Telegrams of the Soul (8 page)

At the entrance to the zoo with its black linked metal fence and the ring of dusty lilacs stood a little light brown Swiss chalet glimmering with a fresh coat of varnish baking in the afternoon sun in which the zoo attendant sat chomping on a pear. He sold lemon yellow entrance tickets and dark green reduced price tickets for groups, soldiers and regular visitors. “Les enfants ne comptent pas,” he muttered, as if to say: “Go on, get lost, you don't hardly matter—. . .” In a little cage near the sweating Swiss chalet sat two aguti, Dasyprocta aguti.
*
The cage floor was covered with broken bits of bread rolls and sugar cubes.

A young private tutor with a boy and a girl at his side said: “Stupid people. Fruit is all they eat! Watch this!” He gave them a little peach.

The aguti stood up on their hind legs and ate like chipmunks. The young girl was flushed with admiration and sensed how all the others standing around admired the tutor too or felt a like emotion.

“Remind me, Fortunatina, tomorrow I'll read you in Brehm, all about the favorite live foods of the onza and jaguars of Brasil. These two creatures huddle in the harbor of life. But bread and sugar?! After all, they're not monkeys, par exemple.”

Then they went to look at the bears, which lumbering beasts made stereotypical movements and smelled awful and which the public kept egging on to waddle over to the water tank.

“Wait—,” said the tutor and tossed an entire bread roll into the tank. Whereupon the bear was compelled to lean in, if only with its upper half.

At the lions' cage, Fortunatina rested her elbows on the wooden railing and looked long and hard. The lioness slunk back and forth, as if slipping on the wet stone floor, as if, alas, creeping up upon some unsuspecting prey?!

The tutor stood back with the boy who wanted to move on: “A lioness, what's the big deal?! She's locked up—.”

The tutor just stood still.

“Fortunatina and the Lioness—,” he thought. He had no idea what it meant, what the story was all about. It was like a ballad which no poet had yet composed. The ballad was there ready to be born in the soul of a poet and set out into the world. Fully formed it fulminated in somebody's head, pressing to see the light of day, wanting to burst into song—Fortunatina and the Lioness!

The tutor just stood still.

The little girl turned to him, blushed, grinned, all flustered, ready to move on.

“There's no shame in dreaming yourself into the souls of animals,” thought the tutor. With an understanding smile he lay his wonderful fatherly hands on the shoulders of the child.

Fortunatina dreamed: “—suddenly, in the middle of the night a shriek resounds which, as it were, makes all of nature tremble—. A slash of the claw is just now felling an ox—. There are examples. Africa. Africa. Often in the last minute, cold-bloodedness, decisiveness served the sanguine hunter—.”

She peered at her tutor.

But the latter wore wide Pepita-pants, a dark jacket and a small brown felt hat. He also had a walking stick with a deer antler handle and a gold-rimmed pince-nez. He ought to have been standing there bedecked from head to toe in yellow rawhide! Or at least in spats!

They walked on.

You could hear the sound of iron castanets, muffled wooden drums, brass rings chiming.

They came to the dance ground of the Ashantee.

“Syncopated rhythms,” said the tutor, “do you hear it?! Tàd
t
dàd
d
dà t
dàd
—.”

“Just like the sound of a threshing machine,” said the boy.

“Quite right,” said the tutor, “syncopes.”

“It really does sound like a thresher,” said Fortunatina.

“Or like in a train car the sounds you hear rattling below,” said the boy.

“Just like in a train car,” said Fortunatina. “Somebody really ought to make a music of it with real instruments.”

“Bravo Fortunatina—,” said the tutor.

“It's music for them in any case—,” said the boy.

“Don't rush to make such a big distinction between us and them. For them, for them. What is that supposed to mean?! You think because stupid people set themselves above them, treat them like exotic animals?! Why?! Because their epidermis contains dark pigment cells?! These girls in any case are gentle and good. Come here, little one.
How
is your name?!”

“Tíoko—.”

He took the wondrous brown hand and laid it in Fortunatina's hand. The latter became flustered.

Then he took a four-stranded necklace of white glass beads with a gold clasp out of his pocket and gave it to Tíoko.

“Where'd you get that?!” asked the boy, while the girl thought nothing of it.

“Where, wherever!” replied the tutor.

Later the boy said: “You were kind and gentle with Tíoko and you believe that she was the same with you; but it's the opposite.”

The tutor peered at him, as if to say: “Stupid person, that's the solution to the riddle of our muddled life.” But he said: “Fortunatina, wasn't Tíoko gentle and sweet? You see! She came with us like a faithful companion, never let go of your hand. What pleasure she took in the glass pearls. And in everything else. Her cleanliness, her wonderfully smooth cool skin, her ivory white teeth, her gentle hands and feet, the aristocratic grace of her gait!”

The boy thought: “No matter what he says, he bought her.”

Fortunatina said in parting: “Tíoko, I love you.”

The boy thought: “Fortunatina makes a big deal out of everything.”

The tutor kissed Tíoko.

Fortunatina felt: “They're all gentle,Tíoko, the poor lioness, my tutor. It's just like in paradise, where people and wild animals—.”

The boy said: “How much did the glass beads cost? How did you come to have them on you? Go ahead, tell me.”

“How come, how come?! You have to open every person's heart with the key that fits that lock.”

The boy thought: “Tíoko's a funny one, that's all.”

Fortunatina felt: “I want to cry, for Tíoko, for the lioness, for everything.”

At the zoo exit the aguti still sat there in their cage, the stupid people kept tossing in bread rolls and sugar cubes. In the light brown varnished little Swiss chalet sat the attendant, still selling lemon yellow entrance tickets and dark green reduced price tickets for groups, soldiers and regular visitors.

“Are you tired, Fortunatina?” asked the tutor.

“A little—.”

“Let's sit down then—.”

There was a bench in a thicket of trees, surrounded by lawns planted with trees. They all felt the pleasant peacefulness, huddled together, as it were. The tutor took a four-stranded necklace of white glass beads with a gold clasp out of his pocket and lay it around Fortunatina's neck.

She trembled with the joy of paradise.

No one said a word.

The boy was all flustered.

“You can smell the grass—,” said the tutor.

They all inhaled the pleasant scent which the earth exhaled from its wondrous lungs, actually from the pores of its skin.

“What will Tíoko do tonight?!” asked the girl.

“She cleans the clothes and shoes, makes the bed, fills the wash-basin with water for the zoo attendant you saw at the entrance.”

“I took her for the daughter of the king!”

The tutor kissed her gently on her blond head.

“I have a regal piece of jewelry on,” she felt, “like Lady Dudley, four strands of immaculate pearls, priceless, maybe worth four million—.”