by Paul Zindel
“I know.”
We walked down Victory Boulevard toward Tony’s Market because he wanted a pack of cigarettes. Josephine Adamo passed on the other side of the street, and she yelled, “Some party!” She had left before the fight, and you could tell by the expression on her face that she hadn’t heard about it yet.
“What did they do when the police brought you to the door?” I asked.
John picked up a handful of slush and started molding it into an iceball.
“My mother started her high-frequency cackling, but it was Bore who got on my nerves. He just came to the top of the stairs, and I could hardly hold my head up to see him. My mother was on her hands and knees, wiping up the snow I dragged in on the skates. Bore didn’t even look mad. He looked sick and old. Then he went back into the bedroom without a word. This morning at breakfast he said they’d have to send me to a doctor.”
He threw the iceball at a telephone pole, but it missed and hit a parked car.
“Was Mr. Pignati all right?” he asked sheepishly.
“What do you care?” I said with an edge to my voice so he’d know I blamed everything on him. Then I was sorry I’d said it.
“I just wondered,” he said, looking away and raising his eyes to the sky where a jet was roaring over. We finally got to the store and stood by the telephone booth having a Coke. John smoked a second cigarette, and then somehow we got enough nerve.
“Hello, Mr. Pignati?”
There was a long pause, although you could tell somebody had answered.
“Mr. Pignati, this is John.”
There was an even longer pause, and the artificial enthusiasm John had put into his voice trailed off. “Are you there, Mr. Pignati?”
“Yes—” came this weak voice.
“Lorraine and I want to apologize for having that party. We had only invited two people, but those others stopped by, and before you knew it things got out of hand. I mean, Lorraine and I will pay for everything.”
I gasped audibly.
John started again. “Are you still there, Mr. Pignati?”
“Yes.”
“Would you let Lorraine and me come over to help clean up? Please?”
“No… it’s all right….”
“Mr. Pignati, we feel terrible,” I said into the mouthpiece and then handed it back to John. I felt on the verge of crying, thinking of the broken pigs.
“Mr. Pignati, we’d really feel better if—”
“I cleaned most of it,” he said slowly.
“Mr. Pignati, are you there?”
There was another pause.
“Yes….”
“Lorraine and I want to know if you’d like to go to the zoo this afternoon. We thought we could meet you around one o’clock near the entrance. You know, right by the sea lions?”
Another pause.
“We could go and feed Bobo,” John said. “Have you been down to see Bobo yet?”
Another pause.
“No….”
“He must miss you, Mr. Pignati. No kidding. The way you used to feed him every day. What do you say, Mr. Pignati?”
As we waited for an answer all I could think of was Conchetta’s ripped dress—the one Helen Kazinski had demolished. It must have been a shock to come home from the hospital and find something like that.
“All right…” Mr. Pignati said sadly.
We got to the zoo around twelve thirty, and I didn’t think the Pigman was going to show. I really didn’t. We sat on the same bench as we had last time, the one near the front gate that lets you watch the sea lions. I had my Ben Franklin sunglasses on again, and it wasn’t even sunny out, but I figured they’d be good because I wouldn’t have to look right into anyone’s eyes. One of the attendants was washing the sea-lion manure off the middle platform of the pool, and at least he was able to do that with a certain degree of proficiency. When it came to feeding them he had no imagination, but that particular task he was up to.
“He’s not coming,” I said when it was five minutes past one.
“Just wait. He’ll be here.”
No customers were over by the peanut stand where that same old woman from the last visit was giving me the evil eye. Worst of all, she was putting peanuts into her mouth at the same rate Jane Appling had devoured the chocolate-covered ants. She really looked like the wrath of God, and I was too scared to go over and buy a package of peanuts for myself.
“I’ll get some peanuts for Bobo,” John said.
“And me!” I yelled after him.
About ten minutes later a taxi pulled up in front, and the Pigman got out. There was no smile on his face. He walked very slowly, and he had lost so much weight. It was pathetic, that’s what it was. Absolutely pathetic.
“Hello,” John said cheerfully, covering his own surprise at the change in the Pigman’s appearance.
“Hello,” Mr. Pignati said, forcing a slight smile. You could tell he was glad to see us, but I knew he was very sick. He certainly had forgiven us for anything we did over at the house or else he wouldn’t have come—so I figured he was just weak from his heart attack and the hospital. Naturally we decided to take the train-type contraption out to the monkey house.
“I bought peanuts for Bobo,” John said, proudly waving the bags. I had already started eating mine.
“I have some… money,” Mr. Pignati said, reaching a hand into one of his pockets.
“I have it, Mr. Pignati,” John insisted, giving a dollar bill to the man in the ticket booth.
We squeezed into the last car, and the same blond boy was driving again. There was quite a wind even though it had warmed up enough to start the snow melting, and it made the frilly canopy on the cars snap loudly. We didn’t say anything more—Mr. Pignati wedged right between us—as we rolled along the bleak pathways of the zoo.
We went by the bald eagle, the white-tailed deer, the tahr goats, the lions, and the striped hyena. They all seemed to be frozen—giant stuffed animals, unable to move. Then came the tigers and bears, the two hippos who were inside for the season, and the eight-ton bull elephant, the only part of which we could see being the long trunk protruding from the doorway of his barn. Even the alligator pond had been drained.
“Bobo will be glad to see you,” John said finally.
Nobody answered.
We pulled the buzzer for the guy to stop the contraption at the primate house, and John had to help Mr. Pignati get off.
“Easy now, Mr. Pignati.”
“Thank you.” The Pigman smiled, and you could tell he was anxious to see his baboon.
“Bobo’s going to be so happy to see you,” I said, trying for another smile.
All the outside portion of the monkey house was closed, so we went inside, and it was obvious that even in the winter those apes desperately need deodorant pads. Even Limburger-cheese spray would’ve been an improvement.
We started walking down the long chamber with all the cages on both sides, and the only other people there were an attendant hosing out the gorilla cage and some woman holding a two-year-old baby.
I stopped and watched the man at the gorilla cage while Mr. Pignati and John went on to the next one, which was Bobo’s. Right away I noticed something was wrong because the two of them started getting nervous and looking all around the place. Mr. Pignati went up to the rail and started calling, “Bobo? Bobo?”
The man cleaning the gorilla cage shut off the water and started to roll up the hose when he heard Mr. Pignati calling. I moved up and could see the cage was completely empty, but I thought they had just moved the baboon to some other cage. I knew he wasn’t on the outside part because it was too cold.
“Bobo? Bobo?”
“Bobo died last week,” the attendant said, still rolling up the hose.
“The baboon?” John asked.
“Yep. Can’t say I felt particularly sorry about it because that baboon had the nastiest disposition around here.” The attendant wiped his nose on his sleeve and continued rolling up the ho
se. “Did an autopsy on him, and it looked like pneumonia.”
Mr. Pignati kept staring into the cage, and we stood motionless for what seemed like an eternity.
“Mr. Pignati,” John said softly, “we’d better leave.”
“Bobo….”
I could see the blood vessels on the side of Mr. Pignati’s neck pulse as he raised his right hand to his face. I was thankful I had my sunglasses on because I didn’t want to see his eyes. I mean, I just didn’t. Even John just stood there not knowing what to do.
“Had a Woolly monkey down the end that died from pneumonia too,” the attendant muttered, almost to himself.
As I started moving away and heading for the door John went to Mr. Pignati and just took his arm lightly, trying to turn him away from the empty cage. I saw the Pigman open his mouth, and then his hands started to shake. He went to grab hold of the railing, but let out a tiny cry almost like a puppy that had been stepped on by mistake. I can still remember the sound of it, and sometimes I wake up from a nightmare with it in my ears. It was like a high-pitched scream, but it came from deep inside of him, and before John or I knew what had happened, the Pigman dropped to the floor. It seemed as if the monkeys knew something had happened because they started making noise and pulling against the bars. I thought they were going to tear them out of the frames, and I wanted to put my hands to my ears to shut out the jungle that had surrounded us.
Mr. Pignati was dead.
15
What happened?” the attendant asked in a scared, dumb voice.
“Call an ambulance!” I yelled. He looked at me for a moment as though what I said was too complicated to understand, and then he was off.
“You’d better get out of here,” I said to Lorraine. When I touched her she burst into tears and ran out of the monkey house. If she had gotten involved as a witness after all that had happened, I knew her mother would’ve shipped her off to a Tibetan convent for ninety-six years.
The lady with the baby in her arms just sneaked out a door. You could tell her motto was “When trouble strikes—vanish.” Then it was just me on my knees next to Mr. Pignati, and just as suddenly as the monkeys had started screaming they shut up. One tiny monkey with yellow frames around his eyes pressed against the bars of his cage to watch me take the Pigman’s wrist. I felt for a pulse, but there was nothing. Lorraine had dropped her sunglasses, so I crawled the short distance over to them and back to Mr. Pignati’s side. When I held one of the glass ovals near his mouth, there was no breath to cloud the surface.
Did you have to die? I wanted to bend down and whisper in his ear. They say when you die your brain lives for awhile longer, and maybe he could’ve heard me.
A small trickle of saliva had started from the corner of his mouth, and I placed my handkerchief against it and turned his head slightly. What would there be to say even if he could’ve heard me?
“Is Mr. Pignati all right?”
“What do you care?” Lorraine had said that morning.
But I did care. She thinks she knows everything that goes on inside me, and she doesn’t know a thing. What did she want from me—to tell the truth all the time? To run around saying it did matter to me that I live in a world where you can grow old and be alone and have to get down on your hands and knees and beg for friends? A place where people just sort of forget about you because you get a little old and your mind’s a bit senile or silly? Did she think that didn’t bother me underneath? That I didn’t know if we hadn’t come along the Pigman would’ve just lived like a vegetable until he died alone in that dump of a house?
“Do you think you’d like to go to the zoo with me tomorrow, Mr. Wandermeyer and Miss Truman.”
“Please….”
“Please.”
Didn’t she know how sick to my stomach it made me feel to know it’s possible to end your life with only a baboon to talk to? And maybe Lorraine and I were only a different kind of baboon in a way. Maybe we were all baboons for that matter—big blabbing baboons—smiling away and not really caring what was going on as long as there were enough peanuts bouncing around to think about—the whole pack of us—Bore and the Old Lady and Lorraine’s mother included—baffled baboons concentrating on all the wrong things.
Everything was so screwed up.
“Your problem is you’ve got too much spare time.”
That was the secret—don’t have any spare time. Watch the little things in life, the ones you have control over. Keep your eyes glued to the peas and every speck of dust on the floor.
“Kenneth is doing very nicely.”
To @#$% with Kenneth. To @#$% with marching along with an attaché case swinging in the breeze.
The tile floor was cold and uncomfortable, and the attendant had dripped some water near me. As I stood up, a hundred thoughts raced through my mind at the same time, one of which was to check Mr. Pignati’s wallet to make sure the police could identify him when they got there. Then I wouldn’t have to get involved at all. I was ashamed of thinking about myself, though actually it was Bore that I was thinking of now. The position of Mr. Pignati’s head on the floor made his face look a little like my father’s, and I didn’t like the feeling it gave me. Up until then I had never been particularly disturbed about seeing a corpse—even when I’d have to sit for an hour or so at a funeral parlor when some relative had died. To me the dead body just looked like a doll, and all the flowers stuffed around here and there were sort of nice. It gave me a feeling like being in Beekman’s toy department to tell the truth—everything elaborately displayed. So many things to look at. Anything to get away from what was really happening.
I lit a cigarette and watched the smoke climb toward a light in the ceiling. There was such a chill in me I couldn’t stop my legs from shaking, and although I was standing in the same spot, I felt as if I were moving forward. My thoughts jumped from Mr. Pignati to wondering if Lorraine were waiting for me, to knowing I was standing in a monkey house stuck on top of a small planet whirling through space. Moving forward. It was like Lorraine’s nightmare, where something forced her toward the room with the black curtains.
Then I knew.
I was not in a monkey house. For a moment it was something else—something I was glimpsing for the first time—the cold tiles, the draft that moved about me, the nice solid fact that someday I was going to end up in a coffin myself.
My tomb.
I took a puff on the cigarette, and I could hear Lorraine’s voice saying I was killing myself. As if I didn’t know it! Did she think I thought smoking and drinking were supposed to make me live longer? I knew what it was doing to me.
“You must want to die,” she had said once, and maybe that was true. Maybe I would rather be dead than to turn into the kind of grown-up people I knew. What was so hot about living anyway if people think you’re a disturbing influence just because you still think about God and Death and the Universe and Love. My poor mother and father—I wanted to tell them that they no longer wonder what they’re doing in the world while I stand here going out of my mind.
I stayed until the ambulance doctor gestured that the Pigman was dead. A whole crowd of people had gathered to crane their necks and watch them roll a dead man onto a stretcher. I don’t know where they all came from so quickly. It must have been announced over the loudspeaker. Hey everybody! Come see the dead man in the monkey house. Step right up. Special feature today.
“Good-bye, Mr. Pignati,” I said, hardly moving my lips. The police and attendants moved calmly, surely, as if they were performing a ritual and had forgotten the meaning of it. I don’t think they ever knew the meaning of it. I thought of machinery—automatic, constant, unable to be stopped.
The sun had come out, and I had to cover my eyes. Finally I saw Lorraine sitting on a bench in the large center mall near the entrance of the zoo. There was a long pond that was heated in some way so the water wouldn’t freeze and kill the fish, and she looked strange surrounded by the mist that rose from its surface.
“Here’s your glasses.”
She didn’t answer at first—just kept looking at the ground. Then she struck out at me, as though trying to punch me.
“We murdered him,” she screamed, and I turned away because I had been through just about all I could stand.
“Here’s your glasses,” I said again, almost hating her for a second. I wanted to yell at her, tell her he had no business fooling around with kids. I wanted to tell her he had no right going backward. When you grow up, you’re not supposed to go back. Trespassing—that’s what he had done.
I sat down next to her and lit up another cigarette. I couldn’t help but look at the flashing light on top of the ambulance. They had driven it right up to the entrance of the monkey house, and it looked weird because it didn’t belong. Right in the bright sunlight you could see the flashing dome going like crazy, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Then I saw this ridiculous sight running toward us from the other end of the mall—a great big fat man in a stupid-looking uniform, clutching a fistful of strings attached to helium balloons that bobbed in the air behind him. He was hobbling as fast as he could go, right toward the monkey house, with this sign around his neck: BUY YOUR FUNNY-FACE BALLOONS HERE!
Lorraine lifted her head slightly and watched him go by. Then she broke down crying again and turned away so she was facing the pond and didn’t have to look at me. I noticed a whole school of goldfish practically sticking their noses out of the water because they thought someone was going to feed them. In the deep center a large carp flipped its tail and then disappeared as quickly as it had surfaced.
“Let’s go, Lorraine,” I said softly, standing beside her. I lowered the sunglasses, and she took them, almost dropping them again trying to get them on.
Her hand lingered near mine, and I took it gently. She seemed funny peering up at me over the thin metal rims. We looked at each other. There was no need to smile or tell a joke or run for roller skates. Without a word, I think we both understood.
We had trespassed too—been where we didn’t belong, and we were being punished for it. Mr. Pignati had paid with his life. But when he died something in us had died as well.