Memoirs of a Polar Bear

by Yoko Tawada

  “Certainly. The sentence is printed in big letters in the middle of the poster, but you don’t really notice it — the color blends in with the background. The gaze of the typical viewer will first be drawn to the name in smaller letters: Circus Busch. It’s more a logo than a word. As images, logos call forth an immediate emotional response. Like the Coca-Cola logo. Then the viewer’s gaze will continue on to the golden lion and the erotic woman in the swimsuit. It’s all a matter of design. We can manipulate vision. In our country, there’s still been almost no research done on consumer psychology. I’m positive the official inspectors won’t be able to see through our strategy. Seeing our poster, a person will succumb to its sensory appeal and come to the performance, but no one will accuse us of using decadent methods to make money.”

  “But to be honest, the woman looks like a striptease dancer.”

  “If the officials say the woman looks too decadent, just tell them she’s wearing one of the official Olympic swimsuits. Training wild animals is a sport, and the trainer’s arms and legs must have complete freedom of motion, otherwise the body of the working class is in danger.”

  “Who counts as working class?”

  “Everyone who works in the circus is working class. That’s only logical.”

  The circus director, a man who usually never missed a chance to display his power, was quite deferential toward Jan. Only later did I learn the reason for this.

  Several days later, gentlemen with severe expressions paid us a visit. They restlessly wiped perspiration from their foreheads. I went on grooming the horses, assuming this visit had nothing to do with me. But the circus director led the men over and addressed me in a supercilious, deep register as if he were lifting a rabbit up by the scruff to display it to a would-be buyer. The men circled me, surveying my body from chest to thighs. The director said with a self-satisfied air: “This is the woman I mentioned. At the moment she’s dressed simply because she’s tending to the animals, but as you see, she’s obviously a great beauty as well as athletic. Now we’ll put on her stage costume and present her to you. Might I ask you for a bit of patience? Why don’t you enjoy a beverage over there while we wait?” Jan repeated the expression “a beverage,” his skilled clown hands miming the knocking back of a glass of vodka. For the first time, the men laughed, while Jan’s eyes remained cold.

  Somewhat later, I finally learned what had led up to this farce: the censors had deemed our poster suspicious after all and were torturing the director with unexpected questions. One of these questions was: “Who is this fictional decadent woman pictured on the poster? The wild-animal trainer is a scrawny man with gray hair, isn’t he?” The director was stumped, but Jan stuck out his rescuing tongue quickly: “Now we’re going to have to reveal something to you — and of course we’re glad to — but please treat this information confidentially: in our troupe we have a talented young woman who is going to crown our next season with her surprise debut as a wild-animal trainer. At the moment she’s still officially employed as an animal keeper, becoming better acquainted with our animals’ particular characteristics — but if all goes well, next season will find her onstage. And so, to account for this eventuality, we have included her likeness in one corner of the poster. Of course, it’s impossible to tell in advance how things will go in rehearsal. One never has beasts like this under control one hundred percent.” Jan saved the day with such a high-caliber lie that reality could only submit to it. I can’t believe he thought of it just like that, on the spot. The officials visited the circus with the assignment of verifying with their own eyes the existence of this talented young woman.

  Jan led me into the changing-room trailer, undressed me, clothed me in a pink costume belonging to the director’s former mistress, and piled up my hair so that it rose like an onion dome atop my head. Then he added fake eyelashes that fluttered like butterflies, smeared my lips pink and greasy with a salmon-tinted hue, and led me into the room where the officials, their mood much improved by the vodka, were waiting. They immediately accepted me as the promising egg about to hatch into stardom and showered me with generous applause.

  At some point the officials left the circus grounds. I wanted to return to the trailer and take off my costume, but my colleagues stopped me. “Not so fast. It’s exciting to see you like this — it’s as if we’d hired a new girl!”

  “In all honesty, I’ve often wondered what you would look like in costume.”

  I was floored. A compliment from woman to woman!

  “You’re the ugly duckling who turns out to be a beautiful swan.”

  “What a rotten thing to say. It’s not true at all that she was ugly before.”

  “But somehow you never noticed her, right?”

  Some of them nodded to me, and others sighed and energetically spewed words I struggled to interpret, unsure whether they meant to praise me or insult me out of envy. Jan suggested to the director that they give me a five-minute act, since a lie is the best mother of truth. In the presence of his colleagues, Jan addressed the director with polite reserve. Now the director had to ask the master animal trainer whether he could imagine taking me under his wing. (The director was no match for this master trainer, his respect for him was too great.) The master’s stern face showed no expression as he replied: “She’s a beginner, so I recommend that we start with a donkey.” It sounded like a grandfather ordaining his grandchild’s choice of profession: with authority, but also with love. His astonished colleagues gaped first at him and then at me. The master had never before allowed anyone to appear onstage with his animals.

  Thanks to Jan, the poster was approved and quickly sent off to the printer. One week later, plainclothes policemen arrived to observe our rehearsals. I took up my position beside the master and pretended to be diligently rehearsing. The policemen didn’t even look at me. Instead they asked to speak with Jan, and when he appeared, they grabbed his arms and took him away.

