We shall not describe this butchery. We are among those who respect the reader, not of those whose pen takes pleasure in laying out all the gruesome facts of certain events, to dissect the wounds, to count the pustules, to search through revolting remains which no longer bear a name in the speech of good folk.
Harlequin was hiccupping out his agony, and was even more upsetting than the normal figure of someone dying, the painted face’s last convulsions loosening the paint, the white of pearl and the rice powder in large flakes.
The crowd, before the curtain finally lowered, was dumb with fright. On the stage, now invisible, the hubbub grew. Suddenly, it ended, and from the room, on the contrary, burst forth a single awful cry.
Hemo, divested of his black headband, of his white shirt with blue tassel buttons, his clown-pants, his laced yellow boots, in a word, of all his Pierrot togs except his floured face, had climbed, with the help of the scenery supports, to the upper rod supporting the curtain, from which he sprang, once again the great wild ape of the old growth forests, toward the top of the room, towards the vault lost in shadow, among the jumble of arches, right-angled joints, iron beams and girders supporting the huge glassed over roof. And through this dizzying escape, which might have seemed a minor episode in such an abominable tragedy, he took with him, holding her to his hairy chest with one arm, who? Colombine, the poor little English actress, miss Betty, unconscious, almost dead, and whose head, the long braids of which she had loosened, and her limbs, all dangled motionless at every leap her fierce abductor made.
The firemen quickly gave up on pursuing him, and the troop director thought better than to bring him down with a pistol shot. Would Miss Betty not likely be killed by the horrible drop that would result from bringing down the assassin? The authorities proceeded with reason by first having the Palace evacuated. All the doors and windows bolted, an entire squad, armed with ropes, planks and ladders took to the chase; a terrible chase, whose outcome the growing, anxious crowd outside awaited. For the story had already spread through all the city. Among the groups of people, comments were exchanged, they generally agreed to lay the blame on the chief of police. What was he thinking, allowing the English pantomimes to have, on stage with them, a supposedly tame beast, but whose true ferocity, alas! was no longer a topic of discussion. Besides, doesn’t it seem to you that, recently, our leaders...
CHAPTER XII
As soon as he had finished reading this article, where the editor of the theater beat, flattered to have for once been one step ahead of his colleagues in the field of politics, and seeing his prose rise from the newspaper’s back pages to the headline, had filled the four columns of the front page, Jan started reading it again, while unconsciously rocking back to front and then front to back, as children do to hasten the forward and backward motion of a swing.
Night was falling. Standing upright in the middle of the car, he continued his reading under the light. When the train stopped he could not stifle a cry in response to that of the employees calling out “Amsterdam,” throwing his ticket at them, jostling the most hurried of travelers, he left the station and headed towards the Palace of Industry.
The box-office was not open. He wandered around the square, reading posters announcing a concert followed by a ball. Prey to a growing apprehension he asked left and right, from police officers and from passersby, who yawned in indifference at his haggard look and choppy speech. In the vestibule of the Palace, a boutique owner informed him that, since the night of the murder, the pantomime show was no longer playing; the administration, under orders, had immediately revoked any contract with the English troop; the morning edition of the Gazette had still not reported what had happened to the infamous ape; as for the clowns and dancers, a gentleman can easily get news of the latter—added a smiling old gossip, her hand extended—by visiting the alleyways near the Rokin Canal. Were the gentleman a stranger to the city, she offered to lead him there. He paid her for her information, but refused her company.
Besides, he had no need for a guide; however timid his life as a young man, this had not saved him from hearing, long ago in Haarlem, the old fellows at the Brinckleymann café, sing the praises of the alleyways in question, and to compare them, in joyful whispered confessions, to the Ryddeck in Antwerp.
Kalver-Straat was the busiest street in Amsterdam. Along its two rows of store fronts, the butcher’s markets sparkled, their windows without a speck of dust, their hams seemingly of freshly varnished mahogany, the scarlet wrapping of the tongue patés livening up the immaculate whiteness of the pyramids, grottos and rock gardens built of lard; at intervals a café presented a contrast, its first room dark and without any other light upon the curtain which separated it from the restaurant proper than that of the glowing end of cigars upon the lip of smokers preferring this isolation in the shadows to the gaslight and sound of billiards from behind. He made his way up as far as the Dam Plaza, turned around and changed sidewalks, now following that which ran parallel to the Rokin Canal. The boutique owner had been correct in indicating the alleys to him; after a number of coarsely painted and gaudily rigged out chubby-cheeked girls, who insisted on pushing him towards some vague half-open doors at the street corner had embarrassed him, a young woman brushed against him, and whispered in passing: “G’night blondy, you’re lookin’ good.” He recognized in her, notwithstanding the impudent tone of her French, that she was a young Englishwoman.
“You wouldn’t happen to be Betty?”
“No, Betty, that ain’t me, that’s my sis’, but it’s the same thing.”
She slipped her arm under his and drew him towards the canal as she answered him. Both of them, in a tacit agreement, avoided the most frequented places; he felt her trembling against him when they crossed police officers walking their beat or doing sentry duty. On Warmoes St. she stopped him before a darkened passage. At the end a doubtful light trickled down from the first floor, illuminating as best it could, but rather worse than best, a spiral staircase. However, upon their approach a door closed, everything turned black again, and she had to lead him by the hand.
A coal heater gave off an asphyxiating heat. Lighting a candle of which she allowed a few drops to drip on the mantelpiece so as to stick it there, the woman brought the fire back to life with a few kicks to the bars of the grate, then impatient and as if to warm herself up faster, she began to dance, to pirouette on her toes around the table, the only piece of furniture in the narrow room besides an iron cot with sordid bed linens and a chair upon which Jan let himself drop.
After the fog outside, the kiln-like temperature dried up his throat. He was made nauseas by the noxious odor of greasy cooking left over from what one could only surmise had been pastry scraps cooked in beer, mixed with some yet more disgusting odors emanating from the toiletry implements spread out over the floor: soured washbasins of frothing water, jars and vials of rancid pomade and of brilliantine which had lost its bouquet. In short, not having eaten and long consumed by fever, he had to hold his head together with two hands to gather the thoughts he sensed were slipping away. Some old dancers’ skirts, in yellow satin decorated with fake pearls and painted-glass jet, unsown and nailed right into the only window’s wooden frame, served as drapes, but prevented any air circulation. He wished to open the door on the landing, but the little one refused to do so; some creaking of the floor led him to ask if someone was not spying on them; no, it was nothing, just one of her brothers listening to see if she was home. To reassure him she bolted the door and pulled the bed over against it.
Thin, pale, a rash on her cheeks, coughing, her shoulders drawn together by a bodice of tacky velvet with threadbare braiding, she took up her dance again, paused to look at him, and suddenly unclipped herself, sat on his knees, and tapped him playfully on his cheeks and under his arms. Jan only then realized that she had misunderstood his intentions, and drew back; she thought he did so because of the rather unappealing look of her yellowed undergarments. Embarrassed, her eyes lowered, sighin
g, coughing harder, almost sobbing, she apologized for her poverty.
Her family had had a string of bad luck. They had spent their advances on their costumes as soon as their engagement at the Paleis voor Volkslijt had been confirmed. Such profitable conditions! The premiere, such a success! With her elder sister Betty, they had brought some lovely bargains from Paris, where they were part of the scene on Richelieu Street and at the Royal-Palace, until their parents had called them back to begin this European tour which was to make them rich. What a bizarre dream their father had had to acquire that hideous ape and to have imagined turning him into an actor!
Upon hearing Hemo’s name, Jan remembered the object of his visit. He had come to have the whole story told to him, the details published in the Gazette being insufficient. First, what had been done with the ape?
A fist pounding and a rough voice shook the door.
“Darlin’!”
“Dad?”
