Read Online The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Diane Ackerman
Ads: Link
ornamental shrubs to protect them from frost. Other blue-uniformed helpers should have been cellaring beets, onions, and carrots, and topping off the silos with fodder, so that wintering animals would have plenty of vitamins (a word coined in 1912 by Polish biochemist Casimir Funk). The barns should have been brimming with hay, the storerooms and pantries with oats, flour, buckwheat, sunflower seeds, pumpkins, ant eggs, and other essentials. Trucks should have been carting in coal and coke, and the blacksmith fixing broken tools, weaving wire, and oiling padlocks. In the carpentry shop, men should have been repairing the fences, tables, benches, and shelves, and crafting doors and windows for added buildings when the ground softened in spring.
Normally, Antonina and Jan would have been preparing the budget for the coming year, awaiting the arrival of new animals, and reading reports in offices angled to view the river and the steeply roofed houses of Old Town. The press department would have been organizing talks and concerts, lab researchers would have been smearing slides and running tests.
Dead season, though never an easy time of year, usually offered gated asylum in a world private and protected, where they banked on a well-stocked larder, standing orders for foodstuffs, and a belief in self-reliance. The war undermined all three.
"The wounded city is trying to feed their animals," Antonina reassured Jan one morning as she heard a clop-and-clatter, then saw two wagons creaking up to the gate with leftover fruit and vegetable peelings from kitchens, restaurants, and houses. "At least we're not alone."
"No. Warsawians know it's important to save their identity," Jan replied, "all the elements of life that elevate and define them—and, fortunately, that includes the zoo."
Still, Antonina wrote that she felt the ground disappearing beneath her when the occupation government decided to move the capital to Kraków, noting that, as a provincial city, Warsaw no longer needed a zoo. All she could do was await the liquidation , a loathsome word suggesting a meltdown of creatures her family knew as individuals, not as a collective mass of fur, wings, and hooves.
Only Antonina, Jan, and Ryś remained at the villa, with not much food at any price, little money, and no jobs. Antonina baked bread every day, and relied on vegetables from the summer garden and preserves made from rooks, crows, mushrooms, and berries. Friends and relatives in outlying hamlets periodically sent food, sometimes even bacon and butter, luxuries seldom seen in the devastated city; and the man who delivered horsemeat to the zoo before the war procured a little meat for them now.
One day in late September, a familiar face appeared at their front door in German uniform: an old guard from the Berlin Zoo.
"I've been sent directly by Director Lutz Heck with his greetings and a message," he said formally. "He wishes to offer you help, and awaits my call."
Antonina and Jan looked at one another, surprised, not quite sure what to think. They knew Lutz Heck from the annual meetings of the International Association of Zoo Directors, a small clique of altruists, pragmatists, evangelists, and scoundrels. In the early twentieth century, there were two main schools of thought about how to keep exotic animals. One believed in creating natural habitats, the landscape and climate each animal would find in its homeland. The zealous proponents of this view were Professor Ludwig Heck of the Berlin Zoo and his older son, Lutz Heck. The opposing view held that, left to their own devices, exotic animals would adapt to a new environment, regardless of where the zoo was located. The leader of this opposing camp was Professor Lutz's younger son, Heinz, director of the Munich Zoo. Influenced by the Hecks, the Warsaw Zoo was designed to help animals acclimatize, and it also provided inviting habitats. It was the first Polish zoo that didn't cramp animals into small cages;
Normally, Antonina and Jan would have been preparing the budget for the coming year, awaiting the arrival of new animals, and reading reports in offices angled to view the river and the steeply roofed houses of Old Town. The press department would have been organizing talks and concerts, lab researchers would have been smearing slides and running tests.
Dead season, though never an easy time of year, usually offered gated asylum in a world private and protected, where they banked on a well-stocked larder, standing orders for foodstuffs, and a belief in self-reliance. The war undermined all three.
"The wounded city is trying to feed their animals," Antonina reassured Jan one morning as she heard a clop-and-clatter, then saw two wagons creaking up to the gate with leftover fruit and vegetable peelings from kitchens, restaurants, and houses. "At least we're not alone."
"No. Warsawians know it's important to save their identity," Jan replied, "all the elements of life that elevate and define them—and, fortunately, that includes the zoo."
Still, Antonina wrote that she felt the ground disappearing beneath her when the occupation government decided to move the capital to Kraków, noting that, as a provincial city, Warsaw no longer needed a zoo. All she could do was await the liquidation , a loathsome word suggesting a meltdown of creatures her family knew as individuals, not as a collective mass of fur, wings, and hooves.
Only Antonina, Jan, and Ryś remained at the villa, with not much food at any price, little money, and no jobs. Antonina baked bread every day, and relied on vegetables from the summer garden and preserves made from rooks, crows, mushrooms, and berries. Friends and relatives in outlying hamlets periodically sent food, sometimes even bacon and butter, luxuries seldom seen in the devastated city; and the man who delivered horsemeat to the zoo before the war procured a little meat for them now.
One day in late September, a familiar face appeared at their front door in German uniform: an old guard from the Berlin Zoo.
"I've been sent directly by Director Lutz Heck with his greetings and a message," he said formally. "He wishes to offer you help, and awaits my call."
Antonina and Jan looked at one another, surprised, not quite sure what to think. They knew Lutz Heck from the annual meetings of the International Association of Zoo Directors, a small clique of altruists, pragmatists, evangelists, and scoundrels. In the early twentieth century, there were two main schools of thought about how to keep exotic animals. One believed in creating natural habitats, the landscape and climate each animal would find in its homeland. The zealous proponents of this view were Professor Ludwig Heck of the Berlin Zoo and his older son, Lutz Heck. The opposing view held that, left to their own devices, exotic animals would adapt to a new environment, regardless of where the zoo was located. The leader of this opposing camp was Professor Lutz's younger son, Heinz, director of the Munich Zoo. Influenced by the Hecks, the Warsaw Zoo was designed to help animals acclimatize, and it also provided inviting habitats. It was the first Polish zoo that didn't cramp animals into small cages;
Similar Books
