Hodja Nasreddin inwardly cursed both the moneylender and the emir, and even himself for extolling his own wisdom too much. How would he get out of this one? The moneylender jerked Hodja Nasreddin by the sleeve, insisting they put on speed. The streets were empty, and Hodja Nasreddin’s feet were sinking into the hot dust. He walked and wondered: “How will I get out of this?” Suddenly, he stopped. “It seems the time has come for me to keep my oath!” He weighed and planned everything out in an instant. “Yes, the time has come! Moneylender, o merciless tormentor of the poor, today you will be drowned!” He turned away, so the moneylender would not see the sparks in his black eyes.
They turned into an alley where the breeze swept along the road, kicking up dusty whirlwinds. The moneylender opened the gate of his house before Hodja Nasreddin. In the depth of the courtyard, beyond a low fence separating the female quarters of the house, Hodja Nasreddin noticed a motion and heard quiet whispers and laughter. The wives and concubines were happy to see a guest arrive: they had no other joys in their imprisonment. The moneylender stopped and stared menacingly – everything grew quiet… “I will free you today, beautiful prisoners!” Hodja Nasreddin thought.
The room where the moneylender had brought Hodja Nasreddin had no windows, while the door had three locks and a number of other latches whose secret was known only to the master of the house. The moneylender fussed around for a long time, jingling his keys, before all the latches were undone and the door opened. This was where the pots were kept, and this is where the moneylender slept on boards covering the entrance to the cellar.
“Undress!” Hodja Nasreddin commanded. The moneylender threw off his clothes. His nakedness was indescribably hideous. Hodja Nasreddin closed the door and began to pronounce incantations.
Meanwhile, Jafar’s numerous relatives had gathered in the courtyard. Many of them owed him money and hoped that he would forgive their debts in celebration of the healing. They hoped in vain: the moneylender could hear the voices of his debtors through the closed door and smirked maliciously to himself. “I will tell them today that I have forgiven their debts,” he thought, “but I will not give them back the receipts, the receipts I will keep. They will relax and lead a carefree life, while I will not say anything, but secretly I will continue tallying everything up. And when ten tanga of interest accumulate on every tanga of debt, and the amount of the debt exceeds the cost of the houses, gardens, and vineyards that my debtors presently own, I will call a judge, retract my promise, produce the receipts, sell all their property, leave them impoverished, and fill another pot with gold!” Thus he fantasized, consumed by insatiable greed.
“Stand up and get dressed!” Hodja Nasreddin said. “We will now go to the pond of the holy Ahmed, and you will immerse yourself in its sacred waters. This is necessary to heal you.”
“The holy Ahmed’s pond!” the moneylender exclaimed fearfully. “I almost drowned in its waters once already. Know, o most wise Hussein Huslia, that I cannot swim.”
“You must pronounce prayers incessantly on your way to the pond,” Hodja Nasreddin said. “And you must not think of worldly matters. Moreover, you will take a purse of gold and give each person you meet a gold coin.”
The moneylender moaned and groaned, but performed everything exactly as told. He met various people along the way – tradesmen, beggars; his face contorting, he gave a gold coin to every one. Numerous relatives walked behind him. Hodja Nasreddin called them on purpose, so as to escape accusations afterwards that the drowning of the moneylender was premeditated.
The sun sank beneath the rooftops, the trees covered the pond with their shadows, and mosquitoes were buzzing in the air. Jafar undressed himself once more and approached the water.
“It is very deep here,” he said pitifully. “Hussein Huslia, you did not forget that I cannot swim, did you?”
The relatives watched in silence. Covering his privates with his hand and fidgeting fearfully, the moneylender circled the pond, looking for a shallow spot.
But then Jafar squatted and, taking hold of the overhanging branches, tested the water with his foot.
“It’s cold,” he complained; his eyes widened.
“You dally too much,” Hodja Nasreddin replied, trying to look away so as not to allow unrighteous pity into his heart. But he recalled the suffering of the poor ruined by Jafar, the parched lips of the sick child, he recalled the tears of old Niyaz. Hodja Nasreddin’s face lit up with anger, and he looked into the moneylender right in the eyes openly and bravely.
“You dally too much!” he repeated. “If you wish to be cured, get in.”
The moneylender went into the water. He entered very slowly, and his belly was still on the shore when his legs were already in up to the knees. Finally, he stood up. Right near the shore, the water came up to his waist. The weeds swayed, tickling his body with their cold touch. His shoulder blades twitching from the chill, he stepped forward and looked back. He made another step, and looked back. His eyes expressed a silent plea, but Hodja Nasreddin did not heed this plea. To take pity on the moneylender would mean dooming thousands of poor people to more suffering.
The water covered the moneylender’s hump, but Hodja Nasreddin chased him relentlessly into the depth.
“More, more… Let the water touch your ears, or else I will not undertake to cure you. Come, be brave, esteemed Jafar! Be brave! Another step! Just a little more!”
“Ulp!” the moneylender said suddenly, and his head vanished in the water.
“Ulp!” he repeated again, appearing on the surface a second later.
“He’s drowning! He’s drowning!” the relatives shouted. Confusion and shoving ensued as they stretched their arms and various sticks out to the moneylender; some were trying sincerely to help him, while others were only doing it for show.
Hodja Nasreddin determined right away exactly who owed the moneylender, and how much. As for him, he was running around and fussing more than anyone else:
“Give me your hand! Give me your hand, esteemed Jafar! Can you hear me? Give me your hand! Give it!”
“Give it! Give it!” the relatives repeated in unison. The moneylender continued to dive, appearing on the surface less and less often. And it was here, in these sacred waters, that he would have met his end, if a barefoot water-bearer had not appeared from somewhere, carrying an empty water-skin on his back.
“Huh!” he shouted upon seeing the drowning man. “Why, it’s the moneylender Jafar!”
Not pausing to think, he jumped into the water without removing his clothes, stretched out his hand, and shouted haltingly:
“Take my hand!”
The moneylender grasped it and was extracted successfully from the water. As he came to on the shore, the water-bearer explained loquaciously to the relatives:
“You were not rescuing him properly. You were shouting ‘give’, while you had to shout: ‘take!’ Surely you know that the esteemed Jafar had almost drowned in this sacred pond once before, and was saved by a man who was passing by on a gray donkey. The man applied this very method to save the moneylender, and I remembered it. Today, this knowledge came in handy…”
Hodja Nasreddin bit his lips as he listened. It turned out that he had saved the moneylender twice – once with his own hands, and once with the hands of the water-bearer. “No, I will drown him nonetheless, even if I have to spend another year in Bukhara to do so,” he thought. Meanwhile, the moneylender caught his breath and began to shout cantankerously: