Flights

APULEIUS THE DONKEY

A donkey breeder confided his story to me.

The deal with donkeys is that they are a rather costly investment, returns are slow and it takes a lot of work. Outside high season, when there are no tourists, you have to be able to finance their food and take care of their coats – they have to be kept neat. This dark brown one is a male, the father of a whole family. His name is Apuleius – that’s what one tourist lady called him. That one over there is called Jean-Jacques, although it’s a female, and that lightest one is Jean-Paul. I have a few more on the other side of the house. Now, in the off-season, only two are working. But when the morning traffic starts I bring them out here, before the tour buses arrive.

The worst are the Americans – most of them are overweight. Oftentimes they’re too heavy even for Apuleius. They weigh twice as much as other people. The donkey is an intelligent animal, it can evaluate weight right away, and it will often start to get upset just seeing them come off their tour bus, all overheated, big sweat stains on their shirts, and those trousers they wear that only reach their knees. I get the sense the donkeys can tell them apart by their smell. So they’ve got problems with them even when their dimensions turn out to be all right. The donkey will start kicking and making a fuss, blatantly trying to get out of working.

But my donkeys are good, I brought them up myself. It’s important to us that our clients leave here with fond memories. I’m not a Christian myself, but I understand that for them this is the pinnacle of their excursion. They come here to get on my donkeys to tour the place where a gentleman named John baptized their prophet with water from the river. How do they know it was this spot here? Apparently it’s written down that way in their holy book.