Читать книгу The Girl Who Married A Lion - Alexander McCall Smith - Страница 10

clever hare realized that the lion was always welcomed by the other animals. This was not because the other animals liked the lion; it was because they were all afraid of him. If the lion came to another animal’s house then it was wisest to give him a lot of food. If the hare ever went to another animal’s house, then he was more likely to be told to go away.

“This is unfair,” the hare said to himself. “I could do with the food that everybody gives the lion.”

Calling on the lion one day, the hare told him that he was very skilled at getting lice out of lion tails.

“I can tell that you have lice in your tail,” the hare said. “Can you not feel them itching?”

The lion thought for a moment. Now that the hare had mentioned it, he was sure that he could feel an itching in his tail.

“Remove the lice from my tail,” he roared at the hare. “Do it right now!”

The hare smiled and said that he would set to work straight away. Quickly he went to the back of the lion and laid out his great tail on the floor. Then, taking a handful of long nails from a bag that he had with him, he hammered a nail through the lion’s tail and into the floor.

The lion called out in pain and told the hare to be more careful.

“I’m sorry,” said the hare. “These are very large lice. They are angry that I am catching them and that is why they are biting you so hard. You’ll just have to put up with it until I’m finished.”

The lion grunted and lay still while the hare pretended to search for another louse. When he was ready, he took out another long nail and quickly hammered it through the lion’s tail. This time the lion roared even louder.

“That was a very large louse,” the hare said. “But don’t worry, I have taken him off.”

“How many more are there?” asked the lion, his eyes watering with pain.

“Three,” replied the hare. “And all of them seem to be very large.”

Each of the last three lice seemed more and more painful to the lion, and he howled more loudly each time the hare drove another nail into the floor. Finally the hare was finished and he came round to face the lion. Looking him directly in the eye – in a way in which no other animal would dare – the hare calmly walked over to the place where the lion kept his food and began to help himself.

The lion was so astonished at the hare’s cheek that at first he did nothing. Then, roaring with rage, he tried to leap to his feet, only to be wrenched back painfully by his nailed tail.

“Release me at once!” he roared at the hare. But the other just laughed, and ate more of the lion’s food. Then, when he had eaten enough, he sauntered over to another part of the lion’s house and found a large knife. The lion watched him suspiciously, and tried to swipe at him with his claws, but he could barely move now and it was easy for hare to get round him. Deftly waving his knife, Hare split the lion’s skin from one end to the other and pushed him out of it. Once he was out of his skin, Lion was just a weak jelly, with no claws and no teeth. Hare pushed him aside and straight away began to free the tail of the now empty lion skin. Once he had finished this task, he slipped into the skin and bounded out of the house.

The baboons were frightened when they saw what they thought was the lion. Carefully they laid out a great deal of food so that the lion would eat it and not bother them. Inside the lion skin, the hare smiled to himself and cheerfully began to eat the food. When he had finished, he lay out on the ground and relaxed his lion claws. It would be pleasant to sleep in comfort in that place and wait for the baboons to bring him more food in the evening.

The next day, since the hare was eating so much food, the baboons had to travel far afield to find food for their store caves. The hare stayed put, and when his hosts had gone he slipped out of the lion skin to play with the baboon children. They enjoyed their games, with the hare chasing them in circles and the baboon children trying to catch him by his ears. Just before the baboon parents came back, however, hare got into the lion skin and was a lion again. The baboons had found a great deal of food but he managed to eat up most of it and told them that they would have to go out again the next day to find more.

That night, the baboon children told their parents that the lion was not really a lion but a hare dressed up as one. The parents did not believe them, and warned them not to say such things. One baboon, though, was suspicious, and he decided to hide the next day and see what really happened when the adult baboons had gone in search of food.

Of course the hare slipped out of his skin again and enjoyed more games with the baboon children. This was watched from a bush by the hidden baboon, whose eyes glowed with anger as he saw the deception which he and his friends had suffered at the hands of the wily hare.

“That lion is not a lion,” the baboon whispered to the others when they returned. “The children were telling the truth – he is really a hare.”

“I see,” said the leader of the baboons. “We shall have to drive him away.”

“Taking a large stick, the head baboon went up to the sleeping lion and hit him firmly on the nose. This woke up the hare, who felt the sharp blow to his nose and howled with pain.

“That is not the sort of noise that a lion makes,” said the baboon. And with that he beat the hare again, putting all his strength into the strokes. Had the lion been a real lion, of course, that would have been the end of that baboon, but it was really only a hare and a frightened hare at that. Leaping out of the skin, he ran off into the bush, to be pursued by the angry shouts of the baboons.

The baboons took the empty lion skin back to the real lion, who was still just a weak pink thing without his claws and mane. He was grateful to be able to get into his skin, and promised that he would not trouble those baboons again. This made the baboons happy, and they decided that although they still felt angry at the way the hare had tricked them out of food, some good had come of it and they would forgive him after all.