Once upon a time there lived a poor, poor guy. From an early age he was left an orphan, without a father, without a mother. He had to get hired as a farm laborer. He labored and labored, suffered grief, bent his back on his owners, but achieved no sense in life. So he decided to leave the owner and go wherever his eyes were looking. He walks along the road and says to himself:
“I’ve bent my back on many, but I haven’t served the devil yet.” Now I’ll serve him too, maybe I’ll get something too.
Then the devil came out to meet him and asked:
-Will you come into my service?
- Why not? That's why I went wherever my eyes looked.
- Well, then follow me!
The guy followed the devil, and he brought him to his house.
“That’s it, guy,” the devil tells him. - Take off your clothes and put on what I give you. For a whole year you are forbidden to change clothes, wash your face, get a haircut or shave. And as the year passes, your service will end. The guy did just that. The devil built a big shop right next to the city square, filled it with all sorts of red goods, and made the guy accept money and keep an account for it.
Our guy got down to business. Clerks are scurrying around, selling goods, and all day long he sits on a chair, counting money.
Trade was brisk, money flowed like a river, but Satan comes every day and takes the treasury for himself.
One fine day, a boyar came to the guy and asked him for a loan of two thousand rubles.
- Come in the evening, maybe I’ll give you some.
As soon as the boyar came out, the devil was right there. The guy asks him what to do.
- Give him money! - the devil ordered.
In the evening the boyar appeared in the shop again.
- Well, have you decided? Will you give me money?
“Write a receipt,” the guy answers. “Here is the money.” The boyar only
and it was necessary. He wrote a receipt, grabbed the money and ran with the other boyars to play cards. But he didn’t rejoice for long, soon everything, down to the penny, floated away from him.
And a week had not passed when the boyar again appeared at the shop and asked for a loan of ten thousand rubles; and again the guy told him to come in the evening. Satan came, and the guy asked him what to do.
- Give him money! - Satan ordered.
In the evening the boyar appeared, wrote a receipt, and the guy counted out ten thousand rubles to him.
Only the world-eater quickly spent this money and a month later he came to the guy again, and this time he was asking for a hundred thousand.
“Come in the evening,” the guy tells him.
The devil came, the guy told him everything, he thought, the unclean spirit thought, and he said:
- Okay, give him as much as he asks.
And again the guy counted out the money to the boyar, taking a receipt in return. Several months passed, the boyar squandered all his money and was left with nothing. A cane in his hand is all he has. He walks around the city idle and whistling.
Here the guy turned one year into his service with Satan. He went to the owner, gave a report, all honor was honorable. Only he was an honest man and reminded the devil:
“The money I lent to the boyar is missing here.”
“Okay, don’t worry, he’ll pay in full.”
“Then you pay me for my service, and I’ll go home.”
“You wait two or three days, then we’ll settle the deal.” The next day the devil got into the carriage and went to his debtor. He pressed the boyar against the wall, he poked and prodded, but there was nothing to pay with.
“Okay,” says the devil, “I don’t need your money, just give one of your daughters to this guy.”
Then the unclean one took out of his pocket a portrait of the monster: dressed in rags, dirty, unshaven, a tangled beard, long claws on his fingers. The boyar's hair stood on end, but he had nowhere to escape. He called his three daughters and told them what and how. The two older daughters fight back with their hands and feet, and the youngest says:
“I’ll marry him, father.” Whatever happens to me, if only my parents don’t end up in debt prison in their old age.
The older sisters began to mock the younger sister and reproach her for being a freak of a groom, but she remained silent and prepared for the wedding.
Meanwhile, the unclean one washed the guy, cut his hair, dressed him up, and he became such a handsome man as the world had never seen.
The wedding day came, and the devil brought the boy to the boyar’s house. And there everyone looks at him, marvels, and doesn’t believe their eyes. The father-in-law asks:
- Where is the groom?
“Here he is,” the devil answers and pushes the handsome man forward.
The eldest daughters were overcome with such anger, such frustration that they hid in their chambers and immediately hanged themselves.
And the guy celebrated the wedding, the devil rewarded him with a rich treasury at parting and said this:
“You served me honestly, but you still got one soul, and I earned two.”
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru