Zoology. Ben Dolnick

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СКАЧАТЬ zoo disappoints most people who come, I think—the rats swimming in the duck ponds, the food machines that give you almost nothing for fifty cents, the animals that are too hot and tired of having their ears pulled to let you pet them—but that first sight of Newman makes almost everyone smile. He stands tall and white with his horse neck way out over the fence, and kids, coming around the corner, let go of their babysitters’ hands and start running.

      After dinner once, David asked me if I’d mind taking a walk so he and Lucy could talk. I walked up Fifth to the zoo, not really thinking about it, and the Cuban security guard, Ramon, let me in without any fuss at all. First I walked a slow lap of the whole zoo, feeling gentle toward all these sleeping animals, embarrassed at how much hate I worked up for them during the day. Only the dim orange security lights were on. When I came around to Goat I was surprised—and, I realized, happy—to see Newman standing awake at the fence. His eyes followed me around the pen, and when I got close enough, he nibbled lightly on my sleeve—not to eat, I don’t think, but to check on me, to say hello. I scratched his head and he shut his eyes and pressed against my hand. I rubbed the smooth places where his horns would be, if he had them. You don’t really know how lonely you are, I don’t think, until you get some relief from it. I climbed into the pen, followed Newman back to the corner where he slept, and sat down feeling quietly and perfectly understood. Within a few minutes his huge white side was lifting, falling, lifting, falling. His head was against my leg. The ground in the shed was not quite wet, not quite dry, and almost the same temperature as Newman’s body. I scratched along his spine and talked to him—about living in the apartment, about being surprised to miss home—and whenever I’d stop for a minute, he’d tilt his head up so I could rub behind his ear.

      When I was still living at home, I’d watched a show on the Discovery Channel one night about an African tribe called the Masai. I hadn’t even watched all of it, but for some reason now, in the dark, in the shed, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The idea that right then there were people walking in red robes with herds of animals, under a brighter sun than I would ever see, gave me goose bumps along my arms—it seemed like a challenge to change my life. To love an animal, to walk with a spear and a goat past loping giraffes, to sleep in a hut protected by thorns—sitting there with Newman it all seemed so admirable and, even stranger, possible.

      As I was leaving, I said something to Ramon about Newman, how different he sometimes seemed from the rest of the animals, and Ramon said, “These goats, man, they’re like my seven other children. I get in a shitty mood sometimes, working overnight, I just walk over there and check out Newman, check out Suzie—five minutes and I’m good to go for the rest of the day, I mean seriously.”

      Ramon worked some day shifts during the summer, too, and from then on he was the person at the zoo I talked to the most. Every day, no matter how hot it was, he wore his blue jacket with his name stitched on the chest. Besides security, he was in charge of rat control, and about this and everything else he talked like tomorrow he was taking a vow of silence.

      “All my life I’ve been hating rats. As long as I could remember I been wondering, Whose life would it make even the littlest bit worse if you killed all the rats? People don’t think in those kinds of terms often enough. Whose life would it make worse if you killed all the mosquitoes? I’ll tell you: the birds’. And people don’t have birds, then the rest of the bugs get out of control and you’ll think the times before with the mosquitoes were a picnic. That’s honest thinking. But not with rats. All rats fucking do since Adam and Eve is give people diseases, bite people, scare people, ruin lives that were going along just fine till those sick gray fuckers showed up.”

      He’d walk up anytime I didn’t look busy, and once he did I might be stuck for the entire afternoon.

      “My father, have I told you about my father’s restaurant? The only good Cuban food you could find in the entire New York area. Seriously, unless you’re in my grandmother’s house, the only place in all of New York where you’re going to find halfway decent vaca frita, or if you want the real sweet maduros, the only place you’re going to find it’s in my dad’s restaurant. Right on the main drag in Washington Heights, one of the most popular restaurants in the Cuban community, probably on the whole East Coast. Oh yeah. Closed up by the city, though, and my dad died before we could raise the money to open it back up. One of the major regrets of my life. No, the major regret of my life. And you know why that happened? Rats. You get bathroom pipes coming up from the sewers and everybody thinks it only goes one way, but really rats are climbing right up those pipes, and man, you’d come into the bathroom and there would be rats just crawling right out of the toilet. My old man—man, you should have seen my old man—he’s in there with a broomstick he sharpened up like this so it’s just like a spear, and he’s stabbing those fuckers in the toilet, and man, it’s like a war zone in there. And me and my big sister are standing outside the door telling customers someone’s in there working on the pipes. This went on for like two years, rats in the kitchen, rats in the bathroom, one fucking rat even ran right through the restaurant under people’s legs one time, and I think that’s what did it, I think somebody went and told the health inspector to come bust our ass. One of the biggest tragedies ever to happen for all of New York.”

      Ramon had a son in the army, and I tried sometimes to steer the conversation toward him, because on the slowest, hottest afternoons I liked to daydream about being in the Middle East, riding around in a tank with a gun against my shoulder and the desert blowing around outside.

      “My son, third infantry, stormed right into Baghdad on March twenty looking for Saddam. Oh yeah. Stormed right in there with guns drawn ready to kick ass. Last Saturday of every month he calls up on the phone and you know what the first thing he says is, every time?” I’ve heard the first thing his son says about ten times more than his son has ever said it, but I always raise my eyebrows. “He says, ‘How are the Mets? How’s Piazza?’ Every time, that crazy fucking kid, from the middle of the desert, and all he cares about is how are the Mets, this from a kid who stormed right into Baghdad looking for the worst guy since Hitler.

      “You know, I meet people who are against the war, people you see going around with the handouts and chants and everything, and I tell you what—I respect everything they say, I listen to it, I nod my head. But I don’t care whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or a goddamn Martian, when our country’s at war you gotta support our boys. My son didn’t decide we should start a war, but as soon as it got going, he made sure he was on the first plane over there, and you know what I call that, no matter whether I think George Bush is a great president or not? I call that courage.”

      Sometimes I imagined Ramon with a faucet on the top of his head, and when he’d been talking too long I could just reach up and twist it to off.

      * * *

      I decided to start swimming for twenty minutes every afternoon, first thing after I got back to the apartment. It would be as good as a shower, and maybe I’d burn off my stomach. Being on my feet all day I felt like I might be losing weight, but I was putting it all back on each day at lunch. On Fifty-sixth there was a place with Reubens, and every night, in bed, I promised myself I wouldn’t get one the next day, and every lunchtime I decided I’d worked enough that morning to deserve one. My high school PE teacher, Mr. Delia, told me when I was a senior that if I swam ten laps three times a week for the whole year he guaranteed I’d lose fifteen pounds. I stopped after two weeks, though, and ended the year five pounds heavier than I’d started. This time I promised myself I’d be disciplined.

      Pool locker rooms smell just like pool locker rooms, even in a place as fancy as David and Lucy’s building: bleach and mold and person. When I was a kid I used to go to the Somerset pool all summer. Fifteen minutes out of every hour were adult swim, and I’d sit on the steps shivering while Dad and Walter played water H-O-R-S-E. Mom never swam, she just liked to sun. Even on cool days, when she had to drape a towel over her СКАЧАТЬ