XII
Crammon and Johanna Schöntag planned to drive to Stellingen to see Hagenbeck’s famous zoological gardens, and Crammon begged Christian to lend them his car. They were just about to start when Christian issued from the hotel. “Why don’t you come along?” Crammon asked. “Have you anything better to do? The three of us can have a very amusing time.”
Christian was about to refuse, when he caught Johanna’s urgent and beseeching look. She had the art of putting her wishes into her eyes in such a way that one was drawn by them and lost the power to resist. So he said: “Very well, I’ll come along,” and took the seat next to Johanna’s. But he was silent on the whole drive.
It was a sunny day of October.
They wandered through the park, and Johanna made droll comments on the animals. She stopped in front of a seal, and exclaimed: “He looks quite like Herr Livholm, don’t you think so?” She talked to a bear as though he were a simple sort of man, and fed him bits of sugar. She said that the camels were incredible, and only pretended to look that way to live up to the descriptions in the books of natural history. “They’re almost as ugly as I am,” she added; and then, with a crooked smile: “Only more useful. At least I was told at school that their stomachs are reservoirs of water. Isn’t the world a queer place?”
Christian wondered why she spoke so contemptuously of herself. She bent over a stone balustrade, and the sight of her neck somehow touched him. She seemed to him a vessel of poor and hurt things.
Crammon discoursed. “It is very curious about animals. Scientists declare they have a great deal of instinct. But what is instinct? I’ve usually found them to be of an unlimited stupidity. On the estate where I passed my childhood, we had a horse, a fat, timid, gentle horse. It had but one vice: it was very ticklish. I and my playmates were strictly enjoined from tickling it. Naturally we were constantly tempted to tickle it. There were five of us little fellows—no higher than table legs. Each procured a little felt hat with a cock’s feather in it. And as the horse stood dull-eyed in front of the stable, we marched in single file under the belly of the stupid beast, tickling it with our feathers as we passed. The feathers tickled so frightfully that he kicked with all fours like a mule. It’s a riddle to me to this day how one of us, at least, failed to be killed. But it was amusing and grotesque, and there was no sign of instinct anywhere.”
They went to the monkey house. A crowd stood about a little platform, on which a dainty little monkey was showing off its tricks under the guidance of a trainer. “I have a horror of monkeys,” said Crammon. “They annoy me through memory. Science bids me feel a relationship with them; but after all one has one’s pride. No, I don’t acknowledge this devilish atavism.” He turned around, and left the building in order to wait outside.
Alone with Christian, a wave of courage conquered Johanna’s timidity. She took Christian’s arm and drew him nearer to the platform. She was utterly charmed, and her delight was childlike. “How dear, how sweet, how humble!” she cried. A spiritual warmth came from her to Christian. He yielded himself to it, for he needed it. Her boyish voice, however, stirred his senses and aroused his fear. She stood very close by him; he felt her quiver, the response to the hidden erotic power that was in him, and the other voices of his soul were silenced.
He took her hand into his. She did not struggle, but a painful tension showed in her face.
Suddenly the little monkey stopped in its droll performance and turned its lightless little eyes in terror toward the spectators. Some shy perception had frightened it; it seemed, somehow, to think and to recollect itself. As it became aware of the many faces, the indistinctness of its vision seemed to take on outline and form. Perhaps for a second it had a sight of the world and of men, and that sight was to it a source of boundless horror. It trembled as in a fever; it uttered a piercing cry of lamentation; it fled, and when the trainer tried to grasp it, it leaped from the platform and frantically sought a hiding-place. Tears glittered in its eyes and its teeth chattered, and in spite of the animal characteristics of these gestures and expressions, there was in them something so human and soulful that only a few very coarse people ventured to laugh.
To Christian there came from the little beast a breath from an alien region of earth and forests and loneliness. His heart seemed to expand and then to contract. “Let us go,” he said, and his own voice sounded unpleasantly in his ears.
Johanna listened to his words. She was all willingness to listen, all tension and all sweet humility.