Scorpion Soup (4 page)

By dusk, all the possessions were sold, and the farmer had a pocket jingling with coins.

He was about to go to the market to buy some food to take home, when he noticed a rather grand shop at one corner of the town square. Having not seenj it before, he approached it cautiously, and pressed his face up to the window.

The walls inside were lined with tall glass jars. Each one had a label but was quite empty of contents. His curiosity piqued, the farmer dusted himself down, and pushed open the door.

The unfilled jars were a little larger than they had appeared from the outside, their labels written neatly in gold script. And it was the labels that caught the farmer’s eye. Although he had left school well before his time, he had learned to read, and he read the labels one by one.

‘Wisdom, Hope, Perception, Deceit, Truth, Goodwill, Remorse, Bravery, Melancholy…’ he frowned and, as he did so, a hunchbacked sales clerk appeared.

‘Can I help you, sir?’ he enquired in an even tone.

The farmer jumped back.

‘I noticed the jars through the window,’ he spluttered, ‘and was so intrigued that I simply had to come in.’

The clerk dusted a hair from his shoulder.

‘And what, may I ask, was it that you found so intriguing?’

The farmer pointed to the empty jars.

‘Those,’ he said.

The hunchbacked clerk narrowed his eyes.

‘And...?’ he hissed. ‘And what is so strange about them?’

‘Well, er, how can you sell Wisdom, or Truth… or whatever?’ he said. ‘The jars are empty. It’s as plain as day.’

The clerk, who was growing impatient, cracked his knuckles.

‘Whoever said that qualities had a colour or a texture?’ he asked angrily.

‘But whoever said they could be bought and sold?’ the farmer replied.

‘Who said they could not?’

The farmer blinked.

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I fancy you’re a trickster, who’s set up shop to dupe god-fearing men like me.’

The clerk stepped over to the door and pushed it open.

‘It was you who came in here uninvited,’ he said calmly.

The farmer was about to stride out, but something caused him to pause.

He slid the tip of his tongue over his upper lip.

‘You think I can’t afford your wares,’ he said. ‘Well, I’ve got money.’

He pulled out a pocket full of coins.

‘So what is it you would like to buy?’ asked the clerk.

The farmer scanned an eye over the shelves.

‘Well, it depends how much they cost,’ he said.

‘They are all priced differently and sold in small bottles of their own,’ the clerk replied. ‘The most expensive is Wisdom, and the least is Shyness.’

‘Why would anyone want Shyness?’ the farmer asked.

‘You would be surprised, sir.’

‘Well, for a handful of coins, could I get a selection? You know, so I can test some of them out.’

The clerk was about to refuse, when he was overcome with goodwill. He glanced up at the jar, fearing its stopper was loose.

‘Very well,’ he said, ‘after all, I am about to close for the night.’

Five minutes later, the farmer found himself clutching a sackcloth bag in which were jangling six miniature bottles.

Just before he left the shop, the clerk gave a caution:

‘Although they are magical,’ he said, ‘you have only purchased samples of my wares, and in this size the effect of each bottle lasts only a single day.’

It was dark by the time the farmer returned home. His wife was standing outside the shack and she was weeping.

‘We can’t go in,’ she said. ‘The landlord has thrown us out. I hope you made us enough money so that at least we can eat.’

Her husband pulled the sackcloth bag out from behind his back.

‘I bought something far better than food,’ he said.

His wife looked at him expectantly.

‘I bought these little bottles.’

‘We need more than liquid, we need
food
.’

‘But they don’t contain liquid.’

The farmer’s eyes were wide.

‘Then what’s in them?’ asked the woman, snatching one and holding it up to the moon.

‘It’s empty!’ she scowled.

‘They all are,’ the farmer explained. ‘And that’s the point.’

The next thing the farmer knew, a clenched fist had hit him between the eyes. His wife’s fury knew no bounds. As he came to his senses, he thought of something.

