The City Jungle (10 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Leashed

I
T WAS LATE AFTERNOON. THE ELEPHANT was returning from his walk through the zoo. He had been carrying children on his back, seizing them carefully with his trunk, and lifting them on.

At command he would bend his knee and wait patiently until grown-ups scaled his mountainous body. He had carried his keeper on his tusk, lifting him over his head and seating him on his neck.

But the colored saddle-cloth and tower had been unbuckled and he was permitted to leave the cage for a while and wander in the open.

The little white goat that never left his side accompanied him as usual on his tour of the garden and now stood expectantly in the cage beside him.

He received all sorts of gifts from the throngs of people who crowded about the cage. He always gave them all to the little goat, eating only what she spurned.

Close by stood the zoo's two giraffes, silent, patient, slightly sneering.

“You and your goat,” whispered Babina, one of the giraffes, to the elephant.

And Zoprinana, the other one, added, “Positively ridiculous.”

“Be quiet,” trumpeted the elephant. “I like her.”

Zoprinana turned her lofty little head. “That's just it. That's just what makes it so ridiculous.”

Babina did not trouble to turn her head as she said, “She's no person for you. Such a stupid little thing.”

“She's certainly not stupid,” the elephant objected. He stroked the goat's back lovingly. “No, she's not stupid. Talk to her.”

But the goat bleated, “I don't want to talk to you, you two long-necked trouble-makers. Besides, why should I worry my head about you? And I don't worry my head about you! Leave us in peace!”

“I am absolutely alone,” the elephant said as if by way of deprecatory explanation. “Of course, it's difficult for you to understand that. You are happy, you are together.”

“Happy?” sneered Babina.

“My dear, we're dying of boredom,” sighed Zoprinana.

“Perishing of homesickness,” Babina complained.

“Don't talk about homesickness,” the elephant cut her short. “Don't talk about it. Let's not speak of it. I'll go mad if anybody reminds me of it.”

He seized sand and small gravel and flung it at the people outside the cage. Everybody laughed.

“You have a splendid time of it,” said Babina, “you're permitted to go out, to move. Who knows all the places you go to?”

“Yes,” continued Zoprinana, “who knows all that you get to see? With us it's ten paces—twenty all around—and you're done!”

Babina grew passionate. “Consider this tiny cage. Impossible to run, impossible to move as we are accustomed to moving. Our legs are becoming stiff, our joints are hardening. Horrible, the way we are compelled to live here.”

“Stunted in mind and body. What is left for us?” cried Zoprinana angrily.

Babina drew herself up. She looked noble, exotic, haughty. But her helpless height, her impotent strength looked somehow silly. Yet she did not sound altogether silly as she said, “What disgusting creatures these must be that come and gape at us every day. What malicious creatures, too, to shut us up this way.”

“What sort of mysterious power do they have? You are strong, Pardinos, and yet they captured you. It was not so long ago that you killed one of those hateful creatures. Why don't you kill them all?”

“You could free yourself and all of us,” Babina urged, “why don't you do it?”

“There are lions, tigers and panthers here,” cried Zoprinana, “we know it although we cannot see them. But we can smell their scent and hear them. You aren't the only one who would be strong enough. . . .”

The elephant smiled. “You two have nothing to fear from me—but lions, tigers and panthers? Would you really like them? Now you are in safety. . . .”

“That is why we hesitated,” cried Babina.

“Ho, how brave we are!” laughed the elephant.

“I don't know whether we are exactly brave,” replied Zoprinana.

“Bravery is no concern of ours,” said Babina, turning her beautiful neck with noble arrogance.

“So there you are,” smiled the elephant.

Babina lowered her long neck horizontally in her bitterness. “Do you suppose that those miserable creatures have cooped us up here in order to protect us? Do you really believe that?”

“Bravery or cowardice—it's all one,” murmured Zoprinana and drew herself up very erect. “It's all one, I tell you! We would rather have danger and be free. We long to flee when we scent the lion and the leopard in the distance. To flee, our hearts pounding, and conquer our foes by swiftness, then be calm again and watchful. To save ourselves anew every hour, to enjoy our rescued trembling existences tenfold with every hour—that is life, that is what it means to live!”

“Run . . . run . . . run!” Babina was stamping. “That is what it means to live!”

“But to have to stand still here,” said Zoprinana quietly, “to have to smell the scent of the lion, to hear him and know that it means nothing—what a terrible fate!”

“Well,” said the elephant, rocking back and forth, “we have to compromise. I just as much as the rest of you. . . .”

“You?” Zoprinana regarded him from on high. “You have a good time of it.”

“I?” The elephant raised his trunk. “Because they lead me through the garden? What is that little strip of path for limbs like mine? I would like to wander for days and days. With the herd, with my brothers and sisters. I'd like to test my strength on the trees I uprooted, on the tough vines I tore down.” He drew a deep gurgling breath. “Do you really suppose that it gives me any pleasure to be led for a brief hour through this horrible garden? Past all those captives pining behind their bars? But I've compromised, otherwise I'd go mad.”

“You could fell them with one blow, those crippled creatures with their two legs,” breathed the immobile Zoprinana in a tone that was at once provocative and envious.

“I can do nothing!” said the elephant with melancholy decision. “Nothing! They are mightier than we. I don't know why. I don't know by what means. But I do know that resistance is useless.”

A blackbird was sitting, a tiny black speck, on the beams that divided one cage from the other. Her ­little tail seesawed back and forth, her shrewd little eyes shone like black pearls, her head peeped elegantly now over one side, now over the other.

“Wrong,” she twittered, “wrong! Those two-legged boobies have no power over me. Not the slightest! They don't mean a thing. There's not a thing they can do to me! Not a thing!”

She spread her wings and flew with a twittering cry to the nearest tree. The giraffes followed her with melancholy eyes.

“Silly creature,” muttered the elephant. “Who pays any attention to her kind?”

At a little distance the gnu was trampling about madly in his yard. His head was lowered and he was kicking with his hindlegs, shaking his sparse mane, bucking in one place so that first his head and shoulders, then his loins and haunches were up in the air. Presently he would stand tense and still, waiting, as if plunged in profound thought.

“Alone!” the gnu would grumble. “Alone! And yet not alone! And yet alone! But the herd is coming! It will be here any time now! Why do they keep me waiting? I've waited so long! So long! But there's a lion!” The gnu would crouch, leap up, trampling, lowering his head, beating the earth like a drum with his hindlegs. “One lion? Two lions!”

Then he would stop again, triumphant. “At last I've driven them off! One must defend one's self!”

The gnu gave himself up completely to his daydreams. In this fashion he passed the time.

An axis-deer sauntered by. Small, compact, with very slender legs. A figure of most elegant plumpness. He sauntered to and fro almost solemnly.

When one of the visitors held out a crumb of white bread to him, he would approach the bars reluctantly, as if suspicious or with nicely moderated hauteur, would sniff the crumb, munch it or disdain it according to his humor.

“Why the excitement?” he asked, shaking his head and glancing at the gnu. “Why the excitement? It really doesn't help. Really we get along here quite splendidly.”

“Don't we, though?” brayed the gnu. “We wait, we trample a lion or two that attacks us.”

“Stop,” laughed the axis-deer, “nobody's ever attacked you.” He stood with his slender legs spread while his fat cylindrical body quaked with suppressed laughter.

“I agree with you entirely,” shouted the gnu, disregarding the remark, “I am quite of your opinion. Everything is splendid here.”

A slender gazelle raised its delicate spear-shaped antlers. “One never is attacked here,” she chimed in, “and that's a wonderfully comforting feeling.”

The axis-deer nodded politely.

At a little distance in the enclosure next to the gazelle lived a roebuck and two does. “What are you discussing?” he asked, coming to the fence.

“We are discussing,” said the gazelle, “what a good time we have of it here.”

“Yes,” he said, “it's very nice.”

“And so marvelously secure,” she continued, “no attacks. . . .”

“Yes,” he agreed heartily, “and no hunting. . . .”

“Hunting?” asked the gazelle. “What is that?”

The roebuck was astonished. “You don't know what hunting is? Say, you,” he called to the axis-deer, “don't you know what hunting is either?”

“No, I don't know either,” replied the axis-deer, “is it very bad?”

“Dreadful!” The roebuck grew serious. “When He comes into the forest . . . you don't hear Him, you don't smell Him, you don't see Him. Suddenly he throws his fire-hand at you. It sounds like thunder and leaves you lying in your blood.”

“A sensational story,” said the gazelle mildly, “but unfortunately not true.”

“I don't believe a word you say,” declared the axis-deer emphatically.

“Indeed!” The roebuck was offended. “And how did you get here, pray?”

“Not through any fire-hand,” replied the gazelle.

“Or any thunderclaps,” added the axis-deer.

“And you weren't hunted?”

“I fell into a pit,” the gazelle explained, “and He took me out. I remember to this day how I trembled and how frightened I was! But He was friendly to me, and stroked me and gave me something to eat. But the wooden box I was shut in so long was small.”

“Yes,” declared the axis-deer, “I found the wooden box quite dreadful, too. But otherwise, if what you say is true, why don't they throw their fire-hands around here? Where's the thunder? He would have an easy time of it here.”

“How did
you
get into the wooden box then?” asked the roebuck.

