The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness Read online

  The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness

  by Joel ben Izzy

  ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

  For Taly

  “In the world of stories, nothing is lost.”

  —ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER

  Contents

  Prologue The Beggar King

  CHAPTER ONE The Lost Horse

  CHAPTER TWO The Cricket Who Jumped to the Moon

  CHAPTER THREE Optimism and Pessimism

  CHAPTER FOUR The Vow of Silence

  CHAPTER FIVE The Search for Truth

  CHAPTER SIX The Border Guard

  CHAPTER SEVEN The Appointment

  CHAPTER EIGHT The Wisdom of Chelm

  CHAPTER NINE Buried Treasures

  CHAPTER TEN The Strawberry

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Hershel’s Last Laugh

  CHAPTER TWELVE The Happy Man’s Shirt

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Fox in the Garden

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Secret of Happiness

  Epilogue The Beggar King

  About the Stories

  Acknowledgments

  The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness

  PROLOGUE

  The Beggar King

  LET ME TELL YOU a tale of long ago, from the old city of Jerusalem, back in the days when Solomon was king. He had reached the height of his power and was known throughout the world for his wisdom. With it, he had brought Jerusalem to a golden age. He was the happiest of men and might well have remained so, had it not been for a strange dream.

  It came to him, one sweltering night. In it he saw the door to his chamber open and felt a cool breeze. A moment later, in came his long-dead father, King David. The elder king spoke to his son from the world beyond, telling him of the celestial Jerusalem, identical in every regard to the earthly city, but for a single difference—in the center of the city stood a magnificent temple.

  “And you, my son, must build such a temple.” He described the building in great detail, even as to the size and shape of its stones, as Solomon listened in awe. “One last thing, which is most important,” added King David. “You must build it using no metal, for metal is used in forging weapons of war, and this is to be a temple of peace.”

  “But father,” asked Solomon, “how am I to cut the stones without using metal?”

  His father did not answer, but suddenly vanished, and the dream ended.

  The next morning Solomon called his advisers together, recounting the strange dream and announcing his plans to build the temple, just as his father had described. When he told them he wished to cut the stones without metal, they were as mystified as he.

  Only one—Beniah, his most trusted adviser—offered a suggestion. “Your father once spoke of a tiny worm called the Shamir. Though no larger than a grain of barley, it was said that this worm could split through stone. In fact, this was the worm that had been handed by God to Moses, to carve the Ten Commandments.”

  “Where would I find this worm?” asked Solomon.

  “It has not been seen for many years, your highness.” Beniah paused. “Not since it came to be in the possession of Ashmodai, the King of the Demons.”

  A hush fell over Solomon’s court, for all knew of the power of the demon king. Only Solomon was not afraid. “Very well, then,” he said. “I shall summon Ashmodai!”

  Solomon looked from their frightened faces to the ring he wore on his right hand. A simple gold band, it had been given to him by his father, and had great powers, for it was inscribed with the secret name of God. Solomon had used this ring to summon demons before, lesser demons. But never had anyone summoned the great King of the Demons, who lived at the far end of the world, where the mountains were made of copper and the sky was made of lead.

  Those in the court drew back, as Solomon twisted his ring. Suddenly, a huge ball of fire appeared before him, and when the flames died down, there stood Ashmodai. All were amazed at what they saw, for the demon king stood fully eight feet tall, with glistening blue skin. He had the feet of a chicken, the wings of an eagle, the head of a lizard, and the personality of a jackass.

  “Well, well! If it isn’t King Solomon!” he said, his voice as slippery as his skin. “The great, the wise, and the powerful! Even so, he is not content with the size of his kingdom, but must intrude upon the realm of darkness as well. Tell me, your highness, why have you summoned me?”.

  “I want the worm known as the Shamir, so I may use it to cut the stones for my temple.”

  “Is that all?” asked Ashmodai. “Then here it is!” he said, producing a small, leaden box. “Now, I demand you release me!”

