: A smart gudgeon decides that if you live in a dark hole and tremble quietly, then he will not be touched. Dying alone, he realizes that in his life there was neither love nor friendship, and everyone around him considered him a fool.
The original uses the spelling “clerk”, it is stored in the title and quotes as a tribute to tradition. However, the modern norm is “gudgeon”, this option is used in other places.
Once upon a time there was a gudgeon. His smart parents managed to live to a very old age. The old father told how one day he was caught in nets along with many other fish and wanted to be thrown into boiling water, but he was too small for the fish soup and he was released into the river. He suffered fear then.
“Look, son,” said the old clerk, dying, “if you want to chew with your life, so look at both!”
Pescara, the son, looked around and saw that he was the smallest in this river: any fish could swallow it, and cut the cancer with a claw. He will not even be able to repulse his gudgeon brothers - they will attack in a crowd and easily take away food.
Pescara was smart, enlightened, and “moderately liberal.” He well remembered the teachings of his father and decided "to live so that no one would notice."
The first thing he came up with was to make a hole where no one else could climb.For a whole year, he furtively hollowed out her nose, hiding in silt and grass. Peskar decided that he would come out of it either at night, when everyone was sleeping, or in the afternoon, when the rest of the fish was already full, and during the day he would sit and tremble. Until noon, the fish of all midges were eaten, the gudgeon had almost nothing left and he lived half-starving, but "it’s better not to eat, not to drink, than to lose your life with a full stomach."
Once he woke up and saw that he was being guarded by cancer. The gudgeon’s cancer was waiting for half a day, while the mink trembled. Another time, his pike guarded the hole all day, but he also escaped the pike. Toward the end of his life, pikes began to praise him that he was living so quietly, hoping that he would be proud and lean out of the hole, but the wise gudgeon would not give in to flattery and every time, trembling, he won.
He lived like this for more than a hundred years.
Neither his friends nor relatives; neither to whom nor to whom. He doesn’t play cards, doesn’t drink wine, doesn’t smoke tobacco, doesn’t chase red girls - he just trembles and thinks one thought: “Thank God! seems alive! ”
Before his death, lying in his hole, he suddenly thought: if all the minnows lived like him, then "the whole piscari family would have been transferred long ago." Indeed, to continue the family, a family is needed, and the members of this family must be healthy, alert and well-fed, live in their own element, and not in a dark hole, be friends and adopt good qualities from each other. And minnows, trembling in holes, are useless for society: "they take a place for nothing and eat food."
Pescara clearly realized all this, he wanted to get out of the hole and proudly swim along the entire river, but, not having time to think about it, he was frightened and continued to die: "He lived - trembled, and died - trembled."
His whole life flashed before the gudgeon, and he realized that there were no joys in it, he did not help anyone, did not console, did not protect, did not give good advice, nobody knows about him and will not remember him after death. And now he is dying in a dark, cold hole, and fish are swimming by and no one will come to ask how this wise gudgeon managed to live so much. Yes, and they call him not wise, but a mutt and a fool.
Then he began to forget himself a little, and dreamed that he won the lottery, grew significantly and “swallows the pike himself”. In a dream, his nose popped out of his hole, and the gudgeon disappeared. What happened to him is not known, maybe the pike gobbled up, or maybe he dragged the cancer away, but most likely he just died and surfaced. What pike wants to eat an old and sick gudgeon, "and also a wise one"?