“Oh,” said the axis-deer, “I had a misfortune. To this day I don't know how it happened. I became entangled in a net in some vegetation I had never seen before. It must have grown up over night, for there it was suddenly in the middle of the jungle, right on the track that I used every day, and had passed over but a few hours previous. A horrible tangling growth of some kind. I got in deeper and deeper. I could never have freed myself, and I was becoming famished. But He freed me.”

The roebuck said nothing for a while. “I'm telling you the truth,” he said at last. “I've been through hunts many, many times.”

“Did you ever lie in your own blood?” the gazelle interrupted.

“No,” replied the roebuck, “but my father did. Before my very eyes, and my mother's. I saw Him pick up my dead father and carry him away. Afterwards I often heard His thunder crash, and have seen my cousins and uncles fall as if they had been struck by lightning.”

“Incredible!” murmured the gazelle.

“I was a child at the time,” the roebuck continued, “quite small. That winter the snow was so deep and I was so weak from hunger that I lay down because I could go no farther. Then He found me.”

“And . . .” prompted the gazelle.

“And . . .” inquired the axis-deer.

“And?” brayed the gnu.

“And He saved me,” the roebuck concluded.

“If you are not lying to us,” said the axis-deer, “I must say, He is more remarkable than I thought.”

“At one time bent on murder, at another on kindness,” said the gazelle.

“Quite a puzzle,” grumbled the gnu.

“Yes, yes,” the roebuck ended, “I know more of Him than the rest of you, but I shall never understand Him.”

Chapter Fifteen

Separation

H
ELLA THE HANDSOME LIONESS paced her cage restlessly. Burri and Barri did not know why their mother was so agitated. Barri sprang playfully at her neck and fastened himself to her chin. Hella shook herself slightly as she walked, and Barri fell to the floor, rolling to one side without his mother's taking any notice of him.

Burri was singularly skillful at lying down just in Hella's path, throwing himself at the last moment right under her feet. She had to stop to avoid stepping on him. This maneuver was always successful. After it the lioness would usually lie down for a moment to surrender herself with a beautiful playful caress to her children's graceful maulings.

But today she avoided Burri's body with a sinuous twist. Or she sprang over him, as gently, as easily, as if her big powerful body weighed nothing at all.

Then, restless, nervous, and worried, she continued her pacing.

She thought: “What shall I do, if it happens again? Suppose they take them from me!” Her heart gave a terrible start. “Burri and Barri, my darlings! Never have I forgotten the others they stole from me, never! But Burri and Barri are such a comfort to me now, a comfort and a joy. Oh what joy! What a tremendous joy!

“But suppose the two children become my sorrow, my despair? How could I ever survive it? Would it not be better if I accustomed myself to do without them now, while they are still with me?”

Troubled, she paced along the outer bars, then along the side to the rear-wall where there was a closed iron door, then along the other side and back to the outer bars. Incessantly, always the same round. Burri and Barri had given up trying to draw their mother into their play.

They paid no further attention to her melancholy mood. She was there, was with them. That was sufficient.

In the middle of the cage they wrestled together, rolling about, kicking their feet, or leaped up, tumbling playfully with their teeth fastened in one another on the floor.

They were charming.

Hella occasionally cast quick glances at them. Quick, loving, delighted glances.

“But I still have them!” the lioness thought with a sudden flood of joy. “I still have them! Perhaps I ought to—but, no, they'll surely let me keep them!”

She lay down on the floor. Instantly Burri and Barri were crawling over her flank, pushing their small velvety paws into her eyes and ears. They tumbled on their backs, puffing their hot panting breath, laughingly, jubilantly, in Hella's face, so that her whiskers quivered.

Hella purred and gurgled with delight.

Before she was aware of it the keeper was standing at the outer bars. “Heh, there, heh!” he shouted, rapping on the iron.

Furiously the lioness started up, sprang at him in a single bound, and stationing herself directly behind the bars, struck out with her claws at this disturber of her peace.

The man stepped back quickly, frightened. “You beast!” he muttered. “She nearly caught me!”

The lioness remained pressed against the bars, growling, never taking her eyes from the man.

He walked past her to see into the cage. Like lightning, she wheeled so that he again found himself confronting her snarling gaping jaws, her enraged and glaring eyes.

He tried to quiet her. “There, there old girl,” he said gently, “why so peevish today? What's ailing you? Be nice. We've always been good friends.”

He was bothered a little by the visitors who had come running up at the lioness' peculiar short threatening roars.

But his words did not help him at all. The lioness watched every move he made, becoming wilder and more enraged; she growled incessantly.

This was not the hour at which the cubs were taken for a walk. Since early morning the lioness had sensed trouble; she was nervous, upset, and here was the keeper at this unexpected hour.

When he thrust the long iron-shod pole into the cage, Hella struck it down with her paws, fastened her teeth in the cold hard metal and held it fast.

