The old devil went away,--he could not get at Iván by means of the
soldiers. The old devil changed into a clean-looking gentleman, and went
to live in Iván's kingdom: he wished to get at him by means of money, as
he had done with Tarás the Paunch.
"I want to do you good," he said, "and to teach you what is good and
proper. I will build a house in your country, and will start an
establishment."
"All right," he said, "stay here!"
The clean-looking gentleman stayed overnight, and the following morning
he took a large bag of gold to the market-square, and a sheet of paper,
and said:
"You are all of you living like pigs. I will teach you how to live.
Build me a house according to this plan! You work, and I will show you
how, and will pay gold money to you."
And he showed them the gold. The fools were astounded: they had no such
a thing as money, and only exchanged things among themselves, or paid
with work. They marvelled at the gold and said:
"They are nice things."
And for these gold things they began to give him what they had and to
work for him. The old devil rejoiced and thought:
"My affair is proceeding favourably. I will now ruin Iván completely, as
I have ruined Tarás, and will buy him up, guts and all."
As soon as the fools had any gold, they gave it all away to their women
for necklaces, and their girls wove it into their braids, and the
children began to play in the streets with those pretty things. When all
had enough of it, they refused to get any more. The clean-looking
gentleman's palace was not half done, and the grain and the cattle were
not yet attended to for the year. And the gentleman demanded that they
should go and work for him, and haul his grain, and drive his cattle; he
promised them much gold for everything and for all work.
But no one came to work, and they brought nothing to him. Only now and
then a boy or girl would run in to exchange an egg for a gold coin;
otherwise nobody came, and he had nothing to eat. The clean-looking
gentleman was starved, and he went to the village to buy something to
eat: he went into one yard, and offered a gold coin for a chicken, but
the woman would not take it.
"I have too many of them as it is," she said.
He went to a homeless woman, to buy a herring of her, and offered her a
gold coin.
"I do not want it, dear man," she said. "I have no children, and so
there is nobody to play with it; I myself have three of these for show."
He went to a peasant to buy bread of him, but the peasant, too, would
not take the money.
"I do not want it," he said. "If you want bread, for Christ's sake,
wait, and I will have my wife cut you off a piece."
The devil just spit out and ran away from the peasant. Not only would he
not take anything for Christ's sake, but it was worse than cutting him
even to hear that word.
And so he did not get any bread. Everywhere it was the same; no matter
where the devil went, they gave him nothing for money, but said:
"Bring us something else, or come and work for it, or take it for
Christ's sake!"
But the devil had nothing but money. He did not like to work, and for
Christ's sake he could not take anything. The old devil grew angry.
"What else do you want, if I give you money? You can buy anything for
money, or hire a labourer."
The fools paid no attention to him.
"No," they said, "we do not want it. We have no taxes and no wages to
pay, so what do we want with the money?"
The old devil went to bed without eating supper.
This affair reached the ears of Iván the Fool. They went to ask him:
"What shall we do? A clean-looking gentleman has appeared among us: he
is fond of eating and drinking, and does not like to work, and does not
beg for Christ's sake, but only offers us gold pieces. So long as we did
not have enough of them, we gave him everything, but now we do not give
him any more. What shall we do with him? We are afraid that he will
starve."
Iván listened to what they had to say.
"All right," he said, "we shall have to feed him. Let him go from farm
to farm as a shepherd!"
The old devil could not help himself, and he began to go from farm to
farm. The turn came to Iván's farm. The old devil came to dinner, and
the dumb girl was just fixing it. Those who were lazy used to deceive
her. Without having worked they came to dinner earlier and ate up all
the porridge. And so the dumb girl contrived to tell the
good-for-nothing by their hands: if one had calluses, she seated him at
the table, but if not, she gave him what was left of the dinner. The old
devil climbed behind the table; but the dumb girl took hold of his
hands, and there were no calluses; the hands were clean and smooth, and
the nails long.
The dumb girl bawled, and pulled the devil out from behind the table.
Iván's wife said to him:
"Don't take it amiss, clean gentleman! My sister-in-law will not let a
man without calluses sit down at the table. Wait awhile! Let the people
eat first, and then you will get what is left."
The old devil was insulted, because at the king's house they would feed
him with the swine. He said to Iván:
"What a fool's law you have in your country to let all men work with
their hands! You have invented that in your stupidity. Do men work with
their hands only? How do you suppose clever people work?"
But Iván said:
"How can we fools know? We labour mostly with our hands and with our
backs."
"That is so, because you are fools. I will teach you," he said, "how to
work with your heads. You will see that with your heads you can work
faster than with your hands."
Iván marvelled.
"Indeed," he said, "we are called fools for good reason."
And the old devil said:
"But it is not easy to work with the head. You do not give me anything
to eat because I have no calluses on my hands, and you do not know that
it is a hundred times harder to work with the head. At times it just
makes the head burst."
Iván fell to musing.
"But why do you torture yourself so much, my dear? It is no small matter
to have your head burst. You had better do some easy work,--with your
hands and back."
And the devil said:
"The reason I torture myself is because I pity you fools. If I did not
torture myself, you would remain fools to the end of your days. I have
worked with my head, and now I will teach you, too."
Iván marvelled.
"Teach us," he said, "for now and then the hands get tired, and it would
be nice to use the head instead."
The devil promised to teach him.
And Iván proclaimed throughout his kingdom that a clean-looking man had
appeared who would teach people how to work with their heads, that they
could work more with their heads than with their hands, and that they
should come and learn.
In Iván's kingdom there was a high tower, and a straight staircase led
up to it, and at the top there was a spy-room. Iván took the gentleman
there so that he might see better.
The gentleman stood up on the tower and began to speak from it. The
fools gathered around to look at him. The fools thought that he would
show them in fact how to work with the head instead of the hands. But
the old devil taught them only in words how to live without working.
The fools did not understand a word. They looked and looked and went
away, each to his work.
The old devil stood on the tower a day, and a second day, and kept
talking. He wanted to eat; but the fools did not have enough sense to
send some bread up to the tower. They thought that if he could work
better with his head than with his hands, he would somehow earn bread
for himself with his head. The old devil stood another day in the
tower-room, and kept talking all the time. And the people came up and
looked, and looked and went away.
Then Iván asked:
"Well, has the gentleman begun to work with his head?"
"Not yet," people said, "he is still babbling."
The old devil stood another day on the tower and began to weaken; he
tottered and struck his head against a post. One of the fools saw that,
and told Iván's wife about it, and she ran to her husband in the field.
"Come, let us go and see," she said. "The gentleman is beginning to work
with his head."
Iván was surprised.
"Indeed?" he said. He turned in the horse, and went to the tower. When
he came up to it, the old devil was weakened from hunger and tottering
from side to side and knocking his head against the posts. Just as Iván
came up, the devil stumbled and fell and rattled down the stairs, head
foremost: he counted all the steps.
"Well," said Iván, "the clean-looking gentleman told the truth when he
said that at times the head bursts. This is worse than calluses: such
works will leave bumps on the head."
The old devil came down the whole staircase and struck his head against
the ground. Iván wanted to go and see how much work he had done, but
suddenly the earth gave way, and the old devil went through the earth,
and nothing but a hole was left.
Iván scratched himself.
"I declare," he said, "it is a nasty thing! It is again he. He must be
the father of those others. What a big fellow he is!"
Iván is still living, and people are all the time rushing to his
kingdom, and his brothers, too, came to him, and he is feeding them all.
If any one comes and says: "Feed me!" he replies:
"All right, stay here, we have plenty of everything."
They have but one custom in his country, and that is, if one has
calluses on his hands, he may sit down at the table, and if he has not,
he gets the remnants.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
On page 133, the original read: "The Tartars after him. He into the
river."
This has been changed to "The Tartars after him. He threw himself into
the river."