by Peter Høeg
nine
As a child Madelene had been dragged along, by people who thought they were doing a good deed, to Copenhagen Zoo. There she had seen ospreys in budgerigar cages, beasts of prey in menagerie box stalls, hippos in tiled bathrooms and anthropoid apes that flung first their excrement and then themselves against the bars surrounding them in mute protest. Since then she had never set foot inside any establishment in which animals were held captive. Now here she was, following Andrea Burden through the London Zoo, and on through a little door in the twenty-foot-high fence of wood and wire netting which had, for two years, encircled the construction work on the site overlooking Gloucester Gate. In less than two months, this site, together with the extension onto Primrose Hill and Albert Terrace, would be linked up to London Zoo for the inauguration of the New London Regent’s Park Zoological Garden.
Madelene had been prepared for the worst. She had brought along a cardboard tube which looked—and was meant to look—as though it might hold a student’s, or perhaps an architect’s, drawings—which, in a sense, it did—but which also contained a Pyrex flask filled by her on getting up that morning and now only two-thirds full. She had stepped through the door with eyes closed. Now, slowly, she opened them.
The light was golden, the shadows long and green, the air as fresh and cool as a fine spray of atomized spring water. Before them spread a grassy plain on the outskirts of which Madelene could make out a large lake with a llama grazing on its bank. In the middle of the lake was an island, on which an antelope bent to drink. Beyond the lake a forest reared up—one of the trees swayed back and forth, a group of gorillas having taken up residence in it like a flock of huge, lumbering black birds. To the west the forest ran out into a rocky outcrop atop which a pride of waking lions stretched languorously in the sunlight.
The memory Madelene had retained of the zoos of her childhood was of landscaped animal prisons. What she was confronted with here was a tropical scene, at the point where the savanna meets the jungle.
Only a distant skyline, the odd concrete barricade, a glass wall, an asphalt path betrayed the fact that the scene in front of them was man-made.
“At this hour of the day,” said Andrea Burden, “I think I know how God must have felt walking through the Garden on the morning of the sixth day.”
Madelene made a vain attempt to recall the chronology of the Creation.
“How did he feel?” she asked.
“There’s a tranquillity to the early morning. One can think clearly. He would have been able to draw up his budget for the next day in peace and quiet.”
They sat down on a stone balustrade. At their feet the ground plunged away to a ditch thirty feet below.
“But he didn’t have the problems we’ve had with private landownership. Or free enterprise. Just as there were no such problems in the last century when Sir Stamford Raffles founded the London Zoo, for the edification of an exclusive, blue-blooded public and with a mere handful of specimens of the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. Things are different now. The land on which London is built, the ground on which we now sit is owned by the Crown. You cannot imagine—no outsider could possibly imagine—what we have had to go through to acquire the lease to this plot of land. Until the present government came into power all negotiations were channeled through the Royal Parks Agency. Now it’s chaos. We eventually found ourselves dealing, on one side, with the Corporation of London and its representatives, the city of Westminster, the Borough of Camden, the London Boroughs’ Association, the Common Council of London. On another with the Crown Estate Paying Commission, which handles the conveyancing of Crown property. On a third with the Department of National Heritage. And on a fourth with the developers who held the contract for Albert Terrace. Not to mention the agents of those residents who had to be bought out.”
She took a deep breath.
“It’s all settled now. We won the first round, now comes the semifinal. Once we’re open, we’ll be having to compete with the safari parks, and with every tourist attraction in the city. Both for visitors and for funding. We’ll have to hold our own against six hundred zoos in the United States and Europe, eight hundred throughout the rest of the world. We will be required to keep a running record of results achieved within the fields of breeding, research and acquisitions. If we are to keep our place on the European Endangered Species Program and in the group that controls CBSG, which controls the allocation of all the most valuable wild animals in captivity and decides which zoo is to be in charge of the studbook for a particular species. We’re banking on becoming studbook keepers for ten species within the first two years. And for ten more over the next ten. We’ve got our sights set on fifteen million visitors a year. We’re budgeting fifteen million pounds for research. Two years ago we took over St. Francis Forest, for use as a breeding center. It’s going to cost us ten million pounds per annum to run that and Whipsnade together.”
Below them, in slow motion, a jaguar made its way across the rocks and down to the water and began to lap.
“Maybe you could get the animals to pay for their room and board,” said Madelene.
“That’s the name of the game if you want to create a zoo on this scale. If God were to take another crack at the Creation that couldn’t be done from scratch either. Or for the benefit of two spectators in their birthday suits. Nowadays he’d have to get out there and raise the money first. And then he’d have to drum up a mass audience. And then…”
“Then maybe he’d just drop the whole idea and leave the animals in peace,” said Madelene.
She could have kept her mouth shut. Only a week ago she would have said nothing. But behind her, on the stone balustrade, Priscilla had now perched herself. The jaguar alone had noticed and gazed intently at this third party to the conversation.
Andrea Burden stood up and closed in, making those small, slithery, semicircular movements that Madelene had learned to recognize.
“So she loves freedom, does she?” she said. “She loves the wide-open spaces. The true, the paradisiacal world of nature. The one she heard stories about as a child. So she could cope with the storybooks at home, then? And if not, no doubt there were always the cartoons.”
She pointed at the jaguar.
“Do you know what lies in store for that in the swamp forests of western Brazil? Do you know what fate awaits those big cats? Those and all other wild animals? They’re destined for the kind of suffering that can only be conceived of in statistical terms. Three out of four cubs die in infancy. Of those that survive the first year, one in two will reach sexual maturity, the others will perish. One in eight will go so far as to mate. Seldom more than once. After that they die of hunger. Or thirst. If they’re not eaten by other jaguars. Or gored by warthogs, after which the wound becomes infected and infested with maggots that crawl up through the musculature and attack the brain, after which…”
“Stop,” said Madelene.
“God knew nothing of this back then on the sixth morning, when he still believed that everything was just perfect. But eventually it must have dawned on him—like most behavioral scientists, he was probably a bit slow on the uptake—that what he had actually created was a factory for the manufacture of suffering. That the whole point of the jaguar is that by pushing itself to the breaking point it should be subjected to a certain number of afflictions which will keep it alive just long enough for it to mate.”
“Well, at least it has a taste of love before it dies,” Madelene said.
Andrea Burden drew her lips back from her teeth in a smile of sorts.
“You bet your life it does,” she said. “And let me tell you how. You see, the jaguar goes through its life alone. Then one day it picks up a scent and follows it, driven by an innate biological urge it cannot understand. It follows this scent and all of a sudden it comes face to face with another big cat. It does not see it as a reflection of itself, because it has no concept of self. It sees it as a mortal threat. It wants to run—both animals
want to run—but they cannot. They are pinned to the spot by a set of genetic stocks. She turns her back to him, prostrates herself, he jumps on top of her and digs his teeth into her neck. And do you know why? A sign of passion, perhaps? Of love? I’ll tell you why. It is for a reason so glaringly obvious that even the zoologists could not miss it. It is because, if he did not hold her down, the female—terrified out of her wits—would turn on him and kill him. Then he couples with her. And just as he pulls out of her, just as he relinquishes his grip, all she-jaguars, all she-cheetahs, all she-tigers, all she-cats the world over make the same instinctive move. And do you know what that is? Do you know how they show their appreciation for this coupling? They stretch back their necks and swivel their heads around. And then they try to see whether they can get away with ripping his carotid arteries with their eyeteeth.”
The two women circled around one another. The jaguar and Priscilla followed them with their eyes.
“None of you ever asked a jaguar,” said Madelene. “It is quite possible to look as though you’re suffering even when you’re enjoying yourself.”
“Every he-cat’s penis is equipped with a number of barbs. As it withdraws, these barbs tear into the she-cat’s flesh. The pain of this triggers ovulation. And that—through pain—is how nature guarantees the greatest possible likelihood of fertilization and the continuation of the species.”
Madelene looked away.
“Even so,” she said, “no one can know … how…”
Andrea Burden leaned on the balustrade and looked at the jaguar. Her face shone with the utter fulfillment of a mother watching her child.
“It is my firm belief,” she said, “that the best zoos can provide animals with almost everything that nature could. Food, light, the right breeding conditions. While also to some extent lessening their suffering.”
Priscilla motioned to Madelene.
“And the ape?” she said.
Andrea Burden did not answer her directly.
“Until a few years ago,” she said slowly, “the polar bear enclosure was thought to be the most dangerous place in a zoo. Those thick, furry coats and brown eyes made people want to stick their hands in and scratch the animals’ backs. If they did, one swat from a paw would tear the visitor’s arm off at the elbow. I’ve been having second thoughts about that, though. The way I see it now, the most dangerous enclosures are … those ones over there.”
Madelene followed her gaze. Above the ape jungle, on the other side of Prince Albert Road, towered the gray silhouette of the Institute of Animal Behavioral Research.
“The academic aviary.”
She pointed up beyond Primrose Hill.
“Hampstead. Where the top-level civil servants—the decision makers—have their private residences. Right next door to the burghers of the financial world. The barnyard of political and financial power. With the most rigid pecking order in the animal kingdom. The most disproportionate relationship between body and brain size. Real peacocks throw themselves into a brief and bloody skirmish, after which they live in sly peace, with the victor as their leader. But out there there’s no end to the lunacy of it, the infighting. Over there they give to the World Wildlife Fund with the one hand and sell weapons and trees from the rain forests with the other. Over there they had revoked London Zoo’s funding and starved the place to the point where the animals were dying off in their cages. Until we embarked upon our … campaign. It is the members of these worthy bodies who will decide who is to be the new director, when London’s two zoological gardens become one in two months from now.”
Andrea Burden paused. Somewhere a bird screeched—a harsh, abrupt, primeval cry.
“This is going to be one of the most powerful posts in the zoological world. And I’ve made up my mind that they should appoint your husband to it. The ape will clinch his appointment. It will bring the last of the skeptics into the fold. You see, it’s not enough that Adam is smarter than all of the others put together. Not enough that he has written forty papers and three books in five languages. Applications will be sent in from every corner of the globe. The ballot will be secret and thoroughly corrupt. But if he has a three-week start on the others, alone with the ape, no one else will be able to touch him. That is why it’s being kept at your place. Under conditions that are in every way warrantable. And why we’ve strayed, very slightly, from the terms of the Convention. To ensure that much greater respect for it in the future.”
“Adam says it’s some kind of dwarf chimpanzee,” said Madelene. “What do you think?”
Andrea Burden hesitated for a second.
“I’m not a zoologist,” she said.
She took Madelene’s arm and pulled her along. Madelene halted. Someone—herself or Priscilla—reached out a hand and grabbed the other woman by the arm.
“Why Adam?”
Andrea Burden tried to extricate herself. But via Madelene’s hand Priscilla hung on to her arm with a grip accustomed to manhandling butcher’s hooks and thousand-pound beef carcasses.
“Adam,” said Madelene, “likes animals because … because they can’t do him any harm. Because he’s superior to them. But he doesn’t trust them. He doesn’t trust any living creature. Not even me.”
A third woman had joined Madelene and Priscilla, invisible and as yet nameless, but quite distinct from Madelene herself. A person of a certain straightforward integrity. It was she who now spoke.
“Even at those times when we’re really close, when you think that now everything is going to be different, he never lets go. He’s afraid … that I’m going to turn my head around and rip his carotid arteries. And now it’s worse than ever. It has something to do with the ape. He’s very frightened. Very dangerous.”
Andrea Burden lifted a face that was, for an instant, naked.
“Boarding schools,” she said. “You’re packed off to school somewhere between the ages of four and ten. That’s quite usual for our class. It’s considered to give one the best possible start in life. Sport, art and literature, four foreign languages. Courses on running a gracious establishment and household accounts for us girls. You get everything. Except love. For ten years. After that it’s too late. For the rest of your life you’re like a soldier at the front. Covering your back. Because no one else is going to. Like in Churchill’s memoirs. The letter from Afghanistan. To his mother. In the break in his account of how they destroyed the irrigation network. About his time at Sandhurst. Where he calls himself a stunted tree. He didn’t have the courage to say it straight out. That’s why you make the choice not to have children. Because you know what they would have to go through.”
The two women enjoyed a split second of intimacy, as people do when they stop insisting on their own private masks, if only for a moment. Then Andrea Burden shrugged off this weakness.
“You’re a foreigner,” she said. “You’ll never understand. But, no matter what, Adam is a lion. He has style, ambition and the knack for dealing with the ministries, the boards of directors and the university. He has the capability to run the zoo without any internal wrangling. He knows how to cut the outside opposition down to size. He’s tamed the environmentalists, the local action groups and the Royal Institute of British Architects. We have to respect him for that. You and I both.”
“I’m married to him,” said Madelene. “And a marriage is not a zoo.”
The two women looked one another in the eye. Under different circumstances Madelene would have dropped her gaze. But that was before she had tried looking into the eyes of Erasmus the ape. And so it was Andrea who was forced to look away.
They had reached the door in the fence. They stepped back into London Zoo. The gardens were open, the first punters of the day had shown up.
“I’m going to stay here for a little while,” said Madelene. “See if I can pick up what was running through God’s head later on that day.”
Andrea Burden stood still.
“What you said … about going to the papers…?” she said.<
br />
Like all she-animals, Madelene cherished a powerful desire for everything to end well, for every leave-taking to be uncomplicated and warm and wistful. This one too looked set to go that way; Madelene was prepared for a reconciliation. But at her back were two other women and it was up to her to answer for all of them.
“It’s been postponed,” she said. “Indefinitely. But it hasn’t been canceled.”
* * *
Once alone she made her way through the Zoo until she came to a telephone booth. She sat herself down on the balustrade surrounding the enclosure that housed the anteaters, viscachas and guanacos, pulled out her flask, saluted the animals and took a swig. She looked up at the Institute windows and tried to pinpoint Adam’s office.
She knew there was no time to lose. That she was in much the same situation as Eve would have been in the Garden of Eden if, as soon as she herself had been created, she had discovered that God was about to go too far and decided to stop him. She would have been every bit as bewildered and overtaxed as Madelene was now. Because whatever it was that Andrea and Adam were putting together it was close to completion.
She walked over to the telephone booth. Dialed the number for the direct line to his front office.
The secretary made herself known.
“It’s me,” said Madelene. “Is he there?”
“I’ll put you through.”
Madelene glanced up at the gray edifice. Her head spun. She had been so sure he would not be there, that today too he would have stayed at home, in the garden room.
“Yes?”
“It’s me,” said Madelene.
Even without being all that well acquainted with the secretary Madelene knew for a fact that she was listening in. The alcohol and the early hour made her voice rasp like gravel on the seashore. Beneath this surface racket Adam recognized his wife’s voice. The voice his secretary heard was that of Priscilla from the Meat Market.
