Bestiary! (37 page)

The emissary rubbed his hands together briskly to make them warm. "What's the occasion?" he inquired.

The feigned innocence did not escape the griffin. The creature picked it apart like picking the tortoise from the shell. A hissing contempt came from its nostrils and partially opened beak. For a moment there seemed to be a geyser in the room.

"Emissary to the UN," it replied, "a conference called to promote the flowering of humanity, and all the time the delegates hard put to it to breathe with the possibility of atomic dust in the air no more than five years from now. And now you want to know the occasion! Can you think of a time when the world faced a greater enigma?"

Gunar Vries was indeed concerned for humanity. It was something he traveled with in addition to his aide and his portfolio. Yet now it seemed to him that it was humanity in the abstract he had been carrying around—the formalities, the rules and regulations, the paperwork of a conference, humanity carefully composed and delivered with dignity. At the griffin's words, humanity suddenly became a third party in the room, and Gunar shivered with life, he shook convulsively as children do in excitement.

The monster slunk around the room, which became small as the cage in which a circus lion is confined. When it came to the desk it turned its head with ponderous grace and ran its eyes over the letters. Gunar Vries stirred indignantly and stepped forward, but on second thought was stricken with shame for his disrespect and stopped still. The griffin turned away, but in the turning managed to drop the nictitating membrane of its eyes, and the perusal became an act of idle curiosity. It paddled away languidly, disdainfully, dragging one wing, and the emissary, hearing a strange clicking noise along the floor, looked down and saw for the first time the full length of the creature's talons. At each step they were nicking small holes in the rug.

The creature sat down by the window, and the tasseled end of its tail lifted and fell. There was a feminine restlessness in the way its feathers quivered, and at the same time a great seething of male energy that propelled it forward even as it sat still. "Lift the window for me," it said, "and let me out on the ledge. Isn't there a park across the street?"

The emissary drew up the venetian blind and opened the window. The night entered, cold and fragrant with grass. The lamps in the park were almost pure white, as if encrusted with snow, and shone up through the delicate branches of the trees. People were sitting on the benches, talking and glancing up at the lighted windows of the hotel, where many dignitaries were in residence. Newsboys had built a fire in a refuse can, and taximen and journalists, tired of the plush and statuary of the lobby, were warming their hands around it. An ornate ledge ran along beneath the windows of the top floor, and the griffin leaped onto this.

"It won't be harmed," Gunar Vries told himself. "It's too fabulous. Even an oaf can see." A look of being protected lay in its eyes, a true and natural hauteur from an ancient epoch. He closed the window, and in his mind's eye he saw the creature continuing swiftly along the ledge, tail and wings spread out a bit, a dark and slithering form against the faintly lighted sky.

He went to his desk, took up his pen, and wrote in postscript on the letter to his president,
My dear friend: This evening I saw one of the first griffins to return. Their coming, though unpredictable, was nevertheless inevitable. They will remain, I gather, until we decide our fate, one way or another.
Hearing a strange cry in the night, a mingling of lion's roar and eagle's scream and more than both, he wrote further,
The cry of the griffin in the great cities of the world will become as familiar as the cry of the cock in the country, and even as the cock's cry wakens us from sleep and is portentous of the morning when we shall not be alive to hear it, so the cry of the griffin, on the roofs above traffic, is troublous, calling us, humanity, to a cognizance of our existence and heralding our possible end.

When Gunar awoke in the morning it was, as every day, to no other thought but the Conference. Not until he passed the desk on his return from his bath and saw that the letters had been taken up by his aide for mailing was he reminded of the griffin. He stood still, startled and amused by such a dream. Well, the times evoked it. He had never before worked under such a strain and the enigma of the times had taken form and substance, emerged in his dream a thing in itself, had become a living creature.

But as he was dressing, the laughter within ceased, and he was overcome by melancholy. It came to him that the griffin might have been other than a dream. His few hours of sleep had been shallow and hot, as if he had slept in a thunderstorm; remembering his sleep, he was almost certain he had not dreamed. If the fabulous being had appeared, it had been an actual one.
But, of course, it had not appeared.
He could negate the event, he could prove it had been a dream by seeing again his letter to his president, the signature constituting the end without postscript. He walked slowly to the door of the adjoining apartment, already tired as if at the end of the day. How old was he now? Fifty-six? And how long did men live, usually?

"Norbert, young man," he called, rapping at the half-open door, "you've not posted the letters yet? The three letters?"

His aide appeared at the door, opening it wider. "They made the plane at seven-thirty."

"The letter to the president?"

"All three were sealed," said Norbert, "and envelopes addressed. Did you wish to make changes?"

"A whim,"
he
replied. He looked sharply at his aide. Norbert wrote symphonies, the modern kind; his disharmonies were not what they seemed but merged into a complete harmony. Was he not the one to understand the griffin? "If I tell him," thought Gunar, "if I tell him, laughing a little, with gestures, with shudders, why, two believing will make it untrue."

But Norbert seemed more erect than usual this morning, his eyes bluer, his fair hair fairer. He liked parties, and the atmosphere for him was still charged with his virtuosity. The emissary decided that to explain the griffin to him would bring the creature down to the level of a piano recital and the sensual laughter of short-armed women.

"Come" he said, signaling for Norbert to accompany him.

In the cab Gunar sat in a corner, holding his hat and gloves on his crossed knees, listening to Norbert read foreign newspapers on the UN proceedings. The cab came to a halt as traffic changed, and he gazed into the street. In a basement tailor shop, the name on the window so worn that the dim light within turned the letters translucent and coppery, a tailor sat sewing at his machine while his wife sat by the window, drinking from a cup.

As Gunar took in the shop and its occupants, he saw his second griffin. She—it was a female, as he could tell by the lack of red feathers on her breast—was sliding along the fence before the row of basement shops, the eagle head lifted and stiff with impending alarm.

He grasped Norbert's hand, and the young man laid down his paper. "You see," he said, as if
he
had tried before to convince his aide, "a female griffin."

Norbert bent across him to look. The griffin slipped down the stairs into the tailor's shop, pushing the door open with a claw, and for a moment Gunar saw, simultaneously, the eagle's head through the window and the lion's tail waving on the stairs. Persons passing paid no attention, or only slight, as to a cat or a sparrow. The couple did not look up, neither the man from his sewing nor the wife from her cup. Gunar Vries was appalled. They went about their pursuits as before, while this enigma, this beast of life or death, slid along their streets, jangled their business bells.

"But are they so common a sight already?" he asked.

"What are?" Norbert had taken up his reading again, but courteously allowed himself to be engaged in conversation.

"The griffins. A female went into the tailor shop and you made no to-do about it."

"I didn't see one," said Norbert. "I didn't know what to look for. I'm sorry. What is it like?"

Gunar Vries drew into his corner again. "It's not a thing that you look for," he replied.

The delegates to the General Assembly of the United Nations assembled at their quarters at Flushing Meadow. Gunar Vries sat in his place, his aide beside him, taking no part in the conversation before the fall of the gavel. The chairman entered, and following at his heels was a male griffin, larger, older than the one that had slept in Gunar's room. The creature was hoary and unkempt. Its eyes were yellow fire. It seated itself to the right of the chairman and with archaic grace surveyed the persons assembled.

That evening after supper the president replied by telephone. "Gunar, what's this talk of a griffin?" he asked. "It's a beast of classical antiquity, is it not? Well, to what use are you putting it?"

Ernest Gorgas was a fine man, and there was no one Gunar respected more. But how impotent the president's voice, how distant not only in space but in time! Gunar had the peculiar anticipatory feeling of hearing it fade away, as if mankind were running instantly into a post-historic age.

"Gunar," the president continued, his voice grinding into the receiver, louder, adamant, yet deeply kind and respectful, "the plea that you made to the Assembly today for international unity was the most moving I have ever heard. It was more forceful, even, than the American Wilikie's
One World.
And the delivery of it—the eloquence, the impassioned tone! Maneuvering it the way you did was uncalled for and yet the most called-for thing in the world. If you are in your way sidestepping praise, being modest, bringing up this tale of a griffin coming to your room with a warning, it's no use. Gunar, my friend, there is no appointment that I have made in my term of office that has given me greater satisfaction."

"Ernest," replied Gunar, "the man who feels that he is not deserving of praise makes no move to sidestep it. He has a deaf place in his ear the size of a pea, and with this he hears praise. No, my friend, a male griffin
was in
my room last evening. Since then I have seen two more. One, slipping along the street, female and playing nervous; the other, a more bestial creature and at the same time looking as if imbued with an omniscient intelligence. It was sitting to the right of the chairman today and commented often; succinctly, too. But though its voice was louder than any there it went unheard. At the conclusion of my speech it came to me and told me that it heard Demosthenes, and that my eloquence exceeded his. It had been sent alone to take in the American Revolution and had heard Patrick Henry—it said that that gentleman's vigor did not touch mine. I did not take these comparisons as praise but was convinced that the precariousness of our times has never been equalled and that orators are made by the periods in which they live."

A long pause followed. When the president spoke again the subject was changed. He inquired about the discussions underway, Gunar's criticism and forecast of results.

Within another day the rumor had been circulated among the delegates that Gunar Vries, emissary from S—, was suffering from hallucinations. The suspicion was not relayed to newsmen or to anyone outside the circle of official delegates. It was a matter of respect not only for the member, as a distinguished person, and for his family, but for the delegates combined. If one was susceptible to weakness of this kind, it might be construed that all were. The curious thing was that the emissary seemed to be in full command of his intelligence while at the conference table. No criticism could be cast upon the deft, perspicacious way in which he handled his country's interests. Not only this, he was one of the most energetic in tackling the problems of all humanity.

Gunar Vries was called home on the second day after his speech. Newsmen, inquiring of him the reason for his departure, were told that he believed that his president was in possession of information that could not be discussed by phone or letter or through a messenger. In Gunnar's place, to be guided by Norbert through the formalities, there appeared the youngest member of the supreme court of S , a man not much older than Norbert, but with his own history up to ninety years already in his eyes.

Carrying his portfolio, Gunar Vries returned to S . He was met at the airport by the president, and together they were driven to the palace. They dined and secluded themselves in the president's study.

"Gunar," said Ernest, as they sat facing each other, "I could not ask for a better emissary. You have used the energy of twelve men. Now, wound-up as you are, you will think I am crazy, you will think I am reckless putting your personal health before the welfare of the nation. But I want you to take a rest for awhile. Let someone else, not your caliber but competent enough, assume your duties. You go to your farm, wear an old hat, go hunting, milk your cows, sow your wheat. We need as many hands as we can get working the land, and as much space yielding. Go home for awhile, Gunar."

Gunar Vries had never been so frightened in his life. It was like the fear, only worse, that he had experienced as a boy of seventeen, when he had left his father and come to the city to study, when for the first time he had lived alone. For several days he had been almost unable to breathe. He had thought he would never again see his father or make a friend, he had thought that he was trapped in that one room forever.

"Has any action of mine," Gunar now asked slowly, "met with your disapproval? Have you found that the ability I evidenced as your minister of foreign affairs, have you found that this ability falls short of my responsibility as a delegate to the United Nations?"

Ernest gripped his forehead, half-hid his painful eyes with his hand. "They say that you see griffins."

"But I told you so myself."

"Doesn't it seem peculiar to you?"

"You prefer to quote the ones to whom it seems peculiar? No, my friend, it is the most natural thing in the world."

"But you are the only one who sees them."

"Does that fact make the griffin nonexistent?" He felt a sharp derision coming on, took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. He tried to suppress the snort, but could not. It was his opinion of organized disorganization.