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.