The Zoo

by Christopher Wilson

  Isakov goes with me everywhere. And will stay with me, until I have written down all the Boss’s movements, meetings and comments, and until I find the letter.

  I wash with him standing beside me at the basin. I go to the toilet with him by my side in the cubicle. We walk together, hands grazing, close as lovers in Gorky Park. We sleep like spoons in the same iron-framed cot, his chest stuck to my back, an arm wrapped around me.

  After a day, we are friends. He softens and grows confidential.

  ‘This is my big chance,’ he says.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Everyone gets a big chance. Once at least in life. And when it comes, you must seize it with both hands.’

  ‘I guess so …’

  ‘Marshal Bruhah has taken me under his wing. He has made me his assistant …’

  ‘Congratulations, Comrade,’ I say.

  ‘He asked me to do a big thing. A very serious thing. And I did it. It is a thing that makes me a big man. Bigger than you can ever imagine …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I cannot tell you what it is.’

  ‘Good,’ I say, ‘I’d prefer not to know.’

  ‘It is a thing that makes me a figure in history. A thing that can never be undone.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘The Marshal always looks after his own.’

  ‘Good for him,’ I say. ‘Good for you.’

  ‘Besides …’ Isakov taps his head, ‘I know things. I’ve seen things …’

  ‘That will help,’ I agree.

  But, for my part, I see it differently.

  I do not trust Marshal Bruhah. Not with my nose. Not with my fingers. Not with my father’s dentures. Not with my family. Not with our future. Not with the Boss. Not with the Motherland.

  I reckon I cannot afford to give him all he wants of me, because then he won’t need me any more.

  So, I calculate I must not recover That Letter, with the crabby green writing on the yellow envelope. Even after I find it, where I’d seen it, in my mind’s eye, slipped down a crack in the floorboard, under my bed, in the staff dormitory, with a corner rising out, proud of the floor, which needs pushing back in, before Isakov can spot that I’ve finally found it.

  So, we have to spend yet another day looking. Everywhere I have been round the dacha. Upstairs. Downstairs. Inside. And out.

  No luck.

  Still, we don’t give up. It’s just a matter of patience.

  *

  You know something is up. You hear it on the Home Service of Kapital Radio. The nine o’clock morning news is a repeat of the midnight news. The physical exercise broadcast is cancelled. So is the Party Lecture. Instead, they are playing slow, sad music, but not saying why this is a solemn time.

  At five minutes to three in the afternoon, the music stops. There is the pealing of bells. Then the National Anthem. Then the voice of Yuri Levikov. Slowly, gravelly, miserably, with a voice cracking with emotion, he announces –

  ‘The Central Committee of the Communist Party, the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the Supreme Union announce with deep grief to the Party and all workers that on March 5th at 9.50 p.m., Josef Petrovich Iron-Man, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, died after a serious illness.

  ‘The heart of the Great Genius, Kind Uncle, Father of the Nation, and follower of the genius of Lenin’s work, the Wise Leader and Teacher of the Communist Party and of the Socialist people, stopped beating.’

  ‘Shit,’ says Isakov. ‘They took their time to announce that … The foreign broadcasts put it out three days ago.’

  *

  Two days later, Bruhah is driven back here to the dacha from The Kapital in his new silver ZIS-110. It flies a red pennant on the bonnet. His chauffeur polishes the bodywork as Bruhah takes Isakov for a walk in the woods.

  I watch them trudge between the tall swaying birches. Bruhah has his arm over Isakov’s shoulder, his mouth close to his ear. Isakov’s head bobs in agreement with whatever is said. It is a fine thing to see the natural friendship between like-minded people overcome all else, even in difficult times.

  Then they are swallowed up by the shade of the wood.

  There is some huntsman nearby, or a woodsman culling the vermin, because I soon hear the crack of two gun shots, then the angry, answering squawks of some crows.

  Bruhah comes out alone, ten minutes later, walking fast with a jaunty step in his muddy boots, wiping his hands with his cravat. He whistles for the driver to start up the car.

  For his part, Isakov stays on in the woods.

  *

  An hour later. I cross Bruhah’s path again. He is striding down the main corridor with the hefty Bulgirov at his side, the long and the short of it – the man who never rests and the man who sleeps in the lavatory. Both regard me as I come level. From Bulgirov I win a delicate wink, a tick of emotion crossing his fat, flat, moon face. From Bruhah comes a cold stare, as if I have awoken an unpleasant idea in his mind.

  ‘Come, Yuri,’ says Bruhah, ‘we have unfinished business, you and I.’

  ‘No,’ says Bulgirov, ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘No?’ says Bruhah. He swings round, turning his stare on Bulgirov. ‘It is my business. It doesn’t concern you.’

  They are eyeing each other, unblinking, like two dogs facing off, over a bone.

  ‘Our business is complete here,’ says Bulgirov. ‘We have finished tidying. Our housekeeping is done. Enough is enough.’

  ‘Yes?’ says Bruhah. ‘Let me decide.’

  ‘Angel-face, here, is my friend,’ says Bulgirov, laying his heavy hand on my shoulder. ‘He’s harmless. He’s an idiot. He’s a child. He makes me laugh. I wouldn’t want to hear he’s disappeared, or come to any harm.’

  Bruhah clucks and strides straight past me without a further word. I don’t think I figure in his thought any more. He must have a lot on his mind, and bigger fish to fry. Or perhaps, I’m just punctuation, a comma in his book and it doesn’t really matter if I’m here, or there, or nowhere at all.

  I’d wanted to remind him. About his promise to return my parents. But I’m nudged by caution too. I’ve had enough of his close attention. I can do without any more.

  ‘Do you have a home?’ Bulgirov pinches my cheek.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Best go there,’ he says. ‘Best go soon as you can.’ And he pats me between my shoulder blades, then turns on his heels without a backward look.

  I wander down the corridor to the entrance hall.

  Tomsky has been left on his own to guard the front door. He looks up from his book, he leans back in his creaking chair.

  ‘Yuri …’ he says, ‘you still here, kid?’

  I shrug. I realise everything has changed. For the first time since I’d come to the house, there is no task for me, no one holding my collar, telling me what to do.

  No one cares about me, here. Not any more. Papa, Bruhah, the Iron-Man, Krushka, Isakov have other concerns. They had all moved on, each in their own direction. And so must I.

  *

  I collect my possessions from the dormitory. There are two books I’d borrowed from the Boss’s library. Soap and a towel I took from the bathroom, together with a plug for a basin. There are some of the Iron-Man’s patched-up old shirts that Matryona had handed down to me. And the letter to Vislov from the Iron-Man I recovered from under the bed. Together with the Tokarev TT-33 pistol, and a clip of ammunition, that I found in the guard room, which I kept as a souvenir of my brief holiday, helping out, here in history.

  They all go into a small camouflage-pattern parachute-regiment rucksack.

  Then I am back on my way to The Kapital, bouncing along the rutted road in the passenger seat of a furniture lorry that stopped to give me a lift.

  There are all sorts of excited ideas leaping through my mind.

  I wonder if Bruhah had kept his word already, and returned my parents. I’ll consider the possibilities when I
get home.

  Who would be there, bounding forward to hug me, to wrap me in their arms?

  Would it be Mama? Papa? Or both together?

  17. RETURN

  The signs aren’t encouraging. There’s no answer to my knock. The spare key is dusty on the lintel. The door swings open on a dark corridor. There is a smell of must and neglect. The air is colder inside than out on the stairwell.

  ‘Mama and Papa,’ I call. ‘It’s me, Yuri.’

  There is only silence. Outside the gibbons have quietened their chatter, listening to my call.

  ‘Papa?’ I shout. ‘Mama?’

  I walk through to the kitchen. Our abandoned dinner plates are there on the table. The uneaten noodles have a carpet of furry, blue-green mould. The tea mugs float an oily, surface scum. A scent of rotting onion taints the air.

  Papa’s newspaper, folded open to the puzzles and chess page, is now weeks old.

  I lie on my bed. And cry. Slow, cool and damp first. Then, hot, fast and howling, head-splittingly loud.

  There’s something comforting in letting it out. After an hour of that, I have a splitting headache but, in most other respects, I feel much better.

  *

  Later that evening, Papa’s friend Comrade Anna, Curator of Elephants, comes calling.

  ‘Roman, Roman …’ she hammers her fists on the door. ‘It’s me, Anna.’

  I open up sniffling.

  ‘Yuri. Oh, Yuri …’ she says, ‘I saw the light in the window. But it’s only you …’ She wrinkles her face. She was hoping for better.

  She wraps an arm around me. She pecks me on the forehead. She is a mixed bag of scents. I detect hay, elephants, warm breath and lemon soap.

  ‘Yuri …’ She puts a palm on each cheek and gazes into my face. ‘What have they done to your nose?’

  ‘That’s nothing,’ I say. ‘Look at my finger. It isn’t there.’

  She clucks. She frowns. She shakes her sad head.

  She clears the kitchen table. She boils water for tea. We sit. I tell the story. Now and then she reaches out across the tabletop and squeezes my hand.

  I can tell from her frowns, wrinkled forehead and raised brows, she’s finding it hard to believe all I say. At some points in the tale she asks for detail, or she demands I make things clear. She is concerned I’ve got the names and people right. And she checks the order in which things happened.

  ‘It was Comrade Iron-Man?’ she demands. ‘Are you really sure?’

  ‘Yes. Yes,’ I say. ‘It was Josef – Uncle Joe – all right. He smokes too much. He forgets people’s names. He cheats at draughts. He swears like a sentry.’

  ‘You’re certain it was him?’

  I say, ‘Yes, he wanted to shoot all the doctors. And treat everyone like flies. And put an end to love. But there were the three doubles too, of course – Felix, Rashid and Director Dikoy.’

  ‘You sat in his study, you say?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘but there were four identical rooms. He used them in turn.’

  ‘And Krushka? You’re sure? He was really there?’

  ‘Yes. He can dance the Kalinka,’ I explain, ‘like a ballerina. But he gets very drunk. Then he sings rude songs about naked ladies.’

  I tell her about how I got myself into trouble. Nose and finger.

  ‘Marshal Bruhah?’ she frowns. ‘How can you be certain?’

  But, most of all, she wants to know about Papa’s movements, and is less concerned with mine. She is worried to hear of his time in the cell.

  ‘All this is dangerous talk,’ she says. ‘It may be true. Or, you may be mistaken. No good comes of speaking of it. Take care. Don’t mention it any more to anyone … Let’s pray – pray hard – for your father’s safety …’

  *

  The Kapital takes to the streets over the death of Comrade Iron-Man. His body lies in state for five days, in an open casket amongst the marbled columns in the foyer of the Palace of the People.

  Crowds gather in Victory Square to hear the speeches from Motolov, Krushka, Bulgirov, Myokan, Bruhah and Malarkov, who bore the red coffin on their shoulders. Over and over, the band play an arrangement of Chopin’s funeral march.

  At the North End, the Square is blocked by troops, and sheer walls, while the crowds keep flooding in from the South, pushing those in front of them. There is a stampede. It’s said thousands are crushed or trampled underfoot, and leave this world with the Great Father.

  They say the queue is five kilometres long to wander past and catch a glimpse of the great man in his coffin. I go with Aunt Natascha, Uncle Ivan and cousin Grigory. We join the column, ten people wide, at Patriot Ponds. It takes us seven hours to reach the mausoleum and then another two hours to pass the open coffin.

  You catch a brief look at Comrade Iron-Man from a distance of ten metres, as you climb the marble stairs and look across at the red coffin raised on the podium. You can’t stop because of the crush of the people behind.

  But I never guessed it would upset me so much. To see the body. Just in passing.

  Then I start sobbing, without the power to stop.

  Aunt Natascha hugs me with pride and addresses the surrounding mourners. ‘This boy is a patriot who loved the Great Father, the Genius, Josef Iron-Man,’ she announces.

  But, in truth, it wasn’t that.

  No. It was the sight of my dear friend and protector, poor Rashid, lying there. He’d been so kind to me. Now his lips were sealed forever beneath his bushy moustache, with his thick backcombed hair, fleshy ears and the pock marks burned in his cheeks with sulphuric acid, so stiff and cold, and quite lost to me.

  And we never got to say farewell.

  It was as if the Comrade Leader could never fall ill, or die, without some friend of mine having to match the cost – and suffer the same fate, alongside in sympathy. First Felix. Now Rashid.

  I guessed their reasons. The real Comrade Iron-Man must have looked a weary, decrepit, old corpse. They must have wanted a younger, more vigorous, better-looking stiff to put on public display, who presented a more favourable image, sporting a more handsome, energetic rigor mortis.

  Besides they are ruthless, I know. And once the Great Leader goes himself, the doubles are dispensable.

  *

  Comrade Anna says we must regularise our positions – Papa and I.

  Otherwise they will dismiss Papa from his post. For not being there. They will reassign the apartment. For being empty. Then, there will be no home to come back to.

  Anna has been busy. She has been thorough. She has made all enquiries. But, still, Papa rings no bells.

  It is a mystery. But like so many others, he is a man disappeared. Completely and utterly.

  The hospitals haven’t seen him. No morgue has received him. The Party knows nothing new about him. State Security shows no concern. The Police have no record. His friends have heard nothing.

  So Anna arranges through her sister, who is married to Professor Lev Brodsky, Professor of Respiratory Diseases, that Papa obtains a certificate of serious sickness, as a Registered Sufferer of Tuberculosis – requiring three months’ recuperation in a Sanatorium in Odessa.

  She says people forgive an absence for TB. There’s no envy for your holiday. Or your leave on full-pay. They prefer you suffer far away, rather than cough up your sick blood over them.

  Still, she says, we must occupy the apartment. Otherwise they will give it short-term to someone else, or they’ll bury Papa off before he’s coughed his last.

  We make a plan of when I go where. The way it works, Comrade Anna comes early morning, and late at night, to check I’m at home and well. And after school, in the afternoon, I go to Aunt Natascha’s, eat supper, do my homework, and stay for the evening, before Uncle Ivan walks me home.

  *

  Things are always changing here at the zoo. Lotti the giraffe has given birth to a calf called Tippi. She is very sweet-natured, but shy. She lurches about like a drunk on stilts and sometimes topples over.

&nb
sp; The Chinese Zoo has sent us a pair of giant pandas, in exchange for a couple of Siberian tigers. Every day hundreds of visitors crowd round in order to witness them hidden in the bushes, or lurking in shadows in the dark of their lair.

  Shango, Comrade Elephant, has learned a new trick. He shoots water with his trunk, curled back over his shoulders. He’s aiming to hit the Macaque monkeys in the next enclosure, while pretending to look the other way. For their part, they pelt him with rotten fruit. There’s no love lost between them.

  When Shango hits a monkey, fair and square, he just swishes his tail with pleasure and flaps his ears. But when he knocks one completely off its perch, he raises his head to the heavens and trumpets his triumph.

  Like the other Comrade Elephant, he’s a character who enjoys his revenge.

  *

  I still get myself bullied at school.

  Sergei Erofeyev has taken to twisting my nose and making the noise of a car horn. Saying, Honk. Honk. Big Conk. While Taras Botskin has found some new names, like Donkey-Sucker, Dick-Up-Your-Arse, Jerk-Off, On-Your-Knees, Drink-My-Spunk, Mother-Licker, which aim to hurt, but end up contradictory, making no real sense at all. So I’ve learned to suffer it all in silence.

  To be frank, when you’ve endured the close attentions of Bruhah, their attempts seem conversational, friendly, bordering on kindly.

  I don’t dare say a word about my adventures. Not even to my new friend Ossip Lokstin. It’s dangerous to speak of it and, anyway, I know I won’t be believed. So, when our class teacher asks us to write an essay on What we did on our holiday, I lie and miss out all the bits about Comrade Iron-Man.

  Instead, I say we went to Sparrow Hills and collected wild crowberries.

  But at first I get some interest and attention from the rest of the class, on account of my missing finger and bent nose.

  I say I lost the finger at the zoo, in an unprovoked attack when I put my hand through the bars of the wolf pen.

  18. THE EMPEROR OF THE TURNSTILES