The Midnight Zoo

by Sonya Hartnett

  “I can’t,” her father answered. “I must stay with the zoo. The animals need me.” And this was a truth Alice recognized, she who had been raised alongside the animals and knew better than anyone how deeply they needed somebody to care about them. There was no time to lose — dawn had already given way to day, and news of the train wreck was riding the breeze to reach the ears of the Leader — but while her father packed her bag Alice shielded her face with a cloak and ran through streets she’d known all her life, through a neighborhood that had seen her grow from a child to a woman, through a town that was her center of the world; and went to the zoo.

  She walked the perimeter of the cages, skimming her fingers along the bars. She whispered to the creatures that lived behind them, as well as to the ones who had once been and were gone and lived only in her memory. Her life would be different from now on, frightening and exhilarating, reticent and precarious, and Alice felt ready to face it only because she’d lived beside animals who longed for such fierce existences. Time was ticking, and she needed to hurry. Reaching the pebbled path beside the eagle’s cage, she turned for a final look. The kangaroo was watching her, trembling in the cold. There was no minute to spare for running her hand over its scratchy gray face. “I have to leave.” Alice spoke to all of them. “But I’ll come back to you, I promise. Tata will stay, and care for you while I’m gone. But I will come back.”

  “And has she come back?” asked Tomas.

  “She has not,” replied the wolf. “The moon has grown big and small and big again, but she hasn’t returned.”

  “Lovely Alice,” sighed the llama. “Everything is wrong since Alice went away.”

  “Where has she gone?” puzzled the kangaroo.

  “She’s forgotten us,” said the unhappy bear.

  “She hasn’t forgotten us!” bleated the chamois. “She was our daughter too! She was the daughter of the zoo. She won’t forget us. She’ll come back as soon as she can.”

  “She promised she would,” said the llama, “and she will.”

  And Andrej heard it again then, Alice Alice Alice, like a leaf skittering on the wind. He was well acquainted with the kind of mountains into which the girl had fled. He wondered what she, someone accustomed to comfort, would make of the rugged ground, the chalk-white stone, the trees that were stern and ungiving. He thought of his uncle Marin, who had taught Andrej the tricks of surviving in those harsh ranges. Alice would need the help of somebody like Marin, who knew about fire and shelter. Andrej tried to hear if Marin Marin Marin was wafting around him like a leaf: but the wolf had risen and was speaking again, and Andrej looked up to listen.

  “The morning after Alice went away, the village Mayor came to the zoo. He cast a wide shadow and smelled of fat and hide. He stood on the grass where you two pups are sitting now. He talked to the zoo’s owner. He said, I have learned a lot in the past night and day, Mikael. I know that your daughter, Alice, concocted the plan to destroy the train. I’m sure she meant well, as children in their escapades always do. But what she did has made the village look bad in the eyes of the Leader, and that’s an unfortunate way to look, don’t you agree? A vulnerable way to look, Mikael. We must do something to prove to the Leader that we regret what happened to his dear good friend, and that we sympathize with his loss. A gift to illustrate our apologies. Something to assure him we’ll behave ourselves from now on.”

  The bear gave a groan, the sound of a log toppling in a fireplace. The llama too was bothered, lifting its feet fretfully. “I don’t like this story,” it whimpered.

  “Be quiet!” barked the chamois. “Let it be told!”

  “Alice,” piped the kangaroo.

  The wolf ignored them, its oak-colored eyes on the children. “The zoo’s owner thought that a gift was a good idea, but he asked the Mayor, What can we do? We’re only a humble village. We don’t have anything that might console a man like our enemy’s leader — a man who wants nothing less than to own the entire world.”

  The lioness’s tail gave a sudden violent lashing, like an asp lunging out of a basket. “Wolf!” growled the bear, and the llama balked skittishly and made a frightened noise. The wolf glanced up, hesitating for a heartbeat before carrying on with the story. “The Mayor smiled at the zoo’s owner and replied, No, Mikael, that’s where you are wrong. We have something rare and precious of which our enemy’s leader is very fond. Apparently he likes animals, dogs and pigeons and horses, and of course all magnificent and exotic wild things. I don’t suppose a man as preoccupied as the Leader has time for visiting zoos, however — do you? So maybe we should send a piece of our zoo to him. Make the Leader a gift of your finest beasts, Mikael, and hopefully his fury will be soothed. And maybe, in doing so, you can make some small amends for the danger that your daughter has brought to our door.”

  “Oh no.” Tomas looked around for help. “No, that’s not fair . . .”

  “Not fair!” The wolf was amused. “The zoo’s owner thought so too. He bristled like a terrier. A terrier with no teeth and no bark. He said nothing.”

  “What could he say?” snarled the bear. “What choice did he have?”

  “Tell the story!” screamed the chamois.

  The wolf flexed its claws against the stone. “The zoo’s owner said nothing. Perhaps because there was nothing to say. A cage door was opened, and something was done to console the Leader.”

  “Something terrible was done,” whispered the llama.

  The kangaroo echoed, in its odd static voice, “Something terrible was done.”

  “Was it the boar’s cage that was opened?” asked Andrej, for they’d seen and heard nothing of that animal and it was starting to seem ominous, the square of shifting blackness labeled KANEC, from which no sound escaped. “Did the boar go to the Leader?”

  “The boar?” The wolf snorted. “Do you really think a pig would impress the commander of a great ocean of army? No, it wasn’t the boar. They opened up the lions’ cage and brought out the lion and the three infant cubs.”

  The brothers stared into the moonlit haze, seeing the wolf’s words take the shape of a key in a padlock, a lion on a leash, cubs clawing and wriggling to be freed. Their gaze slid to the lioness, who had not risen from the ground. Whose tail lay lank and seemed hardly alive. “That terrible thing,” murmured the kangaroo.

  “That afternoon, the lion and his mewling cubs were coaxed into wooden crates; and the crates were loaded onto a truck; and the truck was driven away. We have not seen them since. The zoo’s owner traveled in the truck with the lions, to tend them during their journey. He gave us food and water before he went, enough for several days. We believe he meant to return — Alice told us he was staying here, to take care of the zoo. But the moon has bloomed and died and bloomed again, and he hasn’t returned in all that time: we haven’t seen him since.”

  No one said anything. In its dark and shielded corner, the eagle shook its wings. Eventually Andrej said, “But the village is destroyed.”

  “That is so.”

  “Why? If the Leader has the lions, why is the village destroyed?”

  The wolf blinked languidly, settling down on thin haunches. “A lion and three cubs couldn’t console the Leader any more than a boar could, that’s why. The Mayor was a fool to imagine they would. A whole pride of lions couldn’t have done so. Only revenge could do that thing. Revenge, and the teaching of a lesson to any other village that was thinking about resisting the invasion. The first bomb fell the morning after the lions went away. Another and another bomb, and more after that, until the village was in pieces, and all the people gone. Since that time, the village has been silent. I don’t think even a mouse lives there now. Nothing remains but dust and stone and this story. Even so, the invaders drop more bombs sometimes, to make sure the rubble is repentant too.”

  The brothers plucked the ashy tips of the grass while they thought over all they’d heard: over the disastrous attack on the cargo train and the loss of the zoo’s daughter, Alice; over t
he disappearance of the lions and the owner of the zoo; over the unforgiving bombings that had destroyed the village and cast out its blameless people. They thought of the weeks that the animals had spent trapped in their cages, surviving on rain and dew and whatever moths and petals and scraps of weed happened to blow in through the bars. “Everyone is gone.” Tomas examined the facts, a frown printing creases on his brow. “Everything is ended, and everyone is gone, except for the animals in the zoo. You’re still here, because you can’t leave. And nobody stayed behind to care about you.”

  “That is so,” the wolf replied.

  Andrej’s heart felt unbearably heavy. He looked at his small grimy brother, whose hair fell in his face and who needed a bath and a new set of clothes; he looked at the lioness, whose massive chiseled head rested leadenly on her paws. Wilma, on the bench, was making no noise, and even the wolf seemed finally quietened. “We have some food,” Andrej heard himself say. “There won’t be much to go around, but it’s better than nothing.”

  Tomas caught his breath, delighted. The animals stood to watch as he upended Andrej’s pack across the lawn. Into the grass tumbled their treasures — a torn comic, a set of playing cards, a blue cap, a brass bullet, a pair of aviator goggles with a stretched and broken head strap. Out fell candles and cutlery and a can opener, matches, a flashlight, and the corkscrew Andrej had found in the village. Out clattered plates and bowls and dented mugs made of tin. Out came their money, secreted like a sardine; out came all the tradable goods Andrej had taken from the caravans — carving tools and razor blades, jewelry in silver and leather — which always made Tomas’s chest hurt to see. Out bounced a rock of cheese and a bruised apple, and two dinner rolls speckled with mold. Out dropped a chunk of liverwurst and an almost-complete packet of biscuits. Out rolled Wilma’s priceless pot of lemon butter, and a matching but full pot of jam. Tomas stood all these aside, shook the bag and peered inside it, and plunged in an investigating arm. From the bottom of the pack he drew the prize of their scavengings, a fragrant lump wrapped in a tea towel: for an instant he hesitated, and glanced at Andrej, who, though he knew how it would feel the next day when there was nothing to eat, nodded and said, “That too.” So Tomas set the lump on the ground and unwrapped the tea towel to reveal a chewed ham bone, the smell of which made the wolf groan. The assembled food appeared a scanty feast for the voracious inhabitants of a zoo, yet Tomas sat back smiling, bountiful and proud.

  “I will have the apple,” the llama decided.

  “Jam!” The monkey yelled as if volted. “Jam, jam!”

  “I am partial to lichen,” announced the chamois, “but of course one is willing to eat bread.”

  Andrej looked over his shoulder at the bear, who lay so heaped and dejected. “What would you like?”

  “Nothing.” The bear closed its eyes. “Not hungry.”

  “Good!” said the llama. “More for us.”

  “Pointless anyway,” the chamois said shortly. “A bear has a tremendous appetite. They can eat until their stomachs drag on the ground. A bit of biscuit would be like a snowflake on a mountain, to a bear.”

  The wolf cocked its ears. “You must be hungry. If you were out in the forest, you’d be fattening up for winter. You’d be hungry enough to eat an elk.”

  “Or a chamois,” hissed the monkey.

  The chamois clattered to the front of its pen and bawled, “I’ve warned you before, you ridiculous chimp! There is nothing amusing about saying such things! We are all in this together! We’re all hungry, we’re all thirsty, we’re all locked behind the same bars! This is neither the place nor the time for jokes about eating each other! It’s not clever. It changes nothing. And it’s utterly disrespectful to my feelings! It’s uncalled for, do you understand?”

  The wolf said, “You’re only saying that because you’re so edible.”

  The monkey sprang through the ropes and turned somersaults, screeching with amusement. Infuriated, the chamois lowered its head and charged. Its hooked horns struck the iron bars with a gong that reverberated hugely against the still air; immediately it reared back, fixed its target, and attacked the bars again. The eagle, alarmed, launched from its perch and flung clumsily around its pen, screaming metallically. The lioness joined in with chuffing roars. The wolf, sprinting the length of its cage, let out several excited yips before raising its white chin to howl.

  The din was chaotic. Wilma, woken in confusion, took a huge breath and contributed to the pandemonium some bloodcurdling shrieks of her own. Tomas clamped his hands to his ears and yelled, “What’s happening?”

  “The food has sent them mad!” shouted the llama. “They are uncivilized!”

  The ruckus was so horrendous that Tomas imagined the pilots in the three long-gone airplanes hearing the uproar and flying back to investigate. Quickly he scooped the bread, jam and liverwurst into his shirtfront and scuttled across the grass. Twisting the lid from the jam, he offered the jar to the monkey, who abruptly stopped screeching, snatched the condiment through the bars, and leapt away with it into a corner. Spinning on his heels Tomas ran back over the grass, past the bench and the marble mermaid to the chamois’s pen. He bowled the bread rolls between the bars and the chamois danced backward as the food bopped toward it, eyes boggling and heavy horns brandished. Tomas approached the wolf’s cage more tentatively, proffering the liverwurst. “Don’t bite me,” he begged, reaching hastily into the cage. The wolf cut short its howl and glared at him, but did not dart forward to bite. Their choir silenced, the eagle and lioness fell mute; the lioness padded listlessly to the rear of her enclosure, and the eagle shrugged shut its great wings.

  Which left only the sound of Wilma, wailing anxiously. Andrej picked her up and found her bottle and tried to interest her in the creamy dregs, but his effort to distract her seemed only to further offend: threads of milk ran untasted across her tongue as she roared out her fear and upset. The bear watched her arch in her brother’s arms and kick against the bonds of the shawl, her face a knot of scorched flesh. For the first time all night it raised itself up on its lumberlike legs, a fog of brown hairs drifting from it, its paws making a rough sound on the stone. Its solemn gaze roved its restive companions before returning to Andrej. “Forgive them,” it sighed. “They sit here every day with nothing to do and nothing to see. Their minds are getting misty. Soon they’ll all be as lost as the seal.”

  Andrej put his squalling sister on his shoulder and walked around joggling her. The big moon was still shining above them, radiating its sugary light onto the earth. Perhaps the only corner where its white beams didn’t reach was inside the wild boar’s enclosure. Andrej turned away from that maw of blackness, and carried Wilma across to the seal’s cage.

  The shiny streak of animal was sweeping up and down the length of its pool exactly as it had been doing when the children first saw it. Its pace, which was swift, was also unaltering, nor did its ceaseless circuit veer even slightly from its invisible track. Somehow it was propelling itself through the water, although Andrej saw no movement of flipper or tail. The seal seemed nothing more than a shadowy shape that had taken on a relentless life and a strange, perpetual mission. Over Wilma’s sobbing Andrej asked the bear, “Is this all it does? Just swim back and forth?”

  “What else should it do?” said the bear.

  Patting the baby between her small shoulders, Andrej watched the sea creature flip and glide. Its seamless looping was hypnotic. The ripples it made on the greasy surface of the water were perfectly identical and flawlessly rhythmical, like the beat of an army drum. They lapped the stone edges of the pool and fell back with the most meager splash. The longer Andrej’s gaze followed the animal up and down the pool, the more forcefully he felt the creature’s trapped misery. “Poor thing,” he said. “They should have left it in the ocean. In the ocean, it would never have bumped into a wall.”

  “It has never swum in the ocean,” the bear replied. “Somewhere far away there’s a place where the rocks are frozen and
sprinkled with snow and the ocean beats the rocks as if it’s trying to crack them like coconuts — I’m not saying this place exists, this is only what I’ve heard; I’m telling you the story as I heard the zoo’s owner tell it, so don’t ask me to explain — and that’s where the seal was born. When it wasn’t much older than that cub in your arms, a boatload of fishermen came to the shore where the seal pup was sleeping beside its mother. The fishermen were hungry, so they ate the seal’s mother. I’ve never eaten seal meat but I imagine it’s salty. Salty, and without bones. They should have finished off the young one too, but it had soft eyes and a fluffy trusting face, and they couldn’t bring themselves to do it . . . but it was a motherless infant now, and out of kindness they couldn’t leave it to suffer. Instead of killing it, they decided to make money from it. I’m not surprised, I’ve seen how much humans love money, how they snuffle around squawking in the grass when they drop the tiniest coin. Anyway, the fishermen took the pup in the boat with them, and whenever they arrived at a port they charged women and children a few coins to pet it.”

  Wilma’s cries were simmering down; Andrej cuddled and cooed to her while he contemplated the seal. He had visited countless circuses and sideshows with their garish tents, frisky ponies, cracking whips, shouting spruikers. It wouldn’t have been like that for the seal: he saw dingy corners of pubs and piers, babbling voices, grabbing hands.

  “Nothing alive stays an infant forever,” continued the bear. “Some behave as if they have, but the fact is that they haven’t, and they should take a good hard look at themselves. Soon the pup was growing. The fishermen taught it tricks — to beg, to balance a ball, to bark on command — but it was always hungry and needing attention, and eventually the fishermen decided they liked living without their pet more than living with it. Trained and tamed as it was, it would have been a waste to eat it; so they sold it to a man who said he had use for a seal, and this man lost it in a bet to another, who gave it to a man who planned to make a name for himself by writing the world’s longest book about seals, who lost it when all his worldly possessions were taken by the debt collector, for whom everything has a price. The debt collector spread the word that he had a seal for sale. And because the penguin who’d been living in that pool had grown huge and died after gorging on pastries and boiled sweets all its life, the owner of the zoo bought the seal to fill the empty cage, and put a sign on the bars saying Don’t feed the seal.”