The Liberation of Berlin Zoo, 1945

Mario Petrucci

'Whenever you see a green space in Berlin be very suspicious.' Pieke Biermann A shell ladders the wire fence top to bottom - skids to its middle in mud, a huge sizzling clove. And out they stalk under wide noonlight - wary at first, casting this way and this with the yellow of hunger that winks in phosphorescent coins. The cats currmurr - a liquid that beats in their throats low and thick, almost a cello. Movement stirs instinct - ankles, wrists, pale exposures of neck. Jaguar begins. Her continents of muscle flinch. She unwinds her crouch into the convoy's parallel herd - embraces from behind, full pelt, a traffic policeman, his white-gloved salute the flash of a doe's tail. In the act of being savaged his hands signal on - and for seconds diverted trucks respond without dent or screech. On Tiergartenstrasse, Panther is surprised onto its haunches by Oberkommandierender Guttmann rounding a bend. Animal meets animal. Panther grins - lifts a black velvet claw. Guttmann raises a hand. And for a moment they are old co-conspirators slapping pad to palm - before a single swipe opens a flap in Guttmann's pot neatly through the buttonhole, spills his coils into winter which at last he feels, threading him. Panther swills bloodwine. Fangs the sweet cakes of a half-digested Limburger lunch. Orang-utan has mounted a tram. Points back at children, one arm trailed in a mockery of style, chin cocked to velocity's breeze. Tonight she'll drag knuckles right up the Reichstag steps, plant a trained suck on the cheek of the porter. His look will pale her into intelligence. On Potsdamer Platz Zho crops turf. Her eyes betray a sidewise disposition towards predators louche in the alleys behind speakeasy and bar. Yet something is missing from the maw of buildings - a tooth pulled from history to make this square of sward, which Zho crops simply because it grows, because it ranks so unnaturally green. Last is Python. Her anvil head, by degrees, jacks towards dim hammerings of free air, grim to push the die-cast snout into any nest of blood. The cold slides into her. She slops into culverts heavy as a rope of copper - moulds to the sewers, wraps the city in coils of intention. Develops a rattle for Russia, a string of diamond yellows for Poland. She winds up a tension. And Berlin ticks inwards, becomes a city breathless, a gasp of dust where Volkswagens are specks, circling crazily. But there is nothing to fear. Not now. The cats have had their fill - only pawprints lead through snow down to the mouths of alleys. A white-gloved claw is on the kerb. The people walk round it, pull tight their collars. Eventually, from a windowbox in Charlottenburg Palace, a single petal of phlox will bear down into the shallow cup of its palm with all the weight of a snowflake.