But she did not hear: his voice was drowned by the song of two tipsy scholars. Thinking that he was driving her away she walked off. And the two scholars—one long and thin, nicknamed the Decanter, and another short and fat, the Beer-Pot, tumbled into the tavern nearly knocking Yubra down. Both were bawling with all their might:
"Little geese are fond of water
But to us wine is better.
We are a merry crew
Drunken scholars bold and true.
Sages may grow old with study
Our wisdom is to drink.
Give us beer, pale or ruddy
Then we have no need to think."
Yubra walked into the dark, low-pitched room full of smoke and the smell of cooking: Itacama was roasting a goose on a spit. All sorts of men of different races sat on the matting on the floor listening to two girls playing the kinnar and the flute; some were throwing dice, playing chess and 'fingers'—guessing the number of fingers opened and closed very rapidly; others were eating out of earthenware pots with their fingers—each had a washing bowl by him—and sucking wine and beer through reeds.
When Nebra saw his friend Yubra, he came forward to embrace him—the old men were very fond of each other—and ordered a luxurious supper for him: lentil broth with garlic, fried fish, sheep's cheese, a pot of beer and a cup of pomegranate wine—shedu. As often happens in times of famine even poor people—as though to give themselves courage—liked being extravagant with their last farthings.
Before sitting down to supper Yubra thought of the beggar woman; he broke off part of a loaf and went outside. But she was no longer there and he returned to Nebra disappointed.
The beggar had walked down the street and turned the corner; she stopped there smelling newly baked bread. A middle-aged woman with a wrinkled, sickly and cruel face was squatting on the ground baking barley cakes: she did it by sticking thinly rolled-out paste on the outside of an earthenware pot filled with charcoal embers.
"Give me some bread, dear, I have had no food for three days!" the beggar moaned.
The woman raised her hard eyes to her:
"Go along! There is no end of you beggars tramping about; one can't feed you all."
But the beggar stood still, looking at the bread greedily. "Give me some, please, please!" she repeated, with frenzied, almost menacing entreaty, and when the woman turned away to take some dough from another pot, she suddenly bent down and stretched out her hand.