  “No,” said Solomon. “Not yet. I shall keep you chained up here for the seven years it will take me to build the temple, to prevent you or any other demons from causing mischief. After it is done, I will ask you one question, and only when you answer it shall I set you free.”

  “A question for me from the wise King Solomon?” mocked Ashmodai. “And what might that question be?”

  “I must think of it.”

  “Very well, then,” answered Ashmodai. “I shall be here, waiting.”

  WITH ASHMODAI IN the palace, strange things began to happen. Solomon returned from supervising the building of the temple one day to find that all the pillars in the palace had turned to trees, their boughs filled with greenery and ripe, luscious fruit—figs, oranges, and pomegranates. Another night he looked up to see gold coins falling like rain from the domed ceiling of the palace, only to disappear the instant they touched the ground. Sometimes Solomon would hear sweet strains of music, yet when he tried to listen, there was nothing. Ashmodai was a master of illusion, and these illusions Solomon found endlessly fascinating—and infuriating, for they defied his understanding of the world. Each time he found himself fooled, Solomon felt as though his crown were missing a jewel. So, after seven years, when the temple was completed and perfect in every detail, Solomon spoke to Ashmodai.

  “Now, as promised, I shall ask you a question, and only when you answer it shall you be free. For all these years, I have watched your illusions. As a great judge, I am often called upon to distinguish between reality and illusion. Now, all I ask is this: What can you teach me about illusion?”

  With this, Ashmodai laughed such a wild, maniacal laugh that it echoed through all of Jerusalem. “Illusion!” he cackled. “The great, wise king, who has nothing better to do than torment demons, wishes to learn about illusion? Oh, no, your highness. That would be unthinkable, absurd, impossible—” Suddenly Ashmodai stopped, a grin spreading across his lizard face. “Unless—of course—you would be willing to remove your ring?”

  “My ring?” said Solomon. “Remove my ring?”

  Solomon looked at the ring, remembering his father’s words. “As long as you wear it,” he had said, “you will be protected. If you remove it, even for an instant, there is no telling what will happen.”

  And now, here stood Ashmodai, taunting him. “Yes, Solomon. If you wish to learn what I know of illusion, you must remove your ring.”

  “That is out of the question!” said Solomon.

  “Very well, then, you shall not learn the secrets of illusion from me.”

  “Then I’ll not set you free!”

  “That’s quite alright. Time means nothing to me—unlike kings, demons live forever. I am content to wait.” He slumped down in his chains and began humming to himself.

  Desperately curious to hear what Ashmodai had to say, Solomon thought for a time, and finally consulted his advisers. All agreed that it was a bad idea to remove his ring. One even went so far as to say it would be unwise.

  “Unwise!” shouted Solomon. �
��You dare to tell me what is wise? I am the great King Solomon, known throughout the world for my wisdom!”

  “That’s right, your highness,” added Ashmodai. “Why should someone as wise as yourself listen to them?”

  Solomon’s advisers remained silent, as afraid of the king as they were of Ashmodai. Their comments would have been useless, for Solomon had made up his mind. “I shall remove my ring,” he said, “just long enough to hear your answer.”

  Solomon had Ashmodai placed at one end of the palace, surrounded by twenty-four guards, while he himself stood in the opposite corner.

  “Yes, Solomon,” said Ashmodai. “Remove your ring!”

  Slowly Solomon slid the ring from his finger. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a gentle breeze began to blow through the palace. Soon it grew stronger, turning to fierce gusts of wind. As Solomon watched, he realized in horror that the wind was coming from the wings of Ashmodai. Each time he flapped them, he doubled in size, from eight feet to sixteen feet to thirty-two feet, until he towered to the ceiling of the palace, breaking free of his chains, his laughter shattering the glass in the windows.

