The Old Genie Hottabych

by Lazar Lagin

  Volka was listening to himself speak with pleasure. He had never dreamt he could calm people so easily and convincingly.

  “O woe is me!” the old man cried suddenly, shoving his bare feet into his famous slippers. “If you perish, I’ll not survive you. Have we really come upon a shoal? Alas, alas! It would be much better if the engines were making noise. And just look at me! Instead of using my magic powers for more important things, I…”

  “Hottabych,” Volka interrupted sternly, “tell me this minute: what have you done?”

  “Why, nothing much. It’s just that I so wanted you to sleep soundly, that I permitted myself to order the engines to stop making noise.”

  “Oh, no!” Volka cried in horror. “Now I know what happened! You ordered the engines to be still, but they can’t work silently. That’s why the ship stopped so suddenly. Take back your order before the boilers explode!”

  “I hear and I obey,” a rather frightened Hottabych answered shakily.

  That very moment the engines began to hum again and the “Ladoga” continued on its way as before. Meanwhile, the captain, the chief engineer and everyone else on board were at a loss to explain why the engines had stopped so suddenly and mysteriously and had resumed working again just as suddenly and mysteriously.

  Only Hottabych and Volka knew what had happened, but for obvious reasons they said nothing. Not even to Zhenya. But then, Zhenya had slept soundly through it all.

  “If there was ever an international contest to see who’s the soundest sleeper, I bet Zhenya would get first prize and be the world champion,” Volka said.

  Hottabych giggled ingratiatingly, though he had no idea what a contest was, and especially an international one, or what a champion was. But he was trying to appease Volka.

  Yet, this in no way staved off the unpleasant conversation. Volka sat down on the edge of Hottabych’s berth and said:

  “You know what? Let’s have a man-to-man talk.”

  “I am all ears, O Volka,” Hottabych replied with exaggerated cheerfulness.

  “Did you ever try counting how many years older you are than me?”

  “Somehow, the thought never entered my head, but if you permit me to, I’ll gladly do so.”

  “Never mind, I figured it out already. You’re three thousand, seven hundred and nineteen years older than me — or exactly two hundred and eighty-seven times! And when people see us together on the deck or in the lounge they probably think: how nice it is that these boys have such a respectable, wise and elderly gentleman to keep an eye on them. Isn’t that right? What’s the matter? Why don’t you answer?”

  But Hottabych, hanging his unruly grey head, seemed to have taken a mouthful of water.

  “But how do things really stand? Actually, I find that I’m suddenly responsible for your life and the lives of all the passengers, because since it was me who let you out of the bottle an since you nearly sank a whole ice-breaker, it means I’m responsible for everything. I deserve to have my head chopped off.”

  “Just let anyone try to chop off such a noble head as yours! Hottabych cried.

  “All right, never mind that. Don’t interrupt. To continue: Pi sick and tired of your miracles. There’s no doubt about it, you’re really a very mighty Genie (Hottabych puffed out his chest), bi as concerns modern times and modern technical development; you don’t know much more than a new-born babe. Is the clear?”

  “Alas, it is.”

  “Well then, let’s agree: whenever you feel like performing some miracle, consult other people.”

  “I’ll consult you, O Volka, and if you won’t be on hand, or : you’re busy preparing for a re-examination (Volka winced), the I’ll consult Zhenya.”

  “Do you swear?”

  “I swear,” the old man exclaimed and struck his chest wit his fist.

  “And now, back to bed,” Volka ordered.

  “Aye, aye, Sir!” Hottabych answered loudly. He had already managed to pick up some nautical terms.

  HOTTABYCH AT HIS BEST

  By morning the “Ladoga” had entered a zone of heavy fogs. ; crawled ahead slowly and every five minutes its siren wailed loudly, breaking the eternal silence.

  This was done in accordance with the rules of navigation. then it is foggy, all vessels must sound their fog horns, no matter whether they are in the busiest harbours or in the empty wastes of the Arctic Ocean . This is done to prevent collisions.

