Дэймон Найт - Orbit 4

She would like to install him in a section of her summer house where he might have a suite of rooms over the garage. She hopes he will be of use as a fourth for bridge and secretly she imagines that the animal will not be aware of her age as she is interested in a certain aspect of his animal nature. The morals of a case like this may be questioned, but the answer is certainly not clear-cut.

This would be just for the Easter vacation and perhaps for next summer. Of course she realizes that the townspeople need this attraction for their park and that the animal belongs to all the people and not just to her but she feels he needs a change if only for the sake of his art. Where will his new ideas come from? she asks, and wouldn’t a wild creature do better in the suburbs than in the center of town? at least for a while? People must have sympathy and understanding for all their animals and if she can’t have this one she might consider taking a gibbon instead, or a young fox.

She has already gone to the jeweler’s to have a silver chain made with which to lead him to breakfast, lunch and dinner.

But he has written: Dear Madam; I would like to accept your kind offer of the use of your house in the country, but I’m afraid I have other plans over Easter. However I may be available for the summer, especially after August first. Perhaps you will consider some alternative since, as you are well aware, all of us wild creatures would enjoy a week outside the town. I would suggest you contact the keepers as to which animals will be the most suitable. Very truly yours, the Animal.

The young male townspeople imitate the animal. They stand at the street corners with their heads at a noble angle, their cigarettes between thumb. and forefinger. They all have political opinions now and they fondle stray cats.

The woman still walks her dogs four times a day as usual. She has bought three red leashes for them.

There is much conjecture as to whether the animal is actually capable of experiencing real love in spite of the complications of his political beliefs and the nuances of his art. One never knows how imitative such things may be. But it does look as though the animal considers the three dogs exceptionally graceful. It looks as though he is interested in becoming friendly with dogs, but he has recently given up smoking and there is no longer any excuse for her offering him cigarettes. Perhaps cough drops if he coughs a bit and she notices, but she doesn’t.

There are changes afoot. Professors have come to study his reflexes and they have found that they are in no way different from those of the townspeople. This hasn’t surprised anyone since they have all, long ago, recognized their animal origins. Yet there is a general sense of foreboding. There has been a reorganization in the department of parks. Younger townspeople are coming in to replace older men. There will certainly be new theories on the influences of such a creature as the animal living in plain view of everyone. Many studies are already underway as to whether there has been more or less crime since his capture. Attitudes of the teenage townspeople are being questioned by teams of graduate students and the animal’s writings are being studied by experts in animal behavior. The animal himself has expressed the view that he would like to be considered as an individual as well as an animal. Soon there will be a symposium. Everyone has a theory or two. The lady with the three dogs will be there as representative of the citizen’s council of residents of the park area. It is said that the animal himself will preside as chairman, though he will have no real say in the proceedings. No doubt it will be broadcast.

The animal has not yet expressed any opinion of his own. Most likely he is waiting for the results of the various studies to be published. The townspeople are eagerly waiting for him to speak out for they are sure, as with all his other writings, that what he says will not be ordinary.

The woman with the dogs feels her responsibilities deeply and is even more inclined to wear black than ever, but she still allows herself red leashes. She doesn’t think it proper for her to discuss anything with the animal at the present time.

On sunny Sundays the park is full of dogs including the three with the red leashes. Townspeople who own dogs can always find something to talk about with each other. It’s too bad the animal doesn’t own a dog. There is so much he could join into. Later the townspeople will remember this and think, if only we had given him a dog since he had to live in the park anyway. But of course it’s too late now.

He has evidently come to a decision and walked away into the deepest part of the forest without writing a single word on the question of his good or bad influences. He has left all the townspeople with an empty feeling inside. Their park seems deserted.

The woman walks with her head up. There are rumors about her but nothing anyone can prove. Her dogs act as though they own the park. Not a single tree is sacred to them. Many townspeople wonder were they really that way before? What if she has shown the animal some secret results from some secret studies? Had she some information not yet released to the general public? Or is it that she has finally grown bold enough to realize her love and confess it? and was he, after all, capable of some sort of loving response of the same nature as the townspeople’s responses? But how will they ever know now all that their animal might have been capable of? And they will always be wondering why he went just at this particular time before the symposium had even begun. They will think how great was his need to return to the land of his origin. They will say he pined for his animal family, his possible animal wives and children, or they will say that he searches for his youth in the places where he once was young or that it is for the townspeople’s sake, because of his influence, perhaps sinister and yet so subtle only he was aware of it, that he has hidden himself there, alone and lonely, writing out his poems on birchbark and whistling themes from the music of their long-dead composers, able to avoid capture this time because of his greater knowledge of the townspeople’s methods.

Oh come back to us, they sometimes call out silently towards the forest, come and write us your animal opinions. Sit in our park. Adorn our cocktail parties. Crime wave or no, you were really good for us in the long run, and even if that may not be true, why you belonged to us and no other town had one like you.

But there’s nothing for them to do but to await the sons and daughters of the animal, those conceived on the nights of freedom, if it really was the animal who was responsible for (and capable of) that rash of rapes. Will the children of the animal, they wonder, follow him back to the deepest part of the forest by instinct, off in search of their father as soon as they are old enough? And what of the youngest, the one that some of the townspeople believe must have been conceived the night he left? will he or she stay as a gift to the townspeople from the animal, decorating first their schools, their birthday parties, baseball games, even roller-skating in the very park where her father spent so much of his time, later the college, the dances, contributing to the courses in logic and philology, majoring in history or French and then marrying one of the townspeople and conceiving sons and daughters of her own?

Surely, the townspeople think, surely the blood of the animal is with us still and will, in some future time, be a part of us all.

There is an ethnic flavor to the following story; I am unable to define it with exactness, but would almost be willing to venture the opinion that it is Irish, It is certainly mad; it has in addition that determined and violent gaiety that somehow makes me think of large, jug-eared men with scars on their knuckles.