by Jerry
After seeing this animal, I was no longer surprised at the other strange beasts I saw. The atomic bomb and the radioactivity that had accompanied it were explanation enough when I thought it all out. These beasts were monsters caused by the effect of radioactivity on the genes and chromosomes of animals pregnant at the time of the blast, while other abnormal mutations were the result of some nutritional change that had taken place in the herbage. It interested me to note that I, too, felt very well and even seemed to have grown a little through eating the meat of these animals. And this diet certainly had had an effect on my hounds, the young dogs increasing in size, going up to forty inches and weighing over three hundred pounds—the size of a small lion or leopard. The aurochs, which had roamed Europe before the Romans, reappeared through some kind of throwback; and the cattle of the country—Jerseys, Guernseys, Herefords, Holsteins, and Shorthorns—bred together, increased in size, and reverted to a breed that looked like the Texas longhorn. These cattle became the chief prey of the giant particolored mink.
Fortunately the mink were rare. I feared them greatly because of their savagery. They stood about five feet high at the shoulder and were some eighteen feet long, including the tail. But despite their size they could flatten themselves and creep along almost invisibly, the white marks helping them by breaking up the silhouette. They would creep closer and closer to their prey and then charge at it from close distance at incredible speed—the speed being fast enough to roll over an ox that was taken by surprise. Then, cutting the jugular with their immense needle teeth, they swiftly emptied the carcass of blood.
As far as possible, I avoided hunting such dangerous animals and confined myself to deer, wild cattle, antelopes, bison and zebras for meat for the pack and myself; and tigers, leopards, mountain lions and bears for sport and to keep my dogs in fighting trim. There is nothing more exciting than hunting some great carnivore that has taken up its abode in a house in the vicinity. Such an animal has to be killed, because nothing is so inconvenient as a tiger or leopard making a den near one’s dwelling.
One of my most interesting hunts was that of a pair of tigers in the Hotel Pierre. They were a mated couple, and I was continually getting glimpses of them in the vestibule or in the passages.
The tigers had made their den in a small pantry behind the cocktail bar; and it was the knowledge that I would lose a lot of hounds, and that any dogs would be good enough for the job provided they had courage enough to enter, which had prompted me to use my culls. I sent them into the bar. The two leaders were killed before they were through the door, the male tiger smashing them against the wall with what can only be described as a right and a left; but as he struck, I shot him, the bullet smashing his lower jaw and entering his chest. The remaining dogs went in over his body, and came out faster than they had gone in, followed by the tigress. She charged out but did not see me—I had hidden behind the bar. As she passed me I fired at her, but I missed. The dogs were now in full cry after her. As she bounded up the steps into the dining-room, followed by the dogs, I got another shot in and hit her in the loins with a high shot that broke her back. I checked the dogs as well as I could—there was no point in their attacking now—but one refused to obey and was killed. Another bullet finished the tigress.
This incident was a contributory factor in my decision to move to the Chelsea. The Park was no longer important, since the whole city was now covered with grass, and the beauty of the cave I had discovered had long tempted me. There was no place near the Chelsea where large, dangerous animals could lurk, and there were excellent facilities for my dogs.
This new home where I am now sitting deserves some notice. The cave has two chambers and is lighted by windows that I have pierced through the debris. There is a third room, on a lower level, which has no window. The temperature of this room rarely varies more than a few degrees, and this is where I sleep in the coldest and the hottest weather. I also keep my wine here, and the room has a pleasant rich, earthy smell of wine and dog and man that is very homelike. The second room is a combined sitting room and study; I have my best pictures and books here, and some wonderful small pieces of furniture. The outside room is my kitchen and workshop. I have built myself a chimney and have a bench and carpenters’ tools.
But all these conveniences could have been found in most districts in the city. It was the exterior which made the situation unique. The hotel itself had collapsed and was a voluptuous green hill covered with short, cropped grass. In fine weather I have seen a herd of zebra mixed with American bison grazing over it within a few yards of me. By some combination of accidents—the explosion that destroyed New York, the civic engineering that existed before the explosion, and certain geological factors—a lovely long, finger-shaped lake appeared in 23d Street. It is fed from the spring which bubbles through my grotto, the water being first forced upward by natural pressure through a small crevice in the fallen masonry some fifteen feet above ground level. After I had done a little minor engineering with plumbing fixtures picked up here and there and with plants and ferns collected wherever I could find them, I had created a little paradise for myself. I should add that I did no hunting within a mile of my home, thus making a reserve because I like the game for company and I find nothing more beautiful. I also had two practical reasons, one being that if any big carnivores came along they would have no difficulty in finding a meal, and the second being that, in the event of illness, I could easily kill something to eat from my own doorstep . . .
Something very awkward has just occurred. My house dogs again expressed uneasiness, and, waiting till they quieted down, I went out to see what had disturbed them. What I found justified my worst fears. The girls have found my retreat. Their spoor is all around the grotto. They even rested on the grass and dipped their toes in the pool below the trickling waterfall. This infuriates me. The impertinence of these abandoned creatures—hunting out the cave of an old and respectable man and then disporting themselves at his private spring! I have been away from people too long to feel any Robinson Crusoe-like joy at discovering the footprints of these girls; besides, Friday was not a girl, much less two girls.
Bodo and Vixen worked over the grotto, quartering it, noses to the ground, stopping occasionally with backward looks at me. I followed them and found the trail to lead east and then, climbing one of the larger hillocks to get a better view, saw the smoke of a fire about half a mile away. It gave me a very strange feeling to see the smoke of another’s cooking fire. I sat down and, with my dogs beside me, spent some time watching the blue smoke curl upward like a ribbon into the sky. Once a little breeze caught it, and it made a question mark. Nothing, I thought, could be more apt unless it were a period. I was overcome by a sense of finality, of foreboding. If I am not careful, my pleasant way of life may end, my habit of years be interrupted. With a certain irony I reflected on the repetition of the human pattern. As we once feared and resented the coming of atomic power, or, for that matter, universal suffrage, the liberation of the slaves or anything else that was different, I am now upset because I am no longer alone in the world. With these thoughts in my mind, I came home and cooked my supper. I had the saddle and kidneys of a yearling moose calf cooked in bear fat, a can of spaghetti with tomato sauce, and a can of green peas. I opened a bottle of port, one of the few wines which has not begun to go off after more than twenty years. I topped it off with three brandies. I have given the dogs a good meal and now sit here, pencil in hand, to record further impressions. I am now right up to date.
The brandy has done me good. I can feel my heart beating strangely.
Six months have passed since I have written a line. Although, as a novelist, I have always objected to the diary or near-diary form, I find on reading this over that it has a certain interest. Oddly enough, whether or not anyone is ever to read it appears to depend on me, because the young women are with me now. I would call them nice-looking—though it is quite hard for me to remember exactly what a pretty girl should look like.
I will describe them in greater detail later. At the moment my problem is one of biology and morals.
I am seventy-three years of age, and, though I am healthy and remarkably strong, I am without any desire for these young creatures of my own species. My lack of interest does not appear to be reciprocated, for in them is the warmth and burgeoning of youth. This is very embarrassing to a man of my solitary habits and advanced years. Who am I to repopulate the world with white men? And would not the world perhaps be a better place without us? On the other hand, my vanity comes in—my vanity as an author and the historian of these events: the final chapter of history as we knew it, and the opening chapter of a new kind of history. If there are to be people again, if there, are to be readers again—who might someday read this diary—it appears that I must father them. The problem perturbs me; it is an issue that I find it hard to clarify. The moral question is not whether I should live with two girls, but whether our species is worth perpetuating.
And for the life of me I cannot see what is the matter with the young Indian braves. Why can’t the girls marry them, and live happily ever after without bothering me? Of course, the Indians may not think them attractive, but this seems hardly likely. In my opinion, the girls’ interest in me is simply curiosity: I seem unique, and women love the rare and strange. It is also evident that I have prestige value among the Indians.
It is now spring again, and as I look back over the last few months I feel them worthy of some notice because of their personal interest to me. We are now in some open country in what I take to be Florida, since our war party went south and we are among palms. I have seen brown pelicans and frigate birds and so I cannot be very far wrong. I was riding Prince, my big bay, and beside me on her chestnut was Helen, the smaller of the two blondes. We galloped side by side, my long white hair and beard blowing in the wind, her yellow hair flowing like a palomino’s tail. Throwing my leg across a horse again after all these years has been a strange and wonderful sensation that has really reconciled me to this new way of life.
As I rode, my thoughts went back to the day the Indians broke into my home and captured me far north in New York City.
I had finished eating and was working on my manuscript when the dogs leaped up and went almost mad with fury. They barked and snuffled under the door. As I grabbed my rifle, the door burst open and a number of young braves, accompanied by the two girls, broke in. They were all yelling and carrying weapons. The leader killed Bodo, who jumped at him as he crossed the threshold. As I raised my rifle, one of the girls tripped me. She flung herself onto me, wrapping her arms about my legs. I fired two shots but missed with both. Looking back at the incident, I am inclined to think the three brandies may have had something to do with the poor showing I made. The brandy was wonderful ’65, the so-called Napoleon, and I drank from one of those large-bellied glasses that are wanned with the hands. My missing, however, must be considered providential, for had I wounded one of the braves I might easily have been killed.
