The Visitor at the Zoo

V

IN the morning of this eleventh day in the store, the young man climbed down as usual, very early, when the great vault was almost empty. Once or twice someone glanced at him curiously as he passed down the aisles, but he kept walking, and no one spoke to him. The clerks were busy behind the walls of glass cases, inserting new merchandise, clicking the metal doors open and shut; the cleaners in their graystriped uniforms were pushing their whining machines along the floor. Voices echoed lonesomely under the distant ceiling.

The young man quenched his thirst at the drinking fountain between the grocery and the art gallery. Then he went into the produce section, with its mountains of fruit under glass, for his breakfast. By this time the outside^ doors had been opened, the music was playing, and people were beginning to stream down the aisles. The young man spent seventy pfennigs for a transparent bag of oranges and a package of bananas. Alternately eating the bananas and sucking the oranges, he wandered through the store. When he finished a piece of fruit, he tucked the peel neatly into the bag under his arm.

Once, on the evening of his second day, the young man had ventured out into the avenue again, but the crowds, the noise and the lights had disturbed him and he had gone back into the store almost immediately, afraid he would be outside when it closed its doors. To be inside was much better. Here there was also noise, but it was of a different quality, not so alarming. The light i was even and cool, and did not hurt his eyes. And besides, in the ; store he found all he needed - food, drink, entertainment. Sometimes he became lost, the store was so large. But he could always find his way again by following the moving rocket-trails of light on the ceiling.

Whenever he saw one of the blueuniformed men, he looked straight ahead until he was past. He had learned that the men in blue would not pursue him unless he climbed the grille or took something from a case without paying, and now he always made sure to pay. As for the grille, he climbed it every night, not being able to find any other way up. Twice more he had been noticed, and the men in blue had run and shouted, ringing their bells; but no one could climb after him. So he was not really very afraid of the blueuniformed men. But he did not like to be near them, all the same.

There were still some discomforts in his new body that constantly worried him and occasionally even alarmed him by their intensity. There was something his mouth and throat wanted to do, for example. He kept trying different kinds of food and drink, and the feeling always went away, but it came back afterward. Dark, curly hair was sprouting all over his cheeks and chin, and it made his face itch. Nevertheless, he was getting along much better than he had at first. He had found out that taking his clothes and shoes off at night made them easier to bear the next day. When his underclothes had become dirty yesterday, he had bought new ones out of a machine, and he discovered now that the smooth, clean fabric was unexpectedly pleasant against his bald skin.

Without watching where his feet were leading him, he had wandered into the women’s clothing section. In the middle of the central open space, a crowd had gathered around a platform. The young man went nearer. On the platform a perspiring darkskinned man was energetically looping a wide ribbon of violet cloth around a blonde young woman who stood passively, arms raised, and stared out into space.

Both man and woman had the bright, unreal colors and the curious black outlines of the cinema he had seen on his first day, and he realized that this was another illusion. The man and woman were not really there.

The cloth took shape, became a dress. The darkskinned man ran a piece of metal up the woman’s side, pinching out the cloth into a ridge and tightening the dress to her body. Then he did the same thing to the other side, touched the dress swiftly here and there, cut a slit halfway down the back and began to work the finished dress up over the woman’s head. Underneath, her body was shapely and cream-skinned in two brief garments of dark blue lace. Looking at her made the young man feel peculiar, and one of his discomforts suddenly became much more acute.

THE young man did not like it.

As he turned to work his way out of the crowd, he came face to face with a darkhaired, paleskinned young woman who first looked startled, then smiled happily. “Martin!” she said, taking his arm.

The young man moved away nervously. “I don’t know you, madam,” he said.

“What?” The woman’s face changed. The young man kept on moving away. She took a step after him. “Martin Naumchik-” Thoroughly alarmed, the young man turned and dived into the nearest hole in the crowd. He worked his way around the platform, turning his head frequently to see if he was being followed. Above him, the darkskinned man was turning the dress inside out. When he finished, he poised it over the young woman’s shoulders, then began to work it down over her body. Both seemed to revolve as he circled them. No matter how far around he got, he could never see their backs.

The young man left the crowd cautiously on the opposite side, and looked around. The dark haired woman was not in sight. Nevertheless, he took a complicated route out of that part of the store, glancing back many times.

Crossing the elevator plaza, he saw people looking at him, and realized he had been shaking his head unconsciously as he walked. The encounter with the darkhaired woman had taken him completely by surprise. It had somehow never occurred to him before that as a human being he now had not only a name and clothing, personal possessions and so on, but also friends and acquaintances. The idea frightened the young man. What could he possibly say to these people? What would they expect of him?

The comfort and safety of his refuge in the store began to seem illusory. For a moment he thought wistfully of his clean, bare little cubicle in the Hamburg Zoo. But the memory was already so faded and distant that it could not occupy his attention long. The reality was this gigantic, glittering room with its unending murmur of voices, its exciting smells, its clicking elevators, its rocket-trails of red, green, amber, blue that traveled in pulses across the ceiling.

The best thing might be to go away, change his name perhaps, find a place to live in some other city where he was not known. But he had no confidence that he could manage such a trip properly. Were there stores such as this in other cities than Berlin? He was humiliated to realize that he did not know. He had lived in Hamburg for twelve years, but had no idea what lay beyond the Zoo grounds. Other cities were only names to him.

AN hour later, up in the third-floor lunchroom, he was still thinking about it over buns and coffee. It was his first experiment with coffee. The flavor was unexpected and rather unpleasant, but he liked its sweetness and warmth.

It was odd how differently he felt about foods now that he was a human being. He had been going cautiously, since his bad experience of the first night in the restaurant. He had eaten only fruits and bread, and sometimes a sausage on a roll. But in time he expected to do all things human beings did, even to eating the wet brown messes he saw on his neighbors’ plates.

He picked up his cup, experimentally flexed the muscles of his lips and drank. He was proud of this accomplishment, which had cost him much effort.

The last few drops rattled noisily as they went in, and one or two people nearby glanced at him with raised eyebrows. Evidently this was not a sound that one made. He set down the cup in some embarrassment, and consulted his wristwatch: it was just eleven.

He restrained himself from checking the time by his other wristwatch, which was in his pocket. He had observed that human beings did not wear two at once, perhaps because the watches were so accurate that no checking was required.

A pattern of bright lights flashed for an instant on his section of the counter. He glanced upward automatically, as he had done the time before, and the time before that, and saw only a fading starflower of red sparks in the machine overhead. They dimmed and went out. A moment later they flashed on again, making him blink and jerk his head back. The bright chrome and glass ring of the revolving display case slowed, stopped. Directly in front of him, a square black hole appeared, and a transparency lighted up. The young man read, EMPTY PLATES, PLEASE. He pushed his empty cup and saucer, and the plate with the remnants of his buns, obediently into the hole, which closed-on it with a metallic snap. The transparency blinked, shimmered, and lighted up again: THANK YOU.

With a warm feeling for the polite machine, the young man stood up and left the lunchroom. As he passed the entrance, where a crowd was waiting to get in, he found himself once more face to face with the same darkhaired young woman.

She stared at him, apparently as shocked as he was. Neither moved for an instant. Then the young woman, without a word, raised her hand and slapped him in the face.

The blow was so unexpected and painful that the young man was unable to move for a few moments longer, while the young woman turned and walked away People standing around wen staring at him; some where whis, pering to each other.

No one had ever struck him before. With one hand to the curious numbness that was the pain in his cheek, the young man turned away.

He spent the rest of the day wandering the store half-blindly, shivering a little. His pleasure in the bright colors and varied shapes around him was dimmed almost to extinction. He was waiting for it to be time for him to climb to his hideaway in the tower. Beyond that he did not think.

EVENTUALLY it was eight teen-thirty. The crowds wen beginning to flow toward the exits. The young man moved across the elevator plaza, vaguely aware that the crowds were heavier and somehow more anxious than usual tonight. He passed a man with a camera, then another. Two in a row. He had sometimes amused himself by counting men with cameras, or fat woman, or crying children, but now he had no interest in games. There were a lot of uniforms in sight, too: not only the blue store police, but white uniforms, red ones, gold-and-white ones …

He passed two blueuniformed men who were standing together, looking intently around them. One stepped forward, glancing at the young man, then at something he held in his hand. “One moment, sir.”

The young man sidestepped, anxious not to be touched again.

“Stop!” cried the store policeman, reaching.

The young man whirled and ran for the grille. Bells were ringing on all sides; footsteps pounding after him. He sprang, caught the grille, began to climb.

Halfway up, he glanced back. No one was climbing after him, but there was a great deal of activity at the base of the grille. Blueuniformed men were clustered around a bundle of something gray, unrolling it. There were others, in gleaming white uniforms, with feathers on their hats, but these were not doing anything, only standing with feet apart, staring up at him.

He went on climbing. As he neared the top of the grille, two heads appeared over the edge, then a third.

The young man paused. The three men wore blue uniform caps - they were store police, not merely the clerks who lived in this upper level. While he was wondering what to do, the three heads ducked out of sight, then reappeared. The shoulders and arms of the three men came into view. Something cloudy and gray seemed to float down toward him.

The young man ducked, but it was too late. The cloudy thing settled around him with a solid thump, and he discovered that it was a net of grayish cord. It pulled tight around him when he attempted to swing away to the side. There were ropes attached to the net, and the men above were holding them.

Panicked, the young man tried to climb down. The ropes held him back, then slackened a little; but when he paused to try to remove the net with one hand, they tightened again.

Down below, two men in graystriped uniforms were pushing up a sort of tall ladder on wheels. The plaza was full of motionless people now, and the men in white were keeping them back.

The ladder was in position almost directly under him, and now a white-uniformed man began to climb it.

The young man saw that in another moment all his chances would be gone. Taking a deep breath, he swung himself violently away from the grille, tearing with both hands at the net that held him.

The great room revolved massively around him. His back struck the grille hard, knocking the breath out of him. He kicked himself away again, still tearing wildly at the meshes of the net. The man on the ladder was very near. The net gave a little; he had found an edge. His head was out, then his shoulders.

The grille struck him again. The man on the ladder leaned out and reached for him. Then he was falling.