Bringing Up Kari 2/3
The second part of the forty-first tale from The Animal Book
As the boy lay stretched on the ground, I recognized the cowherd. He had gone to bathe in the river, had slipped too far out, and not knowing how to swim had almost been drowned. I put him flat on his face on the sand, and the elephant put his trunk about his waist and lifted it gently up and down, and then up again. After doing this three or four times, the water began to come out of the boy’s mouth and, not knowing what else to do because his body was cold, I slapped him very hard all over. After that, I propped him up against the elephant’s leg. Then the boy slowly came to.
In the meantime all his cows had wandered away in different directions. As I thought some had gone into the jungle, where I was afraid they might be eaten up by tigers, I sent Kari to bring them back to the river bank. But Kari got lost himself, so when the cowherd had recovered entirely, I went to look for his cows and my lost elephant.
Where do you think I found him? He had gone right into the forest where I had left the saplings and the twigs, and had buried his trunk into the heap, and was eating the best of them, without any concern for the cows, the cowherd, or myself. But I could not punish him that day because he had done his duty by saving the life of the boy.
Kari was like a baby. He had to be trained to be good, and if you did not tell him when he was naughty, he was up to more mischief than ever.
For instance, one day somebody gave him some bananas to eat. Very soon he developed a great love for ripe bananas. We used to keep large plates of fruit on a table near a window in the dining room. One day all the bananas on that table disappeared, and my family blamed the servants for eating all the fruit in the house.
A few days later the fruit disappeared again. This time the blame was put on me, and I knew I had not done it. It made me very angry with my parents and the servants, for I was sure they had taken all the fruit. The next time the fruit disappeared, I found a banana all smashed up in Kari’s pavilion. This surprised me very much, for I had never seen fruit there, and as you know, he had always lived on twigs.
Next day, while I was sitting in the dining room wondering whether I should take some fruit from the table without my parents’ permission, a long, black thing very much like a snake suddenly came through the window and disappeared with all the bananas. I was very much frightened because I had never seen snakes eat bananas, and I thought it must be a terrible snake that would sneak in and take fruit. I crept out of the room and, with great fear in my heart, ran out of the house, feeling sure that the snake would come back into the house, eat all the fruit, and kill all of us.
As I went out, I saw Kari’s back disappearing in the direction of the pavilion, and I was so frightened that I wanted his company to cheer me up. I ran after him into the pavilion, and I found him there eating bananas. I stood still in astonishment; the bananas were lying strewn all around him. He stretched out his trunk and reached for one far away from where he was standing. That instant the trunk looked like a black snake, and I realized that Kari was the thief.
I went to him, pulled him out by the ear, and joyously showed my parents that it was Kari and not I that had eaten all the fruit these many weeks. Then I scolded him, for elephants understand words as well as children, and I said to him, “Next time I see you stealing fruit, you will be whipped.”
He knew that we were all angry with him, even the servants. His pride was so injured that he never stole another thing from the dining room. And from then on, if anybody gave him any fruit, he always squealed as if to thank them.
The End, Part Two