The Zoo Read online

  51.

  I’m somewhere on New Walk on the phone to our media planners when I see the graffiti. The campaign is pretty much complete and we’re in the process of booking everything.

  I’m saying something like, ‘We need to up the opportunity to hear. At least for the first month. We want heavy rotation initially. I want the campaign to be everywhere so everyone can get used to the change in direction.’

  On the other end of the line Leary is saying, ‘We might need to increase the spend then. If we want to cover as many stations as you’re suggesting and get such high rotation we need to spend more money or something is going to give.’

  When I see it I stop talking and it takes me a minute to compose myself and realise that Leary is waiting for me to say something.

  ‘I’m going to have to call you back,’ I say eventually.

  The words: pink text, each letter about a foot high. A sensation that I’m being watched causes me to involuntarily look about, as if I’ve overheard my name mentioned in conversation, but not heard the context.

  Your eyes are made of such fine dust.

  There’s no doubt that it’s directed to me. That much is immediately clear. I’m not even sure that anyone else can see it.

  There’s no doubt that the words are mine. The urge to ask them ’Are you for me?’ is so strong that I have to clamp my hand over my mouth to stop myself from doing it.

  What does it mean though? It’s as if someone has left me a cryptic clue to work out and I’m missing the codex to start me on my way. I puzzle at it. The world closes in around it, like I’m looking at it down a microscope.

  I take each word in my mouth and roll it around. Get the taste of it. Digest it.

  Then I sit down cross-legged on the pavement in front of it and gaze at it until the words swim out of focus and I can’t even see the shapes of them.

  I get to the office late.

  Ruth hands me a stack of mail. I put it down on the front desk with no intention of looking at it. She picks it back up, lifts my arm like a chicken wing, tucks the mail into my armpit, then drops my arm down and pats my bicep.

  ‘There, there,’ she says, ‘be a good boy.’

  I’m walking away when I remember I wanted to ask her to get something for Harry. Get him something to say sorry. Both him and Sally have been avoiding seeing or talking to me. When I tried to kiss him goodbye this morning he flinched, screwed his eyes up and pulled away from me.

  Taking a twenty pound note out of my wallet I go back to the front desk. Just before I hand it to Ruth I spot the crust of blood along the edge of the note and swap it for a clean one.

  ‘Are you going into town at lunch?’

  Distrust skitters across her face. Then a forced smile.

  ‘Why?’ She draws the word out. Whhhhhhhyyyyyyyy?

  ‘Can you nip by Dominos and pick something up for Harry for me?’ I am sweetness and light.

  ‘Oh yes. Of course I can. I thought you were going to ask me to do something for Hilary. Pick up a suit or something. But I’d love to get something for Harry. Anything in particular?’

  She puts the note into her purse and closes the clasp with a clunk. I consider it for a moment. I hadn’t got as far as actually choosing, just knew there had to be a something.

  ‘I dunno. Something to do with animals maybe? He loves animals at the moment.’

  ‘Okay, no problem. Something to do with animals.’

  As I head towards my office I can hear her repeating it, with animals, with animals. Changing the inflection on it each time so it becomes a question, then a statement, then a question.

  My hands are shaking from withdrawal. At my desk I squeeze them shut, nails biting into my palms, trying to still them. I sit on them. Nothing works. Eventually I close the door to my office. Take the vodka from the shelf and gulp down a mouthful. It burns and I have to hold my quivering hand over my mouth to stop myself from spitting it back out. When it is gone, when I can feel it burning its insidious way down my throat I collapse into my chair and press my fingertips into my eyelids until the world is made up of explosions and stars.

  Sometime later I turn on my iPad, load up the BBC news app, skim through the sports, through the local news and then stop at the international news.

  Nhgosa. A video of the rebel army leader, all military bravado, medals, peaked cap and great coat, sweltering in the African heat. He’s on the back of a flatbed truck, waving and leaning down to shake hands with people. A flock of children chasing after the truck, like seagulls after a fishing boat.

  I press play on the video.

  He talks in a deep booming voice in accented English. He is on a balcony. There are bullet marks in the wall behind him.

  I’m zoning in and out. It’s like someone is un-focusing the camera.

  He talks about freeing the country from the yoke of capitalist imperialism, about freeing the resources of the country for the people.

  The camera cuts to the crowd. Smiling faces. Cheering and clapping.

  He waves at them again.

  The armed guards either side of him let a volley of gunshots into the air.

  The crowd disperses.

  The video cuts to the mines, to the children working in mud, pulling ore out with their hands.

  I click on one of the related videos. A woman faces the camera, speaking to a journalist who is just out of view of the camera. A translator talks between them. The woman holds her arms up. Both of her hands are missing, the arms ending in shiny stumps.

  The journalist is saying, ‘Can you explain what happened to you?’

  The translator chatters. The woman nods. Big, sad eyes.

  ‘I understand this is hard for you, but can you tell us what happened and who did this to you?’ the journalist says.

  She looks at the translator, who turns the question to her language. She nods and then speaks slowly, looking directly at the camera, directly at me.

  ‘They came through our village in the early morning. I was asleep with my child. Men dressed in black, with guns and scarves over their faces. When I saw them I started to run, but I ran straight into a group of them. They cut my hands off and they raped me.’

  The journalist turns to the camera, and momentarily there is confusion on his face, before he composes himself.

  ‘They cut your hands off before they raped you?’

  She waits for the translator and then nods again. ‘I think so, I passed out. But I think so, yes. Then they killed my baby and burned the village.’

  The voiceover says, ‘this is just the tip of the iceberg. Rape and mutilation are being used as military weapons in this conflict. These things are done publicly as part of a strategy. This is public and unashamed. As the rebel army passes through the country they leave behind a trail of carnage on an unprecedented scale.’

  Bile rises in my throat. I take another slug of vodka and think about an invisible boy in the middle of the road.

  I spend the rest of the morning not answering emails.

  52.

  Now I know what is missing, and consequently what The Zoo wants, I can hold it at bay. I’m trying to suppress the idea that power has shifted, because I’ve thought this before and it’s hurt me. If I avoid Beth, if I look for The Ape, if I show it that I’m working for it, I can play for time. I can hold it at arm’s length.

  In the day room daytime TV and medication are lulling me. I rock back and forth. Around me the ward is slow motion and blurs. I’m trying to focus thinking of places The Ape could be. Earlier I searched the cupboards of the kitchen. Behind the guise of tidying them I removed all the crockery then emptied the drawers. I searched the fridge, despite Beaker standing over me to ensure I wasn’t stealing his food.

  I feel The Zoo over me. It chides me for sitting still, for not looking for its missing component. I shake my head to clear away the drug cobwebs, squeeze my eyes shut then open one and observe the world through the fog.

  Where could it be?

 
; With soggy hands I empty the craft boxes. Shuffle them up. Crayons and paper and scissors and glue on the floor. I’m conscious of controlling myself, of not seeming manic. The task is more difficult because of the missing thumb on my left hand. Hard to grasp the pencils as they skitter around on the tabletop. I give up trying to lift things with it and instead use it as a shovel, pushing them along to my right hand.

  An orderly stops, watches me and then nods in approval as I stack them tidily away again. I could even get some brownie points from Janet with this.

  Not there.

  Outside, as I smoke a cigarette, I root around among crisp fallen leaves, searching the dirt for disturbances where someone could have buried him.

  Not there.

  I’m beginning to panic now. How much is due diligence? How much effort do I need to show to placate it? Do I need to search people’s rooms?

  Of course I know the answer. It’s not been lost, someone has taken it. No two ways about it. No doubt at all.

  I stub the fag out, burning the tips of my fingers on the dregs of its heat and make my way back inside. As I cross the day room I’m conscious about not looking suspicious.

  The first room I come to is The Beard. I hesitate. He’s an aggressive man. I suspect even on the outside, before he went whatever type of crazy keeps him here, that he was a slave to violent tendencies.

  With a shiver and a blip in my vision The Zoo reminds me why I’m here and my hesitation is gone.

  A quick glance left and right shows me there’s no-one in the corridor, so I push the door open and peer around the edge of it. Empty. Once inside I close the door to with a gentle click and survey the interior.

  The room is the same as mine but reversed. The beauty of the layout is that there are actually very few places you could hide anything – a desk drawer, under the bed, in the wardrobe, behind the wardrobe maybe, in the pockets of clothes and that’s about it.

  I head for the desk drawer. Empty apart from a Bible. I have an image of prison films, of books hollowed out as hiding places. But inside there are only yellowing pages with frantic pencil notes crisscrossing the text. I push the drawer closed, aware of the sound of the runners.

  Move onto the wardrobe. Nothing in the bottom apart from the omnipresent dust. He doesn’t have many clothes. Two pairs of trousers. Four identical shirts. A jumper. In the pockets I find nothing apart from a dry-cleaning receipt. As I pat the collars of a shirt I sense something in my stomach. A feeling I haven’t felt for a long while. Excitement. I’m enjoying this. It feels naughty, underhand, on the wrong side of the tracks. I allow myself a wry smile.I’m still smirking as I lift the bottles of shampoo, moisturiser and shaving cream in the bathroom, shake them in turn, listening for a tell-tale rattle of something inside, when the door to the room opens.

  I freeze. Back myself into the bathroom even further.

  There is a commotion in the corridor, the sound of people shouting. I swallow my breath. It’s like a balloon inflating in my throat. It wants to burst out.

  The Beard backs into the room. One arm stretched out in front of him fending off two orderlies, the other high above his head. If he turns to his right he’ll see me. See me invading his privacy. I flatten against the wall. No matter how hard I press my sweaty palms against the cold plaster I will never make myself flat enough. I can never make myself invisible.

  He is shouting at the orderlies. ‘Stay back. Stay back. You, you, you fucks. Stay back or I smash it. I’ll smash it to pieces.’

  It’s a radio. As he waves it above his head it tunes and untunes itself. Lou Reed’s ‘Heroin’ fights against the static. Asian Radio Lady is trying to fight her way through the wall of orderlies, her fingers snatching at the air with increasing desperation.

  ‘Give it back. Give it back.’ Her voice is high-pitched and barely human.

  My head is pounding. I have to let my breath out. I have to. My vision is a maze of spots and I’m close to passing out. The Zoo is laughing in my head. I hold my hand over my mouth and let my breath out into it, wet warmth on my skin.

  Beard is hollering, his words running into a guttural monologue. His voice is changing. Deeper. Harsher.

  ‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in Heaven. Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?” Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!”’

  He’s waving the radio above his head, feinting as if to drop it. Every time he does, both orderlies dive in the direction the radio would fall if he did drop it. He laughs and whips it out of their reach.

  All it would take is for him to turn his head and I would be discovered. One turn of the head and it would be over.

  But he doesn’t turn, instead he dances back on his toes, agile for a man of his size, and shouts, ‘By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their fruits you will know them.’

  I’m holding my breath again and out there in the room Beard is dancing with the orderlies, Asian Radio Lady mirroring him, following them, stabbing her hands towards her radio while Lou Reed is singing. Then the room is full of static again, The Zoo in my head, pressure, pressure, pressure.

  Then Beard turns, looks right at me, right fucking at me, and in his eyes there is no recognition, only the static of the radio and at the same time he launches the radio at the wall in the corridor. I hear it explode, the rainfall of parts on the floor, before the orderlies have hold of his arms, pulling him out of the room, his body limp, while Asian Radio Lady is sobbing and pummelling his back and each hollow thump reverberates in my head.

  Just as suddenly it is quiet, they’re gone, and I’m escaping down the corridor, down the corridor towards the plastic sheet, towards what The Zoo shows, and I think a half thought that The Ape may be waiting for me there, the dust kicked high by my pounding feet, then I’m through the plastic, wading through the dust, stumbling over piles of wood and bricks, in the dark, with the taste of sulphur in my mouth, towards the light, as the sulphur rises, through the hole and into the burning sunshine.

  53.

  The heat and the fence are the same, but everything else has changed. Corrugated iron buildings lean against each other in clusters about the space. Everything shimmers with the heat.

  The sky is a flat blue wasteland. I tilt my head up and rotate it, taking it all in, the sun on my face. The chaos of Beard’s room is fading as the warmth takes over.

  A maze of footprints is on the ground in front of me, a mess of trainer and boot prints. Then in the middle the unmistakable impression of a child’s foot. I kneel and trace the outline. Inside the first print is a tracing of a cowboy hat. My knees crack when I stand, I feel dizzy, despite, or maybe because of the expanse of the sky. I feel hemmed in, trapped, the fence mocks me.

  I begin to follow the footprints.

  Everything is quiet as I follow them around the huts. Inside each hut there is only blackness. I follow the prints around the edge of the enclosure. Almost the same path I took on my first visit. The sun is burning my neck, crisping the hairs there. The prints take me around the perimeter once, then again in a slightly smaller circle. I swear the inner ring of prints wasn’t there on the first circuit. They look fresher. I pick up my pace and complete the circuit.

  The sun is lower in the sky now. Thin clouds stretch across it in delicate wisps. The orange of the sun bleeds into them, then leaches out across the blue, like watercolour on wet paper.

  The prints begin the loop again. I kneel at the point they cross the first loop and look at the prints – inside the first of the second loop is a tra
cing of a sword. I’m getting annoyed now, starting to feel like someone is taking the piss out of me. It occurs to me that if I stay put then whoever is making them should come up behind me in a couple of minutes, so I turn around, sit on the floor and wait. Nothing happens. No child. No more footprints. Just me sitting in the dust under a massive African sky, knowing that I need to get to my feet and play out whatever it is that I’m supposed to do.

  So I pull myself up and set out on another circuit. This one begins with a tracing of a skull and crossbones. I want to get this over and done with, I’m not stupid, know that I will end up doing this again, getting smaller, so I begin to trot. By the time I’m back at the beginning I can touch the nearest hut if I stretch out my arm. Getting closer. Don’t need to look at the ground to know the prints begin again, but I do. Put my foot next to one of them, next to a drawing of a machine gun. The print looks so small. I can make out each toe, the light print of the heel, the heavier pressure of the front of the foot, suggesting running, so I do the same, even though I’m struggling for breath, struggling against the build-up of acid in my calves and the stabbing pains in my shins.

  Sketch of a Lion.

  Run around once more, as the light slides out of the day and the temperature drops, making the sweat dry cold on my back.

  Sketch of a Rhino. One more circuit.

  I reach the hole in the wall. The prints turn in, turn into the cluster of huts, up to a spray-painted image of a monkey on the wall, arms pointing into the seventh circle. I follow them between the buildings, which lean into me, conspiratorial, seeming to grow in height and close in above me until the darkening sky is just visible as a sliver of blue between the iron and pallets and plastic sheets.

  I’m shepherded along to a shadowy entrance at the end of an alley way.

  I am held in thrall of childhood fears. I am rooted. It takes everything I have left to step into the darkness, to duck my head under the threshold and enter the hut. Inside there is just one room with wicker mats on the floor and a pile of coloured cushions against one wall. The only light is from the door behind me and a jagged hole in the ceiling and the embers of a fire in the centre. Stepping closer I see a pan of still boiling water resting on a metal grate over the fire. Something is inside it. A glimpse of bone breaks the surface of the water. I lean closer. It’s a rat or a rodent of some kind. All the fur stripped from its body apart from the head and through the bubbles I can see two blank eyes staring up at me. Then one of them blinks. I scream, jump up, catching the pan as I do and the water spills out of it, into the fire, which hisses and extinguishes and all the light in the hut is gone.