I have started to spend a lot of time at the pet shop, even though it smells wild and foul, and the birds make an infernal racket, whistling and chatter, ‘hello’ and ‘good day-good day,’ the parrots say with resounding voices that sound like speakers from the early days of radio, a long since antiquated technique. Apart from that, it only takes a moment to get used to the smell.
I do not stand there thinking that to a certain extent we are all in cages, animals as well as people, I do not stand there looking at the animals because I feel like a prisoner in my own existence, I know all the modernistic pitfalls & platitudes ad nauseam. There is by no means any sense of identification. I don’t feel bad for the animals, I don’t even feel sympathy for them. Nor do I think that these feathered and scaly creatures are the building blocks my species was founded on, so to speak. But as the thought emerges, I realize that I could think that.
I stand in contemplation in front of the cages and aquariums. I seek out the eyes of the animals and like to imagine that they seek out mine. They can’t remember me later, they can’t remember me even a second later. They don’t recognize me when I return five minutes later. Likewise it is impossible for me to distinguish between one goldfish and the next. Our eyes meet, and zilch. Am I the kind of person who says ‘zilch’… Our eyes meet across the battlefield of evolution, across millions of years.
I have learnt to grow accustomed to mice, I would not have thought that possible, what with their scurrying, their tails, etc. The birds’ eyes shine with intelligence, do not stick your fingers into the fish tanks to pet them, they can get fungal infections. One day there was a rabbit that (possibly) sensed me watching it, in any case it turned its head and looked me in the eyes, lingering and lazy. Would it have done the same with any old object, dead or alive? Is there life on Mars? It was grey and probably soft as silk, as they say.
There are sharks there, and now I am getting to the point. I come for the sharks in particular. My frequent returns are down to the sharks. I had not noticed them at first, and I thought I had misheard when the trainee asked: ‘Are there any sick fish to feed to the sharks today?’ And the owner must have nodded, because he continued: ‘I want to feed them, I want to feed them.’
At first I thought it was a metaphor, that shark meant something else. And I looked around suspiciously. I was afraid of being ridiculed. I was afraid to ask: ‘Do you have sharks?’ Slowly I scanned all the aquariums. I dress sharply, I’m not the type who wears clogs and has a snake around my neck while I walk down Strøget, (or worse still, and here is a story I was told once: a man who was in the habit, when there was a knock at the door, of opening the door, shouting ‘catch’ and throwing his snake into the arms of his visitor!) not the overweight kind that keeps stick insects or millipedes – oh, millipedes! Once on a dusty road in Africa I saw three monstrous millipedes come sweeping along, their legs made the most cheerful turn, black as old-fashioned locomotives they far outnumbered sightings of cheetahs and lions, and every time a couple wearing pith helmets stopped their four-wheel drive and asked us: ‘Have you seen any game today?’ I said yes and told them about the millipedes, ‘There, over there, that way, be careful you don’t run them over.’
Not the poor, lonely, sad type. Not perverted, not even introverted. I don’t keep pets. My love life is rather ordinary, like that of a country bumpkin (strictly speaking I did not need to share that with you). I have a degree, I’m slim and light on my feet, the rambling type. Does that sound like a personal ad? It is.
The aquariums are stacked three high at a length of ten metres, it’s a large pet shop, and the sharks are placed at the very top, almost at the end of the row, that is, deep inside the dark heart of the shop, where the room curves and opens into a warm side wing with glass doors where the birds and rodents are kept.
There are five small, eager devils side by side, they stay close to the glass and bump into it aggressively, like a team of horses stuck in a rut.
‘Nothing but mouths,’ the pet shop owner says; menacing mouths. The sharks can grow up to one metre in length, and I don’t know what people do with them then. Maybe they butcher them. In Iceland I was served shark with gravy and fried onions. It was disgusting. But Björk was sitting only a few tables away, wearing something that resembled rompers. I had just landed, went into the first restaurant I came across, and who should be sitting there but Björk! That would be like… no, there is no comparing. Not because they are cuter when they are small (the sharks), because they are not the least bit cute, but at least they can be kept in a normal-sized aquarium.
‘Maybe,’ the pet shop owner says, ‘people keep them (when they are fully grown), but I guess they would not have much room to move.’
They are grey and look like ferocious anchors. I have an urge to buy them and leave them on the windowsill at my office. Every time I would look up, I would meet their gaze, they would keep close to the glass and stare at me, consumed by a single thought: to escape and take me. In the end I might relent to all of the excited, concentrated will and stick my arm in. When somebody wants something from me, I am not very good at saying no, that was how my ex-girlfriend Alwilda got me, that is how my students take up all my time. I picture the sharks, one hanging from each finger; as long as the fingers remain. Now I picture myself pulling my hand out of the aquarium with a shark (about ten centimetres long) hanging from each finger, and masterfully continue typing on my computer, striking the sharks against the keys, typing with them until they expire on a keyboard ruined by blood and water.
I only have one animal at my office at the moment. A teddy bear that I bought at the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg; one of these museums where you have to walk through the gift shop in order to reach the exhibitions. And in a display case in the shop, there were three bears, one large, one medium and one small, designed by Malevich. Bing-bang-boom. Father-mother-child. Oh, how I wanted to buy all three. But it was too much. I could only justify buying the smallest one, the baby. Buying all three – it made me imagine an old spinster, her bed covered in porcelain dolls, her liver-spotted hands pressing their yellowed backs and yellowed dresses against the wall every morning, dumb as rabbits. I knew someone like that as a child. Her name was Gerda. At night, when the bed was Gerda’s, what did she do with all those dolls? The task of removing them and putting them back is what concerned me. I do not want to go there.
In the beginning, my heart would race every time I was going to show the bear to someone. Now the object has been normalized, displayed on my desk, on most days I pay no attention to it. But originally, in the very beginning, I felt a need to display my conquest.
It is neither soft nor adorable. It is like the Russian peasantry that Malevich stole it from and returned it to, now Malevich-coloured, clear red, clear blue, white, black, yellow. It is tough and proud, it works until it drops. It goes to bed with the chickens, rises with the sun, and once in a while, it gets to eat a little millet.
I kept it in my bag, god knows why. I was waiting for the right moment to pull it out, waiting for a lull in the conversation. When it arrived, I struck.
One time when I was in a restaurant with two of my best friends… it was seething in my bag throughout the main course and dessert, the bag was behind my chair. Under the pretext of having to grab my cigarettes, I loosened the flap a little and looked at it, it was sizzling. We were having a conversation about our likes and dislikes – they are both painters – and we jogged through the history of art, through a series of exhibitions. Should an explanation to my exaggerated state of excitability be sought in the past: I had a toy dog as a child, it was just as firmly stuffed as the Malevich bear, you sang about it while it danced: ‘Look, here comes the chequered dog, it has a rattle in its nose, it wants to sing you a song, it is a curious creature.’
And now I really wanted to display my curious new creature. I finally managed to do it after we had paid and were putting our coats on: ‘I’m not usually the type to collect dolls and stuffed animals, you know that,’ I said, ‘but look!’
‘Ooo,’ one friend said and stepped forward.
But my other friend made a small noise and stumbled back, as if he had seen a ghost or an aesthetic phenomenon in the flesh.
Which track would you prefer to follow, the beautiful one that leads you into the arms of a piece of handicraft that makes your heart race, or the one that leads back to ‘Once upon a time’, hearing the legs of a stuffed dog as your hands make it waltz on the edge of a cot?