Only the Animals

by Ceridwen Dovey

  ‘That’s her husband, isn’t it?’ the tomcat said when Henri had left.

  My paws were sweating again. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Come back only at night,’ my soldier said. ‘You are not safe here anymore.’

  I purred and rubbed my cheek against his hand. Who was safe anywhere anymore?

  ‘Let’s go catch a carrier pigeon for lunch,’ the tomcat said to me. ‘It’ll make you feel better.’

  ‘I’m not the slightest bit hungry,’ I said. I could feel my pulse beating in my throat, a sensation Colette once described when she was upset. ‘I have to try to make it back to Paris.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to realise this is what we need to do. We’ll leave early tomorrow morning, at first light.’

  A cheer rose from the other end of the trench. The smallest turtle had won the derby, carrying its friend on its back. The turtle that had chosen to go around in circles had dug such a deep trench for itself that it had successfully disappeared from view.

  Going Home

  The tomcat insisted on night-hunting in no cat’s land, as he calls it. He asked me to join him but I lied and said I wanted to preserve my strength for the start of our long journey to Paris. Really I just wanted to watch my soldier and his friend sleeping hand in hand on my final night in the trench. It’s something I love to do with Colette: watch her sleep. If she wakes and catches me gazing at her, she offers me a treat, usually a moth caught between the windowpane and curtain.

  I worry that my soldier will not survive this war. Colette would be better suited to life in the trenches than most of these skinny boys. She is robust and fit, her muscles kept flexible by regular sessions in her private gymnasium on the rue de Courcelles. At first it was to match the other performers in the music halls, who used their bodies in such bizarre ways that she felt she ought to strengthen her own. Then it became part of her weekly routine, especially once Missy was in her life: the two of them would put on shorts and headbands and do all kinds of stretches and exercises that made no physiological sense to me but seemed to make Colette happy and strong. On holiday at Missy’s villa in the seaside town of Le Crotoy, the two of them would do their sessions on an outdoor gymnasium custom-built by Missy, shocking the passers-by.

  Two carrier pigeons, both male, have crossed the night sky bearing a crucial message and are now flying in ovals as they try to orient themselves. They hate the dark. It is bewildering to see a pigeon silhouetted against the moon. A bat would better suit these sinister times. I think of the message I would send her if I could, imagine her unrolling it from the canister when the exhausted pigeon taps on her window: In trying to stay close beside you, I have put great distance – an entire war – between us. But now I am coming home. Keep this bird for my dinner if you can.

  The tomcat should have returned by now. He promised he would be back before daylight. Colette always says there is a sad and suffocating difference between a room where a feline presence has a moment ago been reigning and the same room empty, and I feel that in this trench: a cold absence where the tomcat should be. It is clear to me what has happened and what will happen, but I cannot bring myself to move. Not quite yet, not with my soldier’s feet beneath my belly. I will imagine movement instead, and perhaps these thoughts will take form and lead me towards the destiny that I sense is crouched waiting for me, not in the unreality of Paris but here in this trench.

  I will wake the tomcat’s adopted soldier from his slumber, and wait until he listens with enough concentration to hear the tom mewling from the mudlands in which he is trapped in wire. The soldier will crawl out to him without thinking of the dangers. The other soldiers will wait anxiously for his return, listening to the tomcat’s cries, sick at the thought of the helpless creature in pain. As the sun begins to shade the sky a pale lemon, the soldier will return, shuffling on his stomach with the blinking tomcat tucked under one arm, both of them so covered in mud they could be two bits of the same mythical beast.

  I will be waiting on the parapet, waiting for the tomcat, waiting for the sunlight, waiting for the moment a German sniper will mistake my glorious fur for a carelessly uncovered soldier’s head, take aim, and fire. My own soldier and his friend will bring my body into the trench and grieve above me, and when my vision blurs they will look just like Colette and Missy dressed up as men. I will hear Colette saying that she and I must be curious until our final living moments, we must be determined to observe everything around us, that ‘Look!’ must be our final word and thought, and I will know that I have made it back to our little apartment, the one she and Toby-Chien and I used to share on the rue de Villejust, and I will know that I am almost home.

