منتديات نور الأدب - The Fly.. a Vietnamese Folktale

The Fly
A Vietnamese Folktale

Everyone in the village knew the usurer(1), a rich and smart man. After accumulating a fortune, he settled down in his big house with his immense garden, guarded by a pack of ferocious dogs. Still unsatisfied, he kept lending money to others at exorbitant interest rates. It seemed that everyone in the area owed him.

One day the rich man set off to collect a debt from one of his poor peasants, who barely made ends meet and simply could not pay. The usurer vowed to confiscate his debtor's most valuable belongings. But when he arrived, only a small boy of eight or nine was there, playing in the yard.

The boy told the rich man that his parents were not home and he continued to play with his sticks and stones, completely uninterested in the visitor. In response to the man's questions, the boy said that his father had gone to cut living trees and plant dead ones and his mother was at the marketplace selling the wind and buying the moon. Confused, the angry rich man threatened the child with his bamboo(2) walking stick. But the boy only kept repeating his earlier reply. The rich man promised that if the boy revealed the truth about where his parents were, he would forget about the debt the father owed him. The boy did not believe the usurer, who swore by heaven and earth to keep his promise, and the boy insisted on a living witness to their deal.

The rich man spied a fly on a nearby bamboo pole and proposed that the fly be their witness. The boy agreed that the fly would be a good witness. He then told the rich man that his father had gone to cut down bamboos to make a fence for a man living near the river. He paused for the usurer to vow once more to keep his promise... his mother had gone to the market to sell fans to buy oil for their lamps, thus selling wind to buy the moon.

Inwardly(3), the rich man realized how clever the boy was, but he laughed when he thought about a fly being the only witness, believing that he needn't bother keeping his promise to such a gullible boy. A few days later, he returned to collect his money from the poor peasant, who begged for another delay. The boy overheard the nasty argument and told his father about the usurer's promise to forgive the debt. The rich man denied everything, "Nonsense! Nonsense!" and he shook his stick at both father and son, claiming that he had never spoken a word to the boy and demanding payment.

In time, the affair was brought before the governing mandarin. The poor peasant and his wife brought their boy to the court. In response to the mandarin, the boy told what had happened and exactly what he had told the moneylender in exchange for the debt. The mandarin said it was only the boy's word as there had been no witness. When the boy revealed that a fly had been a witness, the stern mandarin warned that such fantasies would not be tolerated in his court. The boy declared that it was not a lie, that the witness fly had been alighting on the moneylender's nose at the time, and he leapt up and pointed straight at the rich man.

The usurer roared indignantly, "Insolent little devil, that's a pack of lies! The fly was NOT on my nose; it was on the housepole..." At that point, he stopped dead. But it was too late. The majestic mandarin burst out laughting, along with all the people in the court. Finally, the boy and the rich man himself joined the laughter. The mandarin held his stomach with one hand and with the other waved at the rich man: "So it's settled. You, sir, made your promises to the child and, housepole or no housepole, your conversation did happen after all! The court says you must keep your promise."

And, with that, the chuckling mandarin dismissed all parties
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1- usurer: One who lends money at interest, especially at an exorbitant or unlawfully high rate
2- bamboo: The hard or woody, jointed, often hollow stems of these plants, used in construction, crafts, and fishing poles
3- Inwardly: within the private thoughts