436
MAUREEN HOWARD
"But strange to say the three pigs were truly busy feeding on
com that was bright as gold and when they had finished they turned
to the prince that he might see their marvelous girth and it seemed
to him that they smiled. Now the prince rode off in a terrible fury,
humiliated by the cleverness of Krishna Nuru's pigs.
"Each day for a hundred days he returned and each day it
seemed to the prince that the pigs grew more beautiful and that
they mocked him, for he could not believe that they merely ate and
slept and grunted in the hay and that the god Krishna had not
performed some magic upon the animals. His cheek grew pale and
his body wasted with envy until at last one day the prince cried
out to them: 'Why are you so happy?' and Krishna smiled with
his
pigs.
.
" 'Why are you so happy?' cried out the prince in anguish.
"And Krishna Nuru answered: 'What your eyes see, your heart
will believe.'
Jim Cogan was enchanted by Clauson's tale and listened with
full respect as the prince met his just and terrible fate. Bring them
down - the empty, the deceitful of the world, the devouring parents
who would feed on his heart.
He
was going to college, driven by the
years of their desire. Yes, he would do their bidding, but the triumph
would be his - already he could see himself in the garment of a
simpler time and place they could not understand, a lamb in a
murky difficult landscape. Tracings of flowers, birds, vines adorned
his neck and breast in the white, white shirt he would buy tomor–
row in some heavy-scented Indian shop. The Prince Dhrahman was
outwitted by pigs.
Clauson stood in the dim light with arms outspread, a fat
hovering Holy Ghost above them:
"Krishna Nuru has written: Dhrahman, who valued appear–
ances, attempted to cheat the god Krishna but cheated only himself.
For Krishna by honest work transfigures the commonplace into beau–
ty.
Thus he would instruct us all to live with effort and grace."
