1.14.7
When the priest had thought the matter through and weighed it in his mind, he said, “It won’t do for you to use your praise of me as expiation, for I’m afraid that, once you get hold of me, you’ll never let me go, seeing as I do from your rhymes about those who do this and that (male and female) that you’re stubborn, leech-like, dogged, and assiduous. You may praise only those close to God and the righteous divines who deny themselves in this world out of desire to see God’s face in the next, who wear hair shirts and spend their nights in constant prayer out of obedience to God, and who subject themselves to perpetual mortification out of love for Him, some eating nothing all their lives but lentils and hardtack.”
1.14.8
“Followed,” said the Fāriyāq, “by the breaking of a tooth and pruritis. Wait! Wait! I forgot to mention something that the lentils have just now brought to mind. Once I was responsible for persuading a young monk to leave his monastery and abandon the path. The reason was the sufferings I’d undergone there, and I did what I did so that I could gloat over the monastery’s discomforture.” Said the priest, “Your sin in gloating, which is a type of revenge-taking, was greater than your sin in persuading the young monk to leave, for there is no benefit to be had from the residence of most of the monks, or anyone else, in the monastery. In addition, it may be supposed that this young monk will marry and create lots of monks from his children. If, however, you go praising nuns, be careful you don’t talk of them as though they had breasts and buttocks, since they know nothing of such things. Their prolonged devotion and seclusion have made them into something different from other women. We, as contemplatives, are the best authorities on them.”
1.14.9
The Fāriyāq then asked him, “In the name of Him who’s worshipped in Heaven and in Earth, are all priests like you, so witty and funny?” “I have no idea,” the other replied. “I do know, though, that I have suffered for what I’ve learned and would have done better to remain ignorant like them. Indeed, ‘in ignorance lies ease.’” “How can that be?” asked the Fāriyāq. The man replied, “Have you a place well guarded where a secret may be kept?” Said the Fāriyāq, “Secrets to me are like my own blood: I never let them out!” (though I say, he’s let it out now). “Would you like me,” asked the priest, “to tell you my story?” “It would be an honor,” said the other. “Listen well, then,” said he.
CHAPTER 15: THE PRIEST’S TALE
1.15.1
Without further ado, he spoke. “Know that when I started out in life I was a weaver. However — given that Almighty God had decided, in His sempiternal wisdom, to make me so ugly and short that even my mother, when she looked at me, would thank God that He hadn’t made me a girl — I was no good for weaving. The reason for this was that my terrible shortness often caused me to pant and choke in the loom pit, because my whole body would disappear inside it, and I’d find it impossible to breathe, despite which my nostrils, praise God, could take in enough air to fill fifty lungs and fifty bellies. Often I’d faint down there and have to be pulled out at my last gasp.
1.15.2
“When I’d suffered from that craft as much toil and trouble as I could stand, I decided it would be better to set up shop selling a few things that women crave, so I rented me a little store and sat there, and the women would pass by, look at me, and then laugh to one another. Once I heard one of them say, ‘If the outside is a true guide to the inside, that shopkeeper’s hose will intercede for his body and sell his goods for him.’ I put my trust in her words and said, ‘Maybe from ugliness will come good fortune, for, as the proverb has it, “from good comes evil.”’ I went on for a while that way but to no avail, for my nose stood between me and my living, and it grew so monstrous that it left room for nothing but rejection and aversion.
1.15.3
“One day I was sitting thinking about the Almighty’s creation of this universe, when I said to myself, ‘My, my! What a wise God! How could He make an individual a part of this world and at the same time make a part of that individual an impediment to his earning a living or making his way in it? What use is this huge nose except for having the “buttocks” of “Halt and weep”230 stuffed up it? And why shouldn’t a part of it be cored out and curled about my body? How is it I see that some people have been created as beautiful as angels and others as ugly as the Devil? Are we not all God’s creatures? Has not He, glory be to Him, taken them all into His care, on the same footing? Does not the earthly craftsman, when he wants to make something, work on it meticulously and make it as nearly perfect as he can, bringing it to the best state possible? Does a painter paint an ugly picture, unless he wants to make people laugh at the thing portrayed? Could it be that, in a nose of huge size, there is some comeliness, value, or benefit of which we ordinary mortals are unaware?’
1.15.4
“Then I would get up and go to the mirror and contemplate my face and reject it, finding nothing in it to like, and say, returning to my first line of thought, ‘If I cannot find anything to like about my face, how can anyone else find it attractive?’ People will, however, find good in the faults of others and in their vices virtues. Do you not observe how, to some people’s eyes, ugliness is attractive? It is said that blacks find nothing attractive in the fair-complexioned among us, while blackness, being general among them, is something they appreciate. Never do I see anyone carrying around a nose like mine without hoping that he’ll find mine attractive. As for color, I belong neither to the blacks nor the whites and am cursed by both their houses. Would that the people of my town were all like me, with big noses; then I could share in their joys and sorrows. From whom did I inherit this boulder, when my father’s nose was just like other people’s? I wish I knew what my father was thinking about when the idea of bringing me into this universe came knocking at his head, and about what lofty mountain peak, craggy landmark, or minaret my mother was thinking on the night when she collaborated with him in that deed! Would they’d swooned that night and not awoken, or gone off the boil and found their appetites broken, or been bewitched and lost all feeling, or got drunk and and gone about reeling!
1.15.5
“I was turning these ideas over in my head and fashioning them into different forms and varying shapes, when behold, a woman with covered face approached, with something that might have been a water pitcher forming a bump beneath her veil; I thought she must have placed a flask of scent by her nose to sniff at when passing the carrion in the city’s markets. She asked me about something she wanted to buy, and I told her its price, which she seemed to find high, so she told me, ‘Bring it down. Your price is pyretic,’ to which I responded ‘And your proposal’s pruritic.’ She laughed and said, ‘You did well on the response but you made a mess of the request. Make allowance for the rights of partnership and commonality, for I’m your partner and comrade, which means you should make me a gift for friendship’s sake.’ ‘What partnership can there be between us, God set you to rights,’ I asked, ‘when this is the first time you have honored me with a visit?’ At this she raised her veil, and I beheld that her nose bulged out so far it left almost no room for her face and seemed to stand face to face with mine as though to salute it. It made me think of the story of the lame crow that made friends with a crow with a broken wing, on seeing which a certain poet declared, ‘I never knew what people meant by the saying “Birds of a feather flock together” until I saw these two crows.’ In the end I sold her what she wanted to buy, trying to get one kiss as a compensation for my loss, but I couldn’t because our noses got in the way. Then she departed and I continued for a while as before.