The Zoo

by Christopher Wilson

  ‘It allows me to see objectively, free of false sentiment. So, I ask myself – “Is this fly better than the next fly?”, “Will the world be a worse place if this fly dies?”, “‘Does this fly deserve the Lenin Prize, or should it go to the earwig instead?”, “Should I listen to this woodlouse, Eisenhower?”, “Is this bluebottle, with the shimmering chest, the most beautiful fly in the world?”’

  ‘Yes?’ I say. ‘You do?’

  But I can’t help feeling he is wrong, and that a human is, in some ways, superior to a fly, and The Kapital is more than a cow-pat.

  ‘So, you must not love people. You must not love this world.’

  ‘I mustn’t?’

  ‘Because people are imperfect. And this world is wrong too. Both need putting right. You must love people as they could be, not as they are. Better in a better world.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘But you must understand this about history … History consists of the lies of the winner. Because only the winner gets to tell the story. And the winner can write it however he wants. So he can make the past just as he wants it – not as it was, but as it ought to be.’

  ‘Really?’ I say.

  ‘So the first task of the politician is to win. Because only if he wins can he put everything right. The past, the present as well as the future.’

  Then the Boss starts to explain people to me.

  He says there are four broad types of people. Firstly, there are people who need to exist, because they contribute to the good of us all. These are a tiny minority. They are leaders, artists, scientists who make the world a better place.

  Then, there are the great majority of people who do no good and do no harm. And so are no use at all. It does not matter if they live or not. And so they are expendable. Because their fate makes no material difference. It does not matter if they live in Minsk, work in a labour camp, or get their brains blown out against a wall.

  Then, there are the enemy. The enemy of the proletariat, who need to be purged. They need to be removed for the good of us all.

  The Boss says there are two types of person to be removed. There are those who should not exist. And there are those who should never have existed. Because they leave a trail, a memory. And so their evil lives on. After they are dead.

  So, there are some people you can simply remove, rub out. But others you must disinvent.

  ‘Disinvent?’

  ‘Dismention. Disremember. Disdiscuss. Dishonour. Disrespect. Discredit. Disdain. Disphotograph. Dispaint. Disreference. Disrecognise. Disdiscover. Dispatch. Dismember …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Remove every last trace. Any old fool can remove someone. In a moment. But it takes work and craft and time to disinvent them. To make what existed disappear without trace. Every day we have new lists. Page upon page. We have to disinvent thousands.’

  ‘Thousands?’ I ask. ‘Thousands of what?’

  ‘People.’

  ‘Why?’ I ask.

  ‘Article 58 of the Criminal Code. And Article 32. Article 12. They all insist we do it. And it is no easy thing, either.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘They may be disinvented, but they still leave a mess behind them. A mess for others to clean up …’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And it’s not just people. We will have to disinvent all manner of things.’

  ‘What else, then?’

  ‘Religion, the family, love …’ the Boss says.

  ‘Is love bad, then?’ It’s news to me.

  ‘Love is the worst evil.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Love is the joker, the chaotic wildcard in the pack. The great disorganiser. It is glue. It is the sticky stuff that clogs the machine. It ties people together but the wrong people, in the wrong ways. It has no political purpose. It takes no heed of history. It has no sense of class-conflict. It lacks all morality. It works without reason. It feels without permission. It thinks the unthinkable. It speaks out of turn. It forgives everything. It embraces the unsuitable. It joins the incompatible. It promises the impossible. It revels in its own madness. It gives not a jot for the Party. It swears good is bad. It says black is white. It rolls around yelping and moaning. It tears off its clothes, to flaunt itself naked, at the flimsiest pretext. It spreads its legs to total strangers. It infects the old as well as the young. No one is safe from contamination. It spreads like the most virulent infection. But you cannot inoculate against it. You cannot ban it by law, or scare it away. You cannot even stick it against a wall and blow its brains out.’

  ‘Maybe so …’ I say. I guess I’m too young to know.

  ‘So we must stop the people loving. At least stop them loving each other …’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘And we must stop them thinking too. Thinking can be every bit as bad as loving.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let everyone have guns, why should we let them have ideas?’

  10. DECLINE

  I saw the Boss getting sicker by the day. I observed, from our mealtime contacts, he was suffering frequent fainting fits, and daily growing a stranger to his memory.

  There were poor days and worse days.

  At his worst, he’d pause for ages between sentences. He’d pass out for minutes on end. Maybe, frozen in some gesture, with his fork poised in mid-air, on an arc to his mouth, or with an emphatic pointed finger. Then he’d sit stock still, or slump, with his eyes closed.

  Then he’d blink, open his eyes again, suddenly alert, and continue as if nothing had happened.

  Papa had treated an ancient rhino called Nestor for this condition. Sometimes the beast would be alert and frisky. Sometimes slow and forgetful. Sometimes he would topple over without warning, with a perplexed look to his cloudy eyes. Papa said it was called vascular dementia. It came and it went. It was all a matter of his arteriosclerosis, his coronary plumbing, and the amount of blood pumping through to his brain.

  One day at lunch the Boss is served an unripe banana and bellows his outrage.

  He demands that the Minister for Buying Bananas be sacked forthwith and put on trial. ‘I daresay he has taken some bribe to defraud the State. Meanwhile he sits at home and gorges himself on ripe bananas, at our expense.’

  But, there being no Minister exclusively dedicated to banana purchase, the message goes out to sack the Minister for Trade instead.

  *

  You do not have to be a veterinarian, or Elephantologist, to see that he’s unwell. He is strangely quiet, slow and low in spirits. He keeps tapping his head with the palm of his right hand, as if trying to work something loose.

  We’ve just started playing our first game of draughts. We’re two moves in when he slumps sideways on his sofa. Spittle trickles from the left corner of his mouth.

  His eyes seem unfocused and wander drunkenly. The left and right eyes take separate tours around the room.

  He has a face of two halves. The right side is firm and taut, but the left is slack, collapsed on itself, sagging like melting wax. His lips have taken a bluish tinge. They twitch and blow frothy bubbles of spit.

  ‘Feels …’ he slurs, then trails off. ‘ … Sdrange.’

  ‘Drunk?’ I guess.

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Unhappy?’ I ask.

  He shakes his head again.

  ‘Ill?’ I guess.

  He nods. ‘Is right …’ he says. ‘Is my …’

  ‘Legs?’

  ‘Noooo,’ he says. I guess he means ‘No’.

  ‘Heart?’

  ‘Noooo.’ He blows a long sausage-shaped bubble of saliva from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Head?’

  ‘Yesss …’ he agrees. ‘Isss my head …’

  I help the Boss to sit himself upright. I put the pillows behind his back. You don’t have to be a Cordate Neurologist to know what’s going on.

  There is so much I want to tell him and, because I am nervous, it all comes out i
n a rush.

  ‘I know what’s wrong with you, old man,’ I say. ‘Because my Papa taught me all about mammalian brains, the crossover of function, and the left and right cortex …’

  The Boss looks at me oddly. As if I’m not there. He’s not himself. He’s lost and bemused.

  ‘There’s worst news and then there’s better news,’ I console him. ‘Which would you rather hear first?’

  His head sags to the left.

  ‘Worst news – you’re having a stroke,’ I explain. ‘There’s a blockage or bleed in your brain. On the right hemisphere. It controls the left-hand side of your body, which is why it feels so weak on that side …

  ‘Better news, the left side of the brain is probably fine … At our zoo, the animals often make a good recovery from a stroke, especially larger mammals. They have big brains with spare capacity. They can often re-learn all the things they need to know.’

  ‘This …’ he taps his chest with his right hand, ‘this here …’ His left eye swivels downwards. His right eye is glazed and looks straight ahead to the far distance.

  There is a white corner of paper poking out from underneath his lapel. It belongs to an envelope in his inside pocket which I pull out. I believe he wants me to have it.

  He nods. ‘Take it …’ he slurs.

  I fold the envelope and stuff it into my side trouser pocket. I barely have time to read the writing, in his hand, in green ink, on the cover. So, I hardly notice what it says –

  The last testament of Josef Petrovich Iron-Man General Secretary of the Central Committee naming his successor

  ‘It’s important?’ I ask.

  He nods.

  ‘Who shall I give it to?’

  His eyes roll two ways.

  ‘Bruhah?’ I ask.

  The right side of his face crumples in pain. But the left stays unconcerned. He leaks a shrill wail of distress.

  ‘Krushka?’

  He closes his eyes. He half-scowls, with the working side of his face. He gives a weary shake of his head.

  I mention Malarkov, then Bulgirov, but he signals ‘no’ to both of them.

  Then he holds out his left hand and extends one finger. I guess he wants to play charades.

  ‘One word?’ I guess.

  He nods and extends a second finger.

  ‘Two syllables?’ I say.

  He grunts, then holds out four fingers and a thumb.

  ‘Five characters?’

  He nods. Then laboriously, with the index finger of his left hand, he draws each character in turn in the air.

  V …I …S …L …O …V …

  ‘Volsiv?’ I say. But I’m only joking.

  He shakes his head wildly.

  ‘Vislov?’ I say.

  He nods twice, then his eyes flicker closed.

  So, he wants me to give the letter to someone called Vislov, whoever he is, when he’s at home.

  The Boss’s head flops forward, with his eyes closed, and his chin resting on his chest. But I can tell from the throb in his wrist that he’s still alive, with a busy pulse of over 110 beats per minute.

  ‘Enough games, old man …’ I say. ‘You need medical attention. And as soon as possible. From a doctor, or a veterinarian, or someone like that …’

  11. REMEMBER LENIN

  I’ll tell you a further, strange thing. Another of those curious coincidences that just happen in this special place – the Iron-Man’s dacha – where the laws of nature are different to those in the outside world, by order of his Iron-Will. No sooner does the Boss fall ill than I do too.

  Normally, I’m strong and sound – aside from when I’m throwing fits. Papa says I have the constitution of a tin can. So, whenever I’ve been dropped off a roof, hit by a milk truck, sizzled by lightning, or run over by a tram, I get a bit dented, but I’m never crushed.

  And yet, suddenly, I am feeling strangely dizzy. And I have a terrible, throbbing, brain-splitting headache.

  My sight goes blurry. The white of my left eye has gone crimson, from a burst blood vessel.

  It is as if I am bleeding, all over, inside. I have bruise marks, from the slightest pressure, on my chest, arms and legs.

  I press a finger onto my ankle to test and, lo and behold, a blood-red print forms under the skin.

  I’ve developed some strange bleeding disease. I am used to bleeding from the inside out. But, now, I am bleeding from the outside in.

  Matryona and the guards carry me to her room. I lie on a couch for three whole days in a hellish, scalding place between sleep and wakefulness, squirming and moaning. Terrible sights and awful thoughts pass through my head.

  Then, on the fourth day, my mind clears. I can stand. I can walk. The bruises are gone. Now my skin stays clear.

  *

  But the Boss fares worse. Marshal Bruhah charges around the house, as if he owns it, in a state of high excitement – wailing his concern here, and beaming his exhilaration there – informing all that the Boss is dying – barking orders and then howling his sorrows, by turns.

  But the Boss, the old devil, proves tougher than we all supposed. For days, he hovers on the brink.

  The doors to eternity are flung wide open to receive him. And yet he refuses to shuffle the final footstep, over the threshold to the golden lights on the other side.

  Then, he rallies. He gathers his strength. Within a week, he is talking again, and able to hobble about the room. But while he seems better physically, in himself, he seems far worse in his head. He seems in steep decline in his mind.

  A stroke can wreak havoc. And there’s some basic know-how, and solid facts, he seems to have lost, for the moment at least.

  In some ways, I’m relieved. I keep worrying he’ll ask for his letter back. The last will and testament. Now he’s decided to carry on living.

  And I would be very happy to give the envelope back to him, of course. For it is his, to do with quite as he wishes. Except, I hid it somewhere for safe-keeping. And I can’t remember where.

  And I don’t know how to tell him I’ve lost it. And I fear he’ll be angry, if he finds out. I worry it’s confidential. Or, worse still, important.

  But the Boss has lost the memory of many, many things. And the letter seems the least of it.

  *

  Papa told me about the studies of his great chum Professor Luria, the Psychologist, about how the human memory works and how it goes wrong.

  Comrade Alexander Romanovich Luria shows we have different memories, housed in different rooms in the brain. There’s a memory like a film, which is an endless record of the episodes of our life – of all we’ve done, where we’ve been and who we’ve seen. It’s our personal memory of our lifetime’s experience. We can watch it in our mind’s eye and play it forward and backward.

  And we have an entirely different memory, arranged like an encyclopaedia – called the Semantic Memory, the Book of Meanings – which contains our knowledge of the world, what’s what, and how things work.

  And, from the way he’s talking, the poor Boss has suffered damage to both of his memories, and to his mind, all over. That’s what happens when you disrupt the blood supply to the brain. Memories just shrivel up. Knowledge dies.

  Now, you’re stranded in the present. You’ve lost some stepping-stones to your past.

  He’s lost memories of his life, and he’s lost memories of basic, general knowledge. And it means he doesn’t understand things as well as he did before.

  But, worse, some days the Boss doesn’t seem able to remember anything new for more than a few minutes. Then we’re back where we started.

  *

  But where there’s a will there’s a way. There’s always a willing helper, if you’re not too proud to ask.

  The Boss has started to use me as an extra organ – as a spare brain and back-up memory – when his own lets him down. So instead of consulting his recollections, he enquires of me.

  It is a secret between the two of us. And, because I am just a menial, who keeps t
o himself, he does not have to worry that the word will leak out.

  He just whispers his questions into my ear, with his warm, damp, tobacco-stained breath, pressed to my ear, prickling inside.

  This gives me nicotine-stained ear lobes. And, to stop the itching, I have to clean out the yellow, oily film every evening.

  *

  ‘Hello, smiley boy,’ he says, ‘I asked for them to bring you to me. In confidence, between the two of us, I need you to remember some things for me. Is your mind free? … I would remember them for myself, but I have other things on my mind.’

  ‘Yuri,’ I remind him, ‘my name is Yuri.’

  ‘That’s as maybe …’ he says, ‘but it is neither here nor there and does not concern me … What I need to know … what I need you to remember for me … in confidence … is the name of a place. It is in Asia, to the East of China. It consists of many islands. I believe it is what they call a country. It’s known as the land of the rising sun …’

  ‘That would be Japan, I think.’

  ‘Japan.’ He nods wisely. ‘You are right. It was there all the time, on the tip of my tongue. And another thing …’

  ‘Boss?’

  ‘There’s a wild animal, smaller than a lynx. Vicious, very sharp teeth …’

  ‘Wolf? Fox?’

  ‘Not those, you stupid boy.’

  ‘Polecat?’

  ‘Of course not, idiotnik … It has beautiful thick fur. It makes fine hats.’

  ‘Sable?’

  ‘Sable. Of course,’ He snaps. ‘Why didn’t you say so the first time?’

  *

  He has become short-tempered and is always complaining about those around him who, so he says, are always tricking him, or letting him down.

  ‘They are holding me prisoner,’ he says. ‘They are stopping me from doing my work.’

  ‘Who?’ I ask.

  ‘Thingy-kov,’ he says, ‘Bruhah-hoo-hah, Bulgy-whatsis-name and You-know-who. The four of them. They’re ganging up on me.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘And they won’t let me shoot Andrey Myokan … Where’s the sense in that?’