The City Jungle Page 8

  But his features, apparently so ancient and so candid, beamed with gratification.

  That day Peter had fetched his bicycle in the morning and with all the stormy, stubborn insistence of which he was capable on occasion, demanded to be taken riding. He knew to a second the time appointed for his outing but he felt a sudden desire to go at once. It was one of his whims, and Eliza found no good reason not to grant it. The sky was clear and blue, the air was motionless, the sun warm, almost hot. As the sparkling cascade of the sprinkler passed by, a fresh smell arose from the grass and flowers.

  Presently he removed his hand from Eliza’s shoulder, his feet pedaled faster, and he was off.

  Suddenly he stopped and sprang to the ground. Flinging the bicycle down carelessly, he hurried to a cage.

  Eliza walked faster.

  A stag had noticed the monkey riding a bicycle and had come bounding up in alarm to the wire fence. A big red stag whose huge dark-brown antlers were tipped with shiny white.

  Peter saw the menacing, onrushing stag. This unfamiliar sight made him desert his bicycle and forget everything else. His curiosity was at fever pitch. In a flash he had rushed to the cage.

  The stag too was curious, not to say suspicious.

  When Peter inserted his arm through the wire to stroke or to seize the stranger, the stag lowered his head with a sudden twist, and a hard blow from one of his antlers caught the chimpanzee’s limb.

  Peter quickly drew back. That hurt! For a second he was dumbfounded with pain and surprise. Then his anger blazed up.

  He crouched down, beat his knuckles on the ground, uttering his cry of rage—“Oeh! Oeh!”

  He seized the bars and scaled them in a twinkling, intending to swing himself over and take vengeance on his foe.

  But Eliza, dashing up, caught him by one leg, and ordered him down. Peter resisted a little, and argued with Eliza: “Oeh! Oeh!”

  As Eliza would not let go, Peter gave up and climbed down beside her. But he shouted abuse, blasphemous abuse, explaining how much he detested the stag, stating most explicitly how loathsome he considered him, how dreadfully he longed to be able to tear him into little pieces.

  The stag stood, threateningly immobile, on the other side of the wire. Majestically he tossed his proud head with its wide-spreading antlers.

  Eliza glanced now at him, now at Peter. She laughed. Laughing, she bent down to the little black fellow. As he was not wearing his uniform she could see the thin hair on his skin. “Peter, Peter!” She smiled at him, and stroked his forehead, head and neck to quiet him. She scratched him and slowly Peter grew more calm.

  Eliza searched her pocket, and discovering a few nuts, offered one to Peter. “Here—crack that!”

  In a twinkling the cracked nut was lying in her hand. She took out the kernel and offered it to the stag. “Eat it! There, there, that’s right!”

  The stag snuffed her extended hand suspiciously, hesitating, and his soft warm breath again brushed her hand. She laughed. “Eat it. That’s right. You’ll like it.”

  Presently the stag’s soft moist lips were munching the kernel.

  Then he tossed his head again. His big soft eyes asked very simply and eloquently—“Another!”

  Eliza made Peter crack another nut. He had watched her offering with curious intentness. Eliza laid the nut in Peter’s hand. He started to carry it to his mouth, but she held his wrist.

  “Be nice, Peter, and give it to the stag.”

  Peter wanted to eat the tasty morsel himself; he had not the slightest desire to do his enemy a favor. Eliza guided his hand toward the wire. At first Peter clenched his fingers around the nut.

  The stag saw both hands in front of him, the human hand and the monkey’s fist. He snuffed at them, wanted to butt them with his sidewise lowered head, but he considered, snuffed again, and as his silken, soft, warm lips brushed over Peter’s fingers, the chimpanzee opened his fist as if at a caress. The nut lay, a little the worse for wear, on the palm of his hand, and the delicate lips removed it.

  Peter was entranced. Quite like a child, his rage turned to joy, his thirst for vengeance to a grateful affection because his supposed enemy had accepted a gift from him.

  In the stormy emotion which now transported him, Peter seized the next few nuts that Eliza handed him, cracked them and offered them joyfully and impetuously.

