Tales of War by Lord Dunsany (classic fiction txt) π
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- Author: Lord Dunsany
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Why, why did men shoot at him, he asked. He made himself terrible, therefore men ought to love him. That was the whole burden of what the Professor calls its argument. βMe, me terrible,β two slaps on the chest and then a growl. βMan love me.β And then the emphatic negative word, and the sound that meant guns, and sudden furious rushes at the cage to try to get at the Professor.
The gorilla, Professor Beek explains, evidently admired only strength; whenever he said βI make myself terrible to Man,β a sentence he often repeated, he drew himself up and thrust out his huge chest and bared his frightful teeth; and certainly, the Professor says, there was something terribly grand about the menacing brute. βMe terrible,β he repeated again and again, βMe terrible. Sky, sun, stars with me. Man love me. Man love me. No?β It meant that all the great forces of nature assisted him and his terrible teeth, which he gnashed repeatedly, and that therefore man should love him, and he opened his great jaws wide as he said this, showing all the brutal force of them.
There was to my mind a genuine ring in Professor Beekβs story, because he was obviously so much more concerned, and really troubled, by the dreadful depravity of this animalβs point of view, or mentality as he called it, than he was concerned with whether or not we believed what he had said.
And I mentioned that there was a circumstance in his story of a plausible and even corroborative nature. It is this. Professor Beek, who noticed at the time a bullet wound in the tip of the gorillaβs left ear, by means of which it was luckily identified, put his analysis of its mentality in writing and showed it to several others, before he had any way of accounting for the beast having such a mind.
Long afterwards it was definitely ascertained that this animal had been caught when young on the slopes of Kilimanjaro and trained and even educated, so far as such things are possible, by an eminent German Professor, a persona grata at the Court of Berlin.
The Home of Herr Schnitzelhaaser
The guns in the town of Greinstein were faintly audible. The family of Schnitzelhaaser lived alone there in mourning, an old man and old woman. They never went out or saw any one, for they knew they could not speak as though they did not mourn. They feared that their secret would escape them. They had never cared for the war that the War Lord made. They no longer cared what he did with it. They never read his speeches; they never hung out flags when he ordered flags: they hadnβt the heart to.
They had had four sons.
The lonely old couple would go as far as the shop for food. Hunger stalked behind them. They just beat hunger every day, and so saw evening: but there was nothing to spare. Otherwise they did not go out at all. Hunger had been coming slowly nearer of late. They had nothing but the ration, and the ration was growing smaller. They had one pig of their own, but the law said you might not kill it. So the pig was no good to them.
They used to go and look at that pig sometimes when hunger pinched. But more than that they did not dare to contemplate.
Hunger came nearer and nearer. The war was going to end by the first of July. The War Lord was going to take Paris on this day and that would end the war at once. But then the war was always going to end. It was going to end in 1914, and their four sons were to have come home when the leaves fell. The War Lord had promised that. And even if it did end, that would not bring their four sons home now. So what did it matter what the War Lord said.
It was thoughts like these that they knew they had to conceal. It was because of thoughts like these that they did not trust themselves to go out and see other people, for they feared that by their looks if by nothing else, or by their silence or perhaps their tears, they might imply a blasphemy against the All Highest. And hunger made one so hasty. What might one not say? And so they stayed indoors.
But now. What would happen now? The War Lord was coming to Greinstein in order to hear the guns. One officer of the staff was to be billeted in their house. And what would happen now?
They talked the whole thing over. They must struggle and make an effort. The officer would be there for one evening. He would leave in the morning quite early in order to make things ready for the return to Potsdam: he had charge of the imperial car. So for one evening they must be merry. They would suppose, it was Herr Schnitzelhaaserβs suggestion, they would think all the evening that Belgium and France and Luxemburg all attacked the Fatherland, and that the Kaiser, utterly unprepared, quite unprepared, called on the Germans to defend their land against Belgium.
Yes, the old woman could imagine that; she could think it all the evening.
And then,βit was no use not being cheerful altogether,βthen one must imagine a little more, just for the evening: it would come quite easy; one must think that the four boys were alive.
Hans too? (Hans was the youngest).
Yes, all four. Just for the evening.
But if the officer asks?
He will not ask. What are four soldiers?
So it was all arranged; and at evening the officer came. He brought his own rations, so hunger came no nearer. Hunger just lay down outside the door and did not notice the officer.
A this supper the officer began to talk. The Kaiser himself, he said, was at the Schartzhaus.
βSo,β said Herr Schnitzelhaaser; βjust over the way.β So close. Such an honour.
And indeed the shadow of the Schartzhaus darkened their garden in the morning.
It was such an honour, said Frau Schnitzelhaaser too. And they began to praise the Kaiser. So great a War Lord, she said; the most glorious war there had ever been.
Of course, said the officer, it would end on the first of July.
Of course, said Frau Schnitzelhaaser. And so great an admiral, too. One must remember that also. And how fortunate we were to have him: one must not forget that. Had it not been for him the crafty Belgians would have attacked the Fatherland, but they were struck down before they could do it. So much better to prevent a bad deed like that than merely to punish after. So wise. And had it not been for him, if it had not been for him...
The old man saw that she was breaking down and hastily he took up that feverish praise. Feverish it was, for their hunger and bitter loss affected their minds no less than illness does, and the things they did they did hastily and intemperately. His praise of the War Lord raced on as
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