Читать книгу Man and Beast - Bottome Phyllis - Страница 3

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Seppel Bergener did not find it altogether easy to be a good American.

He was born ten miles from Budapest; dimly in the overgrown jungle of his restless mind he could still remember that wide yellow worm, the Danube, on whose treacherous marshy banks he had spent the first three years of his life.

Sometimes when he was drunk there spluttered in his ears the dazzling fireworks of Z’s and S’s which comprised his native tongue.

He could not have spoken Hungarian; but had anyone spoken it to him, his blood would have answered.

As it was, Seppel spoke a clipped fumbling American; and when he listened to the strange flat language now always in his ears, he had to make those piteous efforts to hear made by the deaf in danger.

Seppel lived in the heart of a Californian desert. All day long the hot clean wind whipped his senses.

His mother was dry and bright like a flame. She was a Hungarian gipsy. Some people said she had killed her husband. Others said that the lions had killed him. Seppel’s parents bred and trained lions for show.

The police had come out into the desert to investigate the sudden death of Seppel’s father. His body had been savaged by the lions, but the lions evaded the third degree and the police could not persuade them to “come clean”. The police had the idea that Seppel’s father might have been killed first, and then thrown to the beasts. But again the lions foiled them, for they had made the evidence quite inconclusive.

Seppel was five years old at the time; he did not care very much about his father’s death. He loved his mother and he loved the lions.

He did not love a young step-father, who was their showman, and who took control of the show shortly after Seppel’s father died.

Seppel grew up fast, and took his education as it was forced upon him. A huge grizzly bear caught him once and hugged one shoulder out of shape. A panther clawed his chin, and left very little of it.

Seppel played with lion and tiger cubs as if they were his human contemporaries, and the marks of his little play-fellows stood out all over his compact, small body.

Seppel never grew to be a tall man, but he was very vigorous and had eyes as clear as flame.

On his sixteenth birthday his mother said to him: “You lion-man now! You mak’ lions like dogs! You great little son of mine! You hav’ my heart an’ my blood! You no mak’ showman ever, you no hav’ beauty. Pity! But for one maker of lions, there is plenty showmen! Aah! a-plenty!”

His mother must have known what she was talking about, because she had five showmen husbands, one after the other. The last of the five was still living when she died. But she left him nothing. She left every lion, bear, cat and cub to her son Seppel. The whole show—cages; cars; the shack and tents; the hot dog and iced-beer stands—were now Seppel’s.

There was no dispute about it either, for Seppel’s mother had made her will in Los Angeles itself, assisted by a famous lawyer. It was deposited in the city safe and published in the newspapers. In Caterina Sybylla’s life there had been “plenty showmen” but only one son.

Seppel was twenty-three when his mother died. He got rid of his showman step-father at once, and married a desert girl, with dry crinkly hair and a voice like the cracked shriek of a desert wind. Her teeth were bad; but she spoke good American.

“You faithful,” Seppel explained to her, “I—kind! You once like other feller—you die! Same as my father feeded by lions. You ’member? I must have showman—see? You better no look at him! Pity if you look at him!”

Carrie Gladys replied raspingly with a string of oaths directed at showmen. She would not look at showmen, she averred, not if Rudolph Valentino or Doug Fairbanks headed the list. Carrie Gladys was not an affectionate woman. She never noticed what anybody else felt about anything, unless she was personally involved. Her real passions were for gin and horses, and she knew that Seppel could give her plenty of both.

For a year after their marriage Seppel tried to do without a showman. He trained and showed his lions single-handed; but the Picture people told him that he was too small and unimpressive-looking to draw a big public and that they could not use him for films. So Seppel set to work to find a suitable showman, without too much charm.

Bert Kimstock was no Valentino; but he was six feet tall, with curly brown hair, the bright eyes of a native Irishman, a long upper lip, nerve, and no money.

Seppel engaged him reluctantly after two or three hours spent with Bert in the cages of the easier lions.

Seppel explained carefully to the new showman how he ran his show. “This I do,” he told him; “I mak’ lions easy! I mak’ ’em tricks! They’re my baby-boys! I no hav’ children. I hav’ lions! You—you can hav’ children! An’ you can play with my lions—once I mak’ ’em easy! I show you how to be safe: you stan’ in the big cage where people come—see? I mak’ tricks an’ you look good! The lions no hurt you! But the lions are mine! You un’erstan’ you just showman? I—lion man!”

Bert assented heartily. He did not want to be a lion-man. He was not without a genuine love and knowledge of animals, he even possessed an old tame lioness called Pansy Bell, whom Seppel allowed him to bring into the show; and with Seppel’s help he half-tamed a lioness cub called Rosamund—but Bert only half-tamed her. Rosamund had heaps of fun wrestling with Bert in her cage—but there were moments when it looked as if she would have thought it still greater fun to have killed him; and with the male lions Bert had no success whatever.

Lions, however well trained, are never so madly affectionate as lionesses; and Seppel’s lions were one-man animals, and refused to extend their patronage to Bert.

Seppel’s favourite lion was called Caesar. He was the best trick lion the show had ever possessed. He had a huge brown mane, sleepy yellow eyes, and when he roared, he set the desert quivering.

Seppel told Bert confidentially, “Caesar’s safe as houses: houses where no fire comes. Mustn’t bring fire near desert houses. No! No! Mustn’t bring flame near lions either! Flame to lions, all same flame to mens. Woman—she flame! You understan’—never come between a lion and a lioness—then lions no safe—they kill—all same men in desert!”

Bert saw this point too; and thought that it did not concern him. He had already seen Carrie Gladys and he did not look on her in the light of a flame. Bert was an honest, rather boastful young man without intensity. He soon found that he was quite unable to teach lions tricks. He had not begun young enough nor did he possess the wild hypnotic eye-language and deep creative patience with which Seppel was endowed both by birth and training. Still the audience gave Bert their chief applause, and all he had to do to win it was to stand once a day in the big arena cage and take picturesque attitudes, while Seppel kept the male lions in their proper places.

The animals, let out of their cages by slip-gates, came through a subterranean passage one by one into the big main cage. The lionesses came first; and as they came in Seppel called them each by name to take their places. Their perches were arranged in a ring round the arena, the first seven feet from the ground, the others gradually rising in height to nine feet. The lionesses took the first perch from the top of a tub; and then sprang from perch to perch. It was Bert’s business to face the lionesses, after they were seated, gluing them to their seats with his eyes and flicking them with a whip, if this reminder should be necessary. Venus was the last of the ladies upon the right, Mariposa the last upon the left.

Mariposa was the wife of Caesar. She was above suspicion in every sense of the word; and even if she had not been Caesar would have kept her so.

Venus had the worst temper of all the lionesses, but she was deeply attached to Seppel, who had helped her on one occasion to rear her cubs, when her natural milk supply had given out. Venus looked upon Seppel as a woman and a sister, and treated him accordingly. But as far as other males were concerned, including all lions, she had what is known in psychiatric circles as “a strong masculine protest” and she took every occasion of showing it. She hunched herself up, and spat at the male lions as they entered, and if one of them came within striking distance of her, Venus promptly clawed him.

After the lionesses were seated, Seppel called for the young males.

These were not powerful or excitable lions. They sat on tubs beneath the ladies’ perches, looking a little bored; and the ladies looked well over their heads, towards the hatchway door.

Seppel then called to the attendants: “Bring in my baby-boys!” Seppel’s “baby-boys” were full grown; and the most powerful male lions in the show. When they opened their jaws, if it was only to yawn, their teeth looked like the worst rocks a ship ever split on. If they roared, the cage rocked. Caesar always led them in, and then took his place at the end of the line, farthest from the hatchway, under the perch of Venus. This was intentional because Seppel trusted Caesar the most, and so great was Caesar’s faithfulness to Mariposa that he never increased the masculine protest of Venus by so much as a glance.

Mariposa sat on the perch farthest from Caesar, but she always watched him with her fond lazy yellow eyes.

When the first trick was over, Bert would turn, and stand picturesquely in the centre of any pattern which Seppel had devised. Nobody noticed Seppel very much, except the big male lions whose eyes he always held.

Caesar and Mariposa shared a large cage next to that of a handsome male tiger, the only mature male tiger possessed by the show. His name was Hector and his manners were regrettably Trojan. His mate having been temporarily removed from his society to attend to her maternal duties, Hector became highly envious of the placid domesticity enjoyed by his neighbours. One morning he jumped much higher than he was supposed to be able to jump against the wooden partition, and tore off a large piece of steel netting which separated the two cages, as if it were sponge cake. He then proceeded to seize Mariposa’s ear; and tore that.

Everyone thought there was an earthquake from the noise that followed; and Mariposa thought that she was the earthquake.

More and more tiger got through the steel netting, and Caesar, shaking the desert with his voice, skilfully seized Mariposa by the haunches, and dragged her clear of the tiger, minus half an ear. He then flung himself against the wooden partition and clawed down more netting, in order to get a stronger hold on Hector. By this time Seppel, Bert and two terrified attendants were gathered about the cages.

A glance was enough to show Seppel what had occurred. Half of Mariposa’s ear was in the tiger’s cage—and a good deal of Tiger was being clawed by Caesar. The partition bulged like a piece of sailcloth caught in a breeze.

It grieved Seppel to interfere with Caesar, but he could not afford the death of his only tiger. He therefore entered Hector’s cage from the rear and strikingly diverted his attention. Hector turned on him in a flash; but quicker still, Seppel covered the tiger’s head with an enormous sack, and with the nervous help of Bert and the attendants, transferred Hector to a distant cage.

Mariposa yelped for hours, while Caesar lay beside her, licking her torn ear, and administering consolation in low throaty growls.

In the course of a few days Mariposa, except for half an ear, completely recovered. Caesar’s temper, however, was desperately ruffled; nor could he ever again feel the same trust in Seppel. “That one lil’ tiger!” Seppel told him persuasively, “he no more trouble any lion! He flat skin to walk on—sure enough dead! My wife she step on him in kitchen!” Caesar blinked disdainfully at this tale for cubs. Did he not know the voice of every creature in the show, and was he likely to forget the still audible roar of a tiger that had trifled with Mariposa’s ear?

Seppel excused Caesar from the ring for two weeks, though it was both difficult and dangerous to get on without him. At last he said to Bert, “My big baby-boy, he come back to-day. He lead once more. There may be lil’ trouble! You look lionesses hard; and if tub fall over—you pick up tub pretty quick: better tub no fall over! Better lionesses come in lil’ bit slow—and the young lions lil’ bit quick!” Bert agreed, but he did not feel too comfortable. One lioness is one thing, but somehow or other ten lionesses are a good deal more than ten things.

However, the lionesses made a good entry. Venus took some time to settle; but Mariposa leapt to her usual perch like a bird. The young lions were hurried in, to get them out of the way; and then the big male lions, led by Caesar, came in very slowly, and with great dignity. Seppel’s flying, intensely beseeching eyes met Caesar’s. Caesar turned his heavy head away, but after a moment’s perceptible pause, he obeyed Seppel’s pleading will, and took his seat on his tub. The other lions all mounted theirs in turn, while Seppel’s earnest, plangent voice told them what good boys they were! What handsome children! What grand lions!

The lionesses remained on their perches, bored, but quiescent. The young males, resentfully expectant, watched their fathers advance slowly, facing Seppel, one by one. Each in his turn; each taking his exact place; following Seppel’s high-keyed, imploring voice, his summoning eyes, and the direction of the whiplash, that without touching them showed each his place and warned him to take it.

Unfortunately Caesar declined. He stood at the end of the row, in his accustomed place; but lie down he would not. He snarled; he raised a paw; he lashed an angry yellow tail. His massive benevolent upper lip turned hideous with menace.

Mariposa, watching him intently from her perch, grew larger while she watched.

Seppel beseeched; he coaxed; he flung his heart out at Caesar: his boy—his baby-boy! Surely to please him Caesar would lie down?

The whip flickered and flapped in front of Caesar’s face. Caesar put his paw on it. He bit it; and wouldn’t lie down. He even jerked back a pace or two, nearer Venus’s perch. Venus snarled savagely—and in her ill-natured prudery, she clawed at the flank of the lady next to her. Dolores—the lady next to her—swayed, lost her balance and fell into the arena.

Seppel glided away from his big males. He got behind Dolores, who was slinking, perchless and nervous, round the ring, and whipped her up on to a tub. Dolores leapt; missed her footing; and the tub rolled over.

Bert had an uncomfortable feeling that he ought to do something about that fallen tub; but with nine lionesses staring at him—and Mariposa swollen out of all recognition—he knew that turning his back on them, to right the tub, would be a most unpleasant posture.

Seppel gave a whimpering cry like a frightened child. “Will no-one helpa me?” he cried. “Will I be all alone for ever—no-one to helpa—me?” But while he whined and whimpered, he deftly righted the tub; lashed Dolores on to it, and saw her successfully negotiate her perch, before turning back with a bound, to face his baby-boys.

The lions had broken up their row. They stood on the balls of their feet, tense and terrible.

