CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Zira took me for outings in the park fairly often. Sometimes we would meet Cornelius there, and together we would prepare the speech I was to give before the congress. The date was fast approaching, which made me quite nervous. Zira assured me that all would be well. Cornelius was eager for my state to be recognized and my liberty restored so that he could study me closely—collaborate with me, he corrected himself, at the gesture of annoyance that escaped me when he spoke like this.
One day her fiancé was absent. Zira suggested going to the zoo adjoining the park. I should have liked to go to a theater or a museum, but these entertainments were still forbidden me. Only from books had I been able to acquire a few ideas about simian art. I had admired some reproductions of classical paintings, portraits of celebrated apes, country scenes with lascivious she-apes around whom fluttered a little winged monkey representing Cupid, military paintings dating from the time when there were still wars and depicting terrifying gorillas wearing flamboyant uniforms. The apes had also had their impressionists, and a few contemporaries indulged in abstract art. All this I had discovered in my cage, by the light of my flashlight. I could decently attend only open-air entertainments. Zira had taken me to see a game resembling our football, a boxing match, which had made me shudder, between two gorillas, and an athletic meet in which air-borne chimps launched themselves to prodigious heights by means of a springboard.
I welcomed a visit to the zoo. At first I felt no surprise. The animals bore many similarities to those on Earth. There were felines, pachyderms, ruminants, reptiles, and birds. If I noticed a sort of camel with three humps and a wild boar with horns like a stag, they could in no way astonish me after what I had already seen on the planet Soror.
My amazement began with the section devoted to man. Zira tried to dissuade me from going there, regretting having brought me, I believe, but my curiosity was too strong and I tugged on my lead until she yielded.
The first cage at which we stopped contained at least fifty individuals, men, women, and children, exhibited there to the great glee of the ape spectators. They displayed a feverish and immoderate activity, leaping about, jostling one another, making an exhibition of themselves, indulging in all sorts of frolics.
It was certainly a sight. They were all intent on winning favor with the little apes surrounding their cage, who now and then threw them some fruit or pieces of cake sold by an old she-ape at the entrance. It was the man, either adult or child, who did the best trick—climbing up the bars, walking on all fours or on his hands—who obtained the reward, and when this fell in the middle of a group, there was a scuffle involving scratched faces and torn-out hair, the whole punctuated by the shrill cries of animals in a temper.
There were some men who were more composed and did not take part in this fracas. They sat apart, near the bars, and when they saw an ape brat plunge his fingers into a bag they would stretch out an imploring hand. The ape, if he was very young, would often draw back in fright, but his parents or his friends would tease him until he decided, still trembling, to pass the reward from hand to hand.
The appearance of a man outside the cage provoked some surprise, no less among the captives than in the simian audience. The former interrupted their play for a moment to examine me with suspicion, but since I stood quite still refusing with dignity the offerings that the youngster tried to hand me, apes and men alike lost interest in me and I was able to observe everything in peace. The silliness of these creatures sickened me, and I felt myself hot with shame when I once again noted how closely they resembled me physically.
The other cages provided the same degrading spectacle. I was about to let myself be led off by Zira, with a heavy heart, when suddenly, and with a great effort, I stifled a cry of surprise. There in front of me, among the herd, I saw none other than my traveling companion, the leader and mastermind of our expedition, the famous Professor Antelle. Like me, he had been captured and, no doubt less fortunate, had then been sold to the zoo.
My joy at knowing he was alive and seeing him again was such that tears came into my eyes; then I shuddered at the condition to which this learned man had been reduced. My emotion gradually changed to a painful numbness when I noticed that his behavior was identical to the other men’s. I could not doubt the evidence of my own eyes, in spite of the improbability of this behavior. He was among the group of quiet ones who did not take part in the scuffles but stretched their hands through the bars with a begging grimace. I watched him while he was doing this, and there was nothing in his attitude to reveal his true nature. A little ape gave him some fruit. The scientist took it, sat down, crossed his legs, and began to devour it greedily, looking at his benefactor with an eager eye, as though he hoped for another gesture of generosity. I wept anew at this sight. In a low voice I told Zira the reason for my tears. I should have liked to go up and speak to him, but she dissuaded me vigorously. I could do nothing for him at the moment, and, in the emotion of meeting again, we risked causing a scene that would prejudice our common interests and might well ruin my own plans.
“After the congress,” she told me, “when you have been recognized and accepted as a rational being, we will see about him.”
She was right and I regretfully let myself be dragged away. On the way back to the Car I told her all about the professor and his reputation on Earth in the scientific world. She pondered over this for some time and promised to do her best to get him out of the zoo. I was therefore a little more cheerful on my return to the institute, but that evening I refused the food the gorillas brought me.