  “You fool, Solomon! You should never have removed your ring!” He reached down and plucked the ring from Solomon’s hand, then threw it out of a tiny window of the palace. The ring sailed over the city of Jerusalem, beyond the distant hills, past mountains and oceans, finally landing at the far end of the world.

  “And now, Solomon, it’s your turn! Say good-bye to your kingdom!” With these words, he picked the king up by the shoulders and hurled him through a window on the other side of the palace. Solomon sailed over his beloved city, beyond the hills, over the sea for many hours until, at last, he landed in the midst of a vast desert.

  There he lay for some time, every part of his body aching, his mouth parched. He pulled himself up and began walking aimlessly, first this way, then that, until, as the sun set, he came upon a pool of water. He knelt down to drink and there saw something that sent a jolt of terror through him—his reflection.

  His crown, which had been a gift from the creatures of the sea, covered with every known precious gem, was gone. His beautiful robe, which he’d been given by the wind, was now in shreds, and looked to be nothing more than rags. And his face, which had been the most handsome in all Jerusalem, was now that of a weathered old man.

  Thus it was, lost and unknown, that Solomon began his wanderings. Never could he have imagined the twists and turns his road would take as he struggled, in vain, to return to his beloved Jerusalem. It was a journey that would take him great distances and last a lifetime . . .

  I AM NO KING SOLOMON, nor do I claim his wisdom. My voyage was not that of a king, but of a husband, a father, and a teller of tales. Even so, like Solomon, in the story I had told so often, I found myself in a place I never expected to be, in a life I no longer understood.

  My journey carried me into the world of stories. There I learned of the tricks they play upon us, bubbling up through the depths of time to teach us their lessons, guide us, and, if we let them, heal us. I also learned how they can fool us, especially when we think we know them well, how they can cleverly hide their truths in places too obvious to see. Some of these truths I stumbled over, coming across the same lessons Solomon must have found in his travels, lessons that can only be learned from loss.

  I’ll share those truths I found as I tell you my tale, which is itself a true story. But first, let me say what I mean by “truth.” I use the word as storytellers do, the way my old teacher, Lenny, once spoke of truth. He had just told me a most amazing story—about a golden retriever he’d once owned and a blue ‘67 Mustang convertible—and I asked him if it was true.

  “True?” he snapped. “What do you mean by ‘true’? You want to know if it happened, word for word, exactly as I told it? Makes no difference. You may as well ask me if it’s a good story, because a good story is true, whether it happened or not. And a bad story—even if it happened—is a lie.

  “The question,” he added with a grin, “is not whether the story is true, but whether it has truth inside it, the kind with a capital T. And that is a mystery only time can solve. But I’ll warn you, Joel—never be such a horse’s ass to think that just because you can tell a story, you’ve found all its truth. There are stories in this world that need to rattle around inside your brain for twenty years before they reveal a final, hidden grain of truth.”

  Lenny had collected many such grains over the years and they stuck to him, like grit to sandpaper, which may account for his personality. Yet his warning comes to mind whenever I use the word “truth.”

  That said, I’ll tell you my tale essentially as it happened, though I will change some parts along the way, for that is what we storytellers do. Yet, as you read this book, you may find some things that strike you as flat-out unbelievable. I know, for that is just how they struck me when they happened. These are things I could not have made up, and so I’ll leave them unchanged. As Mark Twain said: “Truth is stranger than fiction . . . Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”

  With that, sit back and let me tell you my tale, of a journey that took me through dark times, yet gave me a gift that I treasure. That gift is this story, which I now pass on to you—a tale of lost horses and found wisdom, of buried treasures and wild strawberries, of the beggar king and the secret of happiness.

  STORY ORIGIN: CHINA

  The Lost Horse

  Long ago in a village in northern China, there lived a man who owned a magnificent horse. So beautiful was this horse that people came from miles around just to admire it. They told him he was blessed to own such a horse.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “But what seems like a blessing may be a curse.”

  One day, the horse ran off. It was gone. People came to say how sorry they were for his bad luck.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “But what seems like a curse may be a blessing.”

