In a little crack where the floor of the cage joined the wall sat Vasta the mouse.
She had often sat in that crack, certain that she was not observed, yet trembling each time with excitement. After the spectacle that she had just witnessed, she trembled more excitedly than ever.
Of course, nature had designed her to be timid, to tremble and to flee. But here in the zoological garden where so many big animals lived in captivity, Vasta knew the pride of a free creature and was on a fairly familiar footing with all the imprisoned beasts. Though she never forgot that caution with which a mouse is born, she did in time get over her dreadful fear of all the huge forms among which she crept.
She learned that the imprisoned animals were either too good-tempered or too unhappy to harm a tiny mouse.
But these orangutans remained mysterious and uncanny. She was perpetually horrified by their resemblance to the most dangerous and most powerful creature the mouse knew.
Nevertheless, she often visited the orangs. She was drawn by curiosity and probably, too, by the partially eaten nuts that were always lying about. But principally she was lured on by the terror she felt whenever she gazed at the orangutans.
Never could she make up her mind to reveal herself. And she always slipped away with the blissful shuddery feeling of having escaped some horrible fate.
That day she remained longer than usual. She was so spellbound by the event she had witnessed that she never once thought how safely she could have hunted for nuts.
Her sharp nose twitched violently, her majestic whiskers quivered, her whole body was trembling when at last she ran away.
Chapter Two
“Come On Out, Boys!”
SOFT, AND FILLED WITH THE CHARM and grace of developing life in young bodies, Barri and Burri were playing together. They rejoiced in the age of four weeks which had been one uninterrupted round of pleasure, one huge entertainment.
Their mother, the lioness Hella, sat with her forepaws stretched out before her, her handsome head with its keen but tender expression raised to watch the antics of her children.
Quite suddenly, Barri lay down, as if tired—and he really may have been somewhat exhausted. He needed so little preparation to lie down, was so mobile, so elastic and loose in all his joints, that he seemed suddenly to have given way in a heap as he sprawled on the floor. He had a roguish expression and suppressed a smile.
Burri stumbled over his brother’s unexpected form, tumbling down as if he had no bones at all. He picked himself up somewhat confused, taking his brother’s calm repose as a new challenge. In any case, he had no intention of allowing a pause in the sport. He trotted up to Barri and cuffed his ear.
Barri parried from where he lay, a quick stroke that caught his assailant on the leg. Burri jumped on him. It was a hop-skip-jump which met a response of childish playfulness that was like a silent exultation. But Burri came instantly prancing back again and tapped his playmate’s flank with a paw which was much too big for him and which it would quite evidently take him some time to grow up to.
Barri rolled over on his back, waving all four feet in the air. The little fellow was laughing fit to burst, laughing not merely with his face but with his whole body.
Burri stood over him. The two began to tussle. Lying on his back, Barri resisted, pressing his hind-legs against Burri, and finally succeeded in taking a fall out of him though for a moment his brother had looked like the victor. Then they rolled into a ball together, kicking and snapping. This was followed by gentle growls and snarls.
It was all fun and, as children, it delighted them to play in this fashion. But in the depths of their natures, not quite awakened as yet, an untamable wildness vibrated and was tested in these playful struggles.
Mother Hella watched them with majestic satisfaction. She laughed.
There was another spectator, too—Vasta the mouse. She sat by the partition that separated their pen from the outer cage. When she saw the lioness laugh, she plucked up courage.
“Splendid children!” she piped.
Hella pricked up her ears and turned her head. “You here again?”
“I just ran in for a moment,” said Vasta.
“Any news?” asked the lioness.
“My dear!” She sat up on her hind-legs, holding her neat forepaws under her little pointed nose. “Something quite remarkable.”
She was about to begin her story when Burri and Barri, who heard her, came trotting over, their heads cocked, bent on mischief, side by side. They crouched, began to slink, prepared to spring. Here was a new plaything.
But Vasta was disinclined to be a plaything for young lions. She flashed through the crack by which she had come. Burri and Barri pawed clumsily at the spot where the mouse had been. Eagerly they sniffed at the crack of Vasta’s refuge. Heads down, they scratched impatiently at the bottom of the wall, whimpering, “Come out! Come on out!”
Vasta, however, declined the invitation. But she was unable to withstand the urgency of their pleadings, and presently piped politely, “I’m not here!”
Barri and Burri rushed to their mother. “She won’t come out,” Barri whispered in her ear.
Burri, who had squatted down on his hams, addressed himself to his mother with a very serious mien. “She says she’s not there!”
Thereupon Barri began to tug at his mother’s ear and neck while Burri at once applied himself to Hella’s full and beautiful jowl.
The lioness uttered deep, gurgling sounds of inward satisfaction and great tenderness. She interspersed them with growls of apparent crossness.
The cubs did not believe her for a moment. In fact they were delighted. This flirting with the fringes of maternal fury was the best fun in the world. They pressed upon their mother more furiously, sprang at her throat, shoved their big soft paws against her nose, her face, fastened their teeth in her neck, and were perfectly wild with joy because they imagined that they were stronger than she. Of course, she knew that this strength of theirs was pure fancy, but that did not diminish her joy.
