by Yoko Tawada
Knut went home, feeling extremely hungry. He stuck his snout deep in his bowl and ate too quickly, choking on his food. “Chew first and then swallow,” Matthias helpfully advised, but this mushy breakfast contained nothing that could actually be chewed. The humans wanted the little bear to eat only food that was easily digestible, to help him grow as fast as possible. Most bears — not just polar bears — are relatively small at birth. Christian said it was beneficial for the newborns not to weigh too much, since the mother animal gave birth while hibernating. But large, deep-seated worries about the tiny infant still filled Christian’s head. At every opportunity he emphasized how much weight Knut was putting on. Meanwhile the journalists with their questions often touched his sore spot: “Childhood mortality is said to be particularly high among polar bears, especially for a cub separated from its mother. Is it correct to say that Knut’s case is still quite risky?” Knut sighed in relief when he heard Christian’s nonchalant response: “No, he’s out of danger.”
“Regardless of the risk factors? He’s truly out of danger?”
“Absolutely.”
“One hundred percent?”
A few of the journalists secretly seemed to be hoping Knut would die.
“Knut is not one hundred percent safe. You or I could die tomorrow too,” Christian answered irritably.
The director had once sighed as he said to Christian: “It’s a miracle Knut is still alive.” Knut felt as if someone had just whacked him on the head. A miracle he hadn’t died yet?
Christian had just nodded slightly in response: “But an astonishing number of polar bears are raised by humans. I looked it up. In the last twenty-five years, there have been seventy such cases in Germany alone.”
The director cleared his throat. “But it’s not a good idea to tell the journalists things like that. Even if Knut isn’t unique, he’s still one of a kind, because he’s been attracting so much attention. Just like Jesus. Lots of people were resurrected, but Jesus is the only one who is famous. That’s what makes him one of a kind. Knut was born beneath a very special star. It’s his responsibility to bear all our hopes upon his shoulders.” The director’s casual comment had led to this whole pathos-laden speech.
Matthias beamed with pleasure when he was allowed to take Knut out for a “pre-opening-time walk.” Opening time meant the opening of the main gate, which neither he himself nor Christian nor the director nor Knut ever used. The main gate was for humans who bought admission tickets. Sparrows, rats, ravens, and cats paid no attention to opening hours and visited the zoo whenever they liked without paying a fee.
The hordes of visitors who wanted to see Knut formed an infinitely long line. After opening, the line became a river flowing toward the enclosure where Knut played every day. Matthias called these games their “show,” pronouncing the word with irony. The journalists, on the other hand, called it “recreation.” Once, Christian said to Matthias: “This recreation is really forced labor, and in the evening, the workers are locked back up in their cells. The term ‘show’ is actually more appropriate.”
For Knut, the show was fun, but he soon became aware that it wasn’t teaching him anything new, whereas his morning walks were highly instructive. The zoo offered almost more educational material than he could process. He walked past many of the enclosures without speaking to their occupants. He hadn’t once spoken, for example, with the elephants or giraffes. These were enormous figures swaying in the distance like fata morganas. The tiger in his nicely manicured green garden was unapproachable, mechanically pacing from one corner to the other without a pause, whereas the black seal gleamed so attractively that Knut almost pounced on him. Matthias held him back at the last moment. After that, Matthias stopped taking him to see the seal. There were also animals that differed only slightly from Homo sapiens.
•
Taking a walk in the early-morning hours soon became an indispensible part of Knut’s routine. The director asked Matthias and Christian if it would be all right for a journalist to accompany Knut on his morning walk. “Knut is a major presence in the press. I have you two to thank for that. I even found a website devoted exclusively to Knut reports. If we don’t keep feeding them news items, they’ll stop talking about him. That’s why I thought that maybe we could offer them something new every week: next week the morning walk, the week after swimming lessons, and so forth.” Matthias swallowed hard while Christian took a step forward and said: “It’s still too soon. Let’s ask the press to be patient. It would be awful if Knut were to be frightened by a camera on his morning walk and leap into the black bears’ enclosure. Besides, what would we do if his fans found out about his walks and started trying to sneak into the zoo early in the morning? We’ve known ever since John Lennon’s death that there is nothing more dangerous than fanatical fans.” The director made a fanning gesture with his left hand in front of his nose and left the room.
•
Every morning on his walk, Knut made the acquaintance of new species. One fellow was nonchalantly sitting high up on a branch in a tight-fitting shirt that made him look sexy. “Have a chat with the Malayan sun bear!” Knut took this suggestion, since the sun bear looked neither arrogant nor mean. “It seems we’re going to have another hot day. It’s already so warm at this hour.”
The sun bear responded offhandedly to Knut’s cautious icebreaker: “It’s not warm at all. I find it chilly.”
“You aren’t dressed warmly enough. Just look at Knut. He’s wearing a nice sweater.”
When the sun bear heard these words, innumerable laugh lines appeared on his face. “You call yourself Knut? A bear speaking in the third person? I haven’t heard anything that hilarious in a long time. Are you still a baby?”
In the brief fit of rage that followed, Knut vowed to avoid all contact with sun bears in the future. Knut was Knut. Why shouldn’t Knut say “Knut”? But he found it impossible to get the sun bear’s remark out of his head. Listening carefully to the conversations between Matthias and Christian, it was immediately clear that Matthias never referred to himself as Matthias. He didn’t use his own name — as if his name had nothing to do with him — and left its use up to the other humans. What a strange phenomenon! And what did Matthias call himself? “I.” What was even stranger was that Christian too referred to himself as “I.” Why didn’t they get confused if they all kept using the same name?
The next morning, “I” went back to the sun bear’s enclosure, but unfortunately he wasn’t there. Maybe he was still asleep in his cave. I discovered the moon bear in an enclosure nearby. Clearing my throat, I spoke the word “I” for the first time: “I am Knut, in case you don’t know.” The moon bear stared at me, narrowed her little eyes until they were even littler, and murmured: “Kawaii.”
This was a word I’d heard many times before, but only ever on the lips of skinny, immature girls. “What language does that word come from?”
“From the language in Sasebo, where my grandmother was born. The word has spread like the plague recently. You can often hear international visitors saying it here in the zoo.”
“I know. And what does it mean exactly?”
“That someone looks so cute that I’d like to put my arms around him and eat him right up.”
I didn’t want to wind up on her menu, so I withdrew without saying goodbye. Matthias, who hadn’t understood our conversation, lobbed a question at my back: “What’s wrong? What’s the hurry? Don’t you think someone ought to send the moon bear’s grimy moon to the cleaners? But first I should pop you in the washing machine. Why do you keep rolling around on the sandy ground? Do you think you need to camouflage yourself? Berlin’s winter is gray, so you want to be gray too. Winter at the North Pole is probably as white as snow and incredibly beautiful.”
But what did it mean that the moon bear would want to devour something she found cute? Was this the custom in her hometown? I’d never considered a
ny sort of food to be kawaii. Admittedly I’d always found Matthias sweet. But I’d never want to eat him. I tried in vain to find some connection between the lovableness of a creature and the desire to eat it.
My education as a walker was continuing apace, but this schooling left deep wounds. Speaking of oneself in the third person meant one was a baby: with this statement, the sun bear had wounded my pride. Since I was cute, I’d get eaten up: the moon bear had turned me into a fraidy-cat. Once I started using the word “I,” the words spoken by others struck me like stones. I would flop down on the bed, exhausted and wrung-out, thinking how nice it would be if I could spend my time only with Matthias. Alone with him: that must be just as nice as being all alone, or even better, since I could then take this new burden called “I” from my shoulders and relax as Knut. But after a restful sleep I was once more curious about the outside world.
One day a photographer accompanied us on our walk. He didn’t bother me. Christian insisted that no more than one be allowed, because a large number of journalists might constitute a mortal danger for me. The video of my walk was broadcast that same night on the evening news, and I too saw myself on TV. Christian said to Matthias: “How can you act so natural the whole time when you know you’re being filmed? Hordes of nervous wrecks are sitting on their sofas worrying about — or at least eagerly waiting to see — whether Knut will survive. And you just go out for a stroll with him as calmly as you please, as if he were some mongrel you’d found on the street.”
“I wish Knut really were a street dog. Especially a mixed-breed dog.”
“You shouldn’t underestimate the power of a star. A star can influence society, maybe even more than a politician. I dream that one day Knut will be like Joan of Arc, holding a huge save the earth banner in his hand and leading a massive demonstration.”
Our morning walk was comparable to an academic education, while the show was like a day job. To make our task easier, I tried to determine under what circumstances and on what occasions human joy was produced and what made it vanish again. The more I thought about it, the more complicated it seemed to me. When I did something on purpose, the audience didn’t like it. I couldn’t plan anything in advance. The audience got bored when I repeated myself too often, but also was soon overwhelmed when too many ingenious new ideas came in rapid succession. Then the viewers would stop laughing and retreat into their own narrow minds. I staged their excitement like ocean waves. When I heard their enthusiasm increasing, I would briefly cut back on my offerings. When the reaction was too muted, I would turn toward my audience once more.
I dubbed the street where the brown bear, the moon bear, the sun bear, and the sloth bear lived with their families Bear Street. I was gradually coming to understand why Matthias considered all these completely different animals members of the “bear group.”
Most of the bears slept at night in a bedroom you couldn’t see from outside, and in the morning they would step out onto a terrace made of a stone slab augmented with a swimming pool.
Only the panda bears lived on another street, although they too were members of the bear family. They lived not in an open pen but in an enormous cage. They didn’t have a terrace either, though they did have a bamboo garden right next door. Matthias said to me: “Christian took really excellent care of Yang Yang. When she died, he was devastated — for months he was in mourning. Then you came along and got him back on his feet again.” I tried to imagine what it must feel like to lose a protégé, to be deeply saddened, and then to get back on one’s four or two legs with the help of a new protégé. My train of thought was interrupted when a panda bear who until then had been nibbling on rustling leaves looked me up and down and dryly remarked: “You’re pretty cute. But don’t let your guard down! It’s the animals who look the cutest that are dying out.” Horrified, I asked what he meant by this. “You look adorable. So do I. Since we’re in danger of becoming extinct, we have no choice but to activate the Homo sapiens’ protective instincts. To this end, Nature is doing its best to deform our faces in such a way as to make them ever more pleasing to human tastes. Just look at the rats. They couldn’t care less whether or not human beings find them cute. Their species is in no danger whatsoever of dying out.”
I was tense before each of these walks, not knowing what new insight would appall me this time. Matthias, on the other hand, appeared relaxed before and during the walks, nonchalantly letting his shoulders and back be borne along by his strong calves. But as the hour of our show approached, he would become distracted, and if I jumped on his back shortly beforehand, his shoulder blades were as hard as a cliff face. As for me, I felt no anxiety before the show, I felt confident it would be successful. Matthias believed that we shouldn’t allow ourselves even a moment’s pause — he would challenge me again and again, but I could tell he didn’t really feel like playing. When we were wrestling, it didn’t bother me so much, since I could feel him in the warmth of his hands, but the ball game became problematic. I couldn’t manage to take an interest in all the balls he tossed to me, and there was one ball I didn’t even want to touch. It was the color of a gold coin and stank of rubber boots. Three words were written on it: Globalization, Innovation, Communication. When I appeared distrustful and ignored this ball, Matthias became nervous. I sensed that this ball was a gift from an important sponsor, so I pounced on the ball, but couldn’t bring myself to embrace it. I was trying to be cooperative, but simulating love for a ball was too difficult for me. So I threw it away from me as hard as I could. The ball flew high up into the sky, and the audience cheered.
The next ball Matthias threw me was a small, unostentatious red one. I pressed it to my heart, lay down on my back and gave it a few gentle kicks. With bated breath, the audience waited to see what would happen next. The spectating heart beat ever faster, the anticipation grew by the second, but I didn’t know how to fulfill the audience’s desires. I remained lying there on the ground with the ball obediently resting on my belly. “How much longer are you on break for? Are you ever going to shoot a goal?” This heckler from the crowd made all the spectators laugh, filling my ears with a dull roar.
I knew I had to offer something new to keep the show going. But since I couldn’t think of anything, I kept kicking away at the ball I was holding on my belly. For a second, my attention wandered and I kicked too hard. At once the ball was launched from my arms, it rolled down the rocky slope and fell into the water of the swimming pool. Delighted, the humans burst into deafening laughter. Sometimes it’s quite easy to make even a full-grown Homo sapiens happy, since he is childish by nature.
The unexpected is always the most interesting: this is a lesson I learned all over again that day. It hadn’t even occurred to me that the ball might fall in the water, and that was a good thing. A little girl cried out in a pleading voice: “Knut, please go in the water! Get the ball for me!” But I didn’t want to go in, since I hadn’t yet had any swimming lessons.
•
In a dream, the beautiful aged queen appeared to me once more, wearing a gleaming white fur coat. She praised me: “You weren’t half bad. I underestimated you.” I hadn’t seen her in quite some time and noticed that I’d grown taller by a head. “You discover how the stage you perform on should appear without anyone teaching you. You perform nothing out of the ordinary, instead you try to show how interesting an ordinary child’s game is. Perhaps this is a new art I knew nothing of.”
“Who are you? Are you my grandmother?”
“I’m not only your grandmother, I’m also your great-grandmother and your great-great-grandmother. I am the superimposition of numerous ancestors. From the front you see only a single figure, but behind me is an infinitely long line of ancestors. I am not one, I am many.”
“Are you my mother too?”
“No, I only represent the dead. Your mother, after all, is still alive. Why don’t you go visit her?”
•
For
Matthias, the end of the show always meant the beginning of relaxation. Back in the room, he made coffee and flipped through a tabloid. For a long time I believed that newspaper pages existed only to be crumpled, crinkled, and torn up. In other words, to be a toy. But now that Matthias read me an article every morning, the conviction that newspapers were there to be read was becoming ever firmer in me.
There were strange stories in the newspaper, for example: A zoo supposedly sold the meat of dead kangaroos and crocodiles to fancy restaurants to get through the financial crisis. The meat was advertised as a delicacy and eaten by customers who wished to partake of something unusual. A cold shiver ran down my spine as I recalled the words addressed to me by the moon bear, who’d said that an animal could be so adorable that everyone would want to devour him. Matthias groaned and said: “I feel sorry for them.” I thought he was feeling sorry for the kangaroos being roasted as steaks, but no, Matthias added: “Other zoos are suffering from a lack of funding too.” It became my habit to study the printed letters while Matthias was reading me the articles. The first letter I learned to recognize was O, which appeared twice in the word “Zoo.” After a while, I was no longer illiterate.
•
Every day letters and packages reached us from outside. Matthias tore open the envelopes in a fury, read the fan letters, and fed them to the new extra-large wastepaper basket. We also received packages of various shapes and sizes. “Knut, this is a present for you from a fan: chocolate, which is bad for your health. I’m going to donate it to a charity organization. Any objections?” Matthias never let me taste chocolate.