Seppel ran close up to them, calling each by name, meeting their fierce yellow eyes with the quick flame of his own. “Caesar!” he called. “Pompey! Tomboy! Kaiser! Capone! Paasha! Ajax! Lindbergh! Duce! Poppa! There you go! Easy my fine boys—you lie down! You good boys! You, Caesar! You my pet boy! Oh Kay! Oh Kay! O.K. lions!” One by one they sank back, down on their haunches; into their statuesque row. Only Caesar still stood upright, lashing his tail with disdainful puckered lips. Seppel’s voice cajoled on. His will burned through his eyes. At last Caesar’s head sank; his beautiful lithe flanks closed in. He lay down at the end of his row. Mariposa grew slowly smaller again.

The hatch door reopened, and the lions filed out in turn.

Then Seppel faced Bert in the empty cage, while the audience still applauded.

He called out in his fierce high voice: “Why you no helpa me, showman? Why you stan’ there—you great ape? You fat stuck pig! You no helpa me put tub straight! I say one momen’ more, one lil’ insta’ all those lions go wild! Go mad! We get feeded by lions! I no can nothing save! I hold ’em with my eyes! I turn my back they loose—they no hold! They go pieces! They no more my children! You no un’erstan’! You only showman. Oh, my God! Only showman! One day all dead for nothing! And my poor baby-boys all shotted up and cursed! An’ all your fault! You stupid—you God-damn stupid showman!” and Seppel tore open the cage door and ran sobbing, through the astonished audience, to find his wife.

Some women would have comforted Seppel and taken the bitterness out of his heart, by their fears for his safety; but Carrie Gladys was no comforter. Her ideal was a cave man; and she did not know that courage can be fed by tears.

Behind Seppel stood Bert; tall, handsome, and cheerfully explanatory. It was all right! The Boss had had an upset! Not an animal damaged, though—and a good audience! Plenty of money!

Carrie Gladys took Bert’s explanations down like gin. She said derisively to Seppel: “Go on—and get in there—cry-baby!” She said to Bert: “Have a drink!” They had a drink and Carrie Gladys laughed. She may not have laughed at her husband; but he heard her laugh. Carrie Gladys had a good deal to learn from lionesses.

Night fell. Towards morning a lion roared. His hollow, hungry voice shattered the desert stillness into harsh, dry flakes of sound.

Seppel lay awake, brooding and resentful, by his wife’s side. “My boy—my baby-boy!” he whispered to himself. He knew it was Caesar roaring. Caesar was roaring because he felt defeated. Hector was still alive; and Caesar had obeyed Seppel—who was no longer to be trusted, since he kept Hector alive.

Seppel, too, felt defeated. He had cried; and Carrie Gladys had laughed at him with his showman.

The morning broke hotter than the day before. The desert wind came in long burning puffs as if the earth had opened a secret chimney and was sighing out fire.

Mariposa and Venus, who were lying side by side on a rock in the middle of the yard, looked as if they were made of the same yellow stone that they were lying on. Nothing moved about them except their tawny eyes. The mountains hung like jagged sheets of cardboard against a brazen sky.

There was an ominous rasping quality in the day. Men’s tempers were short and uncertain. The animals were inert and unresponsive. Even the tiger cubs were less playful than usual. They bit and scratched mechanically and fell asleep while doing it.

Seppel went the round of the cages muttering to himself. The polar bear lay prostrate in his pool, with only the top of his head and one irritated red eye showing. The monkeys were beating their wives and the wives were screaming like mad.

Seppel watched them for a time, but thought there was not much harm being done, and that it would be a pity to interfere with a male prerogative.

At last he came to Caesar’s cage. Caesar was in a very low frame of mind. He refused even to come forward and speak to Seppel.

Seppel pleaded for a long time with Caesar; but Caesar only sat on his haunches and blinked. Once, he even put his paw on the bars, and shook them.

Seppel took this very much to heart; but Bert, standing good-naturedly beside him, thought the whole affair rather a joke. “You no un’erstan’ lions,” Seppel said bitterly. “They gotta strong feelin’s, lions! They no get over things! Once you hurt a lion—you hurt a heart!”

“Well—what you goin’ ter do about it?” Bert asked him; “if Caesar’s so damn hurt—how you going ter manage? Goin’ ter give another lion the lead? Caesar held you up yesterday! And ter-day’s Sunday! We’ll have a swell audience, maybe! They won’t want ter wait half an hour, while you baby Caesar into lying down, will they?”

