“No!” the bald brother howled angrily. “My goat will not eat your bran!”
The pot flew after the clover and broke, mixing the bran with the dirt, while the brothers were already rolling on the ground in a fierce struggle, raining blows and curses on each other.
“Two fools are fighting, two cheats are praying, and meanwhile the goat has died of hunger,” Hodja Nasreddin said, shaking his head. “Hey you, virtuous and loving brothers, look over here! Allah has judged your quarrel in his own way and taken the goat for himself!”
Coming to their senses, the brothers released each other and stood with bloodied faces for a long time as they looked at the dead goat. Finally, the bald one said:
“We must skin it.”
“I will skin it!” the bearded man said quickly.
“Why you?” asked the other; his bald head grew purple with rage.
“The goat is mine, and therefore the hide is mine!”
“No, mine!”
Before Hodja Nasreddin could put in a single word, the brothers were rolling on the ground once more, and it was impossible to tell anything apart in that rasping bundle. Only a dirty fist emerged for a moment, grasping a clump of black hair, leading Hodja Nasreddin to conclude that the older brother had lost a significant part of his beard.
Waving his hand hopelessly, Hodja Nasreddin rode on. He saw a blacksmith with tongs tucked into his belt – the same one he had met the previous day by the pond.
“Greetings, blacksmith!” Hodja Nasreddin shouted happily. “We meet again, although I have not yet managed to fulfill my oath. What are you doing here, blacksmith, have you come to the emir’s judgment as well?”
“Only will anything useful come of this judgment?” the blacksmith replied grimly. “I have come with a complaint from the blacksmiths’ row. We were ordered to feed fifteen guards for three months, but an entire year has passed, and we keep feeding them and feeding them, and sustaining great losses.”
“And I have come from the dye row,” another man butted in, his hands bearing traces of dye and his face green from the noxious vapors he had to breathe from dawn till dusk. “I have come with the same complaint. We were given twenty-five guards for billeting, our trade was ruined, our profits fell. Perhaps the emir will be merciful and free us from this intolerable burden.”
“And why are you ganging up on the poor guards?” Hodja Nasreddin exclaimed. “Truly, they are not the worst or the most insatiable among the inhabitants of Bukhara. You feed the emir himself without a murmur, and all his viziers and officials. You feed two thousand mullahs and six thousand dervishes – why must the poor guards go hungry? Besides, have you not heard the saying: wherever a single jackal finds a meal, ten more immediately appear? I do not understand your displeasure, o blacksmith and dyer!”
“Quiet!” said the blacksmith, glancing round. The dyer was looking at Hodja Nasreddin with reproach.
“You are a dangerous man, traveler, and your words are not virtuous. But our emir is wise and ever-merciful…”
He did not finish, because trumpets began to howl, the drums began to bang, and the entire speckled camp stirred and began to move – and then the copper-bound palace gates swung open slowly.
“The emir! The emir!” came shouts, and the people began pouring towards the palace from all directions to see their ruler.
Hodja Nasreddin occupied a very comfortable spot in the front rows.
The heralds ran out of the gates first:
“Make way for the emir! Make way for the most radiant emir! Make way for the ruler of the faithful!”
The guards jumped out after them, raining blows with their sticks left and right onto the heads and backs of the curious who had moved too close; a broad space appeared in the crowd, and then musicians emerged, bearing drums, flutes, tambourines, and karnays [10]; then came the retinue, clad in silk and gold, carrying curved swords in velvet scabbards studded with precious stones; then two elephants with tall plumes on their heads were led out; finally, a lavishly decorated sedan chair was brought out, and inside it, underneath the heavy brocade canopy, lay the great emir himself.
The crowd rumbled and buzzed as he appeared; as if a great wind had passed through the square, all the people prostrated themselves as required by the emir’s edict instructing his subjects to gaze on their ruler with great servility, and always from beneath. Servants ran before the sedan chair, spreading rugs on the ground. The palace flyswatter walked on the right of the sedan chair with a large horsehair fan on his shoulder, while the emir’s hookah-bearer walked haughtily and with measured steps on the left, holding a golden Turkish hookah in his hands. Guards in copper helmets brought up the rear of the procession, holding shields, spears, crossbows, and bared swords; two small cannons were towed in the very back. This was all lit up by the bright midday sun – it ignited the precious stones, it burned on the gold and silver decorations, it reflected as hot fire in the copper shields and helmets and shone on the white steel of the bared blades… But in the enormous, prostrate crowd, there were neither precious stones, nor gold, nor silver, nor even copper – nothing that could please the heart by burning and shining in the sun – only rags, poverty, and hunger. And when the emir’s lavish procession moved through the sea of the dirty, uneducated, downtrodden, and tattered people, it seemed as if a thin golden thread was being threaded through a wretched rag. A tall platform, covered in rugs, where the emir was to shower his favor onto his devoted subjects, was already surrounded on all sides by guards, while the torturers and executioners were fussing around on the place of execution just beneath it, ready to perform the will of the emir: they tested the flex of their switches and the strength of their sticks, they soaked multi-tailed rawhide whips in basins, they put up gallows, sharpened their axes, and dug sharpened stakes into the ground. The head of the palace guard, Arslanbek, whose ferocity was known far beyond Bukhara, was running the show. He was red-faced, corpulent, and black-haired, his beard covered his entire chest and draped over his stomach, his voice was like the bellowing of a camel.
He was handing out punches and kicks generously, but suddenly he bent over and began to tremble with servility.
Swaying smoothly, the sedan chair was brought onto the platform, and the emir drew aside the canopy and showed his face to the people.
Chapter 10
He was not so handsome, the illustrious emir; his face, which the court poets always likened to the full silver moon in their poems, was far more reminiscent of an overripe, flabby melon. When, supported by his viziers, the emir got up from his sedan chair to sit on his gilded throne, Hodja Nasreddin ascertained that his figure, contradicting the unanimous assertion of the court poets, did not at all resemble the slender cypress; the emir’s body was obese and bulky, his arms short, and his legs so crooked that even his robe could not conceal their ugliness.
The viziers took their places on his right, the mullahs and officials on his left, the scribes with their books and inkwells situated themselves below, and the court poets formed a semicircle around the back of the throne, gazing at the emir’s nape with devoted eyes. The court flyswatter waved his fan. The hookah-bearer placed the golden mouthpiece in his master’s mouth. The crowd around the platform held its breath. Rising in his saddle and stretching his neck, Hodja Nasreddin became all ears.
The emir nodded sleepily. The guards moved apart, clearing the way for the bald man and the bearded man, who had finally reached their turn. The brothers crawled up to the platform on their knees and touched their lips to the rug hanging down to the ground.