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--------------Excerpted
chapters from my stray dog tale THE TAIPEI ZOO
may be found below on this page.--------------
--------------LETTERS
FROM THE TAIPEI ZOO is not exactly proud
to be sponsored by
Idyllic Oriental Brain Fuck Airlines--------------
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Education
is linked to eros by a golden thread. --Plato.
These are Letters from the Taipei
Zoo. The meaning
of this title will become apparent as you read. My letters cover the first
eighteen months after my arrival here in Taipei, the capital city of Taiwan.
What is the purpose of this book--if it
should even be called a book? How did it come about? I can approach these
questions by saying something of myself. I'm an American man not yet fluent in
Chinese, a foreigner here. My perceptions of Taipei are those of a Westerner,
and I'm especially aware of the extent to which I am a Westerner--this because
my education in the U.S. was focused on what it means for one, for any of us,
to be from the West. My fascination with a place like Taipei is sparked in
large part by curiosity as to how my own Western world stands in contrast to
the Asian culture around me.
But maybe I should say so-called Asian culture around me. Because
Taipei already long before my arrival had been refashioned in part on Western
models. The Chinese Taipei I know, or the Taiwanese Taipei--whichever way you
choose-- they've both already been partly "Westernized".
As if these questions weren't enough,
others may begin nagging too. Such as: What is Taipei? Or rather-- What is Taiwan? This is a question some of you may ask,
either through geographical ignorance or sincere political confusion. It's not
easy to answer. Even if I say something as simple as "Taiwan is an island
off the south coast of China"--even this is already taking sides in a
political debate. Is Taiwan a country?
Many people consider Taiwan part of
China; many, taking the opposite stance, consider it an independent country by
virtue of its having had a separate government from the Mainland since 1949.
The question of the political identity of Taiwan is thus a matter of continued
debate. As I write, Taipei is still officially the seat of the Republic of
China, a government that once laid claim to all of China, just as Beijing is
the seat of the People's Republic of China, a government also laying claim to
all of China. Whether you know it or not, there are two governments in the
world that claim to represent China. If you don't know this interesting
political fact, it's probably because one of the two governments only occupies
a relatively small piece of land situated off the Chinese Mainland. That piece
of land is Taiwan.
Incidentally, Taiwan is also the island
that used to be called Formosa in the West. "Formosa" is short for Isla
formosa, the
Portuguese for "beautiful island."
Throughout the letters collected here,
I refer to the people here as both Chinese and Taiwanese, this usage reflecting
the fact that I consider them to be, culturally speaking, both at once. I still
use these terms interchangeably.
What should anyone read this book?
Isn't a collection of letters likely to be too much bound to the daily lives of
the correspondents to make worthwhile reading for people not connected to those
lives? This might be so. But the letters collected here aren’t written in the
usual modern epistolary style: they aren't written to touch base in the manner
of: I've been up to such and such. The job is going well. How have you been? Though it's true my letters
occasionally recount my life, most of them are excursions into various other
genres of writing: polemic, fantasy, satire, aphorism, comic narrative,
cultural criticism. In this collection, then, there is part of a comic novella;
there’s an essay on Chinese children and their perceptions of foreigners; there
are paragraphs of literary criticism and portraits of the people of Taipei;
there’s a vampire tale written in collaboration with a class of twelve-year-old
English students; there is much else besides. All of these letters were sent to
a correspondent named H.
H. still lives in the States. He’s a
friend of mine from graduate school still working in the French Department
where I was a student before coming to Taiwan. H. himself is a serious student
of literature, and I've often sent him my writing in hopes of some critical
response. As he’s now struggling to finish a doctorate, this has usually been
in vain.
I'll begin this collection with a
fragment from my comic novella, which I sent to H. in a mood of provocation.
H., whose research focused on poetry, had written me about his general and
growing indifference to novels and narrative. He wrote in this vein because I'd
been questioning him about his reading of Dostoyevsky, whom, I suspected, he
hadn't quite read. His response was as follows:
Did H. take the trouble to read these
chapters? I believe he didn't. He was writing a dissertation on Ponge and
Bonnefoy and another poet whose name begins with "G"--I forget the
name just now. That he didn’t read my draft chapters didn’t much irk me however:
probably I won’t be reading his dissertation either, so how could I
complain?
But will you take the trouble to read
the things collected here? We'll see.
