The City Jungle (11 page)

Chapter Sixteen

The Other Side of the Cage

T
HE 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 hands. “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.”

“You
are perhaps,” growled a smart gentleman in whose eye glinted a monocle.

The rotund woman cast him an offended glance, and appealing to the crowd, was heard to murmur, “I won't stay where there's such a . . . He's probably an officer in civilians or a baron!”

“The idea,” the gentleman with the monocle growled after her, “of comparing us to monkeys!”

He awoke no echo. But an elderly spinster observed to herself, “The sight of monkeys always makes me sad.”

“Why?” a shy young man wanted to know.

“Well, they're always sick,” explained the spinster.

“Sick,” growled a gloomy athlete, “they're dying on their feet!”

The gentleman with the monocle laughed sarcastically. “They're the liveliest corpses I've ever seen!”

“Morituri!” said the shy young man.

But the monocle simply snapped, “Bosh!”

“Their resemblance to human beings is awful,” the spinster complained.

“Awful indeed!” agreed the gloomy athlete. Nobody knew in what sense he intended it.

“It is a resemblance that pains and shames,” the spinster averred.

“Quite right from your point of view,” said the monocle stridently with a smirk.

“They're so helpless,” declared the shy one, “so miserable and helpless and that makes their caricature of humans even more terrible. . . .”

“Yes, indeed!” The gentleman with the monocle made a face as if somebody had insulted him. “Yes, indeed, it is rather a cheeky joke on nature's part.”

He wheeled brusquely and departed.

The children uttered a shout of joy, for the little macaco was acting as if he had gone mad.

Somebody had given him a little round pocket ­mirror.

The tiny monkey saw his reflection in it and was tremendously astonished. He did not know that he was gazing at his own image. He peered over the rim of the mirror to find his new companion, then into the mirror again and was really beside himself. He did not understand it in the least. It was a miracle. He looked at himself, then groped behind the mirror. Again and again, astonished, delighted and perfectly daft.

Laughter from all sides. Children and grown-ups were amused by the droll spectacle. The monkeys became interested and crowded around the macaco. The baboons threw away their bananas, long-tailed monkeys dropped half-oranges, macacos, curl-tails, white-beards and Indian lemurs all cast aside cakes, fruit and sugar and swarmed down to the corner where the tiny creature was sitting.

At the first approach of his larger relatives he had darted aloft like a streak of lightning, and was now crouching high up under the roof, his quick uneasy glances seeking salvation.

Then a wild hunt began.

A baboon reached the little monkey and plunged down after him, swinging from tree to tree, from branch to branch. All the others followed in fierce pursuit.

Once more the tiny creature flew up to the top of the cage as if on wings, his pursuers close behind. Once more he succeeded in reaching the ground. But the ­others had divided their forces, he was surrounded. There was not a chance to escape.

He raised his thin arms in a gesture of fervent entreaty. The mirror flashed in his tiny hands.

He squeaked, whistled and screamed for mercy. He even ventured to defend himself. He bit, scratched and pummeled. He was heroic.

In vain. His courageous but impotent struggle lasted scarcely two seconds. They seized him by his four miserable little hands, and it looked as if he would be torn to pieces. They buffeted his head till sparks danced before his eyes.

A baboon wrenched away the mirror and vanished with it.

In a twinkling the others had forgotten the tiny monkey, and the vanquished one, beside himself with despair, slowly climbed down the bars, wailing and scolding.

They all attacked the baboon, but he was not so easy to master. He took up his position in the middle of the cage on the swinging perch where only a few could get at him. There he gazed into the mirror, and though his astonishment did not manifest itself in such wild gesticu­lations as had the little monkey's, he was so immersed in the mysterious object that he took no notice of five or six powerful monkeys that were sneaking up.

There was an immediate tussle. The baboon sought to flee and he too pressed the little round mirror to his heart. The band rushed madly up and down again. The smaller monkeys dismissed the business, and apparently forgetting all about it, applied themselves to other pleasures or disputes.

Meanwhile the mandrill had confronted the baboon, and succeeded in seizing the mirror from him without a struggle. The mandrill sat still directly in front of the bars. There was no expression at all in his dark eyes or on his colored face. But from his belligerently lifted lip it was plain to see how fascinated he was by his own image, and how intensely he was laboring to fathom the twinkling star in his hand.

Nobody in the cage dared take the prize away from him.

Presently the monkeys had forgotten all about the flat sparkling surface which they had desired so hotly, though now and again one of them in passing cast an envious glance at the mandrill.

Suddenly the mandrill dropped the mirror and clambered away somewhere, perhaps to ponder.

Three or four baboons immediately leaped for it, several long-tailed monkeys joined the chase, again all wanted to possess the toy. In the course of the ensuing scrimmage the mirror was broken to pieces. Their greedy hands smashed it to atoms. The miracle was ended. The mirror was no longer either a mystery or a puzzle. They seized the little splinters, sniffed them, tried to see if they were edible, then dropped them, each with the identical gesture of complete indifference.

One of the many trapdoors that opened into the winter cage was raised and closed with a loud crash. The age-old baboon Muffo appeared. His shaggy mane hung in heavy locks from his shoulders, back and breast. It enveloped him like the insignia of vast dignity. His features were grave and thoughtful and there was something monumental about them as if they had been cast in bronze. He was the ruler in the monkey house. He had no intimacies and permitted no insubordination. If his favor was won for an indefinite time, no one ever knew why. If it was lost again, with a sudden fall from grace, no one ever knew why. No one ventured to resist him, no one permitted himself any familiarities.