The Nick Klaus's Fables (6 page)

“The one you’re missing,” she said, pointing
at the missing leg. The horse’s head followed her finger pointing
at the missing leg. Confused, he raised his head again, grinning
his big white teeth.

“There’s nothing there, how can a leg be
missing?”

Far from feeling intimidated, the little
girl clenched her fists. “You must have lost it somewhere
then?”

“There’s no leg there, how can I possibly
have lost it? How do you know it’s missing in the first place,
anyway?”

“All horses have four legs!”

“Not true,” answered the horse huffing and
digging his hooves in the mud. “How can you claim that when you’ve
got only two legs?! What happened to your other twos?”

The little girl pinched her lips and thought
the horse was being rather difficult. “I only have two legs,
because I’m meant to be this way. I would find it hard to run on
four legs. But you, you’d run much faster with four legs.”

“I need what I need, and three legs are
plenty for me.”

At that moment, the little girl spotted the
sun going down behind the forest. She remembered she had to go
home.

“Please give me a ride back home.”

The horse shook his head vigorously.

“I was going to give you a ride. But it’s
late now, and horses with three legs don’t run in the dark.”

The Lost Little Girl
(#21)

Once upon a time a horse with legs,
galloping up and down a hill, spotted a little girl, crossing a
field back and forth. “This little girl seems lost. I better give
her a ride home,” he told himself. And so he approached her.

“Are you looking for your way back home?” he
asked her. She stared at the horse surprised when she realized that
he only had three legs. How strange, it did not seem to prevent him
from jumping, reeling, frolicking, trotting, and of course
galloping up and down the hill. The little girl crossed her arms
and said bluntly: “What have you done with your fourth leg?”

The horse put on an air of surprise on his
face: “What fourth leg?”

The little girl frowned. She was not ready
to let this horse have the last word, especially not a horse with
three legs.

“The one you’re missing,” she said, pointing
at the missing leg. The horse’s head followed her finger pointing
at the missing leg. Confused, he raised his head again, grinning
his big white teeth.

“There’s nothing there, how can a leg be
missing?”

Far from feeling intimidated, the little
girl clenched her fists. “You must have lost it somewhere
then?”

“There’s no leg there, how can I possibly
have lost it? How do you know it’s missing in the first place,
anyway?”

“All horses have four legs!”

“Not true,” answered the horse huffing and
digging his hooves in the mud. “How can you claim that when you’ve
got only two legs?! What happened to your other twos?”

The little girl pinched her lips and thought
the horse was being rather difficult. “I only have two legs,
because I’m meant to be this way. I would find it hard to run on
four legs. But you, you’d run much faster with four legs.”

“I just need what I need, and three legs are
plenty for me.”

“I would never ride a horse with three legs.
You look ridiculous.”

At that moment, they spotted the sun going
down behind the forest. She remembered she had to go home. The
horse drew his big wide head near hers.

“It’s getting late. Do you really want to
sleep in the woods, alone?”

She little girl shook her head no
vigorously.

“Well, whether I have three or four legs
should not matter if it gets you home.”

While the little girl pondered, he lowered
his front legs so that the little girl could climb on back his
easily.

Doorman Bear
(#22)

“I am so sick and tired of this life,”
complained an enormous grizzly bear. He stood in a river, his feet
soaking in the freezing water waiting for a fish to appear and
catch it. He turned to his wife, sitting on a blanket behind and
setting the covers.

“I’m sick and tired of spending my days
hunting for fish in this river, never knowing when the next catch
will come.”

“Would changing river make our life easier?”
she asks, fanning the flies off her face. He shrugged his shoulders
at her. Seeing his sad expression, she said: “What else could you
do, dear? We are bears. We must live in the forests and eat berries
and honey, and fish in rivers.”

“I dream of becoming a doorman. With a nice
uniform and a cap to protect me from the sun. Life would be so much
better.”

He told her about his plan, to exchange
their part of the river and buy a nice dry and warm apartment in
the town across the river. Mrs. Bear was not convinced. She likes
the smell of fresh bushes and flowers, and the taste of raw salmon.
He promised to buy her large pot of honey and gigantic slice of
salmon with all the money he was going to make.

“Why would we buy fish when we can get it
for free?” she asks perplexed. Nonetheless, the bear sold his river
rights to another bear clan and took his wife to town and soon
found a job as a doorman.

The first day, he was ecstatic. He rushed
back home to parade his uniform. He showed her how he tipped his
hat to people in the streets. He bragged about the thickness of his
coat, how alive it made him feel.

After several weeks, his prospect got
somber. His wife noticed that the coat looked too big on him.

“Are you losing weight?” asked his wife
preoccupied. He was cheerful. He worked so hard that he had no time
to go shopping, and sometimes had to skip lunch. She started to
prepare him lunch every day. But to no avail, the coat grew bigger
and bigger. The sleeves covered his hands. His hat fell into his
nose.

“You don’t look good for a working bear,”
she pointed out. “You looked as if you just spent two years in
hibernation.”

He lost more weight and grew weak. He would
fall asleep on the sofa as soon as he would walk home. His wife sat
at the dinner table alone staring at her honey and salmon. But she
was worried about her husband and she lost her appetite too.

One day, she decided to stalk him to work.
She sat in the lobby of his building, hiding behind a newspaper so
that he could not recognize her.

And she saw how exhausting he was of
carrying suitcases, up and down the stairs, answering telephones,
handing out dry cleaning, running around to find missing keys, and
handing out mails and parcels, and sending food delivery men to the
apartment, and worse of all being forced to lower his eyes in front
of rude owners, visitors, and children. A big bear like him who no
longer looked so big.

