The Clever Wife

In a certain country there lived a merchant who dealt in every kind of goods and sailed from land to land in his boat, buying and selling. One day he said to his wife, “I can’t stay at home any longer. I have to go away for a year on business.” Then he laughed and added, “When I come home, I expect you to have built me a grand well. And since you are such a clever wife, I expect to see a little son as well.” Then he boarded his boat and sailed away.

As soon as he had gone, his wife got to work. With her own hands she spun four hanks of beautiful thread. Then she put on her loveliest clothes and her finest jewels. “I am going to the bazaar to sell this thread,” she told her ayahs, her maids.

“That isn’t proper,” said one of them. “You shouldn’t sell your thread yourself. Let me do it for you. What will your husband say if he hears you have been selling thread in the bazaar?”

“I will sell it myself,” said the merchant’s wife. “You could never sell it for me.”

So off she went, and everyone in the bazaar said, “What a beautiful woman!” Before long the kotwal, the chief of police, noticed her and came straight over. “What fine thread! Is it for sale?”

“Yes.”

“How much for a hank?”

“Fifty rupees.”

“Fifty rupees! Who would ever pay that?”

“I won’t take less,” she said. “I shall get fifty rupees for it.”

“Very well,” said the kotwal, “I will pay you fifty rupees. May I come and dine at your house?”

“Yes, tonight at ten o’clock.” He took the thread and paid her the fifty rupees.

She went on to another bazaar, where the king’s wazir, his chief minister, saw her with her thread. “What lovely thread! Is it for sale?”

“Yes, at a hundred rupees a hank.”

“I will give you a hundred. May I dine at your house?”

“Yes, tonight at eleven.”

“Good. Here are your hundred rupees.” And he went off with the thread.

In a third bazaar the king’s kazi, his judge, saw her. “Is that beautiful thread for sale?”

“Yes, for a hundred and fifty rupees.”

“I will pay that. May I dine at your house?”

“Yes, tonight at twelve.”

“I will be there. Here is the money.” So she took his rupees and gave him the thread.

She carried the last hank to a fourth bazaar, where the king’s palace stood. The king himself saw her and asked whether the thread was for sale. “Yes, for five hundred rupees,” she said.

“Give it to me. Here are your five hundred rupees. May I dine at your house?”

“Yes, tonight at two o’clock.”

Then she went home. She sent a servant to the bazaar to buy four big chests, and told her other servants to prepare four excellent dinners, each to be served in a different room: one at ten that night, one at eleven, one at twelve and one at two in the morning. The four chests arrived, and she had one placed in each of four rooms.

At ten o’clock the kotwal arrived. She welcomed him warmly, and they sat down to dinner. Afterwards she asked, “Do you play cards?” He did, so she fetched a pack, and they played until the clock struck eleven. Then the doorkeeper came in and said, “The wazir is here and wishes to see you.”

The kotwal was terrified. “Hide me somewhere, please!”

“There is nowhere to hide in this room,” she said, “but there is a big chest in the next room. I can shut you in it if you like, and let you out when the wazir has gone.” She led him next door, he climbed into the first chest, and she closed the lid and locked it.

Then she had the wazir shown in, and they dined together. After dinner she asked whether he played cards, and he said yes, so they played until twelve, when the doorkeeper announced that the kazi had come.

“Oh, hide me, hide me!” cried the wazir in a panic.

“Come into the other room,” she said, “and I will hide you in a big chest. I can let you out when he has gone.” So she locked the wazir in the second chest.

Next she and the kazi dined, and then they played cards until two o’clock, when the doorkeeper said the king had come.

“What shall I do?” said the kazi, shaking with fear. “Hide me! Don’t let the king see me!”

“You can hide in a big chest in another room until he has gone, if you like,” she said, and she locked him in the third chest.

Now the king came in, and they dined. “Will you play a little game of cards?” she asked, and he agreed. They played until three o’clock. Then the doorkeeper came running in, exactly as she had told him to, and cried, “My master’s boat has come in, and he is on his way up to the house. He will be here any minute!”

