and after
that a fresh Illusion springeth to befool mankind, and the Seven must
expend the concluding half-cycle in preparing the edge of the Sword for a
new mastery. As the poet declareth in his scorn:

Some doubt Eternity: from life begun,
Has folly ceased within them, sire to son?
So, ever fresh Illusions will arise
And lord creation, until men are wise.

And he adds:

That is a distant period; so prepare
To fight the false, O youths, and never spare!
For who would live in chronicles renowned
Must combat folly, or as fool be crowned.

Now, for the Kings of Shiraz and of Gaf, Shibli Bagarag entertained them
in honour; but the King of Oolb he disgraced and stripped of his robes,
to invest Baba Mustapha in those royal emblems--a punishment to the
treachery of the King of Oolb, as is said by Aboo Eznol:

When nations with opposing forces, rash,
Shatter each other, thou that wouldst have stood
Apart to profit by the monstrous feud,
Thou art the surest victim of the crash.

Take colours of whichever side thou wilt,
And stedfastly thyself in battle range;
Yet, having taken, shouldst thou dare to change,
Suspicion hunts thee as a thing of guilt.

Baba Mustapha, was pronounced Sovereign of Oolb, amid the acclamations of
the guard encamped under the command of Ravaloke, without the walls.

No less did Shibli Bagarag honour the benefactor of Noorna, making him
chief of his armies; and he, with his own hand, bestowed on the good old
warrior the dress of honour presented to him by the Seven Sons,
charactered with all the mysteries of Aklis, a marvel lost to men in the
failure to master the Illusion now dominating earth.

So, then, of all that had worshipped Shagpat, only Kadza clung to him,
and she departed with him into the realms of Rabesqurat, who reigned
there, divided against herself by the stroke of the Sword. The Queen is
no longer mighty, for the widening of her power has weakened it, she
being now the mistress of the single-thoughted, and them that follow one
idea to the exclusion of a second. The failure in the unveiling of her
last-cherished Illusion was in the succumbing frailty of him that
undertook the task, the world and its wise men having come to the belief
that in thwackings there was ignominy to the soul of man, and a tarnish
on the lustre of heroes. On that score, hear the words of the poet, a
vain protest:

Ye that nourish hopes of fame!
Ye who would be known in song!
Ponder old history, and duly frame
Your souls to meek acceptance of the thong.

Lo! of hundreds who aspire,
Eighties perish-nineties tire!
They who bear up, in spite of wrecks and wracks,
Were season 'd by celestial hail of thwacks.

Fortune in this mortal race
Builds on thwackings for its base;
Thus the All-Wise doth make a flail a staff,
And separates his heavenly corn from chaff.

Think ye, had he never known
Noorna a belabouring crone,
Shibli Bagarag would have shaved Shagpat
The unthwack'd lives in chronicle a rat!

'Tis the thwacking in this den
Maketh lions of true men!
So are we nerved to break the clinging mesh
Which tames the noblest efforts of poor flesh.

Feshnavat became the Master's Vizier, and Abarak remained at the right
hand of Shibli Bagarag, his slave in great adventure. No other condition
than bondage gave peace to Abarak. He was of the class enumerated by the
sage:

Who, with the strength of giants, are but tools,
The weighty hands which serve selected fools.

Now, this was how it was in the case of Baba Mustapha, and the four
Kings, and Feshnavat, and Abarak, and Ravaloke, and Kadza, together with
Shagpat; but, in the case of Noorna bin Noorka, surely she was withering
from a sting of the scorpion shot against her bosom, but the Seven Sons
of Aklis gave her a pass into Aklis on the wings of Koorookh, and
Gulrevaz, the daughter of Aklis, tended her, she that was alone capable
of restoring her, and counteracting the malice of the scorpion by the
hand of purity. So Noorna, prospered; but Shibli Bagarag drooped in
uncertainty of her state, and was as a reaper in a field of harvest,
around whom lie the yellow sheaves, and the brown beam of autumn on his
head, the blaze of plenty; yet is he joyless and stands musing, for one
is away who should be there, and without whom the goblet of Success
giveth an unsweetened draught, and there is nothing pleasant in life, and
the flower on the summit of achievement is blighted. At last, as he was
listlessly dispensing justice in the Great Hall, seven days after the
mastery of the Event, lo, Noorna, in air, borne by Gulrevaz, she fair and
fresh in the revival of health and beauty, and the light of constant
love. Of her entry into the Great Hall, to the embrace of her betrothed,
the poet exclaims, picturing her in a rapture:

Her march is music, and my soul obeys
Each motion, as a lute to cunning fingers
I see the earth throb for her as she sways
Wave-like in air, and like a great flower lingers
Heavily over all, as loath to leave
What loves her so, and for her loss would grieve.

