The Zoo

by Jamie Mollart

  He sits like the Sphinx and there seems to be a trace of a smile on his face.

  He is the endangered species that is also the top of the food chain. He is losing his fight with Man the species and paradoxically is individually more powerful, more instinctual and more deadly.

  I take SALLY from where I left her and slide her under The Lion. Feels right. Feels perfect.

  Two more names. BERKSHIRE and HARRY. Sitting opposite The Soldier and The Rhino.

  The Rhino.

  He is an automaton. A tank. He is bullish and instinctual. He is prehistoric. The past in the present.

  He is thick skin.

  He is point and go. A machine. Trampling. Squashing. Barging.

  Berkshire. No doubt about it.

  That just leaves . . .

  HARRY and The Soldier.

  He doesn’t stand, he can’t stand, he leans and rocks on his ridge like a weeble and for this reason, despite the sensory pleasure I derive from him, he is lower in the ranking than you would immediately think he should be.

  Harry the boy soldier. Seeing things he shouldn’t. A pawn in other people’s games. Lower in the ranking than he should be. It is so pertinent I nearly cry. He should always have been number one.

  When I can bring myself to look at Janet the horror on my face is reflected in her eyes.

  ‘Well done,’ she says, ‘well done.’

  Later my room seems empty. I stare at the lumps in the ceiling, at the indentations I made with my thumbnail and I wait.

  Eventually I fall asleep.

  I dream I am in the corridor, the floor is chequered and I am walking the hall using the moves of a Knight and I can’t make it back to my room, I keep missing the door because making his move doesn’t allow me to reach it and I can feel a scream growing inside me, growing and growing until it’s too big. I’m trying to keep it in, but I can’t, then it’s out there and hands are on my shoulders and they find my room, because they don’t need to use his move. The door is slammed shut after me. There are childlike words scrawled on it, the truth.

  Then it is morning and I am lying in a noose of the sheet. It’s rapped tight around my body and it looks like sinew. I feel calmer but the sheets are wet and they cling to me and I thrash about trying to get free as they tighten and tighten. When I am free I perch on the edge of the bed, shaking, my knee twitching up and down with the exertion and I think of The Zoo and I remember the way a Knight moves.

  The move.

  I run through it in my head. It is important to remember it, so I run through it.

  Two squares horizontally and one square vertically.

  Or two squares vertically and one square horizontally. Think. Think, Think. Two and one. One and Two.

  The move means The Knight can jump over other pieces. The Knight is not stopped by a bank of other pieces. The move means that The Knight is at its most powerful in closed positions. I realise that’s fucking it and I’m through the door, hitting it hard, so it slams back against the wall, the noise fills the corridor and an orderly looks up from the desk with a face full of contempt, so I gently close it to and raise my hands in apology and surrender. I mouth ‘sorry’ and she shakes her head and goes back to her magazine. I think of the ad space in between the pages and think ‘I fucking own you’ and I feel a bit better about her.

  I make my way to Janet’s office and knock on the door. From inside I hear her ask me to come in. I want to confront The Zoo. I don’t want to appear nervous, but I don’t want to be too cocky either, so I sit in the chair, casual and then quickly, before I lose my nerve, lift The Knight, remove LOU, take my name from under The Ape and swop them over. I lean back, afraid of the response, but nothing happens so I know I’m right. Janet smiles at me. Minutes pass.

  LOU is under The Ape. She knew. She was the only one who knew, the only one who understood all along. It crosses my mind again that she could have been sending me the messages. Then realise it doesn’t matter.

  ‘Is that right?’ Janet asks, ‘Are you done?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘definitely.’

  She leans into a drawer under her desk and takes out a copy of the Times.

  ‘Then you’re ready for this.’

  She leafs through it, finds the page she was looking for and folds it open on the desk between us.

  A full page advert. White text on a black background. I read through it. Raise my head, a questioning eyebrow at Janet. She smiles encouragement. It’s all there. About the mines and the children. About the bank and the blood minerals. About what they are doing and about how they lie. About the lies I was peddling for them. At the bottom is my signature.

  ‘You did this,’ she says, ‘Before you went into the board meeting for the last time.’

  ‘I did this?’

  ‘Yes, for one day you changed all the adverts in all of the major papers.’

  And I remember. I remember the surreptitious emails. I remember writing this. Writing this and sending it off. Sending it on the same reference numbers, then calling the papers to tell them the ads had been updated, knowing they wouldn’t check them.

  I smile and say, ’What happened?’

  ‘What do you think happened?’

  ‘I imagine they were pretty fucked off.’

  ‘That would be an understatement. I’ll let you find out the rest, but it’s not ignored anymore. People everywhere are aware of what is happening in Nghosa and they want things to change. You should be very proud of yourself.’

  I want to be. I really do.

  ‘I’ve done some terrible things,’ I say.

  ‘And one great thing. Are you ready to tell me all about where these came from now?’ An elegant hand takes in all of The Zoo.

  I think of my son. Already his face is fading in my memory. I feel his little hand in mine, and the softness of his blond hair as I place my palm protectively on his head, but there is a gap and then only the moment when he is taken from me in a hospital room, just as he hands me the string bag with The Zoo in it. The toys I asked Ruth to buy him to apologise for my behaviour: The Cowboy, The Knight, The Pirate, The Soldier, The Lion, The Rhino, The Ape, The Horse, The Zebra, The Dog, The Chicken. Then he is pulled away, mouthing ‘Daddy’ and they are turning him away from me. I can’t see him amongst the adults. I am left holding a yellow string bag. My son is gone and I have only The Zoo.

  ‘Can I give them back to him?’ I ask.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t promise anything.’

  I’ll take that for now.

  I get my cigarettes out of my pocket and go to leave. I can’t resist it though and tap the paper, where it says ‘James’ and lean in, whisper to The Knight.

  ‘I fucking know you.’

  I take his silence as acceptance.

  77.

  Waiting. I’m in the garden, smoking a cigarette. I’m nervous. First day of school nervous. The sun is warm on my face. I close my eyes, the inside of my eyelids purple. Bask in the heat. I’m drifting off when I sense someone next to me. I open my eyes. Beth. She’s holding two cups of tea.

  I start to apologise. Struggle for the words. Stop. Take another swig. Start again, but I can’t find the way to say it. Not without explaining The Zoo and that would mean explaining everything.

  Instead I say nothing. She puts the tea down on the bench and leaves me there.

  Sometime later I return to the day room and watch facile daytime television and try not to fidget too much.

  Just before they are due to arrive I return to my room and shower, put on a fresh shirt and pace.

  A knock on the door. I open it to Janet. She leads me down the corridor, waits for the outer door to buzz, presses the string bag into my hand and gestures for me go through. I momentarily pause, then step over the threshold.

  In a small room on the ground floor. I sit drumming my fingers on the table and tapping my feet on the lino. The door opens and they are there. My family. Sally and Harry. My everything. I rise shakily to my
feet. Sally sits without saying anything. Harry holds his hand out formally and I shake it, tiny in my palm.

  I push the string bag across the table to him. He reaches into his pocket and shows me The Ape, then puts it in the bag and gives the whole thing to Sally.

  As we sit in silence the camera begins to track away from us and from where I’m sitting I can see the plywood backing to everything. The orange make-up of the actors under the lights, the plastic whiteness of their teeth and perfect hair. I look at the darkness behind the dome made by the studio lights and I can’t see the ceiling, can’t see the back wall, just black extending back and back and back, and my eyes un-focus, a softness around the edge of things, still falling away from me, so far so good, so far so good, so far so good.