The City Jungle Read online

  That was Vasta’s impression, too. She crouched in the tiny crack where she always sat. Yppa had never yet noticed the mouse nor had Vasta ever ventured to address Yppa.

  She was afraid of the mother orang’s hands, those terrible hands that looked so human. She trembled at the sight of those fingers that could grip so cleverly, and would certainly be able to reach into Vasta’s crack. But today her dark little beady eyes were fastened curiously on Yppa. Vasta’s cobwebby but rigid whiskers vibrated nervously as, at last, summoning all her courage, she finally asked Yppa a question. “Are you happy?”

  Yppa had heard apparently, as a slight twitch of her features showed. But she did not answer.

  Vasta waited a while. “I saw how you despaired,” she whispered. “And I felt so sorry, so terribly sorry for you.”

  The mother orang fixed her glance on the glass roof as she covered Tikki with her hands. She seemed to hear nothing.

  “I watched you so long,” the mouse warmed up to her subject. “So long. I know that I am as nothing compared to you, that a blow from your finger could crush me to death, but I felt such pity . . .” She stopped short, terrified.

  The inner wall had been pushed back noiselessly.

  Zato entered the cage. Huge, powerful, his manner was unfathomable and mysterious.

  Yppa did not move.

  Even Vasta, who was overpowered by curiosity, did not stir from her place.

  The inner door was opened still wider, disappeared in the wall. Once more the entire cage was open to view.

  With his arms Zato seized the bare branches of the strong dead tree and swung himself forward until he stood before Yppa. He looked at her. There may have been tenderness in his eyes and manner. Only he himself could know—though perhaps Yppa divined it too.

  She did not stir. But she lowered her glance.

  Zato sat down in front of her. Perfectly still. He remained in that position for an hour, two hours.

  It was too long for restless little Vasta, and she slipped away. She felt somewhat offended, for she had never been so snubbed in all her life.

  Zato sat for hours until Yppa gathered courage to look into her mate’s eyes. Then she was no longer afraid for Tikki or herself.

  They remained thus for a long time, facing each other, deaf to the keeper’s allurements, as indifferent to the proffered fruit and tidbits as if they had been blind.

  Zato picked up some of the straw that covered the floor and let the wisps slide between his fingers aimlessly.

  Yppa did the same, but only with one hand. The other held Tikki. He was asleep.

  At last, toward midday, when the house containing their cage was deserted, Zato picked up one of the bananas that had been tossed in and offered it to Yppa with a slow, almost solemn gesture.

  Slowly and solemnly Yppa accepted the luscious fruit.

  Then Tikki awoke and clambered up on his mother’s shoulder, awkward and childish. He turned his old man’s face toward Zato and immediately an expression of unbounded astonishment passed over it.

  Cautiously Zato reached for him. He took him from his mother who surrendered him quietly. Holding the thin little body reclining in his hands, Zato bent over it and fondled Tikki carefully, but with passionate devotion.

  In a few moments Zato got up, holding the little thing in one hand close to his face; with the other he seized a branch and in one enormous swing reached the farther, most distant corner of the cage.

  Yppa did not move but her constantly watchful glance followed every step and gesture Zato made.

  He sat in his corner turning Tikki round and round at arm’s length as one examines a piece of cloth.

  This game lasted a long time. Tikki, not understanding it at all, nevertheless seemed not to mind in the least and readily surrendered himself to his father’s hands, trusting Zato who again held him close to his face when Tikki stretched his little arms and tried to reach him.

  Of course Tikki grew restless after a while. He was hungry and wanted his mother. Zato would not let him go.

  Yppa noticed that the little one was hungry. She got up and went to him. Before she could reach him Zato sprang up and swung past her to the other corner of the cage.

  His action was perfectly gentle and he showed no sign of ill-temper or anger. But his manner bespoke absolute determination. He did not want to give Tikki back.