If these various writings seize your interest, you’ll read them, because
you’ll be dragged in. If they
don’t seize your interest, however, then there’s nothing can be done. All I can
ask in that case is that you give the volume to someone else who may have an
interest in Taipei and the kind of mild satire I write. But if you want to stack up this book
with your recyclable newspapers--well, how can I stop you?
Eric Mader-Lin
Taipei
1998
Dear H.:
I have nothing in me of your dislike of
narrative. In this as well we are on opposite sides of the world. In fact, I myself
am now writing a novel, or novella to be precise. It’s entitled The Taipei
Zoo. I've enclosed
the first few chapters in the current draft. Let me know what you think.
Warmly,
E.
But things here aren't quite what they
used to be. Just look at what's happened. Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo--they've all
fallen to their knees. Faces everywhere have the stunned look of someone who's
been slapped good and hard by a hand out of nowhere. Given all that's gone
down, I shouldn't be so hard on myself. Maybe I should give myself a break.
But really, global economic factors
don't matter much in my case. They don't matter in any direct way at least. I can't mention the
declining opportunities in Asia as an excuse for what's happened to me. Declining opportunities--that's just
a constant of the world economy. If Taipei isn't the gold mine it used to be,
what does that have to do with my doggy fate? My failure, I'm saying, should be
chalked up to my own account.
It all goes back to my leaving a red
paper folder on a chair at the airport. I'm talking about the Chiang Kai-Shek
International Airport just outside of Taipei. I left a red paper folder there.
That was a pretty simple mistake, wasn't it? Any of you may have done it, and
you've probably made even worse mistakes in your lives. Yes, I'm even willing
to bet you've made worse mistakes than any of mine, if you want the truth.
But really--how can I say things like
this, right in the first chapter? Here I was just admitting my guilt, so how
can I hint at your failures too?
I do it because I know what you readers
of contemporary novels are like. I'm getting older as a writer now, and I've
had many of you readers as friends. I know you've pulled some pretty pathetic
stunts in your day. I've heard about most of those stunts from your own lips,
in fact. So you can't deny it, at least not to my face. You're a gabby bunch,
always running at the mouth. I'm tired of listening to you.
There's something I don't understand,
though. Even with all the irresponsible, crackpot things you've done, even with
all that, you've always managed to get by in life without much trouble. You've
always managed to slip through things unscathed. I still don't quite understand
it--how you do it, I mean. But that's how it usually is with you
readers--you're a lucky bunch. And you know very well, you've known it all
along, that we writers, writers like myself, we're never as lucky as you. But
you just take that for granted, don't you? "It's the way the world is set
up," you say. "Anyone who spends so much time scribbling in notebooks
deserves what
they get." This attitude makes you more than willing to get your laughs at
our expense too, doesn't it? You watch us stumble, and you laugh. That's how I
see it now; that's how I understand it. You laugh at me or at anyone else who's
foolish enough to work so many months at something and make not a dime off of
it in the end. You take us writers for idiots, obsessives. Your every remark
proves it.
Maybe it's true what you're saying
about us, though. Some of us go about the world as if fate were out to teach us
one hard lesson after another. Who is it put the curse on us here? I wonder
sometimes. Isn't writing an honest job like any other? I know from experience
that it's harder than most jobs. I've had most jobs, you know, and writing is
harder than any of them.
But I have to return to my story, even
in the state I'm in. Even now, I have this job to do. And why? I don't know why
myself.
My mistake, I was saying, was initially
a pretty innocent one. If I hadn't left that red folder behind at the Chiang
Kai-Shek International Airport, everything could have been different for me. I
wouldn't now be telling you such a sad story, for one thing. And the story I'm
telling you here--it's one of the saddest stories I've ever heard. That you can
bet on. It's certainly the saddest story I'll ever manage to tell. After
telling it, my heart will be too broken ever to tell such a sad story again.
I remember my first day in Taiwan very
clearly because in a certain sense it was my last day. I was on the north side
of Taipei, while the night school that had hired me to teach English was in the
downtown. I was supposed to be at the school announcing my arrival. As it
turned out, I knew neither that I was on the north side of Taipei nor that the
place I was looking for was in the downtown. I didn't know Taipei at all, my
Chinese was minimal, and I was already completely lost.
Yes, I'd been hired to teach English.
