by Yoko Tawada
One day Matthias came into the room carrying a large box. “Knut, you know what this is?” The package looked like a gigantic cube of chocolate, but what he pulled out of the box looked more like our television set.
“You have to type in your name and click here. Do you see? These are all photographs of you. You can see yourself on the Internet.” Matthias went on tapping at the keys, and I saw something white lying on the stone slab. “Do you recognize yourself? That’s you! How adorable!” Matthias stared at the other Knut like a man in love, apparently forgetting that the real Knut was sitting right next to him. If the picture is Knut, I’m not Knut anymore.
Christian came into the room, bearing traces of exhaustion around his eyes. “Well, here’s something I never would have expected from you. A computer on bear turf!”
Matthias frowned. “The press department asked me to answer as much fan mail as I possibly can. The fans are different than before. Their infatuations are no longer enough for them. Now they want to be noticed. Some fans would even kill their idol if he ignores them. Every day we get more than one hundred fan letters. It’s impossible to answer all of them, but I have to respond to as many as I can. Here’s an example for you,” Matthias said and read out a few of the letters lying before him.
“Dear little bear, my name is Melissa, I am three years old. I think about you all the time, especially when I go to bed.”
“Dear Mr. Knut, I’ve made up my mind to purchase an electric car. It’s important to me to do something to stop the ice at the North Pole from melting. Yours sincerely, Frank.”
“Dear Knut, this week I turned seventy, and I still love to go hiking in the snow. I always keep your picture with me as a talisman. Yours, Günter.”
“Dear Knut, my hobby is knitting. I would like to knit a sweater for you as a present. What is your size, and what is your favorite color? All my best, Maria.”
Some of the emails were written in English, and Matthias translated them as he read. “Sorry that I’m writing in English. Or do you speak English? I often wonder what language the inhabitants of the North Pole speak at home. English, no? Love, John.”
Matthias found all this entertaining, but Knut couldn’t understand what was supposed to be so funny about these fan letters.
•
Apparently many of the animals had no difficulty at all ignoring my interest in them. The birds from Africa, for instance, found me completely unremarkable, whereas I never tired of looking at them. I’d stand before the aviary until Matthias lost his patience. The muddy, ponderous gait of the hippopotami was equally mesmerizing, but they never turned their heads in my direction. I, in turn, took no interest in either the moon bear or the brown bear, though each dolled herself up for me and glanced over flirtatiously.
Thanks to Christian, I’d been well informed at an early age about the dangers of the female sex. I didn’t miss a word when the all-knowing animal doctor conversed with journalists. “There’s a case study involving a young bear that was raised not by his biological mother but with a milk bottle and never learned to communicate with other members of his species. In his post-adolescent years, he tried to declare his love to a female bear, but she took a swipe at him, and he was injured.”
Christian answered conscientiously: “Not to worry! We won’t introduce Knut to any female bears until he’s strong enough to protect himself from womanly aggressions.” In other words, the human milk bottle that nourished me would be to blame if women didn’t understand me. And being misunderstood could lead to serious physical injuries.
On my walk the next morning, the brown bear started flirting again: “Wait a sec, will you? Why are you afraid of me?” I wanted to ignore her, but Matthias wouldn’t let me. “You polar bears will die out if you keep committing incest,” the brown bear declared. I was never sure how well Matthias understood bear language. His thoughts, at least, swam on the same wavelength as bear thoughts, otherwise he wouldn’t have picked this very moment to remark that there were ever more biracial cubs born of polar bears and brown bears.
“Of course, in the zoo we don’t want to encourage these unions. But out in nature, this happens as a matter of course, since there’s ever less viable territory for the polar bears. They’re being forced to emigrate ever further south.”
I didn’t want to move south under any circumstances, I thought. The brown bear persisted, sticking her snout in my direction: “International marriages are coming into fashion. Pure breeds are dying out. Don’t you even want to see what it’s like to have sex with a brown bear?”
Matthias’s gaze was wandering back and forth between the brown bear and me. “Knut, can you sense what a near relative the brown bear is to you? You can marry her if you want. A sun bear, on the other hand, wouldn’t be close enough.”
I didn’t want to marry anyone from the sun bear family anyhow — I found scrawny bodies unattractive. When I grew up, I wanted to marry Matthias and live with him until death did us part. But he wasn’t saying anything about the genetic link between Homo sapiens and polar bears. In front of the sun bear’s enclosure, I compared myself, Matthias, and the sun bear. Regardless from what angle I looked at it, the similarity between Matthias and me was greater than the similarity between me and the sun bear.
“How is our little bear doing today, the one who speaks of himself in the third person? Or is his problem now the love triangle and no longer the third person?” The sun bear knew that I was secretly watching him even though I pretended to be in a hurry. His words annoyed me.
“What’s that wisecrack supposed to mean? Whom are you referring to?”
Around his nose, arrogant, disdainful folds gathered. “Why, you, Matthias, and Christian.”
“The three of us work together in harmony.”
“But you don’t have the slightest idea with whom Matthias and Christian have relationships. Outside the zoo, I mean.”
His words struck me like a blow, but he paid no attention to my reaction. Instead he remarked, his eyes glazed over: “Next month I’m getting married to a woman.”
“Is she from Malaysia too?”
“Whatever gave you that idea? She’s from Munich.”
When I was alone again, I started thinking. What did Matthias do when he wasn’t working at the zoo? I felt endlessly liberated the first time I was allowed to leave my four walls and go for a walk in the zoo, but every outside world had yet another world outside it that filled me once more with unease. What was outside the zoo? And when would I finally be able to reach the outermost outside world?
•
During the night, rain washed the air clean. I filled my lungs, and as if in response a lizard slipped out of a bush. She stopped abruptly, crept bowleggedly forward, then stopped again. She described a half circle and then disappeared back into the bush. “That was a descendant of the dinosaurs,” Matthias explained. “Its ancestors were gigantic, even bigger than today’s elephant. We mammals were so afraid of the reptiles’ ancestors that we didn’t even venture outside during the day.” To my astonishment, I could immediately imagine the figure of the dinosaur even though I’d never seen anything of the sort. Not only that: several days later, as another lizard crossed my path on my morning walk, she suddenly appeared in my retinas the size of an elephant. In terror I jumped back. Matthias didn’t laugh, he asked if I was frightened. “Fear is proof of imagination. A rusty head knows no fear.” What head did Matthias mean when he said “rusty”?
Matthias and I watched the lizard, not letting her out of our sight for a moment until the tip of her tail had been sucked entirely into a bush. I was relieved. “We mammals always have a ton of worries,” Matthias said, sighing.
One day Christian asked Matthias how his family was doing. “My family is doing splendidly, but sometimes I can’t understand what my own children are thinking. Probably it’s because I’m too exhausted.”
“But y
ou understand perfectly well what bears are thinking. Am I right?”
“You can’t compare the bears to your own children.”
“No. But you discuss everything with Knut. Do you do that with your wife, too, or are you hiding something from her?”
“No.”
“You’re happy with your wonderful wife and children, right?”
“So are you.”
I pretended to understand nothing of this conversation.
•
When I went straight down Bear Street, at the end a bridge would appear that crossed a pond. We stood for a while on the bridge, and then a duck swam up with three ducklings behind her. I could sense that Matthias wanted to say something to me. “A duckling can swim as soon as it’s born. That means that ducklings are born as ducks already and can’t grow up to be something else instead. But you, Knut, have to have swimming lessons. You’ve splashed around in a tub often enough, but you’ve never swum properly in a real swimming pool.” The ducklings were moving their swimming feet hectically beneath the water, hurrying as though they were afraid their mother might swim out of sight.
“In Nature, a newborn bear spends two winters under his mother’s supervision. There are so many things the cub must learn in order to survive in the wild. In Russia there was a professor who put on a bearskin and spent two years in the wilderness with two baby bears whose mother had been shot by a hunter. He became a mother bear. It’s still too cold for me to go swimming outside, but if I too want to be a proper bear mother, I’ll have to pull myself together and teach you to swim.”
The next morning, Matthias put on bathing trunks and before my eyes jumped into the little swimming pool. The liquid mirror shattered, integrated the human body, and grew calm again. Matthias had to exert effort to keep his head above water, since it wasn’t attached in a convenient place like the head of a duck. He had to keep his skinny arms constantly in motion so as to not drown. He put a smile on his face to reassure me, but it was clear to me that he could never grow up to be a duck. In a panic, I ran back and forth on solid ground. Matthias beckoned to me with his hand, which he quickly plucked out of the water to wave again and again, but I didn’t have the courage to jump in. I could only breathe freely again when Matthias, shaking his head, finally got out of the water. He didn’t stay beside me on dry land for long, however: his eyes were fixed on me as his body disappeared backward into the water. Something was wrong with him. After long hesitation, I jumped into the water. Surprisingly, the water gave me a friendly welcome, it embraced me and held me up. What wonderful water! My body already knew it.
How I frolicked! Shrieking with delight, I pretended to be drowning. Once it did hurt — the formless water can sting the mucous membrane inside your nose if you inhale at the wrong moment. By the end, the muscles in my arms were like stretched-out rubber bands, but I didn’t want to stop, even after Matthias told me several times that the end of today’s water game had come. I would have fallen asleep in the water’s arms if Matthias hadn’t forced me to take my leave of my new beloved, the water. Back on solid ground, I gave my body a good shake, and right away my fur was dry again.
•
“Swimming is a pleasure.” I couldn’t keep my mouth shut the next morning when I saw the sun bear. He scratched his belly with his thin fingers and turned away from me before replying: “Swimming is a senseless activity. I have no time for silly little games. A grand new project is calling me. I shall write the glorious history of the Malaysian peninsula from the sun bear perspective.” It would never have occurred to me that this sun bear might scratch not just his belly but also manuscript paper. He unhesitatingly referred to this as “writing.” When I asked whether this peninsula was far away, he replied, making use of the folds around his nose to show his disdain for me: “Far away, of course, though I don’t know how far it would have to be for you to think it far enough to be considered far away. You’ve never even been to the North Pole, have you?”
“Why would I have gone to the North Pole?”
“Aha, I see you’re now using the first person like a champ. I’m already starting to miss the baby bear who talked about himself in the third person. There’s nothing more boring than a civilized polar bear. Never mind, just a joke. You don’t have to travel to the Pole. But doesn’t it worry you that the North Pole is in danger of disappearing? I wasn’t born on the Malaysian peninsula, but I do feel concerned about the future of the region where my ancestors lived. That’s why I’m researching the history of the peninsula and thinking about possibilities for the coexistence of cultures. You ought to give some thought to the North Pole too, instead of just occupying yourself with walks, swimming, and playing ball.”
“My ancestors are all from the GDR, not the North Pole!”
“Oh, really? Even the ones who lived one thousand years ago? Seriously, you’re hopeless.”
Unlike the unkind sun bear, the sloth bear was perfectly amiable when I addressed him for the first time.
“It’s the perfect weather for a nap.”
“Yes, the weather is quite pleasant.”
That was our first conversation. But this same bear criticized me harshly the second time we met: “You run around in this zoo without purpose or goal. You sell yourself to the audience with your show. Does your life have any meaning at all?”
“And you? What do you do all day long?” I shot back.
“Me? I loaf,” he replied calmly. “Loafing is a dignified labor. It requires courage. The audience expects you to perform something interesting, to entertain it. Do you have the courage to refuse to play any game at all and to disappoint the audience? Every day you go for a walk because it’s fun for you. Can you renounce fun, or don’t you have the nerve for that?” He was right: I didn’t have the courage to disappoint my audience and Matthias. I was incapable of loafing.
It was disconcerting to speak with the other animals about our lifestyles. The Canadian wolves had frightened me right from the start, and I tried to keep away from them, but one day I accidentally passed close by their compound and realized it too late. The head wolf immediately addressed me. “You there, always running around all by yourself. Don’t you have a family?”
“No.”
“What about your mother?”
“My mother is Matthias. He’s right here. He always goes walking with me.”
“But there’s no resemblance at all between you and Matthias. He must have kidnapped you as a baby. Just look at my big family. All its members resemble one another like peas in a pod.”
Matthias came back to get me and delivered his commentary as if he’d overheard our conversation. “Wolves have a slender, elegant, aristocratic figure. But I prefer bears. Do you know why? Male wolves fight each other until they’ve established who’s the strongest in the group. Then the strongest male produces offspring with his mate. The rest of the wolves in the pack don’t have pups. That gives me the creeps.” Just as Matthias couldn’t understand the wolves’ speech, the opposite was fortunately true as well.
I didn’t like the wolves and tried to ignore their opinions. But I couldn’t get what the wolves’ leader had said to me out of my head. Didn’t Matthias and I look alike? Had I been kidnapped as a baby? All day long this thought turned over and over in my head.
The press often wrote about me. When Christian brought us an article, Matthias would read it aloud, then I would study every sentence on my own that evening. “First Swimming Lesson for Knut.” They took a piece of my life away and locked it up in newsprint. When I went swimming, Knut should have stayed contained within this swimming “I” rather than being consigned to newsprint one day later. Perhaps I should have kept so many people from learning that my name was Knut. They used my name whenever they felt like it, to amuse themselves.
One article made a particularly strong impression on me and refused to give me peace even weeks later. Not a day passed n
ow without my reading some article about myself. I no longer read out of curiosity, it was more out of worry. “Knut was rejected by his mother immediately after birth and was raised by a human being. Now he is learning to swim and other survival techniques, all taught to him by humans.” What did it mean that my mother had rejected me? This was news to me. I dug around in the stack of old articles, searching for clues. Somewhere there had to be a master article that explained the circumstances under which I came into human hands. At the end of my search, I still hadn’t learned anything else about my biological mother, though I did perfect the art of reading. Among other articles, I found one that said: “After the birth of Knut and his brother, the mother animal, Tosca, showed no interest in her brood. After several hours, specialists determined that the newborn cubs were in mortal danger, so they were removed from Tosca. Normally a mother bear displays aggression when an attempt is made to remove her offspring, even if she doesn’t intend to raise them, and for this reason, she must be tranquilized beforehand. But Tosca, astonishingly, showed no reaction at all when the zookeepers removed the cubs. The specialists conjectured that Tosca’s stressful circus life had made her lose her maternal instincts. It’s well known that circus animals under Socialism were overworked and under a great deal of pressure.”
•
The day I was scared to death of overtook me without any warning. I injured Matthias while we were playing. His thin skin ripped, and in no time he was red with blood. Matthias didn’t even raise his voice, but the incident took place during our show, and many of the audience members were horrified at the sight of the blood and began to shriek hysterically. We returned to our room, and Christian treated the wound. He applied the bandage while I tried to lick the bottle of disinfectant. The bottle fell over, and Christian scolded me.
We returned to the play area. For the first time, I felt on my skin an audience’s corrosive hostility and trembled. “Dear visitors,” Matthias shouted at the top of his lungs, “the injury was completely minor, nothing of any importance!” Shouting was not typical of him. The audience applauded enthusiastically.