The Zoo Page 10

  29.

  Beth’s reading a book, her mouth moving, tongue stuck out between her teeth. Listening hard I can just hear the words, breathy and so quiet as to nearly be non-existent. All vowels whispered between bitten lips.

  The day is tight about me. Everything is compressed and there is a pressure in my skull that makes my eyes hurt and my vision explodes in pins and needles when I turn my head. So I sit stock still, any movement exacerbating the pain, sit stock still and reach out for whispered words. She doesn’t seem to notice me, or shows no sign of doing so if she does. I watch her eyes slide down the page. Watch her mouth form words I can barely hear and wonder what she is reading.

  A layer of dust coats everything and I can taste it in my mouth. The building work has moved further down the corridor and the noise is constant: hammering and metal against metal. The crash of bricks on the floor. It has been incessant for the last couple of days, starting early in the morning, 6 or 7, then continuing throughout the day, before stopping at around 3 am. They don’t even seem to break for lunch.

  Earlier, as I stood chasing shadows through the plastic, someone’s hand crept between the plastic sheets and split them slightly like theatre curtains. In the gap I could make out movement, the flash of a fluorescent jacket, a stack of bricks next to an upturned wheelbarrow and then the curtain closed, leaving just the calloused fingertips and then they were gone too.

  I don’t know how Beth is reading her book.

  The expression on her face is of rapt concentration. She looks at peace for the first time since I met her. A flash of jealousy explodes through me like ark light. I squash it down.

  ‘What are you reading?’ I ask.

  She holds the book up so I can read the cover, her eyes continue to trace the words. The complete short stories of Franz Kafka, I read.

  ‘Is it any good?’

  ‘You’ve not read any Kafka?’ she asks, incredulity in her voice.

  ‘No,’ I say, feeling acutely embarrassed.

  ‘You know about him though?’

  ‘He’s the one with the beetle, yes?’

  She peers over the top of the book and laughs. ‘Yes, he’s the one with the beetle. That’s not the one that I’m reading though. I’m reading the one with the talking monkey.’

  ‘It’s about a talking monkey?’

  She checks the number on the page and lays the book down on the table, careful not to break the spine.

  ‘It’s about a monkey that has taught itself to be like a human,’ she says.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You’re really interested?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay, it’s a about a monkey. Well, a chimp really. So not a monkey at all. It’s been caught by hunters and taken home by them on a ship. They keep it locked in a cage, so small it can hardly move. It realises it can buy its way out by becoming one of them. The first thing it learns is to spit on the floor, then smoke a pipe and then drink booze.’

  ‘Typical bloke.’

  She smiles. There’s a tiny gap between her two front teeth.

  ‘The whole thing is a monologue that the chimp is giving to a group of scientists.’

  ‘Do you know how it ends?’

  ‘Oh yes, I read it for A levels. He tells them he can’t remember what it was like being a chimp anymore and he’s quite pleased about it.’

  She picks her book up again. I let her read, watching her eyes devour the words, listen to the rasp of the paper as she turns the page and think about changing myself to fit in with what is expected.

  I feel a hand on my shoulder, look around into the eyes of an orderly and he asks me if I’m doing okay, if everything is alright and I tell him yes, even though I’m sure it’s not. He seems satisfied and leaves, something furtive in his manner, so I follow him, down the corridor to the plastic sheeting, which he splices open with his palms held vertically, pushed through the gap and pulled apart, then, with a glance over his shoulder, he is through them. The sheets fall back, slapping the floor and causing a cloud of dust to hang in the air. I go to follow him, treading as lightly as I can so as not to leave a trace. Pressing my ear against the plastic I can hear an engine start up inside then man’s laughter. I put my hand against the gap and tease my fingers through, feel heat on them from the other side.

  Then I hear a voice down and to my left, thick with vowels and unintelligible. I jump. Asian Radio Lady is holding her radio up to me. It spits and crackles with white noise, focusing momentarily into music, haunting Gregorian chants, then descending again into the hiss. She says something else I can’t understand. I ask her to repeat it. She does, but I still can’t make it out. Then the third time I get it.

