My interlocutor with a ball-shaped head, slouch like a penguin, without a neck, with a swollen belly and a big posterier, like a huge backpack of tourists, he is named Gusalain.We met him by chance in the autumn Park of Toronto, in the evening, when we were walking our four-legged friends. My Pit bull, Tarzan, started playing with his Doberman.We sat on the Park bench, admiring the red crimson quiet leaf of maple Canada.Gusalain was holding a paper Cup between the palms of his hands, as if warming them in a warm coffee.
- It was very nice to meet you, my friend. To be honest, I've never heard of your country before. Please tell us about your people about their culture and their religion. Like, for example, burying people when they die. It's very interesting to me - I said in broken English.
- Well, if you find it interesting, then I will - said Gusalain looking at his Doberman, which was playing with my Pitbull named Tarzan, running through the Park, rustling the fallen maple leaves. He continued:
- For us when a person dies, he dosent get buried.
- So do they cremate the person, like in India? - I asked.
- No, my friend, they don't cremate us. When someone dies, all his close relatives are invited to the ceremony, the people putting the body of the deceased in a huge pot with water. Then making a fire, they cook it, then gently roasted, and eaten.
This activity allows us to avoid the extra cost of the shroud, the coffin, the grave, the tombstones of black marble and granite and the funeral.We preserve the money. Thus the ground of our independent country is saved, our planet is decreasing day after day, hour after hour. If it goes at this rate, soon our planet will become a giant cemetery.There will be nowhere to plant fruits, vegetables and crops - he explained.
Hearing this, my jaw dropped in amazement.
- Are you kidding? This never happens! - I said and got up. Then I was about to leave, as they say, away from sin, then Gusalain began to laugh.
- What are you, mate, you don't get the joke? Sit down, I was joking - he said, laughing, catch a glimpse of coffee and smoke a cigar in familiar.
-Well, your jokes - I said, also laughing.
- Joke with joke, but, it turns out in some countries people eat our four-legged friends in restaurants with sauce and salad. God, what blasphemy! But recently I read an article on the Internet that in Central Asia even eat ass! Not somewhere in the teahouse, but in restaurants! This news has shocked me the most -said Gusalain.
- Oh, right. You work as a human rights activist and protect the rights of animals, right? I said.
- no, I'm not a human rights activist. Well, how do you explain that? In short I feel sorry for the donkeys, as I am also a hereditary donkey, in the truest sense of the word. Yes, Yes, don't be surprised, my friend said Gusalain.
Are you joking again? - I said, about to get up and leave. But Gusalain again stopped me.
- No, my friend, this time I speak quite seriously. You know, sometimes a man will want to pour out his soul to someone wildly. I can see through that you're a good person by nature. So I decided to tell you everything.
In short, my grandmother before her death told me all of this with bitter tears of on her eyes. I still remember her dying words by heart. She said:
- Son, all these years I've been hiding a terrible secret from you.Whatever it is, you still need to know about it and I will be released from this heavy load, it will fly to heaven as a fairy to God Almighty. Son, you're not a man, you're a donkey! Yes, Yes, a thoroughbred donkey! she said, stroking my head.And I silently , sitting on a mattress, my grandmother's stuffed with cotton waste, wiping away surreptitious tears from her eyes, thinking about what my grandmother was delirious on her deathbed.
But here my uncle, with sympathy looking at me through tears, said that my grandmother was telling the truth about what I really was, a donkey.
And my grandmother kept saying:
-Gusalain, Son, we found you a newborn baby in the middle of tall grasses, in the mountains, where your grandfather and uncle lived and grazed a flock of sheep. Around the mountain slopes and snowy peaks, where the clouds crawled, through the gorges and the pass, like gray dragons. We found you, thanks to a huge dog named Kaitmas, who was worried when she heard you crying. There you were, wrapped in an old and torn sweatshirt.Oh how I cried then, taking you in my arms, poor little donkey, thinking, what heartless ruthless people abandoned such a helpless tiny newborn baby and left one in the mountains, where hungry wolves roam at night. Then, booming thunder right above our heads and flashed a terrible lightning in the darkened sky. It started to pour hard rain as if it was released from a bucket so I ran toward the Yurt, constructed from felt. Seeing you, your grandfather, the Kingdom of heaven, was glad he had a little boy, saying that we now have two sons. But when we heard you cry, we were cold with fear. When you cried, you screamed like a colt. I mean, jackal.We were scared.But despite that, I tried to calm you down. I fed you cow milk from a bottle with which we sometimes fed orphaned calves. Looking at you, your grandfather offered to take you back to where we found you.
