Ugly truth behind the ugly duckling

The ugly truth behind the ugly duckling

by R. Eric Swanepoel

The first part of the traditional story is right enough. Alan was ugly,
and he was a cygnet who grew up amongst the ducklings. Yes, his life
was hell, from the moment the little swine Neil first noticed the
difference. They teased him, they called him names. His throat became
red and sore from being clenched against crying, and from reciting,
'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt
me.'

Of course he was more than just "hurt". It is true, however, that there
was one duckling who was sympathetic: Camilla. Camilla was cute. When
the other ducklings had eventually grown tired of jeering, and they'd
wandered off under the leadership of Nasty Neil to peck a strayed frog
to death, leaving him crying in the corner of the pen, Camilla would
come up and lay a wingtip on his shoulder. 'There, there, Alan!' she'd
say, 'Some day things'll be better. I know that inside you're
beautiful.' That was the kindest, and also the cruellest sentence he
ever heard. He wanted to be beautiful on the outside also.

Eventually the others lost interest in him and left him alone in the
corner that had become his, where he could hide himself. Camilla hardly
visited him either. He didn't care. He would show them. Somehow. And
then the idea came to him. It was staring him in the face - literally.
The walls of the pen were made of cheap pine, which was fissuring along
the grain. One wall was painted red, and the other blue. He could, if
he tried hard enough, pull off pieces of wood and stick them together,
to make a magnificent mask! He worked at night, in secret, while the
other birds slept. During the day he dozed off on top of his mask.
Those times he woke during the day he rather wished he hadn't, because
Camilla was spending a lot of time with Neil.

Things change gradually as one gets older. The friendships between some
become more than just friendships, if you know what I mean. And so it
was with Camilla and Neil. This didn't mean that Camilla felt any less
for Alan. Oh, no, of course not. But there were other urges, other
needs... And she had worked miracles with Neil, they all said. Yes,
Nasty Neil had seen the error of his ways, and Nice Neil had even
apologised for his juvenile self. Occasionally Camilla and Neil would
come across together to see how he was doing, a concerned and friendly
couple. And Alan hated them. But he wasn't that unhappy, because he had
a secret. And the secret was his glorious pan-technicolour
splendiferous dream mask. Which would show them all. He would be king,
and all the women would be his, and Camilla would be sorry, and he
could decide whether to forgive her or not. He would take a long time
to make this decision, in order to prolong her agony, the little
bitch.

The day came when he could no longer pretend to himself that his
creation wasn't perfect. In the chill dawn he wriggled into his
enormous cantilevered costume, for that is what his mask had become! He
stood in the far western corner, in order to catch the first rays of
sunlight from the east. And he stretched his neck out and honked.

It was Neil who emerged first. 'For chrissakes! Do you know what time
of the..' And he stopped and stared, in silence. Alan watched him, his
heart beating fiercely with pride and triumph. And then Neil's horrid
cackling laugh broke out, and he turned back into the roosting box.
'Hey, everyone, come and see this! You'll never guess what the little
turd has done now. It's a real hoot...!'

Fortunately a human hand descended from above, and hoisted him out of
the wreckage. The ducks scattered, still drunk with mirth and mob
frenzy. Alan's plumage was stained with a mixture of mud, tears and
paint, and ruffled where the painstakingly assembled frame had been
wrenched off. The human was saying, 'Oh, Christ, not another one!'
which Alan didn't understand because birds don't speak English, in
general.

When his sobs died away and his eyes cleared he became conscious of the
soft pressure of sympathetic wingtips and compassionate eyes. He
jumped, because the creatures who possessed these recognisable
anatomical features were so strange and varied! Some of them had bits
of paint and mud on them, like himself, some just had some bald patches
where new feathers were growing, and some of them seemed intact, but
they were of all shapes and sizes. 'We understand. It happened to us
also. We grew up in the wrong pens. You see there are ducks who were
placed with the turkeys, there's a turkey who was placed with ducks,
there's a chicken who grew up with the geese...'

And so Alan was initiated into the tribe of outcasts, who prided
themselves on liberty, egality and fraternity, and other such
philosophical imports from France, but not a love of foie gras (bien
s?r que non!) From their high and privileged pen on the hill, they
could look down on the more homogeneous groupings below, poor dullards
that they were. Up on the hill they discussed art and helped each other
with their projects. Together they built a huge tower from which to
hang their creations, ostensibly for the benefit and pleasure of the
whole farm, but in reality, although no-one admitted it, to raise two
fingers (OK, feathers!) to the various Neils and Camillas down below,
and perhaps, belatedly, to win the admiration of the odd Camilla or
two. Of course there were petty rivalries and misunderstandings, but in
general they got along just fine, even if they could never get no real
satisfaction.

Then one day, a human voice called out, 'Righty-ho, me boyos. It's
killing day at last!' Still being birds, they still didn't understand
English, but soon they found themselves roughly packed into small
crates never-you-mind-how, and bumping along what humans would call a
road, on what humans would call the back of a truck. Alan was lucky, as
his legs were not broken in the process. He could just see Neil's
loathed head on its scrawny neck projecting from a neighbouring cage.
His eyes were wide with fear. Good.

They had been shackled, and now they found themselves hanging upside
down by their painful legs, moving along a conveyance mechanism. There
was a trough of what looked like water at head level. Alan noticed that
those whose heads went into this hung apparently lifeless afterwards!
Well that wasn't for him, he'd pull his head up when he got there. Ha!
He could see Neil ahead of him, and Camilla just after Neil. Neil
retracted his head and... he was looking ahead with real terror on his
evil visage... And then Alan saw too - there was a rotating blade and
every bird that had been past was gushing blood from a massive neck
wound, some, the unchristened, were thrashing around. Camilla had seen
in time and was hanging limp, water dripping from her beautiful downy
peaceful head. Neil was frenzied, but it wasn't mob frenzy this
time.

It wasn't much compens...