The Zoo Page 7

  He sits at the desk in his living room. He nods to me, then returns his gaze to his papers. There is a typewritten list of names, several sheets long. Like a teacher correcting good homework, he is ticking each one, nodding. Sometimes smiling.

  Breakfast is laid out on a small circular table. Much is familiar. I have no trouble dealing with the breads, porridges, yoghurts, cheeses, cold meats, nuts or dried fruit, but I do not know how to approach the long, curved, freckled, yellow vegetable. Whatever it is, it isn’t Slavic.

  It tapers at each end, with a black scar on the one side and a pale stalk on the other. It isn’t clear which side to attack it from. So I just dive in and take a bite. The outside is fleshy and fibrous. It puts your teeth on edge. But the inside is a sweet soft pulp.

  The Boss raises his eyes from his papers, watching my vigorous chewing and vain attempts to swallow.

  ‘You peel it first.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It’s called a banana. It is my favourite fruit. Here. I will show you once. And only once.’

  He plucks one from the bunch and reveals how to undress the thing, pulling the rind down the length of it, in three long strips, exposing the curved column of creamy white pulp inside.

  He nibbles off the tip, chews, nods and swallows.

  He’s right. It is edible, providing you first discard the skin. In fact, the taste is not unpleasant.

  Let nobody mislead you. It is no easy task, either, being Food-Taster, First Class, to Comrade Iron-Man, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Socialist Union.

  Within a couple of days, I come to realise that the Boss is an insomniac with a hearty appetite. There is a lot of eating to be done, all times of the day, never mind the drinking. The hours are not short, nor regular.

  The main work of the day is usually between eleven at night and three in the morning, when the Boss takes a long, late dinner at the dacha, with his colleagues, Bruhah, Malarkov, Bulgirov and Krushka. There is drinking, leading to carousing. There may be forfeits, bets, wrestling, horseplay, pissing yourself, vomiting, falling over, fist-fighting, tumbling down stairs and breaking glass. It can go on until five or six in the morning.

  Breakfast is a brief and simple meal taken any time in the morning. Then, a light lunch is taken at teatime.

  A First Class, Food-Taster – as opposed to an Assistant-Taster, or Second Class Taster – must attend all three daily meals and sample every item of food and drink offered up for the Boss’s sustenance and pleasure.

  This is not a job for the faddy eater, since you must taste all and every food, whether it is to your taste or not. As a Georgian, Comrade Iron-Man is partial to many local dishes from his homeland that involve aubergine, walnuts, figs, and such, and offal, that others may not regard as food.

  Nor is it a job for the greedy, since you must try to conceal your intervention, and eat the bare minimum of each item.

  The Boss does not want to look at his plate and see bits gone astray, and observe that someone else has enjoyed the best part of his meal before him.

  The Boss likes food but the food is not always kind to him. His dentures are ill-fitting and can chafe his gums. He expects to be warned when hard chewing is required.

  He hates being surprised by piping hot or chilled foods, which put his remaining teeth on edge.

  The Boss will usually trust a bottle with the seals intact, uncorked or with the screw-top unbroken. Anything opened must first be sampled by the taster.

  It is easy to tamper with cigars and cigarettes, so opened packets have to be sampled, before the Boss can inhale with confidence.

  So, in fulfilling the demands of the job I become, at only twelve years of age, both a light smoker and a heavyish drinker.

  *

  I am not a snitch or a tell-tale. I would never rat on another person. Not on purpose.

  So I never mean to get Professor Nikolai Anichkov, President of the Academy of Medical Sciences, into trouble. I don’t even know him. It comes about quite by accident. It happens this way.

  Matryona comes to find me in the rehearsal room in the afternoon. She says the Boss has called for me to taste his breakfast.

  The Sick-Man is cheerful, and smiles to see me. But he complains about his rheumatism, cranky heart and creaking bones, and says to me –

  ‘It is an evil thing getting old. The head is willing, but the body won’t oblige.’

  Naturally, I say, ‘Then you should get yourself an autojektor.’

