The Midnight Zoo (9 page)

“Yes, teasing.” Tomas smiled tepidly.

“Give the boar the rest of the biscuits.”

“Yes, he’ll like biscuits,” Tomas agreed. But he tugged at his brother’s sleeve and mumbled, “Come with me?”

The lioness lifted her head to watch them cross the grass. They walked beneath the branches of the maple, past the bench and the mermaid and the packs with their strewn innards. Approaching the boar’s cage they saw the bars harden out of the shadows, saw the sign that said
KANEC.
Andrej knew that the animals were teasing, that logically the boar could not be loose: but his certainty suddenly revealed itself to have a dank side, like a branch that has lain many months in a puddle, and he paused while moonlight still touched his face, abruptly less sure. “The sign wouldn’t say there was a boar in the cage if the boar wasn’t in the cage,” whispered Tomas, but Andrej knew this was a child’s reasoning, impossible to rely upon. He knew, also, what his father and uncle would expect him to do — what all the animals were watching in expectation of him doing. He must tell Tomas to stop here, he must go forward into the darkness bravely and alone because the strong are duty-bound to protect the weak, it is a law of nature and thus of
rightness:
and in that instant Andrej understood that the soldiers and their leader were not obeying this law, and that any victory they achieved wouldn’t last because nature’s law would not be overthrown. He wished Alice were here so he could tell her this inevitable truth he’d unexpectedly grasped: that the invaders couldn’t win the war, she didn’t have to blow up a train, there was no need to leave her animals — she had only to wait for nature to right itself, as it always must and will. Bunching the baby inside the shawl he passed her into his brother’s arms, and took from Tomas the biscuits in their crumpled paper bag. “Stay here, where it’s light,” he ordered; then lowered his head to whisper. “If something happens, you run. Don’t try to help me. Hold on to Wilma, and run.” And then, before Tomas could answer, he stepped forward into the blackness and walked up to the wild boar’s cage.

Scanning the darkness inside the enclosure, Andrej saw nothing except shadows overlapping one another, and a few leaves that had blown between the bars. Such pitchness could conceal a troll. He listened, but heard nothing — no grunt, no scuttling of hooves. Such silence could be the last thing one ever heard. “Boar?” he said. The cage reeked potently of hog, but that didn’t mean the boar was in the pen. It might be hunched at Andrej’s ankles, rankled and with razor tusks. Andrej’s heart thudded;
Marin,
he called, but felt only emptiness, remembered only that attempts to placate an avowed enemy usually fail, as the village had discovered when it gave away its lions. Nevertheless he stood his ground: “I’ve brought you some biscuits, in case you’re hungry,” he informed the invisible animal. His blood sang as he reached between the bars to lay the offering on the stone. His wrist looked thin and breakable at the end of his sleeve. Withdrawing his hand, he wiped crumbs from his fingers. “I hope you like them,” he told the unshifting blackness. Then he backed away swiftly, but not so swiftly as to seem afraid, into the welcoming moonlight. Tomas, squeezing Wilma, hurried to his side.

“I told you!” Unscathed and standing in the light, Andrej rode a wave of triumph. “I told you it would be all right!” He wished his father had been here to witness his courage, his mother to approve of his kindness. He was once again convinced that the boar wasn’t free . . . but he had no desire to repeat the experience, and when Tomas said, “The eagle and the lioness haven’t had dinner yet,” he was pleased to cross the grass to where the lioness lived, where a boar might be afraid to go.

The ham heaved out a repellent odor when they peeled away the tea towel. Andrej stripped off a handful of the stringy pink meat and upended it into the eagle’s cage. The big mahogany bird dropped from its perch to step boldly toward them, talons clicking on stone. Its stately head was like a butcher’s hook, its wings a heavy saddle astride its body. They saw the intricate mosaic of its quills, the rich butter-yellow of its legs and beak, the vitality in its crimson eyes. “Beautiful bird, won’t you talk?” Tomas asked, but the eagle would not.

