The City Jungle (4 page)

He started. “Why?”

“I'm not going dancing tonight!”

“What's the matter?” he asked fiercely. “What's the matter with tonight?”

“You know what's the matter,” she said.

“That's got nothing to do with you.” Karl was angry.

Eliza trembled. She bowed her head. “I feel miserable.”

Karl was pressing. “All the more reason for trying to enjoy yourself.”

But Eliza was firm. “I mustn't enjoy myself. I can't. I feel miserable.”

Chapter Five

The Curator

F
OR A LONG TIME THE CURATOR HAD cherished the plan of taking his vacation in the spring and wandering alone through the countryside and forest as he used to do. A student, connoisseur and reverent lover of nature, he was as accustomed to the wild solitudes of the north as of the tropics. Indeed he never really felt solitary. That stirring life which had surrounded him from his youth in the forests of his native country, the turbulent life in Central Africa, in the Indian jungles or in the wilds of other lands, that wonderful, mysterious, eventful life to which all his senses were perfectly attuned, prevented him from ever feeling lonely. Now that he was respon­sible for this zoological garden and its inhabitants, he felt at times a desire to wander in the nearby woods, to seek there something which, even though it was supervised, yet seemed to approach a primitive state. He loved to tramp over hill and dale and through the thickets, to stand in the wind, to watch, to listen, as he had in his roving years.

He was about to get into the automobile standing before the zoo gates. “Ah,” he thought, “freedom at last!”

But the word “freedom” recalled to his mind Dr. Wollet who always had such violent things to say against the imprisonment of wild animals. So much that was false, sentimental, wrong-headed, as the curator thought.

He hesitated, then muttering a distracted “Wait” to the chauffeur, turned back to the zoo. Hesitating, he passed through the wide gates, hastening his pace a little so that the keepers who greeted and stared at him would think that he was called back by some official duty. Then he began to saunter more slowly along the short, but very broad, elm-bordered walk. The elms were healthy. Their wide-spreading branches possessed that strength the mere sight of which lends repose and confidence.

Shrill screeches, harsh half-articulated shrieks, shattered in their effort to form speech, drew the curator's attention from the tree tops. Parrots. Beating their wings, the brilliant birds sat chained to perches, almost as tall as a man, among the trees. They climbed deliberately and slowly up their perches and down again. Stately macaws, dark blue, deep red, orange yellow, with powerful hooked beaks. White cockatoos, the crests of many of them touched with a very light yellow, like pure unalloyed gold. When they raised these crests, they looked like grotesque clowns, droll but impudent. All these birds had remarkable faces, and the play of their features was astonishingly mobile. They were full of character, these faces, stern, arch, irate, good-natured, alive with dangerous malice, amusing cunning, a childish delight in play, grudging and repellant pride. There was something, too, profoundly sage in all their faces, something that seemed to know all primal secrets, that made one eager to question them, and yet something that stilled every question on the lips.

Here and there a group of visitors, men, women and children, would stop before the parrots, timidly offering them sunflower seeds and fruit, flirting with much uncertainty and sudden terror with the brilliant-­colored or white birds whose natures, however alluring, remained strange and uncanny to them.

“They are tame,” thought the curator, “most of them are perfectly tame. Their chains could be taken off and they would be just as harmless as they are now.” The recollection of Dr. Wollet flashed through his mind again. Yes, he might be converted—some day. The curator reflected: “They would fly into the trees if they were set free, into the zoo. Not one would remain on its perch. And this avenue of parrots looks so pretty.” He reflected further: “They would frighten the public. Especially the children. There would be difficulties. No, no, things must remain as they are.”

