The Rome Zoo by Pascal Janovjak

Author:Pascal Janovjak
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schwartz Books Pty. Ltd.

Salvatore likes listening to Guido and his words, even though he only understands half of what he says, perhaps because the student seems too young to be expressing such thoughts, or perhaps because he speaks as if on a stage, without really addressing him directly. Young Guido says the protesters are like the wind, he says the wind is turning, that the days of society as spectacle, of its zoo-circus-cinemas, are over, that the wind is shifting and blowing through the tree tops, and that now is the dawn of a new era, he declaims, making a note that F3 is coming over to present her rear to M14, the dawn of a new era and that the zoo is an Ark, a fortress designed to preserve genetic capital, far from human folly and from the destructive human appetite for accumulation; Guido says the dykes are about to give, as he notes that F23 is delousing F16, the dykes are about to give and the world’s markets will come tumbling down one after the other and Salvatore takes a drag, his head is spinning gently and he’s never sure if it’s the weed or Guido’s words, he really does talk too much, and Guido’s words end up soothing him like the murmuring of a stream. Salvatore leans back and watches the eucalyptus leaves dancing. Of all those words there is one which makes him dream more than the others; it’s the word Ark, because it’s a word that gives meaning to his uniform and allows Salvatore to imagine himself as a captain, or midshipman or even just a non-commissioned officer, it doesn’t matter which, the Ark just needs to be steered into safe harbour and that’s what he’ll be able to tell his children, if one day he has any. The wind is turning and the whole zoo is changing course, and MD4 leaps from his branch, and pretends to chase M7, and M7 pretends to flee, baring his teeth.

Behind the bars of the gate the activists are also playing at defying the police. They’re beating their chests and brandishing their fists, and the police are beating their truncheons against the bars. Unlike the macaques, who always stop in time, the men will soon come to blows. It’s the 1980s already: the streets of Rome smell of tear gas, but also of gunpowder and burning. Weapons are slipped into processions, bombs go off in squares. Small groups of extremists are on the increase, all of them brag about being infiltrated by foreign powers. The new Animal Liberation Front is another group that thinks violence is necessary, they quote the example of Giorgio the chimpanzee: he had to bite off Fellini’s finger to make humans change their attitude towards animals. One night in September 1981, protesters carry out a ram-raid and break through the zoo’s perimeter fence. It takes several days to repair the hole, and stray dogs make the most of their chance to go in and devour a few ibises.

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