Telegrams of the Soul by Peter Altenberg Read Free Book Online Page B

this!” He gave them a little peach.
    The aguti stood up on their hind legs and ate like chipmunks. The young girl was flushed with admiration and sensed how all the others standing around admired the tutor too or felt a like emotion.
    â€œRemind me, Fortunatina, tomorrow I’ll read you in Brehm, all about the favorite live foods of the onza and jaguars of Brasil. These two creatures huddle in the harbor of life. But bread and sugar?! After all, they’re not monkeys, par exemple.”
    Then they went to look at the bears, which lumbering beasts made stereotypical movements and smelled awful and which the public kept egging on to waddle over to the water tank.
    â€œWait—,” said the tutor and tossed an entire bread roll into the tank. Whereupon the bear was compelled to lean in, if only with its upper half.
    At the lions’ cage, Fortunatina rested her elbows on the wooden railing and looked long and hard. The lioness slunk back and forth, as if slipping on the wet stone floor, as if, alas, creeping up upon some unsuspecting prey?!
    The tutor stood back with the boy who wanted to move on: “A lioness, what’s the big deal?! She’s locked up—.”
    The tutor just stood still.
    â€œFortunatina and the Lioness—,” he thought. He had no idea what it meant, what the story was all about. It was like a ballad which no poet had yet composed. The ballad was there ready to be born in the soul of a poet and set out into the world. Fully formed it fulminated in somebody’s head, pressing to see the light of day, wanting to burst into song—Fortunatina and the Lioness!
    The tutor just stood still.
    The little girl turned to him, blushed, grinned, all flustered, ready to move on.
    â€œThere’s no shame in dreaming yourself into the souls of animals,” thought the tutor. With an understanding smile he lay his wonderful fatherly hands on the shoulders of the child.
    Fortunatina dreamed: “—suddenly, in the middle of the night a shriek resounds which, as it were, makes all of nature tremble—. A slash of the claw is just now felling an ox—. There are examples. Africa. Africa. Often in the last minute, cold-bloodedness, decisiveness served the sanguine hunter—.”
    She peered at her tutor.
    But the latter wore wide Pepita-pants, a dark jacket and a small brown felt hat. He also had a walking stick with a deer antler handle and a gold-rimmed pince-nez. He ought to have been standing there bedecked from head to toe in yellow rawhide! Or at least in spats!
    They walked on.
    You could hear the sound of iron castanets, muffled wooden drums, brass rings chiming.
    They came to the dance ground of the Ashantee.
    â€œSyncopated rhythms,” said the tutor, “do you hear it?! Tàdtdàdddà tdàd—.”
    â€œJust like the sound of a threshing machine,” said the boy.
    â€œQuite right,” said the tutor, “syncopes.”
    â€œIt really does sound like a thresher,” said Fortunatina.
    â€œOr like in a train car the sounds you hear rattling below,” said the boy.
    â€œJust like in a train car,” said Fortunatina. “Somebody really ought to make a music of it with real instruments.”
    â€œBravo Fortunatina—,” said the tutor.
    â€œIt’s music for them in any case—,” said the boy.
    â€œDon’t rush to make such a big distinction between us and them. For them, for them. What is that supposed to mean?! You think because stupid people set themselves above them, treat them like exotic animals?! Why?! Because their epidermis contains dark pigment cells?! These girls in any case are gentle and good. Come here, little one. How is your name?!”
    â€œTíoko—.”
    He took the wondrous brown hand and laid it in Fortunatina’s hand. The latter became flustered.
    Then he took a four-stranded necklace of white glass beads with a gold clasp out of his pocket