Collected Fictions

Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth

... is the likeness of the spider who buildeth her a house.

Qur'an, XXIX: 40

"This," said Dunraven with a vast gesture that did not blench at the cloudy stars, and that took in the black moors, the sea, and a majestic, tumbledown edifice that looked much like a stable fallen upon hard times, "is my ancestral land."

Unwin, his companion, removed the pipe from his mouth and uttered modest sounds of approbation. It was the first evening of the summer of 1914; weary of a world that lacked the dignity of danger, the friends prized the solitude of that corner of Cornwall. Dunraven cultivated a dark beard and was conscious of himself as the author of quite a respectable epic, though his contemporaries were incapable of so much as scanning it and its subject had yet to be revealed to him; Unwin had published a study of the theorem that Fermât had not written in the margins of a page by Diophantus. Both men—is there really any need to say this?—were young, absentminded, and passionate.

"It must be a good quarter century ago now," said Dunraven, "that Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, the chieftain or king or whatnot of some tribe or another along the Nile, died in the central chamber of that house at the hands of his cousin Said. Even after all these years, the circumstances of his death are still not entirely clear."

Meekly, Unwin asked why.

"Several reasons," came the answer. "First, that house up there is a labyrinth. Second, a slave and a lion had stood guard over it. Third, a secret treasure disappeared— poof!, vanished. Fourth, the murderer was already dead by the time the murder took place. Fifth ..."

Vexed a bit, Unwin stopped him.

"Please—let's not multiply the mysteries," he said. "Mysteries ought to be simple. Remember Poe's purloined letter, remember Zangwill's locked room."

"Or complex," volleyed Dunraven. "Remember the universe."

Climbing up steep sandy hills, they had arrived at the labyrinth. Seen at close range, it looked like a straight, virtually interminable wall of unplastered brick, scarcely taller than a man. Dunraven said it made a circle, but one so broad that its curvature was imperceptible. Unwin recalled Nicholas of Cusa, for whom every straight line was the arc of an infinite circle.... Toward midnight, they came upon a ruined doorway, which opened onto a long, perilous entryway whose walls had no other windows or doors. Dunraven said that inside, one came to crossing after crossing in the halls, but if they always turned to the left, in less than an hour they would be at the center of the maze. Unwin nodded. Their cautious steps echoed on the stone floor; at every branching, the corridor grew narrower. They felt they were being suffocated by the house—the ceiling was very low. They were forced to walk in single file through the knotted darkness. Unwin led the way; the invisible wall, cumbered with ruggedness and angles, passed endlessly under his hand. And as he made his way slowly through the darkness, Unwin heard from his friend's lips the story of Ibn-Hakam's death.

"What well may be my earliest memory," Dunraven began, "is Ibn-Hakam on the docks at Pentreath. He was followed by a black man with a lion—undoubtedly the first black man and the first lion I'd ever set eyes upon, with the exception of those lithographs of Bible stories, I suppose. I was just a boy then, but I'll tell you, that savage sun-colored beast and night-colored man didn't make the impression on me that Ibn-Hakam did. He seemed so tall. He was a sallow-skinned fellow, with black eyes and drooping eyelids, an insolent nose, thick lips, a saffron yellow beard, a broad chest, and a silent, self-assured way of walking. When I got home, I said, 'A king has come in a ship.' Later, when the brickmasons went to work, I expanded upon the title a bit and called him the King of Babel.

"The news that this outsider was to settle in Pentreath was welcome, I must say; the size and design of his house, though, met with amazement and even outrage. It seemed intolerable that a house should be composed of a single room but yet league upon league of hallways. 'That's all very well for the Moors,' people said, 'but no Christian ever built such a house.' Our rector, Mr. Allaby, a man of curious reading, dug up the story of a king punished by the Deity for having built a labyrinth, and he read it from the pulpit.

The Monday following, Ibn-Hakam paid a visit to the rectory; the details of their brief interview were not made public at the time, but no sermon afterward ever alluded to the act of arrogance, and the Moor was able to hire his brickmasons. Years later, when Ibn-Hakam was murdered, Allaby gave a statement to the authorities as to the substance of their conversation.

