The Camel
Par Jean Painlevé
I noticed a camel who looked well-read and told him so: “You’re not wrong,” he replied, “for although all my breed are extremely well-acquainted with the philosophical culture of the desert, I also appreciate your language and your poets… Listen…”, and he quoted, in French
“C’était un vieux lapidaire
Qui enfermait ses dromadaires
Dans les tiroirs de sa commode
Les logements à Paris sont si incommodes…”
[There once was an old gem merchant who kept his dromedaries in a chest of drawers. Paris housing is so cramped.]
“Doesn’t that highlight your little narrow, mediocre life quite brilliantly? And owning dromedaries, what a fool…” “Oh, of course”, I responded, a dromedary is a camel with an extra hump.” “Certainly not,” said my interlocutor, haughtily, “we are dromedaries, with a slightly convex spine. It’s the camel which is deformed. The extra hump means you can sit securely – you can’t do that with us. Try mounting a dromedary bareback, you’ll slip forwards or backwards. But you’ve never been able to tell us apart…” He sighed and continued: “But regardless of the branch of our family, we are all born to protect man, even through smuggling. We even served under Bonaparte and his men, and our bodies shield against the wind, the sand and even bullets. Our sobriety is such that it is celebrated in a French saying (you won’t find us sitting around in a bar with a drink in front of us), and we are such faithful servants that we’ll give our meat and our fat to connaisseurs.” At this point I absent-mindedly hummed an old tune: “you give me the hump, the camel’s hump…”, but gracefully he pretended not to hear and merely gave me one of those withering looks that camels are so good, and carried out: “So you shouldn’t be surprised that we should sport a bit of a superior air, an air which is only added to by our long eyelashes which filter the wind and allow us to see, ‘twixt the gusts of wind, through half-shut eyes.” “ ‘Twixt the gusts of wind! Bloody hell, my good man, which century are you living in?” “That’s an expression which my great-great-grandmother picked up from one of Napoleon’s Mamelukes. “Between” the gusts of wind is quite common, “ ‘Twixt” is more elegant. Our refinement is evident right down to the way we drink. Even when we’re parched, we don’t make any of the rude noises that you do.”
Flicking his chewing tobacco to the other side of his mouth with a long swollen tongue like a piece of aubergine-coloured rubber, he continued: “What’s more, the camel, this ship of the desert as you call us, develops your abdominal muscles while gripping your backside and churning your stomach. And we labour in the fields, even if we are harnessed - such humiliation! - to a donkey, which has to quicken its step just to keep up with the pace we set; and it was we who filled out the tracks which your engineers are so proud of, just to let vehicles through - and then we have to go along and bail them out when they break down!”
“Everyone is quite ready to accept your many qualities; it’s your character which…”
“Our character! When we say no we mean no. We have a character, and it’s entirely to our credit. So rather than the insult you intend by it, your French expression “what a camel he is!” should be seen as the compliment which it is. But our character is quite constant – we grouch however heavy the load you fasten onto our backs; we always stand up, just as soon as men have bellowed so hard that they are beginning to choke with anger. Like the sand and the wind, we can be gentle or fast; but we are never in a rush because we are part of eternity. Remember, for us man is only a biped, which is ridiculous in itself, and worse, a pretentious biped. And in the unanimous opinion of all camels and similar beasts, there is nothing prettier than a baby camel.” And on this note, all that was left for me to do was to slip out, carefully.
Jean Painlevé
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