She opened up and debated with a large man on the threshold. Until now she had spoken in French, but now she and her father spoke English. Still, Jan understood them well enough to grasp a few snippets of their conversation, amongst which the word “reporter” was frequently repeated. The man came in: a sort of monstrous dwarf whose strength must have been Herculean, wider than tall, gap-toothed, shaved, with reddish brown brush-cut hair resembling a calfskin skull-cap, with jowls hanging to his shoulder blades, mutton chop hands, and feet so wide, beneath his spindly legs and knock-knees, that one would have thought them to be webbed. His moleskin vest thrown on with nothing underneath so constricted his chest that his flesh protruded out in great rolls from between the buttons. Even had he not been staggering, his face and small, bloodshot eyes would have been sufficient indication of his inebriated state. In a stupor, grumbling at the tiresome task of having to answer the reporters’ endless questions and repeating the story over and over again, he muttered to Jan, whose thinness and clothing he disdainfully measured up, that he should have at least come to him, the troop’s director, and not waste the time of his lazy daughters, who needed no encouragement to loiter about. Jan offered him, awkwardly, as he feared offending him, a ten florin gold piece. It disappeared by sleight of hand and the dwarf, his features and words softened, asked Jan to join him in the adjoining room, the current one being his daughters’.
Barely larger, this second room only received the false light from a peephole in the partition of the hallway during the day. But right now a kerosene lamp was hanging from the ceiling by a wire. The empty chimney had, in lieu of a wind screen, a piece of packing cloth held on the mantel by a rudimentary kitchen utensil, plates, bottles, rusted pots, in one of which a bottle stood upright, allowing some hard liquor to seep out of its cracked bottom. A narrow cast iron stove, with a long, elbowed chimney pipe, roared red hot, supporting a large pot of potatoes. On the cots, piles of rags which were children were stirring; the mother in the middle of them was feeding the smallest whose irritation at vainly suckling on the flaccid breast was rising; a skeletal boy in a clown suit was standing reading beneath the lamp. The reek, the heat, the thickness of the sweat and fetid breaths were such that Jan, inured to the Pahouins’ huts, nonetheless leaned on a wall so as not to collapse.
His tongue loosened by a full cup of liquor drawn directly from the pot on the mantelpiece and swallowed in one gulp, the director, having chased away with his foot, as one would a nest of vermin, the infants on one cot, lowered himself into a weightlifter’s squat, invited Jan to join him and lamented his dog’s life, past, present, and future.
In order to provide for his needs and those of his family, he only had his take as a mountebank lifting weights on the street. On a rainy day, no curious folk out, not a penny in his cup, he had considered, rather than coming home to clamors of hunger, to take a header into the Thames. The posting of an advertisement for the sale of a young gorilla by a sailor back from Gabon, gave him a brilliant idea, which a large sum, wired for and received two days later from his eldest daughters, dancers in Paris, allowed him to accomplish. He bought the animal, a bit dearer than he might have liked because of an agent of the Paris Museum who kept outbidding him thinking he could compete with the purse of an English entertainer.
As much as Jan insisted on knowing immediately of Hemo’s whereabouts, the director kept drinking shot after shot and rattling off his clap-trap story, an arranged translation which he spouted between pauses. Once, however, he interrupted himself. His “Darlin’,” right in front of him, was warming her hands by the stovepipe, but he had not yet taken notice of her. Brandishing his fist at her, he asked her what she was doing there.
“I’m a-warmin’ meself,” she answered, completely indifferent to his threat. His fist striking her on the back with a hollow thud, she did not move any more than before. The father said nothing, but forcing her to stumble down the stairs under a hail of blows, sent her to her job on the street. The door having barely closed, the girl came back in, just as calm as ever, looked for her mantle on the cots, slapped one of her little brothers who was curled up in it, then leaving it to him, went back to the landing, when a bout of coughing bent her in half so violently that Jan interceded on her behalf.
“Stay Darlin’, the man’s done changed his mind.”
