The City Jungle (14 page)

They scented and spied her out at once.

“She's sitting there again!” purred Solb, the elder of the pair, puffing his hot breath at her.

“Yes, I saw her!” growled Fasso, the smaller, snarling at her.

Only the wall protected Vasta, and her knowledge that in the crack of the wall she was safe. The two panthers drummed, scratched, beat against the wood in their effort to catch the little mouse. Had they ever reached Vasta she would have lain there in less than a second, a tiny, unrecognizable scrap of bloody flesh. The panthers' sharp claws beating against the smooth-painted wall sounded like the fall of hail.

Vasta contentedly polished her pointed nose, but she did so partly to quiet her nerves which began to jump at the sight of the panthers.

Presently Solb gave up the attack and Fasso immediately followed his example.

They began to run about their narrow cage. They were dancing, if one observed them closely, with noiseless, marvelously light steps and sinuous movements of their bodies. It looked as if they really had no bones, as if their limbs were made of silk floss, of black velvet, of firm but elastic rubber. They ran one after the other, executed a figure, and came together again. They executed many changing figures while their black and mobile bodies responded to a silent music full of deep harmonies, full of untamable wildness which could never be softened and of dangerous surging primal power, which continually thrilled them, to whose perpetual ecstasy they must surrender themselves, and which was perpetually renewed in their surrender. It was a dance of impatience, a dance of despair. It was the dance of the captives.

In a piping voice Vasta imparted her news.

The panthers sprang into the air, weaving back upon themselves, weaving one about the other. They would not let Vasta go on.

“What do we care about the orang?” snarled Solb.

“What do we care about Zato?” growled Fasso.

“How long must this last? How long?” howled Solb.

Fasso reared and hurled himself against the bars, growling. “It must end any moment, any moment. . . .”

Solb rolled on the floor. “We will be free!” he muttered, “Free! Free!”

“We must be free! Must be free!” howled Fasso.

“We are waiting! Waiting! Waiting!” cried Solb.

They had been captured separately about a year before. They were brought together on the ship and had been in the zoo only three months. They refused to believe that their present state was in any way unalterable or final.

“We are waiting! We are waiting!” They kept growling, snarling, whining confidently or furiously, hopefully or desperately.

Vasta stole away. No success in that quarter.

The panthers continued their dance.

Then Vasta heard loud and piteous howls. She had stopped under a board and was wondering where she should go next, to whom she should impart her news, when she heard these cries. Vasta knew that voice and also that cry of pain. It was her friend, the gentle, friendly wolf, the only creature among all those in the zoo whom she had ever been able to approach without fear. He cried so that her blood froze, howled so horribly that her heart stood still. Vasta was terrified at the thought of what might be happening in that cage, the mere idea made her shudder. But she was unable to withstand the alarming appeal of that voice. Sympathy, excitement, curiosity urged her on. She ran without stopping to think, as if in the grip of a dream, disregarding all caution. She flitted over open gravel paths where people were walking, ran along the ledge and climbing up, gazed down into the cage with beating heart.

The gentle wolf, Hallo, was lying on the ground while Talla, the wild female, was taking out her fury on him. With wildly waving feet, Hallo was striving to ward her off, trying to escape her cruel fangs. A thin trickle of blood was running from his body over the concrete.

Talla was trying to catch Hallo by the throat, and Hallo was desperately twisting away in pain and fear.

“What did I ever do to you?” he howled.

“You must die!” growled Talla.

“Let me go!” cried Hallo.

“When you are dead, you slave, you traitor!” snarled Talla.

“Help! He-e-elp!” howled Hallo.

“Coward!” she yelped while her teeth flashed as they snapped together. But she had bitten nothing but air.

Horrified, bewildered, and terribly excited, Vasta stared down at the whirling knot of wolves, deafened by their howls and growls.

Suddenly a big jet of water swished into the cage, caught Talla and hurled her away from her victim. It took away her breath.

“Again!” called the curator to a keeper. “Don't take the hose off her for a minute!”

Once more the jet of water caught Talla's flank, and playing over her body, reached her head, struck her face. Pinned by the column of gushing water, Talla was nearly suffocated. Beside herself with terror, paralyzed by the force of the water, shuddering with cold, she turned tail. She ran the length of the cage, pursued everywhere by the hose.

Hallo meanwhile skulked lamely into the sleeping compartment.

They had set a box over the open door of the cage, and when Talla, totally exhausted at last, rushed in, the curator cried, “Enough!” In a twinkling the jet of water vanished. Talla crouched in the box, feeling with relief that she was saved. She had forgotten her rage.

They closed the box and carried Talla away.

“The poor little fellow,” said the curator, “he's no match for her! We'll put her with the strong Russian wolf. He'll take good care of her.”

Hallo licked his wounds, feeling that he too was saved.

“She was unlivable,” he told Vasta. “I'm delighted that she's gone! She would have murdered me! She certainly would! And why? I haven't the slightest idea. I was friendly to her.”

“Yes,” Vasta threw in, “you're always friendly.”

“Am I not?” whimpered Hallo. “But she—she's mean! She wouldn't let me out in the cage at all. I had to stay in here and never go near her. That was impossible. With the best will in the world, it was impossible. See what she did to me. . . .”

It was a long time before Vasta took leave of Hallo. Now she had a second piece of news. But it was not to be the last.

When she got to the fox (she didn't know exactly why she should rush right off to her enemy), the cage was empty.