  For a little while Yppa did not disturb him. Then she approached again. At her very first step Zato changed his place, circled around Yppa and crouched as far away as possible in a corner.

  This was repeated several times. The gigantic orangu­tans kept circling restlessly around their cage, constantly eluding one another. Both perfectly serious, imperturbable, almost solemn.

  The afternoon visitors watched these proceedings with amusement and took them for a game of teasing.

  Once Tikki looked over Zato’s shoulder at Yppa and stretched out his thin little arms to her longingly. Zato covered the little one’s head with his soft, powerful hand, hid Tikki in his breast, against his neck and fled into another corner.

  Everybody laughed.

  “A family idyll,” they said.

  But it was no idyll.

  When by strategem they had succeeded in separating Zato from Yppa the night before the birth, he too had known what hours of pain lay before her. They were closely bound to one another in expectancy, ­anxiety, fear and hope. Suddenly Zato found himself alone and he was very much upset.

  Of one thing he was certain: Yppa had no part in it. One thing he sensed quite clearly, Yppa was just as much in the power of whatever force had brought them here and kept them captive as he.

  His spirit was so broken by what he had been through that he felt all resistance to be vain. He had become too timid and weakly to feel rage or anger. Gentle and submissive, he sat all day long alone and waited.

  From time to time he believed that all was lost, and that he would never see Yppa again. Then he was plunged in melancholy.

  But there were moments, too, when Tikki’s soft squeakings reached Zato’s listening ear. That encouraged him again and he waited more patiently.

  Patience, heroic endless patience never forsook the orangutans.

  At last they permitted Zato to enter the big cage again. He went from the small cage where he had been lured and driven and where he was isolated by a partition from Yppa, back into the large cage. The hole that had been closed so long was again opened. Zato immediately slipped through. But then there was that iron door that divided the big cage in two. Zato confronted it, trembling, tense, did not stir from the spot, staring incessantly at the coffee-brown iron surface. Then that pitiless obstacle too disappeared without a trace, and Zato saw Yppa, saw for the first time his son.

  Now he had seized him, now he had taken Tikki to himself, now he was filled with just one purpose—come what might, they would never again separate him from Tikki, never again. He would let no one hold Tikki but himself, he would not let him out of his arms for a ­single moment.

  Yppa finally gave up trying to reach Zato directly. She did not for a moment consider an open struggle with him. She knew that Zato was the stronger. Moreover her instinct told her that Tikki would be in ter­rible danger if she attempted to seize him by force.

  So she began to draw close to Zato very slowly, hardly perceptibly, as she thought. But Zato saw her. He always let her approach to within a certain distance and then by retreating showed her how futile it was.

  Yppa sat down and buried her face in her hands in desperation.

  “If only night would come! If only we were alone!” thought Zato.

  But they were not alone.

  Twilight settled slowly down and the visitors had to leave the orangutans’ house and the zoo.

  Nevertheless Zato and Yppa were still not alone.

  The keeper had noticed s
ome time before what was going on and had already summoned the curator. The two men were standing in front of the cage.

  “Be a nice fellow,” the curator coaxed, “be nice, eh? You’re such a nice fellow, aren’t you, and you love your little son so much, don’t you? Anybody can see how much you love him. But just remember that the little one can’t live on love. He’s hungry. He must go to his mother. Be a nice fellow. Let the baby go to his mother. . . .”

  The curator stopped and waited a little while before beginning again. He spoke a long time in a very tender voice.

  Zato’s distrust increased with every word that he heard but could not understand.

  He turned his back on the two men outside the cage, turned his face to the wall in a corner and waited.

  “If we could use a noose on the old fellow,” began the keeper.

  “Impossible!” the curator replied. “He’d injure the young one seriously if he didn’t kill him.” To the ­keeper’s questioning glance he replied, “Not intentionally, of course. Only in his first struggles, when he felt the noose, or by some accidental twist . . .”

