by Felix Salten
Hella laid her beautiful head between her forepaws. “Oh, my good friend,” she said softly, “it is not a question of forgetting. You can’t forget even if your memory is as short as ours seems to be. But we must learn gentleness and patience if we want to live.”
Vasta carried the news to the bears’ cage.
She often visited the big brown clumsy fellows. They were good-natured and playful, always fond of their joke, and they never grudged the mouse a bite from their abundance. Vasta was on friendly terms with the bears.
This time she was the witness of an exciting scene.
Krapus, the tall strong bear, was sitting on his haunches, craftily watching Karl, the keeper, who was cleaning out the cage.
Driven to the back of the cage by Karl, the other bears one by one relinquished their places with angry growls and suddenly bared teeth.
Karl was cross with them. He poked his broom at their noses, between their eyes, in their flanks. If he came too near the bears did not wait for the blow. Tripps, the thin little bear, shambled nimbly out of the way. Papina, who would presently have cubs, toddled out of reach. Halpa, the girl bear, was frightened and betook herself to safety.
All of them knew keeper Karl’s humors. His many tokens of friendliness no longer meant anything to the bears. They were vengeful with all the strength of their good natures, and dangerously cunning in their thirst for vengeance. Karl miscalculated this. He was in one of his surly morning moods. He swaggered around like a bully, taking out his temper on the bears.
Only Krapus remained steadfastly and stubbornly in his place. He sat up on his haunches, as if waiting for a signal to begin the battle, or for the right moment to attack. He would not be dislodged by keeper Karl. But Karl appeared to have little desire to challenge Krapus. He was in a bad humor, he knew very well why the bears were aroused. But that threatening glimpse of Krapus’ plump power was so fatefully imposing as to penetrate even Karl’s surliness. He wanted to avoid the furious beast and, bridling his own temper, turned to leave the bears’ cage.
At that instant Krapus sprang forward and struck at Karl with the full force of his fury. The three other bears watched with intense interest. Obviously the attack had been planned, obviously they all knew of it and were merely waiting to pounce on the keeper the moment he fell to the ground.
Karl would have gone down without a word, but with a fractured skull, if Krapus’ furious paw had ever reached him. But the terrible blow fell short and whisked through the air as Krapus lost his balance and fell.
Then Karl’s rage became a frenzy without let or hindrance, delivering him from that oppressive feeling which had weighed on his heart all morning.
Before Krapus could stumble to his feet, Karl attacked him with the broom, striking him on the nose with the iron handle, three, four, five times, catching him always on the same sensitive spot.
“You beast, you!” cried Karl in a husky voice. “You dirty beast!”
His courage gone, Krapus fled. Then, racked with pain, he tried desperately to defend himself. He stood up, thirsting for vengeance, but another terrible blow on his nose brought him low.
Karl did not stop beating him until his rage had cooled, and Krapus, completely vanquished, had crept into a corner, hiding his nose between his paws.
“You wait, you dirty rascal!” muttered Karl before leaving the cage. “I’ll show you yet!”
In their fear the other bears pretended to be innocent and peaceable, but Karl did not believe them.
“You damned rascals!” he shouted. With that he left them.
Vasta had watched, greatly disturbed.
Papina, the bear who was going to have cubs, sidled over. “Tell me, little friend,” she said, “you are free, you are more fortunate than we, tell me, is there no help for us?”
Vasta considered, and for answer told them what had happened in the orangutans’ cage.
“Oh,” cried Halpa, “there is no help for us captives. He is too strong and He is cruel. He knows no mercy!”
But Vasta had flitted away.
She ran to the regal tiger. She loved his majestic beauty, his proud strength. She respected his noble reserve, the disdainful hauteur that made him a solitary. She admired the impenetrable, unfathomable quality of his nature. She would feel terribly unstrung when with condescending kindness he spoke to her. At such times she was aware of the enormous gulf dividing him from her.
Opomo, the splendid young regal tiger, lay quietly in the middle of his cage. His forepaws stretched out, his head thrown back, he was gazing through the bars at the green and blooming garden. He was no longer conscious of the iron bars, they seemed to have become a part of the garden, black streaks striping the bright green of the trees and grass. They could not be removed, they belonged inseparably to his world.
He had never known any other. Some three years before he had entered this cage. He had left his mother very early. The things she told him when he lay against her breast as a little cub he no longer remembered. He remembered only the affectionate games they had played together. His mother too had been born behind the bars, and behind the bars she had grown up. Where she was at present he had no idea, and indeed, thought of it very seldom and never for more than a moment or so.
Ever since leaving his mother he had been almost always alone. Once he had had a mate. For a short time he admired and loved her passionately. One night she disappeared mysteriously from his side and for a brief period he mourned her.
For a long time the cage with its strong iron bars, the walls that enclosed him, had seemed to him simply a part of an unalterable fate to which he had resigned himself. When he was quite young he used to hurl himself furiously, to the point of exhaustion, against the bars and the walls. Now that was all passed. He had become dull, he thought of nothing. He stared into space and saw nothing. The garden outside seemed simply a bright green dissolving effect. Like insubstantial shadows human beings sauntered past his cage.
Vasta sat still in her hiding-place, worshiping Opomo. The tiger’s careless, soft, powerful grace possessed a fascination for Vasta. She could never free herself from the thrall of his beauty. Each time she resolved to visit the tiger she was torn between fear and temptation. Once she was safely in her hiding-place in his cage it required an effort to compose herself.
Opomo had snuffed her scent. He turned his head in her direction, otherwise remaining motionless. But he began to purr very softly.
A brief pause—then suddenly he questioned her. “What news, little one?”
“The great father ape, Zato, is dead,” Vasta instantly answered.
The tiger, trembling, bounded up—and then at once lay down again. “Tell me about it!” he commanded.
Overwhelmed with terror, Vasta had fled. The tiger’s command fetched her back. Stammering and trembling, she made her report. She knew practically the whole story. She even knew of the orangutan’s homesickness.
As she reached this part of her story the tiger got up. With that springy tread in which his whole body was involved the tiger paced around the cage, betraying increasing agitation.
“Homesickness,” he groaned, “homesickness! Can that longing, that blind aimless longing that tears me to pieces, that drives me almost insane, can that be homesickness?” He stood still, with lowered head, while from the bottom of his heart came a roaring moan—“Homesickness!”
“Night and day it torments me! Before the sun rises, and in the last hour of twilight. When I lie sleeping, I dream, I dream! Wonderful dreams! I think that I am yearning for my dreams!
“Homesickness!” He began to rave. “There must be something somewhere, some land, I don’t know where! Trees, tall grasses! There must be! There must! That’s what I see in my dreams! Oh, the slinking along, the watching, the spring at something alive that crumples under your claws. The warm blood that spurts out—in your mouth, in your
eyes!” He raved on. “Must I spend my whole life here, in this miserable, stinking, horrible prison . . . my whole life! Must I never experience the things I experience in my sleep, in my dreams—such pale unreal things! A prisoner! A prisoner! Now I know what I am—a prisoner!”
Vasta had slipped away. In the distance she heard the tiger whom she loved so dearly. Her tiny little body was quaking with nervousness. She felt herself in the grip of the violent storm which her news had unchained. That is why she hurried to the two black panthers whom she seldom visited. She was afraid of them. But she felt that she must bring them the news, she wanted to see how they would receive it.
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?”
EVENING WAS FALLING. ELIZA WAS putting Peter the chimpanzee to sleep and Karl was standing beside her, glowering down.
“Yes, my friend,” Eliza continued, “y
ou 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.