It's the way many of us Americans first arrive in Taipei. In the folder at the
airport was the number and address of the institute that had hired me. Stupidly,
that was the only place I'd written it down. I'd decided to come to Taipei
almost on the spur of the moment, and I hadn't prepared my arrival very well.
In the cab from the airport, I realized I didn't have the folder, but I didn't
ask the cabby to turn back, because I thought I could easily find the school
through the phonebook once I got into the city. But of course I learned upon
arriving in the city that I couldn't figure out the first thing about the
phonebook as it was all in Chinese. That I knew a little spoken Chinese didn't
mean I could use something as complicated as a Chinese phonebook. A Chinese
phonebook isn't even in alphabetical order, you know. In Chinese, there isn't
even an alphabet to speak of. I hadn't thought of this problem in the cab. How
do these people organize their phonebooks? It's a mystery to anyone who isn't
fluent in Chinese, and I was nowhere near fluent. Though I knew the English
name of the school, I had no way of finding the Chinese name. I was hoping to
run into someone who could help me. It was around noon, I think.
Near where the cab dropped me off was a
cheap hotel. The desk person had no English phonebook, neither could she quite
figure out what I wanted. I decided to check in if only to park my bags
somewhere while I tried to get oriented. It was obvious the one thing I could
do was walk around until I found a foreigner who looked like they knew the
place or a local whose English was good enough to help me.
Leaving the hotel, I decided to get
something to drink. And here I should tell you a bit about my character,
something that needs to be explained before I get any further. It's only when
you know something about me that you'll understand how I got into the scrape I
got into, and how I got into it so quickly.
I am easygoing by nature. As I'd
already traveled more than most people in my thirty years of life, I was even
feeling rather cavalier about being lost in a big Asian city. I knew that
statistically speaking Taipei was a much safer place than New York or Chicago,
so I wasn't really in a rush to find out where I was. I actually had no reason
to report to work that morning, and I thought I might as well revel a bit in
the fact of being lost. Strange as it may sound, I even found something
pleasurable in my situation. I took pleasure in the fact that I could be at
ease while lost in a foreign capital. Although I was certainly tired out on
that first day--the flight from New York was nearly twenty hours--the fact is
that I was in a good mood.
Forty minutes after leaving my bags at
the cheap hotel, I was sitting in a little street-side cafe drinking an odd
sort of sweet milk tea. I picked the cafe randomly, walked in, and sat down.
When the waitress came up, I ordered the tea by pointing at the drink sitting
in front of another customer and gesturing to indicate that I wanted one too.
What had I ordered? I had no idea. At the bottom of the drink there were little
round chewy things that reminded me of something I had eaten long ago. But I
couldn't quite remember what it was, or where I'd eaten it. There was something
strange about those chewy things, something unsettling about the memory they
were prodding to the foreground of my mind. What was it? Taking another one of
the chewy things into my mouth, I pressed it between my tongue and lower lip,
trying to remember. Then, in the dim light of the cafe, it all came back to me.
*Combray*... I was at a birthday party in a large hall. There was a fat man in
the corner playing an organ. A clown was going from table to table doing
tricks. I didn't like that clown. Everyone wanted to avoid the clown because if
the clown came to your table you might have to sing. There were many birthday
parties happening at once in the large hall. It was a kind of special
restaurant for birthday parties, a kind of birthday parlor. The round chewy
things were at the bottom of the bowl in front of me; they were floating in a
kind of watery syrup which had been poured around a scoop of violet ice cream.
They were mixed in with the ice cream and syrup.
That was it! I had remembered!
But was it my birthday there, or was it
someone else's? I thought it wasn't mine. No, I knew it wasn't my birthday
party. But whose party was it? Somehow I remembered that I didn't like the person,
whoever he was. No, I never liked that Birthday Boy.
Or maybe it was my birthday after all.
It's possible I was just afraid of the clown, and this accounted for the
negative feeling of the memory. I couldn't really be sure.
Here, in short, is the sort of thick
nonsense that was going through my head that day because of the strange chewy
things at the bottom of my tea drink, and probably also because of the long
flight I'd just completed. My brain had started to swim, as brains will often
do after a transoceanic flight.
I remember then using my spoon to fish
two more of the chewy things out of my drink. They were round, partially
translucent. They looked like frog eggs. I started to imagine a customer
complaining because the frog eggs in his drink had started to hatch. Then
another customer: her eggs were hatching too! Here and there around the cafe an
uproar was beginning, one customer at a time. People holding up glasses to the
light, watching the tails of tadpoles beginning to twitch. I imagined a man
slamming his fist down on the bar counter: "Your product is not fresh
here, Monsieur! From now on, we will go elsewhere for our frog tea!"
