The Secret Life of the Panda Read online

  Thus, it was through a mist of tears that I beheld the shell of a stuffed leatherback turtle, sticky with varnish.

  “Once the seas were full of turtles,” said my father, poking at a leathery flipper with the tip of his cane.

  “Please not to touch!” snapped the attendant in his high-pitched voice.

  “...before the delicacy of their flesh made them a prized dish. Turtle soup was so delicious that Ibn Hussein ate nothing else.”

  “Did you ever taste it?” I asked.

  “No.”

  We moved on to a mummified corpse from China: perfectly preserved teeth in a slack-lipped smile.

  “In the Tang Dynasty it was an honour to be mummified, to be embalmed for posterity, so that we can look at him today, and contemplate our own mortality. The fact that we are here at this moment, with all our faculties and in a state of good health, is not something we should ever take for granted.”

  The empty eye-sockets gazed at us. The head, tilted to one side, seemed to enquire of us what it was like outside the prison of this building.

  Any other father would perhaps have thought twice before bringing his grieving son to such an exhibition of curiosities. My father had the insight to understand the rational basis of my grief—that my mother’s loss was simply a vacuum that had to be filled. And he was going to fill it: with knowledge, with facts, with the cold hard particles of matter. He knew that it was the best way to help me to understand the brevity of life, the unfathomable mysteries of the Universe and the constantly changing nature of the present.

  We paused before a two-headed lizard. The heads were blunt, in seeming imitation of the tail, which was equally blunt, or perhaps it was the tail that imitated the heads. One of the heads peered at us, fixing us with the black bead of an eye, while the other head tore at the bloodied carcass of a chicken that had been thrown into its cage. It held it down with one claw and tore away strips of meat with its tiny, sharp teeth. The watching head was motionless, only occasionally betraying its living nature with a tiny mechanical shudder.

  “The dinosaurs,” murmured my father, “gazed in just the same way at the volcanoes erupting on the still-warm crust of the earth.” He looked down at me but I could see it was not me he was seeing—he was looking beyond me at the spouting lava flow that had opened a great wound in the granite flanks of a mountain. “Who knows what it is that they see, these cold-blooded beasts. Perhaps they’re waiting for the ice-caps to melt and for their time to come, once more.”

  *

  I have always kept women at a distance. I watch them drift past, like spectres. Occasionally one approaches too closely but it takes only the slightest touch and they withdraw, hurrying away to warm their frosted fingers.

  Only once, a young researcher—dark, Scottish with gold rimmed spectacles... We had begun to sit together at lunch. I think we appreciated each other’s long silences. I suppose I might have brushed against her in the corridor a few times. We went on a few excursions to an art cinema and I recall an episode of indistinct fumbling on a sofa bed.

  One day, on our way to a seminar, we entered the lift together. As the doors closed with a soft hiss, she murmured something which I only half heard but from which I plucked the word, “love”.

  “What do you mean by that?” I said. “I like to be clear about these things.”

  “Feelings,” she began to stammer.

  “Lust you mean? You feel lust for me?” I was cruel. I felt it rise up in me: the desire to be cruel.

  We did not continue to lunch together.

  *

  The next exhibit was visible only through an eye-piece in a panel of black-painted board. At first there was only an amber coloured glow with something fine and whiskery that fussed at the edges of my vision. Then the long thin lariat of an antenna whipped into view and a burnished carapace, as wide as a car bonnet. The label declared it to be a giant Asian whistling cockroach and indeed, if you placed your ear to a tiny zinc grill, you could make out a faint musical hissing—something like a rendition of a baroque concerto played upon a miniature glass harmonica, but infinitesimally faint.

  Something made me recoil from the delicate music: a memory of an afternoon when I had been practising the piano—a little tune my mother had taught me. As he passed the piano, my father had accidentally knocked the lid of the instrument and it had fallen, trapping my fingers.

  The attendant became impatient with our slow progress and in his cross staccato he urged us to “move along and give others a chance to view the spectacle” even though there weren’t any other spectators beside ourselves.

  My father strode away and I caught up with him in front of a copy of “Lady with an Ermine”, the original of which, he informed me, is to be found in the National Museum in Cracow. From the time of my first visit, I formed the idea that the woman in the painting was my mother. The impression was so strong that, even though my father had told me that the woman was, in fact, the mistress of the Duke of Milan, I couldn’t rid myself of the thought that they were my mother’s eyes in the painting, her lips, and her slender hand stroking the animal’s fur. I wanted to curl up, like the ermine, on that soft bosom.

  I ran home, after that first visit and, on a scrap of paper torn from a volume of Buchner, I drew what I remembered of that face. My clumsy sketch bore little resemblance, in reality, to the woman’s features, but at least I had an image of my mother’s face which would soften the memory of the cold waxen mask I’d seen in the casket. He had removed all the photographs of her that were in the house. So that I should not miss her, he said, or form any false ideas about her. He wanted to impress on me the importance of the scientific view. He told me that the artist, Leonardo Da Vinci, was an expert in anatomy and that the hands were particularly well-painted. He went on to explain the structure of the human hand: the network of veins and capillaries and the complex nerves and muscles. If you were to strip the skin off the human hand, he explained, it would be just like the inner workings of an intricate machine, just like those in one of the factories he owned.

