Man in a Cage by Patrick Nevins
My gorilla, Dinah, is not long for this world.
She was a vigorous little creature until this recent turn, as robust as the day I purchased her in Gabon. But despite the great care I have taken with her, from a West African jungle to the Bronx Zoo, I fear she is resigned to the same fate as the other two gorillas who have survived passage to America: a slow, pathetic death by starvation. God bless Mr. Engelholm, the zookeeper who has appointed himself Dinah’s nurse. Mr. Hornaday’s doctors have prescribed fresh air, so every day you may find the keeper pushing the pitiful ape about the zoo grounds in a baby carriage. She peers out from under the thick blankets that are necessary to keep her body warm and returns the incredulous stares of visitors with an emptiness that betrays her suffering. The illuminating factor behind her dark eyes is all but extinguished. Engelholm brings some levity to the scene by pretending to mistake the ape for a human child. “Do you want to see the pretty buffalo?” he asks in baby talk. To the ape’s blank stares he replies, “Hang it! You’re a gorilla, not a baby!” The act always elicits a laugh, but what the audience will not be allowed to see are the vain attempts by Engelholm and Hornaday and me to remove Dinah from the carriage and return her to her cage. She cries and fights—it is the most she moves anymore—until we set the carriage inside the cage and allow her to emerge from it on her own time.
Only a few weeks earlier, Dinah showed none of these signs of resignation. Quite the opposite. Upon the arrival of a young lady from New York World, Dinah had knuckle-walked eagerly to the reporter, and the reporter, who had never been up close with an ape before, readily accepted the animal into her arms.
“Oh, you are a big girl!” she said.
The reporter, carrying Dinah like a child, followed me to the concrete room in back of the cage where the gorilla lived during inclement weather and sat upon a stool. Dinah sat upon the young lady’s lap, sounding off with low grunts, while the reporter interviewed me—if it could rightly be called that. From the start of my career in Gabon, many of the men who have reported on me have been transparent in their aims at tearing me down, but I could not guess this young lady’s agenda. She showed little interest in what I had to say about the gorilla’s language; as I expounded upon the subject of my life’s work, she held her ear to Dinah’s muzzle—and whispered back into the ape’s ear! They were conspiring schoolgirls, and I a learned pedagogue speaking to the ether!
I wandered away and let the girls do as they wished. My thoughts drifted across the Atlantic to Africa. Had not Europe done enough to that continent? An abominable slave trade. Christianity. And now war.
“Professor,” the reporter called out. “Dinah says that in New York, the sun stands no chance, and the moon is only a memory.”
“Why, Miss, you’ve not only mastered Dinah’s language—in mere minutes!—you’ve also discovered that she’s a poet!”
“Her words thrum like the rivers of Africa. Her breath is the jungle’s mist. It does not require a skilled interpreter to discover that she wishes to know why she must remain entombed in concrete when you return to her forest.”
“Miss, you may exploit Dinah and me for your little society piece, as I now see that’s what this is all about. But could you do me one favor? Africa is being ravaged by Europe’s greed. I would not describe to a lady some of the violence I have seen carried out against its natives. And now the continent is being ravaged by Europe’s war. White generals are arming Africans and marching them into battle. Marching them into death. I’ve seen war, and it isn’t pretty. And for what are these Africans fighting? For the generals’ masters’ right to keep stealing from their lands! When the war is over, the Africans who have survived will have to trade their rifles for whiplashes! Unless they turn their rifles on their generals! So you may tell Dinah that she is better off here. I aim to return to Africa as soon as the war allows and pick up my studies, if the whole continent hasn’t been laid to waste. Now could you put that in your little article?”
The reporter’s countenance had shed its girlish smile and all vestiges of cheekiness. I felt ashamed for having unleashed the storm of my thoughts on the girls’ sunny conversation.
“Tell me,” I said softly to her, “what else has she told you?”
She whispered to Dinah; the ape’s lips fluttered against her teeth. The reporter gave me a sympathetic smile. “She is an enigma. Perhaps we are not meant to understand her.”
The Times has reported that Dinah is improving, but I have no faith that her appetite will remain and she will make a complete recovery. Nurse Engelholm’s heart will break.
Mine has already been broken. Twice. My chimpanzees, Susie and Moses. Susie, like the gorillas, succumbed from my failure to adapt her to this country’s climate. And Moses. You must ignore the lies that have been spread about me and trust that I am being forthright when I tell you of the unfortunate circumstances I met in Equatorial Africa.
Patrick Nevins lives with his family in Columbus, Indiana. Man in a Cage is his first book.