At Jan’s gesture of denial, she sighed, disappointed, having for a minute hoped she could stay warm. The father, moved to pity, comforted her with a glass of liquor. She drank it and left, resigned, while he described how Hemo had been trained. Skilful in the training of all sorts, this was his proudest achievement; he named and boasted of each progressive phase with an abundance of technical terms. Jan, getting carried away, asked him to make it short; then, paralyzed at the fear of giving away his secret, he resolved to shut up and listen; in all the verbiage he would manage to sort out the truths which would be of use to him.
“Listen to me, as fer tellin’ ya where the ape’s at, I dunno, or rather I ain’t sure. Prob’ly at the Zoological Gardens.”
Jan suddenly lit up and got up to run off there, when the other convinced him otherwise. “Dammit, hold up a minute!” He missed having company. Besides, the displays were closed until the next morning, but Betty would be back any minute now, and she would have had some news during the day which she would be happy to pass on to him. While he waited, if he wished, he could read the proof that the ape was taken among the savages, Pancks will lend him the book. At these words the clown handed him a book, whose illustrated pages he flipped through. It was the authentic account of Sir Thomas Stayel’s voyage. Understanding written English better than spoken English, Jan found the passage where the author related in a few lines, with the man of action’s disdain for long exposition, his meeting of a young tame gorilla living in king Akayrawiro’s capital; he tried to tie him up, a little savage girl freed him and ran off with him. He hesitated to use his rifle, given his membership, one he bore most proudly, to the Society for the Protection of Animals, fearful of injuring the ape and only wishing to bring down the thief. While he mulled it over, a savage, promised a gift, aimed, so skilled with his bow that he transfixed the black girl through and through, without even grazing the creature sitting piggy-backed on her shoulders.
Had Jan been harboring the slightest suspicions, the concordance between this account and that which he had formerly heard from the very mouths of the Pahouins’, dispelled them. It was only out of curiosity that he waited for Betty, to meet someone so intimately involved in Hemo’s melancholy adventure. Steps made the stairs creek. A rough voice swore in the darkness, that of a man Betty was bringing to the room with the iron cot. The father prayed that Jan would be patient a bit longer, then went and scratched at the door, a discrete and agreed upon signal to have the girl speed things up. The man, to which she wished a good night, left her and stumbled down the stairs. She came in, handed over a wad of cash to her father, who presented Jan to her as a generous journalist who wished to ask her some questions. She exclaimed with a tired shrug.
�
�Well damn it! this is turning into such a bore.”
With such a clear command of French, she was able to explain how she had acquitted herself of the mission of gathering information her father had entrusted her with. The police were considering whether Hemo should be tried as a common murderer! Here was a lovely chance at ridicule that few would pass up, she was surprised when they did not persevere. Seats at the trial could sell for more than they did at the theater. Without being snoopy, she would give her eye teeth to be there on the day the judgment was handed down, to watch Hemo, the accused, surveying the magistrates. As intelligent, good looking and strong as he was, and they as ugly as they were, one could bet that Hemo would take them for some inferior brothers, apes like him, but of some degenerate species.
In short, he was in the Zoological Gardens, chained and hidden away, but as soon as the public’s memory of the dramatic events died down, as soon as one no longer feared a public outcry, he would be afforded the relative liberty of a large cage. They, for now, should relax; a secretary, a charming boy whom a common friend had introduced to her, had received her in private audience, and would forward them a large sum in compensation, which the father could cash in at the central administration.
At this outcome, though expected, they were overcome with joy. The clown danced a jig, the kids on the bedrolls squawked their hoarse cheers, and the one that was suckling on empty purred in hope as his mother switched him to another breast. Darlin’, back in haste, completed the scene. She was out of breath. She had dragged into the dark alleyway a police constable, whom she had thought to be a john. He would have arrested her had she not slipped through his fingers. In Paris, in such a case, one could scream and put up a fight, and passersby, who were always on your side, would berate the officer and force him to let you go. By comparison, here people were so stupidly thick that one wondered if they would not side with the police.
The Missing Link and Other Tales of Ape-Men Page 13