A48 The Wise Brother
Arsen Mikhaylov of Arzni, Armenia in Arzni, Armenia
The story of this tale is thus, as I have heard it from my grandmother, my mother and my grandfather. It is about two people, two brothers. One of them is very lovable, an intelligent man, a clever man. The other is a little more aggressive and he is a little less clever—‘less’ means ‘not much’—and he is jealous of his brother. He is jealous of the intelligence of his own brother, also because his brother—he himself is a king of a kingdom, but he knows that his brother is cleverer than him, more intelligent, more able to establish his thought among the people. He is able to answer questions and solve big problems. Because of this he does something against his brother, in that he presents his brother in his kingdom as if he were mad, a tiresome fool, a man who has lost his mind, and all the people of the kingdom of the king hate the brother of the king. They say ‘He is mad.’ All after the king said ‘My brother is mad.’ All have to shout in one voice, all have to shout that the brother of the king has lost his mind, he is mad. But the vizier of the king, the first vizier, knows who the brother of the king really is, how intelligent a man he is, this Dahlun Dewanda (as he was called). One day early in the morning the king, together with his vizier, his overseer, his greyhound, his dogs, goes out hunting, goes out of the royal city gates. When they go out of the city, the vizier of the king sees that the brother of the king is sitting, early that morning, when dawn was breaking, sitting in front of the city gates, and that he has made three large piles of ash. They all go off together, the horses of the king, they go off with dogs, but the first vizier goes back. He says ‘Dahlun Dewanda, I know, brother of the king, that in those piles of yours there is a meaning. Why have you made these piles? What was the meaning of them? You have made these piles early this morning in our way, as we have gone out to hunt.’ Dahlun Dewanda, the brother of the king, says to the vizier ‘Every pile has a value. Every pile is worth a gold coin. Come, give (this) to me and I shall tell you what the meaning of this pile is.’ The vizier takes out three gold coins and gives them to the brother of the king. He says ‘Tell me the meaning of the piles.’ He says ‘May this pile of ash be on the head of the man who relies on the king, on the government, who puts his hope in the government, relies on the government. May this second pile be on the head of the man who tells his secrets to a wife, to his wife. May the third pile be upon the head of the man who disowns his own family, his own relatives, those of his community, rejects his own people, hates them and helps the family of the wife and strangers. These are the three piles.’ He rides off, the vizier rides off on his horse. He goes after the king. He arrives and goes out to the hunt. The vizier comes home in the evening and thinks a lot on the three points that Dahlun Dewanda told him. He says ‘Let me see whether this man is telling the truth about them. He is an intelligent man. These things have to be tested. This cannot be.’ He begins to work and thinks how he could test the three points that the son of the king told him. ‘Do these exist in real life, or not?’ First he comes back one day, at night he pretends to drink one or two glasses of wine and says ‘Wife, come out, come out,’ he says to his wife. He wakes his wife. He says ‘Get up, straight away.’ ‘What has happened?,’ she says. ‘Man, why are you like this?’ He says ‘Get up, I have killed somebody. I have killed somebody. Look I have wrapped him in these cloths. I do not know what to do. We must do something. If the kings knew about it, he would hang me.’ At that time they used to collect people in the square, hang them and throttle them, whoever killed a person, by the law of that time. He says ‘We must do something quickly.’ Then she says ‘Oh, man, what should we do?’ His wife says. ‘We must bury him somewhere so people do not see.’ She says ‘We should dig and bury him somewhere, so that people do not see.’ He says ‘Oh, wife, where should we bury him? Tell me.’ She says ‘In the stable. Bring him and we’ll take him in there, we’ll bury him in our stable, so people do not see us digging.’ She says ‘Quickly, get up.’ The husband and wife get up, straight away take a shovel, a spade and a pickaxe. They dig and bury him in the stable very neatly, and nobody knows. They go to bed. The next day the vizier drinks heartily again and pretends to be somebody who is drunk. When he is as if drunk, he comes home and begins to beat the wife, his own wife. He beats her and says ‘You are not a good wife.’ The wife says ‘Now I’ll show you. Now I’ll show you. In the morning I shall go straight to the king and tell him what you have done, that you have killed a man, that you are a murderer and you have come and beaten me also.’ He beats her, then puts his head down and sleeps. Early next morning his wife goes straight to the king. She says ‘King, be well, you do not know what kind of man your vizier is. Your vizier has killed a man. Your vizier is the murderer of a man. You have kept him as a vizier. Last night he came and beat me too. He beat me and wanted to kill me. You must hang him, do not spare him.’ As soon as it became light, she went to the king. Two hours have not passed, the king does not speak with his vizier, he summons a crowd to the square. He brings them there and says ‘The vizier must be hanged. The vizier has killed a man.’ Then they seize the vizier. The army of the king comes to the house. They seize him and take him to the square, and tie him to the post where they must hang him, under which they put firewood in order to burn him. What will they do to him? Then, when they have bound him to the post, where they must hang him and burn him, he looks, the vizier himself, he looks at the king, the king himself—they have worked together, he is the second (in command). He does not ask him ‘Which man have you killed? Where have you killed him? Why have you killed him? How have you killed him? They say ‘Finish the job.’ Then he looks at all those whom he has put in positions of high rank, the relatives of his wife and foreigners. One of them brings a rope. Another brings soap. Another brings firewood. Another says ‘Finish the job, king, may you be well, finish the job, let’s hang him and finish. Why are you taking so long? You are taking a very long time. Let’s hang him quickly and finish.’ Then the vizier looks and sees his own relatives, whom he has disowned, whom he has not helped, ever, some ten people like this on the edge (of the crowd), he was surprised to see that they are sitting and weeping for him, people whom he has not greeted in his life, when he was in his position of vizier, when he was in a high position. Now that they are throttling him, these ten people or so, fifteen people, his relatives, they are weeping for him. The others whom he has put in high positions all say ‘Finish the job, king, may you be well.’ They say ‘Finish the job quickly, let’s hang him. Let’s hang him and finish. This son of a dog’—and so forth—‘he has killed people. He has also beaten his wife. Finish the job!’ He sees that the king does not utter a sound. The vizier sees that now they will hang him. They want to light the fire under his legs. He says ‘King, may you be well, permit me to say something. I am your vizier. Am I not your right arm, the second man (in command)? Are you hanging without asking (questions), without asking anything? Are you not allowing me a final word? You are hanging me like this, without saying anything.’ He says ‘Give me permission to say something.’ He says ‘Speak, say one word. It is time to end the matter.’ He says ‘Ask these people, I want these people who have gathered in this square, this crowd of people, to ask whom I have killed, who is the killer, who is the one whom I have killed, why have I killed him? Go on, why do you not ask? Ask my wife.’ He says ‘Tell me wife, why have I killed him?’ ‘How should I know whom you have killed?’ He says ‘Just check whether I have truly killed a man or not.’ He (the king) says to his wife ‘Which man has he killed? Where has he killed him?’ She says ‘We have buried him in our stable. I have buried the man together with him.’ He sends an army. He says ‘Go quickly. They take him (the putative murdered man) out from the stable, while his wife is with him, and bring him back. Wrapped in a cloth, they put him in the square.’ He says ‘Untie it, open it so I can see who this person is, why you have killed him.’ They open it. They see a lamb, a sheep, made into a nice roast dish, wrapped in bread, very pleasing. When they open it, it makes a lovely, pleasant smell. The king sees this and says ‘What has happened? I do not understand. What is this that has happened? Why have you done this, this thing?’ He says ‘King, may you be well, I listened to your brother, Dahlun Dewanda. He told me a very clever thing, saying “The piles—may this pile be upon the head of the man who puts his trust in the king.” I put my trust in you, that you would support me, that you would help me, when I fell into a tight spot. But you were the first to abandon me, how could you, king? Was I not the second man in command in this kingdom? You did not even ask whom I killed? You were going to hang me without asking. The second pile was the one concerning that which he said “May it be on the head of the man who tells his secrets to his wife.” I told lies to my wife and said that I have killed a man. I had not killed a man. I had grilled a lamb, I had made it into a roast, filled it with onions and put it in bread. My wife tricked me in the presence of everybody before everybody else tricked me. My wife betrayed me. She came and tricked me before everybody anybody else betrayed me. You too would have hanged me. The third pile, concerning which he said “May it be on the head of a man who rejects his relatives, people of his own community, and takes on foreigners.” As for this pile, I see that some of my relatives, poor people, to whom I have never offered a helping hand, they were there. These fifteen people, twenty people, wept for me. All those whom I had put into a lofty position, who eat, drink and enjoy life, they all want to hang me quickly, in the presence of everybody else they want to hang me. You brother is a more intelligent man than anybody else in this kingdom. King, may you be well, from today, he says ‘I shall not work with you as a vizier. Farewell. I am leaving and going away from this kingdom’.
