Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

142 Air. Monday and Other Tales of Jewish Amsterdam

We lived in the countryside and raised chickens at the time. Quite a flock was running about in our back yard. One of the fowls, a hen, seemed to be especially fond of Oreste. In fact, judging by the emotional way she behaved, that chicken seemed to be head-over-heels in love with him. He called her Sarah.

Now, in my opinion, chickens are the silliest animals that ever roamed the earth, fit only to lay eggs and to be cooked in the end. Sarah was by no means an exception. But you should have seen that hen whenever Oreste came to visit us. She ran to the wire fence to get as close to him as possible. And then she started talking, yes talking. Very excited cackling, all sorts of fowl-nonsense, and without interruption. Oreste squatted on his haunches near her at the fence and talked back to her. With low organ-tones in his throat and now and then a high pitch.

Oreste had a flat in London. He told me one day that in the London Zoo there was a chimpanzee that he had caught years ago, before the war, when he hunted in Africa. He asked me whether i would like to meet his friend.

"Friend" that's how he put it.

In retrospect, I consider this visit to the Zoo one of the strangest adventures of my entire life, and I daresay that being a roving reporter I have seen quite a number of weird things. From the moment Oreste passed through the big gate, it seemed as if all the animals had received some stimulating injection. They became very lively in their cages and I got the mad feeling that if there had been no bars on those cages, all of them would have lined up for us like a guard of honour.

The mountain sheep with their grey smelly beards went