Читать книгу Stories about elephant calf Lanchenkar - Ayusha Erdyneev - Страница 7

At their next meeting Lanchenkar asked Lanchenak: “Want another riddle?”

“Yes, I do,” answered Lanchenak. “But now the deal is this: one riddle, one bunch of bananas.”

“Good. Listen: ‘My eyes, my ears, my trunk, but it’s not me. When I extend my trunk to it, its trunk extends to me too.’”

“It’s your father! Your mother! An elephant-werewolf! A twin extraterrestrial!” tried his luck Lanchenak.

“You couldn’t find the correct answer. If you want to know it, give me bananas.”

“Take it and tell me what it is.”

“My reflection in the water,” answered Lanchenkar treating himself to bananas.

“I thought so but I was too shy to say it,” muttered Lanchenak and hurried home.

Lanchenak summoned all elephants of his herd and said: “I am going to offer you a riddle. If you don’t guess it, you give me a bunch of bananas each.”

The elephants loved riddles, so they gladly accepted the terms.

“These are my eyes, my ears, and my trunk. When I extend my trunk to him, he extends his trunk to me. But that’s not me. Who’s that?”

Lanchenak’s congeners offered one answer after another, but all of them were wrong. Finally they said, “All right, Lanchenak, we give up! You are a friend of the wise Lanchenkar; we are no match for you. So take the bananas and give us the answer!”

Lanchenak grabbed his trophies, looked at the crowd of elephants with an air of superiority and said, “Why, there’s nothing to it! Makes me think I live among such a stupid herd! The answer is that it is Lanchenkar’s reflection in the water!”