He leaves and goes away from the kingdom. He disappears. He leaves his wife. The vizier goes. A year goes by. In the second year a drought afflicts that land, that kingdom. The king does not know what to do. The people are hungry, famine afflicts them. He does not know what to do to look after the people. ‘What should we do’ he says ‘to get out of this problem, to get out of this difficulty?’ He calls his brother. His brother knows that the vizier has gone away. He says to his brother—he knows he is a clever man—‘Brother, tell me something that we can do. We must find the vizier. However much I search for him, I do not find him. He used to administer all this land. Now the vizier has gone away, no brains are left. All the problems come one after the other. What should we do to cope with this matter and go about dealing with it? How can I find the vizier to plead with him and beg forgiveness from him, so that he will come back?’ He says ‘Do you know what you should do? Call all the craftsmen in your city, in your country, those who are blacksmiths, who are shoemakers, craftsmen. Summon them all and give each one a lamb, a sheep. Give them the following challenge: I give you a period of one month. I am weighing this lamb on the scales. The lamb is twenty kilos. After a month you should bring it back here weighing exactly twenty kilos, no more and no less. If it is not this weight, I shall behead you all with an axe, I shall kill you.’ The vizier has gone to work with a blacksmith, like an apprentice, in order to live, hiding himself away there, working. When he comes there, he sees his boss coming, with a lamb in his hands, bringing it home saying ‘The king has given us a challenge, we have a problem, for how can we keep the lamb for a month without it becoming more or less than twenty kilos?’ He said ‘Give it to me. I shall look after it. It is not your problem,’ the vizier says. During the period of a month he feeds the lamb and gives it drink. Every evening he wears the skin of a wolf, he comes in with the mouth of a wolf and frightens it, after eating and drinking at the time it slept. After a month, when he puts it on the scales, it is the same. Then he says to the blacksmith ‘You can go safely, you can go at ease to the king. This is twenty kilos, no more, no less.’ He says ‘Oh, how have you managed to keep it like this?’ He says ‘I have kept it so.’ The king weighs them all. One hundred people have taken a sheep, among all of them, some have increased (in weight) and some have diminished. They see that one lamb has remained twenty kilos. He says to the blacksmith ‘Whose is this?’ They say ‘It belongs to the blacksmith, the hammerer of iron, blacksmith—you know don’t you what it is?—He says ‘My brother, how have you kept it?’ He says ‘I have kept it, but to be accurate I have not kept it, my apprentice has kept it. I have an apprentice worker at home. He has kept it. I do not know how he has kept it, but it has remained like this. He says ‘Quick, go and bring him.’ He sends an army and at once the police bring him. They bring him and they see that he is his vizier. He says ‘I beg forgiveness of you,’ the king says to him. Go and work again in your place, I have been in error.’ He says ‘I shall not work with you again, king, may you be well. If you agree that your brother should be king and that I should be his vizier, I shall work. If you do not agree, then farewell again, I am going.’ He says ‘I give you this kingdom. The kingdom is all full of problems, many problems. Why is it still so? It has enemies. If they attack the kingdom across the border, they will destroy it.’ He says ‘I give this kingdom to my brother and to you and I am going away.’ ‘Don’t go. Come and sit down. Come and sit down here.’ This story has its own meaning. I do not know what the origin of this story is, but I know that our forebears told this story.