Week 2 Story: The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal

The current version of this story is here.

Richard’s commute to the bank was short enough to be made on foot, and he hunched his shoulders against the drizzle as he walked. 

His work as a teller was not unpleasant — it consisted of signing things and telling people they couldn’t have the loan they wanted — and, truthfully, he derived some satisfaction from both of these tasks. Moreso, his work allowed him time to think. On slow days, he would spend hours lost in thoughts of mortgages and politics and what really was the worst that could happen if he asked the girl who worked at the post office to have dinner with him and, embarrassingly, ideas for a novel he’d been writing in his head.


He was so engrossed in one such daydream that he nearly walked past a dull glinting in the gutter below him. He peered down. A golden lamp — tarnished, but ornate — sat in a puddle on side of 12th Street. It didn’t take Richard long to deduce that such a trinket could be brought to the local pawn shop and exchanged for a tidy profit.

"A golden lamp -- tarnished, but ornate..." Source: Wikipedia Commons.

Pleased, Richard plucked the lamp from its puddle and set a course for the pawn shop. He hummed to himself as he walked and debated whether it would be better to put the money towards the next month’s rent on his flat, or towards an enormous amount of Guinness.

***

Like Richard, the pawn shop was rather unremarkable. Its windows were barred and it carried an odor of cigarettes that was perpetuated by its owner.


A bell tinkled as he entered.


“With you in a minute,” wheezed a voice from the back of the shop.


Richard squelched his way to the sales counter in his wet loafers and placed the lamp next to a tin of used corks by the register.


A portly little man bustled out. Most his hair had fled from the crown of his head and reassembled itself in his comically bushy eyebrows, which he furrowed at Richard.


“Buying or selling?” he asked irritably.


“Selling.”


“Have you got the piece here with you?”


Richard gestured towards the lamp, which the shopkeeper bent to inspect.


After a discerning bit of squinting, the shopkeeper straightened. “Eight-fifty.”


“Beg your pardon?”


“I’d go as high as ten, if you can prove the authorities won’t show up asking for it to use as evidence in a court of law. Happened before. Otherwise, eight-fifty. Final offer.”


“Now see here,” began Richard, taken aback. This was hardly the small fortune he’d been looking forward to drinking his way through. “It’s a bit dingy, but you can clean it up.” He seized the lamp and scrubbed at the muck.


At once, the lamp shuddered violently and spat out a figure, alongside a great cloud of smoke.


“Fools!” cried a voice, deep and terrible. “Ignorant mortals!”


Small fires blazed where the figure's pupils should have been and they licked at the air when he spoke. This all made for quite a frightening effect and Richard found himself speechless.


“You’ve disrupted my eternal confinement!” bellowed the creature. “You’ve freed a wrathful djinn from his prison and allowed him to wreak havoc in the world of men!”


By the looks of him, the djinn intended to do as he said. Richard looked to the shopkeeper for support, but the man seemed rather angry at all the commotion in his shop.


The djinn eyed Richard sternly. “The lamp must always remain full! It is your duty to replace me, as the Old Laws state.”


Richard blinked slowly. “You want me...to take your place...in the lamp?”


“To take my place in EVERLASTING CAPTIVITY!” roared the djinn, who possessed a flair for showmanship.


At this, the shopkeeper had the grace to look sympathetic, even if his expression appeared somewhat feigned.


“But I can’t do that,” protested Richard, “I’ve got to get to my shift at the bank!”


“You’ll do no such thing,” the djinn said. “You’ll take my place inside the lamp and I’ll hear no more about it.”


“But I didn’t even get my Guinness! Or write my book! And I’ll never get to ask the girl at the post office whether she’d like to — “


The djinn held up a hand, not unkindly. “The lamp must always be occupied. One soul leaves.” He gestured to himself. “Another enters.” He looked pointedly at Richard.


The shopkeeper shrugged. Fair was fair, after all.


Richard peered at the spout of the lamp. “It looks awfully cramped in there,” he said.


“It is.”


“And it seems like quite a bit of trouble to get oneself down the spout.”


“It’s an ordeal.”


“How exactly does one go about inserting oneself into such a lamp?”


“I find it’s easiest to go feet first,” rumbled the djinn. “You sort of get the hang of it once the knees are through.”


Richard prodded the spout of the lamp with his soggy loafer. It looked to be a tight squeeze.


The shopkeeper made a show of checking his watch. Richard was unsure why he was in such a hurry — all he had to look forward to was the djinn’s wrathful havoc.


The djinn cleared his throat impatiently.


“I’m sorry,” said Richard, “it’s just that I’ve never done this before and I can’t quite seem to get the trick of it. Perhaps I could have a demonstration before you’re on your way?”


The djinn rolled his blazing eyes and held out a hand, into which Richard deposited the lamp. He deftly inserted his feet into the lamp’s spout and began to wriggle his way inside.


“See now — you have to tuck the hips back like so, or else they get caught on this bit of nozzle.”


Richard watched attentively.


“I find it’s easiest to do the elbows one at a time,” continued the djinn, now up to his shoulders in the lamp.


“It’s a bit like getting on a sweater that’s shrunk in the wash,” observed the shopkeeper helpfully.


The djinn kept squirming.


“And then — “ The djinn plugged his nose and plunged into the lamp, like a diver in a swimming pool. “ — you just pop yourself in.” His voice sounded tinny.


With a squeal, Richard lunged for the tin of corks on the counter. Snatching one, he crammed it inside the spout of the lamp and tossed it onto the counter. He held his breath.


A minute passed, then another. The shopkeeper furrowed his eyebrows apprehensively. Nothing could be heard from within the lamp.


The shopkeeper opened his mouth as if to say something, appeared to think better of it, and closed it again. Rain pattered against the windows of the shop — it appeared that the showers would continue into the afternoon. Neither man spoke.


After a moment, Richard straightened his coat and turned on his heel, leaving the lamp where it rested next to the register. He squished wetly across the carpet and pushed the front door open into the street.


“Afternoon,” he said over his shoulder.


The lamp gleamed softly in the light of the shop.


Richard folded the collar of his jacket up and set off into the drizzle. A car drove past, its rims shining wetly in the greyish afternoon.


At the steps of the bank he paused, then continued past, towards the Ox and Plough a few doors down.


He sighed. It was a dreary afternoon and he really wasn’t in the mood for work today. Besides -- he rather needed a Guinness.






Author's Note/Bibliography: For this, I put my own spin (new setting, new characters) on the Indian folktale The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal by Joseph Jacobs (1912). The idea of a selfish creature ending back up at square one stays the same, but now the Jackal and the Brahman are played by the same character.