With such a sage for a court minister, Emperor Yuhavit could, as can be imagined, sleep quietly. What does “quietly” mean? He slept so soundly that he could be awakened only by whistling into his ear through the throat of a freshly butchered goose.
The emperor would slowly wake up, first letting his right eye be rubbed, then his left. He instructed his High Yawner to yawn for him. Then—with a kind of cannon the sage had invented—he would have his pants and jacket and medals shot onto him, and the emperor would scratch himself, saying, “There you have it! Yet another Monday!” And he would go have breakfast.
Emperor Yuhavit the Great never had to worry about anything or pinch any pennies.
2.
Meshgig’s name was known all over the world, and Getzim’s name was also known throughout the nations. But while Meshgig was recognized as a great sage, Getzim was considered just as big of a blockhead.
What no one—including Meshgig himself—knew was that Meshgig’s wisdom was not in his head but in his hat.
This very hat was made from the skin of a dwarf, and whoever put it on became the greatest sage in the world.
How Meshgig came upon this hat…is a story of its own. For now, all we need to know is that the difference between the greatest sage and the greatest fool is only in the hat. One has a foolish hat, and the other—we already said.
A story like this once decided to happen:
In a bet between our emperor and another emperor about whose minister was a greater sage, the two wisest people from each nation were locked up in a single hall to see what would happen.
Everyone waited three days and three nights. On the morning of the fourth day, people heard a shriek, and Meshgig, the greatest of all sages, flew out of the locked hall without a hat, a little bloody around the nose and between the teeth.
When Getzim the Fool, who stood watch just outside, saw this, he ran inside screaming:
“Hey there, what’s this about, taking a sage and hitting him and snatching his hat?”
But four minutes later, he also flew back, a little bloody. And through the windows of the closed hall, two hats came flying.
When the sage saw this, he was very embarrassed, grabbed the first hat that his hand could reach, and ran off to the emperor to tell him what had happened: the other sage had been violent.
Knowing the kind of person he had on his hands, the emperor let go a little yawn, gave a “There you have it,” and ordered the wise Meshgig to write a letter to the other emperor, saying that his sage had been violent and telling him in the strictest of terms that if he did not immediately send a wagonful of saffron, eleven barrels of cinnamon, two hundred pounds of pickled peas-and-things, and eighteen barrels of diamonds—it would cost him dearly.
“Well—start writing!” said the emperor to the sage. “You know how!”
But the sage sat with his tongue sticking out, picking his nose, and understanding nothing of what was said to him.
“There you have it!” said Emperor Yuhavit the Great. “Now stop picking your nose. You can’t do that if you’re a sage!”
“Really?” said the sage, and bubbled up with a little laugh. “Who says?”
The emperor looked at him sideways and said:
“Why are you pretending to be a fool? Start writing!”
“Me? I should write?” asked the sage, and started laughing mischievously. “What do you want I should write? I should ask if his woodpecker is still coughing? I just don’t know what to write….”
“Stop pretending you’re a fool!” The emperor got fired up. “Here. Take this quill in your hand and write!” And into the sage’s hand, he put a large goose quill.
Meshgig licked it, smiled, poured half a bottle of ink onto a new piece of parchment, wiped it clean with the sleeve of his expensive purple wool coat, and started writing:
Greetings, dear Emperor,
First, I’m writing to say that we’re, thank God, in the best of health, and may God grant that we hear the same from you. Second, I’m writing you, dear Emperor, to say that my emperor has angrily told me to write you a wise missive, and so I’m writing you this wise missive, and asking you to let me know—what date does Shushan Purim fall on for you over there? And there’s no other news to write about—because my emperor is looking at me a little angrily. It’s possible that he might give me a smack, too.
As the emperor read the missive, he put out his hand and—trask! flem!—one, two, three, four…
The sage covered his face, held on to his hat, and laughed so foolishly that the emperor also started laughing. Soon the ministers, including the court fool, all gathered together and stood at the threshold—laughing, too.
Everyone laughed except the fool. He stood serious, with great pride and dignity. He had his right hand on his sword, and his eyes looked sharp and wise.
“There you have it!” said the emperor, and pointed to the sage, who sat on the ground carving something into the foot of the throne with a penknife. “Our sage is so wise he’s become a fool. Now we’re, God forbid, lost for good….What should we do?”
“What to do,” said the fool, counting every word as if it were a pearl. “We take and we…”
He said nothing else out loud. He just whispered in the emperor’s ear. The emperor was startled—he slammed his hand down—and then he said, “We’ve been saved.” And he ordered that the fool should be made the court sage.
The courtiers quickly fulfilled the emperor’s orders. They anointed the fool with oil, covered him with perfume, plied him with fragrant herbs, dressed him in royal attire, and took him out to the palace balcony. And the Minister of the Most Internal Affairs disclosed to the people, who had gathered in the thousands:
“People! There’s been a miracle! The greatest fool has suddenly become the greatest sage….You yourself will hear him speak and see for yourself.”