A big, sky-blue macaw, with a dazzling yellow and green top-knot, struggled fiercely with its chain, then laid it carefully and suggestively around its neck. It looked like a clear case of suicide. Suddenly the macaw was dangling, seemed to be lost, if help did not arrive forthwith. Hoarse whistlings, choking gurgles. It rolled its eyes piteously. From all sides people came running, dashing, bounding. Horrified and painfully excited, they gathered around the poor bird, screaming, shouting and roaring for the keeper to come to the rescue. When the hubbub was loud enough, the hanging bird calmly fastened one claw in the chain. A jerk, a lightning-­like swing, and the macaw was sitting haughtily on its perch again, looking around contemptuously and screeching like a devil. The curator stood by and smiled. He knew that trick.

He left the shade of the avenue and walked into the bright sunshine where a carpet of flowers bloomed on the broad lawns. Pansies, daisies, forget-me-nots and wallflowers grew against a background of red carnations, running in luxuriant decorative lines across the velvety close-cropped grass. Lilacs, laburnums and jasmines bordered the gay expanse. In the distance a white monument rose from amongst the light and cheerful shrubbery: a little memorial erected to a chimpanzee that had lived here for six years and then died of consumption. Peter's predecessor. He had been called Peter, too. A thought passed through the curator's mind: “And some day the present Peter will die of consumption, too. Perhaps I'll have a monument erected to him. He's earned it, good little Peter has . . . And then there'll be another chimp . . . and another. . . . And in a hundred years there'll be fifteen or twenty stone apes around the garden here.” He dismissed the thought and went on.

On the lawns the blackbirds were walking with elegant measured steps, stopping now and again in their search for earthworms. In the shrubbery the finches were chirping, the titmice whispering, the sparrows noisily twittering. Fragrance arose from the ­flower-beds, from the lilac blossoms, from the freshly sprinkled grass and moist germinating earth. As if for the first time, the curator noticed the long terrace with its many tables, running in front of the restaurant. In the middle distance he saw the pavilion of the orchestra. Not a soul was in sight so early in the morning. The verandah tables were deserted, the music-stands on the pavilion were empty. The curator had little to do with this part of the zoological garden.

On the far side of the lawns were the animals, the zoological garden which had been entrusted to his care for so many years. But, following some compulsion which was not quite clear to him, he was traversing it as if he were a stranger. As far as the imprisoned animals were concerned his conscience was perfectly clear. But he was a sensitive and upright man, and had been somewhat alarmed by Dr. Wollet's remarks and the fate of the mysterious corpse in the elephant house. He was seeking some endorsement of his rule, some reassurance on the whole question of the administration of the zoo.

The high tops of the oaks, elms and plane-trees, the dark foliage of a purple beech towered above the fantastic architecture of the animal houses. A joyful happy life flitted and fluttered through their branches, twittering and singing, screaming and rejoicing in the thick sun-flecked foliage. With delight the curator watched the oriole streak like a winged golden flash from tree to tree. He listened to its melodious piping call. He saw the woodpecker's zigzag flight, heard it pounding on the bark, heard its exultant laugh. He heard a jay's angry rasping from the tree top, and the gentle twittering cry of blackbirds. Then, the furious swift scampering of squirrels passed in a flash of red through the branches.

The curator walked by the cage where the fox was having another of his insane fits, dashing around in a circle. “He's feeling spry,” thought the curator, bestowing a sidewise glance on the creature. “Poor fellow, he must have suffered dreadfully when he came to us with that injured foot. I didn't think he'd ever pull through. But now he's recovered completely.” He became ­indignant. “How stupid and how cruel to set such traps, how pitiless to plan such frightful tortures for poor foxes.” He went on, with an agreeable sense of feeling real sympathy for his charges.

He came to the big pond, and affectionately watched the gay population stirring here. Here the denizens of all the zones settled peaceably together. A flock of big gulls from the North Sea fluttered on their clipped wings, a mass of rosy red flamingoes from Africa strutted slowly and elegantly along the turf of the bank. Five or six ­pelicans, natives of Albania, crouched with philosophic composure at the edge of the water whose mirror-­like surface was furrowed by white swans, ­Chinese ducks, Indian moorhens, lesser divers, and sandpipers from the lagoons of the Adriatic. There were storks and marabus, looking like worried actors and apparently plunged in profound thought. From time to time wild geese ­waddled ponderously through the grasses, spreading their stumps of wings and uttering their characteristic
cronk,
untamed and unrestrained.

