James Baquet

Last time we saw how King Vikram promised a holy man named Shanta-Shil that he would join him for one night in a cemetery and do his bidding. This is the frame story of the collection known as “Baital Pachisi,” (“Twenty-five Tales of Baital”), also called “Vikram and the Vampire” or “The King and the Corpse.”

And so the king arrived at the cemetery with his son, both girded for battle. There they witnessed terrors of all kinds and in the midst of them calmly sat Shanta-Shil.

“Come sit down,” he said, and when they had, the king asked, “What do you command?”

“O king,” the yogi replied, “just perform one task: About an hour from here you will find a body hanging from a tree. Just bring it to me.”

The king and his son found the tree, and there, head downward, was a body — eyes wide open, body thin like a skeleton — and hanging by its feet like a bat!

The king valiantly cut it down, but immediately it started to cry out, and as the king asked, “Who are you?” It slipped from his fingers and resumed its place on the tree! Six more times he cut it down and asked, but with the same result.

The seventh time he failed, the ghoul spoke. He would allow the king to carry him away, on one condition.

As they traveled, he would tell a story that ended with a riddle. If the king could not answer, he could take the ghoul away. If he could answer, he must, and the ghoul would fly back into the tree.

But if he could answer and chose not to, the king’s head would explode in a thousand pieces!

And so it went: 24 times the king set out with the ghoul, his son beside him, and 24 times he answered the riddle and the ghoul returned to the tree. Sometimes they were easy, and sometimes difficult, but always he answered. The pleasure of this book is in the stories, which sadly we haven’t room for here.

The 25th time the ghoul told this story:

After a fierce battle a father and a son find a queen and her daughter alive. The father marries the princess, and they have a daughter; the son marries the queen, and they have a son. What is the relationship of the two newborn children?

The king could not answer. And so the ghoul was delivered to the holy man, and the king’s promise fulfilled.