I was tired, mouthing the words to
myself: *We will go elsewhere for our frog tea! We will go elsewhere...* It was
just then that I noticed a small Chinese boy looking at me, watching me
nervously. He was maybe three years old. He was with his mother at a table
nearby, and his mother was busy talking with another woman. He seemed to be
afraid of me, but he couldn't stop looking: his curiosity was too much for him.
I remember thinking that maybe the boy had never seen a foreign man up close.
He had brought four of his fingers up into his mouth for security, and his brow
was knit in confusion and fear. It was an expression defined by tension: rapt
curiosity struggling against an obvious urge to flee the sight of the strange
monster before him. The boy's other hand, the one that wasn't stuck in his
mouth, had meanwhile reached up behind him and wrapped itself in his mother's
skirt. Apparently he'd keep on staring at the strange animal as long as his
hand could assure him, by clinging to the skirt, that his mother hadn't left
him.
I smiled at the boy and began to lean
slowly forward, reaching out with the spoon to offer him the two frog eggs.
Instantly, and with a loud whimper of terror, he leapt round to the other side
of his mother and began to wail raucously, gaining the attention of the few
other people in the cafe. The mother turned quickly and looked questioningly at
me as I sat there holding out the spoon. The other woman too turned and looked
at me with a mild frown. But the man behind the counter, the man who mixed the
frog eggs with the cold, creamy liquid, at least he began to laugh aloud.
I got up from my seat and went to the
man behind the counter. I handed him one of the big blue bills with Chiang
Kai-Shek's smiling face on it. I got my change, a lot of smaller red bills, and
left the cafe.
II.-- All of this seems ridiculous so
far, granted. What is interesting about this character--*me*? Why should you
follow him any further into what is, after all, not an exotic fantasy land, but
instead just another sweltering Asian capital, one you can read about any day
in *The Economist* or *Time*? I hope you will bear with me. My protagonist is
just suffering from a nascent jetlag. He is not normally so flippant. And
perhaps it will help you overcome the weight of this crankish beginning if you
put yourself in my shoes. I know this isn't easy for readers. But still just do
it. Just try to imagine you were me that first day in Taiwan. What is your
situation? What do you expect from the place? What are you doing there anyhow?
You have a PhD. in Classics from a good American university. You are 29 now.
You wrote your dissertation on Lucian and the Russian critic Bakhtin.
Regardless of your academic credentials, you couldn't land a university job in
the States, and you didn't want to be a taxi driver, bartender, hotel desk
flunky, drug dealer, or waiter. Going abroad to teach English for a while
seemed like a good idea. And you'd heard good things about Taiwan. Everything
would have been fine that first day in Taipei, but you left your contact
numbers in a folder on a chair in the airport. You felt stupid about that, but
you knew it was a simple enough mistake, and probably within an hour or two
you'd solve the problem of finding your school.
But then the drink with the frog eggs
had reminded you of a scene from your early childhood--a period you'd prefer
never to be reminded of--and your fatigue from the long flight, your easygoing
nature, and the involuntary memory from childhood had all combined to provoke
you into a harmless but ridiculous act: offering some of your drink, two bits
of candy as it were, to a child who was terrified of you.
Then you were on the street. There was
sweat running off your head, down your neck, and down your back. It was around
1:30 p.m., and your good mood was giving way slowly to confusion and giddy
fatigue. You had, after all, just crossed the planet, you were in the wrong
time zone, and you were lost. All the signs around you were a blur of Chinese
characters, and the people seemed completely taken up by the bustle of their
day, paying you no attention at all.
Imagine you were me that first day. The
situation wasn't very serious, but it would be soon enough.
III.--The traffic was three times that
of New York and the air was stifling. There was sweat running off my head, down
my neck, and down my back. Noticing a bank across the street, I decided to change
some more money. At least there'd be air conditioning in the bank, and maybe
even a city map with romanized names.
In the bank there were two lines. The
teller for the long line was an older lady who looked very relaxed: she was
wearing a wig, and her makeup was poorly done. The teller for the other line
was a nervous-looking little man with grey hair. I decided the nervous man's
line would be faster. That was in fact a mistake.
