So that day he went out and made about thirty traps, of sticks with nooses attached, to snare jungle-fowl. His work finished, he returned home. Next day he went out to look at his traps, but found that he had caught, not a wild chicken, but a big lizard (palas [107]) with pretty figured patterns on its back. The man said to the lizard, "Halloo!"
Then he released the lizard, and gave him his own carrying-bag and work-knife, and told him to go straight to his house. But the lizard was afraid to go to the man's house, for he suspected that the man wanted to make a meal of him. Instead, he ran up a tree, taking with him the knife and the bag. The tree overhung a clear brook, and the lizard could see his reflection (alung) in the water.
No fowl could the man snare that day, and he went home. As soon as he reached the house, he said to his wife, "Are you all done cleaning that lizard?"
"What lizard are you talking about?" returned the woman. "There's no lizard here."
"I sent one here," insisted the man, "and I'm hungry."
"We have no lizard," repeated his wife.
In a hot temper the man went back to his traps, and there saw the tracks of the lizard, leading, not towards his house, but exactly in the opposite direction. Following the tracks, he reached the brook, and at once caught sight of the lizard's reflection in the water. Immediately the man jumped into the water, grasping for the image of the slippery lizard; but he had to jump out again with empty hands. He tried again. Hour after hour he kept on jumping, until he got so wet and cold that he had to give it up and go home.
"The lizard is right over there in the brook," he told his wife; "but I could not get hold of him."
"I'll go and look at him with you," she said.
So together they reached the brook; and the woman glanced first into the water, and then up into the tree.
"You foolish man," she smiled. "Look in the tree for your lizard. That's just his shadow (alung [109]) in the water."
The man looked up, and saw the lizard in the tree. Then he started to climb up the trunk, but found himself so chilled and stiff from jumping into the water, that he kept slipping down whenever he tried to climb. Then the woman took her turn, and got part way up the tree. The man looked up at his wife, and noticed that she had sores on parts of her body where she could not see them, and he called to her, "Come down! don't climb any higher; you've got sores." So she climbed down.
Then her husband wanted to get some medicine out of his bag to give her for the sores; but the lizard had his bag.
"Throw down my bag and knife to me!" he shouted up to the lizard, "because I must get busy about fixing medicine for my wife." And the lizard threw down to him his knife and his bag.
As soon as they got home, the man made some medicine for his wife; but the sores did not heal. Then he went to his friend Tuglay and said, "What is the medicine for my wife?"
Tuglay went home with the man; and when they reached the house, he told him what he was about to do. "Look!" said the Tuglay.
Then the man looked, and saw the Tuglay go to his wife and consort with her.
And the husband let him do it, for he said to himself, "That is the medicine for my wife."
When the Tuglay was done with the woman, he said, "Go now to your wife."
Then the man went to her, and said, "This is the best of all." After that, the man cared for nothing except to be with his wife. He did not even care to eat. He threw out of the house all the food they had,--the rice, the sugarcane, the bananas, and all of their other things. He threw them far away. But after they had taken no food for several days, the man and the woman began to grow thin and weak. Still they did not try to get food, because they wanted only to gratify their passion [110] for each other. At last both of them got very skinny, and finally they died.
No comments:
Post a Comment