  When inspecting my desk drawers, as he sometimes did, he came across the sketch I’d made. He picked it up and turned it towards the light.

  “You have no talent for drawing,” he informed me. “Do not waste any more of your time doing it.”

  He carefully folded the drawing and meticulously shredded it before letting the pieces fall into the waste-paper bin.

  The last case in the museum, a tall deep case lined with black velvet and illuminated by seven small brass spotlights, contained nothing, nothing at all. There was a blank space where the information card should have been. My father always passed it without a second glance, but I often stood for a moment, wondering about the exhibit that had been removed.

  We made many visits to the museum. During our visits he imparted to me his profound knowledge of natural history, geology, art and philosophy in whispered lectures under the constant stare of the attendant whose eyes seemed to follow our progress around the exhibition, no matter how crowded or empty the room was.

  It was shortly before I was due to leave for America that we came for a final visit. My father, by this stage of his life, was beginning to lean more heavily on his cane and his breathing had become a little laboured as we passed between the exhibits.

  The attendant, more diminutive and shrunken than ever, nodded to us and slipped the coins below the desk into his cash tin. I had never ceased to feel the cold criticism of his stare and even as I stood, in a white linen suit specially tailored to my frame, I could feel his eyes following my steps.

  The exhibits had changed very little over the years but on this visit we found an impressively large case occupied by a small rusty nail, though so encrusted with orange deposits it had the appearance of a twisted little grub.

  “Nail from Noah’s Remarkable Ark”, read the accompanying text.

  My father gave it no more than a cursory glance.

  “God is dead,” he muttered and sh
uffled on.

  It came as a shock for me to discern the mocking bitterness of his tone. For a moment I began to doubt my father’s philosophy and to suspect the signs of a crumbling and distorted faith, like the cracking in the hull of a gigantic ship into which the waters had begun to pour from the gash made by a passing ice-berg.

  We had completed the full round of the exhibits and were approaching the exit. The final case which had never, to my knowledge, contained a single thing, not even a nail, was still vacant. My father had already moved past it and stood by the exit waiting for me. I glanced into the velvet-lined interior. What I saw made me smile; I’d caught sight of my own ghostly reflection, dressed in the white suit. I seemed, momentarily, to have been suspended in the case. I adjusted the angle of my hat, pleased and amused by my appearance, then noticed, just behind my head, the pale face of the attendant who was positioned behind me. Our eyes met in the glass.

  On the occasion of that final visit, it seemed the time to say something to my father, to somehow acknowledge that we were approaching the end of an era. Soon, very soon I would be leaving home, perhaps forever, and it seemed fitting to say what I’d prepared. Except that when I opened my mouth I found that all the words had become wooden and meaningless.

  “Father, I...”

  He gave me one of his quick, sharp glances.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “You’ve been a good father. It must have been very difficult.”

  “What?”

  “To bring me up, after mother died.”

  He didn’t speak, merely moved his head slightly.

  “If she had lived, she’d have shown me all the things you’ve shown me.”

  “She would never have brought you here.”

  My father said no more; he merely looked back into the dark entrance to the exhibition hall. I half turned and, out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the attendant, who I’d never before seen away from his desk, had followed us out and was standing, with one hand on the door frame.

  When I turned back, my father was already striding away into the dusk.

  “What are you looking at?” I rounded on the attendant.

  “That’s a very fine suit,” he spoke in a light, soft voice. “The white looks well on you, young man.” It was the first time he’d ever spoken to me.

  “Don’t call me that. My name is Amadeus, Mr Amadeus.” I began to feel hot and uncomfortable in my suit.

  “I’m to go to America,” I told him. “I have a scholarship to study the physical sciences.”

  “The earth goes around the sun,” he said and smiled. “I know that much. And people may travel great distances in their lives but they always come back to the same place.”

  The attendant went back to his desk and I was left alone. It was then that I became aware of a muted hum. I assumed that it came from the lighting but it seemed to follow me. Sometimes it was no more than a faint murmur, sometimes it grew to a roar. At times it seemed to disappear, then return almost imperceptibly.

  I did not sleep that night, nor would I sleep for many nights. My mind was too full. I’d seen myself, for the second time that day, as I passed the mirror in our wood-panelled hallway. At first I only glimpsed the features I’d always seen. But the longer I stood there, staring at my face, the thinner and more angular it seemed to become and the more my neck shrank into my shoulders. The tailored linen suit was no disguise for the thin torso inside.

  *

  Here I sit, monitoring the invisible collisions which occur, remotely, at the bottom of a concrete shaft. Their traces, the only empirical data we have for the operation of invisible processes, are measured in a concentric layering of gas-filled chambers.

  I mentioned the tinnitus to Dr Vincent; he prodded my ears with a polished metal implement and agreed that it could be. If it gets too bad, I am to go back and see him. But the more I listen to it, the more I am convinced that it is something external—an electrical hum, quite explicable, anyone would say, given my proximity to so much equipment. Dr Vincent maintains that the museum never existed. He says it is the manifestation of an early trauma. He says the lizard represents my sublimated sexuality. Utter nonsense, I told him, but he insisted on the significance of the two heads—the one head denying the erotic impulses of the other. I’m thinking of transferring to Dr Prakash. He may be bald but he only voices his opinions when asked.

  I think of my father’s semen, the collisions in my mother’s womb and his proprietorial paw resting on her bosom. I am my father’s son. He has instilled in me the compulsion to analyse the data I see before me. I consider it, suck my pen top and scribble down a few lines of a programme to correct a small technical glitch. Distantly, but distinctly, I hear the strains of a glass harmonica. My mother is combing her hair after her bath. It falls down into her lap like a lithe animal and coils there.

  The City in Flames

  Jan Knyp opened the pomegranate, as he had opened other bodies; prised apart the rind that parted like old leather and with the point of a knife pierced the tissue that enclosed the red granular cell. The juice broke out over the surface of the table and the lace cloth was stained with a faint orange blur tinged with red as though it had been burned. The fruit had an acrid taste and the flesh of each tiny cell was a glob that slithered in his mouth.

  A seed stuck in his teeth so he picked it out with the knife. One morsel was enough. He could not bear to eat—he could not bear to be a part of the world. He felt the clammy sweat that chilled in his armpits and was disgusted by eating, by sweating, by the daily grind, and longed to be free.

  It was very dark—as the solstice approached. Who would choose to live through the winter of 1535? Who would endure the weeks of grim rain? The cold that insinuated itself into the clothing, stripping men down to naked and quivering creatures hungry for warmth. In winter they suffered a closeness they would never submit to in summer. Jan and his wife, Regula, were jealous of warmth. They fought like dogs over scraps of heat.

  They ate together: a necessary household economy. Yet, the way she sucked up the oysters from their shells; the shape of her lips had something distinctly of the oyster about them: the pink fading to grey, the slackness, the glint of a tooth which could be a pearl hidden in the black mouth—the sucking and dabbing, the half closed eyes; an ecstasy of gorging on the slippery flesh. When she slipped those oysters’ lips into her own Jan thought of the consummation of snails, of the smacking of flesh on flesh.

  She’d given him one of her looks—her eyes alone were the lean part of her: the pared-down eyelid blinking on the inscrutable blackness of a pupil. “If you’ve finished eating,” she paused with a morsel of food on her fork, “perhaps you can find the time to look over some of the objects we need to dispose of. The furniture we no longer use must be sold.”

  “There are things I must finish before it gets dark.”

  “You think more of those papers of yours than you do of this house. You leave me to attend to everything. No matter, I’ll deal with the things as I see fit.”

  He needed to keep his manuscripts hidden or they were employed to light the kitchen fire. He had found his sketches and engraving proofs of the butterfly’s tongue bundled into a wad and stuffed into a rotten window frame to keep out the draught. Regula referred to his work as a perversion. She called him a subversive Satanist and told visitors that he cut up animals as a sacrifice to the Dark Lord. She claimed that his fevers were a punishment from God.

  His bread crumbled, a gritty substance, quite unfleshlike. He chewed on a rind of cheese. But the process choked him. By the time Regula had moved on to her bleeding joints of meat, he was escaping back to the soot of candles, back to the attic he’d adopted as his own.

  *

  “Your brother has written.” Regula came to Jan’s room with the letter clutched to her bodice. “He has sent us a bag of coin with his servant.” She held up the little bag and it jingled faintly. “He knows how much we need the money. If you felt any affection
for your family you’d write back to him, but I know you would rather sit here inventing your rituals.”

  “Leave me be!”

  “To do the Devil’s work. Aye, to eat and drink and do nothing of any use to this rotten hulk of a house. Never, I’ll never stand for the Devil’s work.” Her expression as she delivered this speech should have made him laugh—the solemnity and the peevish set to the mouth. She stepped forward, thrusting the letter into his face. Although the strange symbols were meaningless to her, she was afraid of the writing, of the power of it. She left it unfurling on his desk and stalked out of the room.

  7th October 1535

  My dear Jan

  I imagine that you are in need of funds. I’m sending you a bag of coin with Mathias, he’s a blockhead but honest. It’s not a great deal, Jan, but it’s all the ready cash we have. It’s become almost impossible to reach you in Münster. Do you realise that you’re all but cut off? Clara begs me urge you to leave while you have the chance. I told her that things are bound to improve and that the roads are infested with thieves these days. My impression is that you might suffer more in leaving Münster than you would do by staying put for the time being. There are rumours that the Bishop’s army will lay siege to the city but I don’t believe it will come to that.

  I trust that you are keeping well and continuing with your work. Give Regula my best and, God willing, we will meet again soon.

  Your brother, Balthasar

  *

  Before suppertime on the same day, the kitchen boy came running with the news that the city council had been over-run by the Anabaptists. He had witnessed the crowds and the burning of books on street corners.

  In the dining room, listening to the resentful clink of cutlery on china, Jan watched Regula as she ate, unable to eat himself. The maid, Gesina, brought in the dishes under their silver covers one after another but it seemed that nothing could satisfy his wife’s appetite.