As I was waiting, I noticed a woman in
the line next to mine. She kept looking at me. Very attractive and rather tall.
About 35. She would look at me, and then smile. She was probably Japanese, I
thought. She had a Japanese nose. My spoken Chinese was good enough to say to
her: "Your nose is very Japanese, isn't it?" The woman laughed at me.
So this Japanese could understand Chinese too, or at least a little.
We got our money from the tellers at
the same time. How I wish now that we hadn't! As we left the bank, we both
paused a moment at the door, as if deciding which way to go. I asked the
Japanese woman, first through my very faulty Chinese and then through hand
gestures, where she was going. She laughed again and smiled and pointed down
the sidewalk. I decided to walk along next to her.
I couldn't say much to her, so I
didn't.
Her car was a very nice silver-green
Mercedes. She played a CD of Spanish flamenco music. During the ride--and
thanks to the flimsy seashell-pink summer dress she was wearing--I was able to
consider her more carefully: her fine, milk-white Asian skin; her long black
hair that draped over her bare ivory shoulders. Her legs under the steering
wheel looked as smooth as polished jade. Given the glint of promise in her
playful smile, I had a hard time refraining from touching her as we waited at
our first stoplight. She looked delicious.
What is it about some Asian eyes that
is so impossibly desirable? I've often wondered about this. I think most
Western men look at an Asian woman's eyes and feel they are somehow defective
in relation to his own tribe's eyes. He feels they are somehow *aberrant*. But
why does that make them so sexy? There is something that seems weaker about
Asian eyes, as if the skin of the eyelids enfolding them were a bit too taut, a
bit too delicate. As if the eyelids were not as they should be, and thus could
be easily torn. And there behind the narrow slits of the Asian woman's eyes,
one glimpses two jet-black pools of ink. The eyes are often so dark that the
pupil is indistinguishable from the iris. The impression given is one of
impassive solidity; such dark eyes have a kind of strong inscrutability that
contrasts with the weakness of the delicate skin enclosing and hiding them.
Certainly these different elements--the
feeling that the eyes are somehow defective; the impression that they are also
somehow weaker; the unreadability of eyes so perfectly black--certainly all
these elements have something to do with the erotic charge an Asian woman's
eyes have in the Westerner's mind. Or at least in my mind. I suppose I can't
speak for others. But I have to admit I was looking forward to exchanging
glances with just such eyes when I accepted the job in Taipei. And already on
Day One I'd caught a beautiful woman's glance in a bank, and here already she
was driving me somewhere where we could be alone. I may have been tired out
from the flight across a dozen time zones, I may have been literally lost, but
such an event nonetheless boded well for the coming year in Taipei. Or so I
thought as her car wove its way through the maddening Taipei traffic.
She parked the Benz in her garage. We
got out, and she opened a side door onto a large courtyard. The sight that
greeted me there made my eyes widen in astonishment and my mouth drop open in
surprise. There were about two-hundred dogs there in the courtyard, and they
all started crowding around us, greeting her. What a bizarre sight in the
middle of a big city! Why in the hell would a woman who drives a Mercedes have
so many dogs? I stood there unsure what to make of it, the dogs nervously
pawing at my calves and licking my hands. They certainly were a friendly bunch.
They all looked like mutts and street dogs saved from the gutter. There was an
orange plastic kiddy pool in the shade with a hose running into it. That was
for their water. When she led me back into the garage, I noticed three tall
stacks of huge bags of dog food. She was smiling as she led me up the stairs to
her flat. I was surprised by all the dogs, but I figured it was a good sign
that the woman I was picking up was a serious dog lover. I too loved dogs.
IV.-- There were dogs in her apartment
too. Two of them were lap dogs, and the third was very big and friendly.
Motioning me to sit down, she went into
another room herself. I played with the dogs while I waited. When she returned,
she was wearing a blue silk robe. Then she was with me on the couch and our
mouths were pressed together, our tongues playing against each other. It was
all very casual, like in a French movie. Even more casual than that. I was kind
of thirsty, but she didn't offer me anything to drink. I remember I felt it was
kind of bad manners.
Soon I'm on top of her on the floor.
Me, who'd only been in the city two hours. There is a large, fine bamboo mat
under us. She is very hot. But her dogs are right there next to us, wagging their
tails and smiling in that doggy way. They seem to know this game. I don't
bother to try to complain about it.
