Two friends once argued about what happiness depends on.
- And there’s nothing to think about! - one exclaimed. - Money brings happiness. You know how I became a poet. Nobody wanted to publish my poems. But my aunt died, left me an inheritance, and I printed them myself. Since then there has been no end to publishers. If it weren’t for my aunt’s money, no one would even now know that I was a poet.
“Nonsense,” the second one interrupted him. - Fate decides everything. I am now considered the best singer in Italy. And for a long time no one wanted to listen to me. So I sang only to the fish on the seashore. Fate would have it that Count Luigi himself was riding a boat at that hour. The Count heard me and invited me to sing at a ball in honor of his bride. That's where it all started. What does money have to do with it? Fate, my friend, fate!
The poet and the singer argued and argued, came to nothing and went for a walk.
They left the house and wandered wherever they looked. On the very outskirts of the city they saw a dilapidated hut.
On the threshold of the hut sat a young man, all in rags, playing the guitar.
- Listen, buddy, I see you are living happily! - the poet called out to the young man.
“What fun is there,” he answered, “when a person has not eaten anything for the second day.”
- So why do you play the guitar? - asked the singer.
- You see, the guitar is all that my father left me as an inheritance!
The friends looked at each other, because they both thought at the same time: “This is probably what we need!” This is where we find out what is more important.”
They each pulled fifty gold coins out of their pockets and gave them to the guitarist.
- A hundred crowns! - exclaimed the young man. - Thank you, good gentlemen.
- Save your gratitude. Exactly in a year we will come to find out if this money helped you,” the friends said and went back.
As soon as they disappeared around the bend in the road, Alcide—that was the young man’s name—said to himself:
- To begin with, I will buy as many sausages as will fit in my stomach. And then I’ll think about how to use the unexpected wealth.
He put the money into the lining of his beret and went to the store.
Alcide had not even walked ten steps when suddenly - an unheard of thing! — a large shaggy crow flew from a branch of an olive tree, grabbed Alcide’s beret with its claws and soared upward together with the beret.
- Thief! Give me the money!” poor Alcide shouted.
But the crow only flapped its wings faster and soon disappeared from sight.
A year has passed. The poet and singer again came to Alcide's hut. They didn’t even have to knock, because Alcide, as the first time, was sitting at the threshold and playing the guitar.
“How,” exclaimed the friends, “are you still strumming the guitar?”
“What can I do,” Alcide answered sadly, “if a shaggy crow took away my happiness along with my old beret.”
And he told a short but sad story.
“Well,” the singer turned to the poet, “didn’t I say that happiness and unhappiness are sent by fate?” Let some crow want to sleep in a nest not on bare branches, but on a soft rag. But explain to me why she needed Alcide’s beret at the very moment when he put the money in it.
- Nonsense! - the poet interrupted the singer. “If the crow hadn’t stolen the money, Alcide would have lived happily ever after.” No, buddy, money is everything.
With these words, the poet reached into his pocket, pulled out another hundred crowns and handed it to Alcide.
Alcide began to warmly thank his friends, but they waved their hand, promised to come in exactly a year and left.
This time Alcide decided to be smarter. When going to the shop for sausages, do not forget that a year ago he never managed to eat sausages, he put one coin in his cheek, and hid the other ninety-nine well. Where would you think - into an old shoe lying in the corner.
“Now no crow can get there,” he said, very pleased with his cunning. “And a thief wouldn’t be tempted by such old stuff.”
Meanwhile, while Alcide was going to the shop, this is what happened: a neighbor’s cat wandered into the hut, which the owners fed only when they themselves were full, and this never happened. The cat searched the whole room, but, of course, did not find anything edible. Then suddenly a mouse jumped out of the hole. The cat is behind her. The mouse darted about and darted into an old shoe. The same one where Alcide hid the money. The cat instantly turned over the shoe, the coins rolled on the floor, and the mouse slipped away into the hole. Then the cat began to play with coins. She rolled them with her paw until she rolled every last one into the same hole in which the mouse hid.
When Alcide returned from the shop, it turned out that he was no richer than he was yesterday - the money was missing, and that’s all! It’s good that he managed to buy sausages.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the singer and his friend, appearing a year later, found Alcide on the threshold of the old hut doing the same thing.
“Well,” exclaimed the poet, “this is too much!” Perhaps you will assure us that the second hundred were stolen by mice?
“Alas, my good gentlemen,” sighed Alcide, “I will not assure you of anything, because I myself don’t know where the money went.”