  A few weeks later, the horse returned. It was not alone. It was followed by twenty-one wild horses. By the law of the land, they became his property. He was rich with horses.

  His neighbors came to congratulate him on his good fortune. “Truly,” they said, “you have been blessed.”

  “Perhaps. But what seems like a blessing may be a curse.”

  Shortly after that his son—his only son—tried to ride one of the wild horses. He was thrown from it and broke his leg. The man’s neighbors came to say how sorry they were. Surely, he had been cursed.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “But what seems like a curse may be a blessing.”

  A week later, the king came through that village, drafting every able-bodied young man for a war against the people of the north. It was a horrible war. Everyone who went from that village was killed. Only that man’s son survived, because of his broken leg.

  To this day, in that village, they say, “What seems like a blessing may be a curse. What seems like a curse may be a blessing.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Lost Horse

  JUST HOW I CAME to be a storyteller is a story in itself, a tale of curses turned to blessings. I certainly wasn’t born into the art, though I’ve met many who were. In a pub at the southernmost tip of Ireland I heard a genuine seanachie, who sang the ancient ballads with such resonance that you could hear the ghosts of his ancestors singing the chorus. In the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem I came to know a Hassidic maggid who could trace his lineage back to Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, the great eighteenth-century mystic teller of tales. And once, on the north shore of Oahu, in Hawaii, I shared the stage with a woman who had been chosen as treasurer of five thousand years’ worth of her ancestors’ stories.

  Me, I had no such credentials, and it always left me feeling a little embarrassed among other storytellers. I had grown up in the least magical place on earth, the suburbs of the suburbs to the east of Los Angeles. Where my family lived there were no movie stars, no beaches—no water of any sort, for that matter. In fact, there was no geog
raphy at all, as far as we could tell; though we were told of purple mountains to the north, we could not see them through the smog.

  It was called the San Gabriel Valley—not to be confused with “the Valley,” which is so well known. Ours was “the Other Valley,” a world flat and square, with relentlessly straight streets leading to freeways in every direction. Those freeways led to other freeways which led to still more freeways. As far as I knew, this was the world.

  I can’t say I grew up in a home filled with stories, either. The truth is, stories take time, and my parents’ time was spent trying to keep our world from crumbling, as they struggled against poverty and my father’s failing health. We belonged to the descending middle class, and my father had tumbled through a dozen careers in an effort to keep us from falling any further. He dreamed of great things for our family, and when those plans inevitably failed he would shrug off the loss with a joke or a proverb. I suppose these might have grown into longer stories had they not been interrupted, usually by the ringing of the telephone. He would rush to answer it, not wanting to miss that all-important call, the one that would surely make us rich, the one that would get our family off welfare, the one that never came.

  As for my mother, she didn’t actually tell us stories, but rather referred to them as she drove us around town. “You must have heard the stories about Chelm? You know, the Jewish town of fools?”

  “No, we haven’t,” my brothers and I would say. “Tell us!”

  “Chelm,” she’d repeat, a dreaminess in her voice coming through the guttural sound of the word. “You must have heard about it. It’s in Poland. Where it snows all the time. Oh, they were the most wonderful stories.”

  “Tell us one now!”

  “Oh, we used to love them. There was one about the Chelmites building their temple, carrying logs down from the top of a mountain—but I’m no storyteller,” she would apologize. “Your Grandpa Izzy was. We could sit and listen to him for hours.” She would then trail off, leaving a picture in my mind of Grandpa Izzy, the great storyteller from the faraway city of Cleveland. Years later, when I began telling stories, I would take his name for my own—Joel ben Izzy, Hebrew for “Joel, son of Izzy.” But I did not know that at the time. All I knew was that something magical was missing and in its stead we had smog. We rolled up our windows to keep it out, and the station wagon became a vacuum, filled with untold stories, winding its way through the endless suburbs.