Memoirs of a Polar Bear Read online

  I hurried out of my apartment, rolled down the stairs, and ambushed the concierge, asking whether she happened to have any of that elixir in her apartment. A peculiar smile appeared on her face, resembling Sumerian cuneiform writing. Indecently rubbing her index finger and thumb together, she asked: “Have you perhaps received some . . .” Irritated, I replied: “No! I don’t have any foreign currency on me!” Now that I’d exposed her sweet, titillating secret, which she’d wanted to share with me surreptitiously, with my use of the loveless, insipid designation “foreign currency,” she felt insulted and turned her back on me. Quick, get her in a chatty mood!

  “You have a new hairstyle. It looks great on you.”

  “Oh, do you mean this disgusting mop? I slept on it wrong last night.”

  “And your new shoes? They’re marvelous.”

  “What, these shoes? You noticed them? I didn’t buy them new. A gift from my relatives — I like them.”

  Although my compliments were obviously just awkward attempts at flattery, the superintendent was willing to acknowledge my good intentions. Like a fat, hairy worm, her gaze crept back toward me.

  “You hardly ever drink. Why are you suddenly so interested in my vodka?”

  “I was remembering my childhood — even though honestly I’d forgotten all about it for years — and now I find it oppressive. I’m having trouble breathing.”

  “Did you remember something unpleasant?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t know yet whether it will be unpleasant or not. For the moment it’s just a breathing problem.”

  “You shouldn’t drink to forget. Otherwise you’ll end up like that poor district magistrate who used to live above you.”

  I remembered the day when something heavy crashed down on the cobblestones in front of the building, sounding much heavier than a man’s body. I heard the sound once more and was covered in goosebumps.

  “You ought to keep a journal if you’re interested in stockpiling your experiences.”

  Her suggestion surprised me — it was so intellectual, it didn’t sound like her. I prodded a bit, and she admitted that last week she’d read Sarashina Nikki, a masterpiece of Japanese diary literature from the Middle Ages, in Russian translation. Her good connections had made it possible for her — despite the modest edition of fifty thousand copies that had sold out in advance via subscription — to get her hands on a copy. The pride she took in being socially so well connected was no doubt the only reason she’d read the book.

  “You must have the courage to write, like the author of this diary!”

  “But I thought a diary was for recording the day’s events. I want to write to call back to mind something I can no longer remember.”

  The superintendent listened to me and then casually made one more suggestion: “So write an autobiography!”

  •

  There were reasons why I had given up my stage career to spend my valuable time at paralyzingly boring conferences. Back when I was still the shining star of our circus, we were asked to put together an evening’s program with a dance company from Cuba. Originally the idea had been for us to take turns performing without truly producing a synthesis. But our collaboration developed in an unforeseen direction. I fell in love with the South American style of dancing and wanted to master it and incorporate it into my repertoire. I had them give me a crash course in Latin American dances and rehearsed assiduously. Too assiduously. After hours and days spent vigorously shaking my hips, my knees were in such bad shape that I was incapable of performing acrobatics of any sort. I was unfit for circus work. Ordinarily they would have just shot me, but I got lucky and was assigned a desk job in the circus’s administrative offices.

  I never dreamed I had a gift for office work. But the personnel office left no talents of their workers unexplored if they could be employed and exploited to the circus’s advantage. I would even go so far as to say I was a born office manager. My nose could sniff out the difference between important and unimportant bills. My inner clock was always right on schedule — I could be punctual without so much as glancing at a watch. When it was time to calculate a paycheck, I never had to wrestle with numbers, for I could read in people’s faces what wages they should receive. If I wanted, I could get my boss to approve any project at all, regardless of how utopian it sounded. My mouth mastered the art of premasticating difficult-to-digest material and then communicating a persuasive plan.

  There was plenty for me to look after in the service of our circus and the ballet: the preparations for foreign tours, publicity, advertisements for job openings, all the usual administrative paperwork — and, chiefly, attending conferences.

