Classics Mutilated Part 42

With a coughing growl, Darius leaps the creek and coils, ready to pounce. The Stranger stands erect and stares Darius down with his redly flashing eyes.

The leopard man runs away into the green jungle. The Stranger shakes his head and turns to a fresh page. Then he turns on me.

"h.e.l.lo, little fellow. You're a shy one, aren't you? Well, you needn't be frightened of me. Here...." His teeth flash, but not in threat. He reaches into his pocket and holds out a handful of peanuts.

I trample out of my hiding place. My ears flap and my trunk unfurls in a vulgar display of threat, but the Stranger barks until he coughs and spits on the ground. "You really are some sort of a beast-man, aren't you? Not a hoodoo or a gaff, at all. Now, what would be a good name for you...?"

"I have a name," I tell him. I try to make my voice large. It cracks and he utters his strange bark again, like the hyena-swine's mating call.

My trunk reaches out to snort up a nut. "My name...." My remade throat closes, my tongue twists, spitting sh.e.l.ls. "Diogenes."

The Stranger's pencil carves a bloated, droopy ellipse, with a wilted triangle on either side, and a lazy S dangling from its belly. Then two smaller circles beneath it, and short, stubby rectangular limbs. The eyes are bigger than mine, the humors out of balance to drive this paper Diogenes mad with glee. My own eyes are small and weak and sad.

He shakes his head again. "I can't do justice to you. n.o.body could believe it, n.o.body would fall in love with it. But you're real enough, aren't you, little fellow? D'you know any tricks?"

My clumsy hands reach out for the book. He turns it around and shows it to me. I take his pencil in my trunk and write my name under his picture.

Cradling it in my hands, I turn the pages with my trunk. He has seen many of us. The hyena-swine creeps up on a rabbit hutch. A wolf woman falls upon a swine man and destroys his crude cane-stick hut. The pink homunculi at play in the undergrowth. A headless rabbit sprawls in the gra.s.s, bejeweled with flies. The leopard man slakes his thirst after a murder. "He has broken the Law," I grunt.

Behind the picture of Darius, I find sketches of other beast men, with no claws or teeth-soft, like the homunculi, but with gloves and short pants. "It's not ... a good likeness ... of a rabbit."

He barks again, but does not smile. "Animals are no fit judges of artwork," he says. "And it's a mouse."

"I've read Homer and Aesop ... in the orig ... original Greek ... and Latin." There are more sketches of this curious animal-baby, on the corner of each page. When the pages slip from my blunt thumbnail, the little rodent dances like a little live thing.

"That ... no, don't look at that." He snaps the book away and tears the page out, b.a.l.l.s it up and puts it in his mouth. His red face dims almost purple. He chokes it down. "That's over and gone. They stole it from me, but they won't take anything from me again." He sucks in fire and blows out smoke, and slowly grows calm again. "How does he do it, Diogenes? You're a sharp one. You can tell Uncle Wilbur."

I don't know what he means. He offers me more peanuts, but I know not to take them. His eyes are like whips.

"You're a true friend to your Master, aren't you? Well, never mind. I'll find out for myself."

We go back to the compound. The Stranger locks himself in his apartment and says he must sleep, but he does not sleep. From lying in his hammock staring at Aesop's Fables-what kind of man cannot read Greek?-to pacing the room until it is filled with smoke, he wastes the day. I watch through the outer window that looks on the ocean, but I cannot imagine what disturbs him. He has the key to his cage.

Inside, the puma cries out. Her cries send him pacing faster. She is a long way yet from being born.

M'ling brings him his supper. The Stranger hides his book of drawings. Montgomery comes in and he and the Stranger share a gla.s.s of poison. He warns the Stranger to be careful in his wandering, for the island is dangerous, then leaves by the inner courtyard door, but he forgets to lock it.

The poison overtakes the Stranger. He has bad dreams. Crying out in echo of the unmade puma, he says, "No, Father, don't," and covers his head. This strange creature is no stranger to the Whip.

In the morning, his hammock is soiled. M'ling sniffs at the stain and the Stranger's discarded rags and says he has marked his place.

The newborn woman cries out. The Stranger pokes at his breakfast for a while, then goes through the door into the compound. Slow on my flat feet, I follow.

The dogs snarl and bark. The Stranger runs them to the span of their leashes, then ducks into the open back door of the House of Pain.

Dark inside. Hotter than outside. Clean. White porcelain and polished steel. Chains. And the new woman on the table. Still red and wet and weeping, mewling lost in the throes of rebirth.

The Master shouts, takes him by the arm and hurls him from the room into the courtyard, then drives him back to his apartment and slams the door.

The Other is shamefaced. The Master almost whips him. "This uninvited guest will be our undoing. His meddling could ruin the work of a lifetime!"

"He doesn't know the score," hisses Montgomery, "but he wants to. Too eager by half, says I. In fact, when I riddle upon it, I wonder if his coming here was an accident, after all."

"That is my princ.i.p.al fear. He must be taken into our confidence or dealt with, but I can't yet spare the time."

Montgomery chuckles. "If he's as fine a specimen as you seem to think, perhaps you could turn his presence here to the good-"

The Master looms over the Other. The puma's blood on his smock is the only color on his white marble face. "This Wilbur Dixon is a singular creature, but imagine his blood in their bodies. No, they would walk erect and speak, but I doubt they could be less human." The Master sees me watching, and orders me to find the Stranger.

He has left his apartment. He races, but I can follow the trail of his smoke through the trees.

Someone else stalks us. I scent Darius' bitter musk on the rank morning heat. The Stranger can smell nothing but his own smoke. He is helpless before the hunched gray shape that drops out of a tree before him.

I wheeze with relief. The monkey man bows and presents his fingers for counting. Amused, the Stranger returns the gesture, but he can make no sense of Virgil's chattering.

"You poor creature! You were a spider monkey, weren't you?"

"I am a man, like you, yes yes. We talk big thinks, yes yes?" Virgil prances and chatters around the Stranger, who makes the sound he calls laughter, and throws him nuts.

"What has that monster done to your tail?"

Angry Virgil tries to stand erect and puff out his chest. "I am a man like you! The Master made me, good Virgil, yes yes, a man!"

The Stranger puts a hand on Virgil's head and strokes his gray fur. "You had a tail once. He's taken all of your G.o.d-given gifts, and for what? This Moreau is a butcher, and the worst sort of villain. Someone should make him pay for his crimes against you."

"Moreau a butcher, yes no," Virgil chatters. "His is the hand that wounds! His is the hand that heals!"

"Where are the rest of you?" the Stranger asks. "How many orphans are there?"

Virgil turns and scampers down the trail. "I will take you to them, yes yes. You must learn the Law."

The Stranger blunders through the canebreak after Virgil and emerges on the yellow waste. Sulfur and steam rise from the hot springs, masking the mouth of the ravine. I wait for them to disappear into the mist, when something rakes my back with claws of fire.

I forget myself, and trumpet wordless terror. My blood flows. I try to turn over, but I am pinned. I have no gun, no whip. I have never had tusks. I cannot even call for the Master.

Darius sinks his teeth into my tough hide and flays my scalp, then flies away. The Stranger brandishes a b.l.o.o.d.y rock, then throws it at the leopard man. He strikes him on the temple and sends him howling into a th.o.r.n.y thicket.

"You're safe now, little friend." He reaches out for my trunk, and lifts me up.

He goes into the ravine.

The stone walls draw close. They come out of their huts of thorns and palm fronds in the cracks of the rock to show fangs and claws and half-made hands. I count heads. Sixty-two. All but M'ling and Darius are here.

Pan lowers his goatish head to show his curling horns, fondles himself and strikes the rock with his hooves. The swine-folk hoot and the wolves growl, the dog-man grovels and licks the Stranger's boots.

A man walks among them, unarmed. He tests the Law. It is too much.

He shows no fear. The stink from him is not like an animal's fear. I doubt anyone but me can smell it. It is the stink of a deeper fear, buried under a mountain of will.

The gray-haired oldest one limps from his hovel and lifts himself upright on his staff. I call him Solon, for he speaks only the Law. His s.h.a.ggy pelt hides his blind eyes, toothless mouth. "If it is a man, then let him say the Law!"

"The Law of the Jungle is the only law I see here," says the Stranger. "I see only animals stripped of their true nature and their gifts, and cast adrift."

The beast men roar and jeer. "Not to walk on all fours-that is the Law! Are we not men?"

"Not to spill blood-that is the Law! Are we not men?"

"Not to suck drink-that is the Law! Are we not men?"

The Stranger rages. "No, you are not! Not to do those things is not to be an animal, but has he taught you what it is to be a man?"

He takes out a little silver tool and blows into it. The single, piercing note traps every beast in the ravine. None of them have ever heard music.

He begins to play the swooning, swaying notes of a familiar tune-Saint-Saens's Danse Macabre, I know it from the Master's phonograph collection. Heads bobbing, eyes glazed, they become less than beasts, but Virgil knows at once what music is for.

Bobbing his furry head to the woozy melody, he prances in circles around the Stranger in uncanny imitation of the Stranger's stiff, inhibited gait. When he runs up the Stranger's back to s.n.a.t.c.h his hat, the Stranger does not punish him, but only quickens the whirling, maddening tune.

Virgil leaps to the ground and dances on his hands, holding the hat in place on his hindquarters, covering the stump of his tail. Then, flipping over and miming c.r.a.pping into the hat, he offers it back.

The Stranger drops his harmonica and again makes that strange, bloodcurdling bark. He slaps his palms together to make a thunderous sound that drives the beasts back into their burrows. But then his brow darkens, and he looks angry. "Your Master never taught you to laugh?"

Silence, but a riot of scent. In the dim cave shadows, his eyes flash red.

Solon bellows, "His is the hand that wounds-"

The Stranger utters that frightening bark again. "Ask yourselves, if you are really men, what has he done for you? Your master, your creator, who rules by fear and pain, who left you to rot in sin and filth: what do you owe him?" He wipes his brow. The beasts are too captivated to rip him apart. It seems he must do it himself. His eyes shine, and stream down his face. "In the place I come from, you would all be celebrated for your gifts. Instead of a Master who whips and shuns you, you would have a loving father who gives you work and a purpose. And there would be no d.a.m.nable House of Pain!"

Only a few of them understand his words, but then Virgil takes up a new chant. "No Pain! No pain!"

The others cannot even parrot his words, but they roar and stamp and crush their own huts in perfect imitation of his fury. My own trunk is lifted in the chorus.

We are so loud that none sees the dogs until they fall upon us.

The Master has returned. He holds the barking dogs to heel, but they have torn the hyena-swine's filthy white tunic. Montgomery cracks his whip over our heads.

A hairless pink sloth-child I call Claudius scurries up the Stranger's leg. He scoops it up and cradles it to his chest to shield it from the dogs.

Moreau holds out the Stranger's sketchbook. The drawing of Darius. "This one has broken the Law! We will have him."

"None escape! None escape!" The beasts chant.

"Not to spill blood-that is the Law!"

"That is your Law," the Stranger shouts, "but why should it be theirs? You give them only pain and turn them loose in the jungle, and grant them only enough sense to recognize that their creator has forsaken them!"

"You misunderstand my aim," the Master says, in a lower tone. "Please come back to the compound. I would rather have you know all than-"

"The Master is not a G.o.d. He is a man like all of you, and yes, an animal, too! He is not above the Law, is he? He and his lackey are only men, and they are only two, while you are many-"

"For G.o.d's sake, man, shut up!" the Other cracks his whip at the Stranger, who does not cower, but lunges at Montgomery, roaring, "Don't you dare!" and clouts him across the face.

The Master hurls the fire of death into the sky. Its thunderclap sends all of us down on all fours. "Mr. Dixon, we came here to save you from harm. But you have done us a mortal blow. Come with us now, before something transpires that cannot be undone."

The Stranger refuses to leave with the Master. Some of us growl and circle the arguing men, but the rest stand dumb, or cling to the earth as if it's trying to shake them off. If either of them had eyes to see, they could tell now who is the most human among us.

"If it will ease your suspicions," the Master says, and turns over his pistol. Montgomery refuses to disarm, and lewdly slurps from his flask. "Where's the leopard man?"

"He attacked your poor pachyderm houseboy, when you sent him to spy on me. He could be anywhere."

"Mr. Dixon, if you please." Bowing to the Stranger, he turns and walks down the ravine. The Other goes backwards after him with his pistol out before him. "Remember who's the Master here, you rum b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

The Other steps on the paw of the cringing hyena-swine. It whines and strikes him with its gnarled claw-hoof. He shoots it through the head.

The thunder is a long time falling away into silence.

"You rash idiot!" The Master takes off his straw hat. "What a terrible waste..."

"We all know who is the master here, Mr. Montgomery," says the Stranger. Gently, he sets down the sloth-child and follows the men. And I go with them.

The Master st.i.tches my wounded scalp and sends me to sleep. Night falls, and the jungle is loud. The beast men claw at trees and stalk prey, battle, and breed in the dark. The Law is broken, and they want us to hear it.

The Master and the Stranger retire to the library to drink poison and talk. For a long time, the Master explains his great work, his failures and his triumphs. His dashed hopes and determination to go on. With fierce pride, he defends his studies. How the necessary pain of rebirth wipes away the animal memory, leaving a blank slate upon which to build a man. How vivisection and blood and tissue transplants led the way to this great mission, to uplift the animal kingdom into the brotherhood of man.

If only the Stranger could listen.

"Dr. Moreau, this place is an abomination. I beg you to reconsider my offer."

"Even if it were so simple, Mr. Dixon, I could never walk away from this place, and you could never take it over. I fully recognize the ethical burden of my undertaking, but it is only in the name of science-"

"Science! Like Communism, the rationale for all modern inhumanity. Neither men nor animals should be tortured as you do."

"To rear a child, one must flay away that which is animal, no? To be born is painful, and none of us asked for it. They are born anew, but they must be taught, like any new human. And my hand is not quick enough, sadly, to give them the gift of true humanity."

"You're a strange sort of parent, to turn your babes out into the wilderness! You gave up on them, but who has failed? Hard work and a little cleanliness, that's what's wanted here! Without constant hard work, discipline, and a little church, what men won't backslide into savagery?"

The Stranger fills his gla.s.s and drinks it. He puts a paper stick in his mouth and lets the smoke out of his head.

"My coming here was not entirely an accident," he says. "I believe it was destiny. You've had your say. Now listen to me.

"I was born in Chicago, but grew up on an apple farm in Kansas. My father ... was a hardworking man, and he expected us to chip in. There was plenty of work for decent folks, but to make your way in the world, you had to have an idea. And you'd still have to work yourself half to death, just to end up with something worthwhile.

"But if you have a dream, then everyone and his brother is out to crush you. To steal your dream or just rip it to shreds and leave nothing behind. Believe me, Doctor, I know what it's like to have your dreams taken away."

He fills his gla.s.s again. "I had a dream, not so different from yours, in essence. I wanted to create life, and inspire wonder. I thought I could do it with films. I don't suppose you know, but I'm somewhat well known in America as an animator."

The Master and the Other share a look. Neither of them knows what it means.

"I make films using a series of drawings to simulate motion, life, emotion. We made the first cartoon with a full sound track. Our short cartoons were popular ... so popular, in fact, that none of the studios would distribute them without taking away ownership of my most beloved character. They called my work primitive trash, but what they couldn't buy or bully away from me, they simply stole. And they got the courts to back them up.