The Animal Gazer

by Edgardo Franzosini

  Sometimes it was the Monkey House, whose large cages seemed to swell by the day to accommodate as many exemplars as possible: chimpanzees, baboons, macaques, gibbons, Borneo orangutans, Liszt monkeys (so-called because of their white mane, similar to the composer’s coiffure). Or else the wooden boxes with narrow doors in which the reindeer and antelopes lived, the meadow on which the yaks spent their days reclining, or the iron grill beyond which the tigers paced back and forth.

  IN THE COMPANY of Albéric Collin and Oscar Jespers, Rembrandt often spent the late afternoon and evening seated at a table on the large terrace of the Hotel Weber. The three animal sculptors drank absinthe, played dominoes, and engaged in conversation. It was on these occasions that Rembrandt proved to be a little more loquacious than usual, at least until the second glass of absinthe or the third beer, after which he would retreat into impenetrable silence. Sometimes the director of the zoo, Michel L’Hoëst, would sit at their table. More often they would be joined by André Demaison, a man from Bordeaux who traveled widely. He had crossed Western Africa high and low and knew the Jola, Wolof, and Mandingo languages. He was short, stout, and had a toothbrush moustache topping an energetic mouth. Demaison captured exotic animals on behalf of the Antwerp Zoo. (“I’m a little like the first Christians, condemned to being surrounded by wild animals,” was his favorite remark.) For some time now, although he had not completely forsaken his nets and rifles (if he had a vocation, it was indeed the hunt), he seemed to be attracted by a new type of prey.

  It all began two years before, he said. One day I arrived in a village between Dakar and Guinea and they brought a boy to show me. Take him into your service, they said. He was half naked. He looked strong and robust. All he requires is a lot of food, they added. We don’t know where he comes from. The women are afraid of him. He must have been fifteen or sixteen years old. One detail struck me in particular: he had arms that were much longer than normal. Then they confided in me that he had been raised by nonhumans, by leopards. I didn’t want to believe them. Look at how he climbs trees, they continued, or how he runs, or the way that he rips apart and devours every chicken he sees on the roads of the village, and you’ll see if we’re not telling the truth. I ended up taking him with me, and until almost the last day I remained in Africa he was a member of my servitude. He was respectful, devoted. But he died when he jumped into a river and was devoured by a crocodile that I thought I had killed: he was trying to retrieve the body. A few months after my return to Europe, at the home of Doctor Chardère of Marseille, I saw another one of these creatures. Sylvie, as Chardère called her, had grown up amid a troop of apes. There was something not quite right, something dissonant in her brain, said Doctor Chardère, almost like an organ that had stopped working through long inactivity. Sylvie walked on bent knees and ankles, with the fingers of her hands scraping the ground. She rejected cooked food and did not want to wear clothes or shoes. She had a highly developed sense of smell and recognized people by their odor. The doctor told me that he had asked permission to place Sylvie face-to-face with the apes in the Marseille zoo to highlight their similarities and differences. The directors of the zoo finally granted permission and I accompanied him there. Chardère had her enter the cage but, after casting a look around, Sylvie huddled in a corner with her chin pressed against her knees, and from there she didn’t budge, limiting herself to emitting occasional grunts, whether from fear or pleasure it is hard to know. As for the apes, two of them dared to approach her, but they took their distance immediately, maybe because something flashed in Sylvie’s eyes for a moment that only Doctor Chardère had noticed. The doctor seemed deeply moved, so much so that he went to Sylvie and kissed her twice on the cheeks. In the meantime a small crowd had gathered in front of the cage, so Chardère illustrated his theory out loud: birds that come from Spain do not understand the chirping of those who live in France or in Italy or in Hungary, just as Sylvie and the apes in this zoo do not understand each other because they come from different countries. Since that day I have realized that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to dedicate my travels and my explorations not only to hunting exotic animals but also to collecting wild children. So far fate has not smiled upon me, but I have no doubt that, sooner or later, I will chance to come across one of these phenomena again.

  In the meantime, Demaison had studied the issue, and thanks to the help of Doctor Chardère he now had a decent mastery of the subject, which he flaunted tirelessly in his conversations with Bugatti, Collin, and Jespers, his artist friends. Indeed, for a while their evening conversations ended up being long monologues by the “hunter,” monologues that the three animal sculptors listened to in silence, nodding and continuing to play dominoes or drink absinthe or beer, while the dying light of Antwerp gave off its last timid shots of artillery. Demaison told them about the wolf-child of Asia, the bear-boy found in the woods of Lithuania, or the calf-child of Bamberg who snarled and snapped in furious fights with dogs. The three young men gave no sign of wishing to contradict him.