  I was perfectly content with my new life until I began to write my autobiography. Suddenly I lost all desire for conference-going. When I sat in my room licking the tip of my pencil, I wanted to go on licking it all winter long, not seeing anyone, just working on my autobiography. Writing isn’t particularly different from hibernation. Perhaps I made a drowsy impression, but in the bear’s den of my brain, I was giving birth to my own childhood and secretly attending to its upbringing.

  I was sucking absentmindedly on my pencil when a telegram arrived with the news that I was to participate in a panel discussion the next day. The topic would be Working Conditions Among Artists.

  Panel discussions are like rabbits — usually what happens during such a session is that further sessions are declared necessary — and if nothing is done to prevent this, they multiply so quickly and become so numerous that it is no longer possible to provide a sufficient number of participants, even if we all devote most of each day to these sessions. We’ve got to think of a way to end this proliferation of panel discussions. Otherwise our bottoms will be squashed flat from all the sitting, and all our organizations and institutions will collapse beneath the weight of our derrieres. There are ever larger contingents of people who use their heads primarily to think up plausible excuses for why they can’t possibly show up for the next panel discussion. The excuse virus has been spreading faster than a dangerous flu. And then everyone’s real and fictitious relatives are all having to die several times over, so that their funerals can serve to excuse absences. I have no relatives I can condemn to fictional death. My physical makeup makes me immune to influenzas of every sort, and so I’m left without excuses. Time passed, and I kept getting lost in the pages of my appointment book, which had been attacked by a mildew of obligations.

  Besides the sessions and conferences, I had to attend formal receptions, look after the official guests of the circus, and take part in business luncheons and dinners. These duties made me ever plumper, and this was the only positive development in my new life. Instead of dancing on the stage, I sat in comfortable chairs in conference rooms, and afterward soiled my fingers with oily pierogi, ate heavy borscht, shoveled glistening black caviar into my mouth, and accumulated a fortune in body fat.

  I might have gone on living like that if spring hadn’t caught me unawares and shaken me to my core. Now I lay there like a person who’s fallen from a tall ladder. When I climb up to the roof to check the tiles in early spring, I’m not thinking that the house might suddenly cave in beneath me; a flawlessly structured republic, a heroic self-portrait in bronze, a stable mood, without ups and downs, a regular life rhythm: suddenly it was all on the brink of collapse, and I hadn’t suspected anything. There’s no point sitting patiently in a sinking ship, it’s better to jump in the ocean and make use of your limbs. It was the first time I’d ever turned down a conference invitation. I was afraid of being annihilated on account of saying no: those who refuse to fulfill their duties lose their right to exist. But my desire to go on writing my autobiography was by that point already three times the size of my fear of having my existence destroyed.

  It felt strange to be writing an autobiography. In the past, I’d used language primarily for exporting an opinion. Now language remained at my side
, touching soft spots within me. It felt as if I were doing something forbidden. I was ashamed of what I was doing and didn’t want anyone to read the story of my life. But when I saw the pages swarming with letters, I felt an urge to show them to someone. Perhaps the pride I felt was like that of a toddler eager to show off a stinky masterpiece. Once I dropped in on the superintendent just as her granddaughter was showing the grown-ups her freshly produced brown dumpling. It was still steaming. At the time I was shocked, but now I can understand the little girl’s pride. That excrement was the first thing the child had ever produced without outside help, and there was no reason to take offense at the pride she displayed.

  But to whom should I show my work? There was something shady about the superintendent. Admittedly the friendship she showed me was to a considerable extent sincere, but it was her job to spy on the building’s inhabitants. I had no parents, and my colleagues were out of the question, since they all avoided me whenever possible. I had no friends.

  Then I remembered a man they called “Sea Lion.” He was the editor of a literary journal. When my stage career was still in full bloom, he had been one of my fans and would often visit me backstage with a lavish bouquet of flowers.

  Sea Lion looked more like a seal than a sea lion, but his nickname was Sea Lion, so that’s what I’ll have to call him, since over the years I’ve lost track of his real name. Supposedly he came down with a raging fever the first time he saw me onstage. He claimed to be hopelessly in love with me. After he’d visited me backstage who knows how many times, he confessed his desire to share my pillow. But he already knew that nature had made our bodies incompatible.

  I, too, was convinced on first glance that our bodies could never conjoin in sexual union: his was moist and slippery, while mine was dry and rough. Everything in the region surrounding his beard was splendidly built, while the tips of his four limbs looked pathetically weak. By contrast, my own life force was concentrated in my fingertips. He had been bald since birth, while I was thickly furred everywhere from my head to my most intimate zone. We would never have made a good couple. Nevertheless we once wound up kissing. It felt as if a tiny fish were wriggling around in my mouth. Sea Lion had an ungainly row of teeth, but that bothered me least of all, since I instantly recognized his true masculinity in the fact that he had no cavities. This I truly appreciated. When I asked why he didn’t have any rotten teeth, he replied that he never ate sweets. I, on the other hand, found them irresistible. What would I use as a metaphor for the best part of my life if there were no longer any sweets?

  I hadn’t seen him in quite some time, though he kept in touch: now and then he would send me his latest catalog, in which his office address was printed. I plucked up my courage and decided to pay him a surprise visit without contacting him in advance.

  The offices of his firm, which was called North Star Publishing, were located at the southern edge of town. From the outside there was no indication that anything like a publishing house might be located here in this building. A young man stood in the lobby, smoking a cigarette. Sternly, he asked what business I had there. I had scarcely gotten out the words “Sea Lion” before he told me to follow him, walking ahead of me like a robot down the hall. To either side, peeling wallpaper hung down like burned skin. We penetrated ever deeper into the building’s interior, and at the end of the hallway reached a green door behind which was a room with no windows. The ceiling was low, and the manuscripts piled up in enormous stacks were yellowed.

  Sea Lion looked at me and flinched as if I’d slapped him in the face. “What are you doing here?” he asked coldly. Only at that moment did it occur to me that there is nothing in the world more dangerous than a former fan. Too late. I — a miserable former circus star — stood there defenseless before the bloodthirsty publisher, clasping my virginal work. Many times in the past I had danced atop a gigantic ball, ridden a stunt tricycle and a circus motorcycle. But publishing an autobiography was a far more dangerous acrobatic feat.

  Carefully I opened my bag, took out the sheets of letter paper covered with writing, and placed them on the desk without a word. His gaze lingered quizzically upon my nose. When he glimpsed the written characters in my manuscript, he adjusted his glasses and began to read. His glasses had round lenses, and he read with his back bent over the manuscript. He read the first page, then the second. The more he read, the more delightedly his eyes gleamed, or maybe I just imagined that. After he had read through several pages, he stroked his beard and opened his nostrils very wide. “You wrote this?” he asked, his voice trembling. I nodded. He knit his brows, then set an expression of weariness on his face like a mask. “I’ll keep the manuscript here. Honestly I’m somewhat disappointed that it’s so short. Perhaps you’d like to keep writing and bring me more next week.”

  I said nothing, and my silence appeared to make him cocky. “And can I say one more thing? Don’t you have any better paper to use? Did you steal this from a hotel? Poor thing! Take mine, if you like.” He presented me with a stack of Swiss letter paper with the Alps as a watermark, adding a notepad and a Mont Blanc fountain pen.

  I hurried home and wrote on a sheet of this freshly acquired fancy paper: “When I stood on two legs, I already came up to Ivan’s navel.” I scraped the metal point of the fountain pen across the paper’s delicate plant fiber structure. It felt just as good as scratching my itchy back.

  •

  One day Ivan appeared riding a strange contraption. He rode in a circle a few times, got off, and then pressed the object, which he called a “tricycle,” between my legs. I bit at the handle of this new vehicle, made of a material that was even harder than the grayish bread Ivan sometimes threw me, fell off, and sat down on the floor to inspect the tricycle. Ivan let me play for a while, then placed the thing between my legs again. This time I remained sitting in the saddle and was given a sugar cube as a reward. The next day, Ivan placed my feet on the pedals. I pressed into them as he indicated with his hand, and the tricycle rolled forward a little way. Then I was given a sugar cube. I pedaled and got sugar. More pedaling, more sugar. I didn’t want to stop, but after a while Ivan took the tricycle away from me and went home. The next day, our game was repeated, and on the days after that, until one day I began to climb onto the tricycle of my own free will. The riding lessons didn’t seem hard once I’d grasped the basic principles.

