She had one son and her daughter-in-law.
The son's wife -- the daughter-in-law -- [starting over] There was a mother, they say.
[audience:] He just grins, silently. ...
[audience2:] He'll speak tomorrow!
The mother in law -- her son plowed, and her daughter broke clods, big like this.
The mother cooked food at home.
She killed a chicken.
She killed a chicken for her son, and she cooked rice, with grains long like this, and meat, too, meat for her son, but only bits of broken rice for her daughter-in-law -- broken grain.
Or sometimes the husk that is left over after pressing oil.
One must say husk [(?) to avoid saying the Nepali word "oilcake"].
The mother-in-law cooked up a husk-sauce for her daughter-in-law.
"Now don't you open it and peek along the way! Take it down to his work-party!
If you open it and look along the way ... -- just don't look!
Don't open it and look!
Take it directly and set it down.
Then go break clods this big!" said the mother-in-law.
Then, in truth, she didn't look.
She ate the broken grain.
She ate the oilcake sauce.
The pure, long white grains and the meat sauce were sent down for the son -- she gave them directly to her husband.
She gave them directly to him and started breaking up big clods, taking up her hoe -- she was carrying a basket, too.
Then she went and, wide-eyed, she watched her husband eat.
White rice this long, and chicken meat -- if her husband had eaten and left only this much for his wife, left it for her, how happy she would have been in her heart!
But he just ate -- he was a dog, it turns out.
He ate it all.
He finished it.
She sat watching, with big eyes.
He swallowed it all down.
When he finished it, how did his wife's feel in her heart --
she was extremely unhappy.
His wife was very unhappy, and he, thinking she had been fed by his mother, ate up all the food.
He gobbled up the meat, he gobbled up the rice.
He thought she had eaten and come down, but she had eaten that husk sauce and that broken grain.
"If he just put a little aside, I'd eat it" -- that was what was in her heart.
It was in her heart, but he didn't leave any.
Her husband didn't leave any.
When he didn't leave any, she was very unhappy, and because she was not happy --
He finished eating and stood up and went plowing, her husband. She was not happy.
She was breaking clods this big.
Then her heart broke.
[aside:] I laughed -- now it is spoiled!
[audience discussion] ...
Her heart broke.
Her husband let loose the two unyoked ones [(?)circumlocution to avoid the Nepali word "oxen"] and went home.
She -- she was behind -- she broke up the big clods.
Her husband went home.
She -- she had taken her basket -- she had loaded firewood ["cooking-instrument"] into the basket to carry it up home -- she had chopped it.
She cut up that basket with her knife. "What shall I become? What shall I become?" she said in her heart.
She thought about it.
"I'll become a hoopoe.
I'll become a hoopoe now," she said, and she chopped up the basket and put it on, she thrust it into her arms [to make wings].
Crying "haku-paku" and going flap, flap she flew off, having become a hoopoe ["haku-paku"]
[audience:] What did she do?
She went "flap-flap" like this.
Going flap-flap she flew off.
She flew off into the forest, to the wild [?] forest.
She went into the forest.
They wondered when she would come back up, but she didn't come up. Why should she? Finally she arrived back home, as far as that goes.
She perched on the drying racks, crying "haku paku! haku paku!" -- on the horizontal poles, on the rack.
She perched on the rack crying, "haku-paku".
Then her husband had a doubt in his heart.
It's like my wife," he said. "Is it my wife?"
"Hey, mother, didn't you give her food?" he said.
"She was fed," the mother said. "She was fed."
"Hey, mother, didn't you feed her, or what?" he said, and then he knew -- the son realized that she hadn't fed her.
When he knew, his mother called "Come down, come down here!" and she spread out mats and blankets, saying, "Come down quickly, come down my dear!"
The hoopoe went even further up.
Come down here, child. I'll feed you."
She went away, higher and higher, higher and higher, she wandered all through the trees.
They went to get her among the trees, saying, "Come down, dear, come down!"
She never came down.
She flew off, "haku-paku".
That's all for my story, sir. That's it.