by Felix Salten
See them? Oh yes, they would all be seen, that would be taken care of, people would see them as they lived in their natural habitat. And the people would be perfectly safe from them. Some feeble start at such things had been made, at Stellingen, for example. But the curator was dreaming on a fantastic scale.
The idea that wild creatures should not be captured, that the children of the tropics should never be carried into the raw climate of northern lands, that human beings have perpetrated too much cruelty on animals in the course of thousands of years and that it must one day cease—that idea did not occur to the curator.
It would have impugned his own reason for existing. And the curator was very far from doing that.
Chapter Six
Mino Goes Mad
MINO THE FOX HAD GONE quite mad again.
He dashed around his little low cage like a fiend, rushing to the artistic sandstone structure which had been built for him, and then out into the circular barred space through the concrete floor of which ran a drain. In and out. Back and forth.
Stone. Iron bars. Concrete.
It drove Mino mad.
How he hated this travesty of a fox’s lair! Whenever he crept into it he recalled his own house which he had built and dug out with his own paws. Yes, that was something different, wonderfully warm and cozy, sunk in the earth of a wooded hill, filled with the movement of life, inside and out, with sprouting and growing things. There had been root fibers and beetles and worms. While he was building it there had even been mice. And what a smell it had! Inside and out. The scent of a thousand victims. Of a thousand dangers. The scent of wife and cubs, trusted and tenderly loved.
Whenever Mino remembered these things a blind rage overpowered him. His blood began to boil and rob him of all his senses.
Often he would lie in the cold, stony, feelingless hole, biting into the walls, spinning around crazily, striking out with all three paws.
For Mino had only three sound paws. A trap had snapped off his fourth. It was the left forepaw. His foot was missing and a bit of the foreleg.
A hunter had found him imprisoned, his leg, maimed by the trap, nearly cut through. Mino was lying flat on the ground, exhausted, almost unconscious from pain and loss of blood, from terror and desperation.
But when the bag was thrown over him, he had rallied all his strength, and bitten and scratched and torn the black, suffocating cover. Lucky for him that he was at the end of his strength. The trapper was thinking of killing him.
But was it really so lucky that Mino had lost consciousness? When he woke up again, there was a heavy chain around his neck. His teeth tore at it in vain till they ached. When the wound on his leg had closed, he was brought here.
He had been here three years now, in this cage. But he had never grown used to it. He could never manage to take it quietly. He never stopped thinking of possible ways of escaping.
It is true that he often lay stretched out all day asleep but this was because he was exhausted by his terrible efforts, his longing.
Sometimes he would sit quietly on his haunches, or lie like a dog on his belly and breast, blinking into space.
Escape.
He laid plans. He would tear up the ground, dig tunnels that would lead him back to the forest. He wondered whether the forest was far or near. And he smiled to himself. Far or near, he would find it. Just let him get outside!
But his feverishly questing nose never found the earth. In his cage there was nothing but stony concrete. His paws ached from constantly scratching at it. It withstood the sharpest, most furious bite he could give.
Then, boiling with impatience, Mino would have one of his insane attacks. Of course he did retain a slight vestige of sense, but it was too feeble to prevent the fit. Mino was raving mad with impatience, with despair, with longing for the death that burns and tortures one.
Inside the hated hole he ran his head against the concrete. A tiny hope flickered through his brain that the fury of his attack would break through the walls. At the same time there was that other hope—that he would break his head and make an end of everything.
Stunned and blinded, he would dash out, rushing around his yard in narrowing circles until he became dizzy and fell down. This dizziness was like freedom to his brain. As far as he could see, the world was spinning round. The bars that caged him spun, and became misty in their mad whirl. The floor turned under Mino’s paws. The firm rigidity of the concrete seemed to melt and disappear.
Thus his mad rages helped to change everything. They were the only thing that did help.
To be sure the deception lasted no more than two or three seconds. Then his prison formed around him as firm and immovable as ever. The idea dawned vaguely in Mino’s brain that he had not been mad enough.
Furiously he fell upon the bars, bit into the cold iron, pressed his nose, his paws, between the bars so that blood dripped from his jaws, his gums, his pelt.
There was the earth right before him. On the other side of those bars was the earth, naked, trampled by many human feet, softened, and strewn with fine gravel. The earth for which he longed. So near and yet never within reach.
Unhappy Mino raised his injured nose. He caught the scent. The promise of wonderful things was wafted him on the air, to mock, to torture him. There was the piquant scent of pheasants, the enticing scent of rabbits, the sharp odor of the big birds of prey whom the fox believed to be free and reveling in tidbits. Then there was the kindred odor of wolves, of other foxes that made Mino’s desire for comrades, for a female companion, intolerable. Oh, how much, how dreadfully much he was deprived of.
Mino flung himself violently away from the bars and began to race about madly again.
A vague, sourish, familiar scent penetrated to him and brought him to a standstill.
There, scarcely a paw’s length away, sat Vasta the mouse. She sat outside in the little hole where the drain disappeared in the ground.