“It is just as if they were free,” thought the curator. “They really are free, and yet they are protected from all danger.”

He went on, turning his back on the thwarted flapping of all those clipped wings.

On an enclosed lawn, shaded by lofty chestnut trees, ten or twelve cranes were parading, looking like trim gentlemen in cutaways. They hurried to the wire as soon as they saw the curator. He could not resist their dumb appeals, and slipped into the cage. Then began a strange and solemnly grotesque dance. The curator called the time and the rhythm. The cranes danced around him, keeping step, turning when he turned, sometimes striking at one another with their long breaks. When the dancing man spread his arms, the cranes would flap their abbreviated wings.

“They are happy,” he said to himself when he left them, “there is no doubt about it.”

He passed the cages where the panther constantly hurled itself against the bars, where the tiger paced restlessly back and forth, where the lion lay in a deep sleep. He passed the bears' den and the monkey house whose hubbub did not detain him. “Delighted as usual,” he thought, with a glance at the crowd surrounding the big cage.

He wandered along the gravel walk between the enclosures where were exotic cattle and sheep, strange gigantic or delicate antelopes, tousled, peevish gnus and wild zebras. Many of these creatures, especially among the buffalos and water-bucks, had been born in the zoo, knew no other world beyond this bit of fenced earth and a full manger.

“Happy lives,” thought the curator, “happy sheltered lives.”

He stood before the cage containing the great birds of prey. The eagle was hulking on the highest tree; carrion-­kites, goshawks, sparrow-hawks, falcons and buzzards were flapping up and down with heavy wingbeats. Several owls, big and little hooters, were perched quietly in their stone nook. The curator recalled the time when eagles used to pass their days in cramped cages chained to low posts. He recalled with what longing the kingly birds would raise their beautiful eyes to the sky, how they would let their splendid wings droop in order to create that tiny illusion of motion, how their firm hard legs, their sharp talons became soft and ­feeble, and how the unhappy eagles dropped at last from the perches to which they could cling no longer, and lying on the ground, perished miserably.

“Pillar-saints,” the curator had called the unfortunate creatures, thus compelled to suffer all the tortures of captivity. He had obtained the big cage for the birds of prey, had not rested until it was built. Now he stood before it once more as in the first year after its erection, and was filled with the satisfaction of having constructed a paradise for his captives. Of course, the eagles, the goshawks, the falcons, all the princely fowls of the air, could merely flutter within its meshes. The proud flight, on motionless outspread wings, that marvelous circling high up in the region of the clouds, was denied them. In their wings, in their breasts, in their eyes the burning desire for unimpeded flight lived on. Their nostalgia, itself as boundless as space, was granted this miserable enclosure.

The curator turned away.

As he strode slowly between the cages, past the cage which the kangaroos crossed in five or six bounds, past the ostriches that could race around their yard in less than a minute, he made plans, air castles for the animals whom he loved, for whom he would do anything save give them their freedom. He stopped for a moment at the basin where the hippopotamus was standing stupidly in the water, and by the sea-elephant, though the monster never stirred. He watched the seals playing, slithering in sudden short serpentine streaks through the little pool they inhabited.

“Too little room,” he thought, “too little room everywhere.”

He recalled how he had had to fight for the appropriation for the big bird cage. “Funds,” he thought, “funds.” If only he had unlimited means at his disposal. What a zoological garden he would build! On a vast terrain that would include whole forests, wide meadows, rocks and big lakes. The gazelles, antelopes, gnus and zebras would live as they do on the open veldt. There would be thickets and clearings for the stags and other deer. The clever seals would swim into imaginary distances, and the beasts of prey, the lions, tigers and panthers, would be given every semblance of freedom.