Translator: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
I'm going to make your eyes work a little harder than they're used to,
used as they are to little more light than that of a torch,
but the story that I bring to you today is from ancient times:
from times when storytellers still existed
and they were honored with many roses;
times when scientists, such as yourself, were still considered magicians.
They were honored with even more roses
if they were lucky.
For you as well as I may very well know that these times, these ancient times,
knew only two types of scientists:
beloved ones and dead ones.
And storytellers weren't better off.
Their stories were boring, then their heads were off.
So, please, bear with me
because the story I bring to you today
from these ancient times
will require your attention.
So, please, make your ears work as hard as your eyes have to
in the light of this torch.
Let's begin.
Once upon a time,
a lady told a great story to a king.
Of course, this was after giving him the services she was obliged to give him.
One referred to this as renewing the conjunction of Venus and the Moon.
We can all imagine what that was, hmm?
And this is the story that the lady told to the king.
This story, my king, is about a king fit for kingship
and his three kingly sons, equal in quality.
And the king ruled a great empire in which the sun never set.
And the seat of the king's throne was in Serendip,
a place we now call Sri Lanka.
And he was of a rare breed, this king of ours, my king,
for when he wanted to gladden his heart,
he did not call for more women or wine.
Instead, he amassed wisdom from all of his land.
He plucked
all in whose heart he perceived more than the usual share of knowledge
and chose them as a companion.
And he was a very lucky king, this king of ours,
as three of the brightest men in his vast empire
happened to be his sons.
They were bright in every field that we can imagine
and also in every field that we cannot imagine,
as their imagination was not limited to ours.
And one day, the king sent for his sons to test their kingly abilities.
And his first, and oldest, son kneeled in front of him,
and the king told him that he was becoming old,
that his mighty cypress was turning into a violet,
and time for change had come.
"Hail to the king, my father," said his oldest son.
"How could one speak of kingship with the king himself?
As long as the king lives, kingship does not suit anybody else.
And without you, I cannot imagine how to live.
A mere ant like me,
even if it ascends to the throne,
can never become a throne-conquering Solomon."
Now, the king, in his heart, was happy and glad,
yet outwardly he looked harsh and sent his child away.
And he also sent for the second and the third son
and gave them a similar exam.
The second replied,
"The burden of the head should be carried by the shoulders."
And the third simply said,
"It doesn't suit small children to keep watch."
The king buried his nose into the dust
out of gratefulness and servitude to his god.
Yet he knew that the test of his offspring was not yet completed.
In order to finish their journey to manhood,
they had to explore all the world's countries
and all of the world's knowledge.
He called for them and said,
"Go away.
Cross my borders before the sun sets,
or you will be dispatched from this terrestrial earth."
And in deep sorrow, the sons obeyed
and crossed the many countries of this earth.
Some were big, others quite small.
Some were wet and green and others arid and gray.
And due to the nature of our bright sons -
scientists they were, of course -
they never left anywhere without experimenting,
looking at everything with the sharp eye of the youngest one,
questioning it with the cunning of the middle one,
and comparing it to other knowledge with the wisdom of the oldest.
And so it happened that during their peregrinations,
a black, tar-faced negro came running towards our three bright brothers.
Now, in these times,
negroes did not yet consider themselves to be a minority,
and thus could be called by any name.
"Old travelers with a pleasant face,"
he said to them,
"has one of you seen a camel coming from this direction?"
Now, none of them had seen such an animal that day
as dawn had only just broken.
However, one of them opened his mouth and said,
"This lost animal that went astray,
was it loaded with oil on one side and honey on the other?"
"Does a woman ride on it?" said the second.
"And is she pregnant?" said the third. "Heavily pregnant?"
Stunned by the correctness and accurateness of these observations,
the camel driver opened his mouth to ask, "Which way?"
"That way," the three brothers answered in unison,
and without hesitation, the came driver vanished,
in quest for his lost animal.
And as the warmth of midday approached
and the youths sought refuge under a large tree
that cast its shadow over a small spring,
they splashed water over their tired faces
as the camel driver came running back
with a tongue like a dagger of steel.
"This way I ran, as far as two marathons,
and I did not stop running,
but I did not see a speck of dust of my animal."
His angry words and his high-pitched voice
rushed the village crowd towards the little oasis.
"These people are robbers and thieves with their fraud and cunning.
They laid their ambush to steal and thieve the golden donkey and camel
of sedentary people and travelers alike."
All the villagers had their separate opinions.
And because no consensus was reached about the matter,
it was decided to take the brothers to the ruling king.
As when knotty questions confused the crowd,
the ruler will give solution.
This was the ruling opinion.
And there were our three brothers,
rubbing their noses in the dust to pay their respect to the local despot.
"May you rule as long as black and white will be.
We travel this land on this terrestrial world,
and on all places we went, we took no profit but our observation.
We admit our crime because we are guilty.
We deceived our black camel driver.
We answered him with what was deducted out of our observations,
not knowing that these deductions concurred with the truth."
"Ha! Away with these!" the arbitrating king responded.
"How can you think your words can change the truth now?
An arrow that has left the thumb will not return."
And the tyrant had them thrown into chains
as if they were criminals,
in a cold cellar, tied to the wall,
sitting between ugly and smelling criminals.