With a roar of delight the lioness rolled over on one side. The tassel of her tail beat the floor softly. There was a wonderful supple grace in her powerful body as, yielding to the cubs’ impudence, she rolled now on her back, now on her flank.
Visitors to the zoological garden had crowded to the cage to watch this family scene. They chattered, and shouted various expressions of approval to the lioness. One youth beat his cane against the bars of the cage. It made a shrill metallic sound. Hella did not pay the slightest attention. She was accustomed to being stared at and was contemptuously indifferent. Only immediately after Burri’s and Barri’s appearance in the world had she been somewhat sensitive. But the curator, who knew the nervousness of animals that have just become mothers, had the front of her cage boarded up. Hella was alone with her children for a whole week, free from all disturbance.
Now she was perfectly unembarrassed in her delight in her cubs. Sometimes she flung them off, or pressed them to the floor, or drew them lovingly into her embrace or let herself be overpowered by Burri and Barri in sport.
But now, while he was still at a distance, she heard the keeper’s footstep.
She was expecting him, and at the first sign of his approach, interrupted the fun to sit erect, quieting the children, who tottered about confused until they perceived that their mother was aroused and waiting. Imitating her, they sat upright with old shrewd faces, but quite perplexed.
The lioness bared her teeth, drawing back her jowls and uttering a thin, piping sound. Suddenly she snapped her beautiful mouth shut and repeated the sound. Her tail kept twitching and waving. It was a sign of impatience, irritation. She rose and paced up and down the cage. At the bars she turned, tossing her head up, then down, in an eloquent gesture of powerlessness. She turned in an incredibly small space, slinking with all her restrained and terrible strength visib
le in her limbs, close to the bars, from one side of the cage to the other. Back again and back again and back again. Ten times, twenty times.
Finally she stopped in one corner as if rooted there, staring out intently, always in one direction, lashing her flanks softly with her constantly waving tail. Her eyes were phosphorescent. Then her rigidly shut expression distorted itself into a furious snarl, which grew louder and louder.
The keeper was standing in front of the cage.
“There, there,” he called to Hella, “don’t get worked up. I’ll bring them back to you. You know I will. I’m not stealing them. Don’t get upset, old girl.”
It did not calm Hella in the least. She struck at the man with her terrible paw so that all the bars reverberated.
Meanwhile the keeper, with the help of his prod, had raised the small door to the empty adjoining cage and was enticing the cubs.
Barri slunk over.
The lioness bounded into the air, clutching at him with her paws, and growling, “Stay here!”
But the confused and faithless cub did not listen.
Burri was wavering. The keeper thrust the long ironshod pole into Hella’s cage, trying to poke him out. “Come on, boy,” he kept urging, “come along! We’ll go out in the fields and get some sun!”
Hella attacked the pole in a white rage. The keeper laughed. “You don’t mean that, mother. You don’t begrudge the little fellows their fun. You’ll get them back again.”
Hella bit at the iron that was prodding Burri, threw the whole weight of her body against it and forced it to the floor.
The keeper was patient. “Come on,” he said to her, “always the same old antic.”
Burri meanwhile had crept beside his brother. The keeper withdrew the pole, closing the little low door with it. Opening the empty cage in which the cubs were now squatting, he climbed in and gathered them up in his arms.
The lioness stood with lowered head, panting. A shudder passed over her spine and flanks. When she saw her cubs in human hands a pitiable howl broke from her chest.
The keeper turned to her. “Be easy, be easy, I’ll bring them back to you. My word of honor.”
A peal of laughter rose from the crowd of spectators.
The lioness lay down again and was silent. But her mouth hung open, her tongue lolled, and it was plain to see from her heaving flanks how upset and anxious she was. But she betrayed it by no other sign. She lay motionless and quiet as the keeper climbed out into freedom with Burri and Barri. Nor did she stir as he set the cubs on the floor and walked off with them. All the spectators followed.
Vasta emerged from her crack.
“I’m surprised,” she said meekly, “really surprised at the way you take on every time.”
There began one of those conversations which are constantly occurring between creature and creature. Humans heed only the sounds that animals make. Hence their observations remain superficial. Man pays no attention at all to those expressions, gestures, motions that go to make up the language of the beasts, so that he almost never understands them, although one would think that, after thousands of years, he might have learned something about them, even with his atrophied instincts. That is why the tiny brothers by whom we are surrounded remain speechless as far as man is concerned, and why we think it a considerable advance if he even begins to regard them as brothers. In no other way is it possible to explain, if not to understand, how human beings can perpetrate such tortures, such incredible, inhuman tortures, upon living creatures—spiritual as well as physical sufferings and tragedies that deprive life of its joy and torment the dreams of all who are conscious of them.
Hella the lioness rested her beautiful head on her outstretched forepaws. Her big, golden eyes gazed, full of gentle trouble, into space. “I don’t know what He is up to,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” Vasta was eager to comfort her. “He takes them out in the fields. There are lots of His kind there, and they all look and laugh and are very nice to the little ones.”
