Times were hard and knowledge was scarce. Those who had survived the Great Tribulation had been thrown centuries back both technologically and intellectually. Books had become semi-ruined artifacts, and teachers — a statistical nil. Humanity was on the verge of falling into complete and irreversible oblivion.
***
The student bowed to the Teacher in reverence. «I... catch a hare with... a sneer,» he said stumblingly and handed a blood-stained parcel to the middle-aged balding man wrapped in a dilapidated rug. The Teacher was sitting in the corner of what might once have been a train compartment, now devoid of all seats but one. A small wall-mounted desk was all covered with half-burnt scraps of paper. The room was dimly lit by half a dozen tin can lanterns that sizzled and smelt of burning grease.
«Caught. You caught a hare. Past Simple, remember?» the Teacher said, unwrapping the parcel and nodding his approval. «And it's snare, not sneer. Rhymes with hare, not spear.»
«Sorry, Teacher.»
«You repeat it now.»
«Sorry, Teacher.»
«No, say: Snare. Rhymes with hare.»
The student repeated.
«Good. Have you done your homework?»
«Yes, Teacher. I learn... learned the line.»
The Teacher looked at the student expectantly. The latter cleared his throat, straightened his shoulders, stared into space and recited in one breath: «Please make sure that the filtration pump is running and provides the corresponding level of water flow.» He exhaled with relief as if a heavy burden had been lifted from his shoulders. «What is a filtration pump, Teacher?»
There was a long pause. Then the Teacher sighed, «I wish I knew it. But ancient poetry is rich in symbols, metaphor and archaisms. We lost so much in our wake, and what is left is but a tiny flickering candle surrounded by infinite night. What you and I are doing is simply keeping the candle alight.»
«Teacher, you speak so... beautiful.»
«Beautifully. Not at all. This Filtration Pump Manual — that's the real masterpiece! You must learn it by heart. All the thirty-nine and a half words of it.»
«I can not. It's more big... bigger than the KFC Brochure.»
«But you still want to be the most educated man of your tribe, don't you?» It was the ace up the Teacher's sleeve and it never failed to work.
«Yes. I am... I do. And Meena will love myself... me.»
«Yes, she definitely will. But you have to work hard.»
The student sighed heavily. «I... will work hard.» And he did for the next hour...
«So, you go and learn the Manual. And the day after tomorrow we start reading the Friday Night TV Guide. Prepare yourself for some really tough mental work.» (The student slouched unhappily at these words.) «And remember to bring a hare. Or, better still, a good lump of boar ham for a change.»
«I will, Teacher,» the student bowed and was gone.
Having the room to himself, the Teacher collected all pieces of paper from the desk and put them under his seat. Then he started dressing the hare with a rusty knife, whistling joyously.
About an hour and a half later, full and satisfied, he made sure there was nobody around his dwelling. Then he removed a floor panel, fumbled beneath it for a while and extracted a thick battered leather-covered book with «Five Centuries of Verse» imprinted on it. He went back to his seat with the book, looked at it lovingly, his fingers caressing its cover, then opened it on the table of contents. Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Byron, Goethe, Pushkin, Lermontov, Poe, Baudelaire, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats, Akhmatova, and dozens of other great names looked back at him from the time-worn pages of what could have been the world's only book of poetry left intact. Hell, it might have been the world's only intact book of anything. And he was more than lucky to possess this treasure. The man who had given it to him, his late father, had told him this, «Knowledge is power, son. And people are like mushrooms — you keep them in the dark and feed them shit. Keep the real knowledge to yourself and pass it on to your own son when it's time.»
He had followed his father's advice. He taught some of these degenerates basic language rules and stuffed their heads with scraps of mostly useless information. They brought him food in return. And when he wanted a woman, he would lure the best one with a dozen lines from the book. Women always succumbed readily to the power of the poetic word. And they were more than ready to take the seed from the man who possessed this power. But there had been no child so far. He had fought the thought that it was his curse for concealing knowledge from humanity — he had fought it and had won. Now Meena was his last hope. If she did not conceive, he would have to take his treasure with him to the grave. Taking on an apprentice was not an option. He would sooner bury the knowledge with him than pass it to one of those barbarians. It was too precious, too exquisite to be approached with dirty hands. He was the Teacher after all, and he had the right to decide on the fate of the knowledge entrusted to him.
He leafed through the book, found his favourite poem and was soon carried away from his gloomy thoughts into a world of perfect bliss.
YOU ARE READING
Knowledge Is Power
Short StoryTimes were hard and knowledge was scarce. Those who had survived the Great Tribulation had been thrown centuries back both technologically and intellectually. Books had become semi-ruined artifacts, and teachers - a statistical nil. Humanity was on...
