ARABIAN NIGHTS.
THE HISTORY
OF THE LITTLE HUNCHBACK.
In the city of Casgar, which is situated near the farther extremity of Great Tartary, there formerly lived a tailor, who had the good fortune to possess a very beautiful wife, between whom and her husband there existed the strongest mutual affection. One day, while the tailor was at work in his shop, a little hunchbacked fellow came and sat down at the door, and began playing on a tymbal, which he accompanied with his voice. The tailor was much pleased with his performance, and resolved to carry him home, that he might entertain his wife, who would equally, he thought, with himself, be amused in the evening with his pleasant and humorous songs. He immediately therefore made the proposal to the little hunchback, who readily accepted the invitation; and the tailor directly shut up his shop, and took him home with him.
They were no sooner arrived than the tailor’s wife, who had already set out the table, as it was near supper time, placed upon it a very nice dish of fish, which she had been dressing. They all three then sat down; but in eating, the little hunchback had the misfortune to swallow a large fish-bone, which stuck fast in his throat, and almost instantly killed him, before the tailor or his wife could apply any relief. They were both most dreadfully frightened at this accident; for, as it happened in their house, they had great reason to fear it might come to the knowledge of some of the officers of justice, who would punish them as murderers; the husband, however, thought of an expedient to get rid of the dead body.
He recollected, that there lived in his neighbourhood, a physician, who was a Jew; and he formed a plan, which he directly began to put in execution. He and his wife took up the body, one by the head and the other by the feet, and carried it to the physician’s house. They knocked at the door, which was at the bottom of a steep and narrow flight of stairs that led to his apartment. A maid servant immediately came down, without even staying for a light; and opening the door, asked them what they wanted. “I will thank you to go and tell your master,” said the tailor, “that we have brought him a patient, who is very ill, and for whom we request his advice. Stop,” added he, holding out a piece of money in his hand, “give him this in advance, that he may be assured we do not intend he should lose his labour for nothing.” While the servant went back to inform her master, the Jewish physician, of this good news, the tailor and his wife quickly carried the body of the little hunchback up stairs, left him close to the door, and returned home as fast as possible.
In the mean time the servant went and told the physician, that a man and a woman were waiting for him at the door, and requested him to go down to see a sick person whom they had brought for that purpose. She then gave him the money she had received from the tailor. Transported with joy at the idea of being paid beforehand, he conceived it must be a most excellent patient, that they had brought him; and one who ought not to be neglected. “Bring a light directly,” cried he to the girl, “and follow me.”—“Having said this, he ran towards the staircase in such a hurry, that he did not wait for the light, and encountering little hunchback, he gave him such a blow with his foot, as sent him from the top of the stairs to the bottom; and he had some difficulty to prevent himself from following him. “Why don’t you come with the light?” he called out to the servant. She at last appeared, and they went down stairs. When the physician found that what had rolled down stairs turned out to be a dead man, he was so alarmed at the sight, that he invoked Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Esdras, and all the other prophets of the law to his assistance. “Wretch, that I am,” exclaimed he, “why did I not wait for the light? why did I go down in the dark? I have completely killed the sick man, whom they brought to me. I am the cause of his death, and if the good ass [1] of Esdras does not come to my assistance, I am a lost man. Alas, alas, they will come and drag me hence as a murderer.”
Notwithstanding the perplexity he was in, he had the precaution to shut his door, for fear, that as any one passed along the street, they might perchance discover the unfortunate accident, of which he believed himself to be the cause. He immediately took up the body, and carried it into his wife’s apartment, who was near fainting when she saw him come in with his fatal load. “Alas,” she cried, “we are quite lost, if we cannot find some means of getting rid of this dead man before to-morrow morning. We shall inevitably forfeit our lives, if we keep him till day breaks. What a misfortune! how could you kill this man?”—“Never mind, in this dilemma, how it happened,” said the Jew, “our only business at present is how to remedy so dreadful a calamity.”
The physician and his wife then consulted together upon the best means of ridding themselves of the body during the night. The husband pondered a long time, but could think of no stratagem likely to extricate them from this embarrassment; but his wife was more fertile in invention, and said, “A thought occurs to me. Let us take the carcase up to the terrace of our house, and let him down the chimney, into that of our neighbour’s, the mussulman.”
This mussulman was one of the sultan’s purveyors; and it was his office to furnish oil, butter, and all other articles of a similar kind. His warehouse for these things was in his dwelling-house, where the rats and mice used to make great havoc and destruction.