Zanzibar Tales Part 10

"Well," said the master, "what do you want, old woman?"

"Oh, my master," cried she, "Keejeepaa is sick!"

The mistress started and said: "Dear me! What is the matter with him?"

"All his body pains him. He is sick all over."

"Oh, well," said the master, "what can I do? Go and get some of that red millet, that is too common for our use, and make him some gruel."

"Gracious!" exclaimed his wife, staring at him in amazement; "do you wish her to feed our friend with stuff that a horse would not eat if he were ever so hungry? This is not right of you."

"Ah, get out!" said he, "you're crazy. We eat rice; isn't red millet good enough for a gazelle that cost only a dime?"

"Oh, but he is no ordinary gazelle. He should be as dear to you as the apple of your eye. If sand got in your eye it would trouble you."

"You talk too much," returned her husband; then, turning to the old woman, he said, "Go and do as I told you."

So the old woman went downstairs, and when she saw the gazelle, she began to cry, and say, "Oh, dear! oh, dear!"

It was a long while before the gazelle could persuade her to tell him what had pa.s.sed upstairs, but at last she told him all. When he had heard it, he said: "Did he really tell you to make me red millet gruel?"

"Ah," cried she, "do you think I would say such a thing if it were not so?"

"Well," said Keejeepaa, "I believe what the old folks said was right. However, we'll give him another chance. Go up to him again, and tell him I am very sick, and that I can't eat that gruel."

So she went upstairs, and found the master and mistress sitting by the window, drinking coffee.

The master, looking around and seeing her, said: "What's the matter now, old woman?"

And she said: "Master, I am sent by Keejeepaa. He is very sick indeed, and has not taken the gruel you told me to make for him."

"Oh, bother!" he exclaimed. "Hold your tongue, and keep your feet still, and shut your eyes, and stop your ears with wax; then, if that gazelle tells you to come up here, say that your legs are stiff; and if he tells you to listen, say your ears are deaf; and if he tells you to look, say your sight has failed you; and if he wants you to talk, tell him your tongue is paralyzed."

When the old woman heard these words, she stood and stared, and was unable to move. As for his wife, her face became sad, and the tears began to start from her eyes; observing which, her husband said, sharply, "What's the matter with you, sultan's daughter?"

The lady replied, "A man's madness is his undoing."

"Why do you say that, mistress?" he inquired.

"Ah," said she, "I am grieved, my husband, at your treatment of Keejeepaa. Whenever I say a good word for the gazelle you dislike to hear it. I pity you that your understanding is gone."

"What do you mean by talking in that manner to me?" he bl.u.s.tered.

"Why, advice is a blessing, if properly taken. A husband should advise with his wife, and a wife with her husband; then they are both blessed."

"Oh, stop," said her husband, impatiently; "it's evident you've lost your senses. You should be chained up." Then he said to the old woman: "Never mind her talk; and as to this gazelle, tell him to stop bothering me and putting on style, as if he were the sultan. I can't eat, I can't drink, I can't sleep, because of that gazelle worrying me with his messages. First, the gazelle is sick; then, the gazelle doesn't like what he gets to eat. Confound it! If he likes to eat, let him eat; if he doesn't like to eat, let him die and be out of the way. My mother is dead, and my father is dead, and I still live and eat; shall I be put out of my way by a gazelle, that I bought for a dime, telling me he wants this thing or that thing? Go and tell him to learn how to behave himself toward his superiors."

When the old woman went downstairs, she found the gazelle was bleeding at the mouth, and in a very bad way. All she could say was, "My son, the good you did is all lost; but be patient."

And the gazelle wept with the old woman when she told him all that had pa.s.sed, and he said, "Mother, I am dying, not only from sickness, but from shame and anger at this man's ingrat.i.tude."

After a while Keejeepaa told the old woman to go and tell the master that he believed he was dying. When she went upstairs she found Daaraaee chewing sugar-cane, and she said to him, "Master, the gazelle is worse; we think him nearer to dying than getting well."

To which he answered: "Haven't I told you often enough not to bother me?"

Then his wife said: "Oh, husband, won't you go down and see the poor gazelle? If you don't like to go, let me go and see him. He never gets a single good thing from you."

But he turned to the old woman and said, "Go and tell that nuisance of a gazelle to die eleven times if he chooses to."

"Now, husband," persisted the lady, "what has Keejeepaa done to you? Has he done you any wrong? Such words as yours people use to their enemies only. Surely the gazelle is not your enemy. All the people who know him, great and lowly, love him dearly, and they will think it very wrong of you if you neglect him. Now, do be kind to him, Sultan Daaraaee."

But he only repeated his a.s.sertion that she had lost her wits, and would have nothing further of argument.

So the old woman went down and found the gazelle worse than ever.

In the meantime Sultan Daaraaee's wife managed to give some rice to a servant to cook for the gazelle, and also sent him a soft shawl to cover him and a pillow to lie upon. She also sent him a message that if he wished, she would have her father's best physicians attend him.

All this was too late, however, for just as these good things arrived, Keejeepaa died.

When the people heard he was dead, they went running around crying and having an awful time; and when Sultan Daaraaee found out what all the commotion was about he was very indignant, remarking, "Why, you are making as much fuss as if I were dead, and all over a gazelle that I bought for a dime!"

But his wife said: "Husband, it was this gazelle that came to ask me of my father, it was he who brought me from my father's, and it was to him I was given by my father. He gave you everything good, and you do not possess a thing that he did not procure for you. He did everything he could to help you, and you not only returned him unkindness, but now he is dead you have ordered people to throw him into the well. Let us alone, that we may weep."

But the gazelle was taken and thrown into the well.

Then the lady wrote a letter telling her father to come to her directly, and despatched it by trusty messengers; upon the receipt of which the sultan and his attendants started hurriedly to visit his daughter.

When they arrived, and heard that the gazelle was dead and had been thrown into the well, they wept very much; and the sultan, and the vizir, and the judges, and the rich chief men, all went down into the well and brought up the body of Keejeepaa, and took it away with them and buried it.

Now, that night the lady dreamt that she was at home at her father's house; and when dawn came she awoke and found she was in her own bed in her own town again.

And her husband dreamed that he was on the dust heap, scratching; and when he awoke there he was, with both hands full of dust, looking for grains of millet. Staring wildly he looked around to the right and left, saying: "Oh, who has played this trick on me? How did I get back here, I wonder?"

Just then the children going along, and seeing him, laughed and hooted at him, calling out: "Hullo, Haamdaanee, where have you been? Where do you come from? We thought you were dead long ago."

So the sultan's daughter lived in happiness with her people until the end, and that beggar-man continued to scratch for grains of millet in the dust heap until he died.

If this story is good, the goodness belongs to all; if it is bad, the badness belongs only to him who told it.

VIII.

MKAAAH JEECHONEE, THE BOY HUNTER.