The Old Genie Hottabych

HOTTABYCH IS LOST AND FOUND AGAIN

“Well, wish me luck!” Hottabych exclaimed, turning into a fish and disappearing into the lagoon.

The water was crystal-clear, so very unlike the water of the Nile Delta, and they had a good view of the old man working his fins quickly as he headed for the open sea.

While awaiting his return, the boys went in for a good dozen dips, they dived to their heart’s content, lay in the sun until they were dizzy, and, finally, with hunger clawing at their insides, they began to worry. Hottabych had been gone for a suspiciously long time, though he had promised not to be away longer than an hour. The sun had long since set, colouring the horizon and the calm sea in tints of amazing beauty; thousands of city lights twinkled in the distance, but still the old man had not returned.

“Could he have got lost?” Zhenya said despondently.

“He can’t get lost,” Volka answered. “Chaps like him never get lost.”

“He might have been swallowed by a shark.”

“There aren’t any sharks in these waters,” Volka objected, though he wasn’t too sure of his words.

“I’m hungry!” Zhenya confessed after a long silence.

Just then, a rowboat nosed into the beach with a soft splash. Three fishermen climbed out. One of them began to lay a fire of driftwood, while the others picked out the smaller fish. They cleaned it and threw it into a kettle of water.

“Let’s go ask them for something to eat,” Zhenya suggested. “They look like nice working people. I’m sure they’ll give us something.”

Volka agreed.

“Good evening, Signores!” Zhenya bowed politely, as he addressed the fishermen.

“Just think how many homeless children there are in our poor Italy !” one of the three, a thin, grey-haired man, said hoarsely. “Giovanni, give them something to eat.”

“We’ve just enough bread for ourselves, but there’s plenty of onions and more than enough salt!” a curly-haired stocky youth of about nineteen answered cheerfully. He was busy cleaning fish.

“Sit down, boys. Soon the best fish soup ever cooked in or around Genoa will be ready.”

Either the cheerful Giovanni was truly a gifted cook by nature, or else the boys were famished, but they agreed that they had never eaten anything more delicious in their lives. They ate with such gusto, smacking their lips from sheer joy, that the fishermen watching them chuckled.

“If you want some more, you can cook it yourselves, there nothing complicated about it,” Giovanni said and stretched. “We’ll doze off meanwhile. Be sure you don’t take any big fishes, they go to market tomorrow, so we’ll have money to pay our taxes.”

Zhenya began puttering around the fire, while Volka rolled up his trousers and made his way to the boat full of fish.

He had gathered as much as he needed and was about to re turn to the beach, when his eyes chanced upon the net folded near the mast. A lonely fish was struggling frantically within, now giving up, now resuming its useless battle to free itself.

“It will come in handy for the chowder,” Volka said, plucking it from the net. But it again began to struggle in his hands, and he suddenly felt sorry for it. He turned round to make sure the fishermen weren’t looking and threw it back into the water.

The fish made a small splash as it hit the dark surface of the lagoon and turned into a beaming Hottabych.

“May the day upon which you were born be forever blessed, O kind-hearted son of Alyosha!” he exclaimed gratefully, as he stood waist-deep in water. “Once again you’ve saved my life A few moments more and I would have choked in that net. got foolishly trapped in it while searching for my unfortunate brother.”

“Hottabych, old man! What a great fellow you are for being alive! We were so worried!”

“And I, too, was tortured by the thought that you, O twice my saviour, and our young friend were left alone and hungry in an alien country.”

“We’re not hungry at all. These fishermen really treated us to a feast.”

“May these kind people be blessed! Are they rich?”

“I think they’re very poor.”

“Then let’s hurry, and I will return their kindness generously.”

“I don’t think it’s the right thing to do,” Volka said after a moment’s pause. “Put yourself in their place: suddenly you see a wet old man climbing out of the water in the middle of the night. No, this is no good at all.”

“You’re right as always,” Hottabych agreed. “Return to the shore and I’ll join you presently.”

A short while later, the sleeping fishermen were awakened by the sound of an approaching horse. Soon a strange rider stopped at the smouldering fire.

He was an old man in a cheap linen suit and a hard straw boater. His magnificent beard was wind-blown, disclosing to all who cared to look an embroidered Ukrainian shirt. He wore a pair of gold and silver embroidered pink slippers with funny turned-up toes. His feet were placed in gold stirrups that were studded with diamonds and emeralds. The saddle upon which he sat was so magnificent that it was surely worth a fortune. The prancing horse was of indescribable beauty. In each hand the old man held a large leather suitcase.

“Would you please direct me to the noble fishermen who have so kindly taken in and fed two lonely, hungry boys?” he said to Giovanni, who had risen to greet him.

Without waiting for an answer, he dismounted, and, with a sigh of relief, set the suitcases on the sand.

“What’s the matter? Do you know them?” Giovanni asked cautiously.

“Certainly I know my young friends!” Hottabych cried, embracing each in turn as they ran up to him.

Then he addressed the startled fishermen:

“Believe me, O most honourable of all fishermen, when I say I do not know how to thank you enough for your precious hospitality and kindness!”

“Why, there’s nothing to thank us for. Not for the fish certainly?” the grey-haired fisherman said in surprise. “It didn’t Set us back much, believe me, Signore.”

“These are the words of a truly selfless man, and they only increase my feeling of gratitude. Permit me to repay you with these modest gifts,” Hottabych said, handing a dumb-founded Giovanni the two suitcases.

“There must be some mistake, O respected Signore,” Giovanni uttered after exchanging puzzled glances with his companions. “Why, you can buy at least a thousand chowders like the one we shared with the boys for two such suitcases. I don’t want you to think it was a very special kind of chowder. We’re poor people…”

“It is you who are mistaken, O most modest of all kind-hearted people! Within these excellent boxes which you call by the scholarly name of ‘suitcase’ are riches that are thousands and thousands of times greater than the cost of your soup. Nonetheless, I consider they cannot pay for it, for there is nothing more precious in the world than disinterested hospitality.”

He opened the suitcases and everyone saw that they were crammed with magnificent, live, silvery fish.

While the fishermen were still wondering what sense there was in giving fishermen fish, Hottabych emptied the quivering contents of the suitcases onto the sand. It was then that the three men gasped in surprise and amazement: in some strange way, both suitcases were found to be crammed full of fish again! Hottabych emptied the suitcases once again, and once again they were filled with the marvellous gifts of the sea. This was repeated a fourth and a fifth time.

“And now,” Hottabych said, enjoying the impression he had made, “if you wish, you can test the wonderful qualities of these ‘suitcases’ yourselves. Never again will you have to shiver in your little dingy in foul weather or in the fog of early dawn. You will no longer have to pray to Allah for luck, you will never again have to drag about the market-place with heavy baskets of fish. You need only take along one of these ‘suitcases’ and give the customer exactly as much as he wants. But I beg you, do not object,” Hottabych said when he noticed that the fishermen were about to say something. “I assure you, there has been no mistake.

May your life be happy and cloudless, O most noble of fishermen! Farewell! Hop up here, boys!”

With Giovanni’s help, the boys climbed into the saddle behind Hottabych.

“Farewell, Signore! Good-bye, boys!” the dazed fishermen shouted, as they watched the surprising strangers disappear in the distance.

“Even if these were ordinary suitcases, not magic ones, we could get many liras for them,” Giovanni said thoughtfully.

“Well, I think we’ll finally be able to make ends meet now, Pietro,” the oldest of the three added. He was close to sixty, with a wrinkled, weather-beaten face and dry, sinewy arms. “We’ll pay our taxes, cure my cursed rheumatism, and buy you a coat, a hat and a pair of shoes, Giovanni. After all, you’re a young man and you should be dressed well. As a matter of fact, some new clothes won’t harm any of us, will they?”

“New clothes!” Giovanni mimicked angrily. “When there’s so much sorrow and poverty everywhere! First of all, we’ll have to help Giacomo’s widow, you know, the one who drowned last year and left three children and an old mother.”

“You’re right, Giovanni,” Pietro agreed. “We should help Giacomo’s widow. He was a good and true friend.”

Then the third fisherman entered the conversation. He was a man of thirty, and his name was Cristoforo.

“What about Luigi? We should give him some money, too. The poor fellow’s dying of tuberculosis.”

“That’s right,” Giovanni said. “And Sybilla Capelli. Her son’s been in prison for over a year now for organizing the strike.”

“Just think how many people we can help,” Giovanni said excitedly. And the three kind fishermen sat late into the night, discussing whom else they could help, now that they had the wonderful suitcases. These were honest and kind-hearted toilers, and the idea never entered their minds to use Hottabych’s present in order to get rich and be wealthy fishmongers.

I am happy to tell this to my readers, so they’ll know the old man’s present fell into good hands, and I’m certain that none of them, if they were in the fishermen’s place, would have acted otherwise.