time for more Zoshchenko

Animals

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I wander down the lanes of the Leningrad zoological park.

In one cage, a magnificent huge tiger. Beside him is a small white bitch-- a fox terrier. She nursed the tiger. And now, by her maternal rights, she is kept in the same cage with him.

The tiger glances at her affably.

An amazing sight.

Suddenly I hear a horrifying cry behind me.

All the visitors run to the cage where the brown bears are kept.

We witness a horrible scene. Next to the brown bears is a cage of bear cubs. In addition to the iron bars, the cages are separated by boards.

A little cub has climbed up on these boards and his paw has gotten caught in the crack. And now a brown bear is furiously tearing at this little paw.

Pulling itself away and crying, the cub gets a second paw caught in the crack. Now a second bear goes after that paw.

They both tear at the cub so badly that someone among the visitors falls in a faint.

We try to chase off the bears with dirt and stones. But this only drives them into a greater fury. One paw with little black claws already lies on the floor of the cage.

I take some sort of a long pole and beat the bear with this pole.

The horrible crying and roaring of the bears brings the keepers, the directors.

They pull the cub away from the boards.

The brown bears pace the cage furiously. Their eyes are flooded with blood. And their muzzles are full of blood. Growling, the male mounts the female.

The unfortunate cub is taken into the office. Its front paws are ripped off.

It doesn't cry anymore. Probably they'll shoot it now. I begin to understand what animals are. And what is the difference between them and people.

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In the Water

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The kids are swimming and diving. I'm bathing by the shore.

They shout at me:

"Hey, c'mon out. Don't be scared. We'll teach you how to swim."

I walk slowly into the water. It's cold. Goose bumps crawl up my flesh.

"Dunk all at once, you dummie. Seven times!" the kids shout.

I dunk up to my shoulders. The kids shout:

"Over your head, you goof."

No, I don't think I'll dunk over my head. The water will get in my eyes and ears. That's awful.

"C'mon out! Don't be such a sissy!" the kids shout.

Although it's deep there, I walk forward. I don't want to be a sissy.

I walk forward and suddenly drop in a hole. The green water goes over my head. Could be I drowned.

But no. I float to the top. And paddling like a dog, I swim.

Bravo. It seems I taught myself to swim.

Suddenly someone or something grabs me by the leg. I cry out and sink to the bottom.

This time I drowned for good. I close my eyes.

The kids lug me up to the top. One of them says:

"I pulled him by the leg, I was just kidding. But he near to croaked."

Another says:

"Too bad we dragged him out so soon. He could have stayed there a little longer. Then we could have pumped him."

I lay on the shore spitting out water.

The kids fuss around me like demons. They're angry that I swallowed so little water.

Speak, Memory, by Vladimir Nabokov

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour). I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. He saw a world that was practically unchanged-- the same house, the same people-- and then realized that he did not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence. He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs window, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell. But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the smug, encroaching air of a coffin; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated."