Дэймон Найт - Orbit 4

Others come and watch him as they watch the goldfish in the pond or how far the crocus has come up. Someone has somehow taken pictures of him naked and sold them surreptitiously. The man in the tan overcoat bought a set of five but he doesn’t meet the woman that day in front of the animal’s cage as the creature chins himself on a branch of his ginkgo tree. If he were here, she might pay some attention to the man in the tan coat, more than she ordinarily would. Everything has become physical and even under their overcoats they would have felt themselves to be there in the flesh.

Neither of them have yet received the invitations to the party that will celebrate the installation of the animal in the park. There has been a delay in hopes that warmer weather will come in the next week or two. The hunters and keepers will be there as well as most of the people in the nearby apartments such as the Century Arms. It is felt that perhaps the animal will pick up some valuable hints on the nature of civilized behavior from this event, though, of course, he can’t be blamed for the two killings that occurred at his capture. Some of the townspeople have wondered what would have happened at that time had he been captured by other townspeople than hunters, had, for instance, the behaviorists come upon him first. Some of the keepers, themselves, and many have become quite fond of him, argue that there would have been no deaths, yet others say he has turned on them in anger more than once, though they managed to get out of his way in time, but they can’t say for sure if these were only threatening gestures.

Yet suddenly, before the invitations can be sent, the animal escapes. No one can understand quite how. At night there’s the policeman to check now and then. The lights are kept burning all around the park and yet he’s gone. There are reports of four rapes that night, and goodness knows, the townspeople say, how many unreported. One can’t be sure who committed them. (There has already been much thought about his possible animal wife or wives, his animal children, perhaps whole colonies of animals living in shelters under the roots of fallen trees, nested in coarse skins and covered with lice. Perhaps they run in packs.) In any case, it may well be that the women of the townspeople seem extraordinarily desirable to him or perhaps it’s just his superb physical shape or his animal nature, but then maybe he isn’t responsible for the rapes at all.

Once the woman had come in late afternoon and whispered “Apartment 5A” as though by some miracle he could come to her open window five floors up. Many of the townspeople have exaggerated ideas of the animal’s abilities, but still, he has escaped miraculously, no one can tell how. Perhaps as he shaved himself in the mornings, his thoughts had turned to the functioning of doors and locks and maybe the woman had left him a bobby pin or dropped one by the wire mesh where he could reach it. Perhaps the key to her apartment, by some strange coincidence, also fit the door of his cage.

And certainly, these moonlight nights, the woman would have liked to reinvent love on a higher plane, liked to consider it from many angles and choose those most likely to satisfy in the longest run of all. And suppose there are to be thoughts also on the new man or a new mankind? a new movement of which the animal might be the leader and she might play the part of sister to the animal, a position without emotional dangers, in which she can permit herself a certain degree of closeness while waiting for some ritual sacrifices to take place. And she wants love-tests also for herself to pass, and a period of fasting, a building up of muscles and mental capacities, some way to prepare herself while she waits for his token, a severed finger, ear or toe? Who knows what rites he practices?

He was found ten days later eating a hamburger and French fries in a diner in a distant city, wearing an astrakhan hat, sunglasses, and smoking Marlboros. He did not resist recapture and was taken by taxi to the airport with no incidents. Positive identification wasn’t difficult even though he had changed his name and adopted many new mannerisms.

A double lock is put upon his door and a guard to warn the townspeople not to come too near. It is felt new hobbies will have to be found to occupy his time. Someone has contributed an old upright piano, others have brought last month’s magazines, paint sets, colored pencils, a banjo. There is a general understanding among the townspeople that there comes a time in everyone’s life when new decisions must be made, new directions taken, new resolutions formulated. The townspeople recognize this phase as it becomes manifest in the actions and attitudes of the animal. After all he is, they estimate, at about that age when such a change is due, and. he must understand, in some vague way of his own, that in spite of his marvelous physical condition he has passed the peak of his powers. And so they are watching the new self-awareness bloom in him along with new generosities and new dissatisfactions. Surely he is asking not only what is the purpose of life, but more specifically, what will he make the purpose of his own life. Now he takes up new pleasures and discards old ones. He revolves slowly to music by the townspeople’s best loved, long-dead composers. He dances with his eyes shut. He taps on the mesh. He seems to understand or at least to react to counterpoint and fugue. He receives a daily newspaper and a good deal of mail addressed to occupant. He writes: Once I crouched, fleabitten, eating raw roots. Once I never heard of shirttails, socks and tie tacks. I slept on fems.

By now it is the fifty-first day of the animal.

He is writing poems on shredded wheat cardboards and old envelopes, but this time of year the younger townspeople roller-skate in the park. The sound of their wheels on the sidewalks bothers the animal as he sits thinking what to write down next or when he is studying a book on style. He has a list of nouns expressing movement and a note to remind himself to put a short sentence next to a long one. Lately he has studied the role of mystery in fiction of every form, but now, probably because of some special feeling for the lady with the dogs and knowing her address from before, he writes: Dear Madam; I must apologize for the night of April second, 1969 . . . She won’t be sure what he is apologizing for even though it was not a fulfilled night for her as it may have been for the animal.

He has already attended two cocktail parties in his honor and one literary tea and he has returned to his cage without complaint. The extra guard may soon be removed. Someone has given him a tan corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows. Many townspeople have found him extraordinarily attractive, especially in a cocktail party setting. The combination of a rugged, even dangerous looking face, white teeth, a well cut jacket, a delicate touch upon a Martini glass and a bit of primeval shyness forms an irresistible combination and none of the male townspeople have blamed the female townspeople for their susceptibility. One woman has sent him three bottles of champagne, another a suede vest and an imported shoehorn. One has knit him a sweater which he will certainly put to good use since the heating in his cave is not particularly good and the imitation stone door has never closed well. He would have liked an electric blanket, which might not have been much more expensive than the champagne, but he certainly must know that he cannot choose in his position.

One woman has asked if he might be let out in her custody. She has, no doubt, realized the distractions of the park with its roller-skating and its gaping visitors, with even the guard wanting to join into some sort of communication with the animal. She has felt this isn’t in the best interests of his art.