Клайв Льюис – A Year With Aslan: Words of Wisdom and Reflection from the Chronicles of Narnia (страница 5)

“I know I do,” said Jill [Pole].

“Then I really think I can trust you.”

“Dam’ good of you,” said Jill.

“Yes, but this is a really terrific secret. Pole, I say, are you good at believing things? I mean things that everyone here would laugh at?”

“I’ve never had the chance,” said Jill, “but I think I would be.”

“Could you believe me if I said I’d been right out of the world – outside this world – last hols?”

“I wouldn’t know what you meant.”

“Well, don’t let’s bother about worlds then. Supposing I told you I’d been in a place where animals can talk and where there are – er – enchantments and dragons – and – well, all the sorts of things you have in fairy-tales.” [Eustace] Scrubb felt terribly awkward as he said this and got red in the face.

“How did you get there?” said Jill. She also felt curiously shy.

“The only way you can – by Magic,” said Eustace almost in a whisper. “I was with two cousins of mine. We were just – whisked away. They’d been there before.”

Now that they were talking in whispers Jill somehow felt it easier to believe. Then suddenly a horrible suspicion came over her and she said (so fiercely that for the moment she looked like a tigress):

“If I find you’ve been pulling my leg I’ll never speak to you again; never, never, never.”

“I’m not,” said Eustace. “I swear I’m not. I swear by – by everything.”. . .

“All right,” said Jill, “I’ll believe you.”

– The Silver Chair

Why do you think Eustace chooses to share his secret? Are you good at believing things? What’s the hardest thing anyone’s ever asked you to believe?

JANUARY 19

Nobody Special

BREE TURNED ROUND AT LAST, his face mournful as only a horse’s can be.

“I shall go back to Calormen,” he said.

“What?” said Aravis. “Back to slavery!”

“Yes,” said Bree. “Slavery is all I’m fit for. How can I ever show my face among the free Horses of Narnia? – I who left a mare and a girl and a boy to be eaten by lions while I galloped all I could to save my own wretched skin!”

“We all ran as hard as we could,” said Hwin.

“Shasta didn’t!” snorted Bree. “At least he ran in the right direction: ran back. And that is what shames me most of all. I, who called myself a war horse and boasted of a hundred fights, to be beaten by a little human boy – a child, a mere foal, who had never held a sword nor had any good nurture or example in his life!”

“I know,” said Aravis. “I felt just the same. Shasta was marvellous. I’m just as bad as you, Bree. I’ve been snubbing him and looking down on him ever since you met us and now he turns out to be the best of us all. . . .”

“It’s all very well for you,” said Bree. “You haven’t disgraced yourself. But I’ve lost everything.”

“My good Horse,” said the Hermit, who had approached them unnoticed because his bare feet made so little noise on that sweet, dewy grass. “My good Horse, you’ve lost nothing but your self-conceit. No, no, cousin. Don’t put back your ears and shake your mane at me. If you are really so humbled as you sounded a minute ago, you must learn to listen to sense. You’re not quite the great Horse you had come to think, from living among poor dumb horses. Of course you were braver and cleverer than them. You could hardly help being that. It doesn’t follow that you’ll be anyone very special in Narnia. But as long as you know you’re nobody very special, you’ll be a very decent sort of Horse, on the whole.”

– The Horse and His Boy

Why is it helpful for Bree to think of himself as nobody special? Do you think of yourself that way? What are the benefits and limits of such a philosophy?

JANUARY 20

Awakening Evil

THE THING IN THE MIDDLE of the room was not exactly a table. It was a square pillar about four feet high and on it there rose a little golden arch from which there hung a little golden bell; and beside this there lay a little golden hammer to hit the bell with.

“I wonder . . . I wonder . . . I wonder,” said Digory.

“There seems to be something written here,” said Polly, stooping down and looking at the side of the pillar. . . .

What it said was something like this – at least this is the sense of it though the poetry, when you read it there, was better:

Make your choice, adventurous Stranger;

Strike the bell and bide the danger,

Or wonder, till it drives you mad,

What would have followed if you had.

“No fear!” said Polly. “We don’t want any danger.”

“Oh, but don’t you see it’s no good?” said Digory. “We can’t get out of it now. We shall always be wondering what else would have happened if we had struck the bell. I’m not going home to be driven mad by always thinking of that. No fear!”

“Don’t be so silly,” said Polly. “As if anyone would! What does it matter what would have happened?”

“I expect anyone who’s come as far as this is bound to go on wondering till it sends him dotty. That’s the Magic of it, you see. I can feel it beginning to work on me already.”

“Well, I don’t,” said Polly crossly. “And I don’t believe you do either. You’re just putting it on.”

“That’s all you know,” said Digory. “It’s because you’re a girl. Girls never want to know anything but gossip and rot about people getting engaged.”. . .

[Polly said,] “I’m off. I’ve had enough of this place. And I’ve had enough of you too – you beastly, stuck-up, obstinate pig!”

“None of that!” said Digory in a voice even nastier than he meant it to be; for he saw Polly’s hand moving to her pocket to get hold of her yellow ring. I can’t excuse what he did next except by saying that he was very sorry afterward (and so were a good many other people). Before Polly’s hand reached her pocket, he grabbed her wrist, leaning across with his back against her chest. Then, keeping her other arm out of the way with his other elbow, he leaned forward, picked up the hammer, and struck the golden bell a light, smart tap.

– The Magician’s Nephew

Whom do you most sympathize with in this situation? Why?

JANUARY 21

How Do You Know It’s Not True?

THE TWO OLDER ONES were really beginning to think that Lucy was out of her mind. They stood in the passage talking about it in whispers long after she had gone to bed.

The result was the next morning they decided that they really would go and tell the whole thing to the Professor. “He’ll write to Father if he thinks there is really something wrong with Lu,” said Peter; “it’s getting beyond us.” So they went and knocked at the study door, and the Professor said “Come in,” and got up and found chairs for them and said he was quite at their disposal. Then he sat listening to them with the tips of his fingers pressed together and never interrupting, till they had finished the whole story. After that he said nothing for quite a long time. Then he cleared his throat and said the last thing either of them expected:

“How do you know,” he asked, “that your sister’s story is not true?”

“Oh, but—” began Susan, and then stopped. Anyone could see from the old man’s face that he was perfectly serious. Then Susan pulled herself together and said, “But Edmund said they had only been pretending.”

“That is a point,” said the Professor, “which certainly deserves consideration; very careful consideration. For instance – if you will excuse me for asking the question – does your experience lead you to regard your brother or your sister as the more reliable? I mean, which is the more truthful?”

“That’s just the funny thing about it, sir,” said Peter. “Up till now, I’d have said Lucy every time.”

“And what do you think, my dear?” said the Professor, turning to Susan.

“Well,” said Susan, “in general, I’d say the same as Peter, but this couldn’t be true – all this about the wood and the Faun.”

“That is more than I know,” said the Professor, “and a charge of lying against someone whom you have always found truthful is a very serious thing; a very serious thing indeed.”

“We were afraid it mightn’t even be lying,” said Susan; “we thought there might be something wrong with Lucy.”

“Madness, you mean?” said the Professor quite coolly. “Oh, you can make your minds easy about that. One has only to look at her and talk to her to see that she is not mad.”