Seppel shook his head gloomily. “Caesar my stunt lion,” he said sadly, “I no give up my stunt lion! Not for no Sunday audience! No! Caesar mus’ come in! Only to-day I feed him myself—first I mak’ him more fren’ly. I talk him alone! She very fine lioness, Caesar’s wife—she better’n a woman! But half an ear—that not enough to break a show down! No, sir. Caesar—he learn understan’ ’bout his wife’s ear!”

It was stupid of Bert to neglect Seppel’s instructions. He forgot to tell the attendants not to feed Caesar with the other lions. When Seppel came from his Sunday dinner, with a handsome meal for Caesar, it was to find that he had been already fed; nor did Bert attach any very great importance to Seppel’s sudden burst of maniacal rage, when he found that he was too late to feed his pet. Like Carrie Gladys, Bert was untroubled by the feelings of others. He was a good-natured fellow, accustomed to getting his own way; and winning applause for it.

Still, he went so far as to suggest that perhaps it would be better for Caesar to remain in his cage and not take the lead in the afternoon performance. Seppel, who was just about to give this order, immediately reversed it, and told the attendant to let Caesar start the line of male lions as usual.

There was a large Sunday audience. The animals came in nicely and without confusion.

The first two tricks ran as smooth as cream.

Bert had a fine easy wrestling match with his pet lioness. Pansy Bell gave him a showy struggle and never forgot herself, for a moment. When she withdrew, Bert stood every inch a lion-tamer in front of his circle of lionesses, while Seppel inconspicuously in the back of the cage engaged the attention of the male lions.

Suddenly a blanched darkness swept over the faces of the audience. It was like a cloud crossing the sun. Bert saw rows of mouths open suddenly and eyes pricked wide with horror. Something had happened behind him, which he could not see.

Caesar had suddenly decided that if he couldn’t kill Hector, the nearest male lion might do instead.

With one bound he had launched himself on Poppa and tore half his flank open. All the lions grew tense and crouched for a charge. Seppel stood alone in the middle of a ring of lions—calling—calling.

Bert looked behind him. There was just one chance in a million. Anything he did might tell now. A sudden noise might hold the lions. If he jumped through the ring and stood by Seppel, there might be a chance for their lives. A moment later, nothing could stop the lions from charging. Bert stood close to the hatchways. Once inside them he would be safe. Venus chose that moment of his conflict to leap down from her perch. The chance was over. Bert jumped for the hatchway. A terrific roar crashed behind him. He ran through the smelly passage, hot and flurried, asking himself over and over again how he could have saved Seppel.

The first cage door closed safely behind him. He was free now. He reminded himself that Seppel too had a door at his back. If Seppel broke through the ring of lions—if he risked the danger to the audience by opening the cage door that faced them—if that roar had not meant the lions were already on him—then perhaps he was safe!

The whole, hot empty yard rocked with sound. Bert found a gun, and ran through the yard towards the arena cage. It would look more like a rescue than an escape if he came back with a gun.

As he came within sight of the cage, he heard high above the pulverizing roar of the lions Seppel’s voice, shrill—plangent—strained but curiously without fear or anger. “My boys! My baby-boys! Caesar! Poppa! Paasha!” Seppel was calling them still. He was down under them; but they hadn’t quite killed him.

The terror-stricken audience pushed each other aside, to let Bert through. He steadied his gun against the steel rims of the cage, and shot Caesar through the heart. With a roar that drowned the shrieks of the crowd and the clamour of the other animals, Mariposa flung herself from her perch on to the body of Caesar.

The rest of the lions drew back, crouched and growling; but it was not Bert’s shot that controlled them. It was Seppel’s voice; he lay in the centre of the ring, incredibly mauled, a mere mask of blood.

“Back—back, my beauties!” he cried beseechingly, and then one by one he called their names.

The attendant opened the hatchway door. The lions withdrew sullenly, but in their usual order. The lionesses left their perches.

Mariposa never moved, nor after that one roar, did she make a sound. She lay across the body of Caesar so still that you could not tell which of them was dead.

Venus, too, refused to follow her sisters. She leapt from her perch, and crouched, swaying, across the bloody floor to Seppel’s side. “God! she’ll finish him!” shrieked Carrie Gladys, her white papery face pressed against the bars; but she was judging Venus by her own standard.

“Is that Venus? Is that my darling?” Seppel called faintly. The lioness crouched low beside him—and with a sigh Seppel leaned his bleeding head against her flank. She licked his wounds with low caressing growls, nor would she let anyone approach him, until she knew that he was safely dead.