Once upon a time there lived three priests. They've become so fat that it's a real disaster. No matter what they did, no matter what medications they took, nothing helped.
The doctors advised them to go to the water: maybe, they say, the water will draw out the excess fat from you.
The priests went to people to collect money for the journey. We went to see one person. That man's name was Adas. All his life he worked at the master's distillery and was fond of various inventions.
Adas listened to the fat priests, thought for a while, and then said:
- Why do you, gentlemen priests, walk among people yourself? Stay with me for a little while, and I will do this work for you.
“Good,” say the priests. “This is even better for us, otherwise it’s hard for us to walk.”
Adas brought vodka and began to treat the priests.
The priests drink and praise the owner: what a kind man he has been caught - he spares nothing for God’s servants!
They got drunk on the free vodka and started snoring throughout the house.
The owner left them and went to his friends - workers from the distillery.
“So, yes, and so,” he says, “help, guys, to cure the fat priests.”
“We can do that,” the friends answer. “Why aren’t we doctors?”
They came to Adas, dressed the drunken, sleepy priests in work clothes, and in the evening they transported them to the master’s distillery.
The next morning the priests came to their senses. They look - where are they? They looked at each other and were even more surprised - instead of cassocks, they were wearing torn peasant scrolls, worn-out supports on their legs... Everything was the same as the workers at the master's distillery!
But the priests were not surprised for long. The gentleman's clerk approaches them and shouts:
- Why are you falling apart here? March to carry the potatoes into the cauldrons!
The clerk thought that the master hired new workers, and they came here to rest, and not to do work.
The priests wanted to argue with the clerk, but he didn’t want to listen and began to beat them with a whip.
The priests screamed:
- We are not workers, but priests!
- Eh, yes, you even decided to laugh at me!
And the clerk began to beat them again, and even harder.
The priests turned and turned, and they saw that nothing could be done.
“We’ll go, let’s go,” they say, “to work.”
- They would have said so right away! - the clerk calmed down. - Otherwise they came up with something else - priests! I'll kill you!
The priests thought: “It’s true: maybe we just dreamed that we were priests?”
They went to carry potatoes. The workers put a sack on their shoulders, they groan and carry it, only glancing sideways at the clerk with the whip. Before noon they carried a whole bunch of potatoes, the priests were strong.
After lunch, the clerk gave them a new job - cutting wood. And they came across oak firewood, knotty. The priests saw and kept looking at the sun: is it soon evening?
They somehow waited until evening and, without eating, immediately fell asleep by the warm cauldron and fell asleep like the dead.
The next morning they got up, ate potatoes with the workers and started drinking: they were afraid that the clerk would whip him.
The priests work at the distillery together with everyone else, as they should, they eat together, they sleep together.
A week passed, then two, the priests’ fat began to fall off, and a month later they became like greyhounds. They look at each other and can’t recognize them - they’re so thin. “Probably,” they think, “the devils grabbed us and put us in the distillery for obedience.”
So one day after work, Adasev’s friends brought a bottle of vodka to the priests and began to treat them. The priests got drunk and fell asleep without memory. Then the workers took them to Adas’s hut, took off their dirty clothes and put them to bed.
The next morning the priests woke up late and trembling, afraid that they had overslept for work!.. They quickly began to look for clothes. Suddenly they see real priests’ cassocks lying next to them! The priests are surprised - they don’t believe their eyes.
And then the owner comes in with a frying pan of fried eggs. The whole house smelled of scrambled eggs, it tickled my nose.
“Get up, get up, gentlemen priests,” says the owner. “It’s time for breakfast.”
The priests got dressed and sat down to the table. They eat and look at each other in silence: apparently, they are dreaming again!
We had breakfast this way and are getting ready to go home.
Adas says:
- Wait, Panov, I don’t give you any money yet
got ready to go to the water...
“No, no,” the priests waved their hands, “we don’t need any water: we are already cured.” And shoot one after another at the door. The priests rushed out into the courtyard and quickly each went to his own church. And they rushed off so fast that even a horse couldn’t catch them.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru