by Yoko Tawada
Time could not be compared with any sort of food: nibble at it as greedily as you liked, there was never any less of it. Knut felt powerless in the face of time. Time was a huge ice block made of loneliness. Knut gnawed and scratched at it, but without effect. When Christian complained of having no time, as he often did, Knut envied him.
Matthias loved to say hello to Knut “nose to nose,” while Knut disliked it. Every time, he found himself worrying about Matthias, whose human nose lacked moisture. If an animal had a nose as dry as Matthias’s it would probably be a sign of illness. Something had to be done for Matthias to keep him from dying young. Knut stuck his snout into Matthias’s beard, which, smelling of cooked eggs and ham, made him feel calm again. From his mouth came the scent of that same toothpaste that had to be squeezed from its tube before every brushing. Knut didn’t like this smell, he preferred the natural paste that came from Matthias’s eyes and didn’t hesitate to lick it up at every opportunity. Matthias would shout, “Cut it out!” and pull his face away, but there would be a happy note in his voice. His hair smelled of soap and cigarette smoke.
For a while, Matthias made his face available as an expedition territory, and squinted to observe the young explorer. “Do you know what never fails to surprise me? When I was first hired as a bear keeper, I began to read books about North Pole expeditions. I wanted to know more about bears. One explorer wrote that he once looked a polar bear in the eye and almost fainted. He couldn’t forget this moment of terror — not because of any concrete danger, but because of the emptiness he found in the bear’s eyes. They didn’t reflect anything at all. A human who thinks he can discern malice in a wolf’s eyes and devotion in the eyes of dogs discovers nothing at all in polar bear eyes, and this frightens him to death. You can’t find yourself in the mirror. As if the polar bear had declared that human beings don’t exist. Strangely, I felt the desire to experience this shocking gaze myself. But your eyes aren’t empty mirrors — you reflect human beings. I hope this doesn’t make you mortally unhappy.”
Matthias drew his eyebrows together and looked penetratingly into the depths of polar bear eyes. But Knut wanted to be a wrestler, not a mirror, and attacked this boring man who was trying to be a philosopher for a little while.
•
One day after the obligatory examination, Christian set Knut down on the floor and opened his right hand in front of the bear snout. Full of delight, Knut pounced on the hand, was rebuffed by it, but refused to be intimidated. After a bit of back-and-forth shoving, Christian set Knut back at the starting point and held his open right hand before him like a wall. Knut stared at it and pounced at precisely the moment when his inner voice said: Now!
“Just as I thought!”
“What do you mean?” Matthias asked, bewildered.
Christian answered with paternal pride: “Knut goes to the right one instant before I think I’ll move my hand to the right. In other words, Knut can read my thoughts faster than I can perceive them myself.”
“That’s nonsense!”
“No it’s not. Try it yourself.”
“Maybe later.”
“What a fantastic discovery! I read something about it in a natural sciences journal and wanted to try it out myself. Knut should become the captain of a soccer team, because he can read his opponent’s movements even before the opponent is conscious of his own intentions. His team will win every game.”
“Not so fast! Knut doesn’t like soccer. You can’t make him your fantasy soccer hero.”
“How do you know he doesn’t like soccer?”
“When there’s boxing or wrestling on TV, he watches attentively until it’s over, but not when they’re playing soccer.”
“And what about soap operas, your favorite programs?”
“Knut likes those shows.”
“Only because of your influence — everyone knows you’re Knut’s mother.”
“Why am I the mother and not a father?”
“Yes, that’s just what you are: his male mother. You’re a motherly man.”
