The lion in the well
A question, before any of this
Who do you let help you?
Most people have a shorter list than they would admit, and it is usually sorted by rank. Help from above is flattering. Help from a peer is fine. Help from below — from someone junior, less able, less established, someone who owes you rather than the other way round — is oddly difficult to accept, and people will go to real lengths to avoid needing it.
This week you get two stories from the animal volumes of the anthology, which are the strangest and best part of the whole collection. Both are about a lion. In one, the lion is helped by a small animal and floats out of a well. In the other, the lion is helped by a small animal and loses an eye.
Fascicle 47 is called "Beasts and Animals," and it is organised by species — lions, elephants, horses, oxen, donkeys, dogs, deer, jackals, wolves, monkeys, hares, wildcats, rats. Every one of these creatures gets its own stories. You are about to read two of the lions'.
The storiesTwo of them — read both, in this order
Both are on the same page. Read number 5 first, then go back up and read number 3.
5. A Lion King Falls into a Well and Is Saved by a Jackal
He is old, his eyes have dimmed, and he is still walking at the front.
Read it →3. A Lion Chokes on a Bone, and a Woodpecker Pulls It Out
The same favour, and an entirely different lion.
Read it →Come back when you have finished both.
Three momentsPlaces worth stopping
1 · Five hundred lions, one clause
"…there was a lion, king of the beasts, who was lord of five hundred lions. Afterward this lion king grew old and sick and thin and his eyes grew dim, and, walking in front of the other lions, he fell into an empty well; and the five hundred lions all abandoned him and went."
Two details, three words apart, and they are the whole first half of the story.
"Walking in front." He is old, sick, thin, and half-blind, and he is still leading the procession. Nobody has taken the front from him and he has not offered it up. That is how he falls in — doing the thing he has always done, in a body that can no longer do it.
"All abandoned him and went." Five hundred. His entire court, disposed of in one clause, with no deliberation described, no argument among them, nobody even pausing at the edge. The story does not say they were cruel and does not stop to judge them. They simply leave, the way a crowd leaves.
2 · The jackal is not being nice
"Then a jackal saw the lion king and thought: the reason I have been able to live at ease in this wood and to have my fill of meat is the lion king. Now he has fallen into a hard place — how shall I repay him?"
"By the side of this well there was a channel of water running, and the jackal at once set about it: with his feet he let the water through, and the water came in and filled the well, and the lion floated out."
Read the jackal's reasoning carefully, because it is not what a sentimental version of this story would give him. There is no pity in it and no affection. It is an account. He has eaten well in this forest for years, and he has eaten well because a lion was killing things. He is a scavenger. Everything he has, he has had from the lion's leavings — and he is, so far as we are told, the only creature in the wood who has ever thought about that fact.
Then look at the method, which is the best thing in the story. He does not pull the lion out. He could not; nothing about him is strong enough, and the story never pretends otherwise. What he does instead is notice a water channel running past, open it with his feet, and flood the well until the lion rises.
He does not add strength to the situation. He changes the level of the water. That is what help from a small animal actually looks like, and it is why it is so easy to miss coming.
The forest spirit then says the line the story exists for:
"Though the body be strong and heroic in itself, / one should make a friend of the weak. / A small jackal was able to save / the lion king from the trouble of the well."
One detail you may have noticed at the end, and it is worth not glossing over: the story identifies the lion king as the Buddha, the jackal as his attendant Ānanda — and the five hundred lions who walked away as the monks. This is a tradition telling a story about itself, and it is not a flattering one.
3 · The other lion
Now the second story, which is the first one with the answer changed.
A lion king chokes on a rib-bone from an elephant he has killed, and dies, and revives. He asks a woodpecker to pull the bone out, promising to repay it. The bird climbs into his mouth and pulls it free. Days later, with the lion standing over a fresh kill, the woodpecker asks for the share it was promised. And the lion says this:
"I am the lion king, / and killing is my family trade… / You did not measure yourself, / and escaped my teeth with difficulty. / That you got out of my mouth again — / how could you forget that kindness?"
Sit with the manoeuvre for a second, because it is beautifully done and you will recognise it. He does not deny the debt. He reverses it. The bird went into his mouth to save him; the lion's account of that event is that he generously declined to bite down. By the end of four lines the rescuer owes the rescued.
The woodpecker's reply is almost unbearably mild — "if you could be a little generous and grant me even a little, I would die without resentment." The lion gives it nothing and walks away.
So the bird follows him. It waits, days, until the lion has eaten and is sleeping without fear, and then lands on his forehead and takes out one of his eyes. And when the lion asks why, the woodpecker answers in the same form the lion used:
"Not knowing how to repay a heavy kindness, / you gave rise besides to a harming mind. / I now leave you one eye — / how could you forget that kindness? / Though you are king among beasts, / what you do has no reciprocity. / From this let us each be done; / let us make no further bond."
It gives him back his own line. How could you forget that kindness? — the exact words he used to turn a rescue into a favour, now used to turn a mutilation into one.
- Both are kings. Both are at the top of everything. Both end up needing a much smaller animal.
- The first one is saved — by a creature who had already worked out, on his own, that he owed something, and said so to himself before doing anything.
- The second one is blinded — not for being cruel, but for being unable to say a true sentence: you helped me. He had the words. He used them backwards.
- Neither lion asks for help. That is not what separates them. What separates them is what happened after the help arrived.
One thing to tryThis week · one sentence · said out loud
The jackal's whole contribution begins with a thought he has entirely to himself: everything I have here, I have had from him. The second lion's ruin begins with a sentence he cannot bring himself to say.
Say the specific thing. Not "thanks for everything," which is a way of saying nothing. Name the occasion: when X happened, you did Y, and it made the difference. The specificity is the whole exercise, because vagueness is how the second lion would have handled it.
If that is too much this week, do the smaller version: ask one person for help you would normally not ask them for, and let them give it without immediately repaying it. Sitting in the debt for a few days is the practice.
Five questionsClick an answer for immediate feedback · nothing is recorded
One question, left open
Who is currently keeping you afloat, who you have never said so to?
There is usually at least one, and they are usually below you in whatever order you are both standing in — which is precisely why it has not been said. The jackal was not owed an apology and did not want one. He simply noticed, by himself, where his dinner had been coming from for years. Somebody is currently noticing that about you, or nobody is, and both of those are worth knowing.
Session 9 · The smallest thing
Another pair, and the smallest intervention in the whole anthology set beside the largest. A wife who has run out of arguments hangs a bell on a door. A neighbour who wants a particular result badly enough breaks a stranger's leg to get it. Only one of them works, and it is not the one that took effort.