Only the Animals by Ceridwen Dovey Read Free Book Online Page B

enjoyment, and they demand to see her. I remind them that she is to be your life’s companion, and ask them to show respect. But I would rather they didn’t visit and left us in peace until you are ready to debut her yourself.
    The children know that you are writing to Hazel. They asked why you aren’t writing to them, and I didn’t know what to say. I am having a hard enough time explaining where their father is.
    You are wrong about humans and masochism, by the way (do I imagine that your letters to Hazel are full of barbs for me?). Most of us derive no pleasure from pain; most of us persist in the belief that romantic love is the shimmering jewel in the crown of human evolution. Some among us suffer to think of your open window, the cool evening air floating through it, the warmth of your body beneath the covers.
    Evelyn
    Dear Red Peter
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â The zoo, so noisy, my own thoughts held out. The birds in their enclosure squawk day and night. I am itchy. Itchy, itchy, itchy. Frau Oberndorff won’t let me scratch. She bathes me, combs my hair to make it lie down, cuts my toenails, cleans my tear ducts. She says my breath is a problem. It stinks. I like the stink. I breathe out and sniff it in. I cling to the lamp that hangs from the ceiling and swing on it, back and forth, back and forth. I scratch my bum, sniff my fingers.
    How did you become what you are? Why do you want me?
    Regards
    Hazel
    Â 
    My dearest Evelyn
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Your letter lit a fire in my heart, a hopeful bright burn …
    I am sorry that my acquaintances (I would not call them friends) have been bothering you at the zoo.
    Do you still not believe me, darling? That Hazel was all Hagenbeck’s idea, that I was forced to go along with his plan as I have been forced to do everything he wanted of me for his cursed zoo? That if I had a choice, if you had a choice – you are somebody else’s wife, let us not forget – I would choose you, you and only you? I fell in love with you the first moment I saw you, before I was fully human, and from across that gulf of understanding and experience, somehow, miraculously, you felt something for me in return. You alone inspired me to become human, not your husband’s relentless mazes and sorting tasks and word repetitions, not his tantrums when I didn’t do what he wanted, not the whipping, not the sweet fruit he dangled just out of my reach. I wanted to be human so that I might reach out across that chasm and touch you, be touched by you. You made me a better human, and I would like to think – dare I say it? – that I made you a better ape.
    Yours always
    R.P.
    Dear Hazel
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â In your last letter you asked for my own tale of transformation, and so I offer it. Do not be discouraged. It is a long process, beset with difficulty, to become human.
    I have only dim memories of our natal home. Fragments. Perhaps you remember more. A thicket of wild blossoms that sprouted in the forest after the heaviest of night thunderstorms. The sensation of being gripped by a boa constrictor, the pressure comforting; almost giving in to death’s lullaby before I was rescued – by my mother? my sister? – from the tightening coil. I have a scar along my hipbone from the hunter’s dart, but I don’t remember being shot. On the ship, they hung bananas from the top of my cage as a game but I refused to eat them. Then Prague, being fitted for a red velvet waistcoat and matching hat for my first appearance at the theatre. Peter’s gentleness. The curtain opening on us sitting side by side on stage, reading beneath a spotlight, and suddenly the intimate moment being exposed for what it was: a performance for a raucous crowd.
    Herr Hagenbeck bought me from Peter on one of his visits to Prague. He could see what I might be capable of, in a way that Peter could not. Hagenbeck enlisted