The Fable of King Wen the Blind

Relating the Search of an Excessively Particular Potentate for the Perfect Queen

ONCE upon a time a tale was told. It is only now possible to retell it, because it has been forgotten:

Once upon a time, so the tale is told, there was a king whose fame was so black that there was not bravado enough in all his kingdom to speak his name or to recount his infamies, either before or after his death. Thus, from having lived too well, he might as well never have lived at all, for the historians could learn nothing of him.

But here, in secret, it may be told that his name was King Wen the Blind, because he was not blind, and he reigned where all really amusing things occur, in England. It was said of him that he joined the brutality of a Nero with the ingenuity of a Petronius. His villainy was only exceeded by the cunning wit with which he applied it. His favourite torture was to read unrhymed verse to his political prisoners. These were only his divertissements. The serious business of his kingship was another and grislier matter. Much could be told you of the reign of King Wen the Blind, except that that sort of thing simply is not done.

MY story begins on the day when the King compelled all the newspapers to fill every edition solidly with a Personal Column in which was repeated, over and over, this intimate item:

LONESOME KING NEEDS WOMAN IN HIS BUSINESS. MUST HAVE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FACE IN THE KINGDOM. No REFERENCES REQUIRED. INTERVIEW NECESSARY. WEN.

Now, his subjects all knew quite well that since the eve of his twentieth birthday he had not looked upon the female of his kind, either seriously or honourably. There was therefore a great light of joy in the hearts of his subjects that their king was about to take a wife, for they thought that family life might soften his sanguinary disposition. However, in spite of their Godgiven vanity, not one woman was bold enough to frame an answer to King Wen's plea.

King Wen was piqued by what he conceived to be his subjects' indifference to his emotional life. Forthwith, he gathered about him the twentieth part of his armies and proceeded to comb the land. This regiment was of so singular a sort as to be recruited exclusively from among his own natural sons, for he had led, as a youth, a careless life and, being a precocious boy, had had at the age of twenty, one thousand eight hundred and seventeen children, all sons (which number you will perceive to be the arithmetical result of five times three hundred and sixty-five, plus two for Leap Years). These descendants, all tall, fair, and green-eyed, with the scarlet birthmark of a mace that distinguished their sire, formed the personnel of the army which King Wen the Blind led on his more amusing enterprises.

With this, the twentieth part of his armies, King Wen forced, from the ladies of the land, an anguished reply to his innocent item in the personal columns. In the end he found the woman he wanted, for King Wen was King Wen and he was not Blind.

The woman whom he sought stood in the centre of a hay field, bearing above her head a haystack twenty cubits high and thirty cubits around. She was entirely undraped, as was the fine old English custom of the time. The woman dropped the haystack down over her, so that it shrouded her even from head to foot. "Ah!" said King Wen the Blind, but there was a doubt between his eyes as he walked toward the haystack. The flesh under his nails grew purple, his only sign of agitation. She was or she wasn't the maiden he sought. King Wen the Blind thrust his hand hardily into the haystack. A pink glow suffused it, for the woman was blushing. He parted the haystack and looked at her face. She was the maiden he sought.

King Wen returned with her to his palace. The people expected a great and royal wedding, but nothing of the sort befell. For he

had made the woman his Chief Scrub-lady in the Palace.

On a later day, King Wen again advertised, now for the woman with the most beautiful feet in the kingdom. Again there was no response. Thus also with the women who had the most beautiful hands, calves, knees, thighs, neck, arms, hair, torso, and cars.

At the end of six years of this sort of thing he advertised for the woman with the most beautiful mind in the kingdom. The king was amazed to find that approximately every woman in the kingdom but one answered his advertisement. It was necessary to get out special editions the next day to print all the answers. He realized then—for he was, after all, a gentleman of perception— that this was no matter for a whole army, and he dismissed from his reckoning all those who had answered the advertisement. He thereupon shaved off his beard, his hair, and his eyebrows, wrapped himself in a gray cloak, took up his sword which was magical because it was named Collalal, and went on his quest alone.

I SHALL not tell you of his quest: it lasted for three years, three months, three days, three hours, and five minutes, for King Wen fell into a ditch and the adventure took him two minutes longer than he had planned. On the fifth minute of the third day of the third month of the third year, then he saw the only woman who had not answered his advertisement for the most beautiful mind in the kingdom. She was drying her bailout of the topmost window of a castle on a high hill and King Wen saw that she was the ugliest woman he had ever seen. He shouted to her to throw herself down to him, but she threw upon him, instead, a pail of shampoo water.

King Wen knew, on the moment, a wrath such as he had never known before. In a white flame of anger he tore his way to the room where the woman was. He called her a name that one does not often hear in noble company and, with a single stroke of the sword Collalal, split open the door.

As he stepped through, he saw, as Joan of Arc saw the Angel of the Lord, that she was holding something magical in her hand, and, seeing it, he fell on his knees and bowed his head before her,

"Against you, I see now that I am powerless. I am King Wen and I ask you to be my wife! For I know well that, with that talisman in your hand, you have it in your power to make me truly wise and bring me lasting happiness."

She looked into his eyes, raised him by the hand, and bestowed upon him a thumbworn copy of VANITY FAIR.

DAVID CORT