Vixen fastened her teeth onto the leg of one of the young men, but another got hold of my left arm before I could get to my feet. The Indians seemed to have decided not to hurt me and to have had a mistaken idea that I would not strike the girls if they attacked me, because the second girl now knelt on my chest. Her hair had fallen down and was hanging in my face. I was able to raise the barrel of my rifle and clip her on the jaw with it as I lay on my back, at the same time striking the other girl on the top of the head with a downward stroke from the butt. The young men now became more active, and disarmed me and tied me. I called Vixen off and gave up the battle. To tell the truth, I was curious about these Indians. I was even more curious about the two girls, who definitely were white and who spoke a kind of English—in the struggle they both swore like cavalry officers. I only hoped they did not know the meaning of the words they used. (It subsequently appeared that they did not, but had learned them from an old prospector who, having joined the Indians and finding these two orphan girls among them—their parents had died of the Red Death—had decided to pay his debt to society by teaching them his version of their own language.) The Indians were Comanches and Kiowas and had set out from Oklahoma four years ago on a kind of scouting exploration mission. They had brought the girls with them as interpreters, in case they should find any white men left alive. Their medicine men had foretold the finding of one and had said the white man would give them news.
I was at first tongue-tied in the presence of the girls, who seemed, once I had got used to the idea, incredible beautiful and desirable. I have to some extent got over this phase, which I consider one of the few signs of senility I have shown. I had next to learn the language they called English. Apart from its Rabelaisian flavor, it had many Comanche words which the girls used to fill in the gaps, where they had forgotten what their prospector friend had taught them. As he died when they were about ten years old, they had developed a kind of special language, as children do. However, by degrees I got their story. They were the daughters of an Indian agent and his wife who had been killed on the reservation when the blast hit us. The girls had been infants then, and so knew very little about the blast. An Indian squaw had adopted them. Some time later, a prospector by the name of Adam K. Bell had joined forces with the tribe (he had been in the mountains for two years) and had instructed the girls in their mother tongue and in his version of history, geography and mathematics. They knew the multiplication tables and could add, subtract, divide and multiply—arts which made them invaluable to the Indians, who called them in when such obscure calculations were necessary. He had also taught them some excellent geology, though they could never figure out his interest in gold, which they said was quite common in some of the mountains they had explored; and they thought it had caused the old prospector’s death through frustration, though of course they did not use that word. They said he went mad when he saw it—and to express his madness they clapped their hands, jumped up and down, and pulled at their hair.
The war party that captured me had had its camp on the site of the blast. The tepees stood about where the Players Club had been. They had chosen this site because, since everything was flattened around them, they need fear no ambush. When we reached the camp, a number of warriors were seated on the grass, grazing their horses, which they held by long riatas. These were the reserve braves, as it were, who had their arms with them—bows and arrows—and could be in action in a few minutes. Farther away, other horses were being grazed under an armed, mounted guard. These men had rifles that looked like Springfields. It appeared later that they had picked them up here and there as they crossed the country—deer rifles and the like, war souvenirs and other relatively light guns. In the United States, very heavy game rifles of the sort used in Africa have always been rare; and even if the Indians had found one, they would only have fired it once because of the kick. But even though they could have found enough ordinary rifles and enough ammunition, a great number of the braves were apparently against using them. The white man’s magic had, as it were, gone out of fashion with all but the boldest. As I took in the scene, I was struck by the oddness of the combination of primitive and modern weapons in the hands of the red men. Noble savages—but I wished they had been less rough with me.
More men were sitting about the cooking fires in front of the tepees. My girls—I called them that already in my mind—seemed to be the only women with the party.
I was taken before the leader, a subsidiary chief or headman called Tall Eagle. He was a powerful man of about forty, and some kind of communication with him was established with the help of the girls. I did not get to know the full story of these Indians until later, when I had mastered something of their tongue, which I speak well now though I continue to mix in words of Zulu, which disconcerts them. The war party’s mission was to proceed east till they came to the Great Water and then follow it south till they came to the land of the Seminoles, with whom they wished to establish contact and discuss the formation o
f a union of the Indian tribes that had survived, a repetition of the Six Nations alliance—if six nations were found still to exist.
They were, however, much perturbed by the great mutations that they had found in the East, and even to encounter such animals as Bengal tigers and polar bears worried them. Fortunately, the great mutations were not common. In my first week with the Indians I had the good fortune to kill a giant mink that had attacked a party of their braves, after it had killed three members of the party and sucked the blood from two of their horses. With the help of the Indians, I skinned the animal. It took ten men to drag it out so that we could peg it.
Perhaps I should describe this hunt in greater detail because it had certain interesting qualities. I was riding with one of the girls in the vicinity of my old home in 45th Street, perhaps unconsciously bidding it farewell, when from the direction of the Hudson River I heard shouts and yells which I knew must come from my new friends. I could also distinguish the scream of a giant mink. I was luckily carrying my 450. I had, in fact, fired a few shots from it just to get my horse used to the sound of a gun, something that he had not taken kindly to at first but seemed to be getting used to, as almost any horse will if he is swung sideways to the target so that a shot is not fired too dose to his ears or face. At any rate, when I heard the noise I turned Prince’s head toward the river and galloped down the soft grass of the street, which at this point runs downhill till it crosses Ninth Avenue, where it rises in a short hill. I could feel Prince change his stride as the street rose; his great quarters came under him as he drove his hind hoofs into the turf. The girl stayed close behind me.
