"Resnick, Mike - A Little Knowledge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

"Jambo, Koriba," he said, greeting me with his usual smile.
"Jambo, Ndemi," I said. "How many times have I explained to you that I am an old man, and that I must sit by my fire until the air becomes warmer?"
"I am sorry, Koriba," he said. "But as I was leaving my father's shamba, I saw a hyena stalking one of our goats, and I had to drive it off." He held his spear up, as if that were proof of his statement.
I could not help but admire his ingenuity. It was perhaps the thousandth time he had been late, and never had he given the same excuse twice. Still, the situation was becoming intolerable, and when he finished his chores and the fire had warmed my bones and eased my pain, I told him to sit down opposite me.
"What is our lesson for today?" he asked as he squatted down.
"The lesson will come later," I said, finally letting my blanket fall from my shoulders as the first warm breeze of the day blew a fine cloud of dust past my face. "But first I will tell you a story."
He nodded, and stared intently at me as I began speaking.
"Once there was a Kikuyu chief," I said. "He had many admirable qualities. He was a mighty warrior, and in council his words carried great weight. But along with his many good qualities, he also had a flaw.
"One day he saw a maiden tilling the fields in her father's shamba, and he was smitten with her. He meant to tell her of his love the very next day, but as he set out to see her, his way was blocked by an elephant, and he retreated and waited until the elephant had passed. When he finally arrived at the maiden's boma, he discovered that a young warrior was paying her court. Nevertheless, she smiled at him when their eyes met, and, undiscouraged, he made up his mind to visit her the following day. This time a deadly snake blocked his way, and once again, when he arrived he found the maiden being courted by his rival. Once more she gave him an encouraging smile, and so he decided to come back a third time.
"On the morning of the third day, he lay on his blanket in his hut, and thought about all the many things he wanted to tell her to impress her with his ardor. By the time he had decided upon the best approach to win her favor, the sun was setting. He ran all the way from his boma to that of the maiden, only to find that his rival had just paid her father five cattle and thirty goats for her hand in marriage.
"He managed to get the maiden alone for a moment, and poured forth his litany of love.
"'I love you too,' she answered, 'but although I waited for you each day, and hoped that you would come, you were always late.'
"'I have excuses to offer,' he said. 'On the first day I encountered an elephant, and on the second day a killer snake was in my path.' He did not dare tell her the real reason he was late a third time, so he said, 'And today a leopard confronted me, and I had to kill it with my spear before I could continue on my way.'
"'I am sorry,' said the maiden, 'but I am still promised to another.'
"'Do you not believe me?' he demanded.
"'It makes no difference whether you are telling the truth or not,' she replied. 'For whether the lion and the snake and the leopard are real or whether they are lies, the result is the same: you have lost your heart's desire because you were late.'"
I stopped and stared at Ndemi. "Do you understand the moral of my story?" I asked.
He nodded. "It does not matter to you whether a hyena was stalking my father's goat or not. All that matters is that I was late."
"That is correct," I said.
This is where such things had always ended, and then we would begin his lessons. But not this day.
"It is a foolish story," he said, looking out across the vast savannah.
"Oh?" I asked. "Why?"
"Because it begins with a lie."
"What lie?"
"The Kikuyu had no chiefs until the British created them," he answered.
"Who told you that?" I asked.
"I learned it from the box that glows with life," he said, finally meeting my gaze.
"My computer?"
He nodded again. "I have had many long discussions about the Kikuyu with it, and I have learned many things." He paused. "We did not even live in villages until the time of the Mau Mau, and then the British made us live together so that we could be more easily watched. And it was the British who created our tribal chiefs, so that they could rule us through them."
"That is true," I acknowledged. "But it is unimportant to my story."
"But your story was untrue with its first line," he said, "so why should the rest of it be true? Why did you not just say, 'Ndemi, if you are late again, I will not care whether your reason is true or false. I will punish you.'"
"Because it is important for you to understand why you must not be late."
"But the story is a lie. Everyone knows that it takes more than three days to court and purchase a wife. So it began with a lie and it ended with a lie."
"You are looking at the surface of things," I said, watching a small insect crawl over my foot and finally flicking it off. "The truth lies beneath."
"The truth is that you do not want me to be late. What has that to do with the elephant and the leopard, which were extinct before we came to Kirinyaga?"
"Listen to me, Ndemi," I said. "When you become the mundumugu, you will have to impart certain values, certain lessons, to your people -- and you must do so in a way that they understand. This is especially true of the children, who are the clay that you will mold into the next generation of Kikuyu."
Ndemi was silent for a long moment. "I think you are wrong, Koriba," he said at last. "Not only will the people understand you if you speak plainly to them, but stories like the one you just told me are filled with lies which they will think are true simply because they come from the mundumugu's lips."
"No!" I said sharply. "We came to Kirinyaga to live as the Kikuyu lived before the Europeans tried to change us into that characterless tribe known as Kenyans. There is a poetry to my stories, a tradition to them. They reach out to our racial memory, of the way things were, and the way we hope to make them again." I paused to consider which path to follow, for never before had Ndemi so bluntly opposed my teachings. "You yourself used to beg me for stories, and of all the children you were the quickest to find the true meaning of them."
"I was younger then," he said.
"You were a Kikuyu then," I said.
"I am still a Kikuyu."
"You are a Kikuyu who has been exposed to European knowledge and European history," I said. "This is unavoidable, if you are to succeed me as the mundumugu, for we hold our charter at the whim of the Europeans, and you must be able to speak to them and work their machine. But your greatest challenge, as a Kikuyu and a mundumugu, is to avoid becoming corrupted by them."
"I do not feel corrupted," he said. "I have learned many things from the computer."
"So you have," I agreed, as a fish eagle circled lazily overhead and the breeze brought the smell of a nearby herd of wildebeest. "And you have forgotten many things."
"What have I forgotten?" he demanded, watching the fish eagle swoop down and grab a fish from the river. "You may test me and see how good my memory is."
"You have forgotten that the true value of a story is that the listener must bring something to it," I said. "I could simply order you not to be late, as you suggest -- but the purpose of the story is to make you use your brain to understand why you should not be late." I paused. "You are also forgetting that the reason we do not try to become like the Europeans is because we tried once before, and became only Kenyans."
He was silent for a long time. Finally he looked up at me.
"May we skip today's lesson?" he asked. "You have given me much to think about."
I nodded my acquiesence. "Come back tomorrow, and we will discuss your thoughts."
He stood up and walked down the long winding path that led from my hill to the village.