“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
HELLA 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 c
ubs 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.
Chapter Sixteen
The Other Side of the Cage
THE MONKEY HOUSE WAS A FLURRY and scurry of life.
During the morning, however, its many inmates lay or sat or crouched rather quietly together. The long-tailed monkeys marched or clambered or sprang about imperturbably, or crouched long and assiduously beside some baboon or lemur giving his fur a thorough examination.
The younger monkeys performed acrobatic tricks for their private satisfaction and were left for the most part undisturbed.
High up in his corner sat the patient budeng, uneasily scratching his head. As soon as he was left in peace, he grew fearful of what new torments were preparing for him. One thing he was sure of—there would be new torments. And he could never protect himself from them.
A diminutive macaco was running about as if the entire monkey house were his personal property. This was possible only in the early morning.
Now and again, of course, one of the old ones would snatch angrily at the half-grown monkey. But the little macaco would elude him with a burst of indignant scolding which was completely lost in the general silence.
Toward noon the first visitors arrived, men, women and children, young girls and young men. The monkeys crowded closer together. They were critical.
“They’re an inquisitive lot out there,” muttered a long-tailed monkey.
“But they have power, these creatures, power!” whistled a white-bearded monkey.
“They’re stupid,” growled a baboon, “painfully stupid!”
This aroused general and enthusiastic agreement. From right and left, above and below, came shouts of concurrence.
“What are they doing here? Every day the same thing, every single day. They stand out there every day.”
“But there are different ones every day.”
“All the same . . . stupid is stupid!”
“Silly!”
“Repulsive imbeciles!”
A little mandrill joined the discussion with an hysterical outburst. His cheeks, like cracks in fruit, were bright blue up to his angry eyes, his snout was rosy red. “Who says they have power?” he asked caustically. “Who? Can they leap?” he asked. “Can they climb to the top of this cage, eh?”
The others were jubilant.
“Has anybody ever seen them delousing each other?” demanded a macaco.
“Why, they must be alive with vermin,” tittered a kahau.
“They haven’t even got any fur,” shrieked his mate.
“They’re all naked, all naked,” mocked the kahau.
The tiny macaco pointed to the crowd outside. “You could peel all that off their bodies,” he laughed, “and you’d find them as naked and white as their faces—disgusting!”
“Disgusting!” came from the whole circle.
“They stand far below us, these savage, cruel beasts,” declared the baboon majestically, “far below us!”
“I roamed around for years with one of them,” said a tousled old monkey, coughing. “He covered me with exactly the same clothes he wore himself. What nonsense I had to perform! And how wickedly he beat me!” The monkey coughed.
“Why didn’t you bite him?” demanded the mandrill furiously.
“Oh, I bit him often, very often,” coughed the monkey, “but . . .”
“But,” the kahau completed the sentence, “they are stronger than we.”
“Nonsense,” cried several, “nonsense!”
“We have the strongest bodies there are,” said the baboon. “Just think of Yppa! They’ll never be like her, never can be! And they never dream how difficult it is for us accomplished and superior creatures to endure the sight of them. We are the epitome of all that is clever and beautiful, they of all that is unformed, malformed.”
“All of us together could soon put an end to them,” grunted the mandrill bitterly.
“They are spiteful in their feebleness,” mocked the white-beard. “They are afraid of us, mortally afraid, that is why they shut us up.”
“Yes, that is why.”
“Well said!”
“But they give us tidbits,” observed the budeng shyly.
Several of his companions immediately assaulted him, seized his top-knot, pinched and pulled him. He endured their mistreatment for a while, completely submissive and unresisting. Then he fled aloft, crouching, well thrashed, on a little board. Poor fellow, he had never tasted a single one of those tidbits for which he was so grateful.
“In my country,” cried the Indian monkey, “in my country we are the lords! We!”
“Do you hear?” they all shouted to the budeng.
“There,” cried the Indian monkey, “order holds sway! That naked hairless pack serves us! Us! We can do anything we like! Not one of those base creatures dares disturb us!”
The white-beard caught him by the shoulder. “Then how does it happen that you are here?”
The Indian monkey twitched away indignantly. “A thoroughly stupid question!”
The white-beard pummeled him with both ha
nds. “Simpleton!” he cried furiously. “Braggart! Big mouth!”
The Indian defended himself, snarling and showing his teeth. He rushed all through the cage, glancing over his shoulder to see if he were being pursued. As nothing happened, he sat down beside a long-tailed monkey and busied himself assiduously with its fur.
Meanwhile the white-beard had found a group crouching together and at once sat down among them to denounce the tales of the Indian monkey as lies.
They conversed together mincingly, resolving to take the Indian in hand and pull him to pieces. But another Indian stopped them. “It isn’t a lie,” he cried passionately, “it’s the truth!”
“What’s the truth?” the others screamed in his face. “What is?”
The Indian lemur was screeching with the fervor of conviction. “That the world is properly divided there and that we are the victors—that’s the truth! That we’re worshiped there as is our due! That not one of that naked rabble dares lay a finger on us!”
The white-beard caught him by the shoulder too. “How did the naked rabble come to bring you here then?”
“Those were rabble from another country,” answered the Indian in a rage.
As a mocking laugh rose from the circle, he gurgled, almost choking with fury, “They captured us, secretly, maliciously, treacherously!”
“Liar!” snarled the white-beard.
“Babbler! Boaster! Prattler!” sneered the others and attacked him.
But the Indian fought like a devil. The rest retreated.
The people outside stood like a thick living wall. They accompanied the dispute they were witnessing with yells, anxious shouts and bursts of jubilant childlike laughter.
“There’s the trouble-maker,” said an old man, pointing to the white-beard.
“All monkeys are quarrelsome,” observed a young man, knitting his brows fiercely.
“My God!” a plump and rotund woman was heard to say. “My God, just like human beings! We’re always fighting and quarreling too.”