Jim Shepard - Lights Out in the Reptile House

4. WE HAVE PUT UP BARRIERS FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY. If you do not respect them, you will be hurt and lose personal belongings. We will not be responsible .

5. OUR ZOO: A GREEN ISLE IN THE HEART OF THE DESERT AND AN OASIS OF REST FOR THE PEOPLE OF OUR COUNTRY. Nomads and peddlers not allowed .

A wooden sign on a humped and desolate area near the masons’ workshops marked the future site of a huge Carnivore House that would be part of the new regime’s expansion of the original “small and primitive” zoo. It would hold “exotic animals sent from all over the world, especially by diplomats serving in new colonies.”

He found Albert in his office. He was very mysterious about where he’d been for the last week — Karel had seen nothing of him, despite stopping by the zoo every so often — and finally became short-tempered when Karel persisted. Did he have to report to Karel, too? he wanted to know. He indicated the papers on his desk as a measure of the work facing him. Karel shook his head, hurt, remembering another comment Albert had once made to him: “Don’t keep after me. I’m not your father.” He considered telling Albert about the bats, but didn’t.

As if aware of his mood, Albert announced that today they’d be feeding the Komodos, and so would Karel, if Karel had any interest. It was what Karel had been waiting for, and he was disappointed the opportunity finally came this way, as a consolation prize.

The Komodos were surrounded by a new laminated-glass shield “160mm Thick to Withstand the Enormous Strength of the Animals.” Albert was unhappy about it. Previously they’d been in the open, surrounded by a deep moat and wall. He was unhappy too about a new sign that said DO NOT BE AFRAID! THE PANES ARE STRONG ENOUGH! and underneath related stories about tourists on the lizards’ home islands being killed and eaten, including one involving the discovery of an arm and shoulder blade with the hand still pathetically holding out a half-eaten roll. Albert felt the old precautions had been more than adequate. The two Komodos, Seelie and Herman, now looked out through the reinforced glass with an untroubled disdain for the excessive safety measures.

It was clear even to Karel that the two had distinctly different personalities. He looked at Seelie and Seelie looked back, with her lizard’s oddly neutral, self-satisfied smile. After an inspection she ignored him and wandered from side to side in the enclosure, examining things she’d tramped past countless times. Like all monitors she walked well off the ground, her skin in that light like fine beadwork. Her dull yellow tongue undulated out at points of particular interest. Herman lounged against a slab of rock near the door, as always, as if too bored or stunned to move. Karel stayed where he was, his nose touching the glass: Herman had once in his presence lopped a huge shank of goat meat from a tray Albert had been setting down, the ferocity and force of the lunge all the more shocking because it had come out of such stasis.

Seelie returned to the glass and regarded him. She was surrealistically large, as though he had his eye to a giant magnifying glass. In her dark eye he could read her intelligence and her reptile’s blank acceptance of torpor and violence.

Albert was preparing their meal: more goat meat, with eggs. They loved eggs. Their habitat, a reproduction of savannah grasses and brush, looked worn. It had to be maintained at a hundred degrees the year round and roofed with a special glass to allow in the enormous amounts of ultraviolet radiation the reptiles required. For all that the grass was dead in one corner.

Seelie lowered her head and scratched behind an ear opening with her foot. Her claw made a coarse scraping sound through the glass. She froze, forgetting her leg in midair. Herman lapped at nothing and tamped a patch of grass repeatedly. Seelie began to doze. Neither took any notice when Albert entered the enclosure with the tray of meat. The eggs he carried in a long-handled basket.

Karel was allowed to wait for the feeding before going back to work. It was not a small concession: it took twenty-five minutes for Seelie to work up an interest. She crawled completely over the meat and then backed up and tipped the egg basket. When Karel left she had smashed the basket and covered her face with eggshells. Herman was looking on from his sprawl.

He spent the rest of the morning cleaning the tortoise and turtle enclosures while the occupants hunkered down like sullen stones in the corners and waited with mineral patience for him to leave. He was grateful for the time with the Komodos but surprised by how little it had cheered him. While he worked he considered his last glimpse of them, their skins like polished gravel in the hazy and filtered daylight, and their clear dark eyes gazing at him sleepily and expectantly.

The next morning was Monday, and he sat staring at the corresponding date on the calendar in his kitchen, where he’d written: School again . He had coffee alone with some desolate lemons set in an earthen bowl before him. At school he kept to himself. On the playground there was a smallish audience for two boys who were setting mice on fire with machine oil. One mouse scampered free, trailing brown oil. As the students formed their lines it crouched in a corner of the courtyard under some discarded broken desks, licking its forepaws furiously. It watched Karel troop into the building.

Attention in class was focused on a kid named Sprute, who was wearing the black-and-white uniform of the Kestrels, the cub organization of the Young People’s NUP. Karel instantly knew from his face that he’d been forced to wear the uniform by a parent who didn’t know or didn’t care what it meant to be the only kid dressed that way in the entire sixth and seventh standard.

Miss Hagen, while she approved of the NUP, disapproved of the violation of the dress code and the disruption it was causing. It was not clear, given the state of things, in just what ways the old rules would be relaxed, and Miss Hagen clearly resented the confusion. The class responded independent of the politics to a difference so extreme it seemed a challenge.

While his teacher confiscated paper clips and other missiles, Sprute was mocked and thumped and prodded. His papers were knocked to the floor. He sat like a soldier throughout it all. Leda, who sat in front of him, did not turn around. The kid behind him drew, when Miss Hagen returned to the front of the room, a long, slow line down Sprute’s back with a pencil.

She finally suggested he go home and change. The class cheered, enjoying the uproar for its own sake.

Sprute’s eyes filled with tears and he stayed where he was, sitting up straight. He looked at Karel, and Karel was moved so violently by pity for this quiet kid — where was he going to go? Home to change in front of parents who had made him dress like that in the first place? — that he said, aloud, “Let him stay.”

It was suddenly quieter. He realized what he’d said and took another horrible second to realize he’d succeeded Sprute as the object of attention. He looked down in an agony of self-consciousness and stammered that it was school; who cared what people wore?

The class digested the surprise slowly. It seemed to be considering whether Karel’s outburst represented common sense or an attempt to ally himself with Sprute against them. The kid behind Sprute was caught slingshotting a rubber band and was told that as punishment after school he’d have to pick the nettles out of the small rectangular lawn around the flagpole.

Karel felt bad for him but preferred their system of punishment to the one for the lower standards, where children caught misbehaving were made to wear a sign which read I AM A BAD INFLUENCE until someone else was caught and the sign passed on to that person. Whoever wore the sign Friday afternoon at the end of school was beaten. The arrangement created from Wednesday on a sense of unbearable suspense, complete with last-minute rescues and catastrophes.