Bestiary! (38 page)

"If you take such a derogatory view of the Conference," the president said, "you won't want to return."

"On the contrary," Gunar replied, leaning forward to stuff his handkerchief away in his rear pocket, "they need me. They can't do without me. The time will come, believe me, when everyone there will see that creature sitting to the right of the chairman. And what a creature!"

"Gunar." The president hesitated. "Before you go home, perhaps it would be wise for you to consult a psychiatrist. They have not all gone to greener pastures in the United States. There might be still. a capable one or two practicing in France or Switzerland."

"I would have no belief in him if he did not see griffins himself," replied Gunar, laughing a little. "But for your sake, to relieve you of anxiety and shame, I shall resign from the UN and from the Ministry. Name someone else to the post."

He wanted to rise from the chair, as a gesture fitting to climax, but found that he could not. His heart was palpitating. Well, he had seen his father again, made a friend, and been in so many rooms he could not remember them all. A boy's loneliness doesn't last, nor does that of a disgraced diplomat. You reach out for people, you have no more enemies... .

Gunar traveled home by train that night, and a female griffin was co-occupant of his compartment. When he entered, she was already asleep on the couch, eagle head tucked under her right wing, left wing and left hind leg hanging to the floor. He sat opposite her and watched her in the dimly lit, rocking compartment.

He rode to his farm on the wagon of a neighbor. "You want to surprise Mrs. Vries?" the neighbor asked. The man had found Gunar, portfolio in hand, standing by his wagon, waiting for him to come from the assessor's office.

"No," replied Gunar. "I just came home, that's all."

"You are tired from the Conference?" the neighbor inquired, believing that it was over. He noticed the diplomat's sagging shoulders and sadness, and he halted the horses. "What's the world coming to?" he asked gently, confidentially, as if Gunar Vries was the one to know.

And Gunar Vries laid his brow in his hand and wept, while the morning sun got in under his overcoat collar and warmed the nape of his neck.

For several days he went about his farm like a man taking a rest. He milked the cows, drove the tractor. There was a deep, still pool in his forest and he went to bathe in it, likening it to his loneliness. If he were drowning in it and cried out, no man would be near enough to help him. But when he left the pool and dressed again, his body was clean and deserving of respect because of its contact with loneliness, and approaching the farm he loved instantly from afar every small figure working.

Then one morning he saw on the roof of the east barn a young male griffin, and he called to it. The creature turned its large golden head slantwise.

"Come," coaxed Gunar, "a lamb? A pan of milk?" And when the creature eyed him without replying, he added, "A calf?"

The griffin dropped its beak and picked at something between its toes. "But I ate, just a couple of centuries ago. Caught four Arimaspi in a ravine."

Alice begged Gunar to wait until she summoned Theodore, but he said no, that he would probably meet the boy in the city.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, for she had given him an idea. "I intend to speak on the steps of the Technological University anyway. When the scientific students see my griffin, it will be a triumph, believe me."

She went along the road with him, holding his elbow against her side and crying, and he bent his head away, unable to bear her grimaces. The griffin was slinking along the other side of the fence, and in a fit of energy suddenly both flew and ran, beating its wings close to earth, for a good half-mile down the fence. Why couldn't she see a thing like that?

He halted and caressed her, pushing back her short, pale hair. "Do you know that I love you?" he asked. "Yes," she wept.

"The tour is a minor thing," he said. "I make it simply to return to you. If I don't go, how much longer and of what consequence will our love be?"

When he set out again, alone, the griffin was returning to meet him, loping.

So he came to Afia, capital of S--, with the griffin at his side. He was dressed as for a session of the UN. He wore his favorite suit, tailored in London on a fine Scottish tweed, a white shirt, a dark red silk tie, and he carried a black Homburg and gray suede gloves. He took rooms in a first-rate hotel.

Entering the park around which were grouped the government buildings, he mounted the flagpole base and pleaded with refugees, messengers passing to and fro, and clerks eating their lunches, to recognize his companion. In the evening he let himself be enveloped by the crowds pouring into the operas and symphonies and cinemas. Jostled and stepped upon, he began to recount his experiences, and some persons, with mail order tickets and in no hurry, tarried around him. At midnight, when the streets were being deserted, he returned to his hotel, and the griffin spent the night in the vicinity.

By the second day word had circulated that this man in the streets was actually Gunar Vries, come to tell of the existence of a fabulous beast or bird. The citizens jammed the streets, the fire escapes, the roofs for blocks around the House of Commerce and Gunar made his speech on the steps facing the park. Overjoyed as he was with the size of his audience, he spoke with such passion that the griffin, already unnerved by the crowd, its flesh creeping with the emissary's harping upon its existence, suddenly rose straight up into the air, screaming.

"Can't you see it?" Gunar Vries cried, pointing to .the griffin beating the air, its beak open and its tongue flickering, its eyes fierier than ever, absorbing the three o'clock sun. After hovering thirty feet about Gunar's head, it continued up and settled on a cornice three stories above him.

The people gazed upward, but lowered their eyes with no change in them. They did not ridicule the speaker, however. They were solemn and attentive, remembering the man he once was. While about them, more griffins, curious as to the throngs, flew in and came to rest on the roofs of distant buildings, their dark forms like statues of themselves against the sky.

Gunar Vries descended the steps, and the people made way for him. He was not disheartened. There was time for other cities and other assemblages. He wanted especially to draw a great crowd in New York, city of the Conference. The griffin flew down and followed at his heels; he heard its wings flapping in descent and then the click of its claws on the stone. A guttural warble in its throat, a sign of uneasiness.

Two members of the police force stepped through the crowd to Gunar Vries. The force had been reluctant to take action against him for disturbing the peace, considering his prestige, but during the course of his speech they had received instructions from Ernest Gorgas himself: "Quietly, with respect for his person as a private citizen and as a former diplomat, arrest and transport him to quarters in the Hall of Justice. Detain him there until further instructions.

"Gunar Vries," said one, "it's the president's wish." "If I resist?" he asked.

The other officer touched his elbow, and Gunar told himself, "All their force will be unavailing and will seem afterward like a touch at my elbow." He reached behind him, laid his hand on the griffin, and brought it forward.

"If I mount you," he asked, "can you rise with my weight?"

The griffin nodded, but was perturbed and glazed its eyes. "When you asked me to accompany you, did you also ask that I convey you? It's seldom we convey a mortal."

"That's what it comes to," said Gunar.

The griffin rose reluctantly in the stance of a lion rampant, but the emissary, stepping forward to place his arms around the eagle's neck, and seat himself upon the lion's rump, was detained by the officers, who came in under the wing, each taking an elbow and an armpit, and prevailing against him.

Gunar Vries was deposited in the cell reserved for politicians, bankers, celebrated attorneys, actresses, professors. Here were ash trays, a water cooler and dispenser. The furniture, though old and sagging, was still substantial, with faintly yellowed crocheted stars on the chair-backs. Waiting for him were his attorney and a psychiatrist, a jovial, plump young man.

"If they want bail," said Gunar to his attorney, "then give it to them. I'll be out of the country by morning."

"They're afraid of that," his attorney replied, a man as competent as he was handsome. "How would it look, Gunar," he chided, "for a man of your status to misrepresent the country? The other nations will say, 'What choice is this?' They'll have respect for no emissary from

The doctor, with whom he had shaken hands and who had been listening, kindly, alertly, smoking a cigarette, now spoke up. "Mr. Vries, contrary to the expressed wishes of Mr. Ernest Gorgas, I am not going to ask your participation in any analysis. I want a few answers from yourself to clarify, not my point of view as a doctor, but your own, as a man of responsibility. Your claim to see griffins, beasts of ancient mythology. Is that true?"

"True," replied Gunar, "both that I claim to and that I see them." He took a cigarette from the silver case the doctor proffered him.

"And why griffins?" asked the doctor.

"Why not?" replied Gunar. "Because that's what they are. They're not snakes, they're not elephants. I'm sorry. I cannot make it as simple as that."

"No, no!" laughed the doctor, lighting Gunar's cigarette. His hand shook, and his small eyes, small mouth, and small mustache all laughed in his round face. "Why have they returned, I mean. Are they, to you, explanatory of our time?"

Well, here was a man after Gunar's own heart, and he would forget, in his appreciation, any ulterior motive the man might have of undermining that which he so eagerly explained.

And so he told of the creature's history and the meaning of its name, and the doctor was absorbed and nodded his head. "Tell me of a time," said Gunar, "when the world faced a greater enigma. We'll either make the earth fruitful as it has never been or we'll exterminate ourselves. We'll either wipe out everything we've built upon, all past epochs, or we'll go on to a greater time than man has ever known. If you look at the situation with your eyes open you'll find that it's quite a creature, a thing with eagle wings and the body of a lion and with eyes of fire."

Gunar ceased, having heard the flapping of wings outside the window as the griffin ascended to the roof. It had followed him, as he had expected.

"Well, it's a pity," sighed the doctor, "that only one man sees them."

The attorney bent forward impatiently. "The president is aware that as a private citizen you may speak as you wish. Nevertheless, he would like your promise, as the promise of a dear friend, that you will make no further speeches in public or in private assembly calling upon the people to recognize the existence of these creatures."

"You tell Ernest," replied Gunar, "that they're bigger than he is."

"Will you commit him?" the attorney asked the doctor.

The doctor had risen, as if he had no more to ask. He shook his head, pressed out his cigarette in the tray. "I prefer," he said, "to commit those persons who cannot see them."

The two men left him so they could consult by telephone with the president. When they returned they brought with them the guard, obliging to authority in release of the emissary as in confinement of him.

Gunar Vries picked up his hat and gloves. "There is one on the roof now," he said to the doctor, "if you care to see it."

This was an old prison, rigged up now with electricity and hot water. They went up the circular stone staircase, and the guard unlocked the gate. The griffin was lying on the parapet, dropping over the edge to watch the traffic three stories below, and at times lifting its head to look at the pigeons cooing and bobbing, circling and fluttering. It was large and dark against the pale yellow haze of the setting sun, and its feathers were delicately ruffled.

"Doctor," said Gunar, "do not let me lose faith in you."

"I see it," the doctor assured him.

The attorney coughed in vicarious embarrassment.

Gunar stepped to the parapet, the doctor and attorney following. "Can we try our flight again?" he asked the griffin. The doctor turned pale, and Gunar, watching for just this response, continued, "Its back is broad enough and its neck the right size for my arms. I'll haanper it a bit, perhaps, but we'll manage. You think now that it's not here at all for me to climb upon, but an idea came to me while I was trying to mount it in the park: if I am afraid, then I am not certain of the griffin myself. In this way, by trusting myself to it, I prove its existence."

The doctor was plunged into remorse and self-doubt. He stood stock-still, his arms hanging numbly at his sides.

Suddenly the attorney was cognizant of Gunar Vries' kindliness, of depths to the man he had not considered. He placed his hand on Gunar's arm. "Gunar," he implored him, "we shall provide you with first-class accommodation by whatever means you care to travel. I shall see to it myself. I shall speak to the president and to the Chamber of Representatives. You will be authorized to go—indeed, dispatched."

But Gunar Vries had hold of the griffin's rear leg and drew himself onto the parapet. The guard, having taken the respite to smoke a cigarette, was leaning against the gate, watching the men, believing that anything was sanctioned. And Gunar Vries, knowing that in a moment the three men would toss off their stupefaction and converge upon him, threw himself upon the griffin.

They flew in a westerly direction, passing over the city. The night moved up from behind and overtook them. With the earth so far below them, Gunar was not sure whether they were still over Europe or had reached the Atlantic Ocean.

"Can you drop a bit closer to earth?" Gunar called forward, and his voice was not as he expected it to be, bounced or pummeled by the wind, but went out into calm air, the atmosphere into which an oracle speaks.

"What for?" the griffin asked.

"But can you see any lights?"

The griffin glanced sideways in derision, enabling Gunar to see its eye, which was a blue distilled from the night, like a pure blue flame, and in it were reflected, nebulously, the lights of a city he believed to be New York.