  ‘It’s for you.’

  ‘What is?’ I ask and she forces the radio into my hands. Taps her ear.

  ‘I don’t understand what you want,’ I say.

  Taps her ear again. Then my chest, repeating, ‘it’s for you.’

  So I put the radio to my ear and sink into the white noise. Somewhere deep in there I hear a voice I recognise, a deep baritone speaking words I recognise. An accent from a dark land. A speech from a long time ago about freeing the country from the yoke of capitalist imperialism, something about the resources. Nested in amongst the fizz and pop of distortion. Barely there.

  I’m forced to go back and remember and for the first time since I’ve been in here I am truly terrified.

  30.

  Harry has been awake for hours.

  He scrabbled at our bedroom door at 6 am and curled up on the end of our bed like a cat. I tried to get him to go back to sleep, but in the end gave up and went downstairs with him to make breakfast. When Sally joined us we were sat at the breakfast bar eating Coco Pops, Harry’s head cocked over the bowl, telling me the noise it made.

  ‘I heard a p-p-pop Daddy. And a c-c-crackle.’

  Sally kissed him on the side of his head. I thought she was going to kiss me as well, but instead she brushed her hand against my cheek and perched on the bar next to our son.

  He opened presents that were as much a surprise to me as they were to him.

  In the car on the way to Monkey Kingdom he chunters and titters in the back and sings along with the jungle CD. I make monkey noises with him and Sally reaches between the seats and tickles his bouncing feet. I study the greying sky, my mind vibrating with trepidation. Turn the air-con up until the heat makes my eyes hurt.

  We park in the overflow car park. I help Harry pull on his wellies, zip his parka up to his neck and pull the hood up.

  ‘You look like a monkey now,’ I tell him.

  He giggles and jumps about, tickling his own armpits.

  We trudge through the mud on the long walk to the entrance. The air is damp and cold, the wind picking up, sweeping the car park of leaves. I yank my coat around my neck.

  ‘How cold?’ I ask no-one.

  ‘Stop being such an old woman,’ says Sally.

  There are only three pay kiosks; the queues meet us as we pass under the welcome sign. I go to say something, but Sally catches my indrawn breath and shoots me a warning glance.

  As we wait I check my phone, erase a heap of spam emails. Sally plays pat-a-cake with Harry, their gloved hands making whumps. Kids bounce and jiggle around us, one behind bumping into the back of my legs repeatedly. I want a cigarette, want to ignore the fact that we agreed not to smoke in front of Harry. The kid behind slams into my legs again. Sally gives me Harry’s hand and goes to the front of the queue. Harry looks up at me, his big eyes a question framed by a sloppy fringe, I shrug. ‘I never know what your Mum’s thinking. Best you learn now never to second guess what women are thinking.’

  He looks confused.

  ‘How c-c-can you second guess something?’

  I begin to explain but am interrupted by Sally’s return.

  ‘Here,’ she says to Harry, ‘They’ve got maps. You can choose what you want to see.’

  They huddle around it. I find a pen in my inside pocket,
put it in my mouth and chug on the lid like it’s a fag.

  ‘He’s your son all right,’ says Sally.

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘Not even slightly interested in the rides and kiddy stuff. Wants to go straight to the monkeys.’

  ‘Well, at least he’s got one of my good traits.’

  She looks at me as if she is going to say something but stops herself.

  At the kiosk I hand over my card, amazed at the figures on the till display. As the attendant hands it back wrapped in a coil of receipt, Sally and Harry are already off into the park. I jog to catch them up. They’re hunched over a sign attached to the wall of an enclosure. Harry turns to me, bangs both fists against his chest.

  ‘It means gorilla,’ he says, points at the sign, ‘it’s a language for people who can’t hear anything. T-t-they speak with their hands instead.’

  Then he’s away again pulling Sally by the hand.

  We watch Spider Monkeys run rings around the edge of their enclosure. Get close enough to watch their nostrils flare as they breathe, look into their eyes, at their black fur. Then notice a pair of tiny hands amongst the hair, see the tiny face of a baby monkey pressed tight against its mother.

  At the glass wall of another enclosure, hands pressed on divisive glass. Inside there are tottering towers of rain-drenched wood, a tyre spinning in the growling wind. A member of staff lobs food over the top, it cascades and rattles off the dead trees and Harry follows it with wide eyes, shouting, ‘he’s eating it, he’s eating it’, as simian hands scrabble in the dirt for grain.

  We stand with soggy families at the Orang-utang enclosure. Sally and Harry are talking, their words stolen from me and swept away into the air. The Orang-utang pulls a blue blanket over its head and shuffles its body around so it faces the wall, back to the watching crowd, like a child playing hide and seek, hand over its eyes, can’t see you so you can’t see me. The wind snatches at the blanket, billowing it up, trying to take it into the sky as a kite.

  In every cage the monkeys huddle together, the wind whipping furrows in their fur. It screams between the enclosures and slaps the loose plastic covering of a sign against the wall with a crack.

  We take cover in one of the inside viewing areas, gagging at the smell of shit and food. A young chav couple, all neck tattoos and gold jewellery, fight against the door, smashing their pushchair against its frame. As the door slams closed, chimps swivel and stare at us. One climbs to the top of a tower of trellis, puts both palms against the ceiling and pushes, trying to force open an imaginary trap door. The muscles in its massive arms ripple, but the ceiling doesn’t give.

  The chav baby screams, struggling to get out of its pushchair, the mother swearing and grabbing at kicking legs.

  Harry tugs at the material of my jeans, so I pat his shoulder, saying, ‘It’s okay. It’s okay.’

  I attempt to distract him with a picture attached to the wall at child eye height in a metal frame with screw heads filed off. A smiling chimp with paint all over its face, brush held skew whiff between wonky teeth. Harry points at the sheets of paper in front of it, splashed with random colours and lines and shapes.

  ‘N-n-not as good as mine,’ he says and I tell him the story of the chimps from the TV commercial that used to live here. The longest running TV advertising campaign ever. The chimps dressed as a family, lips quivering in mimicry of speech along with the voiceover.

  ‘H-h-how long was it on telly for?’ he asks.

  ‘40 years.’

  He thinks for a while, then says,

  ‘That’s older than me?’

  ‘Older than me,’ I reply, ignoring Sally saying, only just.

  He studies the picture again for a while.

  ‘Was it always the same m-m-monkeys?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I say, ‘I think they just used ones that looked the same.’

  Sadness clouds his face.

  ‘Do monkeys d-d-d-die?’ he asks.

  ‘Everything dies eventually darling,’ says Sally, picking him up and kissing his face until he giggles, dead monkeys forgotten.

  My reflection in the glass as I look into dark chimp eyes, at a foot hanging over the edge of a hammock, the swirl of fingerprints, calloused and grey, a lip curled over human teeth. It picks at its nose and the gesture is familiar. The blink of an eye and in it I can see recognition, understanding, empathy.

  Harry shows me the sign language for chimp.

  He calls at the chimp, calls its name at the glass until the chimp turns to look at my son and Harry is screaming, ‘It heard me, Daddy it heard me, it knows its name,’ his stutter lost in hysteria. The chimp jumps from the hammock, crosses the floor and cuddles up to another chimp, stroking its face.

  Later we sit on a bench with a plaque dedicating it to a dead girl and wait for a leopard that never shows.

  I suggest a drink, but Harry won’t leave until he sees the leopard, so I make my way across the park on my own, leaning into the wind, spots of rain flecking my face.

  The trees bend down to touch the ground. On a bench under their swaying canopy a small boy sobs into his hands. I walk past. Then go back. He is only wearing a t-shirt and shorts, sandals on his feet.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I ask, squatting down on my haunches in front of him.

  Black hands are pressed against his face. He has short, tightly curled hair, soaking wet.

  ‘Where are your parents?’

  Behind his hands the sobbing becomes wailing. I reach out for him, try to peel his fingers away. He screams, jumps away from me, cowers against the arm of the bench and shouts something at me in a language I don’t understand. I reach out for him again. He pushes himself into the wooden back of the bench, climbs it, feet scrabbling.

  ‘It’s okay, it’s okay. Can you tell me where your parents are?’

  Yellow eyes filled with terror.

  Then he is up on his feet and running away into the bushes lining the path. It takes me a second to react and then I am chasing after him, shouting at him to slow down, that I want to help. The branches push back against me, the top of one springing back and cutting my face. I reach a tall metal fence and he is nowhere, all I can hear is the wind bullying the trees, the branches ricocheting off each other and the rain lashing down.

  I scramble back onto the path. Search about for an employee, but can’t find one and when I return to my family I am shaking.

  ‘What happened to you?’ asks Sally.

  I tell her about the boy.‘Did you tell anyone?’

  ‘I tried,’ I say, ‘I tried, but couldn’t find anyone.’

  She grasps Harry’s hand and leads us through the deluge to the information desk where I splutter out a description of the boy. The attendant copies my words onto the back of a paper bag and repeats them into a crackling radio.

  In the cafeteria I cradle a cup of over-sweet tea and listen to Harry chatter about painting chimps.

  The rain increases, turning the paths into streams and we run splashing to the Gorilla house, Harry leaping from puddle to puddle, the wind pushing us about like chess pieces, where I press my hand against a bronze cast of a Gorilla’s hand and a Silverback prowls around in front of us.

  The car park is nearly empty, most people having left as the weather worsened.

  Harry sleeps in the car on the way home and Sally stares out of the window. I drive home in a daze, gusts of wind smashing into the car so hard I have to grip the steering wheel tight to stop us meandering across lanes. I think of the boy running through the bushes, his yellow eyes and bare feet and haunting screams.

  In the night I reach for Sally and this time she responds, never opening her eyes and we have familiar, mechanical sex and I force myself into her harder and harder and her nails scratch at my shoulders until I collapse off her and she rolls away from me. It’s so dark I can’t tell if my eyes are open or closed.

  31.

  The order goes: The Cowboy, The Knight, The Pirate, then The Soldier. That’s all of The Figur
ines and then it’s The Animals.

  The Animals break down like this: The Lion is the first of them. This needs no explanation. He is the king of the beasts, the master of the savannah, the top predator. But even he is below The Figurines; because on the seventh day God blessed us with the recognition that we were superior to the animals. But there is a disconnect, a gap between The Figurines and The Animals. It occurs to me that here is the gap. The missing piece. I can remember nothing being there in its place though. As far as I can remember it has always been The Soldier then The Lion. I try and imagine something else, but I draw only blanks and my memory always arranges them like this: The Cowboy, The Knight, The Pirate, The Soldier, The Lion, then The Animals. The logic seems right. The order seems right. The nagging feeling is just that. Like leaving your home convinced you left the iron on, or having to go back to check the front door is locked. It has to be an illusion. So I push it down.

  So, the order goes: The Cowboy, The Knight, The Pirate, The Soldier, then The Lion, his mane a proud quiff, brushed up and to the side like that of a sixties rocker.

  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.

  Daniel was snatched from his den and Hercules stole his pelt.

  He is bravery. He is stoicism. He is the messianic figure in an imaginary world through a wardrobe. He is the roaring introduction to a film and he is Born Free.

  He is a star sign that represents leadership, confidence and creativity.

  But he is also hunted, killed, traded and penned back.

  Beneath The Lion it is more difficult, they are much of a muchness, the categorisation is looser and less sure. So here I push them aside and think of other things.

  The fifteen minute checks are grinding me down. I try to hide from them. Avoid the concerned gazes and the earnest head nods when I tell them I am fine.