Exs and Wei

Excs is a man who lives on a mountain in a part of the world which no other people visit. His people are clever but they are different from you and me in one way. They have never drawn maps and they have never made pictures.

One day an aeroplane crash-landed on their mountain.

Excs and his friend Wei were very brave. They heard the passenger and pilot shouting for help and they dragged them out through the smoke to safety. They knew what planes were because they had seen them in the sky from a distance, but they had never seen one with smoke coming out of it before.

The passenger was a young woman called Jemima. She kept pointing to some large boxes still in the plane and begging Excs and Wei to go back in to get them. She had such big tears in her eyes that they risked their lives to get them out for her. When the boxes were out Jemima gave a sigh of relief.

Excs wondered what was in the boxes but he was too polite to ask or to peep inside them when her back was turned.

Later Jemima opened the boxes. They were full of paintings which were on their way to an important exhibition and they were worth a lot of money.

Jemima was so grateful to be rescued that she decided to give Excs and Wei one of the biggest, most colourful paintings.

She chose one of some horses in a meadow with mountains in the background. She chose it because these people had horses and lived among mountains.

Excs took the picture. He turned it round, upside down and then passed it to Wei who tapped the wooden frame with a puzzled look on his face. He seemed to think it might be a secret box.

‘No,’ smiled Jemima. ‘It’s a picture. A beautiful view. Look.’

She held it a few metres away from the two friends, so they could see it from a distance.

Excs was confused. He looked hard at the picture and then at Jemima. He stepped close and touched the paint. Jemima wished she could speak his language. She couldn’t imagine why they were behaving so strangely. Anyone else would be over the moon to be given such a wonderful gift.

Suddenly she realised. Excs and Wei couldn’t ‘see’ the picture. They could only see the canvas, the paint and the wooden frame. They had no idea why Jemima was holding it so carefully, this frame with splashes of colour on it.

There was no art in their culture. Their eyes and brain had never been trained to ‘read’ a picture.

Jemima had no other present to give. Instead, Excs and Wei’s people gave Jemima and the pilot presents. Very useful ones. Two mountain ponies to carry the boxes of paintings and a guide to show them the way down from the mountain.