They saw the sun set and rise again.
Their knowledge and their cunning,
their wisdom and sharp eye
had brought them nothing but a cold night in cuff links
due to the swiftness of their tongue.
But just as the crow cawed for the third time,
they heard the heavy locks of their cell creaking.
Released they were.
The big doors opened and let the light in
as trumpets marked the entrance of the ruling king.
Pale-faced and nervous, the ruling despot entered their cell,
his crown now looking too large for his head.
"Gentlemen," said the tyrant,
"I am most discomfited.
This night, a man came from the desert with a camel loaded with oil and honey,
a pregnant woman riding it.
He said he had found it, his noseband entangled in a tree.
So, here I stand before you,
three innocents that spent a night in jail.
You must tell me your story, complete and in detail.
I must know how it can be
that one can tell the essence of something that he did not see."
The three bowed in loyalty,
eager to share their knowledge in exchange for their freedom.
The youngest said, "It was very simple.
My eyes showed me the evidence.
My readiness of mind explained it to me.
On one side of the road an army of ants marched.
On the other side, flies were in turmoil.
When ants march, they march for oil,
as oil is what armies march for.
Flies do not turmoil unless there is honey for them to stick their tongues in.
So much became clear to me by my reasoning."
"I," the second said, "had studied the prints on the road.
They showed me the camel had kneeled and a person had stood next to it.
Between the footprints, the sand was moist,
so I touched the moist and sniffed,
and my soul was set aflame.
A wave of desire engulfed me:
these heavenly fluids are feminine.
A clear thought took shape:
the rider is a woman, not a man."
And the third youth said,
"After we agreed on the sex of the rider, I looked closely to the prints again.
In front of her footprints, I saw handprints.
This woman had trouble raising herself,
so she had to become four-footed to get on her two feet.
My sagacity whispered to my mind,
'This woman is pregnant and rather heavy.'"
The ruling king was convinced by these stories.
The sons of Serendip had showed him
how they could tell the essence of something that they did not see.
He offered them his friendship and companionship
and along with that, of course, the wine, the wheat and the women.
So it happened that on a certain night, our three brothers sat together,
eating, drinking and telling tales for their amusement.
"This wine," the oldest said, "is not pure wine.
It consists of human blood."
The second had tasted the roasted lamb
and deducted, "This lamb is even more impure.
It must have been fed with the blood of a dog."
Expectantly,
they looked upon the youngest,
hoping that his cunning eye had seen the most impure of impurities around them.
"The king that rules here is not the descendant of a king.
He is the offspring of the loins of a mere cook."
They all nodded, pleased with their knowledge.
Yet what they did not know
is that the ruling tyrant had been listening in a nook in the wall,
eager to learn more from our bright youngsters,
but now his curiosity had brought him knowledge
that he did not want to know.
Pale-faced and nervous,
he left the palace to find out if the brothers had, once again,
touched the truth without seeing it.
The wine merchant was the first one he found.
The ruling king put a dagger to the poor man's throat.
With a trembling voice, due to fear and the dagger,
the merchant explained:
"This field had been a graveyard since the beginning of history,
and your vizier only recently transformed it into a vineyard.
The grapes might have sucked the essence of the graveyard blood,
making the wine impure and of bad taste."
And the second to find a dagger to his throat was the shepherd.
"That lamb was like all other lambs."
"Nonsense!" the tyrant barked.
The shepherd mewed in fear:
"All right, all right, it's true: it's nonsense.
But you must understand, I was in despair.
I had a sheep with a beautiful lamb,
but a wolf killed the mother while the lamb was still a suckling.
So I thought all was lost.
Until I remembered that my dog had little cubs too.
And with tender words and calm attention,
I gained the dog's trust and could make her feed my lamb.
And it worked."
"Don't you think what a sin it is to suspect me in my old age,"
his mother said to him
after the tyrant had rushed to her with weak knees from fear of the truth.
"I will dispatch you from this world if you do not speak the truth,"
the tyrant told his mother,
putting his hand to the hilt of his sword.
And she too yielded in fear, confessing her sin,
that she had given herself to a cook as lust had taken control of her body.
The ruling tyrant -
or shall we say cook-in-chief? -
was so overwhelmed by the truth that his anger vanished.
Slow paced,
the wrinkles in his face as knotty as the questions in his head,
he went to the young bright ones,
and they gave him his explanation,
but not before the king had promised to leave them in peace -
and not in pieces.
And with their lives safe, the young ones traveled home,
their arrival bringing tears of happiness to the eyes of their old father.
And after joyous years, their father passed away,
the oldest son being given the throne.
A wise and consistent king he would be,
not afraid to tell the truth and act upon it.
His younger brothers sat left and right of the throne,
being his chief advisors,
and wisdom ruled the old country of Serendip.
Now, this story,
dear ladies, gentlemen,
is a fairy tale.
But why?
Well, usually when one would tell a truth
that was against the ruling opinion,
which is to say the opinion of the ruler that ruled the opinion,
it would turn one from a beloved scientist into a dead scientist.
He would be put from the light into the dark.
But he who stands today lit only by the light of a torch,
telling a truth against the ruling opinion,
might someday stand in the full light and rule the opinion.
Thank you.
(Applause)