Page 50 - Fables volume 2

“I have no questions, Your Honor—none that the district attorney
hasn’t already asked.”
“Then that completes your case?” The prosecutor nodded. “Then
present your final argument to the jury.”
“Langurs and capuchins of the jury: you have heard the refusal of
these witnesses to give this court of law a report of what was
happening right in front of them. I submit to you three possibilities
for their actions, all of them leading to the same conclusion. First,
they may have religious or ethical beliefs preventing them from
propagating evil by retailing it. Second, they may be willfully ignorant
bystanders who take no social responsibility and therefore do not or
cannot recognize a crime. Third, they may themselves be criminals,
adherents of the ‘code of silence,’ and thus would always protect a
fellow miscreant. My office has attempted to determine which of
these types we are dealing with: unfortunately, these monkeys have
travelled together in several countries. They worked for an organ
grinder in Sicily, then begged at a Buddhist shrine in Japan; following
that they came here to the United States and led an undisciplined life
in a private zoo. Consequently they were exposed to all three
motivations—moral, immoral and amoral; but regardless of which of
those impulses to denial were operative on the night of May
sixteenth, the stimulus is the same: they witnessed a breach of the
law. Thus, on the basis of this circumstantial but logical evidence, I
ask you to bring in a verdict of guilty.”
“Counsel for the defense?”
The crafty old lawyer approached the jury box dramatically.
“My fellow simians, I have listened with interest to the eloquent
sophistries of my distinguished colleague. They would make a fine
story in a detective novel for lemurs and very slow lorises.” A quickly
repressed titter from juror number five, on whom the counsel for the
defense had set his sights early on. The prosecutor could not help
baring his teeth. “Indeed, the proclivities for prevarication among us
primates are vast in number and subtle in variation. By focusing on
those diverting possibilities the prosecutor hopes you will not notice
that he has no case: the fourth possibility, that the witnesses really
saw and heard, therefore can say, nothing about the events of May
sixteenth, is at least as salient—if not more so—than the other three.
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