Thus he spoke, trying to pass off as a mullah reading a sermon; both his voice and his words sounded well-intentioned, but people who had ears heard him, understood him, and concealed unpleasant smirks beneath their beards.
Chapter 11
Suddenly, Hodja Nasreddin saw that the crowd was thinning. Many were leaving in a hurry, even running away. “Are the guards working their way towards me, perchance?” he thought worriedly.
He understood everything as soon as he saw the moneylender approach. A decrepit old man in a clay-stained robe was walking under guard behind the moneylender, as well as a woman draped in a veil, or, more accurately, a young girl, as Hodja Nasreddin’s skilled eyes determined from her gait.
“And where are Zakir, Djura, Muhammad, and Sadyk?” the moneylender asked in a squeaky voice, looking over the crowd with his only eye; the second was dim and motionless, a walleye. “They were just here, I saw them. Their debts will be due soon, they run and hide in vain. On the right day, I will find them anyway.”
Limping, he dragged his hump onwards.
“Look, look, that spider has brought the potter Niyaz and his daughter to the emir’s judgment!”
“He did not give the potter a single day of postponement!”
“May he be cursed, that moneylender. My debt is due in two weeks!”
“Mine – in a week.”
“Look how everyone scatters before him and hides, as if he spreads leprosy or cholera!”
“He’s worse than a leper, that moneylender!” Hodja Nasreddin was torn with bitter repentance. He repeated his vow: “I will drown him in that same pond!”
Arslanbek admitted the moneylender out of order. The potter and his daughter followed the moneylender to the platform, where they kneeled and kissed the fringe of the rug.
“Peace to you, honored Jafar!” the grand vizier said amicably. “What business brings you here? Relay your case to the great emir as you fall into his feet.”
“O great sovereign, my lord!” Jafar began to the emir, who nodded in his slumber and began snoring and whistling yet again. “I have come to ask you for justice. This man, who is named Niyaz and who works as a potter, owes me one hundred tanga, and three hundred more in interest. Today, the debt is due, but the potter has not paid me anything. Judge us, o wise emir, the sun of our universe!”
The scribes recorded the moneylender’s complaint in their books, and then the grand vizier turned to the potter:
“The great emir asks you, potter: do you admit this debt? Perhaps you dispute the day and the hour?”
“No,” the potter replied in a weak voice, and hung his gray head. “No, o most wise and just vizier, I do not dispute anything – neither the debt, nor the day, nor the hour. I only ask for one month’s postponement and rely on the generosity and the mercy of our emir.”
“Permit me, o sovereign, to announce the decision which I have read on your face,” said Bakhtiyar. “In the name of Allah most gracious and mercifuclass="underline" according to law, if someone cannot pay his debt on time, then he and his family will be slaves to the one he owes until such time as he pays the debt and the interest for the entire duration, including the time spent in slavery.”
The potter’s head sank lower and lower, and suddenly began to shake. Many in the crowd turned away, repressing heavy sighs.
The girl’s shoulders trembled: she was crying under her veil.
Hodja Nasreddin repeated to himself for the hundredth time: “He will be drowned, that merciless torturer of the poor!”
“But the mercy and generosity of our ruler the emir are boundless!” Bakhtiyar continued in the meantime, raising his voice. The crowd fell silent. The old potter raised his head, and hope flashed on his face.
“Although the term of the debt has passed, the emir grants the potter Niyaz a postponement – one hour. If, after the hour has passed, the potter Niyaz continues to neglect the tenets of faith and fails to pay the entire debt with interest, then we must follow the law, as I have said. Go, potter, and may the emir’s mercy continue to abide with you.”
Bakhtiyar fell silent, and then the chorus of flatterers crowding behind the throne stirred and began to drone:
“O just emir, who obscures justice itself with his justice, o wise and charitable emir, o generous emir, o grace of earth and heaven’s renown, our illustrious emir!”
This time, the flatterers outdid themselves and praised so loudly that they woke up the emir, who frowned unpleasantly and ordered them to be quiet. They fell silent, and all the people on the square were silent, but suddenly, the silence was interrupted by mighty, ear-rending braying.
It was Hodja Nasreddin’s donkey. Perhaps he had grown bored of standing in the same spot, or maybe he noticed another one of his long-eared kin and decided to say hello, but he was braying with his tail raised, his snout stretched out, and his yellow teeth bared. His braying was deafening and unrestrained, and if he stopped for an instant, it was only to take a breath, open his mouth even wider, and bray and screech even louder.
The emir plugged his ears. The guards dashed into the crowd. But Hodja Nasreddin was already far away; he was dragging the stubborn donkey behind him and scolding him for all to hear:
“What are you so happy about, you accursed donkey? Can you not praise the emir’s kindness and wisdom a little quieter? Or perhaps you wish to be appointed the chief court flatterer for your trouble?”
The crowd met him with loud laughter, making way for him and closing ranks in front of the guards, who never managed to catch Hodja Nasreddin, have him flogged for such an insolent disturbance of the peace, and confiscate the donkey for the emir’s treasury.
Chapter 12
“Well, the judgment is over, and now my power over you is boundless,” the moneylender Jafar spoke to the potter Niyaz and his daughter Guljan after they had all left the place of judgment following the pronouncement of the sentence. “My beauty, since I saw you by chance, I have been deprived of sleep and peace. Show me you face. Today, in exactly one hour, you will enter my house. And if you are kind to me, I will give your father an easy job and good food, but if you are stubborn, then I swear by the light of my own eyes that I will feed him raw beans, make him carry heavy stones, and sell him to the Khivians, whose cruelty to their slaves is known to all. Do not be stubborn and show me your face, o beautiful Guljan!”
He raised her veil with his voluptuous, crooked fingers. She shoved his hand away with an angry motion. Guljan’s face was open for only an instant, but even that was enough for Hodja Nasreddin, who was riding by on his donkey, to sneak a peek. And the beauty of the girl was so wondrous and incredible, that Hodja Nasreddin almost lost consciousness: the world went dark before his eyes, and his heart stopped beating. He grew pale, swayed in his saddle, and covered his eyes with his hand, shaken. Love struck him instantly, like lightning. It took some time for him to recover.
“And this limping, hunchbacked, blind ape would encroach upon this fantastic beauty!” he exclaimed. “Why, why did I drag him from the water yesterday? Already my deed has turned against me! But we’ll see, we’ll see yet, dirty moneylender! You are not yet the master of the potter and his daughter, they have a whole hour’s postponement, and Hodja Nasreddin can do in one hour what would take another man a whole year!”