  I did also have one awful tricycle experience. One morning Ivan showed up reeking — a nauseating mixture of perfume and vodka. Feeling crushed and betrayed, I hurled the tricycle at him, but he skillfully ducked out of the way and started shouting at me, his arms whirling through the air like a pair of wheels. This time there was no sugar for me; he pulled out his whip. Even after this, it was a long time before I understood that there were three sorts of actions. Performing actions in the first category got me sugar. The second category got me nothing: neither sugar nor a whipping. For third-category actions, I was copiously rewarded with lashes. I would sort new actions into these three categories the way a postal clerk sorts letters.

  •

  With this, I concluded the new section of my autobiography and brought my manuscript to Sea Lion. Outside a brisk wind was blowing, but inside his publishing house the air was stuffy, it smelled like the cold smoke of Soviet cigarettes. On his desk I saw plates filled with bones, probably the bones of chicken wings, and behind them sat Sea Lion, skillfully operating his toothpick like the beak of a little bird. As dessert, I served him my manuscript with its thickly clustered letters. He gobbled it right up, gave a hoarse cough, yawned, and said: “This is much too short. Write more.”

  His arrogance set my teeth on edge. “How much I write is my business — not yours. What’s in it for me if I write more?” My erstwhile circus star pride had suddenly returned. Sea Lion was nonplussed, apparently he hadn’t reckoned with my making any demands. With nervous fingers he opened one of the drawers, pulled out a bar of chocolate, handed it to me and add
ed a bit of commentary: “This is an excellent product of the GDR. I don’t eat sweets, so you can have it.”

  I didn’t believe a word he was saying, since the color of the packaging that sheathed the chocolate like metallic armor gleamed in a way that didn’t look East German. No doubt Sea Lion had gotten hold of the chocolate through his West German connections. I could report you! But I gave no sign of having seen through him and instead broke the chocolate bar in half, wrapper and all. An attractive, pearly black cocoa skin was revealed. But unfortunately I found the taste rather too bitter. “You’ll get more if you keep writing. Though to be honest, I’m not even sure you have anything more to say.” Sea Lion put the Busy Publisher mask back on his face and let his mind crawl into his paperwork.

  Irritated by his cheap provocation, I rushed home and hurled myself at my desk. Annoyance is an easily combustible power source that can be extremely useful in the production of a text. It gives you energy you’d have to generate elsewhere. Rage is a sort of fuel that can’t be found in the forest. For this reason I’m grateful to anyone who enrages me. Apparently I was writing with too much force in my fingers. The point of my fountain pen gave out under the pressure and bent. The mountain-blue Mont Blanc blood spilled out, staining my white belly. It was a mistake to have taken off all my clothes because of the heat. An author should never sit down at her desk naked. I washed, but the ink stain remained.

  •

  I learned to wear a girly, lace-trimmed skirt — or rather, to endure it. At least I stopped ripping it off when they put it on me. I also let them adorn my head with large bows. Ivan said I had to put up with them since I was a girl. I couldn’t swallow his argument, though I was capable of swallowing his sugar cubes ad infinitum. Various bits of fabric were tied around my head, and this too bothered me less and less, and even the terrifying spotlight beams stopped confusing me. I never lost my composure, even when I beheld a seething mass of people before me. The fanfare announced my arrival, and I would ride my tricycle steed onto the brightly lit stage. A lace-trimmed skirt encircled my hips, and atop my head fluttered a large bow. I got down off the tricycle, held out my right paw-hand to Ivan for a handshake, then I clambered onto a ball and balanced on top of it for a while. Amid the thunderous applause, I would catch a glimpse of sugar in the palm of Ivan’s hand, bubbling up like water from a spring. The sweetness on my tongue and the billowing clouds of joy rising up from the pores of the spectators intoxicated me.