The City Jungle by Felix Salten
Author:Felix Salten
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin
Chapter Eleven
A Fool
HOME AGAIN IN HIS GLASS HOUSE, Peter was overcome by that exhaustion to which at times he was prone.
He rolled listlessly on the floor, and creeping limply to his bed, lay still. His face, his shrewd eyes exhibited a sorrow that was shocking.
The stag, his ride, everything seemed forgotten. Eliza knew these attacks; they filled her with anxiety. She sat rather dejected after the failure of her efforts to interest Peter in some grapes or a piece of orange.
Suddenly she started. An elderly gentleman was standing beside her, saying, “Perhaps you should give Peter a glass of red wine.”
She rose. “How did you get in here? It is forbidden.”
“Forbidden?” replied the stranger. “Pardon, I did not know that.”
Eliza looked at him and she felt less afraid.
The gentleman was dressed entirely in black, there was black crepe on his hat, and on his pale and kindly face a shadow of deep melancholy. Eliza could not recall where she had seen this face.
“No, it is not allowed,” she said, but her voice was now mild and somewhat bewildered, “and I must ask you . . .” She hesitated.
The stranger looked at her as if each of her words made him curious.
She began again. “If . . . if everybody were allowed in here, just imagine . . .”
“But my son visited little Peter so often,” said the gentleman. He was silent and seemed to be struggling with something that prevented him from speaking. Then Eliza realized that this was Rainer Ribber’s father.
Tears came into her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She took her handkerchief and wiped them away, but fresh tears kept welling out.
The gentleman went on speaking. “Rainer loved the little fellow so dearly. . . .”
Eliza was sobbing aloud, crying into her pocket-handkerchief. She could not utter a word.
“He loved all the creatures here in the zoo very dearly,” his father continued.
Another silence.
“He loved all creatures everywhere,” said his father with a sigh. “Not only the prisoners in here, but those that live outside in freedom.” He interrupted himself, repeating with a strange emphasis, “Freedom! But it was these poor captives that possessed his whole heart.”
“Oh,” cried Eliza, “he was such a dear fellow.”
“Even as a little boy,” Rainer’s father went on, talking to himself. “We had canaries, but he wouldn’t stand for it. Even as a little boy. The idea of keeping a poor little bird in a tiny cage! Rainer would be quite filled with despair when he saw it.” He sighed again. “Yes, yes, the child . . . the child. Perhaps he was extravagant in some ways, but I am no longer any judge, for he brought us up, brought up his own parents to feel as he did.”
“He was such a nice, likeable lad,” said Eliza again, softly.
“He 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.
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