Story: The Awful Wife

Story source: Russian Fairy Tales by W. R. S. Ralston (1887) The Bad Wife

Robber by Pixabay

There once lived a couple who were not in a very happy marriage. The wife would never listen to her husband, in fact, if he said to do (or not to do) something she would do the exact opposite. For example, if the husband cooked dinner and asked her to come eat, she would refuse to eat. If he asked her to come to bed, she would refuse sleep. Even if he told her not to do something dangerous, she would do it anyways. The husband lived a rough life, and would often have to leave the house in order to clear his mind.

One day, the husband went to the store in order to get some groceries. He went to the back of the store to get some ice cream, and saw that there was a man who was about to rob the store and take customers for ransom. So, the husband left the store and told his wife to stay away from the ice cream aisle, and even better to not go grocery shopping at all. Of course, he knew that his wife would do exactly this. So, like he thought, she left for the store and headed straight for the ice cream section. The robber was just starting to pull his gun out when she arrived.

The husband decided to drive back to the store a few hours later in order to see what had happened to the wife. As soon as he pulled up, the robber was running out of the store. He explained to the husband that an absolute crazy woman was in there and that he just couldn't stand her any longer. She wouldn't cooperate with police, doing exactly the opposite of what they told her to do, and she was actually the one take to jail.

So the robber and the husband made a deal. The robber would steal, and the man would get half of the money as long as he never told anyone who was doing the robbing. The two were able to get a lot of money, but the robber soon decided to rob a government building. The robber told the husband that if he turned him in, then he would kill him.. as this was going to be the greatest and final heist. The husband knew that what was happening was wrong, and that it had to end.

So the husband told the robber that the crazy woman worked in the government building, and the robber didn't know what to do. He was already in the building, so he could try to rob the bank and face the woman, or he could follow the husbands advice and get caught on purpose in order to avoid the woman. He decided jail was the better option.

The husband was smart, knowing that the robber would go to jail where he belonged, and that his former wife would still be in jail as well... thus tormenting the robber for many years to come. The mayor repaid the husband for tipping off the police and he lived happily as a single man.

Author's Note: I thought that the original story was fascinating because the husband used the wife's evilness to his advantage. In the original story, the robber is actually a demon who possesses people, and the final heist was the ultimate possession of a princess. The demon ended up back in hell with the wife, and the husband was repaid by the king with many riches.