  Demaison spoke quietly, almost whispering, until something in his story excited him in a particular way, and then he became animated and suddenly raised his voice.

  They were leaping—do you get it—from one rock to another, like two chamois, he said, when some hunters found them in a lost valley of the Pyrenees. Rousseau also talks about them in his book. In the beginning there was no way to make them stand still except by threatening them with a stick. Then they began to understand hand gestures and to respond to greetings. The King of Spain took their schooling to heart but, although over time they learned to do the most necessary things—eating, drinking, sleeping and so on—there was not, in truth, an appreciable change in their character or in their habits.

  Every now and then Albéric Collin would interrupt Demaison, breaking into the conversation with a few words of mild teasing. Of the three animal sculptors sitting at the table in the Hotel Weber, Collin was the only one who could boast a more than passing knowledge of the classes, orders, families, genera, and species into which animals are subdivided. It is a quality that can be grasped in the scrupulousness, fidelity, and meticulous attention to detail with which he made his works (he went so far as to measure the length of the claws of lions, tigers, and panthers). Among the critics and simple habitués of art galleries there never failed to be someone who held this quality against him, criticizing him as a translator enslaved by and faithful to tangible reality.

  “In short,” said Collin one night, “all your ‘savages’ immediately demonstrate a positive attitude and a certain satisfaction over their new life, but deep down they never express any intolerance of or aversion to their past.”

  Demaison burst out in laughter. “Now don’t get so threatening and insulting with me,” he said, while his stomach shook.

  Which threat or insult Demaison detected in Collin’s words is not clear, nor did it become so when he added, “One can hear echoes of Rousseau in what you say. Or are you perhaps one of those who is moved to tears when you hear the story of Napoleon’s bastard, Kaspar Hauser?”

  One night it was Rembrandt who broke his customary silence and addressed Demaison in an unexpectedly vicious tone, telling him to his face that when he listened to his stories he had to struggle not to throw up. Then, as if to reinforce his words, he spit on the floor. On the pavement a clot of mucus formed that was streaked with threads of blood. With the tip of his shoe Rembrandt rubbed it into the ground.

  AFTER A WHILE life in Antwerp began to nauseate him. From his current lodgings, on Begijnenvest, he could no longer see the zoo. The damp room that reeked of mold, and that doubled as his studio, filled him with distress. Sometimes, while he was walking down the streets of the city, returning from the zoo, he had the impression that he stank to high heavens, but the people, rather than turning their embarrassed gazes away and taking their distance, seemed to stare at him insistently and then come closer to sniff at him.

  Only in his work, as he wrote in a letter to h
is sister-in-law, Barbara, Ettore’s wife (with whom he may have once been in love), did he “find complete happiness.” But he also confided in her, as if happiness were a crime, that he should never have become an animal sculptor. “I wrote to Ettore but he never wrote back. He must be in Le Mans,” an assumption Rembrandt made, one is led to believe, because he had read about it in the newspapers. So he asked Barbara to please convey his congratulations to his brother on the “Peugeot Bébé.”

  In a letter some time later to “Totor”—the nickname Rembrandt used for his brother, who in turn called him “Pempa”—he thanked him for sending money, which allowed him to “buy some warm sweaters.” He then added, “I have a touch of pleurisy, and two days ago I could hardly breathe. Now I’m feeling better.” And he concluded, “Yet still this life weighs heavily on me.”

  One morning Rembrandt received a letter. The address printed in the upper right-hand corner of the envelope, in blue characters (first in Flemish, then in French), indicated the sender: the director of the Antwerp Zoo, Michel L’Hoëst.

  Who knows why he’s writing to me, thought Rembrandt, turning the envelope over and over in his hands without making up his mind to open it. Writing me when we already see each other almost every day at the zoo or at the Café de l’Union. Only at that point did it dawn on him that for the past week they hadn’t had an occasion to meet.

  Rembrandt opened the envelope. Inside was a card. One of those elegant cards that L’Hoëst usually wrote on Christmas to send the season’s greetings. On one side there was a reproduction of an engraving of the Reptile House at the zoo: a kind of Hellenistic temple with a series of columns and gables in which snakes, crocodiles, iguanas and also tortoises and turtles were exhibited. On the other side these words were written: “My dear friend, the horrible but also, in some way, merciful carnage will take place tomorrow. While I have been spared the tremendous suffering of having to issue the command to open fire, I still have had, however, to scrupulously organize everything myself . . .”

