Sinbad’s stepsisters were revoltingly obese and useless: The apple had fallen very far from the tree indeed, as the children of crumbling aristocracies and benevolent dictatorships are wont to do. And Sinbad grew more and more intelligent and aware by the day and found himself very lonely. His yearning for his absent father, when combined with a formative Sunday school education, gave him an aching love for brawny men with beards. But these tendencies were forbidden in that primitive part of the land, and he spoke to no one about it. And one night, when the rest of the family had left to go to the opera, he sat and wept by the stove.
Then came an apparition — a bearded specter — who sang, “I am your Fairy Godfather.” And Sinbad winked, knowing what that meant, and made to remove his belt. “No,” cried the apparition, “not that kind of Fairy. I will give you fancy clothes and a marvelous appearance. And you will go and live with a Prince in a castle in the White Forest. Beware: The spell’s magic is impermanent.” The spell went:
O Possibility begins with a P for Pie
Double S, Single B, Triple I!
And Sinbad’s potential was fully realized, and he found himself transformed, and a gilded carriage arrived to bring him to the Prince’s castle. When his family returned, there was a note: “Dear Family, I have gone to the Prince’s castle; get a new servant.” And his stepsisters whinnied like horses and flung their slippers at the chandelier, shrieking, “What about us? Weren’t we supposed to see the Prince like Mother did and like all the maidens before us?” But times were changing.
There at the castle, Sinbad met a very handsome, gracious, bearded Prince and a fellow newcomer, Cindy, who had too been transformed by her Fairy Godmother. And the Prince welcomed them with broad, muscular arms. On languid nights the Prince taught them to read and write properly and whispered in their ears stories written with the wisdom of ancients, and then the three would fall asleep together, arms and legs intermix’d. But some of the royal family detested the Prince’s new lovers, for the Prince had gotten entangled, not just with peasants beneath his estate, but also with a boy and a girl; the haggard old bespectacled priest in particular was scandalized by this shocking departure from traditional morals. But times were changing.
And these changing times slowly passed, and Sinbad became gratefully accustomed to his new lifestyle and the musky scent of the Prince’s beard against his skin and even the murmur of wild beasts from the White Forest at night. And he ate well and lived well and learnt to quietly tolerate the upturned noses of the rest of the royal family. Each morning the castle bell would toll eight times: ding, dong, ding, dong. And then one morning, as the bell was about to clang, the servants hurriedly woke him up, and began to fit him in black velvet robes.
The Prince, who had (ding!) risen early to tell investors about the new wing of the castle, (dong!) smiled at the boy gently and affectionately; (ding!) and Sinbad was suddenly aware of the sound of champagne bottles being popped (dong!) and a sea of royals and servants had gathered, (ding!) clapping and waving and chanting, “Goodbye! Goodbye!” (dong!), and he was swept away, through the demented crowd (ding!), past the drawbridge, and then he was outside. And, gravely, the bell tolled its final dong, and the velvet slipped from his shoulders into the mud.
Sinbad had nowhere to go, so toward the sea he found himself running, and soon there was the cottage again, by the faded blue sea. And as he burst through the door, he saw that everyone was asleep, and he knew that nothing and everything had changed, and he could no longer live in that wretched cottage like a dog lying upon the filthy floor. And so, still dreaming of his beautiful bearded Prince and savior, he stood by the edge of a cliff, staring out at the endless sea, his heart beating wildly as the waves crashed upon the sandy shore.
Johann Loh is a philosophy major from Singapore. He can be reached at loh@princeton.edu.
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