The Clay Nightingale

I love listening to merchants counting their coppers at the counter. Each has his own arithmetic. One guest once confessed over a mug of uzvar how an old potter taught him a lesson. That potter shaped marvellous clay cuckoos. Pour a little water inside, blow into the tail - and the bird pours out such trills you'd swear a living nightingale was singing in the orchard. The merchant decided to buy up the whole batch for the fair, but he badly wanted to save on the deal.

I'll pay only for the weight of the dry clay, - says the merchant, weighing a whistle in his palm. - And whether it sings or not, that'll depend on the wind, and wind around here comes free. The old potter only smiled into his grey moustache. - Fair enough, sir. Clay is close kin to the earth, no sense skinning a man three times over for it. He weighed him out a hundred cuckoos, took the coppers strictly by weight, packed them in straw and wished him a good journey.

In town the merchant laid out his wares on expensive cloth and gathered a crowd. He filled his chest with air, blows into a bird... and it only wheezes dully and blows bubbles like a frog in a bog. He takes another - the water simply trickles out the bottom, and not a peep of sound. The crowd roars with laughter, pointing fingers. The shamed merchant loaded up a full cart of mute goods, came back to the village in a fury and pounced on the master right from the doorway.

You palmed off rejects on me! - shouts the merchant. - They don't sing! The potter calmly takes a cuckoo and holds it up to the warm stove. His calloused finger, with the barest touch, rubs away a tiny drop of beeswax that had neatly sealed the thin hole on the bird's neck. The master gave a light puff - and the house filled with such ringing nightingale song it made the heart ache.

For a bird to sing, you have to share your breath, not just rattle silver in your fist, - the master says quietly. - You squeezed your kopeck tight, so the poor thing had nothing to breathe. The merchant looked at his own hands, and for the first time in his life he felt ashamed not of his losses, but of his own smallness. He laid an honest price for the work on the table, threw in extra on top, and drove off without a word.

And it's often the same in life. Some folk spend their whole lives trying to pay only for the weight of things, never grasping that the most precious part always hides in what no scales can weigh and no kopecks can haggle down. The soul in a whistle has no weight, and without it - it's just a lump of dry clay.