Lastly they approached the lioness’s cage, Tomas carrying Wilma, Andrej bearing the ham bone. The lioness rushed to the bars and swiped her paws against them, snarling impatiently. Andrej fed the bone partway through the bars, and she gripped it with her ivory teeth and yanked it into the cage. As it pulled from his hands he felt her force, the force of an avalanche or a hurricane. She consumed the ham in mere moments, her incisors carving the meat from the bone, pinning the bone between her paws and effortlessly eating that too, the bone cracking and splintering horribly. When the meal was as gone as if it had never been, she lay on the stone licking her teeth and considering the children. She gazed particularly at the baby: after much licking and gazing and considering she asked, “Is your infant warm?”

Andrej glanced at Wilma. The shawl was woolen; the night wasn’t too cold. “I think so.”

“She looks pale,” said the lioness. “Bring her closer. Let me see.”

Andrej took Wilma from Tomas’s arms, came forward and held his sister up to the bars. The baby, half asleep, squirmed like a grub in the shawl. The lioness stared; then, in a flash, she was on her feet and speeding toward the bars. Andrej snatched Wilma to him and leapt backward, but the lioness didn’t seem thwarted or insulted: “That’s better,” she said. “Keep her near your body. She will be warmed by the heat of your blood.”

Andrej’s heart was hammering with shock. He could hardly find words to say. “I know that,” he managed to answer. “My mother told me.”

“Your mother? You remember her?”

Andrej nodded shallowly. “Yes, we remember her.”

“I do not think my cubs will remember me,” said the lioness, “when they are grown, as you are.”

Tomas, who had shrunk behind his brother, emerged and spoke up timorously. “I’m sad that the lion and your cubs were taken away because of the war.”

The lioness’s eyes turned toward him. Her head was a magnificent thing, like the head of the sun. Her long willowy body was supple and strong as a river. “Because of
your
war,” she said.

“It’s not our war,” Andrej said quickly. “It’s the
gadje
’s war.”

“It makes me sad,” said Tomas.

The lioness’s lime gaze shuttered away from him, returning to the baby. “Three Rom children rambling alone through the night,” she mused. “I think you must have lost a family too.”

Tomas drew a wobbly breath and said again, “I’m sad.”

What Andrej remembered perfectly
was the scarlet kite. Someone had brought it to the celebration and all afternoon it zipped and soared above the trees, although down in the clearing there was almost no breeze and the women had to flap their aprons to encourage the cooking flames to bite. Andrej played soccer with the other boys, most of whom were his cousins or in some other way related. The weather was pleasantly warm that day and the boys played without shirts, and in the rough-and-tumble their olive-skinned chests became scuffed with grass and dirt. Whenever Andrej paused to catch his breath, he looked up in search of the kite. Its canopy was cardinal-red, its tail a string of white feathers. He remembered seeing his cousin Mirabela running in circles with the kite jolting and swooping above her and a gaggle of the younger children dashing along behind her, begging to hold on to the string. Tomas was not among them, nor was he playing soccer. He could be shy with people he didn’t know well, and whenever there was a gathering he preferred to stay close to his mother.

Andrej wished Uncle Marin and some of the other men would join the game. It was always more fun when the grown-ups played too. They kicked the ball cleverly, and with such focused strength; when they scored a goal, they turned cartwheels and ran around whooping. They didn’t take the match seriously, as some of the boys did. That afternoon, however, the men stood talking around the horses, subdued and shadow-eyed.

It was the Feast Day of Black Sarah. She was the Gypsies’ patron saint. Being their patron saint meant Sarah listened more closely to Rom prayers than to those of anybody else. Praying directly to her increased the chances of a prayer coming true. That day Andrej was praying for a soccer ball of his own. He’d been making necklaces out of painted beads and trying to sell them in towns that they passed, but lately it seemed nobody had need of a necklace, nor patience for the Gypsy boy peddling them. He’d never get a soccer ball without the aid of prayer.

