Giraffe Read online

  The contagion in the giraffes is not like that. The parting is not man from man, but man from beast. I am vertical, but separate from the giraffes. The contagion is virulent to other hoofed animals but is not dangerous to humans or to animals that are close to humans, such as horses and dogs. I will not develop lumps in the pits of my arms. The contagion will strike down only these creatures tottering in ammonia behind me. It is as Aristotle said — we differ from animals in our ability to speak. We alone can speak of the Communist moment, of justice and injustice. It is our speech that passes judgment on animals, excommunicating eels and condemning giraffes.

  “The orders are for complete destruction,” I say to the keeper. “Tonight.” It is as if I have ordered his destruction.

  “They are healthy,” he says, but nothing more.

  Jiří

  ČARODĚJNICE

  APRIL 30, 1975

  I HAVE A MEMORY from 1941, the year I killed my first boar. I am a little boy, pushing a wheelbarrow from a damp hay barn after a summer rainstorm. I am wearing a raincoat, buttoned to the collar. I cycle across the crest of a meadow. I see a double rainbow and a maypole around which people are dancing on a field below.

  Tomorrow is May Day. There will be speeches and parades in the town. They will go around and around the pine tree I have myself cut down and stripped.

  I AM DRINKING in the sawmill. The windows are open now. There is the smell of cut wood. We’re having a party for Luboš, the forester responsible for the Christmas tree harvest. He’s moving to a mountainous part of the country, where there still are bears and wolves. Another bottle is uncorked. We cheer Luboš but do not yet break into song.

  I go outside with Luboš. We lean against planking sliced from spruce we have grown together in the forest. We smoke Red Stars and drink.

  “You’re a lucky man,” I say, “to be going to such a wild and mountainous place.”

  “You could move also,” he says.

  “I can never leave,” I say. “I’m too accustomed to seeing the Svět between the trees. I wish only for those heights here.”

  The comrades have put on the music. We’re getting in the mood. I hear someone calling my name.

  “Sobotka?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  A Communist official stands before me. I recognize him finally, but I cannot remember his name. He’s from one of the industrial towns. His shirt is sweated through.

  “Comrade!” I say. “What brings you here?”

  “You,” he says, unsmiling.

  “Have a drink!”

  I put an arm around him. He shakes it off.

  “No drink,” he says. “Listen, we’ve got foreign guests here to shoot black grouse. We need you to guide them.”

  “Grouse? This time of year?”

  “We need you to accompany us now.”

  He gestures to two Státní Bezpečnost, or secret policemen, standing by an official car.

  “No fuss,” he says.

  “I’d like to oblige,” I say, “but as you can see, I’m occupied.”

  He puts up a shaking hand.

  “Comrade Sobotka, you have no choice in the matter.”

  WE DRIVE AWAY ON the road by the marsh. There is matter in the air from the chimneys in the industrial towns, a luminescence of dust that settles in the sunbeams and on the petals of the spring blossom.

  “I need to go home to change and shave.”

  He shakes his head and taps his wristwatch. It has a hammer-and-sickle dial.

  “Just bring your biggest-caliber rifle and all the ammunition you can carry.”

  “I thought we were going to shoot black grouse.”

  “We are,” he says.

  I GO IN MY HOUSE NOW. Květa is at the kitchen table, painting faces on snowman decorations from the factory in the town. I go wordlessly by her. I unbolt the gun locker. I take out the Mauser 7.92. I fill the satchel with a hundred or so 57 mm cartridges. Květa looks up.

  “Back already?”

  “Some officials are demanding I guide foreigners after black grouse,” I say.

  “At this time of year?” she says.

  She glances at the Mauser.

  “You’re going to hunt grouse with that?” she asks. “Where’s your shotgun?”

  She has an eye for detail. You see it on these decorations she paints.

  “A rifle is what I want,” I say, “and a rifle is what I’m taking.”

  “You’re not going dressed like that?”

  I stuff the last cartridges into my satchel.

  “My wife, my love,” I say, “I am in a hurry.”

  I kiss her on the forehead, and I go to open the front door.

  “You could start a revolution with all those bullets,” she calls after me.

  THE TWO STB MEN STAND in the driveway with hands on their holsters. I climb into the back of the car next to the official. I arrange the rifle between my knees. We drive off fast, skidding around a bend and accelerating toward the town. I am disheartened. I am a Communist in the forest, where I fear the ground might give under me. I feel different out here. I have imagined the Communist moment to have risen higher, to be better and less authoritarian.

  I turn to the official. It is hard to see his expression; sunlight is streaming into the car.

  “This isn’t about black grouse, is it?”

  “No,” he says. “Prepare yourself for a long night.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We are going to the zoo.”

  He speaks to me in the familiar form. It’s true — we are comrades. We are like distant relatives, avoiding each other at a celebration.

  “To do what?” I ask.

  I feel weighed down by the satchel. The car kicks up dust on the gravel road. The Svět blurs brown beside us. I have heard rumors of contagion, that the zoo has been under quarantine.

  “You’re aware a contagion has broken out in the zoo?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “It is an animal infection. It must be contained.”

  “That’s why you need me,” I say.

  “You’re the sharpshooter. You’re the best shot in the district — everyone says so. You’re trustworthy, loyal, a Party member. You won’t go blabbing the story.”

  “The story?”

  “The story of how you were called on to shoot dead a group of giraffes.”

  “Show me the order,” I say.

  The StB men glance at me in the mirror.

  “There’s nothing on paper,” the official says.

  “You must have something.”

  “This is from the top,” he says.

  I squint into the light.

  “I won’t do anything without a written order,” I say.

  WE STOP AT A PANELÁK overlooking the Svět and pick up Máslo, the head of the district committee. He squeezes in beside me.

  “The comrade is right,” Máslo says, nodding to the sweating official. “There are no written orders.”

  Máslo is neckless, but not gracefully so, like an okapi. He has the face of a functionary. I do not recognize such faces or necks in the forest, where hats are pulled down and collars are turned up against the cold, but they are apparent to me out here, as if they were preordained for it, just as doctors used to say you can tell a thief by the slope of his forehead.

  Máslo keeps smiling at me.

  “Come on,” he says. “The drinks are on me afterward.”

  I say nothing. Máslo puts a hand on my knee; he keeps it there.

  “This is a question of national security. You have to do this for the good of our children, for the health of our ČSSR. As to the written orders, you have my word among witnesses this comes from the top.”

  WE PASS OUT OF the town into the parkland, not slowing, going by people standing with vacant expressions under a stage that has been set up for the May Day parade. We come to a checkpoint, where the wide steps leading down from the chapel of St. Michael meet the Svět. We are ushered throu
gh. The road under us is suddenly white, powdery with quicklime. There are Veřejná Bezpečnost, or state security officers, and soldiers guarding the perimeter of the zoo.

  “What’s going on here?” I ask.

  “I told you,” Maslo says. “This is a matter of national security.”

  We get out of the car. I am introduced to the regional director of agriculture, the regional security chief, ranking StB, VB, and army officers, and Interior Ministry officials from Prague.

  There are several tents in which army field telephones are connected to zookeepers living with their animals in quarantine inside the zoo. Everyone wears rubber boots and leaves footprints in the powder. It is early evening now. The bonfires marking Čarodějnice have not yet been lit.

  The new regional director of the state veterinary service walks over.

  “František Vokurka,” he says, not extending his hand. “You must be the sharpshooter.”

  “I’m the forester,” I say.

  “Thanks for coming. I asked for a sharpshooter. I want to make this as humane as possible. We’ve tried strangulation. Chemicals are unsatisfactory for this size and number of giraffes. It’s too late for arguments or alternatives. Comrade: You are to shoot all the giraffes.”

  I push my spectacles back. I feel myself falling back, as though shoved.

  “How many?” I ask.

  “Two have already been shot,” he says, avoiding my look.

  “How many?”

  “This is difficult for me,” he says. “I accompanied many of these giraffes from Africa.” He pauses, looks down. “Forty-seven,” he says. “Including fourteen calves.”

  I want to walk away, but I do not.

  “What about the zoo director? I don’t see him here.”

  “He’s been abroad. He’s returning as we speak. Look,” he says, “the giraffes are done through with contagion. They have the pox. Their hides have opened into sores. There is no time to lose. The collective farms are already bringing complaints, saying their cows are giving no milk and their calves are dying without explanation.”

  I am taken into a tent. The Mauser is inspected, the leather strap removed. “This cannot be disinfected,” a soldier says, holding up the strap. “We’ll have to hold it here.”

  “I want it back.”

  “Of course.”

  I am stripped now inside the zoo gates. I hear a leopard or some other cat mewling. I sit naked on a bench with a pack of Red Stars, matches, spectacles, satchel of cartridges, and the rifle. A man comes in with a hooded suit of the kind used in case of nuclear attack. He holds another suit, boots, goggles, and surgeon’s rubber gloves.

  “Put these on,” he says.

  I dress. I think of myself as a soldier moving about the secret military base in the forest. I do not put on the goggles.

  “I need my spectacles to shoot straight,” I say. “You want me to shoot straight, don’t you?”

  I REPORT BACK TO VOKURKA.

  “I am a frogman,” Vokurka says, watching me. “I know how it is to wear a suit. The trick is to move slowly and deliberately at all times. Let me see your rifle and ammunition.”

  I lay them on a table. A VB officer snorts.

  “You’ll need an elephant gun,” the VB officer says.

  “What’s that?” I say.

  “A few days ago,” Vokurka says, “the VB were brought in to shoot two giraffes dead. They made a mess of it. They shot into the chests of the animals. They caused real suffering. That’s why we called you in.”

  “Comrade, how much do the giraffes weigh?” I ask Vokurka.

  “The adults? Six hundred to nineteen hundred kilos.”

  “Jesus and Mary!” I rip back my nuclear hood. “Listen,” I say, “the heaviest stag I’ve shot weighed two hundred kilos. At most. What am I going to do with a Mauser? It’s a sparkler.”

