Perri
Page 13
It was his voice, and when she tumbled out, Porro sat before her.
“I love you,” he said, very gravely, very gently.
It took her breath away.
He repeated, “I love you.”
“Th-that’s g-good,” she stammered.
“If you like me, too,” he said, “then it’s good.”
Before she could answer, the black squirrel whizzed in to join them.
“Off with you! Impudent brat!” he screamed. “That’s my mate!”
“It’s a lie!” Perri flared up. “I’m not your—”
She did not finish. The black squirrel interrupted her: “You will be! Absolutely! That fellow shan’t disturb us.” He snarled at Porro: “Be off! Be off!”
“No! No!” Porro defied him. “She belongs to me.”
“To you?” Furiously the black squirrel jumped at him. “To you? That belongs to you! That, and that!” He pounded at Porro. When Porro hit back they grappled, biting fiercely.
Porro defended himself, and several times took the offensive. But the black squirrel was stronger and more brutal; he wanted to kill his rival. When he went at his neck, and tried to bite his throat, Porro twisted away with a quick, elastic movement, and fled, defeated.
Perri crouched there mournfully; she gave up the idea of hurrying after Porro. The black squirrel would only follow her, and get hold of Porro again. She made up her mind to avenge Porro.
“Well, my love,” rejoiced the black squirrel, “we’re rid of him. He won’t start anything with me again.” He was bleeding from three wounds, but he came closer, trying not to show it.
“But I’ll start something with you!” came a cry from above. “You leave my Perri alone! I love her! Yes, Perri, I love you with all my heart.” It was Flame-Red. He charged down like lightning. “Take yourself off, villain!” he ordered.
The black squirrel bristled with indignation. “You miserable braggart! I hate you! It’s a long time I’ve been waiting to throttle you!”
Flame-Red said not a word, but fell upon the black squirrel without more ado. There was mad biting on both sides. Deadly enemies, they grappled blindly, senselessly.
Perri watched silently. The black and the red skins seemed to be one. Hair floated about. They rolled over and over, and plumped to the ground without letting go.
While they were fighting, Perri seized the opportunity to sneak off. Gently and cautiously she whisked away, and when she was out of earshot she began to race.
“Porro!” she cried, “Porro!”
He jumped to meet her; he had waited for her ten or twelve trees away.
“Here I am,” said Perri.
“I knew you would come.”
“But now we must go fast,” she urged, “far, far away, so that nobody can catch us.”
They ran on and on, from tree to tree. They reached a strange neighborhood, but still they ran without stopping.
The flame-red one had overpowered the black squirrel, who was exhausted and battered from his struggle with Porro, but he hunted in vain for Perri. Soon he gave it up to lick his bleeding bites.
Perri and Porro were safe in a mighty oak. “This is where we’ll live,” said Porro.
“How nice that it’s an oak again,” said Perri. “I like it here.”
“Anywhere that I can be with you,” replied Porro, “I like it—anywhere.”
“You’re wise,” she praised him.
“Perhaps you’ll make me wise,” he said thoughtfully. “But I was very stupid; I didn’t understand anything. Now I know that love is the great wonder. No matter what it means, even fighting and pain, it’s all happiness.”
Chapter Thirty
NOW THEY WERE ALWAYS together. It was different from before—more intimate, more tender, gayer and more serious.
They were building a home. Porro brought the bottom from an old crow’s-nest. It was firmly woven, formed a solid base, and let in no moisture. On this they built strong walls. It was hard work, and solidly built. They had new ideas every day, and enjoyed themselves hugely. They arched a roof over their roomy chamber.
Nobody could get at them. The morning sun shone on their labors.
“This is wonderful!” cried Porro.
“We’re rich!” laughed Perri.
“And safe!” he said comfortably.
“Tut, tut,” said Perri, “one’s never quite safe.”
“If a marauder should come after all,” he worried, “wait—I have it.”
He opened a second, secret entrance, very small. “We can sneak out there unnoticed,” he explained.
“You’re clever,” she said.
“Because of you,” whispered Porro, “only because of you.”
Meanwhile the first tiny leaves pushed out delicate, fumbling fingers. The forest was covered festively with a thin green veil. The meadows were like flowered carpets.
There the roe deer grazed; their coats were already turning red. Big bucks began to whet the velvet from their antlers. The stags appeared again with their old royal pride; their foreheads now bore kingly crowns.
The hen pheasants sat brooding in their flat nests on the ground. From the highest treetops the blackbirds sang sweet morning and evening melodies.
The mother hares romped in the grass with their cunning young ones, who looked like animated balls of wool.
Perri leaned over to Porro: “Porro—we’ll have children—”
He looked at her. “How lovely you are.”