Picking up the little bottle that his wife has thrown on the ground, he uncorked it, and held the rim to his pursed lips. He felt something strange enter his mouth, something intangible and warm.

‘You’ve ruined us,’ said his wife, as she began to weep again.

The farmer stood up.

‘My dear, dear woman,’ he replied, ‘please forgive me. I can never find the words to apologise enough. You deserve a far better man than I, and so I will take leave of you and return only when I have made something of myself.’

‘Good riddance to you!’ barked the old woman.

But her husband had already gone.

On the ground where he had been standing was a tiny bottle. Squinting, and holding it to the full moon as she had done before, she read the handwritten label –
Remorse
.

Within a day, the farmer had crossed the fields and reached the edge of the neighbouring town. He met a fisherman beside a stream, approached him and said:

‘Hello friend, do forgive me for disturbing you. Oh, how very sorry I am. Truly, I really mean it.’

Struck by the stranger’s politeness, the fisherman offered him some grilled fish for lunch. The two men became instant friends and, before he knew it, the farmer was invited to stay in the fisherman’s home.

That night, he reflected on the day’s events and how the course of his life had changed. His mind wandering, he opened the bag and pulled out the first bottle he could find.

The label read,
Bravery
.

‘Hmmm,’ thought the farmer to himself. ‘I’d like to be brave.’ And, without giving it too much thought at all, he prised out the cork and sucked down the bottle’s contents.

That night, while the fisherman and his family slept, a band of thieves broke into the house, each one armed with a scimitar. They came in over the roof, and in through the windows, moving in complete silence.

Then they sprang.

The fisherman and his family were roused from their beds, tied up and relieved of all that they owned.

In the clamour of the attack, no one noticed the farmer sleeping in the kitchen beside the fire. Hearing a commotion, he crept stealthily into the sleeping quarters, armed with a cleaver. And, hardly knowing how he did it, he took the attackers by surprise.

Within less time than it takes to tell, he fought them all at once, and disarmed them all in a feat of unbridled bravery. Minutes later, the band of thieves lay dead, their bodies dismembered on the floor of the fisherman’s home.

News of the farmer’s bravery spread.

The corpses were taken into the town’s main square, where they were hung up for all to see. A passer-by recognised them as the most feared bandits in the realm, with a handsome reward on their heads.

Before he knew it, the farmer was being received in the royal palace, where he was decorated by the king, and rewarded with six bags of gold. Hardly able to believe his luck, he bought an ornate carriage and fine clothes for himself.

Then he set off back to his village to be reunited with his wife.

Unaccustomed to luxury of any kind, the farmer ordered the coach driver to pull up at dusk on the banks of a brook. He selected a spot beneath a sprawling neem tree, protected from the wind by an outcrop of rocks.

‘We will camp here for the night,’ he said, ‘and set off at dawn.’

The moon full above him, the farmer found himself unable to sleep. And, eventually, his mind turned to the little bottles he had left.

Opening his sackcloth bag, he removed the remaining bottles and held them up to the moon for light. But his water bottle had leaked some of its precious fluid and the writing on the labels had been smudged.

As much as he squinted, he was unable to read a word.

‘I should open them all and release their contents into the air,’ he thought aloud, ‘after all, they could contain harmful elements.’

But something niggled at him and, before he could reason with himself, he had snatched one of the bottles out, pulled away the stopper, and drunk down its contents.

A few minutes passed and the farmer began to sense something. He could hear a distant sound, like the clatter of hooves galloping far away. He looked to the right, then the left, and realised that the sound was coming from the base of the neem tree.

He leant down, cupped a hand to his ear.

A procession of ants was marching across a root, exposed above the surface of the ground. The farmer watched as they made their way across a stretch of barren land beside the brook, and down a hole no wider than his thumb.

The bizarre thing was that he could hear them walking, and talking as well, and he could understand exactly what they said. He could hear the sound of fish, too, swimming through the nearby water, and a nest of magpies up in the highest branches of the tree.

But that was not all.

The farmer walked over to the coachman, who was asleep on the grass. Without quite knowing how, he knew that the man had an eye condition that would very soon make him blind. And he knew that the carriage he drove was stolen, the yellow lacquer having been painted over the red livery of the king.

With his heightened perception, the farmer felt truly alive, for the first time. He thought of all the possibilities, all the things he could do with such a gift.

But then something caught his attention.

The ants.

He overheard one complaining to another.

‘What a nuisance it is that we have to dig this mine shaft,’ said the first.

‘And that there are these great big yellow blocks of metal hindering our way,’ said the other.

‘If only someone would move them for us,’ the first replied.

Wasting no time, the farmer started digging.

Within an hour he had unearthed forty bars of gold, the pure metal glinting in the moon’s light.

‘I’m rich!’ he exclaimed, ‘richer than in my wildest dreams!’

The coachman was woken by the farmer’s outcry. He sat upright, rubbed his eyes, and screamed.

‘I’m blind! I can’t see a thing!’

Loading the treasure into the carriage, the farmer helped the old coachman aboard as well. Then, fearing that the people of his own town would recognise him as the impoverished farmer that he was, he rode on and on until he came to the next kingdom.

Once there, he rented a fine mansion for himself, found wealthy new friends, and set himself up as a member of the landed gentry.

As the weeks slipped away, and as his funds were invested, the farmer became the wealthiest man in the land.

Then, one morning, he remembered his wife.

In all the excitement of his new life he had quite forgotten about her or, rather, had suppressed all thought of her because he was having such a good time.

Changing back into less opulent clothing, he set off in a simple cart to find her.

A few days later, he found her in the town near to where their farm had stood. A few feet away from where she was squatting, hand outstretched, was the shop that had sold the farmer the glass bottles so many weeks before.

But the shop was abandoned, all the windows smashed, the door hanging off its hinges.

‘Dear wife,’ said the farmer, approaching the huddled figure. ‘I have returned and, as I promised, I have made something of myself.’

The old woman glanced up, squinted, and slipped back into the shade. She was imagining things again.

‘It’s me, your husband!’ cried the farmer.

Within a week or two, the couple were installed in their mansion. And as the days went by the farmer’s wife grew increasingly used to the lavish lifestyle that instant wealth can bring. She spent a fortune on fine dresses for herself, and was soon bossing her husband around, as she had always done.

As for himself, the farmer spent more and more of his time in leisure until, one morning, he remembered the three remaining bottles. He asked one of the servants where his old sackcloth bag had been kept. It was brought to him on a golden salver, rose petals sprinkled around the edges.

The farmer opened the bag and removed the bottles. The labels were far too smudged to read.

‘Do I dare?’ he asked himself.

There was the sound of his wife barking him orders from the salon downstairs. Grimacing, he summoned his courage, opened one of the bottles and quaffed down its contents.

As before, nothing happened at first.

The farmer’s wife asked for a purse of gold, so that she might buy herself a jewel-encrusted necklace. Her husband opened his safe and was about to hand over the coins, when he felt a shiver down his spine.

‘If I give her this money,’ he thought to himself, ‘she’s going to ask for some more, and then even more, and very soon we’ll be broke.’

So he put the money back in the safe and shook his head. His wife protested, but he walked through into another room, where he started thinking.

For the first time in his life, the farmer had clarity of thought, the kind of which he never imagined was possible. He could think of solutions to the most complex problems in science, in everyday life, and the arts.

On a single day – the day on which the
Wisdom
was effective – the farmer came up with solutions to a thousand things.

He worked out how to solve the kingdom’s terrible water shortage, and where to mine the abundant deposits of gold. He settled marital disputes and invented new machines, designed a new city from the ground up, and cured the king of the illness that was about to claim his life.

Before he knew it, the kingdom was wealthier than any other, and the farmer was celebrated as a visionary of the rarest kind. Realising that his people no longer wished him to lead them, the king abdicated, naming the farmer as his successor.

A little time passed, and the new king’s initial genius quickly wore thin.