  With a reserve that scarcely betrayed his desire the stag followed every motion that Peter and Eliza made. He stood majestic and almost helplessly timid, eager for the nut, yet still suspicious. He had raised his head with a somewhat equivocal dignity, ready at any moment for offense or defense, but at the same time inclined to accept the tasty tidbits.

  For the third time his warm blowy breath snuffed Peter’s hand, for the third time Peter felt the agreeable caress of those velvety lips, and gazed three times into the soft shimmering darkness of those glorious eyes.

  But when at last he pursed his lips splendidly for an answering kiss, the stag tossed his head wildly and started back a few steps into the enclosure. His gesture was that of haughty rejection and said—“Enough!” But Peter in his ravishment noticed nothing at all of this unfriendliness. He was making all preparations to clamber up the wire and swing himself over. All that he wanted now was to stay close to his new friend.

  Eliza stopped him. “Come, Peter,” she said. “Come. Be a good boy! That’s enough for today.”

  Obediently Peter picked up his bicycle and jumped on. As he rode away, he waved one hand to his comrade. It was a childish, careless gesture which, like all those he had learned from human beings, had made but an indistinct impression on Peter’s mind.

  The stag wheeled about, and walking very stiffly to the corner of his cage, stared after the departing figures. Who was that creature? Accompanied by a human beast, too! But his odor was not human, though otherwise quite strange. Perhaps a captive like himself, and yet free to wander around the zoo. Who was he?

  Chapter Eleven

  A Fool

  HOME AGAIN IN HIS GLASS HOUSE, Peter was overcome by that exhaustion to which at times he was prone.

  He rolled listlessly on the floor, and creeping limply to his bed, lay still. His face, his shrewd eyes exhibited a sorrow that was shocking.

  The stag, his ride, everything seemed forgotten. Eliza knew these attacks; they filled her with anxiety. She sat rather dejected after the failure of her efforts to interest Peter in some grapes or a piece of orange.

  Suddenly she started. An elderly gentleman was standing beside her, saying, “Perhaps you should give Peter a glass of red wine.”

  She rose. “How did you get in here? It is forbidden.”

  “Forbidden?” replied the stranger. “Pardon, I did not know that.”

  Eliza looked at him and she felt less afraid.

  The gentleman was dressed entirely in black, there was black crepe on his hat, and on his pale and kindly face a shadow of deep melancholy. Eliza could not recall where she had seen this face.

  “No, it is not allowed,” she said, but her voice was now mild and somewhat bewildered, “and I must ask you . . .” She hesitated.

  The stranger looked at her as if each of her words made him curious.

  She began again. “If . . . if everybody were allowed in here, just imagine . . .”

  “But my son visited little Peter so often,” said the gentleman. He was silent and seemed to be struggling with something that prevented him from speaking. Then Eliza realized that this was Rainer Ribber’s father.

  Tears came into her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She took her handkerchief and wiped them away, but fresh tears kept welling out.

  The gentleman went on speaking. “Rainer loved the little fellow so dearly. . . .”

  Eliza was sobbing aloud, crying into her pocket-­handkerchief. She could not utter a word.

  “He loved a
ll the creatures here in the zoo very dearly,” his father continued.

  Another silence.

  “He loved all creatures everywhere,” said his father with a sigh. “Not only the prisoners in here, but those that live outside in freedom.” He interrupted himself, repeating with a strange emphasis, “Freedom! But it was these poor captives that possessed his whole heart.”

  “Oh,” cried Eliza, “he was such a dear fellow.”

  “Even as a little boy,” Rainer’s father went on, talking to himself. “We had canaries, but he wouldn’t stand for it. Even as a little boy. The idea of keeping a poor little bird in a tiny cage! Rainer would be quite filled with despair when he saw it.” He sighed again. “Yes, yes, the child . . . the child. Perhaps he was extravagant in some ways, but I am no longer any judge, for he brought us up, brought up his own parents to feel as he did.”

  “He was such a nice, likeable lad,” said Eliza again, softly.

  “He found you, too, extraordinarily sympathetic, Miss Eliza.”

  Eliza dried her tears and even tried to smile. ­Rainer’s father knew her name. It was almost a kind of bond between them, she felt.

  He pointed to the chimpanzee who was asleep in his bed, his hands over his face. It looked as if Peter were pressing back some dull pain or heavy sorrow in order not to suffer unbearably.

  “He always pitied that poor little fellow so much. . . .”

  “Pitied him?” Eliza would not have contradicted for anything. “But nobody needs to pity Peter, he gets along very well. He’s happy.” She waxed enthusiastic.

  “Do you think so?” answered Rainer’s father. “You are devoted to him, nobody can deny that, and my son thought so much of you—but just look at the little creature now, does he look very happy?”

  Eliza glanced at him, and for a moment she was taken aback. “But Peter is asleep,” she objected. “You can’t really tell. . . .”

  “Perhaps you are right,” said Rainer’s father very slowly, “perhaps, but I am accustomed to accept my son’s judgment in such matters. And it seems to me that my son was right. You know, he always used to say that that little sleeper was as disturbing as a hopeless cry.”

  Then it occurred to Eliza that Rainer had visited the cage that last evening to see Peter asleep. She averted her head.

  Beside Peter’s bed, Rainer’s father was talking in a low voice. “What it is, I don’t know, but now I understand my son. I am very close to him now, very close. An animal like this reveals himself very clearly when he’s asleep. It is not as if Peter were grieving at being far from his tropical forest, without brothers or sisters, alone in an artificial existence. He has amusements, of course, he has everything possible. But everything possible is only a substitute and no substitute can ever make up to him for nature.”

  Eliza’s eyes flew open.

  “He can’t tell you what he lacks, poor speechless Peter,” Rainer’s father continued, turning to her. “He can’t explain it even to himself. But he feels that the most important thing of all is lacking. What I call—I heard it first from my son—the roots of his existence. The nourishing sources of his vital energies are lacking.”

  Eliza shrugged her shoulders. “Your son was a dear fellow, a very dear fellow, but he was always extravagant.”

  “You are right!” his father agreed. “You are right! The rest of us always call a soul like Rainer’s extravagant.” He began to soliloquize. “But everything noble, everything merciful, every liberating force was brought into the world by people who were extravagant just as you were extravagant, my Rainer! Where would the world be today were it not for the people we call extravagant? Can you deny,” he asked, touching her arm with a finger she barely felt, “that the premonition of an early death is hovering over this chimpanzee? Can you deny that this chimpanzee has submitted with perfect gentleness, with infinite patience, with a resignation of which few humans would have been capable?”

  “What do you mean? An early death? For Peter?”

  Rainer’s father became harsh. “You know just as well as everybody else that chimpanzees, like other captives, are subject to premature death.”

  “I’m doing everything,” Eliza protested in terror, “everything I can. . . .”

  “Nobody questions that,” interrupted Rainer’s father. “You make a real effort. Of course. So does the curator. So do many of the keepers. Of course they do. But first you capture all these creatures, these innocent unsuspecting helpless creatures. Then you make them suffer the torture of transportation. Then you subject them to the torture of being caged. And after all that, you begin to be kind to them.” He laughed, a short sharp laugh. “Oh, this garden, this garden . . .”

  Eliza stared at him bewilderedly. “Good heavens, you mean that this garden should not exist?”

  “Oh yes, this garden has to exist! Too many ­people demand it, declare that it is useful, instructive, a cultural necessity, a joy to young and old! Too many ­people maintain that! But not I, not I! As for me, I have not even dared say that there never will be any true culture until people no longer find joy in caged animals, there will be no true culture until people no longer think of this garden as a place of enjoyment, but as a place of horror. . . .”

  Eliza shrank back. The strange gentle old man, who really did not seem strange to her at all, Rainer’s father, seemed to be insane.

  He seemed, too, to read this feeling on her face. “No, Eliza,” he said, “I am not insane. I did not know the truth about this garden until I wandered through it with my son’s farewell letter and recalled his words, which are verified so terribly at every turn.”

  “A farewell letter?” Eliza trembled.

  Rainer’s father nodded silently.

  “Did he know then . . . ?” she asked, and began to tremble so violently that she had to support herself against the bars of the cage.

  Rainer’s father bowed his head and was silent for a long time. His head still bowed, he began to speak at last in an infinitely weary voice.

  “‘Man is tormented and torments the animals.’ That is what he wrote in his letter. I know it by heart, I’ve read it here so many times every day. Oh yes, the letter came, but it was all over by then. . . .” He could not go on.

  “Terrible,” murmured Eliza.

  “Yes indeed!” He raised his voice a little. “’Tis true ’tis terrible, and terrible ’tis true.” Then he added the incomprehensible word “Polonius.”

  “He also wrote: ‘Can I say as other men say—What do I care? No, it’s impossible!’ And he wrote: ‘I feel all the sufferings of God’s creatures, but all their sufferings are too much for me!’ Too much, poor boy, poor dear boy!” His father was weeping with quiet, strangely dry sobs, that shook his body and forced a kind of twittering whistle from his breast. But presently he recovered his composure. Simply, like a man who has no part in what he relates, though his face was ashen-gray, he continued. “‘If none of the beasts of prey will take me,’ he wrote, ‘and the beasts of prey are unhappy and broken, if none of them will take me, I will go to the elephant. He has a little pet that he protects, and can be made very angry. He is strong.’ Yes, those are his words. ‘I will give myself to him as a sacrifice, an atonement for everything, for all. . . .’”

  “No!” cried Eliza.

  “‘For everything, for all,’” repeated Rainer’s father. He laughed, a soft laugh. “A fool!” nodding emphatically as if in affirmation of his judgment. “Yes, indeed, a fool! A fool whom God has punished! Everybody will say so! That is why the letter must remain secret! Shh! Shh!” He laid his index finger on his pale thin lips. “I’d laugh myself,” he tittered, “even I, if he weren’t my son.” His titter twisted into a stifled sob. “My only son, who made me what I am. . . .”

  Without another word he departed.

  Chapter Twelve

  Father and Son

  THE EARLY MOR
NING SUN ILLUMINATED the orangutan’s house. The bright May sun. Strong, warm, bursting buds.

  Yppa sat holding Tikki, her baby, at her breast. The bright light of the sun penetrated to Yppa with diminished force through the panes in the glazed roof and walls.

  Inside it was warm and humid from the partially throttled steam. In this way an effort was made to imitate and find a substitute for the humidity of the jungle. But the empty room, fenced off by solid bars, did not in the least resemble the jungle, and in spite of its size, remained just a narrow cage. The sole effect of the moist air was to prevent Yppa and Tikki from being cold. Other­wise the air which was sealed in had nothing in common with the tropical warmth of their native forests.

  But the sun . . . Yes, Yppa recalled a piercing dazzling light, a vast fire which had meant sun to her in days long past. What was this feeble glimmer to her now?

  But Yppa no longer noticed the difference. Some sense of it remained in her nerves, pulsed in her blood, shrouded her whole existence. But this feeling itself was now so deeply shrouded that she hardly ever suffered because of it.

  She had no thought but for Tikki whom she was holding in her arms. She lived only for Tikki. She was happy that this permitted her to forget the feelings in her heart.

  From time to time she thought of Zato, her companion in this cage, her mate, Tikki’s father.

  He had disappeared during the night on which Tikki had been born.

  Yppa guessed that he was close at hand, for in the course of the days and nights she had occasionally caught Zato’s scent.

  She did not know what had happened to him, and worried about it now and again, but not for long. Her whole attention was centered on the little creature at her breast. But whenever she imagined the meeting between Zato and Tikki she trembled with fear.

  At present she was sitting in a careless posture, letting her glance rove dreamily here and there as the baby suckled. Always, when she could feel the little thing’s diminutive lips at her breast, she passed into this twilight state and was soothed to the point where she might be said to be happy.