  I slept restlessly, not just that night but also the ones that followed. Once, finding myself unable to remain lying there in the muggy, stale air of the trailer, I went out in the dark and heard a woman sobbing. I followed the sound and found a red-haired woman crouching in tears beneath an illuminated window. She’d once been rumored to be Jan’s secret lover.

  “Are you worried because Jan hasn’t come back yet?” My question was cautiously tentative, but she furrowed the skin above her nose and answered:

  “Why don’t you just say clearly that he was arrested. I know everything. I even know who betrayed him.”

  “The circus director?”

  “Never. Who would send his own son to prison?”

  “What? Jan is the director’s son?”

  “Of course. You didn’t know?”

  My husband interrupted me and said: “What sort of act was the donkey number? Your story is interesting, but it’s much too long.”

  “Let me tell it the way I want to. It’s good practice for when I write a book someday. You have to present concrete details.”

  “You’re planning to write a book? Not an autobiography, by any chance?”

  “No, I want to tell a certain person’s life story. I’m practicing on my own life story. Listen, now comes the chapter about the rehearsal with the donkey. You’ll have to pay attention.”

  •

  “We have to start rehearsing. There isn’t much time left before the premiere. You and this donkey are going to have to fill the gap left behind by Jan’s disappearance.” My master’s full-bodied voice came back to me. My donkey apprenticeship began, but my lessons weren’t given by the master himself, but by Professor Beserl, who would come to the circus with his donkey. His academic title was by no means a nickname. He had once taught in Leipzig, at the university, and was well respected in the field of behavioral science. After his retirement, he debuted a donkey act in a circus and became famous overnight. A few years later, though, he
developed knee problems and was forced to stop several times in the course of any performance to sit down and speak gently to his knees, caressing them. The doctor, who’d no doubt been bribed by the circus manager, gave the old donkey professor false hopes, praising his endurance, and the donkey act kept being performed. But one day, after a last loud creak, the professor’s knees definitively gave up the ghost. Everyone in the audience heard it. Ever since, the professor had lived the life of a recluse in a small, dilapidated cottage, living modestly but happily with his donkey. When he received the circus director’s query, he was overjoyed, gladly taking upon himself the long trip to the circus so as to pass on the secrets of donkey artistry to the next generation.

  On our first rehearsal day, he said to me: “You must love only vegetarian animals. If you have an affair with a carnivore, your fate will run amok. Take a good look at him! Isn’t he sweet? A donkey is no daredevil, nor is he a coward. In other words, he is perfectly suited to acrobatics.” The professor’s donkey was named Platero.

  Putting great faith in their eyes, human beings, when they first meet a new individual, quickly take in the person’s figure, clothing, and face. Donkeys, on the other hand, place a great deal of importance on the tastes a person has to offer. The professor said that I should start by impressing the donkey with carrots. The next time he saw me, he would immediately think of carrots. I held a carrot before Platero’s muzzle. He nibbled on it, making an appetizing sound that sounded like “carro, carro.” Then he pulled back his upper lip, displaying his proud teeth. He looked as though he were soundlessly laughing. It was impossible to tell by that laugh whether he was happy or making fun of someone. “Doesn’t he have a splendid laugh? He laughs to remove the traces of food from his teeth. You can give him something sticky to eat and then talk to him just before he’s finished chewing. For example, like this.” The professor gave Platero a carrot smeared with a sticky substance and asked him: “You wouldn’t be making fun of me, would you?” Platero moved his mouth as though he were grinning, at precisely the right moment. “You can combine little scenes like this to create an act.”

  “I didn’t know you used tricks like that!”

  “To manipulate the people, politicians use their own carrots and sticks. We’re just using our brains to animate animals.” The professor pulled back his upper lip just like his donkey and laughed.

  “You can’t make art just by working hard. You have to achieve something effortlessly and naturally. When your art looks like magic to your audience — not like back-breaking work — then it’s exactly right.” It seemed to me that at just that moment, I saw Platero nodding in approval, but it was just the sunlight playing a trick on me.

  Beneath his long lashes, Platero’s eyes had such a gentle gleam that I found them almost uncanny. Do vegetarians never fly into a rage? Do they never tear at each other in fury? Does the character of a human being change if he becomes a vegetarian?

  The premiere was just around the corner, so we took advantage of every possible shortcut. We worked constantly, our eyes fixed on the future, laboring without respite. Platero had already mastered his skills; I was the one who still had many new things to learn. I tried to slip into the professor’s role. A long road lay before me.

  Large cards with numbers written on them were arranged in a row. I asked Platero what two times two was. He went over to the card with the number four written on it. This card had been smeared with carrot juice, and the others not. The trick was perfectly simple, but it still wasn’t easy to get the donkey to walk up to the same card every single time. “It can happen that the donkey chooses a different card, even though he knows perfectly well which one smells of carrots. Human beings sometimes behave like this too: doing something on purpose, even though it means giving up a reward. So it’s possible even when you’ve rehearsed enough for things to go wrong. Let’s say the trick fails to work one time out of ten. So the question is: How can you prevent this ill-fated occurrence while you and the donkey are onstage? Do you know how?” I shook my head until my hair stroked my cheeks.

  “You have to achieve a certain mental state in which failure is no longer possible. You are as relaxed as if napping beside a lake in the springtime, but your head is clear as glass. You are free of worries, but still attentive. Your entire body functions as a sensor, registering everything that takes place around you, but this places no burden on you at all. You respond automatically to everything because you are part of everything that occurs. You act without intention, but always correctly. Onstage, you must find a way to enter this state. Then you will never fail.”

  The donkey went over to Card Four every time I gave him the multiplication task “two times two.” When I saw the circus director walking over, I thought this would be a good opportunity to show off my skill. Lovingly I stroked Platero’s ear and asked him what two times two was. Platero did not move from the spot. The professor sat, his face expressionless, on a wooden crate in a corner of the rehearsal room, unwilling to help. I repeated the question, stroking the donkey’s ear once again, but Platero refused to budge. The director sighed in disappointment and left us. I wanted to burst into tears. Somewhat later, the professor casually remarked: “You stroked Platero’s ear that time. You’d never done that before. He wanted you to keep stroking him, that’s why he didn’t move. He picked you over the carrot.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me right away?”

  “Is that my duty? I’m here for my own entertainment. I enjoy watching young people suffer.”

  “That’s so mean!”

  “Onstage, you can’t just stroke the animals when you feel like it. In the circus, even the tiniest gesture counts as a signal — you can’t just sneeze onstage, or blow your nose.”

  I didn’t have time to go on feeling distraught — or to celebrate every little insight either. First of all, I had to teach the donkey to answer the audience’s math problems by going over to the appropriate card and stopping in front of it. It was this donkey’s habit to stop short whenever he saw someone standing right in front of him. And when I stood behind him to the left, he would take a step diagonally to the left. When I stood behind him to the right, he would go to the right. It was my task to use these rules to bring the act to its finale.

  The donkey would shake his head when I touched his ear. He nodded when I touched his chest. We practiced answering a question with Yes or No. We rehearsed from morning till night, and when I was desperate for a break and went out for a breath of air, all the people I saw had donkey faces. I saw a man scratching behind one ear and immediately wanted to lend a hand, but then remembered that you can’t just touch other people like that.

  The professor usually went home as soon as rehearsal was over, but one evening he stayed late to talk with me. “Platero is old, and so am I. We have to take into account that we may not exist much longer.” His voice sounded cheerful even though he apparently intended to talk to me about the time after his death. “What if you have to start over with a new donkey after we’re both dead? I am going to initiate you into the final secret. Until now I have never shared it with anyone. This is like making you an heiress to a large fortune. You were at a great disadvantage when you came to the circus, because your parents were not circus people. You must have noticed that, didn’t you?” I remained obstinate, refusing to nod. “Fine. You don’t want to admit you’re disadvantaged. You have a strong will. You’ll succeed.”

  •

  My debut with the donkey took place shortly after my twenty-sixth birthday. It was an incandescent success, even though it was just a brief, unremarkable number featuring an unprepossessing animal.

  •

  “Arithmetic! Should we try it with Tosca? Maybe she has a talent for math.” Inspired by my donkey tale, Markus decided to paint numbers on large cards. Since we didn’t have any cardboard, he used veneer panels that he’d taken from the basement of an abandoned building without permission. T
here were cards with the numbers one through seven, and only one of them had been smeared with honey. Tosca immediately went over to the sweetened number and started licking it. “Tosca keeps sniffing at the card and licking it. I’d be surprised if no one in the audience saw through our trick. Besides, there’s something not terribly convincing about the idea that a bear can add and subtract. Why are we so quick to believe that a donkey can?”

  “Probably because there are donkeys in children’s books who can read and write. Do you remember the donkey in The Merry Pranks of Till Eulenspiegel? Wasn’t there that trick with the donkey reading aloud?”

  “That’s right. On the other hand, everyone thinks donkeys aren’t particularly clever. So the contrast is humorous. We ought to be staging the opposite of some cliché.”

  “What’s a polar bear cliché?”

  “Polar bears are always sitting on ice floes.”

  “What’s the opposite of ice?”

  “Fire.”

  Making big cats jump through flaming rings was an obligatory offering of every circus. My husband and I knew we wouldn’t be able to avoid it forever but it would be too banal to just send Tosca through the flames. We needed at least some sort of backstory, we could for example turn the fairy tale “Snow White” into a musical and have Tosca leap over the flames in the heroine’s role. In my opinion, though, we didn’t need any additional infernos at the circus — we were so deep in the red that the ledger-books’ numbers were fiery enough. But Pankov instructed his secretary to retrieve the large fire ring from the warehouse without consulting us. The next morning, all the equipment was gleaming, freshly polished, in the rehearsal space. I pretended not to see it and practiced with Tosca how to walk side by side and stand facing each other.