  “I’ve thought about this,” Vokurka says coolly. “This isn’t a hunt. It’s an execution. It’s not a matter of sighting an animal running away from you, between trees. The giraffes will be right above you. The giraffe keeper will guide them out. He’ll steady them for you. You’ll have no problem if you shoot precisely.”

  “Tell me where I should shoot.”

  “Not into the chest,” he says. “Never into the chest.”

  He takes paper and a pencil. “Ever seen a giraffe close up?” he asks.

  “Only from a distance,” I say.

  I have never been inside the zoo. I have never seen a beast in a cage. In a trap, but not in a cage.

  “Let me draw a giraffe for you.”

  He sketches a vertical shape.

  “You have to aim for the head,” he says. “The bullet must pass into the brain. That’s not easy. The brain is heavy, tens of kilos, and encased in thick bone.”

  “Through the eye?”

  “No. The best shot is here, just below and behind the ear,” he says, marking it with a cross. “The bone is less thick there, between the jaw and skull. It’s an aperture into the brain.”

  “That’s a hard shot,” I say.

  “The ear will cast a shadow,” he says. “You can aim for the center of that shadow. If you hit the giraffe here, where X marks the spot, it’s zhasne—lights out. The giraffe will die instantly, even if the neck cord is not severed.”

  “How will I shoot them in the dark?” I say.

  “Don’t worry about that,” the VB captain says, intervening once more. “The StB have brought in floodlights.”

  “One thing,” I say.

  “What’s that?” Vokurka asks.

  “I’ll need liquor. I can’t do this without a drink.”

  I WALK ALONE THROUGH the zoo, in my nuclear suit. I am out of the forest. I am revealed on concrete. I carry the rifle in one hand, the satchel in the other. I see the floodlights. I follow the footprints in the quicklime toward them. I pass zookeepers who are also in nuclear suits. They move between the cages with shovels and wheelbarrows of feed. I move on slowly, deliberately, as if underwater. I see a swallow, the first of the year. I hear a shotgun: I see pellets in the air like flies and the swallow torn and falling now. A man in a nuclear suit comes running up. He stares at me through goggles.

  “We’ve orders to shoot them down,” he says.

  I come to the giraffe house. A group of men stand by the wooden fencing. They are also in nuclear suits, but wear aprons over the suits. They are sharpening long knives. They are butchers from a rendering plant. There are two Škoda trucks of a special design, from that rendering plant, parked by the giraffe house.

  “They’re supposed to be blood-tight,” a butcher says. “We’ll be here all night. You shoot them and we’ll cut them up and drive them off.”

  A young man steps from a hut and walks toward me. He is not much older than my son. He wears a nuclear suit, but no hood. Blond hair falls diagonally across his face. He looks foreign.

  “Comrade Sobotka?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Emil.”

  “Emil what?”

  “Just Emil. I’m the scientist.”

  He folds his arms and unfolds them, as though he does not know where to put his hands. Behind him comes the giraffe keeper.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to the keeper.

  He looks away.

  “The okapi?” I ask.

  “One of them was shot,” he says. “The other is fine.”

  Now comes an StB officer. He wields a camera with a telephoto lens, a Zenit PhotoSniper, as though it were also a weapon. He shouts, “Line up!”

  We arrange ourselves in a line: secret policemen, butchers, a blond boy, a giraffe keeper.

  “ČSSR is in danger,” the StB officer says. “Our national security is imperiled. The contagion must be contained.”

  The butchers turn their knives on the points. I stand with my rifle at my side.

  “Orders have been given for the destruction of every one of these giraffes. The zoo is sealed off at gunpoint. No one will be allowed to leave unt
il the liquidation procedure is complete. No one will speak of these events. Anyone who does will be prosecuted and imprisoned. It will be as if this night never happened.”

  “Who’s he kidding?” a butcher says beside me. “Here I am working for twelve crowns and fifty heller an hour and he’s going to shoot me after three warnings?”

  THE SUN SETS. I see Čarodějnice bonfires burning beside the Svět. I see the puff of other shotgun discharges, and I see new swallows and an unkindness of ravens drop from the sky.

  I make a plan now with the scientist Emil and the giraffe keeper. I can see by the way Emil sweeps back his hair over and over, through his surgeon’s gloves, and by his confession of nausea, that he fears this night as I do. The keeper seems not to be quite awake. His eyes are dulled from many days living in quarantine. His giraffes will be driven into the yard in groups of three or four. I will climb up on the fencing around the yard and fire off my shots. It will be too messy to shoot the giraffes inside, where they could not be easily separated and would be driven mad by the crashing deaths.

  The floodlights the StB have arranged are useless. The light they shed is watery, useless. It is wrong to imagine that ČSSR has held within it some elite; the secret police are only a reflection of what is apparent.

  “I have a flashlight,” the keeper says. “If you shine the light in their eyes they will be blinded and stayed for a moment. Then you can aim it where you need to shoot.”