She sniffed cautiously around the bars. A strange scent reached her nostrils. Vasta chanced it and ran by fits and starts right across the perilous open space, watchful and ready to flee at any moment. But the strange scent drew her on.

There was not a sound from the artificial lair. Only silence, utter silence.

Vasta trembled and ran a little bit further, and peered in.

The fox was lying stiff and cold. His face was pressed close against the wall. It looked peaceful.

Vasta the mouse hurried away.

Now she had three interesting bits of news.

Chapter Twenty

“Which Do You Like Better?”

E
VENING WAS FALLING. ELIZA WAS putting Peter the chimpanzee to sleep and Karl was standing beside her, glowering down.

“Yes, my friend,” Eliza continued, “you don't fool me one little bit. It's a disgrace the way you treat those poor bears!”

Karl laughed scornfully. “A disgrace! Very well, let it be a disgrace!”

“It certainly is,” Eliza insisted. She gave her hand to Peter who played gently with her fingers as he fell asleep. “That's what it is, a disgrace! I know what I'm talking about!”

“Well, then, why don't you call it a crime and be done with it!” said Karl bitterly. He knew he was in the wrong and it made him the more obstinate.

“Well, since you say so yourself,” Eliza retorted, “it is a crime!”

“Eliza!”

“Ssh!” she admonished. “Quiet, Peter is trying to sleep.”

“Oh, what do I care about Peter?”

“You and your ‘what do I cares'!” she interrupted angrily. “That's what you say about the bears, too!”

“The bears! Dirty, tricky, mean beasts, those bears!”

“Indeed!” Eliza was becoming more exasperated. “And you don't think at all about the fact that they're prisoners. It never occurs to you that they're mean because you hurt them!”

“Of course,” he growled, “of course! It's all my fault! And those scoundrels, those dirty rascals, they're not to blame at all! They're just little baa-lambs, I suppose!”

“Nobody supposes that bears are baa-lambs,” said Eliza in a voice that suddenly grew very soft. “But stop to think, Karl! Nobody is doing you any injustice. . . .”

“Oh no?” Karl laughed bitterly. “I suppose the way you're treating me is no injustice, then?”

“I can't be nice to you,” said Eliza earnestly, “I can't when you . . .” Her eyes were brimming with tears.

“When I beat those beasts!” Karl finished up for her. He was beside himself. He seized her arm and shook her. “Which do you like better, those beasts or me?”

“Let me go,” begged Eliza.

“Which do you like better?” Karl shouted.

“Let me go,” repeated Eliza. “And take care that the curator doesn't find out how you . . .”

“The curator,” Karl sneered, “the curator can go chase himself! I'm asking you now and I want an answer! Do you hear? An answer!”

At that moment Peter sat up. He was disturbed and could not sleep. He started to put his arm around ­Eliza's shoulder, to protect her and also to protect himself.

But Karl seized him and threw him back furiously on the bed. “Leave us alone!” he shouted. “Leave us alone, you damned ape!”

Peter somersaulted and lay dumbfounded, rolling his big melancholy clever eyes.

Eliza stood between them. “Go!” she commanded. As Karl hesitated she cried again, “Go! That's my answer!”

There was such decision in her voice that Karl turned on his heel and went out, slamming the door.

Chapter Twenty-One

Night Chorus

P
ITCH BLACK NIGHT SPREAD OVER the zoological garden. The tumult of the sleepless city reached it only as a distant confused rumbling. Its electric lights throbbed as a pale glow against the sky a-glitter with a thousand stars.

In the zoo arose the sound of voices.

Voices from Africa and Asia, from the polar ice and the jungles of India, from the grassy plains of ­Tanganyika and the primeval forests of Borneo.

They were all gathered here, and all cried, whimpered and raged with longing for their homes.

Lions groaned and tigers moaned as if their breasts would burst.

Elephants trumpeted like thunder.

Polar bears roared and the brown bears roared furiously with them.

Wolves howled in long-drawn plaints.

Hyenas burst out in shrill laughter.

Monkeys screeched.

All cried the same thing. How long must we remain captive? What have we done that we should suffer so horribly? Why are we here? Why?

Sudden silence.

In the darkness of the zoo lights are moving, lights like stars that have fallen from some fabulous heaven and are wandering about here on earth.

But these were no stars. There was no fabulous heaven in the zoo. Perhaps there is none anywhere—or only in the hearts of the children of men when very small and innocent.

The flashing lights gleamed always in pairs. Two by two, close together.

Anyone who knew the zoo would have recognized that these were the eyes of the captives, gleaming from the darkness of their cages as if ablaze with expectation and impatient longing.

There were big eyes that flashed like precious magic amber; others that shimmered a weird emerald green; others whose gleam was shot with sparks of red, blue and gold. And there were little eyes that were like rockets just before they flare out, and others that glowed as red as boiling hot blood.

All seemed to hover suspended, free and motionless, in the night air. Two by two they hung suspended, close to the ground, or at varying levels above the earth. But all signified one thing—life, expectation, longing.

For several moments the captives were silent as if awaiting the response to their frantic outcries, their wild plaints, their impatient demands.

The burning eyes stared into the darkness of the night and into the darkness of fate.

Then a single howl arose, and others joined it, groaning. Others whined or roared their fervent pleas. Once more all were united, friend and foe, weak and strong, all were alike in impotence, in desperation.

Their chorus of lamentation did not reach the ears of people enjoying themselves or sleeping the sleep of the just.

The chorus of the captives mounted to the stars.

But the stars twinkled and gleamed and glittered and remained mute.