Lion (fifth story)

If there is someone very sensible, this someone, mustn’t read this story.

When I was a little boy, an eight years old boy, I was very impressed by a story I heard of lions and their evil deeds.

I heard that a lion, when in hunger, didn’t hesitate in attacking a village. And, sometimes, there were two or three lions. I heard, mainly, that the defenceless natives had, always, the doors and walls of the huts reinforced. The huts were always of a circular shape, the doors small and of stout wood. The walls made of strong timber and trunks and covered with dry clay. The ceiling was made of light boughs and branches of trees and these covered with long dry grasses and reeds. We must know that Africa is very hot by day and night but, I don’t know how, the huts were very fresh and, even, shadowy. The material used to make the huts was splendid and suitable. Very fresh the huts were.

Many times the natives had an organization and they weren’t defenceless. But many times, too, they were defenceless because they risked building their huts lonesomely in a region rich of something fit for farming or hunting. In this situation they risked their lives thinking, perhaps, the lions would get their preys far at the vastness of the plain. However, when the rain didn’t fall, the rains raced dry and dusty a big famine overcame all the animals and the lions blinded with the pangs of hunger neared the smallest villages. And what I heard made me impressed with the story.

It was said to me that the lion, or lions, always succeeded in getting inside the huts by jumping to the thatched roof and with mighty kicks and stampings with the paws they holed the roof and killed men, women and children. But I was most impressed with another thing: can we make out, can we guess the affliction, the agony, the anguish of the people when in the silence of the immensity, in the deep silence, they heard the high-pitched sniffing of a wild beast at doors? The beast circling the hut always sniffing? If the lion was experienced in attacking the huts it was, immediately, on the roof tearing, ripping and rending. The poor people knew there wasn’t any salvation for them.