But as we are making love, and as she
is getting more and more aroused, the dogs are getting more and more excited
too. The little ones are running around her head and feet, and one has even
tried licking her face. How can I concentrate on this with these dogs around?
But now she is groaning and writhing against me, and there is no question of
stopping to go to another room.
She has her hands down around my ass.
She is pulling me into her according to a slow and precise rhythm, masturbating
herself with my body. As she gets hotter and hotter, her voice breaks into a
kind of breathless whimpering, then retreats again into the more relaxed groaning.
And then whimpering again.
I would be enjoying this myself, but
the big dog has meanwhile started barking. He is barking rather loudly too,
right next to us. It is making me uneasy. I am wearing nothing, moving in and
out of this big dog's mistress, and he is right there, standing behind me and
over me as it were, barking in a manner more and more worrisome as his mistress
gets more and more excited. This is really too much! Does he think I'm hurting
her? What if he decides to take my balls off with those teeth I've glimpsed now
a few times over my shoulder? He sounds almost angry, that dog, and it has
started making me uneasy.
I'm moving faster now, but I'm not
enjoying it one bit. The big dog is barking at the ceiling, and has even
growled a few times. This woman beneath me has been close to coming for quite a
while now: why can't I get her over the edge? I never should have come to this
place.
She has wound the fingers of her right
hand into the long golden hair that drapes down from the belly of one of the
two lap dogs. I think this dog is called a Llasa. She is finally about to come,
the big dog is still barking at us, and now she has her fingers wound into this
little dog's belly hair. The little dog is right there next to my face, and it
keeps trying to walk away. But her eyes are closed and she's holding onto its
fur for dear life. I can't help thinking of brave Ulysses and how he wound his
hands into the belly hair of that big sheep so that he could escape the cave of
the Cyclops.
Damn this! The little dog is licking
her face, then mine, and then trying to get away again. She is on the very edge
of ecstasy and I am still holding up even though I'm afraid her big dog will
lose it and attack me just as she starts coming. I'm hoping she doesn't cry out
too much.
As she comes, she winds her fingers
furiously in the Llasa's belly hair and he is yelping and screaming along with
her. The big dog is barking at us vengefully, just as a dog barks before it's
going to attack an intruder. Damn this!
But the big dog never attacks. Then she
releases the Llasa, which retreats immediately over to the sofa.
As she begins to wind down, before
she's even gotten her breathing back, I realize what a boil my blood is in,
just how annoying all of this is. My cock starts to come back to full power.
She may have a cute nose, this bitch, but this was really too much! I'm taking
her into the other room and fucking her properly. This is no way to treat a
guest.
I get her up from the floor and begin
to pull her by the arm to the bedroom. She goes along, smiling and almost
playful. I close the door behind us before the dogs get in. I pull her down
onto the bed. She is smiling seductively now. But then she holds up her index
finger as if to say "Just one second!" and she hops up from the bed
toward what looks like a large and elaborate dark wood dresser. The light in
the room is dim and bluish. What does she want to get on the dresser? Then I
see it is not a dresser actually, but a kind of shrine or altar. I can make out
a golden disk and above it two wolves' heads carved in relief and facing each
other. She is praying before it! What nonsense is this now! I feel like
pouncing on her. She comes back to the bed as I'm getting up and leads me by
the cock to the altar. I really shouldn't put up with this. Taking a little
black canister from the altar, she rubs a kind of ointment on my cock and then
begins kissing me passionately on the neck and on my chest. The ointment stings
a bit. She is working her way slowly down me with her tongue. The ointment is
potent stuff. It is making me so hot I almost can't stand still. Her lips are
finally down around it, sucking softly. There is a kind of spinning and
whispering and then suddenly an awful noise of howling. Then I am in a bolt of
lightning that doesn't stop striking. I begin to scream as I feel myself
getting smaller, my shoulderblades drawing tightly up around the back of my
head as if my sinews were the strings on a mandolin being tightened to breaking
point. Then my arms are shortening palpably and my legs are shortening and
hunching out behind me. I feel my jaw and face tightening and pushing out
forward, and I am still shrinking. Then I am below her standing on my hands and
feet, looking up, and she is laughing. What is this? My nose is way out before
me, and my hands.... I look at my hands.... They are paws! They are dog's paws!
