The City Jungle (9 page)

“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

H
ALLO 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 experienced 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.

To be sure, there was more room to move in. Her limbs, which she had not used for months, were stiff and ached a little. Movement did them good. But there was not a tree, not a bush here, no hiding-place, no opportunity to be alone.

Oh, the joy of being alone! Of being alone and untrammeled! Oh, the undisturbed watching and hunting and seizing! The live prey trying to escape! Talla had forgotten no detail of her former happiness.

She rushed at the bars. Growing wilder she dashed along the semi-circle a dozen times or more, always close to the bars. She bit at the thick iron rods, she scratched at the floor, so unyielding that it did not even show the imprint of her sharp claws. Concrete.

She sat down, panting, her tongue lolling out.

Everything seemed to whirl about her. She wanted time to reflect. Had her misfortune become greater or less? A rage that was really despair blazed up within her. No! No!! No!! was the burden of her short hoarse whining yelps.

Then the young wolf spoke to her. “It's all in vain, my dear, all, all in vain!”

Talla whisked around. “What did you say?”

Hallo approached confidentially. “I've tried it,” he continued. “I tormented myself for many days and many nights. You can't escape. Impossible!” He was happy to be able at last to open his heart to someone. “We have to be patient and wait, my dear. That's all. Later perhaps. . . . Perhaps, some opportunity will come . . . sometime . . . perhaps. . . . But who knows,” he asked, after a pause, in another tone of voice, “who knows what would happen to us if we did get out? Do you know what it's like out there? No? Well, I know, and I tell you, it's worse than it is in here. . . .”

Talla had got to her feet and walked up to Hallo. He wagged his tail amicably and advanced to meet her. “It's out there that danger really begins. . . .”

Talla pricked up her ears. Her tail began to wag gently. Danger enticed her, lured her. In here there was only torment. But Talla was thinking of the dangers of the forest. And Hallo was thinking of the mysterious incomprehensible dangers of a great city.

“We are too far away,” he said, “much too far away! How could we ever find our way home?”

Talla was standing beside him. She snuffed him. For a few seconds only. It was as if she were listening with a marvelously acute sense of hearing.

Hallo stood, all unsuspecting, wagging his tail with joy, and went on speaking.

Then she sprang at him.

The hair bristled along her spine, her lips drew back in an angry snarl, her eyes blazed with fury.

“Coward!” she cried. “Dog! Dog!”

Hallo could not resist the fury of her attack. ­Startled out of his wits, he fell over and rolled on the floor.

“Where would
you
ever find a home?” he heard Talla in a furious whisper above him. “Where, I say, you traitor, you disgrace to the name of wolf!”

“Let me alone,” pleaded Hallo. “Please, let me alone! Oh! Oh!”

He cried piteously, for Talla's teeth were sinking into his shoulder. “What did I do to you?” he whined before she could seize him a second time. “I don't understand you!”

“You don't understand me?” cried Talla threateningly and snapped at him, but a quick movement saved him this time from her murderous teeth. “You don't understand me?”

“No, I don't,” whimpered Hallo. “You've hurt me. . . .”

“Do you know the forest, you miserable creature?” Talla raged. She was beside herself. “Do you know what freedom is, you hideous beast? Freedom! Answer me or I'll kill you. Do you know what freedom is?”

“No,” howled Hallo, “no! What is freedom?”

Talla leaped at him again, seizing him by the throat. Hallo shrank away and left a tuft of hair in Talla's teeth. She followed him up furiously. “I can smell Him on you, our enemy, the murderous terror! He who tortures us! He with whom there can be no peace because He knows no peace and wants no peace! He who steals the forest from us, who persecutes and destroys us! He whom we hate, whom we despise, whom we fear. Now do you understand me?”

Cautiously, slowly, Hallo crept a little farther away. “No,” he groaned.

Again Talla was standing over him. “I smell Him on you. He has made a dog of you, a common dog. . . .”

“He is good!” Hallo sprang up, crying passionately. “He is great and He loves me!”

But Talla sprang at him again with redoubled fury, and drove him into the little sleeping compartment. There she stopped.

“Dog!” she growled. “Don't dare come out! Do you hear?”

“Yes!” Hallo's voice trembled.

“You will die,” she growled, “if you dare come anywhere near me. I'll kill you!”

Creeping into the farthest corner of the sleeping compartment, Hallo lay flat on the floor, his nose pointed toward the semi-circle of the cage. Intently he watched his companion.

Another spectator had also watched this scene. Vasta the mouse.

She was a friend of gentle Hallo. From the very first day of his arrival she had been his confidante and comforter. She loved this kind, good-natured, playful companion, who was as gentle with all creatures as a dog. She liked to pass the time with Hallo and he never dreamed of harming her.

He always watched with friendly interest when she drank what was left of the milk, the few drops that sufficed to satisfy her.

She had observed and heard everything, and sat worried, watching her mistreated friend. At last she crept up close to him, and sitting beside his head, which he kept pressed to the floor in fear, she whispered in his ear, “I'll come back and see you later.”

Hallo did not venture a reply. He merely blinked understanding.

Vasta ran away. She was so accustomed to the cage that she ran right across the semi-circle. But Talla had no sooner spied Vasta than she sprang after her, striking out with her forepaw.

Only a desperate leap saved Vasta's life. She felt ­Talla's hot breath on her body. She nearly fainted with sudden fear of death. But she rushed on and escaped.

Outside in safety she had to stop in the middle of the white gravel path. Her pulse was throbbing even in her eyes. For a long time she was paralyzed with terror.