The Zoo Read online

  All that happened was very dialectical, which is not a foreigner’s way of talking but actually a meeting of opposing forces, like two stags butting heads for one doe. So something has to give. And things can never be the same again. Papa says that is how history works, particularly Slav history, where things can just go from bad to worse, and from worse to awful, in the blink of an eye, and it’s hard to get a good night’s sleep, and enough to eat, and snow-proof felt boots, although the excitement, cold feet and hunger can provoke great Socialist music and heroic literature, and Social Realist painting, by way of compensations. All praise to the Party. All homage to Comrade Iron-Man.

  *

  As it happens, I love finding new words like dialectical, epicentral, duodenum, catawampus, egregious, skulduggery, infinitesimal, and then working them like crazy, maybe for a whole week or so, until they’ve lost all their shine and gone all lackadaisical and lacklustre.

  But, trust me, everything that follows is as true, in edible and indelible as the scarlet birthmark on my right buttock, which Papa says looks the spit of a young Comrade Lenin in profile, facing leftwards.

  2. HERMAN THE GERMAN

  I am born in 1940, with dark clouds gathering, nine months before Herman the German invades the Motherland. Even so, Papa says we mustn’t hate all Fritzies, but only the Nazi scum, the Brigand Interventionist you-know-whos, the Kapitalist Hegemonist thingammies, the War-Mongers, Fascists and Imperialists, and not the decent Common Cabbage, Rubber-Neck and Potato-Head, our proletarian Hun brothers.

  He says we mustn’t forget there have been many good Germans, and even some great ones, who have sprinkled themselves throughout history – poets, scientists and artists, and ordinary people too – who never, not once, invaded the Socialist Union, scorched our crops, bombed our cities, plundered our homes, raped our women, slaughtered our people.

  Papa can rattle off the names of heaps of good Germans, off the top of his head, just like that, exhausting the fingers of both hands – with folk like Mozart, Martin Luther, Karl Marx, Goethe, Engels, Beethoven, Kant, and you-know-who – except you can’t help noticing that they’re mostly dead.

  We live in the staff block of The Kapital Zoo. It is a two-floor building with carved shutters, a fancy gable, and a long balcony, backing onto the entrance gates, overlooking the lake. There are six apartments. Three on each whatsisname.

  This way there are always the keepers, attendants and guards to take care of the animals, day and night. Because during the Great Patriotic War, we all made our contribution, animals included, and the zoo stayed open, even during the heaviest bombing. And animals often got hurt, from falling masonry or shrapnel, so Papa was on call at all times, as Chief Vet.

  But sometimes there was nothing to be done but take a pistol to put an injured beast out of its misery. And then there was just a bleeding carcass, on its back with its still, splayed legs in the air. But it’s a crime to waste good food in a time of famine. So we would share the meat out. The staff got some. So did the large carnivores, like the big cats. So we enjoyed some rare delicacies denied to the rest of The Kapital like Salamander Suvlaki, cabbage-stuffed Lemur, Roast Peccary with wild horseradish, and Loin of Lion, which were not traditional, Slavic dishes, but completely new to Socialist Cookery, though the meat often turned out stringy and chewy, and rarely tasted as delicious as they sounded, although most often better than stale rye bread and cold millet stew.

  Papa says that the bravest, boldest beasts, like the lions and bears, never minded much about the bombing, but the ostriches, racoons, bison and deer were scared close to death. And the monkeys could never abide the blackouts, and would howl and shriek pitifully, being terrified of the gloom, because they were clever enough to fill the dark with their own imaginings.

  And in 1944 the Germans bombed the power-house and blew up the generator, so the staff, and members of the Young Biologist Club, had to take the most delicate and warmth-loving animals home with them, and sometimes sleep with them in bed, which was why I came to share a cot with Petra the tiger cub and Fyodor the orphan otter, several tropical reptiles and a baby goat who was so agile he could leap from the mantelpiece to perch on the picture rail.

  And I can truly say that none of them were clean or house-trained. So I often woke feeling damp in the dark. And it wasn’t me that wet the bed. And, underfoot, the floorboards were often squidgy and slidy.

  Once, when Fritzi drops incendiaries, a bomb lands in the enclosure of Shango the elephant. He starts pacing up and down hooting, in a strop, because he hates the horrible hissing sound it makes, and the smoke pumping out of it. Then he promptly decides to put it out by stamping it deep into the boggy ground.

  And they printed an account in The Daily Truth under the headline Comrade Elephant Fights Fires for The Motherland as a lesson to everyone, to show that even the animals in The Kapital Zoo were helping out with the war effort, which was why Shango gets awarded the Order of Alexander Nevsky, for Extraordinary Contributions to the Fire Services, which is a bronze medal on a crimson ribbon with a yellow stripe, worn on the right breast, which ranks above the Order of Military Merit, even though he was a grumpy and uncomradely elephant who used his trunk to spray the visitors with shit, or hurl stones at their heads.

  Now, there is just Papa and I living in our apartment. We have two bedrooms, a living room and kitchen all to ourselves because Papa is a Professor and Chief Medical Officer and because the authorities did not reassign the spare bedroom when the assistant veterinary officer Gregor Malenkov spoke out of turn at a bus-stop and was called away to a camp in Kolyma.

  Mama was a doctor. But she left home suddenly when I was five. This was before my accident so I have no clear pictures-in-my-mind of her. Although there are seven photos with us together. She has wavy blonde hair, fat lips and a large handsome nose. Usually she is smiling. Often she is touching me. Holding me in her arms, clutching my hand when I’m older, or hugging me. Papa is often missing, or looking grumpy at the edges. I often think how life would be different if she were still with us now.

  Papa said she had gone North to do help with important medical research and would not be back for several years. And that she would not be able to write to us often. Although she still loved us both dearly.

  But Andrei Maximov in my class at school told me my Mama was arrested by the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs for being a Socially Dangerous something-or-other and sentenced to eight years in a work camp near Kolyma. He knows this because his uncle Modest was arrested on the same day and held in nearby cells in The Freedom and Peace Prison, although he got twelve years for doing precisely absolutely nothing at all. Zilch. Zero.

  But that’s Life. You don’t know what to believe for the best. Because, everyone knows, for nothing you only get nine.

  Andrei said that the police came to arrest a neighbour. But because this particular person was out, they knocked on the next door, and arrested his uncle Modest instead. Just to meet their quota.

  Sometimes I wish that Papa would invite one of his three lady friends to live with us, because everyone would be happier then. And, although he knows too much about most things, his cookery lacks skill, warmth, seasoning and flavour. And his laundry lacks smoothness, dryness and whiteness. And although he is a good father, he struggles to show any feelings, and goes gruff, stiff, arm’s-length and moist-eyed at the very times I need him to take some proper care of me.

  Anna, Comrade Curator of Elephants, visits most, usually Tuesday and Friday evenings. She cooks a hot meal and asks me about my school-work, and who are my friends, and sews up tears in my clothes, and darns any holes in my socks. When I go to bed, she and Papa stay up and discuss Big Mammal Policy.

  Then, sprawled on the sofa, they pair-off. With each other. There is mouthing, stroking, grunting, gasping and a rhythmic sound like muffled hammering. Sometimes, towards the end, Comrade Anna makes a long drawn-out sound, like a honking sea-lion, pleasured by an unexpected herring, which startles the
nearby animals into silence for a moment. And the night pauses to listen, still and silent.

  *

  As long as I can remember, Papa has left two packed suitcases parked in the corridor. One for him and one for me. But they stand splayed at right angles, some metres apart. And from this, I understood, when they were needed, we would not be travelling together.

  And he told me if he ever had to leave suddenly for any reason, I was to take my suitcase and leave immediately and separately for Aunt Natascha’s apartment on Galinko Street. And talk only to her and no one else.

  He said there were clothes, soap, toothbrush, bits and pieces and money. And some other family and personal things besides. He said I would understand what everything was for when the time came. But I should never open the case before then.

  Papa says there are five new commandments to remember when dealing with strangers, to fit our modern times –

  Don’t think.

  If you must think, then don’t speak.

  If you must think and speak, then don’t write.

  If you must think, speak and write, then don’t sign.

  If you must think, speak, write and sign, then don’t be surprised.

  It is half past seven in the evening. It is dark. The wolves are howling their evening chorus, calling for the waiters to bring their supper. The gibbons are screeching the latest monkey-gossip.

  Papa and I are sitting at the pine table in the kitchen eating boiled macaroni, sprinkled with raw, grated onion.

  If only all onions could be so scrumptious – purple veined, sweet, sharp and sour. Your eyes water just gazing down on them.

  There is banging at the door of our apartment, hard enough to splinter the timber from its hinges. I scamper to open the door to our impatient visitors.

  There are two men in the doorway, lit brightly by the bare yellow bulb on the landing. One is pale, lean and ugly. The other is pink, fat, sweaty and ugly, in a leather trench-coat, panting from climbing the stairs.

  ‘We are here for Comrade Doctor Professor Roman Alexandrovich Zipit,’ says the lean one.

  ‘Who is it?’ Papa demands.

  ‘It’s two secret policemen,’ I call back, over my shoulder. ‘For you. A fat one who’s out-of-breath, and a skinny one with yellow teeth.’

  Although, if they were truly secret, and in disguise, say, to look like drunken road-sweepers, or smelly garbage-collectors, or dusty millers, we wouldn’t know. But as it is, they are show-off dressers, and favour foreign clothes, which they confiscate from visitors or steal from black-marketers, so you can always see them coming.

  I hear Papa scrape his bowl away from him and rise from the table. He is slow and purposeful, treading his way to us at the door, as if he has been expecting this exact interruption.

  ‘Yes?’ Father asks reluctantly. He swallows twice on air.

  ‘We are from the Ministry of State Security, Comrade. You are to come with us immediately.’

  ‘I have done nothing,’ Father protests. ‘Nothing …’ he trails off. A note of doubt has entered his voice, as if he’s just remembered doing something, after all, maybe, a while ago.

  It goes without saying. Even children know. Everyone has done something, sometime. If only a bit of slight stealing, or talking out of turn, or light lying, or not owning up. Anyway, it doesn’t matter much. They say State Security does not make mean, personal distinctions, but treats everyone as a suspect, and every suspect as guilty.

  ‘We know all about you.’

  ‘You do?’ asks Papa.

  ‘Yes,’ says the lean one with steel glasses, with a thin smile of rat-yellow teeth. ‘We know who you married. We know your record as a student. We know what papers you have written. We know your height, your weight, your age.’

  ‘We know your blood-type,’ says the pink, sweaty one, ‘the smell of your farts, your dental records, your digestive disorder, your sexual history and your fumblings in the dark. We know what happened at the conference in Smolensk, in room 147, with the lady dermatologist …’

  ‘You do?’ Papa blushes crimson. He sounds defeated and deflated.

  ‘And now, you are needed,’ says Pink and Sweaty. ‘You are needed urgently. To treat a patient.’

  ‘What patient?’ asks Papa.

  ‘We are not permitted to say,’ says Wire Glasses.

  ‘You don’t need to know,’ says Leather Coat.

  ‘I’ll need equipment and medicine,’ says Father. ‘You’d better tell me the species, and give me some idea of the problem.’

  ‘Species?’ asks Thin Lips.

  ‘What kind of animal?’ asks Father. He spreads his hands helplessly. ‘What do you want me to treat? Is it a reptile, a bird, a mammal?’

  ‘This is a summons to do your duty, not a game of twenty questions.’ Steel Spectacles rustles his sheet of yellow paper. ‘You must leave everything and come now.’ He frowns down at me. He flicks his fingers to shoo me away, the way you’d dispatch a dog to its corner.

  The other one has been eyeing me up, scowling, and drawing some conclusions.

  I spy the bulge in his coat pocket. Anyone can tell it’s a revolver.

  ‘Do you shoot people?’ I ask. ‘Much?’

  He says, ‘Shhh.’

  ‘With your gun?’ I explain. ‘There in your pocket.’ I point it out.

  He scowls.

  ‘Is it a Nagant?’ I guess. ‘An M1895?’

  This is an old, seven-shot, double-action pistol with a heavy trigger pull. They say it is popular with secret policemen.

  ‘Have you shortened the barrel?’ I ask. Because, often, they do.

  He tells me, ‘Shhh,’ then turns instead to Papa and says, ‘Is this unwanted noise, this smirking moron, your son?’

  ‘The boy doesn’t mean any harm. He doesn’t know any better.’

  ‘Why is he smiling at us? As if he likes us?’

  ‘Yes, what does he mean by it?’ demands the fat one.

  ‘Does he think we are his friends?’ asks the thin one.

  ‘He has traumatic brain damage,’ says Papa. ‘From an accident. He has fits. I cannot leave him. He can’t care for himself.’

  I blush at becoming an imbecile. So suddenly. And without warning. The two men look to each other, unsmiling.

  ‘Fits?’

  ‘He has epilepsy. But he carries my equipment,’ says Father. ‘He is trained to act as my aide. He may be an idiot, but he is a useful idiot. I cannot work without him.’

  So that’s how I get my ticket for the journey alongside Papa. And we slink out into the inky night in the spitting rain, stalked by two secret policemen, with me carrying Papa’s extra-large, best-quality, all eventualities, leather case of instruments, not knowing if we are called to treat a mouse, or rhinoceros, or a who-knows-what.

  *

  Out through the turnstiles onto the pavement we are met by two uniformed policemen who walk us, their hands resting firm on our backs, to a large black car parked at the curb.

  Guess what.

  No lie.

  This car is only one of those. Yes. Truly. Only a ZIS-110, six litre, eight cylinder, over one hundred and forty horse-power. Top speed one-forty kilometres per hour. Three speed transmission, not counting reverse. Electrical windscreen wipers. Directional indicators. This car is so good that the Amerikans steal the whole design to build their Packard Super-Eight.

  We are in a convoy. In front is a ZIM GAZ-12 and behind a GAZ-M20 Victory. It is a parade of top class Socialist, Slavic cars.

  Soon we are motoring fast, westward through Probedy Park, headlights on full beam, full speed through any stop lights. Like we are super-important people on some secret late night assignation.

  3. UP TO MY NECK IN POLITICS

  I sense Papa’s fear from his rasping, shallow breaths, and the way he leans against me, in those thick, hide-upholstered seats, clutches my hand in his hot, damp grasp, and presses my fingers hard, thinking to hold me fast.

  The car throbs throaty, t
hen growls to accelerate. We drive for many minutes. Then the buildings of The Kapital are behind us. There is woodland either side of the unlit road. We see tall watchtowers above the line of a high timber wall, painted forest green. Then we are stopped before an iron-barred gate. Sentries peer in through the car windows, dazzling us, shining their torches onto our screwed-up, scared faces.

  There is a driveway up to the two-storey structure. It is a long official-looking building but there are no signs to say if it is a hospital, barracks, school, office, or what.

  In the arched doorway, two fur-hatted sentries stand scowling in gold-buttoned greatcoats, with sabres in scabbards, and leather boots shiny as mirrors. There is saluting, muttering, the stamping of heels, and the signing of papers as State Security passes us over, like an awkward parcel, into the care of a fat, worried-looking, bald man in a navy suit bearing the Order of Lenin medal on his lapel. Then we are bustled through the central doorway into a large wood-panelled hall, then down a long parquet-tiled corridor.

  We are hurried into a small room. The heavy wooden door clicks shut behind us. We are left alone. There is a desk and chair, a sofa, and a low table stacked with papers. Next to a small square barred window, there is a wash-basin and to its side a steel rail, draped with a crisp white towel.

  I see on the desk, there is a stack of Herzegovina Flor cigarette packets, a large white china ashtray with a cherrywood pipe, like Uncle Vlad’s, a pale green glass bottle of Borjomi mineral water and a drinking glass, on a fat book called Pharaoh by Boleslaw Prus, next to a copy of The Combat History of the 2nd Guards Tank Army from Kursk to Berlin: Volume 1: January 1943–June 1944, opened at page 103.

  We do not presume to sit. Not in the apartment of a Personage.

  ‘But who lives here?’ I whisper.

  ‘Shhh …’ Papa shrugs and holds an upright finger to his lips.

  ‘It stinks …’ I say. ‘Pipe tobacco, wood polish, socks and armpits.’