“Of course you’re a real person,” he repeats.
A car passes by, the windows tremble in their frame. The lamas’ voices come through the partition. A second car passes by, the driver accelerates, he strains his motor without changing speed, the windows shake.
The door opens. A client enters, not a regular: someone unknown, short in stature, dressed like a Sunday proletarian, with a full jacket too long in the sleeves. He has gray hair, a worn-out expression that the lack of sleep has rendered cartoonish.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” he says.
His voice lacks confidence.
He goes to sit at a table under a fluorescent light, three meters away from the counter. Freek and Yasar greet him, but don’t look at him, Yasar out of professional tact, Freek out of shyness.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any salted buttermilk tea, would you?” the newcomer asks.
“No,” says Yasar. “We don’t have that here.”
“I was joking,” the man explains.
“Oh,” says Yasar.
“Two whiskeys,” says the man.
“A double?”
“No. In two glasses. Two doubles. With very few ice cubes.”
Yasar disappears the dishcloth he had on his shoulder and gets to work. No one says a word. There’s the sound of falling ice cubes, pouring alcohol, the temple bell, the radio. The pansori singer can be heard. Yasar places the glasses on a platter, and brings them to the small man’s table. Then he takes his place back in front of Freek. For twenty seconds, they don’t speak, both of them, as if the presence of a client behind them is preventing them from picking back up the interrupted conversation. Then Yasar shakes his head.
“You know, Freek,” he says. “In my opinion, they’re exploiting you, over at the zoo. They know very well that you’re going there after hours and taking care of the animals. What you’re doing is still work. Night work. They should compensate you.”
“Oh, I do it for the animals, not to get dollars,” says Freek. “And anyway, they pay me. Some days the director makes me come into his office. He talks to me. He gives me papers to sign. I sign them with my name. He gives me free meal tickets for the watchmen’s canteen.”
“There’s no way they count all your hours,” says Yasar. “I’m sure they’re exploiting you, Freek.”
“No, they do me right. Of course, sometimes. .”
“Sometimes what?”
“Oh, nothing. .”
“You were going to say something, Freek.”
“No.”
“Something that bothers you.”
“Well, sometimes they mistake me for an animal,” says Freek. “The watchmen. It’s an accident, I think. Not out of malice. They grab me on one of the paths before opening time. They don’t listen when I protest, like I’m talking to deaf people. No matter how loudly I complain, they open an empty cage and close it again with a padlock. Next to me they put cold food and some straw for toilet paper. There’s a sign hung from the bars: PLEASE DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS. While the zoo’s open to the public, I keep away from the sign so people don’t think it’s talking about me. At any rate, I don’t get much. The guards leave me there for three or four days. Then, they free me. They apologize. They say it was a truly regrettable mistake, that they accidentally got me confused, and it wasn’t out of malice. They say that I look too much like an animal. That they weren’t paying attention, because I’m tame, and I talk instead of biting or scratching. . You see, Yasar? I’d have to bite them for them to see that I’m something other than. . With all that, Yasar, how should I know that I’m really a person?”
“Stop, Freek,” the bartender says. “You’re like us, like everyone. Half human, half animal. Everyone’s the same way. You, me. . I can’t guarantee I’m a hundred percent human either. I just don’t know.”
“All the same. No one accidentally throws you in cages, I take it? With hippopotamuses and parrots?”
“Oh, I. . I was locked up in a special prison for twenty-five years. . With men and women who’d shot soldiers, ministers. .”
“Who did you shoot, Yasar?”
“Gangsters.”
Yasar was immersed in a hard silence. He’d killed mafiosos, in the past, but only a small number of them, and the species still hadn’t disappeared. To the contrary, it had multiplied, reducing other species’ territories, polluting other species’ daily lives and even their dreams. Yasar floats wordlessly, momentarily in the depths of this failure. The others, Freek and the whiskey drinker, ruminate on what they have said or heard.
A truck rumbles on the boulevard. The windows, and even a few glasses on the shelf behind Yasar, vibrate.
Behind the wall ascend mantras, prayers.
In the radio’s disappointing loudspeaker, barely audible since Yasar lowered the sound for reasons unknown, the Korean singer expresses the pain of desertion, the pain of scorned fidelity, the pain of betrayed filial devotion. She has taken on a quavering, but powerful, intonation. It is possible that its unbearable beauty is why the bartender, without thinking, changed the volume.
The small man sitting behind Freek swallows the last mouthful of his first glass.
“You work at the zoo?” he suddenly asks Freek.
Freek turns toward him. His heart always races when a stranger talks to him. Any sort of direct question agonizes him, he feels like trouble must follow. He fears what humans may think, not necessarily their actual threats, but what they might imagine, their cruel and shameful daydreams, often unconfessed, their unconscious depictions of his suffering or death. He pivots frankly toward the stranger and tries to answer naturally, but he can’t hide the abrupt pallor of his cheeks, nor the nervous quivering of his eyelids, his lips.
“Yes,” he says. “I go to the zoo. I get in through openings in the bars. When the visitors are gone, I talk to the animals. They’d like to be somewhere else. They’d like not to have to die in order to be somewhere else. They shiver in a corner for hours, without stopping. I wait for dusk, I sit near them and speak to them. The animals listen to me. They listen all night through the night, with their ears and muzzles. I try to talk to them until their fear fades away.”
The small, worn-out man stirs the ice cubes in his empty glass, then puts it back down in front of him.
“It’s not just animals,” he says. “I’m in a funk myself. Once you’re aware you’re trapped in life without any way to get out. . And then, when you think about those who did get out. . When you imagine what happens to them after. . At this very moment, for example. .”
He attacks his second double whiskey.
“And do you know how to get rid of humans’ fears?” he continues.
“No,” says Freek. “Not humans. For that, you have to go to a lama.”
He clears his throat. He successfully talked with the stranger, but the effort hurt his vocal cords. Now he figures he can end the dialogue without offending the other man. He turns toward Yasar, toward the shelves lined with multicolored bottles.
“Can you make me another caffeine, Yasar?” he says. “I’m going to drink one more bowl and then go. The animals are miserable. It’ll be a difficult night for them. I have to leave. They’re whining in the darkness, they’re waiting for me. They’re going to need me. They’re terrorized by death. Like the yak. Like the clown.”
“Hey!” exclaims the Sunday-dressed proletarian. “How did you know I’m a clown?”
He lifts his arm, an arm with a too-long sleeve, in the half-theatrical gesture of a man who has been drinking.
“Oh, you’re a clown?” asks Freek.