The former fool walked onto the balcony, made a deep bow, and was about to say something. But he had, it seemed, bowed too deeply, because his hat fell off and he was left standing, like a clay golem, scratching his head with his pinky finger. After some thought, he finally blurted out: “A good Sabbath!” (It was actually Wednesday.)
By the next day, a revolution began. Emperor Yuhavit was decapitated. The former fool, who remained a fool, was hanged. The former sage, who had now also become a fool, was shot. Their clothing and their hats were destroyed. And now everything is as it should be.
Translated by David Stromberg
Off in a certain land there once lived a king. He was a giant who was strong enough to knock down walls. He had conquered half the world, and the kings he had conquered would follow behind his golden wagon and kneel before him.
And the queen—she was as beautiful as an angel. Her eyes were bluer than heaven and brighter than the sun, and her golden locks were more beautiful than the diamond crown she wore on her head.
Yet the king was unhappy, and he envied the poorest beggar whom God had blessed with a child.
“What good is all this to me?” he would think as he wandered all alone in his garden, which had a silvery stream running through it and golden fruits growing, and songbirds twittering sweetly and playing among the branches.
What good was it to be a great man if he was so bereft and lonely?…All his amusements, all his kingly pleasures, had become tedious to him, and even his beautiful queen could no longer lift his spirits. He would give away entire lands, he would even give up years of his life, if only the queen could make him happy with a child.
And in the crystal palace, in the loveliest golden hall, the beautiful queen spent her days with tears pouring from her bright eyes, begging God for a child so that she could provide the king with his heart’s desire. All the holy people from the farthest lands in the kingdom had beseeched God endlessly on behalf of the royal couple,
and sorcerers had given all kinds of advice and blessed the king and queen hundreds of times. But nothing helped. The beautiful queen was not favored with a child, and the young king went around looking pensive and mournful, unable to take pleasure in anything.
One day, a very old sorceress arrived at the royal palace after a long journey from a faraway land. There, in her decrepit hut at the tip of a magical mountain, she had heard of the great king’s sadness and the queen’s weeping, and her witch’s heart quivered with sympathy. So she locked up her hut with seven locks and set forth—leaning on black crutches and carrying two strange, thick sticks—to help the suffering king and queen.
And when the king and queen learned why the sorceress had come, they ran over to greet her, and both of them kissed the thin, dirty fingers of her witch’s hands and beseeched her with tears in their eyes: “Help us, venerable sorceress, help us!”
When the shrunken, hideous, centuries-old sorceress saw the great king and the most beautiful queen in the world kneel down before her, she was deeply moved, and she covered her clouded old eyes with her dirty hands and wept with strange, squeaky sobs.
But soon she wiped her witch’s eyes, steadied herself on her black crutches, looked around the sumptuous golden hall, peered at the crystal panes and into every corner, muttered something from between her blue lips, and waved one of her strange, thick sticks in the air—and suddenly the golden light of day disappeared and the hall was illuminated by a red glow.
And the sorceress in her many-colored rags lifted her long hands above the crowns of the king and queen and blessed them with the first words that came to her mind:
“May you have a bright son—a diamond of a son! Let the beauty of all the worlds shine out from his eyes. Let him have the strongest arms of all the sons in the land. Let his voice be so like the voice of a songbird that he will bewitch every listener with his divine singing, and let his mind be filled with the wisdom of the entire world!”
And, children, the old sorceress’s words were full of magic, and she pronounced them at an auspicious moment.
At the end of the year, the queen truly did bear a son.
“My God! What a child! Made of diamonds!” the elder midwife exclaimed when she caught her first glimpse of the infant crown prince. She squinted against the blinding rays that poured from the child, filling the hall with a sea of light.
“A marvel!” cried the second midwife, stumbling back in wonder. “Just look at him! His whole body is made of diamonds!”
“Truly—what a child! Like a picture!” Disbelief rippled through the ranks of the assistant midwives.
The queen overheard their talk, and ordered the midwives to show her the child. As soon as she saw him, she trembled and turned very pale. Out of fear lest an evil eye be cast on the wondrous child, she swore the midwives to secrecy, so that no one in the land would find out. In addition, she decreed that among the dozens of servants in the palace, only the youngest ones would be allowed to see the child and take care of him.
The joy of the king and queen knew no bounds. Nevertheless, they were worried—the child’s extraordinary beauty, and the diamond glow that emanated from him, frightened them a little….
In the meantime, the child grew, and his radiant diamond limbs grew strong and healthy. He was a giant and disliked being fussed over. At the first chance, he’d run out of the palace into the garden, to unusually beautiful trees laden with golden fruits, and to the silvery stream, at which he loved to gaze through the palace windows.
The sweet songs that would occasionally burst from his throat when he was playing with his young caretakers entranced anyone who heard him and put the best court singers to shame. And the king’s grizzled-gray old advisors gaped at the boy’s extraordinary wisdom, and more than once found themselves disconcerted by his remarkably clever questions.
So you see, children, all the pronouncements of the old sorceress were fulfilled.
