In times long past and ages gone before, there dwelt in a certain city of China a Tailor who was a generous man who loved pleasure and amusement. He and his wife were accustomed to enjoying public entertainments and diversions. One day they went out in the early morning and were returning in the evening when they encountered a Hunchback whose appearance would draw laughter even from sadness and dispel the deepest despair. They were delighted to look upon him and invited him to come home with them, to talk and dine with them that night. He agreed and accompanied them on foot to their home. That evening, the Tailor went to the bazaar and bought fried fish, bread, lemons, and dry sweetmeats for dessert. He set the food before the Hunchback, and they ate. Presently, the Tailor's wife took a large piece of fish and gave it to the Hunchback, putting her hand over his mouth and saying, "By God, you must swallow it in one gulp—I will not give you time to chew it." He swallowed it whole, but within it was a sharp bone that lodged in his throat. His time had come, and he died.

When it was the Twenty-fifth night

The woman replied, "Why this empty talk? Have you not heard the poet who said:

Why then waste I my time in grief, until I find no friend to bear my weight of woe? How sleep upon a fire that flames unquenched? Upon the flames to rest were hard enow!"

Her husband asked, "And what shall I do with him?" She answered, "Get up and take him in your arms and cover him with a silk cloth. Then I will go out, and you follow me. If anyone asks, say, 'This is my son, and his mother and I are taking him to the doctor to be examined.'" So he rose and, taking the Hunchback in his arms, carried him through the streets. His wife went before him, crying out, "O my son, may Allah protect you! What ails you? Where has this sickness struck you?" All who saw them said, "It is a child sick with smallpox." They went about asking for the physician's house until people directed them to that of a doctor who was a Jew. They knocked at the door, and a black slave girl came down and opened it. Seeing a man carrying what appeared to be a child and a woman, she asked, "What is the matter?" The Tailor's wife answered, "We have a little one with us, and we wish to show him to the physician. Take this quarter dinar and give it to your master and tell him to come down and see my son who is gravely ill."

The girl went up to tell her master. The Tailor's wife then walked into the vestibule and said to her husband, "Leave the Hunchback here and let us flee for our lives." So the Tailor carried the dead man to the top of the stairs and propped him upright against the wall, then ran away with his wife. Meanwhile, the girl went to the Jew and said, "At the door are a man and a woman with a sick child. They have given me a quarter dinar for you to come down and examine the boy and prescribe treatment." As soon as the Jew saw the quarter dinar, he was delighted and got up quickly, his greed driving him forward. He hurried out in the dark, but hardly had he taken a step when he stumbled over the corpse and pushed it. The body rolled down to the bottom of the stairs. He cried out to the girl to hurry with the light, and she brought it. When he went down and examined the Hunchback, he found him quite dead. He cried out in alarm, calling upon Jewish prophets and the Ten Commandments, saying, "I stumbled against the sick one, and he fell downstairs and is dead! How will I get this man I have killed out of my house?"

Then he picked up the body and, carrying it into the house, told his wife what had happened. She said to him, "Why do you sit here? If you keep him until daybreak, we will both lose our lives. Let us carry him to the roof and throw him over into our neighbour's house. Since he is a Muslim, if the body lies there all night, the dogs will come down from the adjoining roofs and eat him." Now his neighbour was a Reeve, the controller of the Sultan's kitchen, and he would bring home great quantities of oil, fat, and meat scraps. Cats and rats used to eat these, or if the dogs caught the scent of a fat sheep's tail, they would come down from the nearby roofs and tear at it. In this way, the animals had already damaged much of what he brought home. So the Jew and his wife carried the Hunchback to the roof and, lowering him by his hands and feet through the ventilation shaft into the Reeve's house, propped him against the wall and went away. Hardly had they done this when the Reeve came home. He had been spending the evening with friends listening to a recitation of the Koran. He opened the door and, going upstairs with a candle, found a man standing in the corner under the ventilation shaft.

When he saw this, he said, "By God! So the one who has been stealing my things is a man, not an animal!" He turned to the Hunchback and said, "So it is you who has been stealing the meat and fat! I thought it was the cats and dogs, and I have killed the innocent animals of the quarter, burdening myself with sin. All this time it was you coming down from the terrace through the ventilation shaft! But I will take my revenge on you myself!" He grabbed a heavy hammer, attacked him, and struck him hard on the chest. The Hunchback fell. When the Reeve examined him and found he was dead, he cried out in horror, thinking he had killed him, saying, "There is no power or might except in Allah, the Glorious, the Great!" He feared for his life and added, "May Allah curse the oil, the meat, the grease, and the sheep tails! How has fate ended this man's life by my hand!" Then, looking at the body and seeing it was a hunchback, he said, "Was it not enough for you to be a hunchback, but you must also be a thief, stealing meat and fat! O Concealer, veil me with Your veil of concealment!"

