If narrators differed about the circumstances of the puppet’s erection and the puppet master’s intentions, they agreed that the specter who emerged to meet the Council of Elders on that ill-omened evening was none other than the scarecrow from the fields. They offered as evidence the disappearance of the sorcerer of the Unknown from his workshop and the fact that no one saw him in the oasis thereafter.
THE GIFTS
1
“Here are the rewards from Luck’s ally for the good opinion that Luck’s emissaries hold of him.”
He touched the bulging leather bag, which was decorated with magical designs, and held it up toward the elders’ faces as his eyes glinted mischievously. Then he added, “Don’t belittle its size, because within it you will find everything you desire!”
The council members exchanged a look that combined doubt, astonishment, and disparagement. The chief merchant protested, “Our master compensates us for our good opinion of him with a gift that shows his poor opinion of us.”
“Poor opinion?”
“Does our master think we are ascetics to whom he can fling a paltry pouch and then say we’ll find everything we want inside it?”
The new governor rubbed his dark hands together. Then he pulled an intensely black veil around his protruding cheeks as a nasty smile gleamed in his eyes. With the chilly hauteur of residents of the Spirit World descending to the tribes’ hamlets dressed as wayfarers, he retorted, “I still feel certain that each hand will find in my modest pouch everything the soul desires.”
“Does our master know that the soul desires more than the hand can reach? Does our master realize that the soul desires whatever the eye sees and that even this does not satisfy it? Then it also craves whatever it creates for itself in the imagination.”
“I know. Trust me: I know.”
“Then are you still certain that your knapsack can satisfy the greed of a soul that only dirt ultimately fills?”
The enigmatic smile flickered in his eyes again, and he said with great conviction, “The gifts in my little pouch will cure souls of greed and feed nations gold dust, not dirt.”
A laugh escaped from the chief merchant’s mouth. He laughed like a hooligan till he leaned back and his veil slipped from his mouth. Then his comrades observed depressingly black teeth in that cavity. He sat up straight and tightened the veil around his nose before asking, “Does our master wish to persuade us that all the treasures that the residents of the Spirit World have accumulated down through the ages and hidden in unknown reaches of the desert reside inside it?”
“If our venerable companion desires treasures, I will produce treasures for him from the knapsack.”
“But I’m the chief merchant of this oasis and won’t be satisfied, master, with a trinket.”
“I wager that the chief merchant of the oasis will find a gift in the pouch that is fit for the chief merchant of the grandest oases.”
“I am astonished to hear in my master’s speech a certitude that puts to shame any I have ever heard from a man’s mouth.”
“A wise head doesn’t look disdainfully at anything, no matter how trifling it appears to the eye.”
“Now we are hearing the language of the Spirit World’s residents who visit our dwellings camouflaged with the clothing of travelers.”
“Hasn’t the time come for us to discover what these souls desire so we can finally complete this task?”
The chief merchant looked round at his companions’ faces. In his eyes they read a challenge, a call to arms, and a thirst for sport. So he turned back to their mysterious companion, around whose neck the fates had hung the title “leader.” As if reading from an inscription burned with hot iron onto a square of leather, he said, “My longstanding dream has been to fasten around my waist a gold belt. Should I hope to find in my master’s quiver a gift of gold dust fashioned into a belt?”
He leveled a derisive look at the leader and then turned toward his comrades, in whose eyes he observed a supercilious expression. The leader’s eyes, however, acquired the merry look his companions had only witnessed previously in the eyes of adversaries who wait patiently to strike. He patted the leather — which was stamped with amulets — and then stuck his other hand into the mouth of the satchel, from which he extracted an object wrapped in a piece of faded dark linen. Placing the package on his lap, he untied it with the slow deliberation of a person enjoying his task. Finally he reached the item, seized the end of it the way a hunter grabs a rabbit by its tail, and held it up. Then a parlous glint ignited in thin air, and the group saw a gold belt as wide as a knuckle. It was fabricated from very minute pieces the daintiness of which added to the belt’s charm and extraordinary allure. The pieces were arranged vertically in delicate links and spread out horizontally with pieces that were even smaller but all the more captivating.
The hand remained lifted in space for a long time, and the enchanting body continued to dangle in the air, where it inflamed souls with greed, desire, confusion, and insanity. Finally his palm moved to present the gift to its recipient. The leader placed the noble tail in the chief merchant’s lap, releasing it slowly and allowing the gold to flow onto the seated man’s lap, where it coiled up like a serpent.
Their eyes gazed at the coil with bedazzlement, awe, and astonishment.
2
Generations have discussed gift-giving, saying a gift that proves fatal if it falls below the mark becomes even more lethal if it exceeds the mark. They have related in the language of the ancients how gifts — in the first instance — generate scorn, and how they — in the second — are the lasso of subjugation that wraps around the recipient’s neck.
People of the desert have handed down from generation to generation a story that the first time a gift was given, it whispered in the breast of the recipient, who was obsessed with malice and deceitful thoughts all night long. Then he found no way to doze off. So he slipped into the darkness before dawn, entered the home of his benefactor, and stabbed him with a fatal dagger blow to the heart. In the morning he went out to boast to everyone that he had taken revenge. Inquisitive people asked why he felt no gratitude for the benefaction. Then he shouted at people as loudly as he could, “Nothing in the desert so deserves punishment as a gift, because no one has the right to despise his neighbor. No one has the right to pretend he has been given more possessions than his neighbor — not even if he possesses everything on the whole disc beneath the moon. Anyone who owns something should be discreet about it to the point of feeling ashamed. He should not stand up among people to boast about what his hand, which has been soiled by deceit and lies, possesses. The sovereign is not content to possess everything on earth. He goes beyond that and gains possession of other people with gifts. For this reason, a present deserves the gravest punishment, because it isn’t a boon and has never been one. Instead, it is a crime that outstrips all others, because it means spitting in the face of the Spirit World even before spitting in the face of the nobleman. So beware!”
Desert people recounted another narrative about a man who received a precious gift from one of the elders. It delighted him, and he paid off his debts with it. He invested a share in commercial enterprises. Then he dispatched caravans and purchased maids and slaves, making his fortune. He lost his peace of mind, however, and was disturbed by a feeling of being indebted and of not having repaid his debt. So he went to his benefactor and bestowed a fortune on him. Then he returned home but still could not feel calm, because the whispered insinuations he heard in his heart and saw in everyone’s eyes mocked him even more, telling him in an audible voice that he would never be able to repay the debt to the lender — no matter how much he gave him — because a gift is not a loan; a gift is a loan that can never be repaid. A gift, even when repaid, still remains a debt for as long as the desert stretches beneath the dome of the sky and creatures are strewn across the wasteland.