Her dark little eyes, like the end of a hatpin, watched the fox. Mino slunk up as if on a mouse hunt. His legs were half crouched and yet tense, ready for a spring, his head lowered and thrust forward. His tail quivered as if it were about to wag.
He stuck his sound paw between the bars and struck at Vasta but could not reach her. Crestfallen, he stood up on his hindlegs, his tail drooping limply, while he gazed innocently out.
“Come to me,” he said softly, “come closer.”
Vasta sat motionless. She said nothing.
“Come inside,” the fox tempted her, “come quickly, come.”
“I’ll take good care not to do that,” said Vasta coolly.
“But I have an important matter to discuss with you,” Mino insisted.
“You can discuss it just as well if I remain here. Go ahead, I’m listening.”
The mouse sat up; she covered her delicate pointed nose with her two forepaws. “I’d rather go on living,” she tittered.
This threw Mino into a white fury.
“Let me out of here!” he snarled. “I want to go on living too! I, too! That’s why I’m dying of grief! Let me out! I’ve had enough, enough! Do you hear me—enough! Let me out!”
Vasta flitted back into the dark hole before which she had been sitting. “Who—me?” she asked in surprise. “Who—me?”
“Yes, you!” The fox was foaming at the mouth. “Yes, you! You vengeful little beast! You wretched, infamous, good-for-nothing creature! You! Don’t deny it! You!”
Vasta sat up as straight as a rod, on her hind-legs, her forepaws lifted in astonishment.
The fox was trembling all over; his eyes had narrowed to little evil slits. “It was you, you and your tribe! It was you that set that monstrous thing to catch me in its iron jaws!” He raised the stump of his forepaw. “The whole forest is filled with you and the likes of you. And all of you are my enemies!”
Vasta laughed
. “We—your enemies? We?”
“Yes,” the fox snorted, “you’re small, but you’re clever and dangerous! I see now, too late, how dangerous you are!”
“You are mistaken, Mino,” said Vasta. But her words were hardly audible for she was proud to be thought so powerful by the fox. She sat up again and took him to task. “Do you admit that you got what you deserved?”
Mino cowered, meek and humble. “I’ll admit anything,” he whined, “anything you like, anything, anything. Have mercy, have pity on me. You are happy, you are fortunate, you are free. You don’t even know how happy, how rich you are. You can go where you want, you can run when you wish. Oh, happy creature! Be kind, be merciful to me! Let me out! I swear I’ll never touch one of your race again, never, never! I swear!” He was intoxicated by his own fervent entreaties and a glow of hope. He overshot his promises. “I swear in the name of all my brothers, of all my sisters, never, never more shall one of us harm one of you. We will be friends, good friends. But let me go this time! I swear . . .”
He stopped and gazed out at the empty drain. Vasta had disappeared.
In the distance there was a shout of joy, followed by savage exultation. A dog—no, Mino knew it was a wolf. He pricked up his ears and listened.
So there was joy here, too! His kinsman was rejoicing. “Only I am suffering,” thought Mino, “only I.”
Exhausted, he lay down flat on the floor, listening despondently and bitterly. The rejoicings grew softer, then were momentarily renewed, finally died away in silence.
Mino pressed his head between his paws and shut his eyes.
His attack was over.
Chapter Seven
The Wolf and the Law
HUBERT, THE ASSISTANT AT THE zoological garden, had called Frau Marina by telephone. She must come to the zoo as quickly as possible.
Frau Marina was frightened. Had anything happened to her wolf?
“No,” the assistant reassured her, “nothing has happened, nothing serious.” But she must come right away.
Then why had he called her up? She had intended to visit her wolf today anyway.
“Well,” the assistant explained, “the fact is that we don’t know what sort of food the wolf is accustomed to. During the three days he’s been in the zoo, he’s hardly touched a thing we gave him.”
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Frau Marina. “The poor fellow; I’ll be there directly!”
She lived in a house with a pretty park, in the villa section. Far away in Poland she owned a large wooded estate that often lay deep under snow for months. One day, while she was sleighing through the desolate winter woods, she had come upon a wolf cub in a drift. He was half-frozen, stiff with cold and hunger. She took pity on the helpless little thing, picked him up, rubbed him vigorously, until his whole body was warm, and put him under her fur robe. During the homeward journey she had taken off her glove and put her finger in the wolf’s mouth to feel whether he had teeth or not. But all she could feel were fine points as sharp as needles, barely piercing his gums. There was nothing but silken soft lips and a rough little tongue. Lips and tongue instantly began to suckle the warm tips of her fingers.
Frau Marina was quite touched and did not remove her finger until the sleigh reached the manor house. Then she took the foundling into her room, ordered a nursing bottle with warm milk, and fed the young wolf. Prudently. Not too much to begin with.
She recalled that her forester had shot a female wolf several days before. According to his report, she appeared to have whelped recently. That was probably why the forester had also observed she had been so rapacious and daring. He added that now her litter would be sure to die of hunger.