They chased through the trees, which were new to them here, yet were already home.
For the first time they heard the impudent, cheerful cry, “Cuckoo!”
Perri stopped, and shook her head almost sympathetically: “The lonely, selfish creature!”
Porro murmured contemptuously, “The wretch!”
She sat up. “I have an idea. Shall we call on the human child?”
“It’s a long way from here,” he replied.
“But we have to tell her everything!”
“All right, if you want, let’s go.”
When they reached the neighborhood where they had formerly lived, Porro hesitated: “And the black fellow? The flame-red one? Our enemies?”
“There are no more enemies,” cried Perri.
She spoke the truth. The black squirrel was living peaceably under the domination of his mate. He was quite changed, and gazed after them timidly.
In the fir they met Flame-Red, who was busily building a nest with his pretty mate. He acted as if he did not know them, and pretended cross surprise when they went by; they heard him scold, “What a nuisance all these creatures are—strangers trying to make themselves at home!”
When they got near Annerle’s house, the magpie flew toward them. “It’s all different from before,” she chattered. “I was just visiting the human child—it’s different.” And she sailed elegantly away.
A neat little titmouse was sitting on a limb. She looked enchanting in her black hood, with her black chin and white cheeks. But she made an unhappy face, and whispered, “Yes, the magpie’s right. It’s too, too bad, but she’s right.”
Perri and Porro still bounded ahead. Finally they caught sight of the garden, and recognized Annerle.
Perri was surprised: “Nobody there—none of us woods-dwellers!”
Porro whispered, “The child is alone.”
Annerle sat on her bench, with a few violets and primroses in her lap. No living creature was near.
“Strange,” said Perri.
“Let’s wait,” Porro advised.
They sat still, and waited, but everything remained as it was. Perri could hold back no longer. She was impatient to tell the human child about their love, their nest-building, their hopes.
“Shall we?” she asked softly, and Porro nodded. They slid down. They sat up in the grass, holding their banners high, their forepaws pressed against their white chests, ready to jump on Annerle’s lap or shoulder as they had always done.
“Hello!” they cried.
> Annerle got up.
“Oh,” whispered Perri almost inaudibly to Porro, “oh—how changed!”
Indeed Annerle had changed. She was bigger; she had grown out of the first dawn of childhood, and was learning reason. Now, at the age of four, she talked the human language; and the language of the innocent forest creatures was gone like dandelion fluff in the spring breeze.
“Squirrels!” laughed Annerle. “Cunning!”
“Hello,” repeated Perri, and begged, “Say something.”
Porro beseeched: “Do speak to us!”
“We have a lot to tell you,” Perri wheedled.
“Cunning squirrels!” repeated Annerle.
But this the two did not understand. And Annerle in turn did not understand their whispering.
“Finished,” said Porro sadly.
“All done,” said Perri, grieved to the heart.
A shudder went through them, a feeling of fear and strangeness which they had never known except when He appeared.
Annerle came near them. She who had never touched a creature before put out her hands to stroke the squirrels.
Perri and Porro dodged away, and went up a tree like lightning. Without looking back they raced toward home.
“We’ll never come here again,” Porro decided.
“Never again,” Perri agreed. “But I can’t understand it.”
Neither of them knew what had happened. Not Perri and Porro, not a creature of the forest, not even Annerle, the child.
The wall between man and animal had gone up, invisible, incomprehensible, impenetrable.
“Too bad,” the titmouse had said. And too bad it is, forever and a day.
Felix Salten was an author and critic in Vienna, Austria. He was the author of plays, short stories, novels, travel books, and essay collections. His most famous work is Bambi.
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ALADDIN
Simon & Schuster, New York
Also by Felix Salten
Bambi
Bambi ’s Children
Renni the Rescuer
A Forest World
The Hound of Florence
The City Jungle
Fifteen Rabbits
Florian
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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This Aladdin hardcover edition October 2015
Originally published in German in 1938 by Paul Zsolnay Verlag as Die Jugend des Eichhörnches Perri
Text copyright © 1938 by Paul Zsolnay Verlag; copyright renewed © 1966 by Anna Katharina Wyler
English language translation copyright © 1938 by Bobbs-Merrill; copyright renewed © 1966 by Anna Katharina Wyler-Salten
Cover illustration copyright © 2015 by Richard Cowdrey
Also available in an Aladdin paperback edition.
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Cover designed by Karin Paprocki
Interior designed by Hilary Zarycky
The text of this book was set in Yana.
Library of Congress Control Number 2014950323
ISBN 978-1-4424-8762-8 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4424-8760-4 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-4424-8763-5 (eBook)