Traditionally, the celebrations in honor of Saint Sarah were noisy affairs. After dipping the saint’s black-faced statue in water in homage to Sarah’s miraculous sea journey, then offering up heartfelt thanks for the kindnesses she’d done them over the past year — a lame colt made sound, a woman delivered of twins, an ugly grandson finally married — the clan would celebrate. Many of its members hadn’t seen one another since the previous Feast Day. There was news to share about births and deaths, gossip to spread about robbery and kisses, hair-raising adventures from the road to act out hilariously. Handiworks were compared, babies were displayed, coins were tossed, dice rolled. Horses were paraded before critical eyes, guitar and violin strings were tuned. Wine barrels were opened, and chickens were slaughtered to roast on spits alongside leaping lambs. The clearing would smell deliciously, and everyone would be happy.

But that day, the day the scarlet kite flew, was different from the gatherings of the past. Everything looked almost as it always did — the freshly painted caravans standing beneath the birches at the clearing’s edge, the cart horses hobbled and released to clomp through the weeds; the fires burning, the lambs cooking, the children running, the musicians playing. But the flutes and fiddles rang out less brazenly than usual, and no boisterous husbands were swinging their wives in circles, and no women, elbows linked, were spinning together in a colorful whirl of skirts and sleeves and scarves. Instead, the women were consulting mutedly, reading secrets revealed by tea leaves or the creases of a palm; and the men were more interested in comparing what they’d heard and seen on their travels than in joining their children’s soccer game. Everything seemed muffled, as if the glossy day was blanketed in snow.

Andrej knew why.

When the soldiers and the army lorries had first appeared on the road, Andrej’s father had told his eldest son not to be so worried. “This is the
gadje
’s war, Andrej,” he’d said. “It’s got nothing to do with the Rom. Let the
gadje
fight each other if they want to: their quarrel won’t involve us.” Andrej’s father had been right — this wasn’t a Gypsy war — but he had also been wrong. The war was touching everything,
gadje
or not. Like a roach it was sniffing its way into the smallest corners and lurking there; like a great storm it was sprawling out hugely, darkening the land. Everything it touched it tainted, making ordinary things different from how they’d been — making them difficult, and sometimes dangerous. Everywhere they traveled, Andrej felt the unease.

And here the war was, on this sunny afternoon, in the clearing with the clan on the Feast Day of the saint, leeching the day of its buoyancy. The Rom had no allegiance to either side that was fighting and had nothing to do with the reasons behind the war, nor any wish to be drawn into the conflict: but the roads felt less safe for them now, and sullen glances seemed to turn on them more often, and there was less money to be earned weaving rattan and telling fortunes and shoeing horses, so life had become slightly fragile. There had even been talk of canceling the Feast Day gathering, but such talk had been seen for what it was, a sign that the Rom were bowing to the influence of the
gadje
. And because no one cared for the thought of doing that, the day went ahead as planned; but no one was pretending things were as they had been, and Andrej wondered if he should request of Black Sarah an end to the war, rather than a soccer ball. Everyone said the war would end soon though, so it seemed wasteful to ask.

Andrej, in common with the other children running around the clearing that day, was trying to believe that despite what their eyes and hearts told them, nothing was badly wrong in their world, and that all they had to do was behave themselves, and not pester the adults, and eat what they were given, and everything would become all right.

The last moment of peace and normality that Andrej remembered was of seeing his cousin Nicholae kick the soccer ball hard and high. Nicholae was the best soccer player Andrej had ever seen; his ability had been born with him just as had the port-wine birthmark that lay like a patch over one eye, and he was graceful and artistic, although not above showing off. Ignoring the oncoming charge of his cousins, Nicholae trapped the ball with the point of his toes, then booted it beautifully over the boys’ heads. Andrej remembered following the ball’s flight toward the clouds and seeing there the scarlet kite, red and clean as a knife wound against the sky, and thinking to himself
Nicholae is showing off
but recalling his mother saying that God gave Nicholae his skill in apology for also giving him the birthmark, and that Andrej wasn’t to begrudge his cousin the occasional skite.