  RED PETER’S LITTLE LADY

  Soul of Chimpanzee

  DIED 1917, GERMANY

  When I come home late at night from banquets, from scientific societies, or from social gatherings in someone’s home, a small half-trained female chimpanzee is waiting for me, and I take my pleasure with her the way apes do. During the day I don’t want to see her. For she has in her gaze the madness of a bewildered trained animal. I’m the only one who recognises that, and I cannot bear it.

  Franz Kafka, A REPORT TO AN ACADEMY

  Frau Evelyn Oberndorff

  Tierparkallee 55

  Hamburg

  June 13th, 1915

  My dear Evelyn

  I know you said not to write to you, not ever again. But time has passed, and a war has been started, and Herr Hagenbeck told me in no uncertain terms that I should write to Hazel care of you, that she has come a long way since your husband began working with her, and it would be appropriate now for me to be in closer touch with her. ‘She is being prepared to become your wife, in due course,’ Herr Hagenbeck said to me, in that manner he has of making one feel unaccountably guilty. He also gave me the distressing news that Herr Oberndorff has gone to the front. I am truly sorry to hear it. I am even more sorry that in his absence, Hazel’s training has fallen to you. It cannot be easy. And here I am making it worse, asking you to read this letter below aloud to her.

  Yours

  Red Peter

  Dear Hazel

  I chose this name for you at our first encounter at the zoological garden, many years ago, for the colour of your eyes in your wide, empty face. You may not remember me; my name, as you will come to know, is Red Peter – Red for my fur, Peter for my first trainer back in Prague.

  I shall send this letter directly to your new trainer, Frau Oberndorff, who has stepped in while her husband is away. She will be reading my letters aloud to you for now, though it sounds as if your progress with reading and writing is beyond expectations. I am pleased to hear from our benefactor, Herr Hagenbeck, that your comprehension and speaking skills are already quite remarkable.

  What to say, what else to tell you? My pipe is filled, a book of poetry lies at the foot of my armchair. I am looking out of my hotel window at the streets of Hamburg, watching dusk’s possibilities evaporate. My thoughts have snagged on old Peter, my namesake, the man who taught me to read. He is probably no longer alive. He was white-haired and kind, and took me along to see Halley’s Comet cross the sky, trapped in its oblong orbit, in 1910. We watched from the dome of the observatory, built above a bastion of Prague’s medieval Hunger Wall, with a small group of young literary dandies to whom I owe my sense of style.

  One was called Blei, another Kafka. The former took no notice of me. But Kafka, very thin, looked me directly in the eye. It was no moment of communion. He was envious of me, I think, of my small existence, and my ability to become almost invisible to humans at certain times. He lay down near me on the stone floor to watch the comet pass, which made me uncomfortable.

  I remember what he said to his companions that night as they left to walk home. ‘Had I not been lying on the ground among the animals, I would have been unable to see the sky and the stars. Perhaps I wouldn’t have survived the terror of standing upright.’

  The terror of st
anding upright, my dear, is something you will soon have to survive yourself. Do believe me that it is worth it. The view is much better from up here.

  Sincerely

  Red Peter

  Dear Red Peter

  I enclose Hazel’s reply to your recent letter. I have tried to use her own dictated words as much as possible. She is coming along quickly now, as Herr Hagenbeck has informed you, and I am particularly pleased with her wordplay. Forgive her occasional coarseness, if you can. She has made a big leap recently, allowing me to dress her in an evening dress and small shoes without too much protest. It was the bodice that gave her the most trouble. The frustration with her body that she expresses should be seen as a positive step, I believe, as it can only motivate her to give up her chimpanzee habits and fully embrace human ways – as you have, to such astounding effect.

  My husband is indeed at the front. It was his choice to go, I should tell you, though men may not have the luxury of choice for much longer, not even family men. The children miss him dreadfully.

  Evelyn Oberndorff

  Dear Red Peter

  What use is this body to anyone? Why can my nostrils not be small as pips? Why does hair grow on my back? Frau Oberndorff gives me exercises to do by the window in the laboratory. Calisthenics, she calls them, for a new body. I do what she says, for the ginger biscuits. They make my shit dark and hard.

  I saw women throwing boiled sweets and chocolate and fruit to the soldiers in the streets. My first taste of chocolate. I asked Frau Oberndorff why everybody is happy. The people are glad for a break in their routines, they are bored of life, she said. They think it is exhilarating to be at war. Exhilarating. A new word for me. New body, new word, new war. I ate too much chocolate and afterwards felt sick.

  Regards

  Hazel

  Dear Evelyn

  I thank you for your reply, and for Hazel’s dictated note. I see I was asking too much in addressing you with familiarity, but when I sit down to write to you it is impossible to hold back. These years banished from you have been terrible. To know that you are holding in your hands this piece of paper, that you are reading these words … I cannot pretend to be formal. Forgive me, Evelyn, for everything. Please give my love to the children. I miss them. I miss you.

  Yours

  Red Peter

  Dear Hazel

  How glad I am to hear that you have embraced our new, healthful German body culture. Let me tell you of my own regime, in case it may help you build your body into what you would like it to be.

  Do not eat too much chocolate, I warn you. It can only lead to unhappiness. Many years ago, I decided to follow a strict dietary regimen to maximise my health, after years of suffering from ailments (back pain, migraines, sleeplessness). A stay at the sanatorium in the Harz Mountains introduced me to Mueller’s body-building program, which Frau Oberndorff has wisely started you on, and to this day I do my exercises (as you do) before an open window. Lately, I have begun to feel the benefits of exercising nude outdoors, but this I do not yet counsel for yourself. One should only venture into nudism when one has learned to wear clothes.

  I follow the Fletcher program of chewing every bite of food more than ten times. I am thin now, thinner than most humans I know, and it pleases me to be this way, without the least bit of fat on my body. Try, if you can, to eat mindfully. It will help you to overcome your instincts to fill your stomach to bursting with whatever is at hand. Eat slowly, never crack bones with your teeth if you must eat meat, do not sip vinegar noisily.

  I refuse tea, coffee and alcohol. Contrary to what you might think, this discipline I impose on myself does not make me the slightest bit envious of other people’s pleasure in indulgences. The opposite, in fact. If I am sitting at a table with ten friends all drinking black coffee while I drink none, the sight of it gives me a feeling of happiness. Meat can be steaming around me, mugs of beer drained in huge draughts, those juicy sausages can be cut up all over the place – all this and worse gives me no sensation of distaste whatever; on the contrary, it does me a great deal of good. There is no question of my taking a malicious pleasure in it.

  Think of it like this. Have you been told the story of how Herr Hagenbeck decided to create a zoo without bars, so that visitors could gaze across the ditch separating them from the animals in their open-air panoramas? No bars to get in the way of a good wondrous stare, no cages to keep the animals from full expression of their wild selves.

  What you need to do now is put those bars back in place, so to speak, in your heart and stomach and mind. Hem yourself in again, deny yourself whatever you desire, until the pleasure comes from the denial itself, not the consummation of the desire. Only then will you be truly free, and closer to human. They – the humans, that is – seem to think that what sets them apart from other animals is their ability to love, grieve, feel guilt, think abstractly, et cetera. They are misguided. What sets them apart is their talent for masochism. Therein lies their power. To take pleasure in pain, to derive strength from deprivation, is to be human.

  Sincerely

  R.P.

  Dear Red Peter

  I hope this short dictated reply from Hazel finds you well. I understand from Herr Hagenbeck that you do not want to visit the zoo and meet with Hazel again until she is ready to be a companion worthy of you. Forgive my impertinence, but could you ask your gentlemen friends to refrain from visiting too? They come here – the ones who have not gone to war, for one reason or another – and knock on the laboratory door, making sly insinuations about Hazel being expertly prepared for your enjoyment, and they demand to see her. I remind them that she is to be your life’s companion, and ask them to show respect. But I would rather they didn’t visit and left us in peace until you are ready to debut her yourself.

  The children know that you are writing to Hazel. They asked why you aren’t writing to them, and I didn’t know what to say. I am having a hard enough time explaining where their father is.

  You are wrong about humans and masochism, by the way (do I imagine that your letters to Hazel are full of barbs for me?). Most of us derive no pleasure from pain; most of us persist in the belief that romantic love is the shimmering jewel in the crown of human evolution. Some among us suffer to think of your open window, the cool evening air floating through it, the warmth of your body beneath the covers.

  Evelyn

  Dear Red Peter

  The zoo, so noisy, my own thoughts held out. The birds in their enclosure squawk day and night. I am itchy. Itchy, itchy, itchy. Frau Oberndorff won’t let me scratch. She bathes me, combs my hair to make it lie down, cuts my toenails, cleans my tear ducts. She says my breath is a problem. It stinks. I like the stink. I breathe out and sniff it in. I cling to the lamp that hangs from the ceiling and swing on it, back and forth, back and forth. I scratch my bum, sniff my fingers.

  How did you become what you are? Why do you want me?

  Regards

  Hazel

  My dearest Evelyn

  Your letter lit a fire in my heart, a hopeful bright burn …

  I am sorry that my acquaintances (I would not call them friends) have been bothering you at the zoo.

  Do you still not believe me, darling? That Hazel was all Hagenbeck’s idea, that I was forced to go along with his plan as I have been forced to do everything he wanted of me for his cursed zoo? That if I had a choice, if you had a choice – you are somebody else’s wife, let us not forget – I would choose you, you and only you? I fell in love with you the first moment I saw you, before I was fully human, and from across that gulf of understanding and experience, somehow, miraculously, you felt something for me in return. You alone inspired me to become human, not your husband’s relentless mazes and sorting tasks and word repetitions, not his tantrums when I didn’t do what he wanted, not the whipping, not the sweet fruit he dangled just out of my reach. I wanted to be human so that I might reach out across that chasm and touch you, be touched by you. You made me a better human, and I would lik
e to think – dare I say it? – that I made you a better ape.

  Yours always

  R.P.

  Dear Hazel

  In your last letter you asked for my own tale of transformation, and so I offer it. Do not be discouraged. It is a long process, beset with difficulty, to become human.

  I have only dim memories of our natal home. Fragments. Perhaps you remember more. A thicket of wild blossoms that sprouted in the forest after the heaviest of night thunderstorms. The sensation of being gripped by a boa constrictor, the pressure comforting; almost giving in to death’s lullaby before I was rescued – by my mother? my sister? – from the tightening coil. I have a scar along my hipbone from the hunter’s dart, but I don’t remember being shot. On the ship, they hung bananas from the top of my cage as a game but I refused to eat them. Then Prague, being fitted for a red velvet waistcoat and matching hat for my first appearance at the theatre. Peter’s gentleness. The curtain opening on us sitting side by side on stage, reading beneath a spotlight, and suddenly the intimate moment being exposed for what it was: a performance for a raucous crowd.

  Herr Hagenbeck bought me from Peter on one of his visits to Prague. He could see what I might be capable of, in a way that Peter could not. Hagenbeck enlisted Oberndorff, the ethologist, to train me here in Hamburg. His colleagues ridiculed him, but he ignored them, for they had also laughed at his attempts to cross a leopard with a Bengal tiger at the turn of the century, until he sold the successful hybrid for an unfathomable sum to a Portuguese collector.

  I spent several years in the same laboratory at the zoological garden where you are now. Herr Oberndorff was very strict in his training regimes, brutal even, as you would already know. But Frau Oberndorff and the children made up for this in every possible way. I grew to love them deeply.