  The sound of the “Ladoga’s” siren depressed the passengers.

  It was dull and damp on deck, and boring in the cabins. That is why every seat in the lounge was occupied. Some passengers were playing chess, some were playing checkers, others were reading. Then they tired of these pastimes, too. Finally they decided to sing.

  They sang all together and one at a time; they danced to the accompaniment of a guitar and an accordion. A famous Uzbek cotton-grower danced to an accompaniment provided by Zhenya. There really should have been a tambourine, but since there was none, Zhenya tapped out the rhythm quite well on an enamelled tray. Everyone was pleased except the Uzbek, but he was very polite and praised Zhenya, too. Then a young man from a Moscow factory began doing card tricks. This time everyone except Hottabych thought it was grand.

  He called Volka out into the corridor.

  “Permit me, O Volka, to entertain these kind people with several simple miracles.”

  Volka recalled how these “simple miracles” had nearly ended in the circus and protested vigorously, “Don’t even think of it!” Finally, however, he agreed, because Hottabych was looking at him with such sad-dog eyes.

  “All right, but remember — just card tricks and maybe something with the ping-pong balls, if you want to.”

  “I shall never forget your wise generosity,” Hottabych said gratefully, and they returned to the lounge. The young worker was in the midst of a really good trick. He offered anyone in the audience to choose a card, look at it, replace it, and then shuffle the deck. Then he shuffled it too, and the top card always turned out to be the right one.

  After he had received his well-earned applause and returned to his seat, Hottabych asked to be permitted to entertain the gathering with several simple tricks. That’s how the boastful old man put it — simple.

  Naturally, everyone agreed. They applauded before he even began.

  Bowing smartly to all sides like an old-timer on the stage, Hottabych took two ping-pong balls from a table and threw them into the air. Suddenly, there were four balls; he threw them up again and they became eight, then thirty-two. He began juggling all thirty-two balls, and then they disappeared and were found to be in thirty-two pockets of thirty-two people in the audience. Then they flew out of the pockets, formed a chain and began spinning around a bowing Hottabych like sputniks until they became a white hoop. Hottabych put this large hoop on Varvara Stepanovna’s lap with a low bow. The hoop began to flatten out until it turned into a roll of excellent silk. Hottabych cut it into pieces with Volka’s pen-knife. The pieces of silk flew into the air like birds and wound themselves into turbans of remarkable beauty around the heads of the amazed audience.

  Hottabych listened to the applause blissfully. Then he snapped his fingers. The turbans turned into pigeons which flew out through the open port-holes and disappeared. Everyone was now convinced that the old man in the funny oriental slippers was one of the greatest conjurors.

  Hottabych wallowed in the applause. The boys knew him well enough to understand how dangerous such unanimous and exciting approval was for him.

  “Just wait and see! Watch him go to town now,” Zhenya whispered in a worried voice. “I have a funny feeling, that’s all.”

  “Don’t worry, we have a very strict agreement on this point.”

  “One minute, my friends,” Hottabych said to the applauding passengers. “Will you permit me to…”

  He yanked a single hair from his beard. Suddenly a shrill whistle sounded on deck. They could hear the heavy clatter of running feet.

  �
�That’s the militia coming to fine someone!” Zhenya joked. “Somebody’s jumped overboard at full speed!” No one had time to laugh, because the “Ladoga” shuddered and something clanged menacingly below. For the second time that day the ship came to a stop.

  “See! What did I say!” Zhenya hissed and looked at Hottabych with loathing. “He couldn’t control himself. Just look at him boast! Golly! I’ve never met a more conceited, boastful and undisciplined Genie in my whole life!”

  “Are you up to your old tricks again, Hottabych? You swore yesterday that…”

  There was such shouting in the lounge that Volka didn’t bother lowering his voice.

  “Oh, no! No! Do not insult me with such suspicions, O serpent among boys, for I have never broken the smallest promise, to say nothing of an oath. I swear I know no more than you do about the reasons for our sudden stop.”

