Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & by Anna Tambour Page B

ears, strained with my body, hawed with my voice till I felt hoarse. But there is an old donkey saying: "There is none so blind as those who will not see, none so deaf as those who will not hear." Indeed, my companion's stubbornness was so great, it left me speechless. Except for one time, when I saw him write in his flowing script, "Many are the mighty things, and nought is more mighty than man."
    Well, I just brayed. Just hung my head and shook it in laughter at the memory of my master at his bath that morning. Mighty! Oh, how I wished my father Guillaume could have seen this man as he emerged from the mountain brook. And even his ears, like mushrooms—and just as deaf.
    My brain felt small though, against the riddle of Mr. Stevenson himself. Stubborn or stupid? Insane or ignorant? While he wrote, I mulled these questions day after day, and couldn't make up my mind. So one morning, after a night in a windswept village where to my delight, we had enjoyed respectively, a bed and a stall, I settled on his problem being a case of slow wits, and decided to persevere with his training.
    Jauntily we set out, and reached the crossroads. Up through even more desolate mountains, down to the blissful valley. This was where the lesson would begin. And just as I turned, lo! He patted my rump, and his palm was sharp. It held the enemy of all asses: a goad. This little wooden stick with a pin at the end draws blood with no effort, and is the tool of choice for stubborn men who refuse to learn from their donkey. The goad was a present from our night's host, who looked a better quality man than he obviously is. My companion was delighted with the effect, for it certainly allowed him to go much faster from here to there.
    ~
    Of the relationship between us, he was also well content. Now grinning master and trotting slave. At one particularly toothsome patch of bramble, when I was just reaching out my lips, what do I hear but "Blessed be the man who invented goads!" And as for what I felt in my tender rump, I let him know with my hooves but he was not as slow-witted here as I had hoped.
    Of the Adventure—if adventure means danger, adversity, discomfort, it was I who had the grand adventure, while he ate chocolate and warming brandy, and stumbled in agony over the proper words to write about his trip. Sometimes we slept under roofs, sometimes under the stars, he grumbling about stones under his soft body, but trying out different praises in the morning about the glory of nature. Sometimes we slept in the icy rain, he in his warm bag, and me standing, tied to a wizened tree, streaming with cold torrents. He romanced about how he tamed me into compliance, while he never noticed that I had nothing more to say to the man.
    He talked to many people. People seem to like that. We sojourned through many villages and I met some of my old friends, but he never considered that it might be nice for me to stop and hang our heads together and breathe each other's nosebreath.
    Our final "adventure" was on the tenth day of my bondage, when we were traversing the side of a very steep mountain. All of a sudden, he found the switchbacks intolerable as they offended his idea of efficiency. He decided that our route was to be straight down an almost vertical slope of boulders only interrupted by scraggly trees. Goad or no, I told him that he was not thinking logically. The more I talked, the more stubborn he became, and finally, he pulled me down the slope. I almost tumbled over my own neck countless times, and if I were a man, would have made my eyes look upwards and put my hands together as they do.
    People have weak memories, as we donkeys often note. The miller who forgets to tell the housewife that he added chalk to the flour. The teller of tales who makes himself out greater than he is. And so with Mr. Stevenson's tale: the details of our parting he sadly mis-remembers, maybe through shame. So I will tell. By the time we reached the base of that vertical