“Stop, be good, old girl,” the man tried to mollify her, “stop that!” He was conscious of a guilty feeling. He liked the splendid creature and had possessed her confidence even after her cubs were born and Hella would permit no one near her. She had been docile with him as she lay suckling her young ones which were still blind. For she was grateful to the keeper for boarding up her cage to protect her and her litter from curious eyes. She would purr contentedly when he came to her. And the man had been awed and touched by Hella's motherhood.

Not until he began to entice Burri and Barri away from her day after day, and keep them for hours at a time, did Hella's friendship gradually wane. The memory of her former experience revived in her. She began to recollect more vividly how she had twice lost her cubs, never to see them again, and her trust in this keeper, too, vanished.

She held down the pole with her teeth and paws. But she lost her grip on the smooth pole as the man pulled hard.

The keeper turned to the spectators with an attempt at a smile. “I really don't know what's the matter with her,” he declared. “Animals have their moods just like people. Especially the ladies, how they take on! A man always gets the dirty end of the stick. I guess you gentle­men know that, don't you?”

There was some scattered laughter, some of it genu­ine, some of it mere concurrence. Above it could be heard the furious roaring, snarling and growling of the desperate mother.

“This lady seems to have got out the wrong side of her bed,” observed the keeper, “or she's angry at the children.”

But he did not feel quite right about it.

He kept trying to open the trapdoor in the partition so that Burri and Barri could run out into the empty adjoining cage. The result was a real contest between him and the lioness.

Then the man lost his temper too. He struck her belly a powerful blow with the pole. She drew back with a howl of pain. He utilized his advantage to open the trapdoor a little way.

But now his difficulties really began.

Burri and Barri who usually obeyed so willingly would not come out. Frightened and admonished by their mother's fury, they were crouching together in the farthest corner of the cage.

The keeper had to pry them out and at the same time ward off the lioness. There was no help for it. He struck her again with the iron-shod pole, this time on the nose.

Her repeated howls of pain had a remarkable effect.

Burri and Barri slunk side by side along the wall and slipped with sudden haste through the door.

When the keeper fetched them from the adjoining cage they were gentle and submissive. But hardly had he taken two steps than they began to scratch and bite with childish rage, so that he was forced to put them down on the grass.

The cubs' sudden action had taken the lioness by surprise. She wanted to hurl herself in front of the hole in the wall, but Burri and Barri were already in the next cage, and the trapdoor suddenly rattled down.

The keeper took no further notice of Hella. She heard him talking to the cubs in the next cage.

She never saw her children again.

The struggle was over and useless. As always.

Hella roared, and it sounded like a vast moan. It sounded as if savage and angry grief were tearing the heart out of her body.

Again and again, this sound of furious sorrow. But no one paid any attention to her. The people ran after the keeper. They crowded around him so that the lioness could no longer see her cubs. Let her roar, complain and moan. No one found it interesting.

Hella sat down on the floor, her forepaws stretched out, her head raised, gazing in the direction in which Burri and Barri had vanished.

She was silent.

Her sides were heaving as she panted feverishly; her tongue hung out.

Hella waited. Hour after hour. Waited till she was nearly exhausted. Waited until her senses were dulled. From time to time, painful longing, or a blaze of anger or false hope would alternate in her brain.

Burri and Barri would come back . . . they would never come back . . . they would play beside her again . . . they would never play beside her again . . . never again. She could not survive it. She could not.

She waited. Resigning herself to a strange, all-powerful, mysterious will, a pitiless fate.

Hella waited. Tamed by the consciousness of utter helplessness, racked by insanely contradictory guesses, and by a dark, remote, inexplicable feeling of guilt that stirred softly somewhere in the depths of her tormented heart.

When the time had passed at which Burri and Barri usually came home, Hella rose and paced about in a circle. Howls of agonized bitter pleading, appealing to something somewhere, appealing to the Unknown. Her agitation increased from minute to minute. Then she stopped pacing, she closed her circle. She sprang against the bars, she assaulted the walls. She howled, she whimpered. She was mad.

Darkness settled down. The blackbird had sung its evening song on the topmost branch of the tree and the highest ridge of the roof, and was still.

The zoo was deserted. It grew dark.

Hella attacked and attacked. Now here, now there. Her throat was bone dry, a hot parched streak ran from her jaws, over the roof of her mouth, to her lips. Her nose too was hot and dry.

“They are gone,” said a sad threadlike voice suddenly.

For a moment Hella stood still, listening.

“They are gone,” the voice repeated. It was Vasta. “I saw them,” said Vasta, “out by the big house where He lives, the lord of the zoo.”

Hella stood listening. A shudder passed over her body and her legs trembled.

“They crated them in clean white wood. Yes, both of them together. And a truck took them away. Yes, it's a terrible pity about the dear boys, a terrible pity.”

Without a sound the lioness slumped down.