He picked up the corpse, carried it on his shoulders, and went out of his house about the end of the night. He took it to the edge of the bazaar and set it upright against the wall of a shop at the entrance to a dark alley, then left and went away. After some time, a Christian, the Sultan's broker, who was drunk and was heading to the bathhouse, staggered down the alley. He had lost his turban earlier in the night. He came swaying and stumbling until he approached

The Hunchback's Tale. 259 the Hunchback and squatted down to relieve himself. When he glanced around, he saw a man standing against the wall. Since someone had stolen his turban earlier that night, the Christian thought this man also meant to steal from him. He clenched his fist and struck the Hunchback on the neck, felling him to the ground. He called aloud to the bazaar watchman and, in his drunken rage, continued striking and choking the corpse. Soon the watchman arrived and, finding a Christian beating a Muslim, asked, "What has this man done?" The Broker answered, "He was trying to steal my turban!" "Get off him," said the watchman. So the Christian got up, and the watchman went to the Hunchback and found him dead. He exclaimed, "By God! A Christian has killed a Muslim!" He seized the Broker, tied his hands behind his back, and carried him to the Governor's house. All the while, the Christian kept saying to himself, "O Messiah! O Virgin Mary! How did I come to kill this man? He must have been in a great hurry to die, dying from a single blow!" As his drunkenness wore off, grief and fear took its place. The Broker and the body were kept in the Governor's custody until morning, when the Governor came out and ordered the supposed murderer hanged. He commanded the executioner to proclaim the sentence.

Immediately they set up a gallows and made the Christian stand beneath it. The executioner, who was the torch bearer, placed the rope around his neck and passed the other end through the pulley. He was about to hoist him up when the Reeve, who was passing by, saw the Broker about to be executed. He pushed through the crowd and shouted to the executioner, "Stop! Stop! I am the one who killed the Hunchback!" The Governor asked, "Why did you kill him?" The Reeve answered, "I came home last night and found this man who had come down through the ventilation shaft to steal my property. I struck him on the chest with a hammer, and he died immediately. Then I took him and carried him to the bazaar and set him against the wall in such a place near such a lane. Is it not enough for me to have killed a Muslim without also killing a Christian? So hang me alone." When the Governor heard this, he released the Broker and said to the torch bearer, "Hang this man on his own confession." The executioner removed the rope from the Christian's neck and placed it around the Reeve's neck. He made him stand under the gallows and was about to hang him when suddenly the Jewish doctor pushed through the crowd and shouted to the executioner, "Stop! Stop! I alone killed the Hunchback! Last night a man and a woman knocked on my door carrying this Hunchback, who appeared to be sick. They gave my handmaid a quarter dinar and he asked to tell me to come down and examine him. While she was gone, they brought him into the house, set him on the stairs, and left. I came down and, not seeing him in the dark, stumbled over him. He fell to the bottom of the stairs and died immediately. My wife and I took him up and carried him to the roof. Since the Reeve's house is next to mine, we lowered the body through the ventilation shaft into his house.

When he came home and found the Hunchback, he thought he was a thief and struck him with a hammer, so he fell and our neighbour believed he had killed him. Is it not enough that I have unwittingly killed one Muslim without also willingly taking the life of another?" When the Governor heard this, he said to the executioner, "Release the Reeve and hang the Jew." The executioner took the Jew and placed the rope around his neck when suddenly the Tailor pushed through the crowd and shouted to the executioner, "Stop! Stop! I and I alone killed the Hunchback! Here is how it happened. I had been out for amusement and, when returning for supper, encountered this Hunchback. He was drunk, playing a tambourine and singing loudly. I approached him, spoke with him, and brought him to my house. I bought a fish, and we sat down to eat. My wife took a piece of fish, made it into a morsel, and put it in his mouth, but the bone got caught in his throat and he died instantly. My wife and I carried him to the Jew's house. The handmaid came down and opened the door. I said to her, 'Tell your master that a man, a woman, and a sick person are here for him to examine!'

I gave her a quarter dinar, and she went to tell her master. While she was gone, I carried the Hunchback to the head of the stairs and propped him against the wall, then left with my wife. When the Jew came down, he stumbled over him and thought he had killed him." He asked the Jew, "Is this the truth?" The Jew answered, "Yes." The Tailor then turned to the Governor and said, "Release the Jew and hang me." When the Governor heard the Tailor's account, he marvelled at the matter of the Hunchback and exclaimed, "Truly, this is an adventure that should be recorded in books!" He then said to the executioner, "Release the Jew and hang the Tailor on his own confession." The executioner took the Tailor and placed the rope around his neck and said, "I am tired of this slow work. We bring out one person and exchange him for another, and no one ever gets hanged!" Now the Hunchback in question was, it is said, the jester of the Sultan of China, whom the Sultan could not bear to be without. When the fellow got drunk and did not appear that night or the next day until noon, the Sultan asked some of his courtiers about him. They answered, "O our lord, the Governor found him dead and ordered his murderer to be hanged. But as the executioner was about to hang him, a second man came forward, and then a third and a fourth, and each said, 'It is I, and I alone, who killed the Hunchback!'

Each gave a full and detailed account of how the jester had been killed." When the King heard this, he cried out to his chamberlain, "Go to the Governor at once and bring me all four of them." The chamberlain went immediately to the place of execution, where he found the executioner about to hang the Tailor. He shouted, "Stop! Stop!" Then he delivered the King's command to the Governor, who took the Tailor, the Jew, the Christian, and the Reeve (with the Hunchback's body being carried on men's shoulders) and went up with all of them to the King. When he came before the King, he kissed the ground and told him the whole story, which there is no need to repeat here, for as they say, there is no benefit in telling a tale three times. The Sultan, hearing it, marvelled and was amused. He commanded that the story be written in letters of gold, and he said to those present, "Did you ever hear a more wondrous tale than that of my Hunchback?" Then the Christian broker came forward and said, "With your leave, O King, I will tell you something that happened to me, which is even more wondrous, marvellous, pleasant, and delightful than the tale of the Hunchback." The King said, "Tell us what you have to say!" So he began in these words: