21
He drives to the abandoned zoo.
Lunch with his sister always puts him on edge. Not to such an extent that he stops going, but he feels the need to collect himself afterwards, in order to understand why this person who’s part of his family is the way she is, why she has the children she does, why she’s never cared about him or their father.
He walks slowly past the monkey cages. They’re broken. The trees that were planted inside them have dried up. He reads one of the
signs, its letters discoloured:
Howler monkey
Alouatta caraya Class: Mammals Next to the word “Mammals”, there’s an obscene drawing.
Order: Primates
Family: Atelidae Habitat: Woods Adaptations: The females have golden or yellowish fur, while that
of the male The words that follow are worn away.
They have special features that enable them to produce sounds.
Their larynx and hyoid bone in particular are highly developed, the latter forming a large capsule that amplifies their vocalizations.
Diet: Plants, insects and fruits Conservation status: Out of danger The words “Out of danger” have a cross through them.
Distribution: Central zone of South America, from eastern Bolivia and southern Brazil to northern Argentina and Paraguay There’s a photo of a male howler monkey. The monkey’s face is contorted, as though the camera captured the moment it was caught.
Someone has drawn a red circle with a cross in the centre.
He goes into one of the cages. There’s grass growing up between cracks in the cement, cigarettes and needles on the floor. He finds bones, thinks they could be the monkey’s. Or not. They could be anything.
There are trees outside the cage, and he leaves it to walk beneath them. It’s a hot day and the sky is clear. The trees provide a bit of shade. He’s sweating.
He comes across a sales booth. When he sticks his head through the empty door frame, he finds cans, papers, filth. Inside, he reads the list of products painted on the wall: Simba the stuffed lion, Rita the stuffed giraffe, Dumbo the stuffed elephant, animal kingdom cup, tit monkey pencil case. The white walls are covered with graffiti, sentences, drawings. Someone has written “I miss the animals” in small, restrained letters. Someone else crossed the words out and added “I hope you die for being so dumb.”
When he leaves the sales booth, he lights a cigarette. He never wanders around the zoo, but instead always goes straight to the lion’s den and sits there. He knows the zoo is large because he remembers spending hours exploring it with his father.
He steps down into some empty swimming pools. The pools are small. They could have held otters, or seals, he thinks, but can’t remember. The signs have been torn off.
As he walks, he rolls up his sleeves. He undoes the buttons on his shirt and leaves it open, loose.
In the distance, he sees huge cages, they’re tall, topped with cupolas. He remembers the aviary. The colourful birds flying, the burst of feathers, the smell both dense and fragile. When he reaches the cages, he sees it’s actually one cage, split into sections. Inside there’s a large hanging bridge covered by a glass cupola, which once allowed visitors to walk among the birds. The doors are broken. The trees that were planted inside the cage grew up and broke through the glass cupolas over the roof and bridge. He steps on leaves and shards of glass, feels them crunch beneath his boots. There’s a staircase up to the hanging bridge. He climbs it and decides to cross the bridge. He walks through branches, steps over them, pushes them out of his way. In a clearing, he looks up to the roof and sees the treetops and one of the cupolas, the one in the centre. It’s the only one made of stained glass and has an image of a man with wings flying close to the sun. He recognizes Icarus, knows of his fate. The wings are made of different colours and Icarus is flying through a sky that’s full of birds, as though they were keeping him company, as though this human were one of
them. He picks up a branch with leaves on it and cleans the floor of the bridge a little so he can lie down without cutting himself on the glass.
Some parts of the cupola are broken, but it’s the least damaged of them all because it’s the highest and furthest from the branches of the trees, which haven’t yet reached it.
He wishes he could spend the whole day lying there looking up at the multicoloured sky. He would have liked to show this aviary to his son, just as it is, empty, broken. A memory strikes him of his sister’s phone calls when Leo died. She only spoke to Cecilia, as though his wife were the only one who needed to be consoled. At the funeral, crying, she held on to her children as though she feared they too would die a sudden death, as though the baby in the casket had the ability to infect others with its fate. He looked at everyone as though the world had distanced itself a few metres; it was as though the people embracing him were behind frosted glass. He wasn’t able to cry, not once, not even when he saw the small white coffin being lowered into the ground. What he was thinking was that he wished the coffin were less conspicuous; he knew it was white because of the purity of the child inside, but are we really that pure when we arrive in this world, he wondered. He thought of other lives, thought that maybe in another dimension, on another planet, in another era, he might find himself with his son and watch him grow. And while he was thinking about all this and people were throwing roses onto the coffin, his sister cried as though this child were her own.
Nor did he cry later, after the simulacrum of a funeral that was still expected back then. When the guests had left and the two of them remained, the cemetery employees lifted the coffin back up, wiped away the earth and flowers that had been thrown on it and took it into a room. They removed his son’s body from the white coffin and placed it in one that was transparent. He and Cecilia had to watch their baby slowly enter the oven that would cremate him. Cecilia collapsed and was taken into another room with armchairs that was set up for this purpose. He received the ashes and signed the papers that verified that his son had been cremated and that they had witnessed it.