“What shall I do?” said the king, as frightened as the others. “Your husband mustn’t see me. You must hide me somewhere.”

“I have nowhere to hide you except a big chest,” she said. “Get into it if you like, and I will let you out tomorrow morning.” She shut the lid of the fourth chest on the king and locked it. Then she went to bed and slept soundly until morning.

The next day, when she had bathed and dressed, eaten her breakfast and finished her housework, she told her servants to fetch four porters. When they came she showed them the chests and said, “Each of you carry one of these on your head and follow me.”

Meanwhile the sons of the kotwal, the wazir, the kazi and the king had been searching everywhere for their fathers and asking everyone they met, but nobody knew where they were.

The merchant’s wife went first to the kotwal’s house, where she found his son. She had the kotwal’s chest set down at his door. “Will you buy this chest?”

“What is in it?”

“Something very precious.”

“How much do you want for it?”

“A thousand rupees. When you open it you will find the contents are worth two thousand. But you mustn’t open it until you are inside your father’s house.”

“Here are a thousand rupees,” said the kotwal’s son. She went on her way with the other three chests, and he carried his indoors. “How heavy it is!” he said. “Whatever can be inside?” He lifted the lid. “Why, it’s my father! Father, how did you get into this chest?” The kotwal was thoroughly ashamed. “I never thought she was the sort of woman to play such a trick on me,” he said, and he had to tell his son the whole story.

Next she stopped at the wazir’s house and had his chest put down in front of his son. “Will you buy this chest?”

“What is inside?”

“Something very precious. Will you buy it?”

“How much?”

“Only two thousand rupees, and it is worth three thousand. But don’t open it until you are indoors.” So the wazir’s son bought his own father for two thousand rupees without knowing it. He opened the chest the moment he was inside, curious to see what was in it, with his mother standing beside him. They were amazed to find the wazir himself, looking very sheepish. “How did you get in there?” they cried. “Where have you been?” asked his wife. “I never thought she would treat me like this,” said the wazir, and he too had to tell the whole story.

Then she stopped at the kazi’s door, where his son was standing, and had the kazi’s chest put on the ground. “Will you buy this chest?”

“What is in it?”

“Silver and gold. You may have it for three thousand rupees, and what is inside is worth four.”

“I will take it.”

“Don’t open it until you are in the house,” she said, and took her three thousand rupees and left. There was great commotion when the kazi climbed out of the chest. “Oh,” he groaned, “I never thought she could do this to me.”

Last of all she went to the palace and set the king’s chest down at the gates, where she found the king’s son. “Will you buy this chest?”

“What is in it?”

“Diamonds, pearls and every kind of precious stone. You may have it for five thousand rupees, but what is inside is worth far more.”

“Here are your five thousand rupees. Give me the chest.”

“Don’t open it out here,” she said. “Take it into the palace and open it there.” And she went home.

The prince opened the chest, and there was his father. “What is all this?” he cried. “How did you come to be in a chest?” The king was deeply embarrassed and said very little about his adventure. But later, sitting in his court, he had the merchant’s wife brought before him and gave her a great heap of rupees, saying, “You are a wise and clever woman.”

The kotwal knew that the wazir had visited the merchant’s wife, the wazir knew about the kazi, and the kazi knew about the king, but that was all any of them knew.

Now that she had plenty of money, the merchant’s wife had a beautiful well built, with a roof over it. She locked its door and told the servants that nobody was to drink from it or bathe in it until her husband came home, because he must be the first to drink its water and bathe there.

Next she sent her ayah to the bazaar to buy the kind of clothes and ornaments worn by cowherds’ wives and daughters, and packed them in a box. Then she dressed in men’s clothes, so that nobody could tell she was a woman, and ordered a horse. “I am going to take the air of another country for a while,” she said. “Look after the house carefully while I am away.”

The servants did not like it at all. They were afraid her husband might come home while she was gone and be angry with them for letting her go. “Don’t worry,” she said. “There is nothing to fear. I will come home safe and sound.” She set off with the key of the well, the box of clothes, plenty of rupees and two of her servants.

