My grandson Oscar, now nearly two, hardly says a word when he and I are out together. It’s like being out with a dog the conversation is so one-sided. He understands well enough. He’s attentive and interested and usually in favour of anything you care to mention. But he barely speaks. Which is strange because his parents are beginning to complain of his loquaciousness at home. ‘You’ve gone all quiet now grandad’s here, haven’t you?’ says his Mum, not without a touch of sarcasm at her child’s new-found gravitas the moment his grandad hoves into view.
When Oscar and I went to the zoo last week, he hardly said a word all day. It was a day of astonishing late autumn beauty, of russets and golds and flaming maple leaves, and the sun’s unseasonable warmth felt like a rich blessing. The animals were all outside, basking in it. At first I worried that Oscar’s silence was a sign of illness or unhappiness. But once I’d settled into his company, I saw sense. On rare, miraculous days like these, why speak?
We went inside the rhinoceros house. There were two stalls in the rhinoceros house, each with one rhinoceros in it. I think they were shut in, rather than indoors voluntarily. Neither of them seemed to mind, however. One was lying down, staring at the cement wall; the other was stripping twigs and leaves from a branch he’d been given as a snack. A sign requested us to be quiet because rhinoceroses are sensitive to noise.
I lifted Oscar and sat him on the rail of the stall with the snacking rhinoceros. We were not more than ten feet away from him and his earthy smell was overpowering but not unpleasant. His movements were ponderous, yet we also had a sense of dexterity, sensitivity and enjoyment. We contemplated him quietly, as asked. When I cleared phlegm from my throat, the animal’s ears instantly swivelled 180 degrees to pinpoint the source of the noise. I didn’t try to explain to Oscar what we were looking at. We were in a room with a dinosaur. It was listening to us. What word or comment by me could clarify a situation like that? ‘Big’? ‘Rare’? Even the word ‘rhinoceros’ didn’t seem up to the job. So we simply looked, quietly.
After that we went to see the lions. The lions’ leafy enclosure extended for an acre or so. A wide viewing window was set in the enclosure wall, and the lions, a male and a female, were sunbathing right next to it, their noble faces lifted to the sun. I suppose on other days other people would have been crowded against the glass and hogging the view. But today it seemed as if the zoo were an Eden and Oscar and I the only human inhabitants. We squatted beside the window and contemplated the lions. If the glass wasn’t there, we could have reached in and stroked them. The male in his magnificence utterly ignored us. The lioness at one point turned her head and examined us. The examination was neutral. Here, I spoke. I hugged Oscar close and whispered in his ear, ‘Lion!’
The silverback gorilla was out inspecting the bounds of his enclosure, pausing occasionally to pick a carefully selected leaf. A monkey lolloped over to the fence and slid his hand under, palm upwards, inviting us to put food in it. We looked down at the black palm, wondering if it was safe to touch. I was struck by the similarity of the lines on the monkey’s palm to those on a human’s. This monkey’s palm had a girdle of Venus and a strong head and fate line, signifying excellent career prospects. But again, neither Oscar nor I said anything.
We looked at the elephant and the giraffes, the capybaras and the camels. We went in the children’s area and wordlessly stroked the goats’ noses. And then we went to the restaurant for lunch. We had fish and chips. And while we were eating, a peacock came stealthily to our table looking for titbits. We duly offered him chips, which he accepted whole from our fingers. ‘Peacock!’ I said to Oscar. Then an exasperated zoo official came in and chased the peacock around a table twice and shooed it out of the door.
I think Oscar enjoyed this peacock’s expulsion from the restaurant more than anything else we saw. I believe so because, when we left the restaurant and we saw the fugitive still hanging about by the door, he broke out into enthusiastic speech. ‘There he is!’ he said in his surprising, mellifluous voice. It was the only thing he said all day. ‘Yes, there he is!’ I agreed. And we stood and watched this peacock for a while, in case he had any other radical or controversial moves up his sleeve.
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