He leaves the aviary and walks past a kids’ playground. The slide is broken. There’s a seesaw that’s missing one of its seats. The merry- go-round shaped like a spinning top has retained its green colour, but
swastikas have been painted on its wooden floor. Grass is growing in the sandbox and someone has placed a rickety chair in the middle of it and left it there to rot. Only one swing is left. He sits down on it and lights a cigarette. The chains still hold his weight. He swings by moving his legs gently, his feet touching the ground. Then he starts to pump his legs, lifting his feet into the air, and sees that in the distance, clouds are forming in the sky.
It’s a hot day. He takes off his shirt and ties it around his waist.
Not far from the playground he sees another cage. He goes over
to it and reads the sign.
Sulphur-crested cockatoo
Cacatua galerita
Class: Aves
Order: Psittaciformes Family: Psittacidae Someone has written “I love you, Romina” in red letters over the description of the habitat.
Adaptations: The males have eyes the colour of dark coffee, while the females’ eyes are red. During courtship, the male raises his crest and moves his head in the shape of an eight while he emits vocalizations. Both parents take responsibility for incubating and feeding the chicks. The bird lives to about 40 years of age in the wild and to almost 65 in captivity (there’s a record of a cockatoo that lived to over 120).
The rest of the sign is broken and lying on the floor, but he doesn’t bend down to pick it up.
He walks over to a large building. The door frame has been burned. The building contains a room with big windows that have been broken. He thinks the space must have been a bar or restaurant. There are built-in chairs that weren’t removed. Most of the tables are gone but two remain soldered to the floor. There’s an elongated structure that could have been a bar.
Then he sees a sign that says “Serpentarium”, and an arrow. He walks through hallways that are dark and narrow until he reaches a bigger space with wide windows. There’s another sign painted on the wall. It says: “Serpentarium, please wait in line.” He goes into a room with a high ceiling, part of which is broken. The sky shows through the
cracks. There are no cages. Instead, the walls are divided into compartments by glass panels. He thinks they’re called terrariums.
There were once different serpents inside them. Some of the glass panels are broken, others have disappeared completely.
He sits down on the floor and pulls out a cigarette. As he looks around at the graffiti and drawings, an image catches his attention. It’s a mask that someone has drawn with a good deal of skill. It looks like a Venetian mask. Beside it, in large black letters, the person has written: “The mask of apparent calm, of mundane tranquillity, of the joy, at once small and bright, of not knowing when this thing I call skin will be ripped off, when this thing I call mouth will lose the flesh that surrounds it, when these things I call eyes will come upon the black silence of a knife.” It’s not signed. No one has scratched it out or drawn over it, but words and images surround it. He reads some of the things people have written: “black market”, “why don’t you rip this”, “meat with a first and last name tastes best!”, “joy? small and bright? seriously? LOL!”, “awesome poem!!”, “after the curfew we can eat you”, “this world is shit”, “YOLO”, “Oh, eat of me, eat of my flesh / Oh, amongst cannibals / Oh, take your time to / cut me up / Oh, amongst cannibals / Soda Stereo forever.”
As he’s trying to remember what “YOLO” means, he hears a sound. He keeps still. It’s a faint cry. He gets up and walks through the serpentarium to one of the largest windows. It’s intact.
It’s hard for him to make anything out. There are dry branches on the floor, filth. But he sees a body move. And then suddenly, a tiny head lifts up. It has a black snout and two brown ears. Then he makes out another head and another and another.
He stands there watching them, thinks he’s hallucinating. Then he feels an urge to break the glass so he can touch them. At first, he doesn’t understand how they got there, but then he realizes there are three terrariums connected by doors and that the glass surrounding two of them is broken. They’re not on ground level, which is why he has to climb up to enter them. He gets down on all fours and crawls through the door to the largest terrarium, the one in the middle, which is where the puppies are. The door is open. The terrarium is wide and fairly tall.
He thinks it would have held an anaconda, or a python. The puppies whimper, they’re frightened. Of course, he thinks, they’ve never seen a
human in their lives. He crawls along carefully because the floor is covered in stones, dry leaves, filth. The puppies are beneath some branches that do a fairly good job of sheltering them. Branches around which a boa might have wrapped itself, he thinks. They’re curled up next to each other to keep warm and protect themselves. He sits down close by but doesn’t touch them until they’re calmer. Then he starts to pet the puppies. There are four of them, they’re scrawny and filthy.
They sniff at his hands. He picks one of them up. It hardly weighs a thing. At first it trembles, but then it begins to move desperately. It urinates out of fear. The others bark, whimper. He hugs the puppy, kisses it until it calms down. The puppy runs its tongue along his face.
He laughs and cries silently.