Zoology. Ben Dolnick

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СКАЧАТЬ Sameer said, while we rallied, “I read a fascinating article in a magazine in the doctor’s office. In Elizabeth, New Jersey, there is a man who funds his life and his exorbitant family merely by the sale of his own hair.” The sounds of the game were as steady as a metronome. Janek sat in a chair by the door, picking at the rubber skin on his paddle. “This man has been blessed with the most lustrous and healthful hair that doctors have ever seen, and when he sells a full head of it—a head of hair more beautiful than Daryl Hannah’s—he earns for it upward of twenty thousand dollars, and this is hair he produces simply by the existence of his head.”

      “Sameer, I am thinking that you read too much,” Janek said. “Every minute spent in a book is a minute spent not in a woman.” He laughed, and a speck of the foam that was always in the corners of his mouth flew onto the floor. Janek looked, every time I saw him, like he hadn’t shaved in three days, and there was something damaged-seeming about his body. He was at least a foot taller than me and Sameer, but he stood with a tilt that reminded me of Frankenstein cartoons—once when he pulled his left pant leg up I thought I saw a rubber foot.

      “I will admit I read to the point of sheerest infirmity,” Sameer said, not looking away from the table. “When you one day pay me a visit, Henry, you may say that you have never seen so many books in your life. They are piled from the floor as well as on top of every surface, and all of them are both old and extremely well-read, first by me but also by my son, who is turning out to be a first-rate mind, albeit one without a sense of dedication. Even in the oven and in the cabinets there are stacks and stacks of books at all angles.”

      “I don’t like to read any more than two things,” Janek said, still grinning, still foaming. “I read the instructions on how to cook food, and I read the instructions on how to cook women.” He held his arm out to give me five and spread his eyes wide, hoping we’d collapse against each other like teammates at the end of a game.

      “As much is evident,” Sameer said. “Because otherwise you would be too distraught for foolishness by the news that there has been still another suicide bombing in Israel, in which seventeen different people have passed away. Every time an Israeli takes his place on a bus or in a café, he is risking the end of his life, and these are even the citizens who have no military association whatsoever. It is no better what Israelis are doing with the Palestinians. For our unfortunate friend Janek I already know the answer, but are you a religious man, if I may ask?”

      “Not really,” I said. “I’m Jewish, but I don’t go to temple or anything.”

      A little ripple of shock ran over his face. “You are a Jew? Oh, the Jewish people are a most fascinating people to me. I will tell you a horrifying secret. I have been studying the Jewish people for many years, and for the past year I have even been taking lessons from a dear friend in the art of reading Hebrew. Janek can verify as much. I do not read with much speed, but each night I practice my characters for one hour sharply, and I find improvement in myself every day. Oh, it is so wonderful that you are a Jew. Are you an Orthodox Jew, a Conservative Jew, or a Reformed Jew, if I may ask?”

      “You had better click the lock on your door when you sleep,” Janek said. “Sameer loves a Jew even more than he loves a blond woman.”

      Most of their fighting seemed like just a show for me, but now Sameer looked truly embarrassed. With his lips pulled back and his teeth gritted, he fired his next shot as hard as he could into Janek’s chest. It couldn’t have hurt more than a pinch, but it was enough to make Janek stop smiling. Sameer turned back to me, served a cracked ball from his pocket, and said, “The Jews have, in my opinion, played one of the most instrumental roles in every matter of human development. They have studied medicine, literature, music, and many other fields in which they have made great strides for all of humankind. I am honored and I am pleased.” For the first time since I’d met him, Sameer, leaning over the table, shook my hand. “I would be deeply honored if on a free occasion of your choosing you allowed me to accompany you to temple for prayer. I do not wish to impose, but it would be as utterly fascinating an event for me as I could conceive.”

      “I don’t really go to temple.”

      “Right, right.” This was something he said a lot, usually when he wanted a conversation to be over, and he used it to mean something like, “Well, we don’t have to worry about such small matters now.” He laid his paddle on the ball, still careful not to look at Janek, and, before he walked out of the room, he shook my hand again. “I will look forward to your invitation, and may I say in departure, ‘Shalom.’”

      * * *

      I spent my first few weeks at the zoo wondering if I’d been there long enough to quit. I came home each day too tired to practice, daydreaming about skipping work the next morning, hurting in my kneecaps and wrists and the right side of my neck (never the left, for some reason). And each morning, still so tired that I’d feel my mind wobble every time I blinked, I’d stand downstairs in the freezing zoo kitchen and chop yams and zucchini and carrots with a knife that could have chopped off a horse’s leg. Taped all over the room were angry messages from Paul, disguised as jokes: Animals Don’t Have Forks and Knives! Cut Veggies Small! The radio on the shelf could hardly get reception through the floor, so I’d listen to talk radio with gospel and oldies buzzing underneath. No matter how fast I chopped, by the time I was stacking the bowls to bring upstairs, Paul would show up in the doorway. “Hungry animals upstairs,” he’d say, “hungry animals. Let’s go.”

      By the ten-thirty break, the idea of still having a full day ahead of me seemed like an emergency, something I couldn’t possibly be expected to bear. Zookeeping wasn’t hard work the way I imagine house building would be, where by the end you’d feel like tearing off your shirt and diving into a lake. It was hard work like making a hole in a concrete wall with your fingernails. Until I’d been there for a week, I had no idea how small the Children’s Zoo was. I’d walk circles and circles past Cow, Sheep, Pig, Goats, Cow, Sheep, Pig, Goats, and the only thing worse than walking those slow circles was when I had to stop and actually do something.

      Cleaning Pig was the easiest job, because they lived on a hard floor—I’d shovel up their poop, soft apples that barely smelled, and then hose the whole pen down. The hosing was sometimes even fun, tilting my thumb over the hole, trying to make the water curve in a perfect sheet up over Lily. But when Paul would assign me to do Sheep or Cow, my legs would suddenly feel like they couldn’t hold me up. Such stupid, embarrassing work—raking and scraping and shoveling for animals that only wonder, while you grunt under another load, why you haven’t fed them yet. At first I’d make friendly, tired faces at the families standing looking in, but eventually I realized that they weren’t looking at the keepers any more than they were looking at the water bowls. We were stagehands in a play starring Dudley and Frankie and Kramer.

      Cleaning Othello’s pen, even though he had more personality than the sheep, was the worst. He covered his square of dirt with heavy black Frisbees of poop, and the smell—sharp, sour, eggy—made me have to breathe through my mouth. But gnats were everywhere in his pen, and if you held your mouth open for too long one would fly in, tickling your lips or choking you. Every afternoon when Othello’s hay needed changing, we all fought to be the one who could hide out in the bathroom.

      Cleaning Goat was almost as bad, at first—raking up all those piles of hair and hay and thousands and thousands of coffee beans of poop—but the Nubian goat, Newman, wouldn’t stand for sulking. While I leaned on my rake, he’d walk up next to me, like a dog, and nudge his head against my arm until I petted him. The rest of the goats made noises when they wanted something—they’d open their mouths, standing perfectly still, and force out a hard, angry myaaaaaaaa. Newman, though, was completely silent. In the afternoons, when I’d be squishing sweat with every step in my boots, I’d sit on the stump and he would try СКАЧАТЬ