But oh, what other hand than heaven's can paint
Her eyes, and that black bow from which their lightning
Pierces afar! long lustrous eyes, that faint
In languor, or with stormy passion brightening:
Within them world in world lights up from sleep,
And gives a glimpse of the eternal deep.

Sigh round her, odorous winds; and, envious rose,
So vainly envious, with such blushes gifted,
Bow to her; die, strangled with jealous throes,
O Bulbul! when she sings with brow uplifted;
Gather her, happy youth, and for thy gain
Thank Him who could such loveliness ordain.

Surely the Master of the Event advanced to her in the glory of a Sultan,
and seated her beside him in majesty, and their contract of marriage was
read aloud in the Hall, and witnessed, and sealed: joyful was he! Then
commenced that festival which lasted forty days, and is termed the
Festival of the honours of hospitality to the Sons of Aldis, wherein the
head-cook of the palace, Uruish, performed wonders in his science, and
menaced the renown of Zrmack, the head-cook of King Shamshureen. Even so
the confectioner, Dob, excelled himself in devices and inventions, and
his genius urged him to depict in sugars and pastes the entire adventures
of Shibli Bagarag in search of the Sword. Honour we Uruish and Do-b! as
the poet sayeth:

Divide not this fraternal twain;
One are they, and one should for ever remain:
As to sweet close in fine music we look,
So the Confectioner follows the Cook.

And one of the Sons of Aklis, Zaragal, beholding this masterpiece of Dob,
which was served to the guests in the Great Hall on the fortieth evening,
was fair to exclaim in extemporaneous verse:

Have I been wafted to a rise
Of banquet spread in Paradise,
Dower'd with consuming powers divine;--
That I, who have not fail'd to dine,
And greatly,
Fall thus upon the cater and wine
Sedately?

So there was feasting in the Hall, and in the City, and over Earth; great
pledging the Sovereign of Barbers, who had mastered an Event, and become
the benefactor of his craft and of his kind. 'Tis certain the race of the
Bagarags endured for many centuries, and his seed were the rulers of men,
and the seal of their empire stamped on mighty wax the Tackle of Barbers.

Now, of the promise made by the Sons of Aklis to visit Shibli Bagarag
before their compulsory return to the labour of the Sword, and recount to
him the marvel of their antecedent adventures; and of the love and grief
nourished in the souls of men by the beauty and sorrowful eyes of
Gulrevaz, that was mined the Bleeding Lily, and of her engagement to tell
her story, on condition of receiving the first-born of Noorna to nurse
for a season in Aklis; and of Shibli Bagarag's restoration of towns and
monuments destroyed by his battle with Karaz; and of the constancy of
passion of Shibli Bagarag for Noorna, and his esteem for her sweetness,
and his reverence for her wisdom; and of the glory of his reign, and of
the Songs and Sentences of Noorna, and of his Laws for the protection and
upholding of women, in honour of Noorna, concerning which the Sage has
said:

Were men once clad in them, we should create
A race not following, but commanding, fate:

--of all these records, and of the reign of Baba Mustapha in Oolb, surely
the chronicles give them in fulness; and they that have searched say of
them, there is matter therein for the amusement of generations.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS

A woman's at the core of every plot man plotteth
Arm'd with Fear the Foe finds passage to the vital part
Delay in thine undertaking Is disaster of thy own making
Every failure is a step advanced
Failures oft are but advising friends
Fear nought so much as Fear itself
How little a thing serves Fortune's turn
If thou wouldst fix remembrance--thwack!
Lest thou commence to lie--be dumb!
Like an ill-reared fruit, first at the core it rotteth
More culpable the sparer than the spared
No runner can outstrip his fate
Nought credit but what outward orbs reveal
Persist, if thou wouldst truly reach thine ends
Ripe with oft telling and old is the tale
The curse of sorrow is comparison!
The king without his crown hath a forehead like the clown
The overwise themselves hoodwink
'Tis the first step that makes a path
Too often hangs the house on one loose stone
Vanity maketh the strongest most weak
When to loquacious fools with patience rare I listen
Where fools are the fathers of every miracle
Who in a labyrinth wandereth without clue

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