I am a dog's body! I am a dog! I start running round the room, I'm yelling, or
barking, I have to get out of here, I have to escape! She has done something to
me! I run and jump up against the doorknob, I run on the bed, I growl at her. I
am a *dog*. I plead with her, barking. But she is huge, above me, she is
laughing all the while. The crazy bitch! I am a dog! Everywhere I run the dog's
body goes with me. I don't have a body to shake it off. Where is my real body?
I am a dog! What kind of drug is this? I have to escape!
"Stop running!" she cried in
English, laughing. "Stop running! Listen!"
So she could speak English. So the
bitch even cheated me on that. She hadn't said a word from the bank until now,
and now she starts speaking to me in English!
She pointed to where I should sit. I
tried to sit still. I wanted to bite her. Why I didn't bite her I'm not sure.
Perhaps I couldn't believe it was all for real. Perhaps, being a dog, I felt
naturally obedient. I was so confused. Me--who'd only been in the city two
hours!
"If you are a good boy," she
said with a Chinese accent, "I will make you a man again. But if you are
bad--if you bite or pee-pee on my floor--I will drive you in my car and put you
in a village far away from here. Then I'll never make you into a man. You'll
never find either me or the zoo. Will you be good then?"
I was shaking all over. I wanted to
escape. What was going on? How could this be happening?
She motioned me to come to her, and I
did. She started petting me. I was growling at her--I couldn't help it I really
wanted to be good, but I also felt like biting her. So I couldn't stop growling
while she petted me. She had experience with this, it seems. She tried to calm
me down.
"To be a dog is not very
bad," she said. "Quiet, you. You will soon be a man again."
V.-- I was a kind of Scotch terrier
mutt, grey and black and brown. I saw myself in a full-length mirror on one of
her closet doors.
I was in the living room with the other
dogs. They were all muttering to me in Chinese. So they were men too! It was
strange, their Chinese. I could hear it as if it came from the back of their
throats or from their minds: almost as if by telepathy. I responded in the same
way with my own very bad Chinese.
"Are you American?" they
asked.
"Yes, I am American," I said.
"Too bad for you to come to this
place," said the big dog.
"We are not happy here," said
one of the lap dogs.
"I also am not happy," I
said.
Being that my Chinese was so bad, this
was about all I could manage to communicate. I didn't understand a lot of what
they were asking me.
The apartment had very strong smells
everywhere around it, and the Mistress' body itself smelled like Heaven. I
wanted to crawl into her skin with her and die in her smell. I almost pee-peed
on the floor when she was sitting next to me. She smelled so good! But I'm
lucky I didn't.
And the bamboo mat we made love
on--what an ecstatic smell that had! Delightful! I immediately made plans to
sleep on it that night. I rubbed my muzzle on it and rolled around on it
awhile.
There were roaches in her kitchen
cabinets. Roaches are terrible creatures. They stink like chemicals or
corroding metal. It made the kitchen very unpleasant even though there was the
smell of meat in there too.
Finally a man came home in a suit: a
businessman. He was about ten years older than the Mistress. When he saw me, he
pursed his lips. He wasn't happy there was another dog, I guess. I believe he
didn't know where his wife or girlfriend got all the dogs from in the first
place. But there was a kind of resigned look about him: even if he knew, he
probably wouldn't have done anything about it. He would only be scared she
would one day turn him into a dog too.
The man smells like a locker room. His
feet especially are awful. But he is, in a way, handsome, and he is probably
the one who bought the Mercedes and the flat. I understand why the Mistress is
with him.
The Mistress made two bowls of shrimp
noodle soup and he and she ate them while the Mistress watched *Those Amazing
Animals* on the Discovery Channel. Loretta Switt hosted the show, and I sat at
the foot of the couch trying to remember what show she was in when I was a kid.
I kept coming up with *Police Woman*, but I knew that was Angie Dickinson.
*What was Loretta Switt in?* I never watched TV after I got to university, and
I now remember very little about all the shows other Americans my age remember
episode by episode. Was she in *Beretta*? No, it wasn't *Beretta*.
I probably only thought of *Beretta*
because it rhymes with Loretta, and because Loretta Switt was holding a white
cockatoo in the opening section of *Those Amazing Animals*, and there is a
white bird in the show *Beretta* too. There is a white bird and some illiterate
cop. Does the bird help him solve crimes? I don't remember. *Starsky and
Hutch*. *The Bionic Man*. *Hawaii Five-O*. "Book 'em, Dano."