  “If we could hold his hands . . .” the keeper began again.

  “Can’t be done.” The curator dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “It would be all right, if we were sure of succeeding at the first try. But who is going to ­guarantee me that?”

  He walked to the door. “Remove every bit of fruit from the cage and watch carefully while you’re doing it, but be quite calm about it, Andreas.”

  With that he left. Meanwhile Andreas cautiously removed the grapes, oranges and bananas from the straw with a long-handled shovel.

  When the curator again visited the orangutans’ house, Zato had turned around and sat, leaning against the bars, with Tikki clasped under his chin, apparently plunged in thought. Tikki dangled, completely exhausted and only half-conscious, from his father’s hands. Zato noticed everything. His drowsy appearance was mere simulation. Never had his distrust been so intently watchful as at that moment. But he was hungry and his stomach was caving in for lack of nourishment.

  The curator was carrying a bunch of fresh bananas.

  Without saying a word, he went up to the bars and handed Zato one of the yellow fruits. He knocked lightly on the iron bar with it and held up the banana.

  “Ah, why not eat it?” thought Zato. “Yes, eat it, then we’ll be left alone, and then . . .”

  He stretched out his arm and, seizing the banana, peeled it with his fingers and teeth. Devouring it with one gulp, he again stretched out his arm with a mute demand that meant “More!” He ate a second, a third.

  Suddenly there was no more strength in his arm, it dropped almost before he could raise it, as if it were paralyzed. Even the hand that held Tikki was relaxed and dropped down. Zato’s head sank upon his breast. His whole body slumped down, and slid from the wall against which it had been leaning. Zato lay outstretched in the straw, unconscious.

  “It’s worked,” whispered the curator, “and high time!”

  He indicated Tikki with his finger.

  Tikki had rolled inertly into the straw beside Zato and was hardly moving. He seemed feeble from hunger and half suffocated from Zato’s caresses.

  Yppa crept up at once, cautiously, anxiously, urged on by mother love. She picked Tikki up hesitantly, as if she were afraid that Zato might spring up and tear the little thing from her hands.

  As nothing happened, she sighed with relief and pressing the baby to her heart, fled.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A Tame Wolf and a Wild Wolf

  HALLO THE TAME WOLF HAD company. Talla, a strong young wolf, had arrived in the zoo, the gift of an important gentleman who could not be refused. They had caught Talla in a pit.

  She possessed very little experience as yet, but a rather wild and turbulent nature. When the hunters pulled her out of the hole she had resisted savagely. She came very close to being knifed or shot. But by chance the important gentleman happened to be present. The charming young wolf pleased him. “Take her alive!” he ordered.

  So alive she had remained.

  To lift her out of the pit they drove her into a narrow box. She gnawed its walls till the splinters flew. They kept her in a small iron cage in the rear-court of the castle. She received an abundance of scraps and the bones from slaughtered lambs and cattle. People would stand before her cage and try to talk amicably with her. Dogs would sniff around and blench back their hair on end along their spines, their lips lifted in a snarl. Talla let nothing disturb or mollify her. She remained consistently filled with rage and bitterness. Had not the bars of her cage been set so close together that she could do no more than force through the tip of her nose, she would gladly have sunk her teeth into every living thing that ventured into her vicinity. She snapped at the huntsmen who brought her food, she snapped at every dog that slunk by. Far back in her narrow cage she sat up on her haunches or lay stretched out, her head between her forepaws, or stood on all four feet, staring out. She saw the geese, chickens, and ducks, the turkeys and peacocks that strutted past, and Talla’s eyes sparkled. At night she labored furiously and tirelessly with her teeth at the floor, roof and bars of her cage, scratched with her claws, but everywhere encountered cold iron. Enraged, impatient, and consumed by a fever of desire, she would howl and howl. A hoarse, gruesome, menacing howl.

