Nick Klaus's Fables, Page 3

The Fabulist’s Fable (#1)

  Once upon a time, a happy King, who lived safely in the tallest tower of his castle, woke up with a big happy yawn. The sun was bright, high in the sky. “What a beautiful day for a promenade,” (that’s the French word for a walk) the King said stretching his arms. Eager, he opened his window, only to turn pale. He held his breath for a long time, unable to utter a word. When he could breathe again, he summoned all his counselors at once. They came rushing down in a large cavernous hall, some still slipping their boots on, others buttoning up their shirts.

  “Something grave just happened. My royal life has been threatened,” he said with rage. Now all the counselors were holding their breath. “The wild animals from the zoo have escaped!” The King cupped his hands around his head. “They are running around town, roaming across the country.”

  The counselors scratched their foreheads in disbelief. “What must we do? What must we do?” they ask each other.

  “What good is a King who is not free to go on a promenade?” said the King.

  “This matter is truly serious, Your Majesty,” said one counselor. “These beasts could overthrow you and bite your head off,” said a bearded counselor.

  “They could tear you to pieces and then eat you alive,” added another, watching the King roll his head on the table.

  “I suggest we take pictures of those wild creatures, put them on posters, and shame them to death,” said with great authority the first counselor.

  “I suggest that we put them on skewers and roast them like marshmallows,” said the second counselor.

  “Whoever deprives me of my promenade will pay dearly,” added the King raising his fists at the ceiling.

  A little girl, who had been listening, and who happened to visit the castle because she thought it was a museum, tugged at the King’s regal gown.

  “Your Highness, all you need is a fabulist,” she said.

  “A fabulist?” repeated the first counselor. “What kind of weapon is that?”

  “Fabulists know how to talk to wild animals. It’s written in my nursery rhyme book,” she said with a preaching voice.

  The counselors groaned, grumbled and groused for a while. So the King lost patience and hammered the table with his fists. “Find me a fabulist now! My promenade is awaiting me!”

  The army searched the kingdom inside out, while the wild beasts slept. They searched every house and stable, galloped through every hill and waded across every valley. But no one knew of a fabulist. No one had even heard of one. Defeated, the army was bringing the king the bad news, when a general spotted a strange man under a bridge, whispering into a dog’s ear. At first the foot soldiers thought he was just a wild beast from another kingdom. His hair was long and matted, his beard dropping below his navel. He only wore rags for pants, and his body looked as bony as the starving dog he was talking to. The foot soldiers captured the man and, in a cage, brought him back to the King.

  The King looked pale and sleep deprived. “Can you help me with my promenade, all these wild beasts are ruining my health? I’ll give you your own castle and food for life.” The King opened the cage. The fabulist looked around lost and said slowly: “These beasts, you’re afraid of, are trying to tell you something. But since you live too high in your tower, you cannot heed their cry.”

  The King’s eyes brightened for the first time in months. “I have been ill-advised, asked to live in the clouds.” He sat next to the fabulist. “Tell me the truths you’ve learned in the wilderness.” The fabulist rose and opened the front door: “Why not just go for a walk?” he said. So the King rose and walked out.

  The Girl and the Tree (#2)

  In a land not so far away, a frail stalk was sprouting from the ground. It was hot, and the ground was dry, cracking in places.

  “Give me some water, I’m so thirsty,” the stalk said imploring a little girl skipping by.

  The little girl took a look at the drying stalk and ran away to the river to fetch water, and then with the water she watered the stalk.

  “Thank you and thank you,” said the stalk, relishing the moist soil. The little girl sat by the stalk and watched it grow. The stalk grew big and became a small tree. But the weather was cold and often cloudy, and the tree was unhappy.

  “Could you chase those clouds away for me, so that the sun can reach my branches and my leaves, and I can grow really tall and strong,” asked the tree.

  The little girl who had grown tall too built a giant fan, and with her fan, she whisked the clouds away. She then sat back down and watched with wide eyes the tree grow tall and strong, with branches lush with leaves.

  Years passed, and the little girl became an old woman, who could barely walk. The weather was windy and damp, tough on her bones, while the tree was tall and strong.

