Just So Stories for Little Children / Просто сказки. Книга для чтения на английском языке

This is Wise Baviaan, the dog-headed Baboon, who is Quite the Wisest Animal in All South Africa.

I have drawn him from statue that I made up out of my own head, and I have written his name on his belt and on his shoulder and on the thing he is sitting on. I have written it in what is not called Coptic and Hieroglyphic and Cuneiformic and Bengalic and Burmic and Herbraic[73], all because he is so wise. He is not beautiful, but he is very wise, and I should like[74] to paint him with paint-box colours, but I am not allowed. The umbrella-ish thing about his head is his Conventional Mane.

‘Wait a bit’, said the Ethiopian. ‘It’s a long time since we’ve hunted[76] ’em[77]. Perhaps we’ve forgotten what they were like.’

‘Fiddle![78]’ said the Leopard. “I remember them perfectly on the High Veldt, especially their marrow-bones[79]. Giraffe is about seventeen feet high, of ’sclusively fulvous golden-yellow from head to heel; and Zebra is about four and a half feet high, of a ’sclusively grey-fawn colour from head to heel.

‘Umm,’ said the Ethiopian, looking into the speckly-spickly shadows of the aboriginal Flora-forest. ‘Then they ought to show up in this dark place like ripe bananas in a smoke-house.’

But they didn’t. The Leopard and the Ethiopian hunted all day; and though they could smell them and hear them, they never saw one of them[80].

‘For goodness sake[81],’ said the Leopard at teatime, ‘let us wait till it gets dark[82]. This daylight hunting is a perfect scandal.’

So they waited till dark, and then the Leopard heard something breathing sniffily in the starlight that fell all stripy through the branches, and he jumped at the noise, and it smelt like Zebra, and it felt like Zebra, and when he knocked it down it kicked like Zebra, but he couldn’t see it. So he said, ‘Be quite, O you person without any form. I am going to sit on your head till morning, because there is something about you that I don’t understand.’

Presently he heard a grunt and a crash and a scramble, and the Ethiopian called out, ‘I’ve caught a thing that I can’t see. It smells like Giraffe, and it kicks like Giraffe, but it hasn’t any form.’

‘Don’t you trust it,’ said the Leopard. ‘Sit on its head till the morning – same as me. They haven’t any form – any of ’em.’

So they sat down on them hard till bright morning-time, and then Leopard said, ‘What have you at your end of the table, Brother?’

The Ethiopian scratched his head[83] and said, ‘It ought to be ’sclusively a rich fulvous orange-tawny from head to heel[84], and it ought to be Giraffe; but it is covered all over with chestnut blotches. What have you at your end of the table, Brother?’

And the Leopard scratched his head and said, ‘It ought to be ’sclusively a delicate grayish-fawn, and it ought to be Zebra; but it is covered all over with black and purple stripes. What in the world have you been doing to yourself, Zebra? Don’t you know that if you were on the High Veldt I could see you ten miles off? You haven’t any form.’

‘Yes,’ said the Zebra, ‘but this isn’t the High Veldt. Can’t you see?’

‘I can now,’ said the Leopard. ‘But I couldn’t all yesterday. How is it done?’

‘Let us up,’ said the Zebra, ‘and we will show you.’

They let the Zebra and the Giraffe get up; and Zebra moved away to some little thorn-bushes where the sunlight fell all stripy, and Giraffe moved off to some tallish trees where the shadows fell all blotchy.

‘Now watch,’ said the Zebra and the Giraffe. ‘This is the way it’s done. One – two – three! And where’s your breakfast?’

Leopard stared, and Ethiopian stared, but all they could see were stripy shadows and blotched shadows in the forest, but never a sign of Zebra and Giraffe. They had just walked off and hidden themselves in the shadowy forest.

‘Hi! Hi!’ said the Ethiopian. ‘That’s a trick worth learning[85]. Take a lesson by it, Leopard. You show up in this dark place like a bar of soap in a coal scuttle.’

‘Ho! Ho!’ said the Leopard. ‘Would it surprise you very much to know that you show up in this dark place like a mustard-plaster on a sack of coals?

‘Well, calling names won’t catch dinner,’ said the Ethiopian. ‘The long and the little of it is that we don’t match our backgrounds. I’m going to take Baviaan’s advice. He told me I ought to change; and as I’ve nothing to change except my skin I’m going to change that.’

‘What to?’ said the Leopard, tremendously excited.