  Rembrandt read it and reread it, placed the card back inside the envelope, and then returned to take it out again and read it once more. The words looked to him like shiny black insects staring up at him, rubbing their legs together.

  V

  As of August 20, under the advance of the divisions of the Central Powers, the capital of Belgium was no longer Brussels but Antwerp. The Austrian 305-millimeter mortars and the 45-ton Krupp howitzers had devastated the cities and laid waste to the villages. Liège was overrun and torn asunder. The news that Rembrandt read in Le Matin d’Anvers was shocking. All was being submerged beneath a dark flood of atrocities, horrors, and perversions. The trees were gone from the countryside and the fields were burning. The roads were lined on either side with the bodies of the dead: decomposing corpses immersed in puddles of rain and blood. The houses had been looted. Chairs, armchairs, and mattresses had been gutted, furniture overturned, tiles ripped up, wallpaper torn off, in search of gold, jewelry, cash. Requisition orders were posted on walls riddled with gunfire but still standing. Bodies were hanging from telephone poles. The Germans had set fire to barns, pouring gas first on the pigs and the cows. The elderly had been forced to march at the head of columns of the imperial army of Wilhelm II, to act as human shields against the gunfire of their fellow citizens who were resisting the invasion. Those who didn’t march fast enough on the muddy roads were rewarded with a bullet to the nape of the neck. Children were beaten to death with the butt end of rifles before their mothers’ eyes. Sons and husbands were bayonetted before their sisters, their wives, who were then ordered to dig the graves. Girls were raped and murdered, their bodies left by the sides of the road, skirts upturned, bellies sliced open. Boys were beaten and hung by their scrotum. Husbands and wives were bound together with rope, back to back, straw stuffed into their trousers and under their skirts: an officer would approach them with a smile on his face and a cigarette in his hand, ready to set them on fire. Children were ordered to dance before the bodies of their parents, to dance and sing the old folk song: Il pleut, il pleut, bergère—It’s raining, it’s raining, little shepherd girl. The bell towers of churches were toppled out of fear they could be used by snipers.

  Perhaps all of this was not in strict compliance with the laws of war and the international conventions signed by the Kaiser, but the strenuous Belgian resistance had ultimately exasperated the soldiers of the German Army.

  ON THE NIGHT of August 24 and 25, 1914, shortly after midnight, when the citizens of Antwerp were already in bed or about to turn in, a steady, incessant humming erupted from the sky.

  Rembrandt stuck his head out the window and had the impression that the air itself was vibrating. Looking up he could see in the incredibly luminous sky the outline of a Zeppelin slowly approaching, headed toward the center of the city. The machine looked powerful, threatening, but also a little comical. It was shaped like an enormous cigar. All of a sudden something was shot from the belly of the Zeppelin that resembled a shiny sparkler. A second later an explosion made the rooftops shake, the chimneys crumble, and the walls crack. The first bomb fell on Beurstraat. Next to be hit were Albert von Barystraat, Schermersstraat, Justitiestraat, the Waag, the public weigh station, the Falconplein barracks. Ten explosions in a row that blazed the passage of the Zeppelin over the city. The bombs—adorned, according to reports, by an engraving of the face of Wilhelm II—opened holes in the paved and cobblestoned streets that were as deep as craters. Gas pipes exploded and water pipes broke. By the end the casualty count reached twelve dead and more than fifty wounded.

  On the next night the citizens of Antwerp remained awake in their houses, making do with candlelight, going to bed fully clothed, or sitting in the dark on the stair landings. They were waiting for the Zeppelin to cross the sky again. But the enormous cigar did not reappear. It would come the next day or the day after that, was the common refrain as they peered at the sky. While waiting they could not remain inert, they had to take precautions. And so they marked with chalk the houses that had a cellar or an underground room that could provide shelter, where mattresses and food supplies could be arranged. In the courtyards they prepared buckets of water to extinguish fires. But they also contemplated less immediate, less evident possibilities. For example, the zoo was located next to the train station—a sensitive target—and therefore there was a big risk that those bombs that fell with a hiss, leaving a filament of light in the sky, would free the animals. Then they would swarm the streets in packs. Sniffing at doors, defecating on the townhouse stairs, bathing in the fountains. Trying to climb up to the windows of the homes. Perching on the huge signs that boasted the quality of Kub bouillon cubes. Or else, if a bomb should strike the cages and slaughter the animals, their bodies would lay rotting in the sun, since no one doubted that soon, very soon, there would no longer be any way to bury people, much less animals. It was a question of public health. And also of public order! There was a danger that the marabou, ostriches, and leopards might come to the tables of the Café de l’Union, where the businessmen played dominoes, or make it as far as the banks of the Schelda to drink from its waters.