  To be quite honest, I didn’t mean it seriously. I meant it as a joke.

  ‘What?’ he frowns. Because – I’ve learned – he does not welcome other people knowing things he does not know. Himself.

  I explain it as best I can. An autojektor is the heart-and-lung machine used by Professor Sergei Brukhonenko to keep alive the head of a dog, after he has severed it from its body. Papa has told me all about it. I assumed the Sick-Man knew all about it too. After all, he paid for it.

  I thought everyone had seen those pictures of the live head of a dog, looking none too happy, separate from its body, joined to a relay of tubes, lying on an enamelled tray, growling and snarling at a circle of scientists.

  ‘So you could keep your head alive,’ I explain, ‘on a plate, and not have to bother about your sick old body.’

  ‘But this is immortality for the mind,’ the Sick-Man says. ‘Why has nobody told me any of this?’

  ‘Or, if you prefer,’ I suggest, ‘you could get a newer, younger body.’

  ‘How,’ the Sick-Man demands, ‘do I get another body?’

  He sounds really interested now. I can see from the perfect stillness of his unblinking eyes that I have his full attention.

  ‘Well,’ I say, ‘it’s not straightforward, but Professor Vladimir Demikhov did it with a dog.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘He grafted a second head onto a dog’s body. So I’m sure they can do the same with people.’

  ‘He put an old head on a new body?’ he asks. ‘Truly?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘but …’

  I mention some of the drawbacks. Obvious really. You’d have to share the same body with someone else. That is, the head already on there. The current tenant. Naturally, there’s a loss of privacy.

  Then, you’d have two heads, which must single you out socially, and draw attention, especially – for instance – at public events, like the annual May Day Parade in Victory Square.

  Then there might well be disagreements. The two heads might be in two different minds about things – about what to do with your parts, and who was in charge of what … But you’d have the use of a newer, healthier body.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And the newer, healthier body would get the advantage of your experience of life. It could be a good deal all round.’

  But for some reason, I have made the Sick-Man very angry. His face is flushed crimson. There’s a twitch to his cheeks. His nostrils are flared.

  He has picked up the receiver of the green Bakelite telephone. He is shouting into the mouthpiece.

  ‘Get me the President of the Academy of Medical Sciences …’

  I hear a distant squeaking sound from the other end of the line.

  ‘Yes, Nikolai Anichkov,’ he mutters. ‘Have him here, within the hour …’

  The Boss shakes his head in angry disbelief.

  ‘Traitors,’ he growls.

  ‘Yes?’ say I.

  ‘For years I support research into fighting old age. Now immortality is made possible, through Socialist science. And I’m the last to know … Do they not want me to live forever?’

  The sadness cuts me to the bone. So I’m struggling to remember the word for it when-you-are-incredibly-powerful-and-yet-fatally-weak-because-you-still-remain-human.

  You may be the most powerful man in the world but still you can’t dodge death. When you have to go, you have to go.

  7. THE JUGGLER’S LIFE

  ‘I guess that’s a fi
ne career,’ I say to Felix, ‘being a double for Comrade Iron-Man. Every bit as good as being his personal Food-Taster, Technician First Class.’

  Felix ponders this without expression or reply. He examines the shiny toes of his boots. He brushes some lint from the sleeve of his Marshal’s jacket.

  I can tell he is dejected from the day’s How-To-Behave-Like-Comrade-Iron-Man Lessons with Director Dikoy. There was a deal of shouting, complaint and criticism. But not a lot of progress was made. The Director was harsh, with exacting standards that Felix never came close to meeting. So I do my best to cheer him up.

  ‘You must get to travel,’ I suggest. ‘You meet important people. Everyone pays you respect.’

  ‘It is a job for life,’ says Felix. ‘But you can never be sure how long that life will be …’

  ‘You do a service for the Motherland, and for the Party, and for Comrade Iron-Man himself,’ I say.

  ‘It is well worth the sacrifices,’ says Felix, looking over his shoulder to check there is no one in earshot.

  ‘Sacrifices?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, you see …’ Felix sighs, ‘the way it is …’

  *

  The way Felix tells it, he was at heart a happy, warm-spirited man, who enjoyed all life had to offer. He liked to walk on the sunny side of the street, and bask on the bright side. He made sure his glass was always half-full, and never half-empty.

  He trained at circus school as a juggler and dancer. He joined a theatre troupe in Yekaterinburg. He liked best working at the Puppet Theatre, or the Theatre of Musical Komedy, or doing private parties for the children of Party officials.

  He liked to wear grease-paint, or masks, or animal costumes that completely covered his head and concealed his true appearance. Because, when he was made-up or dressed up, he looked different. People no longer saw any unfortunate resemblances in his face.

  But suppose he went out without make-up, and in normal attire, into a loud, crowded tavern, or a busy restaurant, or the wedding reception for a cousin, or a school reunion, or the terrace at a football ground, the same things always happened, as night follows day.

  The gathering would fall silent. People would melt away from his side. The world looked at him sideways, while pretending he just wasn’t there. There’s an elephant in the room. They think their pretence not to see it will make it disappear.

  He hears the whispers and muttering.

  ‘It can’t be!’

  ‘But look at him.’

  ‘That face.’

  Because, even without a moustache, and despite his youth, he bears an extraordinary, uncanny likeness to Comrade Iron-Man, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Socialist Union.

  Sometimes, your face tells fibs about you. So, although he is a kindly, comradely soul, he seems to wear an attitude of haughty disdain.

  Most people realise he is probably not Marshal Iron-Man. But they remain uneasy. Is the Party checking up on them? Is it some elaborate ploy to test their loyalty? Is he some close relative – son or brother maybe – who has the ear, or shares the authority, of the Great Leader?

  Then, when the Germans invade, Felix signs up to defend the Motherland. Now he can just be a normal guy. A private soldier in infantry uniform, like any other, he thinks. But no.

  The officers pass him from unit to unit. No one wants him in their Company. He is, at best, an embarrassment. Perhaps, at worst, a terrible omen. A death sentence, maybe.

  ‘Private Dadaev,’ he salutes the Captain, ‘reporting for service. Ready to fight in the defence of the Glorious Motherland.’

  ‘Yes?’ The Captain frowns, winces, and shakes the private’s hand with a very timid deference. ‘It is a privilege to meet your honour.’

  ‘Where do I report, sir?’

  ‘I would not like to say,’ says the Commander. ‘I would not like to order you to do anything or report anywhere. It is entirely up to you, Comrade. Please please yourself. But please please yourself somewhere else, if you prefer.’

  ‘If it pleases you,’ says Felix, ‘I would like to fight the Nazi scum, and die a heroic death, here, in defence of Mother Motherland.’

  The Sergeant whispers to the Lieutenant, who speaks in the ear of the Captain.

  ‘Somewhere else would be better …’ he tells Felix. ‘Regrettably, it is not permissible for you to die here, with us. You must take your ultimate sacrifice elsewhere. This is a travel warrant. Collect some extra rations. You must take yourself to Kursk and join the 95th Rifle Division. They are in much greater need of your heroic death over there.’

  So he is passed from pillar to post. In the end, he takes matters into his own hands. He jumps into a trench with the 192nd Infantry Division of the 12th Army at the defence of Uman and gets himself killed, almost, in his first half-hour’s engagement, when he peeps over the rim of the trench and is shot through the neck by a German sniper.

  As he lies dying, the life’s blood squirting out of his neck, pumping in a jerky arc, he hears the medics talk about him.

  ‘Such a perfect likeness.’

  ‘Have you told the Political Commissar?’

  *

  When Felix next wakes, it is many days later, in a cool white-tiled room that smells of Lysol. And, alas, is not Heaven.

  He feels a terrible burning to both his cheeks. He has been given some extra operations, after they resuscitated him and stitched up the holes where the bullet passed through. He has had his ears re-shaped. And they have burned some livid pits on his cheeks with hydrochloric acid, to resemble Comrade Iron-Man’s smallpox scars.

  He is in some secret medical unit just outside The Kapital, in the hands of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs. It is not a happy awakening.

  They tell him he is dead. Dead every which way.

  Dead to his family, who have been informed of his demise and shown his grave.

  Dead to his old name and identity, now he has no papers.

  Dead to his old career as an entertainer.

  Dead to his former face. Now he is the spit of Comrade Iron-Man.

  *

  ‘At least I didn’t have a wife and children,’ says Felix.

  ‘What difference would that make?’ I ask.

  ‘When you become a double, everyone disappears in time. All your close family …’

  ‘Disappears?’ I ask.

  ‘They are wiped, erased, off the face of the world. So no one is alive who can recognise you any more,’ Felix says, ‘and know you by your old name. And say you are not really Iron-Man.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You lose your name, and your family and friends, your past and your future …’ says Felix. ‘But, apart from that, and apart from when you get shot at by some foreign assassins, being a double for Comrade Iron-Man is, as you remark, a fine career with great prospects …’

  *

  Yesterday, the Boss tells me a true story. He likes telling jokes about his very best friends and closest colleagues, who often turn out to be his favourite enemies.

  Comrade Krushka goes to visit a collective pig farm. They say he has a very jolly, friendly temperament, when he is not in a mammoth rage, or purging peasants in the Borderlands. He clambers into a pig pen and pats the pigs who gather round him, sniffing, snuffling and snorting, welcoming a kindred spirit into their gang.

  Next day, The Daily Truth publishes a photo of the happy scene. Beneath the picture is the caption: A group of pigs greet Comrade Krushka (third from left).

  So when the plump, round-faced, hairless, pink person, with a wobbly under-chin, and droopy dewlaps, waddles up to me smiling from pointy ear to pointy ear, I guess immediately who he is. It has to be the porker Krushka.

  ‘Are you the boy who plays draughts with the Boss?’

  ‘That’s me,’ I agree. ‘My name is Yuri.’

  ‘You are fortunate, Yuri. The Boss has taken a shine to you. They say he confides private, personal things to you. Do you know why?’

&nbs
p; I shrug.

  ‘You are right,’ he says. ‘It’s hard to know why the Boss likes someone. But hates his identical twin. In your case, he may like you because you are a child, a fool and harmless. And you have a kind way, and an angel’s face …’

  ‘He says I’m a perfect fool,’ I explain. ‘He says he has several absolute idiots working for him, but I am his favourite.’

  ‘That may be the answer,’ he nods. ‘But sometimes the Boss likes someone, and likes them some more, and then likes them even more than that. And then guess what happens next …’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘It turns out they were a traitor. All along. Taking advantage of the Boss’s trusting nature. So then they get arrested. And shot.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘True. And guess what happens after that?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘They are nowhere to be seen. They are disappeared. Completely. And not just themselves. But their family too. They are disinvented. Evaporated. Annulled. Cancelled. Erased. Entirely. Not just their present, nor their future. Their past is gone too. Their face has fled from every photograph. Now, there’s just an empty space, to the right of the Boss, where they used to appear. They evaporate from people’s memory. Their name disappears from the index of books. In the Slavic Encyclopaedia, some writer has to fill out an extra three pages on the Kamenovska Tapeworm, after Lev Kamenev gets shot, just to fill the empty space.’

  ‘Lev Kamenev?’ I say. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Yes …’ Krushka nods. ‘My point exactly. Who indeed? Nobody knows any more. And do you know the moral of the story?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never, never underestimate the Boss. And never, never betray him.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘As it happens, there’s a little task you can do. You’ll never guess what it is.’

  ‘Is it to keep my eyes and ears open, and report back to you?’

  ‘Well said …’ He blinks and frowns his surprise. ‘How on earth did you know?’

  I shrug. ‘I’m new to politics,’ I admit, ‘but I’m picking it up …’

  ‘Now, we are true and good friends, you and I,’ he declares. ‘We shall never be parted. We shall never fall out. You must call me Uncle Nikita. I am not a bad man, you know.’