  “Can I take shelter under your branches, tree?” she asked. “I wish I was tall and strong like you, but the rain is too much for my old back.”

  “Of course you can,” answered the tree. “But I wish you hadn’t spent your life watching me grow and instead had become yourself a tree.”

  The old ailing woman nodded with a little girl’s smile for a minute, and then she poured a jug of water over herself.

  The Lion and The Monkey (#3)

  A starving monkey came across a well-dressed lion eating a sandwich on a street corner, near a train station.

  “Give me my sandwich,” shouted the monkey abruptly.

  “No way,” answered the lion. “It’s mine. Go and get your own.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” replied the monkey with rage. Surprised, the lion glanced around and seeing no one stared at his sandwich.

  “Good try, but my sandwich doesn’t have a sandwich,” said the lion.

  “Surrender now. I promise I’ll eat you without a fuss, with a fork and a knife.”

  The lion chuckled and took another bite.

  “Well it isn’t complaining at the moment that I’m chewing it,” said the lion with a mouth full.

  “How can it complain? You just bit its head off, and it can’t hear me,” said the monkey clasping his hat with both hands.

  “Excuse me but have we met before?” asked the lion perplexed.

  At that moment, the monkey burst into tears. Shocked by the monkey’s effusions, the lion took once more a grave look at the rest of his sandwich.

  “Forgive me,” said the monkey. My train’s leaving in ten minutes. I’m moving back to the jungle. I’m not sure how I’ll survive there.

  “Why not? You look strong and healthy.”

  “Maybe, maybe,” said the monkey, crouching on a doorstep. “I don’t know how to hunt anymore. I can’t even prey on a sandwich. And no one uses money in the jungle.”

  The lion sat next to the monkey, deeply troubled by what the monkey had said. Lost in reflection, he offered the monkey the rest of his sandwich.

  The Dog Too Close To The Ground (#4)

  A sniffing and panting dog approached a dozing cat in a back alley.

  “Help me please. I’ve lost my owners.”

  “Lost your owners,” said the cat yawning. “How is that possible?”

  “We were walking down the street. I turned round and . . . they were gone,” the dog said, howling in pain. The cat scratched its head, considering.

  “What did they look like?”

  “Two humans with hair, only on their heads. Two long legs, with shoes with mangled shoelaces. Gum too stuck below the soles.”

  “Did they belong to you, these humans?” said the cat.

  “No, I belonged to them!”

  “Just what I thought, you haven’t lost anything. So why are you so sad?” said the cat tucking its paws back below its head. The dog stopped sniffing and raised its head for the first time. He peered around and then fled down the street.

  The Boots and The Stairs (#5)

  Two muddy heavy boots went up an old house’s wooden stairs. />
  “Not so fast,” said the left boot out of breath. “These stairs are exhausting.”

  “Yes, they’re steep,” answered the right boot. “But we’re almost there.”

  The stairs was eavesdropping. “Oh stop whining both of you! You call me exhausting and steep?” interrupted the stairs. “You come up and down, never stop to say hello, and I go on working. You skip and shuffle, bounce and stomp, and even take breaks on my steps, and you don’t hear me whinging.”

  “You have no reason to complain old stairs, at least you don’t have to wear smelly socks the whole day,” said the boots in chorus.

  “But you don’t have people partying on your steps and dropping furniture that scrapes your back and breaks the life out of your banister. You two get to go to all these places and see the sun and the blue seas.”

  “Oh yeah?” said the left boot. “I’d like to see you going around the world with the same partner all the time. I always have to turn right when my nature fancies going left.”

  “Listen cantankerous fool, you don’t have to be in the cold and be covered with mud. You get swept and washed once a week,” added the right boot.

  “You don’t understand,” said the stairs. “I’d like to run back in the wood, smell the fresh grass, and feel the morning rain of my youth.”

  “May your wishes be granted,” said the left boot. “We belong to an engineer, who is here to install an elevator.”

  “And soon, all these people you’ve carried over the years, you’ll be left alone with their stories, neglected” added the right boot.

  The stairs fell silent, closed its