"The words, he said, that Ibn-Hakam had stood in his study—not sat, mind you, but stood —and spoken to him were these, or words very similar: 'There is no longer any man who can contemn what I do. The sins that bring dishonor to my name are so terrible that even should I repeat the Ultimate Name of God for century upon century I would not succeed in mitigating even one of the torments that shall be mine; the sins that bring dishonor to my name are so terrible that even should I kill you with these very hands, that act would not increase the torments to which infinite Justice has destined me. There is no land ignorant of my name; I am Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, and I have ruled the tribes of the desert with an iron scepter. For many years with the aid of my cousin Sa'id I plundered those tribes, but God hearkened to their cries and suffered them to rise against me. My men were crushed and put to the knife. I managed to flee with the treasure I had hoarded up through my years of pillaging. Sa'id led me to the sepulcher of a saint, which lay at the foot of a stone mountain. I ordered my slave man to stand watch over the face of the desert; Sa'id and I, exhausted, lay down to sleep. That night I dreamt that I was imprisoned within a nest of vipers. I awoke in horror; beside me, in the morning light, Sa'id lay sleeping; the brush of a spider web against my skin had caused me to dream that dream. It pained me that Sa'id, who was a coward, should sleep so soundly. I reflected that the treasure was not infinite, and that he might claim a part of it. In my waistband was my dagger with its silver handle; I unsheathed it and drew it across his throat. As he died he stammered out a few words that I could not understand. I looked at him; he was dead, but I feared that he might yet stand, so I ordered my slave to crush his face with a stone. After that, we wandered under the heavens until one day we glimpsed a sea, with tall ships furrowing its waves. The thought came to me that a dead man cannot travel across the water, so I resolved to seek out other lands. The first night that we were upon the ocean I dreamt that I was murdering Sa'id.

Everything happened again, just as it had before, but this time I understood his words. He said As you slay me now, so shall I slay you, no matter where you flee. I have sworn to foil that threat; I shall hide myself in the center of a labyrinth, so that his shade may lose its way.'

"That said, Ibn-Hakam took his leave. Allaby tried to think that the Moor was mad and that that absurd labyrinth of his was a symbol, a clear testament to his madness. Then he reflected that the notion of madness squared with the extravagant house and the extravagant tale, but not with the lively impression that the man Ibn-Hakam himself gave. Perhaps such tales were indigenous to the sandy wastes of Egypt, perhaps such oddities like the dragons in Pliny, were attributable less to an individual person than to a whole culture.... In London, Allaby pored through back issues of the Times; he found that such a rebellion had in fact occurred, as had the subsequent defeat of al-Bokhari and his vizier, a man with a reputation as a coward.

"The moment the brickmasons were done, Ibn-Hakam set up house-keeping in the center of his labyrinth.

He was never seen again by the townspeople; sometimes Allaby feared that Sa'id had already gotten to him and killed him. At night, the wind would bring us the sound of the lion's roaring, and the sheep in the pen would huddle together in ancestral fear.

"Ships from Eastern ports would often anchor in our little bay here, bound for Cardiff or Bristol. The slave would come down from the labyrinth (which at that time, I recall, was not pink but bright crimson) and exchange African words with the crews; he seemed to be looking out for the vizier's ghost among the men. Everyone knew that these ships carried contraband, and if they were carrying outlawed ivories or liquors, why not the ghosts of dead men?

"Three years after the house was built, the Rose of Sharon anchored at the foot of the cliffs. I was not one of those who saw the ship, so it's altogether possible that the image I have of her is influenced by some forgotten print of Aboukir or Trafalgar, but my understanding is that she was one of those very elaborately carved vessels that seem less the work of shipwrights than of carpenters, and less that of carpenters than of cabinetmakers. She was (if not in reality, at least in my dreams) a burnished, dark, silent, swift craft, manned by Arabs and Malays.

"She anchored around dawn one morning in October. Toward night-fall, Ibn-Hakam burst into Allaby's house, totally unmanned by terror. He could hardly manage to tell Allaby that Sa'id had found his way into the labyrinth, and that his slave and lion had been murdered. He asked in all seriousness if the authorities could do nothing to protect him. Before Allaby could answer, he was gone, for the second and last time—as though snatched away by the same terror that had brought him to the house. Sitting there alone now in his study, Allaby thought with amazement that this terrified man had brought iron tribes in the Sudan under his thumb, had known what it is to do battle and what it is to kill. The next day, he noticed that the ship had sailed (for Suakin in the Red Sea, it was later learned). It occurred to him that it was his duty to confirm the murder of the slave, and so he climbed up to the labyrinth. Al-Bokhari's breathless story had sounded like mad fantasy to him, but at one corner in the long corridors he came upon the lion, which was dead, and at another, he found the slave, who was dead, and in the central chamber, he found Al-Bokhari himself, whose face had been smashed in. At the man's feet there was a coffer inlaid with mother-of-pearl; the lock had been forced and not a single coin remained."

The final periods, weighted with oratorical pauses, strained for eloquence; Unwin figured Dunraven had pronounced them many times, with the same self-conscious gravity and the same paucity of effect.

"How were the lion and the slave killed?" he asked, to feign interest.

The incorrigible voice answered with somber satisfaction.

"Their faces had been smashed in, as well."

To the sound of their footsteps was added the sound of rain. It occurred to Unwin that they would have to sleep in the labyrinth, in the central chamber of the tale, and that in retrospect he would surely see that long discomfort as adventure. He remained silent. Dunraven could not contain himself; like a man who will not forgive a debt, he asked:

"Quite an inexplicable story, don't you think?"

Unwin answered as though thinking out loud:

"I don't know whether it's explicable or inexplicable. I know it's a bloody lie."

Dunraven burst forth in a torrent of curses and invoked the eyewitness of the rector's elder son—Allaby, apparently, having died—and of every inhabitant of Pentreath. No less taken aback than Dunraven must have been, Unwin begged his pardon. Time, in the dark, seemed slower, longer; both men feared they had lost their way, and they were very tired by the time a dim brightness coming from above showed them the first steps of a narrow staircase. They climbed the stairs and found themselves in a round apartment, a good bit run-down and gone to seed. Two signs of the ill-fated king remained: a narrow window that looked out over the moors and the sea, and, in the floor, the trap door that opened onto the curve of the staircase. The apartment, though spacious, was very much like a jail cell.

Driven to it less by the rain than by the desire to live for the memory and the anecdote, the friends did spend the night within the labyrinth. The mathematician slept soundly; not so the poet, who was haunted by lines of poetry that his rational mind knew to be dreadful:

Faceless the sultry and overpowering lion, Faceless the stricken slave, faceless the king.

Unwin had thought that the story of Al-Bokhari's murder held no interest for him, yet he awoke convinced that he had solved it. All that day he was preoccupied and taciturn, fitting and refitting the pieces, and two nights later, he rang up Dunraven and asked him to meet him at a pub in London, where he spoke to him these words, or words very much like them:

"Back in Cornwall, I said the story that you'd told me was a lie. What I meant was this: the facts were true, or might be true, but told in the way you told them, they were clearly humbug. Let me begin with the biggest lie of all, the incredible labyrinth. A fleeing man doesn't hide out in a labyrinth. He doesn't throw up a labyrinth on the highest point on the coast, and he doesn't throw up a crimson-colored labyrinth that sailors see from miles offshore. There's no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one. For the man who truly wants to hide himself, London is a much better labyrinth than a rooftop room to which every blessed hallway in a building leads. That piece of wisdom, which I submit to you this evening, came to me night before last, while we were listening to the rain on the roof of the labyrinth and waiting to be visited by Morpheus. Warned and corrected by it, I chose to ignore those absurd 'facts' of yours and think about something sensible."

"Set theory, for instance, or the fourth dimension of space," Dunraven remarked.

"No," said Unwin with gravity. "I thought about the Cretan labyrinth. The labyrinth at whose center was a man with the head of a bull."

Dunraven, who had read a great many detective novels, thought that the solution of a mystery was always a good deal less interesting than the mystery itself; the mystery had a touch of the supernatural and even the divine about it, while the solution was a sleight of hand. In order to postpone the inevitable, he said:

"A bull's head is how the Minotaur appears on medals and in sculpture. Dante imagined it the other way around, with the body of a bull and the head of a man."

"That version works just as well," Unwin agreed. "What's important is the correspondence between the monstrous house and the monstrous creature that lives inside it. The Minotaur more than justifies the existence of the labyrinth—but no one can say the same for a threat dreamed in a dream. Once one seizes upon the image of the Minotaur (an image that's unavoidable when there's a labyrinth in the case) the problem is all but solved. I do have to confess, however, that I didn't see that that ancient image was the key to it, which is why it was necessary for your story to furnish me with a better, a more exact, symbol—the spider web."

"The spider web?" Dunraven repeated, perplexed.

"Yes. I shouldn't be surprised that the spider web (the universal form of the spider web, I mean—the Platonic spider web) suggested the crime to the murderer (because there is a murderer). You'll recall that Al-Bokhari, in a tomb, dreamt of a nest of vipers and awoke to discover that a spider web had suggested the dream to him. Let's return to that night on which Al-Bokhari dreamt of the tangled nest. The overthrown king and the vizier and the slave are fleeing through the desert with a treasure. They take refuge in a tomb. The vizier—whom we know to be a coward—sleeps; the king— whom we know to be a brave man—does not. So as not to have to share the treasure with his vizier, the king stabs him to death; nights later, the murdered man's ghost threatens the king in a dream. None of this is to be believed; in my view, the events occurred exactly the other way around. That night, I believe, it was the king, the brave man, that slept, and Sa'id, the coward, that lay awake. To sleep is to put the universe for a little while out of your mind, and that sort of unconcern is not easy for a man who knows that unsheathed swords are after him. Sa'id, a greedy man, watched over the sleep of his king. He thought of killing him, perhaps even toyed with the knife, but he didn't have the courage for it. He called the slave. They hid part of the treasure in the tomb, then fled to Suakin and on to England. Not to hide from Al-Bokhari, you understand, but in fact to lure him to them and kill him—that was what led the vizier to build the high labyrinth of bright crimson walls in full view of the sea. He knew that ships would carry the fame of the slave, the lion, and the scarlet man back to the ports of Nubia, and that sooner or later Al-Bokhari would come to beard him in his labyrinth. The trap was laid in the web's last corridor. Al-Bokhari had infinite contempt for Sa'id; he would never stoop to take the slightest precaution. The long-awaited day at last arrives; Ibn-Hakam disembarks in England, walks up to the door of the labyrinth, passes through the blind corridors, and has perhaps set his foot upon the first steps of the staircase when his vizier kills him—perhaps with a bullet, I don't know—from the trap door above. Then the slave no doubt killed the lion, and another bullet no doubt killed the slave. Then Sa'id smashed in the three faces with a large rock.

He had to do that; a single dead man with his face smashed in would have suggested a problem of identity, but the lion, the black man, and the king were elements in a series whose first terms would lead inevitably to the last. There's nothing strange about the fact that the man that visited Allaby was seized with terror; he had just committed the dreadful deed and was about to flee England and recover his treasure."

A thoughtful, or incredulous, silence followed Unwin's words. Dunraven called for another mug of ale-before he offered his opinion.

"I accept," he said, "that my Ibn-Hakam might be Sa'id. Such metamorphoses, you will tell me, are classic artifices of the genre—conventions that the reader insists be followed. What I hesitate to accept is the hypothesis that part of the treasure was left behind in the Sudan. Remember that Sa'id was fleeing the king and the enemies of the king, as well; it's easier, it seems to me, to imagine him stealing the entire treasure than taking the time to bury part of it. Perhaps no odd coins were found lying about because there were no coins left; perhaps the brickmasons had consumed a treasure which, unlike the gold of the Nibelungen, was not infinite. Thus we would have Ibn-Hakam crossing the sea to reclaim a squandered treasure."

"Not squandered," said Unwin. "Invested. Invested in erecting upon the soil of infidels a great circular trap of brickwork intended to entangle and annihilate the king. Sa'id's actions, if your supposition is correct, were motivated not by greed but by hatred and fear. He stole the treasure and then realized that the treasure was not for him the essential thing. The essential thing was that Ibn-Hakam die. He pretended to be Ibn-Hakam, killed Ibn-Hakam, and at last was Ibn-Hakam."

"Yes," agreed Dunraven. "He was a wanderer who, before becoming no one in death, would recall once having been a king, or having pretended to be a king."