Little Muck

When I was a boy, a little man lived in our town of Nicaea, and everyone called him Little Muck. He was shorter than anyone in the street, walked slowly, and wore an enormous turban and slippers whose toes peeked out like two little boats. He rarely left his house, once a month at most, and then a whole pack of boys ran after him.

"Little Muck, Little Muck!" we sang. "Turn around, or you’ll lose your slippers!"

Muck never turned around. He only wrapped his cloak tighter and walked on. But one day I, the cheekiest of them all, stepped on his slipper. Muck stumbled and looked back at me, and said nothing. That same evening he came to see my father.

I hid behind the curtain and waited for the storm. But after seeing his guest out, my father called me over and was silent for a long time.

"Sit down," he said at last. "I will tell you who Little Muck is. And then you can decide for yourself whether it is funny to step on his slippers."

And this is what I heard.

Muck grew up in a poor family. His father, Mukrah, was a stern man and was ashamed of his son, because the boy did not grow like other boys. He taught Muck neither a trade nor his letters, and the boy mostly sat at home alone. When Muck turned sixteen, his father fell gravely ill and soon died.

His relatives quickly divided the poor little house among themselves, and to Muck they gave only his father’s clothes: a long blue robe, wide trousers, a turban and an old dagger.

"Go and seek your fortune," they said, and shut the door.

Muck cut the robe short so it would not drag, tied a sash around it, stuck the dagger in his belt and set off into the wide world.

For two days he walked, eating wild berries and sleeping under bushes. On the third day he saw a town, and in the town he heard a strange voice:

"Come, my darlings! Come, my kitties, dinner is ready!"

At an open window stood old Mistress Ahavzi, calling her cats. So many came running that Muck’s mouth fell open: ginger ones, grey ones, striped ones, fluffy as pillows.

"Mistress," Muck called, "take me into your service! I can do everything."

Mistress Ahavzi looked him up and down and nodded. So Muck began to look after her cats and dogs. He fed them, combed them and washed their bowls. But the cats were very sly. As soon as the mistress left the house, they raced around the rooms, smashed jugs and tore the curtains. And when she came back, they sat in a row, purring, and looked at Muck as if to say: "He did it all."

"You weren’t watching again!" Mistress Ahavzi lamented over the broken pieces. "My best jug!"

"It wasn’t me, Mistress, it was Ginger Purr," Muck explained.

"Purr?" the mistress marvelled, stroking the cat who sat there with an innocent face. "He wouldn’t hurt a fly!"

So the weeks went by. The mistress scolded, and Muck sighed. He never saw any wages, because each time the mistress took something off for a jug or a curtain. One little white dog, though, grew fond of him. One day she led Muck to a room he was forbidden to enter. There, among old chests, stood tiny slippers and lay a little cane with a carved lion’s head.

"My slippers wore out long ago," Muck thought, "and these are just my size." He put them on, took the cane, and decided it was better to leave on his own than to hear himself scolded every day for the cats' mischief.

Muck ran out of the gate, and then the slippers carried him off. His feet flashed on their own, pit-pat-pit-pat, trees flew past as if in a gale, and he could not stop. Only when Muck cried out in exhaustion, "Stop!" did the slippers halt on the spot.

He sat down right on the road, caught his breath and thought. Might these slippers be magic? Muck stood up, carefully turned on his heel once, twice, three times, and said in his mind: "To that oak on the hill." Whoosh! And there he stood under the oak, his turban almost flying off his head.

That was how he learned their secret. Turn three times on your heel, and the slippers will carry you wherever you wish. And the cane had a secret of its own. That same evening Muck was walking through a field when suddenly it struck the ground by itself, tap, tap, tap, three times. Muck dug away the sand and found an old silver coin. From then on he knew: where gold lies under the ground, the cane taps three times, and where there is silver, twice.

"Now I won’t be lost," Muck told himself.

He set off for the capital, where the king lived, and stood by the palace.

"I am the fastest runner in the world," he told the guards. "I want to serve the king as a messenger."

The guards roared with laughter. The courtiers roared with laughter.

"You? A messenger?" snorted the captain of the guard. "By the time you reach the gate, the letter will have turned yellow!"

But the king, hearing the laughter beneath his windows, came out to see. He smiled and ordered a race: Muck against the king’s runner, who was long-legged as a crane.

The whole court gathered. Ladies hid behind their fans, noblemen wagered on which step Muck would fall. The long-legged runner shot ahead and for a moment left Muck behind. Muck turned three times on his heel, and whoosh, only a cloud of dust was left. When the runner, panting, reached the finish, Muck was already standing there, straightening his turban.

The court fell silent. Nobody was laughing now.