Matthias occasionally sat in front of the mouse-gray television set he’d brought in one day. Knut kept him company when he saw no prospect of more interesting games. Soccer bored him because all he could see on the screen were black dots moving around like ants. He loved wrestling matches, and also dramas with a lot of close-ups of women’s faces. Although empathy meant nothing to him, sad faces were interesting to look at. Recently there was a scene in which a man said to a woman that he couldn’t come to see her anymore. He slammed the door and went out into the street, where a large number of cars were parked. The woman had long hair. She wept in a kitchen in which delicious bananas were lying in a shallow bowl. The man had supposedly betrayed the woman, he had another wife and biological children in another city. Matthias forgot to blink as he stared at the screen. Suddenly Knut felt like wailing. What would he do if Matthias one day said that he could no longer come to see him? What about his wife and biological children outside the zoo?
The milk was increasingly being supplemented with solid food, and it took Matthias ever longer to prepare Knut’s meals. “I don’t have time right now. Can you watch TV on your own and wait for me?” Matthias said to Knut, but it wasn’t possible to watch TV alone. Knut could feel the boxer’s fighting spirit or the sadness of the abandoned woman only through Matthias’s body. Without Matthias, the television set was just a dead box filled with tiny flickering particles of light. The box needed a human to animate it — and even then it would be far preferable if Matthias himself were to join Knut in a wrestling match. Any living creature, even the scrawniest little mouse or a nameless squirrel, would interest Knut more than the tube.
Every day now, Knut grew in both height and breadth. When he steadied himself against the wall and rose up on his hind legs, he could sometimes glimpse squirrels climbing the walnut tree outside the window. Birds and squirrels had almost weightless bodies and could effortlessly move in a vertical direction. Why was only Knut so plump and clumsy? He’d have loved to climb up the wall to see what everyone referred to as “outside.”
While Matthias was preparing the complicated bear meals, Knut would be seized by the desire to climb up the legs of the cook, preferably so far up that he could sniff the cook’s beard. But those human legs were so tall, and the beard was as high up as a squirrel in a tree. When the cooking time got to be too long, the waiting emptied out first Knut’s stomach, then his chest, and finally his skull. “It won’t be much longer now. You’ll have to be patient. I still want to add many more healthy ingredients.” Matthias pounded sesame seeds, squashed fresh oranges, boiled groats, mixed all of this with the contents of a can, added some walnut oil and stirred carefully.
Matthias once dropped the can, on which a cat was painted. Using his tongue as a rag, Knut wiped the floor clean in a flash. Ever since, he was of the opinion that Matthias should just serve him the contents of the can without mixing in so many other things. He couldn’t understand why it was necessary to grind, squeeze, chop, and stir all that health.
Knut knew that the inhabitants of the North Pole required fat above all else. Christian had explained this to the journalists several times. Knut lived in Berlin, so he didn’t need a layer of fat under his skin. There was a rumor going around that winter had arrived, but the heat wave refused to leave the city, and Knut couldn’t imagine it.
It wasn’t just about the fat: the fresh blood of a sea lion was apparently rich in vitamins. That’s what Christian said when he was asked to explain the plan for Knut’s nutrition. “The ideal thing would be sea lion meat, but of course that’s out of the question. We give Knut beef, and add vegetables, fruit, nuts, and grain.” A young journalist with glasses persevered: “There’s a rumor that Knut is being fed a luxury brand of cat food that costs one hundred dollars per can. Supposedly this brand is popular among millionaires in the States. Is that true?” Christian
laughed coldly and shot back: “How interesting! Do you have relatives in the U.S. who are millionaires? I’m hearing this rumor for the first time. It’s very — shall we say — creative, as is often the case with rumors. In Brandenburg there’s no doubt a rumor that Knut’s favorite food is Spreewald pickles.”
•
Matthias and Christian received an anonymous package in the mail. Inside the carefully packed box, they found two aprons, both of them printed with bears. Knut had to admit that they really were bears in the broadest sense, though to be sure bears of a peculiar sort. Their bodies were black except for their collars, which someone had forgotten to dye black. As soon as the two men tied these matching aprons around their waists, they began to be synchronized in their hip movements. On this day, it seemed, they took particular pleasure in preparing Knut’s supper together. They ground, grated, and stirred the ingredients as a duo. Knut covered his head with his short, fluffy arms, sighed, and waited for the food to finally be ready to serve.
Knut wished he could stuff himself on a bratwurst like Matthias sometimes brought in from outside when hunger caught him unprepared. Knut would covetously beg for a bite, but the stingy Homo sapiens would resolutely reply: “No, sausage is only for the proletariat. You can’t have any, crown prince.” But once, Knut latched onto the proletarian trouser legs and climbed onto the lap using his strength and claws. Matthias stretched out his hand in all directions to keep the sausage away from the crown-princely nose, but eventually he gave up and surrendered the entire sausage to His Majesty the Crown Prince. Knut devoured it in just a few bites.
•
Christian read off Knut’s weight from the scale and said, raising his voice a little: “The time for your stage debut will soon be here.” Somber shadows gathered in Matthias’s face. Christian went on encouragingly: “When the television shows how happy and sweet Knut looks running around outside, the viewers will start to think seriously about climate change. The ice floes at the North Pole can’t keep melting like this, otherwise in the next fifty years the world’s polar bear population will decrease by two-thirds.”
Christian was confused because Matthias showed no reaction to his speech, so he turned instead to Knut and said: “On the day of your debut, you must sit on the wool blanket. I’ll pull it behind me like a sled as I step proudly onto the stage. Can you wave regally with one hand like the Danish king?” Christian took Knut’s right paw hand and held it up. Knut gave Christian’s hand a gentle warning bite, but that only made him laugh. “Knut, you already have on elegant white gloves, but your manners are unseemly for a member of the royal house. For example, you aren’t allowed to bite the hand of an emissary.”
Knut didn’t know whether a “debut” was a new sort of food or a new toy. But he knew at once when the day arrived that this was the day of the debut Christian had spoken of. Already the morning was filled with commotion and gaiety. The humans stank of phoniness and worries. It was a hybrid atmosphere of a sort Knut had never before encountered.
To be sure, Matthias appeared at his usual time, dressed as always, but his breathing was irregular. Christian wore a white suit and had a beautician with him whose name was “Rosa.” Rosa looked at Knut and screeched in a sweet, shopworn voice: “Look how tiny! Like a stuffed animal!” Christian, annoyed, immediately set her straight: “Knut isn’t tiny anymore. When he was born, he weighed only 800 grams. He spent forty-four days in an incubator. Now he’s nice and big. Don’t let me hear you calling him small!”
“Oh, pardon me.” Rosa changed her tune at once: “What a big, strong bear!” She started to use moistened cotton to wipe the saliva from Knut’s face and the mucus from around his eyes. At first he couldn’t forget the insulting comparison to a stuffed animal, but his antipathy disappeared when he noticed the pleasant fragrance of Rosa’s rear end. Unfortunately, she’d smeared some chemical with a strange, sour odor under her arms. Knut withdrew his snout, sneezed, and hid behind Matthias. Christian kept his eyes on Knut the entire time, now and then giving him an affectionate smile.
Rosa brought her face close to Knut’s and tried to encourage him. “What Germany is really looking for is a star,” she whispered. Knut remembered a TV show in which the people split into two groups: the first group was responsible for singing, the second for judging. A judgment might be, for example, that one person needed to stop holding back, whereas another was entirely lacking in talent. Knut had watched the show with Matthias, happy not to be a candidate himself. His debut today, he hoped, would have nothing to do with this show. The thought made him nervous.
Thanks to Rosa’s presence, Christian’s smell today was rather pleasant, whereas Knut found the tang of Matthias’s fear sweat distressing. It occurred to Knut that Christian might like to mate with Rosa. But yesterday he’d said that slender women just looked scrawny and unerotic to him now that he was spending so much time with polar bears. Rosa was skinny — her wrist might break if a blackbird pecked at it. Was Christian really satisfied with this skin-and-bones woman?
“I hear your office is right next to the flamingos.” With this pink sentence, Rosa’s sweetened voice began a conversation with Christian. His own voice displayed naked delight as he replied: “I see you’re well informed! Yes, I’m the flamingos’ neighbor. Maybe that’s why I stand on one leg when I’m working. Would you like to come visit me sometime?”
Knut envied Christian his tongue, so lithe and skillful in its movements. For Knut, the tongue was still a foreign instrument. Once, he tried to drink water from a deep bowl and got a cramp in his tongue and almost suffocated. Christian immediately flipped his small bear body upside down and gently pounded his back — and his breath returned. It was possible to be killed by one’s own tongue.
Rosa was like a sparrow, unable to go even a minute without opening her beak. “Yang Yang was sick, and now she’s dead. Could this have something to do with the fact that you now have eyes only for Knut and neglected her?” Rosa’s voice was gooey.
“No.” Christian’s nostrils flared: “It’s impossible to imagine Yang Yang suffering from lovesickness, much less dying of it. And if I may speak of my own inclinations, rest assured that I will only fall in love with a Homo sapiens, never with a she-bear.” Christian delivered this statement with mock pride and a charming wink. What was the point of this exchange? And who was Yang Yang?
Matthias picked up Knut and asked in a whisper: “Have you practiced your songs? How’s your dance number coming? The time for your debut has arrived.” This gave Knut a shock. Songs? Dance? He hadn’t prepared a thing. How stupid he was! Every time he’d heard “Miller’s Dance,” his hips had wanted to start dancing, but he always went right to bed rather than putting his predilections to use. When he heard all the lively twittering from outside, he always wished he could sing just like these winged creatures. But he never tried, fearing the birds’ derision. When he kept silent, he felt safer and more valuable. Why should he try to wrench his voice into daredevil heights only to make a fool of himself? He was defiant, arrogant, lazy — and all because of fear. He felt ashamed. The day of his debut, he now realized, had arrived without his having learned to do anything but greedily devour his food and sleep like a log. Now he would have to go onstage utterly unprepared. “You can’t do anything! This is giving me a headache. When I was your age . . .” This was a sermon someone had addressed to Knut in a dream. When was that? The words came, but he couldn’t listen — he was beside himself at the sight of the gigantic Snow Queen standing before him. She was ancient — so old that her age transcended years. Her body was ten times as tall as Matthias. Behind her stretched endless snowfields. Her snowy coat blinded him, he couldn’t follow her sermon. When the old queen was about to leave, Knut recovered his faculties and said in a panic: “What’s your name? I mean, what kind of animal are you?”
His questions horrified the Snow Queen: “You really don’t know anything at all. No knowledge, no ability, no art.
You can’t even ride a bicycle. All you have to recommend you is your cuteness. Why are you always sitting in front of the boob tube?” This flood of words poured out of her, apparently against her will, since she’d been on the point of leaving. Knut was shocked to hear such critical remarks — Matthias and Christian had never reproached him for anything.
“Why should I ride a bicycle? What art do you mean?”
The old queen answered calmly: “By ‘art,’ I meant something that enlivens your audience.”
“But people will be happy just looking at me. I don’t have to put on a show for them.”
“You are truly hopeless. I can’t believe you’re my progeny. Maybe you’re popular at the moment, given that you’re a healthy young tyke who happens to be cute. If I were you, I’d hide myself away in a cave — not to hibernate but out of shame. You have famous ancestors, you’re waited on hand and foot, you live without cares — sure, if you were a human, they’d be grooming you to run a company or even lead a country. But in the polar bear world, we have other values.”
Remembering this dream, Knut became even more nervous. He could no longer get around the fact that this debut marked his first appearance as an artist, and he was artless. He was learning what remorse feels like. Why had Matthias never taught him to dance or sing? Knut had a suspicion that the guitarist had practiced on his own so as to win all the applause for himself today, and there he’d be, the little bear standing beside the celebrated guitarist, artlessly sucking his thumb. No, Matthias couldn’t possibly be so underhanded, but why hadn’t he ever taught Knut to do anything?