“Please!” Griick held up his hand. “Have the politeness to listen. I say that there is no doubt, no possible doubt, that you believe in what you say. Very good! Now. Allow me to ask you this question.” He folded his hands over his paunch, and his rosy lips shaped themselves into a smile.
“Suppose that you are Martin Naumchik.” He waved his hand generously. “Go on. Suppose it, I make no objection. Very well, now you are Martin Naumchik. What is the result?”
He leaned forward and stared earnestly at the biped. Wenzl, beside him, was grimly silent.
“Why, you release me,” said the biped uncertainly. “You help me find that animal who has got into my body, and somehow - in some way-”
“Yes?” said Dr. Griick encouragingly. “Somehow - in some way -”
“There must be some way,” said the biped miserably.
Griick leaned back, shaking his head. “To make you change around again? My dear young sir, reflect a moment on what you are saying. To put a man’s mind back in his body after it has gone into the body of an animal? Let’s not be children!
“The thing is impossible, to begin with! You know it as well as I do! Supposing that it has actually happened once, still it’s just as impossible as before! My dear young sir! To put a man’s mind back in his body? How? With a funnel?”
The biped was leaning his head on his greenspined hand. “If we could find out why it happened -” he muttered.
“Good, yes,” said Griick sympathetically. “A very good suggestion: that is what we must do, by all means. Courage, Fritz, or Martin, as the case may be! This will take time, we must be prepared to wait. Patience and courage, eh, Fritz?”
The biped nodded, looking exhausted.
“Good, then it’s understood,” said Griick cheerfully, getting up. “We shall do everything we can, you may be quite sure of that, and in the meantime -” he motioned toward Wenzl, who had also risen - “a little cooperation, no trouble for poor Wenzl. Agreed, Fritz?”
“You’re going to keep me here? On display?” cried the biped, stiffening again with indignation.
“For the present,” said Griick soothingly. “After all, what choice have we got? To begin with, where would you go? How would you live? Slowly, we must go slowly, Fritz. Take an older man’s advice, haste can be the ruin of everything. Slowly, slowly, Fritz, patience and courage-”
Wenzl took the biped’s slender arm and began to guide him out of the room. “My name is Martin Naumchik,” he muttered weakly as he disappeared.
THE dim gray light of early morning flooded the outer rooms, illuminating everything but emphasizing nothing. For some reason - the biped had noticed it before - it made you see the undersides of things more than usual, the loose dingy cloth hanging under the seat of a chair, the grime and dust in corners, the ordinarily inconspicuous streaks, smears, scratches.
He prowled restlessly down the corridor, past the closed doorway of the next room - the female had apparently up-ended a table against it - into the fluorescent-lit office space with its hooded machines, then back again. In his own inner room he caught sight of an ugly face in the mirror - greenish and flatmuzzled, like an impossible hybrid of dog and cock - and for a horrible instant did not realize it was his own.
He clutched at the wall and began to weep. Strangled, inhuman sounds came out of his throat.
Ten hours, ten hours or more, it must be. Just around supper time it had happened, and now it was past dawn. Ten hours, and he still wasn’t used to it, it was harder to bear than ever.
He had to get out.
The biped’s little valise was standing on the floor of the inner room near the washbowl. He pounced on it, ripped it open, flung the contents around. Toothbrush, chess set, some cheap writing paper, a dog-eared paperbound book called Brecht’s Planet: Riddle of the Universe; nothing useful. Weeping, he ran into the office room and snatched up the telephone receiver. The line was still dead. Probably it was not linked into the zoo switchboard this early in the morning. What else?
He caught sight of one of the typewriters, stopped in surprise, then sat down before it and took the cover off.
There was paper in a drawer. He rolled a sheet into the platen, switched the machine on, and sat for a moment anxiously gripping his three-fingered hands together.
The words took shape in his mind: “My name is Martin Naumchik. I am being held prisoner in …”
His hands stabbed at the keyboard, and the type bars piled up against the guide with a clatter and a snarl; the carriage jumped over and the paper leaped up a space.
The pain of realization was so great that he instinctively tried to bit his lip. He felt the stiff flesh move numbly, sliding against his teeth. Biting his lip was one of the things he could not do now. And typing was another.
It was too much. He would never get used to it. He would always forget, and be snubbed up like an animal at the end of a chain …
After a moment, half-blinded by tears, he pried at the jammed keys until they fell back. Then, painfully, picking out the letters with one finger, he began again: “My name is M …”
In half an hour, he had finished his account of the facts. Next it would be necessary to establish his identity. Perhaps that should come first, or the story would never even be read. He took a fresh sheet, and wrote:
M. Frederic Stein
PARIS-SOIR
98, rue de la Victoire
Paris 9e (Seine)
Dear Frederic:
You will know the enclosed is really from me by the following: When I was last in Paris, you and I went to the Rocking Florse and got tanked on mint whistles. There were three greenies in the jug. You told me about certain troubles with your wife, and we discussed your taking a correspondent’s job in the Low Countries.
This is not a joke; I need your help - in God’s name, do whatever.
He paused, and over the machine’s hum was lucky enough to hear the whisper of footsteps in the corridor. He had barely time to turn off the machine, cover it and hide the typed pages in a drawer.
A young keeper with a sullen, pimpled face came in, wheeling a cart with two steaming trays. It was breakfast time.
His first day as a caged animal was about to begin.
III
THERE in the middle of the city, the streets were as bright as if it were day. Over the tesselated pavements people were wandering. Music drifted seductively from an open doorway; all the scarlet blossoms of the Antarean air-weed, clinging to the sides of the buildings, were open and exuding a fresh pungence.
In one of the brilliant display windows, as he passed, the young man saw a row of green creatures in glass cages - sluggish globular animals about the size of a tomato, with threads of limbs and great dull green eyes. They floated on the green-scummed surface of the shallow water in the cages, or climbed feebly on bits of wet bark. Over them was a streamer: TAKE A WOG HOME TO THE CHILDREN.
He passed on. The people around him, moving in groups and couples for the most part, were a different sort than he was used to seeing at the Zoo in Hamburg. They were better dressed, better fed, their skins were clearer and redder and they laughed more. The women were confections of white-blonde hair and red cheeks, with sparkling white teeth and flashing nails, and they wore puffed, shining garments like the glittering paper around an expensive gift. The men were more austere in dark, dull reds and blues. Their feet were thinly shod in gleaming patent leather, and their hair shone with pomade. Their talk, in the unfamiliar Berlin accent, eddied around him: confident tones, good humor, barks of laughter.