“What happened? Who’s been killed? Who’s been robbed?” Hodja Nasreddin shouted, steering his donkey into the thick of the crowd. “Step aside! Make way! Make way!”
When he made his way through the crowd and rode right up to the edge of the large pond, covered in greenish weeds, he saw something incredible. A man was drowning not three steps from the shore. He would emerge on the surface and sink again, sending large air bubbles from below.
Numerous people were fussing around the bank. They stretched out their arms towards the drowning man, trying to get a hold of his robe, but their grasps fell a mere foot too short.
“Give us your hand! Give it! Give it!” they shouted. It was as if the drowning man could not hear them. He would not give them his hand, but instead continued to sink and surface at regular intervals. Lazy waves were spreading across the pond and licking its edges with a soft splashing sound, marking his journeys to the bottom and back up.
“Odd!” Hodja Nasreddin said, observing. “Very odd! What could be the cause of this? Why would he not hold out his hand? Perhaps he is a skilled diver here to settle a wager, but then why is he wearing his robe?”
Hodja Nasreddin grew pensive. While he was thinking, the drowning man surfaced four times or so, and every time he spent longer and longer at the bottom of the pond.
“Very odd!” Hodja Nasreddin repeated, dismounting. “Wait here,” he said to the donkey, “and I will go take a closer look.”
At this point, the drowning man sank deep down and did not appear for such a long time that some on the shore began to say funereal prayers. But suddenly, he appeared again.
“Give us your hand! Give it! Give it here!” the people shouted, stretching their hands towards him, but he glanced at them with blank eyes and sank silently and smoothly to the bottom without offering his hand.
“Oh, you people are a bit slow!” Hodja Nasreddin said. “Can you not tell by the expensive robe and the silk turban that this man is a mullah or a wealthy official? How is it that you have still not managed to learn the character of mullahs and officials, and the means of extracting them from the water?”
“Get him out quickly, if you know how!” people in the crowd shouted. “Save him, there he is again. Get him out!”
“Wait,” Hodja Nasreddin replied. “I have not finished talking. Where, I ask, have you ever seen a mullah or an official who would give anything to anyone? Remember this, o know-nothings: mullahs and officials never give anything, they only take. And you must rescue them from drowning according to their character. Here, look!”
“But you are too late,” people shouted from the crowd. “He will not appear again.”
“You think the water spirits will accept a mullah or an official that easily? You are mistaken. The water spirits will spare no effort in trying to get rid of him.”
Hodja Nasreddin squatted and began to wait patiently, watching the bubbles as they floated up from the bottom of the pond and drifted to shore, pushed along by a light breeze.
Finally, something dark began to rise from the bottom. The drowning man appeared on the surface – it would have been the last time, were it not for Hodja Nasreddin.
“Take my hand!” Hodja Nasreddin shouted, thrusting his hand towards him. “Take it!”
The drowning man clutched the extended hand feverishly. Hodja Nasreddin winced in pain.
Back on the shore, it took a while before they could get the rescued man to release his grasp.
For several minutes he lay motionlessly, plastered in weeds and covered with stinking mud, which concealed the features of his face. Then water began pouring from his mouth, his nose, and his ears.
“My bag! Where is my bag?” he groaned and would not calm down until he felt his bag on his side. Then he brushed off the seaweed and wiped the mud from his face with the flap of his robe. And Hodja Nasreddin shrank back, so hideous was this face, with a flat, broken nose, twisted nostrils, and a blind right eye. What’s more, the man was hunchbacked.
“Where is my rescuer?” he asked in a screeching voice, looking over the crowded people with his only functioning eye.
“Here he is!” everyone clamored, pushing Hodja Nasreddin forward.
“Come here, I will reward you.” The rescued man placed his hand into his bag, which was still sloshing with water, and took out a handful of wet silver. “Then again, there is nothing special or surprising about the fact that you pulled me out. I think I could have made it out myself,” he continued in a shrewish voice.
As he spoke, his grasp loosened gradually – perhaps from weakness, or perhaps from some other cause – and the money poured back into the bag through his fingers, jingling quietly. Finally, a single coin remained in his hand – half a tanga – and he handed it to Hodja Nasreddin with a sigh:
“Here is some money. Go to the bazaar and buy yourself a bowl of pilaf.”
“There is not enough here for a bowl of pilaf,” Hodja Nasreddin said.
“No matter, no matter. Just buy pilaf without meat.”
“Now you see,” Hodja Nasreddin turned to the others, “that I was indeed rescuing him in full accordance with his character.”
He headed towards his donkey.
A man stopped him midway. He was tall, thin, and sinewy, his face bearing a grim and unfriendly expression, and his hands blackened by soot and coal. Blacksmith’s tongs were tucked into his belt.
“What do you want, blacksmith?” Hodja Nasreddin asked.
“Do you know,” asked the blacksmith, measuring Hodja Nasreddin from head to toe with a hostile gaze, “do you know who it is you rescued in the last moment, after which no one could have rescued him? And do you know how many tears will be spilled because of what you have done, and how many people will lose their homes, fields, and vineyards and be sent to the slave market and then down the Great Khivian Road in chains?”
Hodja Nasreddin stared at him in surprise:
“I do not understand you, blacksmith! Does it befit a man and a Muslim to pass by a drowning man without offering him a helping hand?”
“So you believe that one must save all the poisonous snakes, all the hyenas and vipers from certain doom?” the blacksmith exclaimed. Then, realizing something, he added:
“Do you hail from these parts?”
“No! I have come from far away.”
“Then you do not know that the man you rescued is a bloodsucking villain, and that every third man in Bukhara moans and weeps because of him?”
A horrible guess flashed in Hodja Nasreddin’s head.
“Blacksmith!” he said in a shaky voice, afraid to believe his guess. “Tell me the name of the one I saved!”
“You have saved the moneylender Jafar, may he be cursed in this life and the next, and may his entire clan be stricken with festering sores to the fourteenth generation!” the blacksmith replied.
“What?” Hodja Nasreddin cried. “What did you say, blacksmith? O woe to me, o shame on my head! Did I really drag that snake out of the water with my own hands? Truly, there is no atoning for a sin like this! O woe, o shame and misery!”
His repentance touched the blacksmith, who softened a little:
“Calm down, wanderer, it is too late to do anything now. It’s just your luck that you came to the pond at that exact minute. If only your donkey had misbehaved somewhere and delayed you on your way! The moneylender would have drowned in that time.”
“This donkey!” Hodja Nasreddin said. “If he does delay me on my way, it is only to rid my saddlebags of money: the money is too heavy for him, you see. But if I am destined to disgrace myself by rescuing the moneylender, you can be sure this donkey will deliver me right on time!”