In one village there lived an old miser. He walked around in a torn robe, kept his wife and children hungry, and was undernourished himself - all trying to save more money. So he accumulated a jar of gold and a jar of silver and buried them under the fence near his house.
But a lean year came, and no matter how much the old man didn’t want to, he had to remember about the treasured jugs.
So he took a shovel and went to dig up the buried money. But as soon as he took out a jug of gold and wanted to open it, a voice was heard: “Don’t touch it - this is Kurban’s money!”
“Oh, what is this!” the miser was surprised, quickly plugged the neck of the jug of gold and began to dig out the jug of silver. But as soon as he opened this jug, he heard again: “Don’t touch it—this is Kurban’s money!”
“What does all this mean?!” exclaimed the miser and quickly plugged the neck of the jug with silver. “I saved silver and gold, but it turns out that this is some Kurban’s money!” Don't let this happen!
Again he buried both jugs in the ground, sat down by the fence and began to think: “My money wanted to belong to some Kurban! The jeweler Kurban lives in our block. What is a jeweler? This is a man who loves gold and silver! That’s why both gold and silver love the jeweler! So my money wanted to go to the jeweler?! But I saved them, and I won’t allow them to go to someone else!”
He ran to the barn, took an ax and a rope, mounted his donkey and rode into the mountains. There, in a juniper grove, he chose a tree, sawed off two large logs from it, put it on a donkey and brought it home.
At home, he hollowed out a hole in each of them, dug out the jars of money and poured the gold into one block of wood and the silver into the other. After that, he filled the hole of each block so tightly with wood chips that not a single crack could be detected.
Immediately the miser put these juniper stumps on the donkey, took them to the river and threw them into the water.
- Now let's see how you will belong to Kurban! Without even looking at the river, he mounted a donkey and rode home.
The miser did not sleep all night and thought: “Oh, what have I done! He saved and saved money, and then he threw it into the river! And now I can’t sleep from frustration and chagrin.”
As soon as it began to get light, he put on his boots and went along the river bank to look for his logs of money. He peered greedily at both banks, expecting that perhaps they had caught on something and gotten stuck. But they were nowhere to be seen.
He walked along the river for several days, looking for his money, and so he reached the neighboring city.
The rich Bai Kasim lived in this city. He kept two workers on the river bank and forced them from morning to evening to catch logs and brushwood floating along the river. In the evening, workers loaded the caught firewood onto the donkey and took it to the bai's yard. So the bay workers saw juniper stubs floating along the river and caught them.
The poor blacksmith Kurban also lived in this city. He bought firewood from the bai and owed the bai so much that he could not pay the debt on time.
On the day when the bai’s workers brought two juniper logs to his yard, Bai Kasym called the blacksmith and told him:
“If you can’t pay your debt, work for it for me.” Go to my yard now, get some wood and prepare more coals for me.
Kurban came out to the bai's courtyard, and two juniper logs immediately caught his eye.
- This will be coal! The best coal comes from juniper,” he said, stacking firewood on the cart.
Kurban brought the firewood to his forge and dumped it in front of the fireplace. Now it was necessary to split them into pieces and burn them into coal.
“I’ll start with archa,” said Kurban and hit one log with an ax. The block of wood split in half and silver fell out of it.
“Oh-oh, wife!” Kurban said quietly. “Come here quickly and take a cup with you!”
The blacksmith's wife came running with a cup, saw the scattered silver, began to collect it and collected half a cup.
“Take the money home and hide it,” said the blacksmith. “Well, now I’ll pay off the bei and get rid of my debts!”
Delighted by the find, Kurban hit another block of wood with force and could not stop himself from screaming.
- Wife, come here quickly! Yes, bring another cup!
“Apparently, fate has taken pity on us, now our children will be fed and clothed,” said the blacksmith’s wife, collecting gold in another cup.
“Tomorrow I’ll pay the boy and go to the market.” I will buy rice, lard, lamb and sweets for the children, I will buy everyone new robes and ichigi with galoshes, and most importantly, I will buy myself a new anvil with a hammer and renovate my old forge. Then my affairs will improve, and perhaps the earnings will be enough for us to live,” Kurban told his wife.
