Week 4: Storytelling--Locked in a Storm

 

I am but a bird, passed as a vibrant and exotic trinket between the hands of various masters.  Some are kind, some are not.  Forever locked in a cage, I wait for the day when my imprisonment may end and I may once again fly freely through the skies.  Yet, as a parrot of remarkable skill and memory, I fear that day may never come.

Not long past, I was sold once again by a merchant in the streets.  My new master was a jealous and distrustful man, always believing the worst in others.  These sentiments extended to his wife, a woman who was of perfect beauty and grace.  Because I was known as a knowing and cunning bird, a bird of remarkable memory who forgot not what I saw, he had purchased me at the market in order to keep an eye on his lovely wife in the times of his absence.  And so I did.

On my master's first journey, while he traveled to far lands to sell his gleaming wares, I stayed behind in a cage within the mistress's room.  Not knowing of my talents, she proceeded to treat me as nothing more than another decoration, something to brighten her abode.  She never suspected that I might be a spy in her midst and so carried on with those actions which would subject her to my master's wrath.

You see, the mistress was in love with a young Turkish man, a man as handsome and decorous as she was beautiful and graceful.  Together they spent their days feasting and their nights lying in bed, never leaving the side of the other in these stolen moments of time.  If not for the adulterous nature of their relationship, there could not have been a more true and fulfilling love.

But unfortunately my master soon returned, and I was brought before him to speak of his wife's pastimes in his absence.  My very nature required that I dutifully impart to my master the truth of the mistress's actions, and so I told him thus:  "Thy wife has a friend, a young Turkish man, with him she consorted with every day and night over thy absence.  This I swear to you is true."

Being the jealous man he was, master did not react well to the knowledge of his wife's infidelity.  Ired, red-faced with rage, he ordered his wife come into the room and beat her unmercifully until she could take no more.  The pounding of his fists against her soft flesh resounded like thunder, his slaps cracked like lightning.  Tears fell like rain from his wife's eyes, cinched tight against the raging storm.  I looked away, not able to witness the sudden violence that my accusations had brought.  Then, his anger sated, my master then left to spend the night with a business companion, wasting the hours away with lewd entertainment.

Mistress slowly rose from her crumpled position on the ground, a cut streaked with blood and various purpling bruises marring the porcelain complexion of her face.  Anger, fear, and betrayal burned in equal parts within her eyes, disappearing behind a blank wall as she shuttered her emotions and gathered her countenance.  As I watched on from my own prison with sympathetic gaze, she called to herself her maid servants.  Before I could hear what was said, I was carried from the room back into the mistress's bedroom.

Later that night, I awoke to the sounds of crashing thunder, seeming as if it arose from right beside me.  My cage had been covered with a thin, red blanket, but through it I witnessed flashes of lightning which tinged my prison scarlet as blood with their unholy light.  The shutters on the window behind me banged from the violence of the storm, wind entering the bedchamber and causing the cover to rustle and blow against my cage.  The gusts even sent spatters of rain into the room, some of which wet the sheet around me.  I could hear nothing of the mistress over the cacophony of noise and believed that she was nestled into bed, recovering from her beating and sheltered from the storm.

Alas, what was I to tell my master when called upon the following day to speak of his wife's repast the night before, when I knew not her actions?  Even fearing his wrath, I could tell of naught but the truth.  "I beg your pardon, master, but I could neither see nor hear the mistress due to the storm that raged through the night.  Forgive me, but I have naught to report."

As I spoke, the shutters on mistress's eyes raised briefly, and I saw there a flash of pain and sorrow while unshed tears glistened on her lashes.  But then the moment passed, and her eyes once again seemed impenetrable and the tears disappeared on a blink.  A flurry of movement drew my attention back to the master, who roughly grabbed hold of my cage and shook it harshly.  Fear filled my being as he shouted through the clatter of the bars.  "The summer tide is at hand!  Do not speak to me of storms and rain when none could have come.  Tell me what has passed!"

Feathers ruffled and shaking with terror, I spoke again of what had occurred; "My vision was obscured by cloth and flashing lightning, my hearing overwhelmed by rumbling thunder, and the wind and rain kept me huddled in my cage.  All this kept me from witnessing any behavior of your wife.  This much I swear to you is true."

At this my master grew more agitated, veins pulsing along his forehead and his throat.  A red flush stole over his face, and his eyes grew bloodshot.  A key was thrust into the lock of my prison, and the door flung open hastily.  The freedom I desired was so near it could be tasted, and yet I knew even then that I would never fly free from this prison.  A meaty fist clenched around my body, squeezing like a vice.  I could not gain my breath, and my vision began to gray.  I looked one final time towards the mistress, whose eyes were once again cluttered with a sorrowful emotion and endless pain.  A tear tracked down her purple and white cheek, and then all was black as midnight. . .

Author's Note.  "This parrot is no more.  It has ceased to be.  It's expired and gone to meet its maker. . . This is an ex-parrot."  Just a bit of humor to brighten up this hopelessly depressing story.  Sorry 'bout that one.  In any case, I decided to tell the story of "The Merchant and the Parrot," from the Arabian Nights unit. I told it from the point of view of the parrot just to give it a bit of a twist and a different perspective.  In this tale, a merchant buys a parrot to tell him whether his wife is cheating on him in his absence.  The parrot is eventually deceived by the wife when she has her maids simulate a storm around the parrot's cage.  No longer believing the parrot is telling the truth when he tells the merchant his wife is cheating, the merchant kills the parrot in anger.  Then, when he discovers that his wife really did cheat and the parrot was telling the truth, he kills the wife and the Turk she cheated with.  (Since I told this story from the point of view of the parrot, though, you don't get that last murderous section of the tale.)  Basically, a happy story all around.  Ciao!

(Sorry for the obligatory Monty Python quote, but it was necessary--I mean, this story had an actual dead parrot sooooo. . . yeah.  You're welcome.)

Image Information.  Parrot in Bloom; photo by russavia, 2012.  Wikimedia.
Amazona aestiva; photo by Penando .... DSCF2141a, 2006.  Flickr.

Bibliography.  "The Story of the Parrot" from The Arabian Nights' Entertainments.  By Andrew Lang, illustrated by H.J. Ford (1898).  Untextbook.