The Visitor at the Zoo

II

DR. GRIICK was alone in his office, with some preliminary budget figures spread out on his desk, and the greasy remains of a knackwurst dinner on a little table beside him. Wearing his reading spectacles, he looked like a rosy, good-humored old uncle out of Dickens. His little blue eyes blinked mildly behind the spectacles, and when he counted, his sausage-fat thumb and fingers went eins, zwei, drei.

Humming, he turned a paper over. The melody he was humming was I Lost My Sock in Lauterbach.

The paneled room was warm, comfortable and silent. And without my sock, I won’t go home, hummed the Director.

The little desk visiphone flickered to life suddenly, and the tiny face in the screen said, “Doctor, if you please-”

Griick frowned slightly, and pressed the stud. “Yes, Freda?”

“Herr Wenzl wishes to speak with you, he says it is urgent.”

“Well then, if it’s urgent, Freda, put him on.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

The screen flickered again. Wenzl’s pale, fanatical face appeared.

“Trouble with the new biped,” he began immediately.

Griick took his glasses off, with fingers that fumbled. “The mischief!” he said. “What sort of trouble, Wenzl?”

“Ten minutes ago,” said the head keeper precisely, “I was notified that Fritz was making a disturbance in his cage. I went there, and found he had been trying to break the window with a wooden chair.”

“Terrible, but why?” cried Dr. Griick, his jowls wobbling. “I endeavored to calm Fritz,” continued Wenzl, “but he informed me that I was without authority over him, since he was not Fritz, but a journalist named Martin Naumchik.”

Griick pursed his lips several times, unconsciously forming the syllable Num. He found some papers under his hand, looked at them in surprise, then pushed them aside with hasty, abstracted motions.

“He also told me,” said Wenzl, “that Fritz had gone off in his body, with his camera and all his clothes.”

Griick put both palms on his cheeks and stared at Wenzl’s image. In the little screen, Wenzl looked like a portrait doll made by someone with an unpleasant turn of fantasy. Full-sized, Wenzl was really not so bad. He had a mole, there were hairs in his nostrils, one saw his adam’s apple move when he spoke. But at the size of a doll, he was unbearable.

“What steps have you taken?” Griick asked.

“Restraint,” said Wenzl.

“And your opinion?”

“The animal is psychotic.”

Griick closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and finger for a moment. He opened his eyes, settled himself before the desk. “Wenzl,” he said, “the biped is not necessarily psychotic. In our ten years with Emma, we have also seen some little fits of nerves, not so? As for Fritz, possibly he is only frightened, being in a new Zoo. Perhaps he wants reassurance, to dramatize himself a little, who knows? Can you show me in the handbooks where it says a biped goes psychotic?”

Wenzl was silent and did not change expression.

“No,” said Griick. “So let’s not be hasty, Wenzl. Remember that Fritz at present is our most valuable animal. Kindness, that does more than harsh words and beatings. A little sympathy, perhaps a smile -” He smiled, showing his small, blunt teeth as far back as the molars. “So, Wenzl? Yes?”

“You are always right, Doctor,” said the head keeper sourly.

“Good, then we shall see. Go and talk to him reasonably, Wenzl; take off the jacket, and if he is calm, bring him to me.”

“I WILL give you five reasons why I am Martin Naumchik,” said the biped in a high, furious voice. His naked, greenspined body looked slender and fragile in the dark wooden chair. He leaned over the table toward Wenzl and Dr. Griick; his eyes were pink-rimmed, and the wide lipless mouth kept opening and closing.

“First. I know Berlin, whereas your menagerie animal has never been here before, and certainly never had liberty to roam the streets. Ask me anything you like. Second. I can tell you the names of the editor, managing editor and all the rest of the staff of ParisSoir, I can repeat my last dispatch to them word for word, or nearly. If you give me a typewriter I’ll even write it out. Third …”

“But my dear Fritz -” said Griick, spreading his fat pink hands, with an ingratiating smile.

“Third,” repeated the biped angrily. “My girl-friend, Julia Schorr, will vouch for me, she lives at number forty-one, Heinrichstrasse, flat seventeen, her visi number is UNter den Linden 8-7403, I can also tell you that she keeps a Siamese cat named Maggie and that she cooks very good spaghetti. My God, if it comes to that, I can tell you what kind of underclothing she wears. Fourth, you can examine me yourselves, I took a degree at the Sorbonne in 1999 - ask about literature, mathematics, history, whatever you like! Fifth and last, I am Martin Naumchik, I have always been Martin Naumchik, I never even saw this ridiculous biped of yours until today, and if you don’t help me, I promise you, I’ll make such a stench … He fell silent. Well?”

Griick and Wenzl exchanged glances. “My dear young sir,” said Griick, rumpling his untidy blond hair; his little eyes were squeezed together in a frown. “My dear young sir, you have convinced me, beyond any shadow of doubt-” the biped started eagerly- “that you believe yourself to be one Martin Naumchik, a human being, and a correspondent for ParisSoir, and so on, and so on.”

The biped said in a choked voice, “Believe! But I’ve told you -”

“Please!” Griick held up his hand. “Have the politeness to listen. I say that there is no doubt, no possible doubt, that you believe in what you say. Very good! Now. Allow me to ask you this question.” He folded his hands over his paunch, and his rosy lips shaped themselves into a smile.

“Suppose that you are Martin Naumchik.” He waved his hand generously. “Go on. Suppose it, I make no objection. Very well, now you are Martin Naumchik. What is the result?”

He leaned forward and stared earnestly at the biped. Wenzl, beside him, was grimly silent.

“Why, you release me,” said the biped uncertainly. “You help me find that animal who has got into my body, and somehow - in some way-”

“Yes?” said Dr. Griick encouragingly. “Somehow - in some way -”

“There must be some way,” said the biped miserably.

Griick leaned back, shaking his head. “To make you change around again? My dear young sir, reflect a moment on what you are saying. To put a man’s mind back in his body after it has gone into the body of an animal? Let’s not be children!

“The thing is impossible, to begin with! You know it as well as I do! Supposing that it has actually happened once, still it’s just as impossible as before! My dear young sir! To put a man’s mind back in his body? How? With a funnel?”

The biped was leaning his head on his greenspined hand. “If we could find out why it happened -” he muttered.

“Good, yes,” said Griick sympathetically. “A very good suggestion: that is what we must do, by all means. Courage, Fritz, or Martin, as the case may be! This will take time, we must be prepared to wait. Patience and courage, eh, Fritz?”

The biped nodded, looking exhausted.

“Good, then it’s understood,” said Griick cheerfully, getting up. “We shall do everything we can, you may be quite sure of that, and in the meantime -” he motioned toward Wenzl, who had also risen - “a little cooperation, no trouble for poor Wenzl. Agreed, Fritz?”

“You’re going to keep me here? On display?” cried the biped, stiffening again with indignation.

“For the present,” said Griick soothingly. “After all, what choice have we got? To begin with, where would you go? How would you live? Slowly, we must go slowly, Fritz. Take an older man’s advice, haste can be the ruin of everything. Slowly, slowly, Fritz, patience and courage-”

Wenzl took the biped’s slender arm and began to guide him out of the room. “My name is Martin Naumchik,” he muttered weakly as he disappeared.

THE dim gray light of early morning flooded the outer rooms, illuminating everything but emphasizing nothing. For some reason - the biped had noticed it before - it made you see the undersides of things more than usual, the loose dingy cloth hanging under the seat of a chair, the grime and dust in corners, the ordinarily inconspicuous streaks, smears, scratches.

He prowled restlessly down the corridor, past the closed doorway of the next room - the female had apparently up-ended a table against it - into the fluorescent-lit office space with its hooded machines, then back again. In his own inner room he caught sight of an ugly face in the mirror - greenish and flatmuzzled, like an impossible hybrid of dog and cock - and for a horrible instant did not realize it was his own.

He clutched at the wall and began to weep. Strangled, inhuman sounds came out of his throat.

Ten hours, ten hours or more, it must be. Just around supper time it had happened, and now it was past dawn. Ten hours, and he still wasn’t used to it, it was harder to bear than ever.

He had to get out.

The biped’s little valise was standing on the floor of the inner room near the washbowl. He pounced on it, ripped it open, flung the contents around. Toothbrush, chess set, some cheap writing paper, a dog-eared paperbound book called Brecht’s Planet: Riddle of the Universe; nothing useful. Weeping, he ran into the office room and snatched up the telephone receiver. The line was still dead. Probably it was not linked into the zoo switchboard this early in the morning. What else?

He caught sight of one of the typewriters, stopped in surprise, then sat down before it and took the cover off.

There was paper in a drawer. He rolled a sheet into the platen, switched the machine on, and sat for a moment anxiously gripping his three-fingered hands together.

The words took shape in his mind: “My name is Martin Naumchik. I am being held prisoner in …”

His hands stabbed at the keyboard, and the type bars piled up against the guide with a clatter and a snarl; the carriage jumped over and the paper leaped up a space.

The pain of realization was so great that he instinctively tried to bit his lip. He felt the stiff flesh move numbly, sliding against his teeth. Biting his lip was one of the things he could not do now. And typing was another.

It was too much. He would never get used to it. He would always forget, and be snubbed up like an animal at the end of a chain …

After a moment, half-blinded by tears, he pried at the jammed keys until they fell back. Then, painfully, picking out the letters with one finger, he began again: “My name is M …”

In half an hour, he had finished his account of the facts. Next it would be necessary to establish his identity. Perhaps that should come first, or the story would never even be read. He took a fresh sheet, and wrote:

M. Frederic Stein

PARIS-SOIR

98, rue de la Victoire

Paris 9e (Seine)

Dear Frederic:

You will know the enclosed is really from me by the following: When I was last in Paris, you and I went to the Rocking Florse and got tanked on mint whistles. There were three greenies in the jug. You told me about certain troubles with your wife, and we discussed your taking a correspondent’s job in the Low Countries.

This is not a joke; I need your help - in God’s name, do whatever.

He paused, and over the machine’s hum was lucky enough to hear the whisper of footsteps in the corridor. He had barely time to turn off the machine, cover it and hide the typed pages in a drawer.

A young keeper with a sullen, pimpled face came in, wheeling a cart with two steaming trays. It was breakfast time.

His first day as a caged animal was about to begin.