“Now you are finally convinced,” the singer said to the poet, “that everything is decided by fate, not money.”
“On the contrary,” the poet answered, “I became even more convinced that only money makes a person happy.” But I will no longer prove that I am right. It costs too much. Now you prove it.
“I’ll try,” said the singer.
He rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a small lead ball. Frankly, the singer himself did not remember what kind of ball it was and how it got into his pocket.
“Take it, poor fellow,” said the singer, handing the ball to Alcide. “Maybe you’ll need it for more money.”
The friends said goodbye and left.
The ball lay in the singer’s pocket for a long time, but it lay in Alcide’s pocket even longer. He remembered about the ball only when his stomach was completely sick from hunger. Even the guitar stopped making him happy.
Alcide pulled out the ball, rolled it in his palm and thought:
“Sell? They won’t give a single soldi for it. But since someone made it, that means it’s good for something.”
Then Alcide slapped himself on the forehead.
- How come I didn’t think of it before! After all, it will make an excellent sinker.
He cut a flexible, long branch from a willow, bent a pin with a hook, hung a ball on a strong thread... In a word, an hour later Alcide was sitting on a large stone by the sea and fishing.
Only the fish, as luck would have it, didn’t bite. Alcide sat on the shore all morning and all afternoon. Anyone else in his place would have abandoned this idea long ago. But Alcide was not like that. If he took on anything, he held on tightly. Alcide decided to redirect the fish, and redirected them.
At sunset, fish began to be caught. The young fisherman only had time to pull out and cast the fishing rod again. Oh, and the fish soup from the caught fish turned out delicious! We should try this!
There was so much fish that Alcide sold half of it early in the morning at the market. Then he ran to the sea again.
And so it went: Alcide spent whole days sitting by the sea with his fishing rod. Six months later, he started a small network. Another six months later I got a boat and became a real fisherman.
What about the poet and singer? Oh, they had so much to do that they completely forgot about the poor guitarist. Both went on long journeys - one to the west, the other to the east - and met in their hometown only five years later. It was then that they remembered Alcide and decided to visit him.
We came to the old place. They look - there is no hut. Instead there is a friendly house. Two children are playing near the house. And from the threshold the young hostess smiles at the children.
The friends came closer and asked the woman:
— Do you know where the guitarist Alcide went?
- How can you not know! - the woman answered, turned around and shouted: - Hey, hubby, two important gentlemen have come to visit you here.
The hubby came out to answer the call, and his friends saw that it was indeed Alcide himself. Questions began. Everyone sat down on the threshold, and Alcide began to tell his whole story in order. We won’t listen to everything from the very beginning; we already know this. And what we don’t know, let’s listen.
- ...So, dear gentlemen, I got myself a boat, a good-quality net and became a real fisherman. Then I liked Giovanna, and, of course, she liked me. Frankly, the guitar helped me a little in this matter. In a word, less than three months have passed since we got married. Well, it’s not appropriate for a young wife to live in a dilapidated hut. We decided to put a house on this place. They began to destroy the hut... Now listen carefully, dear gentlemen, this also concerns you. There was an abandoned crow's nest in the old chimney, a beret in the nest, and a hundred crowns in the beret. And I am very glad that I can finally repay my long-standing debt.
Alcide ran into the room and brought a torn beret in which coins jingled. He gave the singer and poet fifty crowns each and continued his story.
- That's not all. As soon as the floor of the hut was broken, in the corner, in a mouse hole, ninety-nine crowns were found. After all, I managed to spend the hundredth crown on sausages. Now I put that missing cudo back.
At these words, Giovanna, Alcide's wife, brought out the money in a beautifully tied purse, and Alcide gave it to the poet.
“Well, I’ll keep the ball,” he said, “as a souvenir.”
As soon as Alcide finished, an old argument broke out between the friends. "Fate!" - the singer shouted. - "Money!" - the poet shouted over him. All the old arguments came into play - both the aunt’s inheritance and the noble nobleman Count Luigi.
Alcide listened and listened and finally intervened in the argument.
- Let me have my say too. Money is money, fate is fate, but believe me, the main thing is work and perseverance. Perhaps your aunt’s inheritance really helped you, sir poet, but for many years you were poor and unknown, but you did not stop writing poetry. You, Signor Singer, were glorified by Count Luigi, but you did not stop singing your songs even until that happy hour when he passed by you in his boat. As for me, everything that I have achieved is the work of my own hands.
The singer and poet were silent for a while, then exclaimed at once:
- We swear by Madonna, it seems he’s right!
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru