The Midnight Zoo (2 page)

Tomas screamed and scuttled
backward, horrified.

Andrej, too, fell backward, forgetting about being brave. When a wolf is so near that one can see one’s face reflected in its eyes, there is no such thing as courage. There is only the shrieking desire to become farther away from the wolf. The brothers yelled and scrambled, fighting against the weight of their packs to push themselves to their feet, slithering in the grass and striking their elbows and all the while remembering that a boy cannot escape a wolf, not even if he runs.

Nevertheless they found their feet and bolted, over the grass and out the gate and headlong down the street in a sightless plunge, Andrej hauling Tomas by the arm and both of them trilling wild songs of fear. They tore along the cobbles, the bars of the fence going by like a solid wall, yet Andrej heard the fall of wolf feet behind him, heard the smack of fangs at his ear, and knew that running was futile, and that he must make a stand. Shoving Tomas ahead, he wheeled — and saw that the street behind was empty, that only dust galloped at their heels, that the wolf had miraculously vanished, or had never been there. Staggering, Andrej shouted, “Stop!” and Tomas halted his helter-skelter charge instantly but apprehensively, hopping and skipping, staring about with rabbit eyes. “It’s all right,” Andrej promised. “Look!”

Fixed to the fence was a sign painted with purple and yellow flowers and golden fleur-de-lis; ribbony blue letters woven between the flowers announced:
ZOOLOGICKÁ ZAHRADA.
Tomas couldn’t read, so Andrej read it for him: “It says
Zoological Garden
. It’s a zoo.”

Tomas wobbled in the middle of the road, blinking, looking from the sign to the road and back again. “Is the wolf in a cage?” he asked finally.

“It must be. It hasn’t followed us.”

Tomas remained rabbity. He knew what Andrej was going to say and he didn’t wait to hear it: “I don’t want to,” he said.

Whatever Andrej might have replied was quashed beneath a sudden and shattering screech which should have come from some frightful mythical creature but which actually burst from the depths of the sack Tomas carried on his back. Andrej’s face darkened. “Now you’ve woken Wilma!”

“Oh! I couldn’t help it!” Tomas cried.

Andrej spun his brother, untied the sack’s drawstring, and drew from its maw a bellowing wee baby wrapped in swaddling. She was bound so tightly she could scarcely move, yet her whole body emanated her outrage at the treatment she had endured, the ride on the airplane and its subsequent crash landing, the hysterical flight from the wolf. Wilma had lived most of her life in a bag slung from the shoulders of a nine-year-old boy and she was used to careless handling, but her single-note scream implied she felt they were now taking advantage of her good nature. Andrej joggled her, patted her yawing mouth, told her they were sorry and that the mayhem was at an end. “Be quiet,” he begged her, for her noise was spreading out through the night like a thin sheet of steel, edgy and reverberating; but Wilma, who had never lived a day without being cajoled into muteness, seemed determined to suffer in silence no more. Andrej clamped her to his chest and swung in waltzing circles, rasping, “Shh! Shh! Good baby!”; lifting one hand to the light he grimaced. “She’s all wet —”

“She’s always wet! She stinks!”

“She doesn’t stink!” Andrej snapped, although, just then, she did. He did not like bad things being said about his sister, though he only vaguely understood why. “She’s just a baby —”

“
You
carry her then!”

“Tom! I carry everything! You’ve only got a
baby
. . . .”

“A stinking baby,” said Tomas.

Wilma arched her spine and screamed. Her mouth was a furious butterfly with pink, opened wings. Her tongue wagged like a fish tail between naked gums. No tears leaked from her hotly scrunched eyes, but dribble oozed over her chin. She drew a breath, and howled mightily again; she did not mean to forgive. Andrej held her at arm’s length, amazed that someone so small could be so despotic. He imagined the rubble blown away by her noise, the last timbers of the village shaken to the ground. He imagined a soldier woken from his doze and wondering about the sound. “Get the lemon butter,” he told Tomas.

Tomas removed his hands from his ears to untie the drawstring of Andrej’s pack and feel about inside it, tottering on tiptoe. The pot of lemon butter was small, half empty, and infinitely precious to the boys. They did not know if babies were allowed to eat lemon butter but the sweet yellow clag was Wilma’s favorite thing, and they fed it to her sparingly so it would not lose its tranquilizing power. Andrej hooked a glossy gob onto his fingertip and shoved it into his sister’s mouth.

For a moment she continued to cry around the finger, immunized by her fury. But when the lemon butter touched the roof of her mouth, Wilma choked a little, and tasted — and closed her mouth around the knuckle, snuffling and looking tragically at Andrej, but helpless to protest any longer. The brothers stood on the road with their ragged heads almost touching, pondering the infant and her puce streaked face, feeling silence settle once more like a crane onto its bony nest. Wilma grunted, blew a bubble, closed her eyes and sighed. Tomas sighed too then, and felt very tired.

“Come into the zoo,” Andrej said eventually.

Tomas didn’t answer; he looked aside.

“The wolf is in a cage. It can’t get you. There’s grass to lie on. There’s trees. We can give Wilma a bottle, and clean her. It’s better in there than out here, on the road.”

Tomas slouched. What Andrej said was true, but Tomas knew he was only saying it because he wanted to explore the zoo. And while Tomas’s heart hitched to remember the wolf, he knew that he, too, wanted to investigate the zoo. It would be an adventure — and better than camping on the roadside with Wilma while Andrej explored alone. Tomas had never seen a zoo, but he had seen some things he never wished to see again from the sides of roads. “All right,” he agreed, starting away with a lurch. “But
you
have to clean her.”

So Andrej followed his brother back the way they had come, the broken village whispering behind him, the baby lying laxly in his arms. The horseman of the night leaned closer as the siblings passed through the zoo’s gate, and the light cast from his lunar lantern grew as radiant as its rival the sunbeams, turning the grass frost-white, icing the maple leaves peppermint, coloring the air softly pewter.

Beyond the zoo’s gate, Tomas immediately lagged; Andrej, too, slowed his step, looking cautiously all around. Side by side they crossed the lawn to the place where they’d landed as airplanes. “If the wolf is free,” Tomas muttered, “throw the baby to it.” Andrej swallowed, saying nothing: there seemed an awful sense to the idea.

But the wolf was not free. The moon was low and brilliant enough to show them what clouds and fright had earlier concealed: that thick black bars rose up to form a cage, and that the wolf was shut behind them. The animal stood motionless in the center of its pen as the children approached, its umber eyes staring, its ears raised high. It was a large wolf, bigger than any dog Andrej had ever seen, its summer coat colored clay-red and shale-gray, its legs long and knuckly, the muzzle whiskery and sharp. It was lean, its shoulder blades jutting, the pelt lying in ripples over the ribs. Its brushy sable-tipped tail hung still, giving away nothing. Andrej, gazing at it, drew a shivery breath. How close they had come to each other, he and this wolf. Near enough to touch.

Other cages curved away from the wolf’s enclosure, and doubtless they were full of interesting creatures; but Wilma was squirming against his collarbone, and Andrej’s hands were unpleasantly clammy from cradling her. He set the baby in the grass and knelt to untie her swaddling. “Whew,” gasped Tomas, “she stinks like murder!” but Andrej only pressed his lips. Uncle Marin had once told him that wolves were the cleverest of animals, and Andrej could feel the caged one listening to them. “She’s only a baby, she can’t help it,” he reminded Tomas, and the wolf. “Neither of you smells good either.” Which was an actual truth. He gathered up the soiled swaddling and buried it under a pile of leaves.

Tomas rummaged inside the packs for their sister’s many requirements; while Andrej cleaned her with hanks of grass and dried her with a scarf, Tomas uncapped a bottle of milk and pulled a teat over its rim. They’d traded ten plaited leather bracelets for the teat and bottle, the shepherd girl bargaining hard and Andrej agreeing in desperation and reluctance, knowing the deal wasn’t fair. The bottle was made for feeding lambs, and when they’d first begun using it Wilma had objected to being fed like a lamb; but she had grown accustomed now, and had possibly forgotten ever drinking as a human baby is supposed to. Having cleaned and dried his sister, Andrej shook out a rectangle of calico and folded it deftly around her bottom, securing the cloth into place with two pins. Tomas felt the usual dart of admiration when, passing the needle through the calico, his brother slipped his fingers between the baby and her diaper so any wayward pinpoint would pierce him, not her. Their mother had done this — Andrej had learned the trick from her — but Tomas didn’t believe himself brave enough to do the same. Just the thought of that biting, unpredictable pain was enough to give him the shivers. Fortunately his task was to warm the milk as best he could, by holding the bottle against his stomach and rubbing it with his hands.

Though it was the middle of summer the night was faintly cool, so Andrej selected a woolen shawl from among the rags in Tomas’s pack; pressing the baby’s limbs to her body he wrapped her up snugly, leaving only her face exposed to the air. Then he scooped the infant from the ground and placed her in Tomas’s arms; Tomas pushed the teat into his sister’s mouth before she could comment, and finally the brothers were freed to consider the wolf.

Which stood as if carved from granite, gazing back at them. It did not seem to breathe. After a moment, its black nose tipped sideways: “It smells us,” Andrej was moved to say. He knew that a wolf could detect the scent of almost anything — a snowflake fallen the previous winter, the bones of an elk dead for years — but it was strangely wonderful to know that the animal was smelling
them
. That they had crossed over into the life of this great grave beast. “I want to pat it,” Andrej realized.

“It will bite you.”

Andrej knew it: he hunkered in the tangling grass, laced his fingers between his knees. The breeze blew through the maple branches above them, pushing leaf shadows across the earth. Moonlight shone on the bars of the cages like satiny snail trails. It wove into the wolf’s mottled coat, sparkled on the tip of each hair. The wolf continued to stand like sculpture, but in the enclosures that surrounded it many living things were moving, sniffing, turning their eyes and licking their teeth. Andrej couldn’t see this, but he felt it. Restlessly he asked, “Is she asleep?”

Tomas glanced at the baby. “No, but she’s happier.”

Andrej squeezed his palms together, tamping down his impatience. He didn’t want his investigation of the zoo to be disturbed by further demands from his sister, so he would wait until she was satisfied. He listened to the breeze, to the sough of voices it coaxed from the fleshy maple leaves. He heard it moseying around the village beyond the wrought-iron fence, drawing sighs from crushed roofs and whistles from smashed shutters. The wolf turned an ear a little, and Andrej wondered what it was hearing. Tanks churning through burning cities perhaps, or whales talking to one another in the sea. Uncle Marin had said, “A wolf can hear your heart beating before you’re even born.”
Can you?
Andrej longed to ask it.
Can you hear my heart?

“I think she’s had enough.” Tomas lowered the bottle. He held the baby upright and rubbed her back, not knowing why this should be done but knowing his mother had done it. Wilma sagged in his hands, kecking and gasping, and after a minute spat out a slug of milk; Tomas sopped it up with his sleeve. He wagged his fingers in her face, said, “Wilma! Little Wilma?” and she mewed contentedly. When he went to lay her in the nest of his pack, however, her eyes widened, her mouth contorted, and she gave a cry. The sound made the wolf take a step — Andrej saw twin flames of moonlight flare in its eyes. “She doesn’t want to sleep,” said Tomas. “I think she wants to see the zoo.”

“Give her to me.”

Tomas handed his sister over gladly, wiped his hands on the grass. He hoisted his baggy trousers and adjusted the belt at his hips. The jacket he wore was too large for him, and the sleeves required constant folding if they weren’t to dangle beyond his hands: but Andrej was already walking away, and Tomas yelped, “Wait!” and skipped to catch up, leaving the sleeves flying like flags.