  “A snake?” Volka shouted angrily. “Oh, so on top of everything else, I’m a snake! Thank you, Hottabych! My best merci to you!”

  “Not a snake, a serpent, for know ye that a serpent is the living embodiment of wisdom.”

  This time the old man was really not to blame. The “Ladoga” had lost its way in the fog and gone aground. Passengers crowded the deck, but they had difficulty in even making out the rails. However, by leaning over the side near the bow they could see the propellers churning up the dark unfriendly waters.

  Half an hour passed, but all attempts to get the ship off the shoal by putting it in reverse ended in failure. Then the captain ordered the spry boatswain to pipe all on deck.

  Everyone except those standing watch gathered on the spardeck. The captain said, “Comrades, this is an emergency. There’s only one way to get off the shoal under our own steam and that’s transfer the coal from the bow to the stern; then we’ll be able make free of the shoal. If everyone pitches in, it won’t take more than ten or twelve hours to do the job. The boatswain will divide you into teams. Put on your worst clothes and let’s start the ball rolling.

  “You, boys, and you, Hassan Hottabych, need not worry. its is no job for you: the boys are too young and it’s a little too late for you to carry heavy loads.”

  “What do you mean by saying I can’t carry heavy loads?” Hottabych replied scornfully. “Please be informed that no one present here can equal me in weight-lifting, O most respected captain.”

  The other passengers began to smile.

  “What an old man!” “Listen to him boast.” “Just look at that muscle-man!”

  “There’s nothing to laugh at, he feels offended. It’s no fun be old.”

  “See for yourself!” Hottabych shouted. He grabbed his two young friends and, to the general amazement, began juggling them as if they were plastic billiard balls stead of sturdy thirteen-year-old boys. The applause which followed was so deafening, the whole scene might very well have taken place at a weight-lifting contest and not on board a ship in danger.

  “I take my words back,” the captain said solemnly after the applause had died down. “And now, let’s get to work! There’s time to waste!”

  “Hottabych,” Volka said, -taking the old man off to a side “what’s the use of dragging coal from one hold to another for twelve long hours? I think you should do something to get the ship off the shoal.”

  “That’s not within my powers,” the old man answered sadly “I thought of it already. Naturally, I can pull it off the rocks, but then the bottom will be all scratched and ripped, and I won’t b able to fix it, because I never saw what a ship looks like on the bottom. Then we’ll certainly drown in no time.”

  “Think again, Hottabych! Maybe you’ll think of some thing!”

  “I’ll try my best, O compass of my soul,” the old man replied. After a short pause he asked, “What if I make the rocks disappear?”

  “Oh, Hottabych! How smart you are!” Volka said and began to shake his hand. “That’s a wonderful idea.”

  “I hear and I obey.”

  The first emergency team was down in the hold, loading the first iron bins with coal, when the “Ladoga” suddenly lurched and then began to spin around in a whirlpool over the spot where there had just been a shoal. In another minute, the ship would have broken to bits, had not Volka sense enough to tell Hottabych to make the whirlpool disappear. The sea became calm; the “Ladoga” spun around a while longer from sheer force of inertia. Then it continued on its way.

  Once again, no one but Hottabych and Volka knew what he happened.

  Ahead were more exciting days, each unlike the other, as they journeyed across little-known seas and channels, past bleak islands upon which no human foot had ever stepped. The passengers often left the ship to go ashore on deserted cliffs and on islands where polar station teams greeted them with rifle salvos. Our three friends joined the rest in climbing glaciers, wandering over the naked stones of basalt plateaux, jumping from ice-floe to ice-floe over black open patches of water, and hunting polar bears. The fearless Hottabych dragged one bear aboard the “Ladoga” by the scruff of its neck. Under his influence the animal soon became as tame and playful as a cat, and so provided many happy hours for both passengers and crew. Now the bear often tours with circuses, and many of our readers have undoubtedly seen him. His name is Kuzya.

  “SALAAM, SWEET OMAR!”