The king made him chief messenger. Muck delivered letters and orders so fast that the king could not be happier. The moment the king said, "I wish I knew how my sister is faring beyond the mountains," Muck was already back with her reply. Only the courtiers eyed the new favourite sideways. They used to mock him, and now he dined at the same table, and this they could not forgive him.

"Where did he come from, that runt?" they whispered in corners. "That such a one should be closer to the king than we are!"

Muck longed to be liked at last. "Perhaps if I am generous, they will become kinder," he thought. One evening, walking in the royal garden, Muck felt the cane in his hand strike the ground, tap, tap, tap, three times. With his dagger he dug a little hole, and there lay a jar full of ancient gold coins.

The next day Muck began to hand out the gold to the courtiers. But they only grew more suspicious.

"Where does a messenger get so much gold?" they whispered to the king. "He must be stealing it from your treasury."

The royal treasurer nodded eagerly: yes, yes, it must be Muck. And when the next evening Muck went to the garden again, servants crept after him. They seized him right at the hole, with the gold in his hands.

"Thief!" everyone cried.

Muck was brought before the king.

"I did not steal, Your Majesty!" he begged. "This treasure has lain in the ground for a hundred years, since before your great-grandfather!"

"And how did you know where to dig?" the king asked.

Muck was silent. To tell about the cane would mean giving it up. And the king, frowning, ordered him thrown into the tower.

For three days Muck sat on the cold stone floor and looked out of a narrow little window. No one came to visit him, no one spoke a word for him. Only when Muck told about the magic slippers and the cane did the king agree to let him go. But he kept the slippers and the cane for himself, and drove Muck out of the kingdom.

Muck walked through the forest in his old worn slippers, alone, hungry and hurt to tears. "I only meant well," he thought. "And it turns out I am in everyone’s way."

Toward evening he saw two fig trees hung with ripe figs. Muck picked a few from the first tree and ate them. Delicious! He bent down to the stream to drink and cried out. Looking up at him from the water was a face with a very long nose and two grey donkey ears.

"Oh, woe is me," Muck whispered. "As if I hadn’t had enough trouble!"

In despair he picked a fig from the second tree. He took a bite, and the ears shrank and the nose became what it had been. Muck sat down on the grass, looked at both trees, and smiled for the first time in a long while. For now he knew what to do.

He gathered figs from both trees, wrapped them separately and returned to the capital. So that no one would recognise him, Muck dressed as a poor peasant and glued on a beard. The royal cook was just looking for something special for supper, so he gladly bought a whole basket of the first figs from him.

That evening at the table the king and all the courtiers stuffed themselves with figs. And in the morning there was an uproar in the palace. The king had grey donkey ears sticking up above his crown, and his nose hung down to his chin. The treasurer’s ears were even longer. The courtiers hid in corners, pulled kerchiefs over their heads and shrieked at one another.

"We have been poisoned!" the treasurer cried, covering his ears with his palms.

"Hush, or the town will hear!" the king hissed at him.

The physicians racked their brains, gave bitter potions and put on poultices, but nothing helped. The ears stuck up, the noses hung down. Then a stranger came to the palace, a scholar in a long black robe.

"I know a remedy," he said.

It was Muck, in disguise again. He gave one courtier a small piece of fig from the second tree, and that man’s ears vanished right before their eyes. The king leaped up.

"Follow me!" he cried. "Take whatever you like from my treasury, only cure me!"

The king led the scholar to the treasury. Among chests of gold and jewels, Muck noticed in a corner the familiar tiny slippers and the cane with the lion’s head. He put on the slippers, took the cane, and then threw off the false beard.

"Don’t you recognise me, King?" he asked. "I am Little Muck, whom you threw into the tower. You believed the slanderers and would not hear me out. Now wear your ears, and remember it."

Muck turned three times on his heel, and before the king could say a word, there was no trace of Muck.

Since then the king has gone about with donkey ears, because no one in the world but Muck knows which fig tree bears the healing figs. And Little Muck settled in our Nicaea. He is rich, because the cane finds treasure for him. But he lives alone, because he knows very well that people can laugh, and envy, and lie.

My father finished his tale and looked at me.

"Well?" he asked. "Will you go on singing under his window?"

I answered nothing, for my cheeks were burning. The next morning, when the boys gathered again to run after Muck, I stood in the middle of the street and told them everything I had heard. They listened in silence. From then on none of us stepped on Muck’s slippers or sang teasing songs.

And when Muck passed by us, we bowed to him, the way one bows to a person who has seen and lived through more than any of us. Muck nodded in reply. But to the end of his days he never believed that we were not laughing at him behind his back.