  Oh, to be free! Oh, the glorious, wonderful, free life in the forest! To drink in the cool breath of night! To slink through the thickets, snuffing marvelous scents, scents of young roe, scents of pheasants, of hares slumbering hidden among the lettuce. The spring and catch! The victim’s unconscious struggles! Then the intoxi­cating taste of warm blood, streaming, spurting from the twitching body. Oh, to be free! To slink home to your accustomed or your chosen bed, in the shadiest, deepest thicket as the sun rises and all the four-footed, all the honest feathered citizens of the forest awake from their slumbers. To lie down on dewy leaves and sleep while it grows warmer and warmer! Oh, the free untrammeled existence . . . never more. Never more?

  All this was in the howling of Talla in the night.

  She never did see the forest again. Even the scent of the forest that the wind sometimes wafted temptingly past Talla’s longing nostrils was never to be smelled again. But at least it had brought the assurance that the forest was still at hand, the hope of sometime escaping to its green thickets. Now that too was gone.

  One day Talla and her iron cage were loaded on a wagon and jolted over the long road to the station.

  Talla was to go away. The warmer it became the more the smell of the wolf annoyed the people on the estate. As the important gentleman did not want Talla killed he presented her to the zoological garden, and Talla journeyed to the big city.

  She saw nothing of the highroad, nothing of the railroad on which she made her journey. Her iron cage was boarded up so that she was in complete darkness.

  Talla could feel only the jolting and rattling of the moving train, which was strange to her. She heard the clattering of the wheels, the snorting and whistling of the locomotive, which terrified her. She breathed coal and oil gas which stupefied her to the point of nausea.

  For two nights and two days she lay cowering in a fever of weird and terrible fear. For the first time she was afraid. She suffered racking pains. She felt herself becoming weaker and weaker. For she would neither eat nor drink. Thirst parched her throat and lips. Hunger tore at her stomach. She assumed that profound and endless patience which lulls all wild animals in the presence of death or in captivity.

  Finally the moving, rattling and jolting ceased. Her cage was lifted, then dropped with a crash. She thought she would surely die. She trembled for she was rolling along more smoothly now in the midst of strange inexplicable noises. She was on her way from the depot through the streets of the city but she did not know that.

  The truck stopped. Once more Talla exp
erienced that horrible sensation of falling with the box and striking hard against the ground.

  Then they removed the boards from the bars. It was bright daylight. Talla saw the sunshine, saw green trees and breathed air that seemed to her cool and refreshing.

  She did not move, did not dare to get up. Her state of drowsy dull drunkenness left her very slowly. But they did not give her any time. Iron poles prodded her, driving her out of her narrow prison into the big light wolves’ cage.

  Behind her the door rattled shut.

  There stood Talla, her tail between her legs, her legs themselves trembling and swaying, her head sunk low. Her eyes blinked as if she had been suddenly awakened after a long, deep slumber. Her parched and painful nostrils sucked in strangely mingled scents that completely bewildered her.

  Hallo, the tame wolf who lived here, approached her curiously. But Talla’s appearance, her peculiar threatening growls, her miserable condition perplexed Hallo. He stopped a few paces off, wagging his tail a little by way of greeting.

  Talla took no notice of him.

  After a while she dragged herself, tottering, to the water-trough and drank it dry. Then, ravenously hungry, she seized some food, shook herself, dropped down on the ground, and lying sprawled out on her flank, at once fell into a deep sleep.

  When she woke up a day and a night had passed. A new day was dawning.

  Talla drank again, and ate the remains of the meal that Hallo had left. He was sitting on his haunches in the open sleeping quarters, watching Talla joyfully. His wagging tail said, “Good morning, I am glad to see you.”

  Talla did not answer.

  He sought to approach her. She lifted her lips in a snarl. “Let me alone!”

  Then she looked about. Where was she? What chance was there of escaping? Why was she here? For how long? What would happen to her?

  She paced along the semi-circular front of the cage.