One cub of that litter Frau Marina had found and rescued from starvation. She reflected. The old mother wolf had to feed her children, had to remain strong to suckle them. She must have killed deer, stags and doe after hunting down the poor creatures. She broke into the sheepfold and stole lamb after lamb. What else could she do? She was not to blame, the old mother, regardless of how bloodthirsty she was or appeared to be. But the poor deer, stags and lambs who died with her teeth in their throats were not to blame either. And the forester? Day after day he found the mournful remains of slaughtered deer in the preserve, and bits of murdered lambs. He became enraged at the “enemy” who was causing so much damage. It was his duty to protect the defenseless creatures from the wolf. He could do nothing else, he had to lie in wait, to stalk her and shoot her at sight with a dum-dum bullet that would tear fur, lungs and heart to ribbons. The forester was not to blame. And the young wolves, the helpless cubs who perished miserably of hunger because their mother lay shot in the snow—they certainly were not to blame. Though the children of a wolf, they were children, just as the mother wolf was after all a mother.
With the young wolf in her arms and sucking comfortably at the bottle, Frau Marina gazed out of the window at the forest reposing under its wintry cover.
“The free life of the forest,” she thought with a bitter smile.
A sentimental lie! Out there every creature was hunting or hunted. Flight and pursuit, life and death, incessantly, endlessly. Day and night. They were none of them to blame. Those that were killed and those that did the killing. Peace? Was it any different among men? Any better?
Frau Marina forced herself not to let her thoughts stray any further.
The young wolf throve and grew strong. He would not leave Marina’s side. If she went out for a few hours, he would whine and howl for a while, then lie down silent with one of her gloves, her wrap or anything else belonging to her that he could steal. They exhaled the scent that quieted him, that lent him patience. He would bury his nose in the bit of leather or wool or cloth, and wait, tense and still. When Marina returned, the wolf would receive her with transports of joy, exulting, flinging himself upon her, doubling up until his head was laughing up at her over his wildly wagging tail, forcing his nose and brow under her hand. At last, proudly and happily, he would fetch her some article in his mouth, an umbrella, a cushion, a book, as a kind of love-offering; and in this way his jubilation regularly ended.
He was as obedient to the wave of her hand as the best of dogs. He guarded her, growled and barked like a watch-dog, but had never bitten anyone, had never betrayed by the slightest sign the wildness of his blood.
Frau Marina took him with her to the city. It would have been impossible to leave him on the estate. He could not have borne the separation, and with the best will in the world the people there had not taken very kindly to him; in general the young wolf’s fate would have been changed in no essential.
When he was a year old that fate was decided.
A police official appeared at Frau Marina’s in order to confirm the rumor that she was harboring a “savage” animal. Frau Marina received the official politely. He sat in the drawing-room, and even as he asked the question, carelessly stroked the young wolf who wagged his tail and rubbed against the official knees.
Frau Marina smiled, indicating the wolf. “There you have the ‘savage’ beast.”
The official drew back his hand in fright. A silence ensued during which the official regarded the wolf with a rather nonplussed expression.
“You see he is perfectly tame,” said Frau Marina at last.
“To be sure, quite tame,” the official stammered. “I see he’s quite tame . . . ha ha ha!” He laughed in embarrassment and louder than was necessary. “Ha ha . . . that’s really quite good—I thought he was a dog, just an ordinary shepherd. Comical, isn’t it? So he’s really a wolf?”
“If you will examine him more closely,” Frau Marina suggested.
“Yes. Well . . . I see. Yes, of course. . . .” The official had recovered his assurance. “Well, tame or not,” he said, “the law’s the law, my dear lady.”
Frau Marina glanced up. “What am I to understand by that?” She was very much disturbed.
“It’s quite simple,” the official continued, “the animal must be shot, or . . .”
“Or?” She had started violently.
“Or he must be sent to a zoological garden,” was the answer.
“And suppose I refuse?” She had risen abruptly and stood prepared for resistance.
The official smiled, and in his furtive, subaltern smile lay all officialdom’s superiority. “Then you will pay a fine, madam, assuming that you do not attempt actively to hinder the knacker in the performance of his office. In that case, of course, you might . . .”
“What is a knacker?” Marina exclaimed in fear.
“. . . might be sentenced to a term in prison,” the official concluded. As if he were now prepared to consider Marina’s question, he explained, “The knacker is the official whose function it is to destroy the animals committed to his custody for that purpose.”
“Ah!” It was a little cry of indignation.
The official shrugged his shoulders. “The law, madam.”
“A very stupid law!” cried Marina, vexed.
“The law,” came the reply in a pedantic tone, “is never stupid. At present your wolf is tame, I concede.”
“You can’t deny it!” Marina interrupted.
“As I said, I concede,” the official nodded his head with demonstrative forbearance. “But nobody knows when the wild beast will awaken in him.”
“I am willing to guarantee that it never will,” declared Marina solemnly.
“The law does not accept guarantees, the law demands obedience.” He was fairly bursting with omniscience. Marina fought for her wolf as one fights for a beloved child. She felt that it was a hopeless battle, but she meant to leave nothing untried.
If she took the wolf away, to her estate, he would be out of the country and safe.