She travelled a long, long way, asking everywhere for her husband’s boat, and after a month she found it. There she rented a small house and dressed as a cowherd’s daughter. She bought some very good milk and went down to the riverbank to sell it. “Look what a beautiful girl is selling milk!” everyone said. Her milk was so good that it sold quickly, and she did the same for several days, until her husband the merchant noticed her. He thought her so lovely that he asked her to bring milk to his boat, and for a while she sold him milk every day.

One day he said, “Will you marry me?”

“How can I?” she said. “You are a merchant and I am a cowherd’s daughter. Soon you will sail away to another country and want me to come with you. Then I would have to leave my father and mother, and who would look after them?”

“Let us marry,” said the merchant. “I am staying here for three months. When I leave, you can go home to your parents, and later I will come back for you.” She agreed. They were married, and she went to live on the boat.

At the end of three months the merchant said, “My business here is finished, and I must go to another country. Would you like to go home to your parents while I am gone?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Here is some money to live on while I am away.”

“I don’t want money,” said his wife. “I only want two things from you: your old cap and your portrait.” He gave them to her and went back to his boat, and she went home.

Some time later she had a baby son. The servants were very frightened, sure that their master would be displeased when he came home. And he was displeased when he arrived two months later. He was so angry that he would not look at the baby and hardly glanced at his beautiful well. One night he lay awake brooding, and dark thoughts of harming his wife and her little son went through his mind.

But the next day she came to him. “Tell me honestly,” she said, “are you angry with me? Don’t be. I want to show you a picture I love dearly, the picture of my son’s father.” She showed him his own portrait and the old cap he gave her on the boat. She explained that she was the cowherd’s daughter he married by the river, and how she earned the money for his well. “You see,” she said, “I have done everything you asked. Here is your well, and here is your son.”

Then the merchant was overjoyed. He kissed and hugged his little son, found his well beautiful, and said to his wife, “What a clever woman you are!”

Where this story comes from

“The Clever Wife” appears in Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales, with notes by her mother, Mary Stokes, and an introduction by W. R. S. Ralston. Stokes records that Múniyá told it in Calcutta on 3 March 1879. Múniyá was an ayah, a children’s nurse, and she told the last five stories in the book to Maive’s mother. The preface describes her as a very old woman, born at Patna and raised in Calcutta, and says all the tales were told in Hindustani.

Mary Stokes’s notes compare the trick with the four suitors to the Sanskrit story of Upakosá, who sets up the same kind of appointments, and call “Adi’s Wife,” a Bengali legend from Dinagepore, a close parallel. In the original the husband briefly plans to kill his wife and child; this page puts it more gently. Its adult relationships, deception and threat against a mother and child require a critical reading rather than an uncomplicated celebration of cleverness.

Read the original: Maive Stokes, Indian Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg #31209)

For older readers: includes concealed identities in marriage, officials seeking private visits, confinement in chests and a husband contemplating harm to his wife and child.

The powerful men fear being seen

Each visitor has enough status to buy costly thread, yet each hides when someone with greater power is announced. The king, who has no higher official to fear, hides from the supposedly returning husband. The sequence turns public authority into private embarrassment.

The cap and portrait serve a different purpose: they connect the husband to an encounter he remembers while exposing how little he recognised his own wife. His willingness to marry the apparent milk seller sits beside his rage at the child at home. Her ingenuity resolves the plot, but his thoughts of harming her and the baby remain wrong; proving innocence should not be a condition of safety.

Compare two kinds of proof

Make a ladder of the four visitors and the person each fears. Then compare the unopened chests with the final cap and portrait: which objects hide information, and which reveal it? Explain why admiration for a trick does not make deception or threats acceptable conduct.

Think about it

• Why did the merchant’s wife ask such high prices for her thread?
• How did she use the four chests to shame the four officials?
• Why did she ask the merchant for his old cap and his portrait?

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• The Bald Wife — a Bengali tale of a wife who wins her husband’s love
• The Ghost-Brahman — a puzzle tale where cleverness wins