- This is not a human child and when he grows up, he will become a mean, envious, vile and small type and a source of misfortune. Let the wolves eat him, he said.
- No, he stays here and I'll take care of him! He's human. He just has a donkey voice. Over time, he will get rid of this and become a normal child - I said firmly. So you became a full member of our family. You began to grow, playing among the sheep, their feet hurt and you would bite them like a donkey. Because there were no children in the mountains. villages and mountain villages were far away. All the problems started later.When you turned school age, you had to go to school and learn among normal guys. And you were with the character of the donkey is still kicking, lying on the grass, lifting his arms and legs up, you rubbed sideways on trees, tilting your neck forward and closing your eyes in pleasure.That's why we didn't send you to school. I started teaching you myself. Finally, I managed to wean you off, to kick, bite, to rub against the tree and shout ugly bass like donkeys. Now, I'm out of life and I want you to study in universities, not shout randomly in the afternoon as your ancestors - she said at last. Then she died. And then I remembered everything. I learned, I became a member of Parliament and later a Congressman in Congress, thanks to my associates and friends. Everyone respected me as a good person, as a kind and honest leader, no one, not even the naive people did not realize that I was not a man, but a donkey! They did not know how I steal people's money in various ways and smuggle billions across offshore zones to foreign banks, as they say on his rainy day. They did not know how I raider seizure selected someone else's business, free privatization of large factories in the name of their sons and daughters. Since, as the mass popular unrest against corruption and the vile dictatorship began, I fled together with the tyrant, the former dictator, from the country, leaving my family, first to Europe, and then here, to the West. Here I lost literally everything. Lost all my money at the casino. You think this Doberman is my damn dog? No, I walk the dog of one emigrant and every day I feed it, bathe it, clean its luxurious two-room kennel with a basement and get a weekly meager salary for it. He used to live in a shelter for the homeless. But there it turns out not all people are so nice. So I had to change my place. I'm living in a vent in an abandoned house.It's dark and damp, the eyes of rabid rats are burning.In late autumn and winter I spend my days in supermarkets to warm up. In the evening I return to the ventilation pipe.I'm afraid of freezing or starving. But since I'm a donkey, sometimes I manage to satisfy my hunger with armfuls of dry grass, collecting it on the field, when a Blizzard howls, it's reminiscent of ballerinas who dance easily on tiptoe. Oh, if you knew how I sometimes feel like going, dutifully dragging a cart with a drunk and angry owner who has a long leather whip whistling in his hands with a propeller. How do you want three on the tree, eating the grass peacefully and silently grazing in the misty meadows. My donkey soul longs for the summer sultry fields, over which the larks sing loudly, pouring a trill, where the hoopoes cry and the sad voice of a lonely cuckoo is heard from the distance. I want to shout loudly, stretching my neck forward like a donkey in the summer fields, where people collect hay, where the July marevo trembles over the country road... With these words Mr. Gusalain paused for a moment.I thought he was gonna laugh and then he said he was joking again. No, on the contrary, he began to cry, rubbing his shoulders. I felt sorry for him and I didn't know how to calm him. Here Gusalain sharply raising his cuts in his head, he began to speak:
-No, I'm in such a cruel country where people lose their condition in a matter of minutes and will be on the street, I will no longer live! I'd rather go to my country and work there obediently, dragging a cart in the markets where people sell bananas, pineapples and oranges briskly! Let me go to jail for a hundred years! Go and fall at the feet of the new President of the country, i'll ask for forgiveness, dropping my tears on his boots and shining them!
Hearing the sound of Gusalain passer-by's began to look back.
I called, whistling my pit bull, named Tarzan, to go home quickly.But Gusalain, as if trying to stop me, said:
- You. I thought I'd finally found a good man and the most loyal friend in the world. And you, like everyone else, doubt that I'm an ass.
With these words Mr. Gusalain began to shout loudly, a raspy voice like a donkey at the summer barn, stretching his neck forward and closed his eyes in pleasure.