But she denied it, saying, “No man hath visited me, and thou must have brought these things with thee, for I have never set eyes on them until this instant.” “Again thou liest!” he roared, “and unless thou tell me his name, I will beat thy body black and blue.” With this he turned to look for the wherewithal to beat her, and, at sight of his fierce face and huge bulk, my heart turned to water within me, and I fled up the stairway. Before I reached the top I heard the sound of blows, followed by loud cries and shrieks from the woman. Full of bitter repentance that she should suffer thus on my account, and unable to endure the sounds of torture, I hastened through the trap door and fastened it behind me. Then, when I had covered it with earth, I fled through the forest and paused not till I had gained the house of the tailor.
I found him in a state of great anxiety on my account, for I had been absent three days and three nights. “I feared thou hadst fallen a prey to some wild beast,” he cried, “but praise be to God that thou art safe!” I thanked him, and, saying that I was fatigued and would tell him all later, went to my own apartment to weep over what had come to that poor woman through my rash action. But I had not been there many minutes when the tailor came to me, saying, “There is one, a foreigner, in the shop, who desires to speak with thee. He hath an axe and a pair of sandals, which he thinks are thine, and the other woodcutters have directed him to thee; so come forth to receive them, and to thank him.” With this, he returned to the shop, leaving me pale with fear, for well I knew the meaning of this thing. While I was planning what to do—whether to go into the shop, or escape by some other way—the floor was rent asunder, and there rose from it the Efrite. In a loud voice he told me that he had tortured the lady nigh to death, but without avail, for she would tell him nothing; whereat he had taken the axe and the sandals, and, by enquiries, had traced me to the tailor’s abode. With this, he seized me and bore me aloft through the roof of the house, and thence rapidly through the air into the forest, where he descended through the earth and placed me within the chamber of the palace from which I had fled. There, on the floor, laid the lady, bleeding from the wounds inflicted by the Efrite’s torture. “Shameless woman!” cried he, standing over her; “here is thy lover: deny it not.” She glanced at me, and answered him: “I have never set eyes on this man before.” He appeared to take thought for a moment, and then he said: “Thou wilt swear that thou lovest not this man?” She answered him: “I know him not; I love him not.” The Efrite drew his sword. “If thou lovest him not,” said he, “take this sword and strike off his head.”
She took the sword from him, and, coming towards me, raised it to strike; but I made a sign with my eye, imploring her pity. She replied also with a sign, as if to say, “I have suffered all this through thee.” But I still implored her with the speech of the eye, for, as the poet saith:
The language of the eye, like the kisses of the mouth is sweet as honey, and only lovers understand it.
When the lips are closed, love openeth the windows of the soul, and conveyeth its meaning by soft glances.
And when my meaning was thus conveyed to her, she flung away the sword and faced the Efrite, crying, “I cannot slay him, for he hath done me no injury.” The Efrite answered her not, but, taking up the sword, handed it to me. “Strike off her head,” he said, “and I will set thee free.” I took the sword, and arose to do the deed; but, while my arm was raised to strike, love spoke again from her eyes. My hand trembled, my heart melted. I flung the sword from me. “Wherefore should I slay this woman, who hath done me no injury, and whom I have never seen before?” I said to the Efrite. “Never before God can I commit this crime.” The Efrite took the sword, and saying, “It is clear there is love between you,” he cut off one of the lady’s hands, then the other, and then both her feet. And, in her pain, her eyes were turned on me, and the words of love were in them. The Efrite saw her look, and cried, “Is it not enough? Wilt thou still commit the crime of unfaithfulness with thine eye?” And, raising the sword again, he cut off her head.
“O man,” he said, turning to me, “it is lawful for one, having known his wife for twenty-five years, to kill her for the crime of unfaithfulness. As for thee, I will not permit thee to join her. I will not take thy life, but, as I am minded to punish thee, I will give thee thy choice as to whether thou wilt be changed into the form of a dog, or an ass, or an ape.” Since he had shewn me this clemency, I thought by pleading to melt him further, so that perchance he would pardon me altogether. Therefore, I recited many instances of kindness and generosity shewn by Efrites to mortals, some of which I had gleaned from books, while others I invented then and there, with a ready wit. But, though the Efrite listened, his bearing changed not towards me one hair’s breadth. “Thou hast been misinformed,” he said at last. “The Efrite knows neither kindness nor generosity: he is only constrained by the justice of those who have sovereignty over him. Wherefore, hold thy peace, and neither fear that I shall slay thee, nor hope that I shall pardon thee. Thou shalt be punished by the power of enchantment, and thou knowest not how to prevent it.”
Immediately on these words, he stamped the floor with his foot, and the sides of the Palace rocked on their foundations, and fell together; but seizing me, he clove a way through the falling structure, and bore me aloft to a great height. Presently he set me down upon the summit of a high mountain, where he took up a handful of dust, and, having chanted some strange words over it, cast it upon me, crying, “Change thy form, O Man! Retain thy form, O Ape!” And immediately I suffered a rending pang in my bones and flesh, and behold, I was a man ape, old and ugly, and clothed only with hair. When I looked up from examining my ungainly limbs, the Efrite had disappeared.
Long I remained, crouching on the summit of that mountain, realising my punishment, the keenness of which lay in the fact that it was only my form that was changed. My memory, my mental powers, and my likes and dislikes all remained to me, though I was bereft of the power of articulated speech. At last, rousing myself, I descended the mountain, subdued and resigned, to meet whatever further fate awaited me. I journeyed on through strange places, meeting no human being nor any of my present kind in the forests and deserts through which I passed, and subsisting on berries which I gathered from the trees. Finally, I came to the seashore, and lo, there was a vessel making towards the land. Presently the ship cast anchor, and some sailors landed in a small boat with some barrels, by which I knew that they were seeking water. There were six of these barrels, and when they had filled three of them from a spring some little distance inland, and had gone again with the other three to fill them also, I jumped into the boat, and secreted myself behind the three barrels, saying within myself, “If I can get on to the ship unobserved, and hide, I may reach a better land than this.”