The Midnight Zoo (12 page)

But one day, an old woman tried to take Wilma. She plucked the infant from Andrej’s arms saying, “You can’t take care of her.” Andrej froze with astonishment: it was Tomas who shrieked like a wildcat and leapt like one too, fastening himself to the crone’s shoulder. “
Our
baby!” he’d wailed, fists flying like cat paws. Andrej had unfrozen to snatch his startled sister from her abductor, who slapped at Tomas until he dropped off like a tick. “Keep her then!” the ghastly stranger had shouted. “The soldiers will take care of her! They’re looking for people like you. Dirty little leeches. Filthy nasty robbers. Vermin, you are! Heathen vermin! The sooner they get rid of the likes of you, the better off we’ll be.”

The confrontation spooked Andrej so badly that he found shelter in a church loft and stayed there for two days. The children were used to being called names — despising the Rom was a timeless amusement of the
gadje
. Andrej had once asked his father why this was so, and his father explained, “People jeer at those who are different from themselves — those who look different, or think differently, or live in different ways. They do it because difference is a frightening thing — sometimes, an enviable thing.” Was this what the woman had felt — fear of them, and envy? Andrej couldn’t believe it. It had been something much worse than that. Something like a monster finally escaped from chains.

Tomas, recovering from his initial shock, chose to pretend the old woman was Baba Jaga, the legendary flying witch who stole children, and occasionally ate them. “Get back to your horrible house, Baba Jaga!” he cried, chopping at the dusty sunlight that shafted through the church windows. The attack he’d launched upon the crone was the first real stance he had taken against the will of the world. Victory made him arrogant for days, as well as somewhat awed.

To Andrej, however, the encounter brought an understanding that they were in a special kind of danger, a peril far more fearsome than any crackle-faced hag from a fairy tale. He thought over and over on what the old woman had said.
The sooner they get rid of the likes of you
. This was what the soldiers in the clearing had been doing: getting rid of the likes of the clan. For some unfathomable reason, the invading army felt such . . . 
hatred
 . . . of the Rom that they would kill a man like Marin as readily as they’d swat a bug. And some of the
gadje
who’d always lived in this land, shoulder to shoulder with the Rom — people like the Baba Jaga woman and who knew how many more — were eager to have it done.

Andrej, lying awake in the airless loft while fireflies tapped on the window’s clouded glass, came to see that loneliness and confusion were midges in comparison with the threat that was really stalking them. The monster that had escaped its chains had countless arms and legs and eyes and mouths, innumerable shapes and disguises; and it was merciless even to mothers and children, even to the best of men.
They’re looking for people like you
.

He saw they must never trust anybody. It would be too easy to become snared. They must avoid other Rom, whose company would attract attention. They must stay alert and invisible and on the move. Something was seeking them.

Andrej had reached across and shaken Tomas, who’d sat up woozily from his pillow of boots. “Come,” Andrej told him. “We’re leaving.” Already he burned to be on their way.

From that night onward the children traveled when darkness could conceal them and fewer people were about, stopping for brief rests or to attend Wilma, then walking on into the dawn. During the day they hid and slept, emerging only if they needed to buy some essential. Baba Jaga had called them
leeches, robbers, vermin,
and although Mama and Papa and Marin and Nicholae and Emilie and Mirabela and none of the others were any of those things, Andrej was happy for his siblings and himself to become rats — sleeping by day, moving by night, raiding and rummaging, staying out of sight. Rattiness would be their protecting charm. Marin had always said, “It’s a lucky soul that gets put into a rat.”

Hearing his uncle’s voice in his head made Andrej cover his ears. His heart mourned for Marin through every moment, even in his dreams. He pined for the comfort of his mother, the steadfast presence of his father. But Tomas was always there, hungry and jovial and querulous, and Wilma with her round head and button eyes caused practical problems which distracted him countless times a day. When Andrej slept, he slept catatonically. When awake, he was thinking constantly, vigilant to every threat, ceaselessly devising ways to outwit and outrun. And so, although the pain of what he’d lost was ever-present and severe, Andrej had no time for stopping to look long at it, or for looking back.

“Wah-wah-wah,”
said the chamois. “No life is without its troubles, kid, not even the life of a rat. Look on the bright side: you aren’t in a cage. You’re free, so stop complaining.”

Andrej, startled from his memories, said, “No, I’m not in a cage, but — I don’t
feel
free. If you’re free, you should be safe. And I don’t feel safe. I always feel . . . hunted.”

“Boo-hoo,” said the chamois rancorously. “Talk to me about being hunted when you find your foot in a snare, little buck.”

The llama’s tufted ears turned: “How peculiar! You can go anywhere your feet take you, and yet you’re not free. There are no bars around you, yet you’re in a funny kind of cage.
That
isn’t fair.”

“Cages come and get you,” murmured the kangaroo.

Andrej said nothing; Wilma was in his arms, and he rocked her. The baby was placidly tasting her fingers, peering out from deep in the shawl. Though he’d struggled valiantly to stay awake, Tomas’s eyelids had begun to droop and eventually he had fallen asleep on the bench, feet tucked securely out of reach of any boar. He lay with his hands folded under his cheek, small inside his clothes. Moonlight was tinting the maple leaves white, and draped the grass like a frayed sheet of linen. The light was luminous, but not as crisp as it had been. The world was still veiled by darkness, but the brief summer night had begun its tender bloom into day. Soon peace would end.

The lioness spoke. “Your mother would be proud of you, Andrej. You have taken care of your brother and sister. You have done what she wanted you to do.”

Andrej winced. He hated to remember the boy crouched in the woods watching his mother being led away. “I should have run
to
her, instead of running away. I might have been able to help her.”

“No. That isn’t what she wanted.”

Wilma mumbled, and Andrej looked at her. He wondered if his tiny sister would grow up to look like her mother — tall, with painted nails and bony feet, and dark hair that reached down her spine. Andrej could remember these things about his mother, but he was forgetting, too. It was hard to hear her voice, or to picture her green eyes and white smile. He could no longer see whole pieces of her — her hands and elbows, her hay-fevery nose. His mother had been taken from the clearing, and from his memory. When Wilma was grown she might indeed look like her mother, but Andrej would have forgotten how to know for sure. Quietly, so as not to disturb Tomas, he said, “I don’t think they will come back. I don’t think I’ll see them again.”

“No,” the lioness agreed.

“Do you think the owner of the zoo will come back?”

“No.”

“What about Alice?”

Alice!
The word whisked through the air more urgently than before.
Alice, Alice:
the animals moved fitfully, shifting their weight, scuffing their feet on the stone. They were calling to her, their cries resounding into emptiness. The lioness said nothing.

Andrej sighed. Tipping his chin, he looked up at the sky. The stars were glinting studs against the sapphire clouds. Uncle Marin had known the names of the constellations. He had known, too, which shining dots weren’t stars, but red and yellow and purple planets. Sometimes he’d said,
I wonder what is happening on the purple planet today?

Andrej looked at the lioness, who hadn’t moved. The moonlight made aqua pools of her eyes, smooth golden velvet of her coat. “Do you think the lion and your cubs will come back?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“I feel it,” she said, “as you do.”

Andrej nodded. There was sorrow in him so boundless and powerful that he hardly dared approach it. If it got loose, it would gallop like a bolting horse through a fairground, overturning everything it touched. Very cautiously he asked, “Did you say good-bye?”

“No.”

“I didn’t either . . . I can’t remember the last things I said to them. It must have been silly things like,
Come and play soccer, Papa,
and
I’m not hungry yet, Mama
.”

The lioness cupped her ears, considering him. After a time she said, “Wherever they are, they know you would have helped them if you’d been able. They know you would have said good-bye.”

Andrej bit his lip, and nodded again. “All right.”

The lioness continued to watch him. In the cage beside her, the monkey uttered a low groan. The seal broke the surface, sniffed up air and submerged; the water closed over it with a slurp. Beyond the zoo’s gate, in what remained of the town, a broken-backed rafter swooned from roof to ground with a muffled crump of noise. Then there was silence. The animals’ breathing made no sound. The moonlight touching Andrej’s hands looked like powdered crystal. The lioness rose liquidly to her paws. “Andrej,” she said, “bring the baby to me.”

Andrej lifted his head and gazed at her, but did not get to his feet.

“Just for a moment,” said the lioness: in a single stride she had reached the bars and was hovering behind them, her yellow face scarred and eternal. “Not for longer than a moment.”

Andrej looked down to his sister, and it crossed his mind how much easier the past weeks would have been if the baby had gone into the woods with her mother with whom she belonged, with whom she wanted to be. So many long years must pass before she could think for herself and look after herself, and he already had Tomas to tend to. Andrej’s mind thought these things, and was wearied just by thinking them, but his legs were lead and didn’t move. “No,” he said stolidly. “I mustn’t.”

The lioness dodged with agitation, yearning toward the bundled shawl. “It won’t hurt. I promise. All you need do is bring her near.”

Andrej wavered, worried he might cry. The animals were watching, and he could feel the lioness’s longing, and his blood was surging and he wanted to help her but, “I can’t,” he moaned.

“Why not?” Her tail slashed in frustration; she reared up briefly on two legs. “What harm will it do? Andrej, bring her!”

“No.” He shook his head in defiance, his eyes welling with tears. “I won’t. I can’t.” And suddenly he was shouting like a child gone mad: “I won’t! I’m frightened of you! You can’t have her! She belongs to me!”

“Idiot boy.”
The words crossed the lawn like flying ice picks, yanking Tomas from his sleep as they speared past, snarled out in a voice so terrifying that it tore the breath from Andrej and he spun to face it believing that the soldier from the clearing had finally come for him. Staring wild-eyed he saw nothing except the stark circle of bars and the maple and frosted grass, but the animals were on their feet and gazing into the stygian core of the zoo: into the wild boar’s cage. “Idiot boy,” said the voice from that blackness, and Andrej, heart hammering, imagined the creature hidden there, its spindly legs and outlandish head, its arched tusks and bristling hide. “What are you worrying about? You think your precious piglet is too good for a lioness? What harm can she, behind bars, do to you, lounging free? What can she do that would be worse than what you’ve done to her?”

“Andrej . . .” whimpered Tomas, but Andrej, shielding Wilma, held up a silencing hand. He stared into the darkness that consumed the boar’s cage, each muscle ready to move. If the beast was free — if the lock had rusted or the creature had shredded the bars and now was loose and coming for him — Andrej would stand his ground. He was not afraid; his heart, still pounding, beat with a blind sense of outrage. He glanced at the cages surrounding the boar’s, saw the wolf, the chamois, the llama. Even if they could help him, Andrej knew they would not. They understood that life is a battle fought alone. And Andrej, in that moment, was ready to fight — he was eager for it. All the injustice he’d suffered was clenching in his fist and prickling in his eyes. He would endure nothing more in dumb helplessness. If the boar came for him, he would hurt it as much as he could. He would kill it if he was able.

But from the boar’s cage came nothing, no scuffle of feet nor snort of hot breath, nothing but the voice which was like satin under a millstone, silky and bruised and ruined.

“She was only a cub, that lioness, when a hunter shot her mother so he could tell a tale of changing something fierce and glorious into something humbled and hideous. He stove in the heads of her littermates because he deemed a swift death beneath his boot the kindest thing for them. He spared her, the smallest cub, and sent her across the ocean as a gift to his fiancée. It was important that his beloved be seen to have the best of everything — and what could be better than a lion cub? What he failed to remember, that foolish hunter, is that even a runt lion is still a lion.”