  After stopping off at Rudolph Island , the “Ladoga” began its return journey. The passengers were worn out from the mass of new impressions, from the sun which shone round the clock from the frequent fogs and endless crashing of ice against the stem and sides of the ship. At each stop there were less and less passengers who wished to go ashore on deserted islands, and towards the end of the journey our friends and two or three other tireless explorers were the only ones to take advantage o a chance to climb the inhospitable cliffs.

  One morning the captain said, “Well, this is the last time you’re going ashore. There’s no sense stopping the ship for six or seven people.”

  That is why Volka talked the others going ashore into staying there as long as possible, in order to really have one good last look at the islands. They could do it in peace since Hottabych, who was usually in a rush to get back, was staying behind to play chess with the captain.

  “Volka,” Zhenya said mysteriously when they dragged their feet aboard the “Ladoga” three hours later. “Come on down to the cabin! I want to show you something. Here, look at this,” he continued, after shutting the door tightly. He pulled a longish object from under his coat. “What d’you think it is? I found it on the opposite side of the island. Right near the water.”

  Zhenya was holding a small copper vessel the size of a decanter. It was all green from age and brine.

  “We should give it to the captain right away,” Volka said excitedly. “Some expedition probably put a letter inside and threw it into the water, hoping someone would come to the rescue.”

  “That’s what I thought at first, too, but then I decided nothing would happen if we opened it first to have a look inside. It’s interesting, isn’t it?”

  “It sure is.”

  Zhenya turned pale from excitement. He quickly knocked off the tar-like substance that covered the mouth of the bottle. Under it was a heavy lead cap covered with a seal. Zhenya had great difficulty prying it loose.

  “And now we’ll see what’s inside,” he said, turning it upside-down over his berth.

  Before he had time to finish the sentence, clouds of black smoke began pouring from the bottle, filling the entire cabin. It became dark and choky. Presently, the thick vapour condensed and became an unsightly old man with an angry face and a pair of eyes that burnt like coals. He fell to his knees and knocked his forehead on the floor so hard that the things hanging on the cabin wall swayed as if the ship was rolling.

  “O Prophet of Allah, do not kill me!” he shouted.

  “I’d like to ask you something,” a frightened but curious Volka interrupted his wailing. “If I’m not mistaken, you mean the former King Solomon, don’t you?”
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br />   “Yes, O miserable youth! Sulayman, the Son of David (may the days of the twain be prolonged on earth!).”

  “I don’t know about who’s miserable,” Volka objected calmly, “but as far as your Sulayman is concerned — his days can in no way be prolonged. That’s out completely: he’s dead.”

  “You lie, wretch, and will pay dearly for it!”

  “There’s nothing to get mad about. That Eastern king die two thousand nine hundred and nineteen years ago. You ca look it up in the Encyclopaedia.”

  “Who opened the bottle?” the old man asked in a business like way, having obviously accepted Volka’s information an not appearing to be too saddened by it.

  “I did, but you really shouldn’t thank me,” Zhenya said modestly.

  “There is no God but Allah!” the stranger exclaimed. “Rejoice, O undeserving brat.”

  “Why should I rejoice? It’s you who’ve been freed from your prison, and you should be the one to rejoice. What’s there for me to rejoice about?”

  “Rejoice, because you must die an ill death this very hour”

  “That’s what I call real mean! After all, I freed you from the copper vessel. If not for me, who-knows how many thousands of years longer you’d have to lie around in smoke and soot.”

  “Don’t tire me with idle chatter! Ask of me only what mode of death you choose and in what manner I shall slay you! Gr-r-r!

  “I’ll thank you not to act so fierce! And anyway, what’s that all about?” Zhenya flared up.

  “Know, O undeserving boy, that I am one of the Genies who disobeyed Sulayman, David’s Son (on the twain be peace!), whereupon Sulayman sent his minister, Asaf, son of Barakhiya, to seize me. And this Vizier brought me against my will and led me in bonds to Sulayman and he placed me standing before him. When Sulayman saw me, he sent for this bottle, shut me up therein and stoppered it over with lead.”