The City Jungle by Felix Salten Page A

some ways, but I am no longer any judge, for he brought us up, brought up his own parents to feel as he did.”
    â€œHe was such a nice, likeable lad,” said Eliza again, softly.
    â€œHe found you, too, extraordinarily sympathetic, Miss Eliza.”
    Eliza dried her tears and even tried to smile. ­Rainer’s father knew her name. It was almost a kind of bond between them, she felt.
    He pointed to the chimpanzee who was asleep in his bed, his hands over his face. It looked as if Peter were pressing back some dull pain or heavy sorrow in order not to suffer unbearably.
    â€œHe always pitied that poor little fellow so much. . . .”
    â€œPitied him?” Eliza would not have contradicted for anything. “But nobody needs to pity Peter, he gets along very well. He’s happy.” She waxed enthusiastic.
    â€œDo you think so?” answered Rainer’s father. “You are devoted to him, nobody can deny that, and my son thought so much of you—but just look at the little creature now, does he look very happy?”
    Eliza glanced at him, and for a moment she was taken aback. “But Peter is asleep,” she objected. “You can’t really tell. . . .”
    â€œPerhaps you are right,” said Rainer’s father very slowly, “perhaps, but I am accustomed to accept my son’s judgment in such matters. And it seems to me that my son was right. You know, he always used to say that that little sleeper was as disturbing as a hopeless cry.”
    Then it occurred to Eliza that Rainer had visited the cage that last evening to see Peter asleep. She averted her head.
    Beside Peter’s bed, Rainer’s father was talking in a low voice. “What it is, I don’t know, but now I understand my son. I am very close to him now, very close. An animal like this reveals himself very clearly when he’s asleep. It is not as if Peter were grieving at being far from his tropical forest, without brothers or sisters, alone in an artificial existence. He has amusements, of course, he has everything possible. But everything possible is only a substitute and no substitute can ever make up to him for nature.”
    Eliza’s eyes flew open.
    â€œHe can’t tell you what he lacks, poor speechless Peter,” Rainer’s father continued, turning to her. “He can’t explain it even to himself. But he feels that the most important thing of all is lacking. What I call—I heard it first from my son—the roots of his existence. The nourishing sources of his vital energies are lacking.”
    Eliza shrugged her shoulders. “Your son was a dear fellow, a very dear fellow, but he was always extravagant.”
    â€œYou are right!” his father agreed. “You are right! The rest of us always call a soul like Rainer’s extravagant.” He began to soliloquize. “But everything noble, everything merciful, every liberating force was brought into the world by people who were extravagant just as you were extravagant, my Rainer! Where would the world be today were it not for the people we call extravagant? Can you deny,” he asked, touching her arm with a finger she barely felt, “that the premonition of an early death is hovering over this chimpanzee? Can you deny that this chimpanzee has submitted with perfect gentleness, with infinite patience, with a resignation of which few humans would have been capable?”
    â€œWhat do you mean? An early death? For Peter?”
    Rainer’s father became harsh. “You know just as well as everybody else that chimpanzees, like other captives, are subject to premature death.”
    â€œI’m doing everything,” Eliza protested in terror, “everything I can. . . .”
    â€œNobody questions that,” interrupted Rainer’s father. “You make a real effort. Of course. So does the curator. So do many of the keepers. Of course they do. But first