Читать книгу The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-exupéry, Экзюпери Антуан - Страница 2

I was rather lonely. I had nobody to talk to honestly until I had an accident while flying my plane. It happened in the Sahara Desert. Something went wrong with the engine. As there were no passengers or a mechanic with me, I decided to fix it myself. It was a matter of life or death for me: I hardly had enough water to survive for a week.

During the first night, I had to sleep on the sand thousands of miles from any civilisation. I was more isolated than a sailor in a lifeboat after a shipwreck in the middle of the ocean. So you can imagine how amazed I was when a miraculous childish voice woke me up at dawn.

“Could you draw me a lamb?” it spoke.

”Excuse me?”

”Draw me a lamb!”

I jumped up wide awake. I blinked repeatedly. I looked around carefully. I saw the most astonishing creature that was looking at me with imperturbable seriousness. Here you can see the best picture of him I managed to draw. Without a doubt, my picture lacks the charm that the original character possessed.

However, this is not my fault. Because of the adults, I had lost my inspiration to become an artist when I was six, and never tried to draw anything else except the boa constrictor, inside and outside.

Now, when I was looking at this unexpected appearance, my eyes popped out of the head in amazement. May I remind you that I’d had an accident in the desert, thousands of miles from any settlement. And still, my little man wasn’t wandering in sands exhausted from hunger, thirst or fear. Nothing about him pointed out a child lost in the desert, thousands of miles from any civilisation.

“What are you doing here?” I said to him finally when I found my voice.

“Could you draw me a lamb…” he answered very slowly as if it was a matter of high importance.

When everything is impossibly mysterious we just can’t resist. No matter how ridiculous it looked, thousands of miles from human civilization, I took a piece of paper and a pen out of my pocket.

But then I remembered that my education was focused on Geography, History, Arithmetic and Grammar and I said to a little boy (though a bit sharply) that I couldn’t draw.

“It doesn’t matter. Draw me a lamb…” he replied.

But I have never drawn lambs. So I drew him on a paper one of the two pictures that I used to demonstrate so often. The Boa constrictor, inside. I was petrified when the little boy reacted with words.

“No, no, no! I don’t want an elephant inside a boa constrictor. Boa constrictors are very dangerous animals, and elephants are huge. Everything is very small where I live. I just need a lamb. Draw me the lamb.”

I drew another picture.

“No. This lamb looks very weak. Draw another one,” he looked carefully and said.

I made another picture.

My friend laughed gently.

“You can see yourself,” he said patiently. “This is not a lamb, this is a sheep. It has horns.”

Then I remade the picture again.

But it was rejected like the previous ones.

“This one is too old. I want the one that will live for a very long time.”

By this time I’d had just about enough because I was in a hurry to sort out the engine. So I drew this picture.

In addition, I explained.

“This is only a box. The lamb, you were asking for, is inside.”

I was surprised when I spotted the enlightenment in a young judge’s face.

“This is exactly what I wanted. How much grass do you think this lamb will need?”

“Why are you asking?”

“Because everything is very small where I live…”

“I am sure there will be enough grass for him,” I said. “I drew you a very small lamb.”

He bent over the picture.

“It is not so small. Look! It went to sleep…”

That’s how I met the Little Prince.