DONKEY ;LIR (SROI] ½REPP] PE] LMW LIEH HS[R SR XLI GSPH WXSRI ¾SSV SJ XLI QMPP ERH FVIEXLIH LMW PEWX it astonished us all. He’d been here longer than any of us; it’s true, he had the greyest muzzle on the whole farm but no-one had ever heard him bray about it. He had in fact always been so morose and taciturn that few could recall him saying anything, and nobody could even VIQIQFIV LMW REQI 8LEX´W [L] XLSWI ½REP words of his silenced us. ‘The ancient wisdom of fools,’ he had sighed, ‘will not be displaced by a leg-count on midsummer’s day.’ Discussion raced back and forth about Donkey’s meaning. It was impossible to pin it down, and some parties were so strong and forthright in their opinions that in the hubbub we seemed to forget that we had just witnessed the expiry of a living soul. But before they had tied a rope around one of his rear ankles, and dragged him, cheek down across the HMVX] ¾SSV ERH SYX SJ XLI mill door, we had agreed to meet up again and take it further – we promised that we would not let things lie. Donkey had no relatives. Or at least, none on this farm. That was normal, we considered.Youngsters were sent off to pastures new at an early age: they had to have a chance to make out their own form from beyond the fatal shadow of their folks’ bulk. But the things is, Donkey had no pals here either. We were all supposed to know that he had had friends back then, in the times of hunger and hardship, when all the animals rallied together – the Rebellion and all that. But many of us suspected that in fact he had always been a loner. There was little ground, it appeared, for an old chums thesis, given his grumpy demeanour, his ludicrous tone of voice, and his annoying habit of posing his own person, by way of an existential obstacle, as evidence that nothing anybody ever did was good enough. How could he ever have had friends? – his personal intransigence didn’t just obstruct those who actually attempted to have dealings with him, but sought to close the whole course of time off from the possibility
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By Johnny Rodger of optimism, good intention, or a better way. It was, at any rate, a bit old-fashioned, we thought, to put those sort of beliefs – or indeed a lack of belief – before harmonious relations with your fellows. Not only that, but this was an attitude which we were sure we recognised. Perhaps it was a mistake, but we associated such a miserable outlook directly with the generation who were involved in that great Rebellion. Donkey had practically admitted as much himself after all, [MXL XLSWI ½REP [SVHW SJ LMW 8LI ³PIK GSYRX on midsummer’s day’ was to us an obvious reference both to the date of the Rebellion itself and to the battle cry ‘Four legs good, two legs better!’ which the sarcastic rebels had hurled at our enemies as they charged them. Donkey had surely demonstrated how dear to him was that revolutionary era with his struggle to pronounce one last time his own version of its motto before he went out. It’s true he’d adopted some HIRWI GSHM½GEXMSR MR LMW breathy utterance, but this also, we considered, was typical of the miserable face put on by that generation. They had been forced to hide their true consciousness of reality while they were oppressed by a cruel boss class. That’s historical fact. So who could blame them for repressing their feelings – it was their suffering, their blood, after all, that bought the freedom which we take so lightly. It’s no wonder that they seemed to scorn our company and sneer at our opinions. Donkey hadn’t even bothered to tell us his name. On the other hand, it could be that Donkey was just having a last laugh at our expense. You didn’t ever hear him laugh. But that’s just it, these guys were stubborn: they had not held ½VQ EX XLI FEVVMGEHIW F] TYXXMRK SR E PMKLX hearted disposition and joshing with the charging cavalrymen. They were austere intellectuals who had disdained the frightfully grim material conditions of their upbringing, and sustained a long and gruelling campaign against the
oppressor who imposed those conditions: how could their humour be anything other than dry? Besides, wasn’t it clear that anyone who posed their physical self against the relentless and unforgiving march of history while stood upon ER MQTPEYWMFP] HEMRX] UYEVXIX SJ LSS¾IXW ERH with a dumb grey bristled muzzle braying about the winds of change, was simply perpetrating not only a delightful but a fatally delicate and dangerous piece of satire? We laughed to think of it. – Even if that body didn’t look so lightweight and precarious now, slumped as it [EW HIEH SR XLI GSPH WXSRI ¾SSV Yet no epitaph could have sounded with a more momentous resonance than Donkey’s barely audible whispering of ‘the ancient wisdom of fools’. He was about to be dragged off to his grave with none of the ceremony that had been accorded other great heroes of that revolutionary age – like, say, the pigs, Old Major, and Napoleon himself. But ironically that cold, lonely and anonymous removal only made all the more apparent the void in our own hearts. There was no doubting that the political orthodoxy presented us with the worthiness of these characters. Yet why did they all seem to us so brutish and so physically repulsive? Here we saw it before us: dead Donkey, his jaw set in a rictus, great buck teeth grinning crazily up at us as they dragged him backwards out of the mill. It was then that we knew for sure what he had meant by ‘fools’. What was the correct stance to take XLSYKL# 8LI] LEH FIIR YRWIP½WL MRHMZMHYEPW JSV sure – that’s precisely why they were the fools – unthinking and uncaring about their own personal appearance and image, while together with other like minded geeks they had forged a blueprint for the common good.
But their wisdom had become our commonplace. Their thousand times recited and excited rebellion was our humdrum reality. That’s why I say that they might be gone, all these ugly ones, but it's our hearts that are empty. We couldn’t decide at that point, as we stood crowded round the mill – peeking in the door; leaning our heads in the windows; perching on the sills – what interest we had in a dead but historical donkey who was supremely grumpy and had never evidenced any personal interest in us. Was it out of compassion, mere curiosity, a true spirit of enquiry, or for entertainment value that we had gathered there? Even our short discussion of the matter had managed to be quite clearly unrevolutionary, and there had been a time when we would have been punished for it. The odd thing is however, that despite the lack of dogs yapping at our heels and keeping us up on our ideological toes these days, [I RIZIV HMH JYP½P our promise to reconvene and take the discussion further. Perhaps it would happen yet. But as we all went off our separate ways that day, one sheep was heard to ask for a reminder of what they used to say at those revolutionary demonstrations of old. Was it ‘Four dogs good!’, she said, or ‘Four dogs bad!’?
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