But once, while the crown prince was playing excitedly in the garden with his caretakers, he crossed paths with several of the courtiers’ children. These were the first children the crown prince had ever seen. And when the other children saw the crown prince’s diamond face, they drew nearer and stood in a circle around him, pointing and staring with astonished, curious eyes. They called out to their own caretakers: “Oh my, what a face he has! Ha-ha-ha, it’s blinding. I can’t keep my eyes on him….”
And the crown prince stopped in his tracks, ashamed. He turned his big blue eyes toward the ground and silently, sadly dragged his caretakers away from the other children. And when he went back inside the palace, he stole away to one of the side rooms and stood for a long time before a large golden mirror, looking with shame at his own bright face, which was as blinding as a little sun.
“What kind of face do I have, anyway?” he wondered for the first time, and was immediately disheartened. All the other children had a different kind of face—they had such soft, pleasant faces!—whereas his face did nothing but blind everyone who looked at him….
And when the queen went looking for her beloved son in the side room, she found him standing half-naked before the mirror and scrutinizing his diamond skin, his eyes dripping with bright tears.
“Darling son, my little crown, why are you crying? Why are you looking at your beautiful body that way?” the queen asked, and gathered him to her breast, alarmed. But the crown prince only wept even harder.
“Go away! You’re making fun of me, too, Mama! Just look at me,” he wept bitterly. “Look at my face! Why do all the other children in the garden have such soft skin, yet my skin is so ugly?” And the crown prince sobbed so hard that his entire body shook as if with a fever.
From across the palace, the king heard his son weeping. He came running, frightened. And there he stood, a great ruler who could make millions of fathers happy or unhappy with a single decree—yet he did not know how to comfort his precious only son. He was prepared to give up treasuries full of riches if only it would make his son happy again. But happiness cannot be bought, even for all the riches in the world, and neither can you buy new flesh for your skin.
While the king and queen were still standing over their child with aching hearts, the door of the room suddenly slid open. A small red gnome with slender feet leapt lightly inside, bowing down to the ground before the king and queen and speaking to them in a voice that rang out like a bell:
“I’ve caught wind of your anguish and have come to help you.” He whispered into the king’s ear: “Bathe the crown prince in the tears of needy children, and his diamond skin will turn into ordinary soft skin.”
And he bowed down again before the king and queen and vanished from the hall.
“It shall be done!” cried out the king, who, as a fearsome giant, was used to having his way. And he smiled with satisfaction.
A few hours later, the crown prince heard the terrible sound of weeping children coming from a faraway room in the palace. Curious, he ran to see. And to his surprise, he saw many little children assembled, some crippled and suffering terribly, others sickly with waxy, thin yellow faces, and still others swollen with hunger or crawling on their hands and knees. There were infants who’d been torn from their mothers’ breasts. Many of the children were half-naked, and others were wrapped in rags. And all the children wept frightfully, and their hot tears ran, drop by drop, into golden basins that had been set out for that purpose.
“Why are these children crying, and why are their tears being collected in basins?” the crown prince asked, his heart quivering with horror.
“My little son, we’re collecting their tears for a bath for you,” the king explained proudly, stroking the boy’s locks. “As soon as you bathe in these tears, you’ll receive the soft, fleshly skin that you long for so dearly.”
“No! No! No!” the crown prince shrieked, stamping his little foot, his whole body tr
embling. “I don’t want to bathe in these children’s tears! I don’t want to!” And he stared at the children and said, “It’s a pity they have to walk around in rags—and they must no doubt be hungry. Papa, see to it that they’re cared for, with food and clothing, so they’ll stop crying—and I’ll just keep my face!”
The stern king had no choice but to obey his precious only son’s wishes. But when the good-hearted crown prince woke up in his golden bed the next morning and opened his bright eyes in the streaming sunlight, he saw to his great joy and astonishment that his diamond skin had changed into ordinary soft skin of flesh, skin even more beautiful than that of the courtiers’ children he had seen yesterday in the garden.
Translated by Ri J. Turner and David Stromberg
It’s summertime, and Shoyelke refuses to stay indoors for even a minute. As soon as he can, he slinks away from home and holes up in the garden so that no one can find him.
At home, it’s boring—his father is busy with work, and his mother, as soon as she catches sight of him, always scolds him for being a complete loafer. “Most boys like you are already studying the Talmud.” And, worst of all, he could be sent on an errand.
He hates errands. He can’t stand being told what to do. In the garden, he’s free, he does what he wants. He lies for hours in the cool grass, which has grown very thick among the trees by the tall fence. He blends in with the bird-meal and madman’s poppy, and gets caught in the burrs, which will be thrown on the Ninth of Av.
When he’s alone—when he doesn’t see Esterke, the neighbor’s daughter, who also always plays in their garden—he hides himself in the grass and, through the blades, watches the colorful spotted ladybugs crawl higher and higher up the stalks, come to the top, and stop as if it were the end of the world. He picks up a stalk and pokes at them until they open a pair of wings and fly off—or fall down as if dead.
In the Land of Happy Tears Page 5