  The zoo adopted of its own accord emergency measures for the most dangerous animals: the small cats were caged in the cellars of the Feestpaleis—the biggest building of the complex—while the larger ones were moved to the armored cages normally used for transportation. The bears instead were too cumbersome, so no better expedient was found than to kill them immediately by gunshot. The escape of the animals was not the only problem. Maybe they wanted to prevent the enemy from seizing the most prized animals, property of the most beautiful zoo in Europe, and transferring them to Germany as war booty. The fact remains that the provincial governor, Gaston van de Werve et de Schilde, ratified the order: all the animals of the zoo had to be destroyed, without further delay.

  “Yesterday they communicated to me the resolution of the municipal council,” wrote the director to Bugatti, “granting me forty-eight ho
urs to prepare everything. At five o’clock tomorrow morning I have to open the gates of the zoo to a battalion of soldiers who will handle the appalling business.”

  AT FIRST THEY had thought of assigning the “appalling business” to the Garde Civique, then they changed their minds. The Garde did not have sufficient training. Above all it did not have sufficient equipment: its single-shot rifles were not up to the task. Therefore, what appeared at dawn before the gates of the zoo was a platoon of fifty men from the Second Regiment of the Chasseurs à Pied, armed with Mauser repeater rifles with fixed bayonets. The soldiers were in high uniform: double-breasted, dark green jackets with a yellow cordon affixed to the shoulder, gray trousers with a thin yellow stripe down the side, and a shako topped by a crest of black feathers. No white gloves, only because gloves did not ease the task of loading the rifle. So why sully the uniform they would have to put on a few days or a few hours later to repel the enemy assault? The soldiers spread out over the great entrance boulevard in orderly rows. They marched past the pavilion where, in peacetime, on Sundays in the late spring and summer, a band played the waltz, the polka, the marches, and they passed by to the Moorish building where the monkeys were housed. “We’ll save that for last,” said the captain who commanded the platoon. Perhaps they resembled man too closely, and it seemed awful to begin with them.

  So they began with the birds. The aviaries that housed them were opened cautiously to prevent any from escaping. In each aviary, which were tall and spacious, two soldiers entered, while another stood right outside. As soon as the parrots saw the soldiers inside their cage they started to shriek wildly, flapping their wings, jumping from one perch to another. The two peacocks, beaks extended, pounced on the chasseurs, who had probably never expected a similar reaction from animals with such a regal bearing, such a harmonious gait. The doves and turtledoves instead conserved, even at that moment, their natural elegance and lightness in flight. The soldiers cocked their rifles and started to shoot. Their comrades in arms who did not enter the aviaries remained on the avenue, in formation, waiting for the others to complete their assignment. The bullets pierced the metal netting of the aviary, and the birds took advantage to escape. But for every breach, every opening that they found, they also encountered the rifle of the soldier posted outside. “I don’t want to hear any shouts,” said the captain to his men. “I don’t want to hear any cries of enthusiasm. And I don’t want to hear any cursing.” In fact the only sound that could be heard were the gunshots, the cries of the birds, and the beating of their beaks against the metal netting, as well as the noise of the occasional bowl or feeder rolling over or shattering. When not a single bird was left alive in the aviary, the soldiers who had done the shooting rejoined their comrades who had remained standing, rifles on their shoulders, lined up along the avenue. The captain gave the order to get into a new formation and the platoon resumed its march. From the cages arose shrieks, moans, and howls of agony that drowned out the rhythmic thud of the soldiers’ footsteps. For the great Indian elephant an almost regulation execution was organized, with a dozen soldiers arranged in two rows, the first crouching and the second standing. A sergeant gave the order to take aim and fire. For the tiger, by contrast, all it took was a shot right between the eyes. And a single bullet was also enough for each of the fallow deer, gazelles, and zebras. On the antelopes they didn’t waste a single bullet, making simple recourse to the bayonet. The firing squad was reassembled, however, for the rhinoceros, the giraffes, and the hippopotamuses. The agony of the rhinoceros lasted for hours after the concentrated gunfire had felled him.