Chapter 15
The emir’s judgment continued. The torturers and executioners had been changed several times. The line of people awaiting lashings kept growing. Two condemned men were squirming on stakes, one lay decapitated on the ground, which was dark with blood. But the moans and cries did not reach the hearing of the dozing emir, drowned out by the chorus of the court flatterers, who were hoarse with effort. They did not forget the grand vizier and the other ministers in their praises, or Arslanbek, or the flyswatter, or the hookah-bearer, judging correctly that they needed to please everyone: some to obtain benefit, others to prevent harm.
Arslanbek had been listening worriedly for a while to the strange hum coming from afar.
He sent two of his most skillful and experienced spies.
“Go and find out why the people are agitated. Return here immediately.”
The spies departed, one dressed in the rags of a beggar and the other in the garb of a wandering dervish.
But before the spies could return, the pale moneylender came running, stumbling and tripping on the flaps of his robe.
“What happened, honorable Jafar?” asked Arslanbek, his face changing.
“Trouble!” the money-lender replied with trembling lips. “O honorable Arslanbek, a great misfortune has occurred. Hodja Nasreddin has appeared in our city. I just saw him and spoke with him.”
Arslanbek’s eyes bulged out and froze. The stairs bending under his hulk, he ran up on the platform and leaned down to the dozing emir’s ear.
The emir jumped so high on his throne as if someone had jabbed him with an awl just below the back.
“You lie!” he shouted, and his face became distorted with fear and rage. “This cannot be! The caliph of Baghdad wrote to me recently that he had cut off his head! The Turkish sultan wrote that he had him impaled! The shah of Iran wrote to me personally that he hanged him! The Khivian khan announced publicly last year that he had him skinned alive! He could not have escaped unharmed from the hands of four sovereigns, that accursed Hodja Nasreddin!”
The viziers and dignitaries grew pale upon hearing the name of Hodja Nasreddin. The flyswatter trembled and dropped his fan, the hookah-bearer choked on the smoke and began to cough, the poets’ groveling tongues froze to their teeth in fear.
“He is here!” Arslanbek repeated.
“You lie!” the emir exclaimed, and gave him a hefty slap on the face with his regal palm. “You lie! And if he is really here, then how could he have snuck into Bukhara, and what good are all your guards? So it was him, then, who caused all the commotion on the bazaar last night! He wanted to stir up the people to rebel against me, and you were asleep and heard nothing!” And the emir dealt Arslanbek another slap. Arslanbek gave a low bow and kissed the emir’s hand in midair.
“O ruler, he is here, in Bukhara. Can you not hear?”
The distant hum grew stronger and louder, like an approaching earthquake, and soon the crowd around the place of judgment also began to hum, quietly and indistinctly at first, and then louder, stronger, until the emir felt the platform and his gilded throne swaying unsteadily. Just then, something floated out of the slurred communal hum, which had begun to turn into a powerful roar, and it was repeated again and again, reverberating in all ends of the crowd:
“Hodja Nasreddin! Hodja Nasreddin!” The guards dashed towards the cannons with lit fuses in their hands. The emir’s face twisted in alarm.
“Enough!” he shouted. “To the palace!” Picking up the flaps of his brocade robe, he dashed towards the palace; after him, stumbling, ran the servants, carrying the empty sedan chair on their shoulders. Seized with confusion, the viziers, the executioners, the musicians, the guards, the flyswatter, and the hookah-bearer ran, shoving and overtaking each other, losing their slippers and not bothering to pick them up. Only the elephants proceeded with their previous dignity and slow pace, for, even though they belonged to the emir’s retinue, they had no reason to fear the people.
The heavy, copper-bound palace gates closed after letting in the emir and his retinue.
And the bazaar square, filled with people, hummed and fussed in agitation as it repeated again and again the name of Hodja Nasreddin.
Part 2
“Here is a tale of some curious events; part of them happened in my presence, and other parts were related to me by trustworthy people.”
Chapter 16
Since time untold, the potters of Bukhara had settled by the eastern city gates near a large mound of clay, and they could not have picked a better spot: the clay was right nearby, and the aryk flowing along the city wall supplied them with plenty of water. The grandfathers, great-grandfathers, and great-great-grandfathers of the potters had already used up half the mound: they built their homes from clay, they made their pots from clay, and it was into clay they were placed to the mournful cries of their relatives. It had probably happened more than once that some potter would make a pot many years after, dry it in the sun, treat it with flames, and then marvel at its incredibly strong and pure sound without even suspecting that some distant ancestor, looking after his descendant’s welfare and success in trade, had ennobled the clay with a tiny part of his remains and made it ring like pure silver.
Here, too, stood the house of the potter Niyaz – right over the aryk, in the shade of mighty, ancient elms. The leaves rustled in the wind, the water babbled, and the songs of the beautiful Guljan could be heard in the little garden from dawn till dusk.
Hodja Nasreddin refused to settle in Niyaz’s house:
“They may capture me in your house, Niyaz. I will spend the nights not far from here, I have found a safe spot. And in the daytime I will come here and help you in your work.”
That was exactly what he did: every morning, before the sun would rise, he would come to Niyaz and sit at a pottery wheel next to the old man. There was no trade in the world that Hodja Nasreddin did not know; he knew pottery very well, and his pots turned out smooth, with a clear ring and the ability to keep water ice-cold even in the strongest heat. Before this, the old man, whose eyes had begun to let him down more and more over the past few years, could barely manage to make five or six pots a day, but now, long rows of them were drying in the sun along the fence – thirty, forty, and often fifty pots and jugs. On bazaar days, the old man came home with a full purse, and the scent of meat pilaf spread through the entire street from his house in the evening.
The neighbors were happy for the old man, saying:
“At last Niyaz happened on some good fortune and left his poverty behind, hopefully forever!”
“They say he has hired a worker to help him. And they say also that this worker is extremely skilled in the trade of pottery. Once, I deliberately stopped by Niyaz’s house to see his helper. But as soon as I closed the gate behind me, the helper got up, walked away, and did not show his face again.”
“The old man is hiding his helper. He is probably afraid that one of us will try to hire away such a skilled worker. Silly man! Are we, potters, so devoid of conscience that we would dare encroach on the well-being of an old man who has at last found his fortune?”
This is what the neighbors concluded, and of course no one even entertained the thought that old Niyaz’s helper was Hodja Nasreddin himself. Everyone was quite sure that Hodja Nasreddin had long since left Bukhara, for he had spread those rumors himself to deceive the spies and reduce their zeal in searching for him. And he achieved his goaclass="underline" ten days later, the supplementary pickets were removed from all the city gates, and the night patrols stopped bothering the inhabitants of Bukhara with the light of their torches and the clanging of their weapons.