The Shadow of the Hummingbird by Athol Fugard

Author:Athol Fugard [Fugard, Athol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781559367950
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group

(Oupa starts to shake his head, protesting.)

And that you won’t call him a stupid ox again, he will allow me . . .

OUPA (Flaring up): No! I’ll drop the ox but not the qualifying adjective . . . because that is what he is and I know your mother secretly agrees with me. I know he is my son, but, believe me, Boba, that, as God’s dirty tricks go, giving him to me as my one and only heir, is by far the dirtiest one he has ever played on me. When he first married your mother, and she became pregnant, I lived in mortal terror of the possibility that another idiot was on the way. All I can say is thank God for your mother. She must have provided the genes that are responsible for you. And just for the record, he is the one that should apologize to me for his impertinence in trying to tell me . . . me! . . . that . . . I am . . . what did he say I was?

BOBA: An arrogant and conceited old idiot.

OUPA: Please, Boba, don’t say it with such relish. Arrogant and conceited! And all because I corrected him in pointing out that anyone claiming to being well-educated would know that it was the Sumerians in three thousand B.C. who launched literacy on the world. But that was just a smoke screen to hide the real issue. The struggle for your beautiful young mind. Conformity or rebellion. Oh yes! What was the first lesson I taught you, Boba?

BOBA: The one you made me write out ten times?

OUPA: Yes.

BOBA: If I don’t understand something . . . ask a question.

OUPA (Delighted): Yes. If you have any doubts about the so-called wisdom of this age . . . question it, boy! That’s all that a wise old Greek called Socrates tried to teach his young friends . . . but the result? The charge of corrupting the youth. The verdict . . . guilty! The penalty . . . a cup of hemlock . . . poison.

BOBA (Interrupting his grandfather, urgently, pointing at the wall): Oupa! . . . Oupa! . . . Look! There it is.

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