“I don’t know what He is up to,” Hella repeated.
“He’ll bring them back again. He always brings them back.”
The lioness smiled. “They’ll smell of fresh grass.”
“Then why are you so worried?”
The sparkle died in Hella’s eye. “I had children once before.”
“You don’t say! I didn’t know anything about that,” Vasta sputtered.
“You weren’t here then. Since then the trees have twice been green and bare again. I was so young in those days.”
“Ah!” Vasta drew a little nearer. “I wasn’t even in the world in those days.”
“Little mouse,” said Hella, turning her head, “you see much more than I do, much more, but you know much less.”
Vasta polished her nose briskly and said nothing.
“I had three charming children,” Hella continued, “remarkably handsome children. I loved them desperately. Yes, I love them even today; I can’t forget them.”
“Where are they?” interrupted Vasta.
“I don’t know,” growled the lioness. “He took them to the meadow every day, just as He does Burri and Barri. One day He returned alone without the children! It was terrible!”
Both were silent for a while. Hella was crying.
“What can He have done with them?” Vasta pondered.
“No one knows,” whispered Hella. “Three splendid children—gone! Three at one swoop! One never knows, never will know, what He is up to. Now I am afraid again, afraid for Burri and Barri.” She got up and began to pace back and forth behind the bars.
Vasta wanted to change the subject. “Yppa has a son,” she said.
The lioness halted. “At last she’ll be happy.”
“It really looks that way. She’s sitting there very quiet, hugging the little thing. She’s quite taken with it.”
“That’s good,” said Hella. “That was what she needed. That will console the poor thing for her lost freedom.” Hella rose, her whole body trembling softly. “Freedom . . .” She grew thoughtful. “I never knew what it is to be free. In spite of all that you and others tell me, I really believe that there isn’t any other world but this garden. I know nothing but this space shut off by those black bars and that other smaller room, inside, where I stay when it’s cold. And I’m content. Sometimes I feel very good, sometimes I’m even happy and cheerful when I’m lying in the warm sun, and especially when I’m with Pono or some other member of the family. Or when I’m with the children.”
She stopped and stretched herself.
“But there are other times,” she began again resolutely, “when I feel a terrible pang of longing, I don’t know what for!” She drew nearer to Vasta and whispered, “You belong outside there, little one, tell me the truth—what is freedom?”
Vasta was embarrassed, she cowered and stammered: “I can’t answer that. Freedom is freedom, that’s all, and it may not be such a great piece of good fortune as Yppa and some of the rest of you think. One is constantly in danger. One has to be forever on guard.”
“You are clever, little one.” Hella nodded. “Very clever. I don’t want your freedom.”
“I’m going,” said Vasta.
“Come again soon,” purred the lioness, “come and bring me the latest news. I’m always glad to listen to you.”
“If I live,” promised Vasta, and whisked away.
A little later the lioness sprang to the bars, standing as motionless as a statue as she swung her tail in circles for joy. Burri and Barri were returning, surrounded by a dense crowd of people.
But Hella saw only her cubs. She was blissfully happy.
Chapter Three
An Elephant, a Goat and a Dead Boy
THE POOR LAD IS DREADFULLY torn up!”
In the elephant house, which had been closed to th
e public, the curator, his two assistants and several keepers were gathered about a dead boy. Even Eliza, who took care of the chimpanzees, had stolen in.
The body, which was hanging between the bars crushed to a pulp, was that of a person who had not quite outgrown his boyhood. It was well-dressed, though they could scarcely tell that, for the clothes were fluttering in tatters from the limbs.
All of them were laboring to disengage the lifeless form from the bars between which it was wedged as if in powerful pincers. They succeeded after much vexation and rough handling that made all of them shudder. Now it was lying on the stone pavement, as the curator, bending over it, muttered in a tone of mingled pity, horror and anger, “The poor lad is dreadfully torn up!”
Meanwhile the elephant stood innocently by, as if nothing had happened, or as if, in any case, he were perfectly guiltless. As usual when he was in a good humor he rocked his huge gray body from side to side with a uniform motion. With a nonchalance that seemed shameless to the group of men, he would take little handfuls of hay from his manger, draw them through his soft rubbery mouth, then drop them on the floor.
The curator started up and approached the cage. He was perfectly pale, shocked and angry at the same time.
“I suppose, curator,” said one of the assistants, indicating Pardinos, “that we’ll have to shoot that fellow.”
The curator waved aside the remark.
“Yes,” the other assistant rallied to the support of his colleague. “Remember that he’s already seriously injured one keeper—Joseph.”
“Silence!” cried the curator in a rage. “Silence! Joseph indeed! It was his own fault! He tormented the elephant! Unfortunately I found it out too late or I’d have discharged him in time! Shoot the elephant! Because he was violent ten years ago and has behaved himself nobly ever since!”
He glanced around, then pointed to an old keeper. “Well, Philip,” he commanded sharply, “why so tongue-tied? Go ahead and talk! You know what happened! Tell it!”