He held up a series of scrolls
wrapped in leather tubes and pushed one into my paws, encouraging me to open the
seal and read the contents. I hesitated for a moment wondering whether I was
doing right handling such seemingly ancient manuscripts - and such as were
marked 'Made in the ancient library of Alexhamstria' - but the salesman insisted
so it must be okay.
Clicking open the metallic
lock, I pushed back the outer leaf and read from the top of the
page:
'The Secrets of the Universe
by Julius Seizure'
'Mmm...interesting spelling' I
thought 'There is obviously more to this rat than meets the
eye'
I decided to play him a long -
just for a little while, you understand, I had no intention of deliberately
causing him grief - but the deception that had just been tried on me needed to
be brought to his attention.
'Forgery' I squeaked 'It
doesn't have the feel of a real manuscript and, besides, it's
misspelt'
'MISSPELT?!' he exploded 'Wass
misspelt?'
'Julius' I assured him 'it's
J-E-W-E-L-E-U-S. Obviously a forgery. Where did you get it?'
'Arve bin robbed!' he shouted
'And Arve 'ungry marves to feed! Ah mister - be kind to a poor lonesum
rat!'
To be honest, I wasn't sure
whether he was attempting to deceive me further or whether he had, in truth,
been deceived himself. I guess that's the difficulty with a lie - it seems to
lead from one to another and, before you know where you are, the liar becomes so
disillusioned by the lies he tells, he can no longer tell what truth
is.
I'd met this problem before
and only recently had been totally bewildered by a story I'd been working on for
Dak, my colleague-in-fur, when he'd asked me to cover some Republican nominee or
other - or was it Democrat? I can't remember - they're all the same to me,
anyhow. I'd read all the previous speeches and sat up most of the day, trying to
piece together the policies that he would stand and fight an election over - but
nothing I read seemed to harmonise with the other facts I
knew.
For instance, to the Gay
Rights Activists, he said 'I wholly support the liberation of your sexual
orientation' but to the Born Again Christians Convention had told them that 'I
stand for truth and integrity and will promote the knowledge of the God of the
Bible'. There again, he spoke of 'the need to assert the right of the unborn
child' and, two weeks after, 'the need to assert the right of the pregnant
mother'.
I mean, which line is the guy
actually taking? If the candidate becomes all things to all men, he will, in
effect, be nothing to anyone. If the man says whatever will gain him the public
vote, the voters will get a man who doesn't even know what truth
is.
And that's a problem - no
matter who the man is.
I returned my gaze to the rat
who stood before me and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, took out a
small gold coin that can be used amongst humans to buy food items (I'll explain
this custom at another time) and pressed it into his paws.
What made me immediately think
I'd been gullible was the chink-chink-chink that emanated from his knapsack as
he wandered down the road in search of another victim...
Ebony the Hamster writes
for the Rodent Weekly.
This article appears courtesy of that paper.
Ganjette's presidential web site can be found at www.hamsterforpresident.com
