THE FABLE OF THE
SPRING OF IMMORTALITY

as told by the Sadet.

ONCE a rich man was so miserly that he chose to live in the forest apart from other families. Leaving on a hunt, he told his son, “Watch over my jar while I am away, for it is our family’s wealth.” But the son fell ill with fever so that monkeys were able to enter the house and take great sport in rolling the precious jar out the door.

Because he was blustering and loud the rich man was a poor hunter and caught nothing, and so returned home in a rage, and was so angry when he discovered the jar stolen that he dragged his poor son into the forest and raised his knife. Because he was pure of heart the boy’s last words were not “I do not wish to die” but “I wish that no one would die.” Then his father left the little body unburned and unburied so that wild beasts would devour it. But instead the Spirit of the Water caused a spring to gush from the boy’s mouth.

That night the rich man’s relations, hurrying to invite him to a feast, took their rest beside the spring. They were surprised, for in all their years of travel they had never seen one in that place. They were no less surprised when they stumbled across the murdered boy as they made camp. They could no longer recognize him as their nephew, so they agreed that they would make no funeral but simply burn the little body in the morning.

They boiled water from the spring. They threw in their dried fish, and then the most surprising event of all occurred: live fishes leaped from the kettle! The water of the spring, the relatives suspected, was rife with spirits. They splashed water on the murdered boy and he sat up and through his mutilated lips described what his father had done.

The enraged travellers raced through the night to find the rich man. Hearing their cries, he ran out of his house—but because he was blustering and loud, he blundered into a tiger’s jaws, and afterward this tiger su¤ered incurable diarrhea.

Meanwhile the son discovered the jar where the monkeys had abandoned it, and with this recovered wealth he founded a village below the spring. Of course the rich man should have known that a family’s wealth is not its jars but its children.