Free The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier

round and saw a chimpanzee jumping up and down on the back seat, with the cigarette in his mouth. You never saw such a revolting creature — huge arms, hairy chest as broad as mine, deep-set evil eyes, and the face of a heavy-weight boxer. He could have knocked the pair of us into the middle of next month, but we didn’t stay to let him. We streaked out of the door and left him to his dancing.
    “Quite a crowd was gathering — they kept their distance, of course — and I heard someone say the chimp was called Bistro, and he’d escaped from the zoo, or what was left of it after the bombing. He had a chain round his neck, and it kept clanking against the tailboard as he jumped. He seemed to be in a rage because he hadn’t any matches — or because he’d swallowed the cigarette and it was making his belly ache. When he was tired of jumping, he sat down in the driver’s seat and started fiddling with the controls.
    “That put the wind up me. There was a goodish slope on the street, and fifty yards ahead a bomb crater big enough to swallow a church — and cordoned off with only a bit of rope and a plank or two. If the jeep took a header down there, I should be answerable.
    ““Come on, Jim,” I said to my driver. “We’ll have to do something about this.” But my knees were like jelly, and I think Jim’s were too.
    “Then the strangest thing happened. A boy stepped out of the crowd, one of the thousands of urchins that abound in the ruins here — about 11 or 12 years old, I should say, but you can never tell with these kids, they’re so undernourished.
    “I shouted to him in German to come back, but he didn’t understand. He was a Pole and his name was Jan, though I didn’t know that till afterwards. But I recognized him as a boy we’d nearly run down in the street the day before.
    “He walked right on, quite unafraid, and when he was alongside the jeep he said in a gentle voice, “Hello, Bistro.”
    “The chimp gave him a dirty look, but Jan only grinned. He fished something out of a small wooden box he was carrying, and it made the chimp curious. It was a cigarette and matches. He handed over the cigarette. Then the matches.
    ““OOOO, Warro … umph,” said Bistro, and he lit up at once, and flung away the matches. He sat back in the driver’s seat, inhaling, puffing out clouds of smoke from his nose, and all the while keeping his eyes fixed on Jan. Quite suddenly Bistro stood up and held out a soft pink-palmed hand for the boy to shake. Then he climbed over on to the back seat and lay down, his legs crossed, and puffed away.
    “It may have been my imagination, but I swear that the jeep began to move. Like a fool, I tiptoed up behind and called out in my best German, “Sonny, put the brake on — she’s beginning to shift.” He didn’t understand. I pantomimed the action.
    “But Bistro didn’t like me. He sat up and screamed. Then he opened the tool-box, which Jim had been far-sighted enough to leave on the floor, and flung the wheel brace at me. It made him mad to see me duck, so he generously made me a present of the whole tool-box plus contents in one almighty fling. It hit the pavement, scattering the crowd. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him leap over the back and shoot after me.
    “I don’t know what happened next. I ran like hell, and it was all rubble and dust and scramble up here and slide down there. I ran behind a wall, panting. Then I realized I wasn’t being followed any more, and I heard the boy’s shrill voice, scolding.
    “I peeped out, down into the street.
    “The boy had got a stick from somewhere and was standing with it raised above his head. Bistro lay in the dust at his feet, his face and head covered with his long arms, whimpering. I don’t know whether the boy had struck him or not. I expect not, for I guess it would have been about as effective as trying to knock down Nelson’s column with a fly whisk. But there was no doubt about the scolding he gave.