He jumped off when he saw her waiting for
him outside the building. She stared at him and said:

“Why would we buy fish when we can get it
for free?”

He looked at his coat, which now looked
ridiculous on him, dropped it on the street, took her hand, and off
they went back to the river.

Three Elephants on
Tricycles
(#23)

Three tired circus elephants were riding
their tricycles around a ring. One of the tricycles squeaked
loudly, so loudly that the first elephant in line finally turned
round and let out in exasperation: “I’m not sure whose tricycle is
making so much squeaky noise, but this has to stop!”

“What do you suggest we do?” said the second
elephant following behind.

“Find a way to stop it! This squeaking is
getting on my nerves.”

“I agree, we should do something about it,”
said the second one.

The third one who was the shyest of the
three, whispers under his trunk: “It’s obvious one of us has lost
too much weight. Otherwise the bike will not squeak.”

His remark threw his two colleagues off.
They thought deeply at the puzzle. After a couple of laps, the
second one, who was the most disturbed by the remark added: “But
how are we going to find out, which of us has been losing the most
weight and is making all this annoying squeaking?”

“It’s easy. It will be the lightest one,”
replied the first elephant, shaking his head in irritation. He
threw an accomplice glance to second elephant. The third noticed it
and got offended: “Being the lightest one does not mean losing the
most weight.”

The elephants looked really pained at the
response. To avoid the heavy silence, punctuated by the irritating
squeaking noise, the first elephant stated:

“We should all stop riding.”

They debated for a while to decide who
should stop pedaling first, because the circus owner forbade them
from stopping pedaling. But the noise was too loud and grinding
their patience. Seeing no one around, they agreed in defiance to
stop riding at the same time.

The squeaking noise vanished. They looked at
each other relieved with an expression saying: “You see, it wasn’t
me and my tricycle.” And to better convince each other, they rushed
to the water trough and vacuumed dozens gallons of water and then
ate pounds and pounds of hay. In fact they drunk and ate so much
that they felt heavy and way too lazy to ride again.

“I’m too tired,” said the first elephant.
“Me too!” echoed the second and the third elephants. “Let’s wait a
couple of hours before riding again. Maybe by then the squeaking
would have gone.”

“What do you mean by then? Has it not
already gone now?”

The second elephant conceded that indeed the
squeaking was now gone.

“He meant to make sure it does not return,”
added the third elephant.

“But what are we going to do during two
hours?” protested the first elephant.

“We have to take a nap,” said the third
elephant yawning. The second elephant gave a grave look at the
first elephant, waiting for his reaction. When he tensed and peered
at the other two in distrust, they straightened up, opening wide
their sleepy eyes.

“That’s not possible because one of us
snores in his sleep,” stated the first elephant.

They all agreed that taking a nap was not
for the best solution and half-asleep started to ride their
tricycle again. The grating squeaky noise returned straight away
and kept them awake.

The Prophet and the
Snails
(#24)

Not long ago a village of snails gathered in
the central square. They were humble hard-working snails, who
worried about the future, and for a good reason. They looked at the
sky and then at each other with grave expressions. The old snails
were ponderous, whereas the young ones appeared restless.

“We need rain!” they shouted. “No leaves or
grass will ever grow without rain.”

The old snails try to pacify the restless
young ones, having lived through similar situations a few times in
the past. The young ones listened and calmed down, but when no
cloud showed up in the sky the following days, and the following
weeks, and even the old snails started to show signs of impatience,
they call for another meeting. All the snails gathered once again
in the main square to vent their concerns. Everyone had something
to say but no one had a solution.

A prophet who had spent many years in the
cave of a mountain happened to be sitting on a bench nearby. Upon
seeing how dry and crackling the ground was, and how unhappy and
worried the snails were, he said:

“Come with me. I will take you up to a
mountain and show you a place where water abound and the grass
grows taller than your shell.”

The young ones opened their eyes wide and
voiced their enthusiasm. The old ones exchanged suspicious,
sometimes even, mocking glances. They tried to pacify the young
snails but failed. The young were just too many. Soon the village
was abandoned, the old snails put in carts along with the children.
The young snails led the way, and off they followed the
prophet.

They crawled and lugged up the hills for a
long time. The snails being snails walked slowly, and even though
the prophet was old and limping, they were unable to keep up with
him. They lagged way behind and soon lost sight of the prophet. To
make the matter worse, they got lost, and there was nothing to eat
or drink in sight. The mountainside was even worse than their
valley. The old snails grew nervous and protested, but the
confidence and drive of the young ones won over the rest of the
villagers. Ahead, they went with resilience.

Eventually their path split in two. The
young snails could not agree. Some preached to take the left path,
others the right one. The children were hungry and thirsty, and
cried. Unable to silence the, the parents decided together to howl
for the missing prophet, who was the only one who knew the location
of the bountiful place. Hopefully he will hear them.

In the meantime, the old snails from the top
of their carts noticed that miles away it rained down the valley
once again. The young snails looked at each other with anger. The
old snails bragged with delight. At this point, the very old and
lame prophet who had noticed their absence and heard their screams
appeared in front of them. The young snails accused him of having
lied to them. There was no water and grass growing taller than
their shell on this mountain. This dream place probably did not
even exist.

The prophet raised his hand to silence
them.

“This is exactly what I promise you,” he
said. “Now let me show you a place where water abound and the grass
grows taller than your shell.”

He then pointed his long hooked and wise
finger with great authority towards the valley where all the snails
came from.

The Wolf Must Run to the
Market
(#25)