A few days later, in the evening, a miser came to this city - the owner of gold and silver. On the outskirts of the city, he asked the first person he met:
- Can you tell me where I can spend the night?
- Knock on any gate, no one will refuse the wanderer. The miser knocked on the first gate.
- Salaam alaikum! “Will you let me spend the night?” he said to the blacksmith Kurban, who was opening the gate.
“Please come in, you will be a guest,” Kurban replied. The blacksmith led the guest into the room and ordered his wife to serve him food.
“Let me ask where are you coming from and where are you going?” Kurban asked the guest at dinner.
- Oh, I’m ashamed to say, something bad happened to me! I see that you are a good, kind person, I will tell you my secret...
And the guest told the owner of the house everything that had happened to him. Struck by the story, Kurban could only say:
“So that’s what it’s all about!” He lowered his head and sat in silence.
And when the guest dozed off on the prepared bed, Kurban went into another room, where his wife and children were sleeping, and said to her in a whisper:
- The owner of the gold and silver has been found. We must return the money to him - what is left, but we must do this in such a way that he does not notice that part of the money has already been spent. How can we do this better?
“I’ll knead the dough and bake two large cakes by dawn.” “I’ll bake gold in one of them, and silver in the other,” the wife suggested. “In the morning, when the guest is getting ready to leave, give him these cakes for the road.” So the money we have left will return to him.
The blacksmith liked his wife's proposal. So they did. In the morning after breakfast the guest got ready to leave.
“Take these two flatbreads for the road,” the host said to the guest. “If you get hungry on the way, eat them.”
The guest took the cakes from the hands of the kind host, kissed each one three times, put them to his eyes, then wrapped them in a scarf and tied them to his belt.
- Thank you for your hospitality. I decided to return home. I can't keep up with the fast river! “But now I know how to live,” said the miser and left Kurban’s yard.
He had already reached the outskirts of the city when suddenly his boot burst. He went to the nearest shoemaker and said:
- Master, my boot burst, but I don’t have the money to pay you to fix it. Would you take this cake for work? I have a long way to go - please help me.
“Okay, give me your cake, take off your boot, I’ll fix it,” said the shoemaker. The miser took off his boot, gave it to the shoemaker and began to untie the scarf with the cakes.
The shoemaker threaded the needle into the needle, took the awl and began to stick it into the boot, but it crunched and broke. The master took another awl and began to stick it into the skin, but it also broke immediately. So, without repairing the boot, the shoemaker broke four awls one after another.
“What a boot!” exclaimed the shoemaker. “I’ve never broken an awl, but here I broke four at once!” I don’t have an awl anymore, you’ll have to sit here with me and wait while I run to the master and fix my awls.
The shoemaker collected the fragments of the awl and wanted to go, but, taking the cake he received from the traveler in his hands, he said:
- I have no money. If you haven’t earned it yet today, you’ll have to give your cake to the master for the work.
“Maybe one won’t be enough, so take another,” said the miser and gave the shoemaker the second cake.
Having put both cakes in his bosom, the shoemaker went straight to the blacksmith Kurban and asked him to repair his awl. Kurban made four new awls for the shoemaker.
“Please don’t punish me, I haven’t earned any money today, I’ll pay you with the cakes that I myself received in advance for the work.” And the shoemaker gave the blacksmith the cakes he had brought.
- Why two? One is enough, let the other remain for you,” said Kurban and returned the second flatbread to the shoemaker.
The satisfied shoemaker thanked the blacksmith and hurried to his customer. In the evening, when Kurban handed his wife the flatbread she had earned, she exclaimed:
- Yes, this is my cake! - and broke it. It was a cake of gold.
- Oh-oh-oh! What to do now? “I don’t want to use other people’s property!” exclaimed the distressed Kurban.
- How will you find the owner now? Our guest left a long time ago, and we don’t even know which way he went,” said the blacksmith’s wife. “Apparently, you are the same Kurban to whom the money wanted to go, so they don’t want to leave you.”
And the old miser returned home and promised himself not to save any more money, but to spend all his earnings on his family.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru