“Now, passerby, you know everything, so keep your promise and depart. I am a little weak after the healing, and it is difficult for me to speak. You are the tenth man bothering me with questions, and I am tired of repeating the same thing.”
The moneylender listened to the story with great attention, interrupting Hodja Nasreddin’s tale now and again with exclamations of surprise.
“Listen, o man who is sitting in the sack!” said the moneylender. “We can both derive benefit from our meeting. You regret that you have not made an arrangement with a man with similar disfigurements, in order to split the cost of the sack. But it is not too late, for am I just the man you need: I am hunchbacked, I limp on my right foot, and I am blind in one eye. And I will gladly pay three hundred tanga to spend the remaining two hours in the sack.”
“You must be joking,” Hodja Nasreddin replied. “Could such a miraculous coincidence be real? If you speak the truth, then praise Allah for such a fortunate chance! I agree, passerby, but I warn you that I paid in advance, and you will have to do the same. I will not trust a debt.”
“I will pay in advance,” the moneylender said, untying the rope. “Let us not waste time, for the minutes are ticking by, and now they belong to me.”
Hodja Nasreddin covered his face with the sleeve of his robe as he emerged from the sack. But the moneylender was too busy to take a good look anyway: he was counting the money hastily, regretting the loss of passing minutes.
Moaning and groaning, he climbed into the sack and bent his head down.
Hodja Nasreddin tightened the knot, ran to the side, and hid in the shadows behind a tree.
He made it just in time. The loud cursing of the guards came from the direction of the cemetery. First their long shadows crawled onto the road from a break in the cemetery wall, and then they appeared, the moon reflecting in their copper shields.
Chapter 36
“You tramp!” the guards shouted, kicking the sack with their feet, their weapons ringing and clanging such that the noise could easily pass for the sound of copper wings. “We searched the entire cemetery and could not find anything. Tell us, o son of sin, where you buried the ten thousand tanga?”
The moneylender remembered the magical incantation firmly.
“Those who carry copper shields have copper heads,” he replied from the sack. “An owl sits in place of the falcon. O djinns, you search where nothing is hidden, so kiss my donkey on the behind!”
Hearing these words, the guards became incredibly furious.
“You lied to us like a foul dog, and now you call us fools! Look, look, the entire sack is covered in dust, which means he was rolling and tumbling all over the road trying to escape, while we scraped our hands bloody as we toiled in the cemetery. You will pay dearly for your lie, o filthy spawn of a fox!”
They let loose a hail of heavy blows, and then, unsatisfied, each did a dance on top of the sack in his copper-clad boots. But the moneylender, heeding Hodja Nasreddin’s instructions, kept shouting: “Those who carry copper shields have copper heads!” which drove the guards into a complete frenzy. Expressing their displeasure at the fact that they were not permitted to finish off the criminal themselves, they picked up the sack and carried it off to the pond.
Hodja Nasreddin stepped out onto the road from his hiding place, washed his face in an aryk, and threw off his robe, exposing his broad chest to the evening wind. How happy and carefree he felt now, when the black breath of death had passed by without scorching him! He walked aside, draped his robe on the ground, placed a stone under his head, and lay down – he was tired from being in a small, stuffy sack, and he wished to rest. The wind rustled in the dense tops of the trees, hosts of golden stars swam in the heavenly ocean, the water babbled in the aryk: all of it was ten times more precious and nearer to Hodja Nasreddin’s heart than before. “Yes! There are too many good things in the world for me to ever agree to die, even if I was firmly promised heaven: one could go mad with boredom in heaven, sitting beneath the same tree for all eternity, surrounded by the same houri.”
Thus he thought as lay beneath the stars on the warm ground, listening keenly to the undying and never sleeping life: his heart was beating in his chest, an owl was sending its night call from the cemetery, something was crawling quietly and carefully through the bushes – perhaps a hedgehog. The wilting grass gave off a pleasant scent, and the entire night was filled with secret fussing and unknown shuffling, crawling, and rustling. The world lived and breathed – broad, open to all equally and offering its boundless expanses to the ant, the bird, and man with the same hospitality, requiring only that this welcoming trust not be used for evil. The master of the house banishes a guest in shame if, taking advantage of the celebration, the guest begins to go through the pockets of the other guests – and, like this thief, the foul moneylender was about to be banished from the happy and joyous world. Hodja Nasreddin did not pity him in the least, for how could one pity someone whose disappearance would ease the lives of thousands and thousands of other people? Hodja Nasreddin regretted only that the moneylender was not the only, not the last villain on earth; o, if only it were possible to gather in one sack all the emirs, officials, mullahs, and moneylenders, and drown them all at once in the holy pond of Sheikh Ahmed, so that their foul breath no longer withered the spring flowers on the trees, so that the jingling of their money, the falseness of their sermons, and the clanging of their swords did not drown out the twittering of birds, so that they could not prevent people from enjoying the beauty of the world and performing their chief function on earth – to always be happy in all their endeavors!
Meanwhile, the guards, afraid to be late, were walking more and more quickly, and finally broke into a run. Shaking and bouncing in the sack, the moneylender was humbly awaiting the end of his unusual journey; he could hear the clanging of weapons and the rustling of stones beneath the feet of the guards, and he wondered only why the mighty djinns were not flying through the air but running on foot with their copper wings unfolded and dragging on the ground, like young roosters chasing after hens. Then a rumble sounded in the distance, resembling the distant roar of a mountain stream, and the moneylender at first decided that the djinns had dragged him into the mountains somewhere, perhaps to their abode on Khan Tengri – the Peak of Spirits. But then he began to discern voices and realized that he was at a nightly gathering with many people; thousands, judging by the noise, just like on the bazaar, but since when is the bazaar in Bukhara open at night? Then he felt that he was being lifted upwards: aha, so the djinns had decided to take to the air after all. How could he have known that the guards were bringing him up the steps leading to the platform? They climbed up the steps and threw the sack down. It tumbled down, and the boards shuddered and rumbled beneath it. The moneylender gasped and groaned.
“Hey you, djinns!” he could not restrain himself. “If you are going to toss the sack around like this, you’ll injure me even more, whereas you are supposed to do the opposite!”
He received a fierce kick in response.
“You’ll find your healing soon enough, o son of sin, at the bottom of the holy Ahmed’s pond.”
These words confused the moneylender completely: what did the holy Ahmed’s pond have to do with anything? His confusion turned into amazement when he heard above him the voice of an old friend, the esteemed Arslanbek (the moneylender could have sworn it was his voice!), the head of the palace guard and the army. Thoughts became jumbled in the moneylender’s head: where did Arslanbek come from, why was he berating the djinns for being late, and why did the djinns tremble with fear and servility as they answered? Surely Arslanbek could not also be the head djinn! And what would be the best course of action – to remain silent, or to call to him? Since the moneylender had not received any instructions for this eventuality, he decided to remain silent just in case.