"Yabba Dabba Doo!" "Gee, Wally, that Eddie sure is a wise
guy." "And *my* name is Charlie." So many stupid names and
phrases started coming back to me as soon as I tried to remember what Loretta
Switt was in. It made me kind of angry. Why didn't she just dry up along with
all the rest of it? Why did she have to go stirring all that crud around and
bringing it to the surface anyway?
All the animals in *Those Amazing
Animals* were very interesting to me. I wanted to smell some of them or bite
others. That I could only see pictures of them seemed really dull. There was no
sound and no smell. I immediately thought of something like speakers that would
emit the scent of what one was watching. When I saw the rhino, I wanted to
smell the compacted hair I knew made up his horn. I didn't much care about
seeing him from twenty feet away, which is all I could do with the TV screen.
And same with the giraffes. When I saw the giraffes, I wanted to smell their
hooves after they had tromped around in the dust for a day. Giraffes made up of
little flecks of light are nothing but a kind of tease. Do giraffes urinate on
trees or do they just urinate where they're standing like elephants do? You
don't mess with those elephants. I knew that as if by instinct. They are faster
and smarter than they look.
All those animals had dung and genitals
and sweat, a whole library of sweat and skin oils, with matted hair that
gathered the best of it. I knew they all stunk, and I couldn't wait to get at
them. And they all had their own way of making noise when you came near them. I
knew they did. I yearned to hear those noises, to provoke those noises. But you
could sense none of the real thing on a flat screen. It made me feel like a
cretin to sit there watching those animal images, however interesting the
thought of the real animals may be.
Do you think I could I catch those
gazelles? It would be a blast to chase them and then chew on a leg for a while.
I wouldn't want to hurt the gazelle, just nibble on its leg. It wouldn't let
me, but I would nibble and gnaw until I was done, and then I'd let him go. I'm a
humane dog. I'm not some hyena.
Those hyena's look like shit. I want
nothing to do with them. They look like they're all a little mad. And worst of
all: they're bigger than me. I know as soon as they saw me they wouldn't leave
me alone until I was harried into the ground. They'd chew off my hair and eat
my intestines; they'd suck the marrow out of my bones. They'd bite each other
and shed their own blood fighting over my carcass. They look hyper, those
hyenas, like they always get the worst of everything. They look like
revolutionaries destined to fail.
Already after fifteen minutes I was
getting seriously bored. Television is no good for dogs. It is only one
frustration after another. You can smell nothing, and you can only hear what
they want you to hear. Television is entirely disconnected from what matters. I
realized that afternoon why dogs never watch it. It's not because dogs are too
stupid to recognize and interpret the images. It's because images alone are the
worst kind of boredom. I was watching *Those Amazing Animals*, but the other
dogs in the living room scarcely glanced at the screen. The very knowledge that
the television was on made them listless and indifferent. They had been dogs
for a while now, and they already knew what a hoax television was.
VI.-- So the Mistress put me outside in
the courtyard with the two-hundred other dogs. The bitch! And I didn't even pee
on her floor. Why did she do it then? Wasn't I as playful and obedient as those
other lucky dogs up there in the apartment? What did they have that I didn't
have?
Next time that bitch comes in here I'm
going right for her calf. I'm not wasting any more time on this nonsense.
But maybe it's true that she changes us
back eventually. Prudence is the safer course.
VII.-- How long was I stuck in that
pen? I was too heartbroken to count the days. No carving of notches like in
*Robinson Crusoe*. A dog's days follow no calendar. There was the long hot
period of sunlight, during which I moped in the shade by the orange plastic
pool, and there was the cooler night with its mosquitoes. Wasn't I special in
some way? Wasn't she soon going to take me back up to her flat and change me
back?
I was in fact special. I was the only
American dog in the kennel. The rest were all Chinese, and one was a German.
The bitch changed him into a German shepherd. Was that her sense of humor? How
do you say German shepherd in Chinese? *Duh guo go*...
The German shepherd and I soon became
friends. His name was Jurgen. He was from Hannover, which is in the north. He
worked for a trade company, and he met the bitch when he was in a copy shop
making photocopies of refrigerators. He had been in Taipei about eight months
when she nabbed him. She seduced him in pretty much the same way she seduced
me. And she had run him through the same rigmarole too, the same fuck in the
living room, followed by the black altar and the cream, followed by the
promises she would change him back. Jurgen figured he'd been there about two
months, and though he had never been back up into her apartment, he said she
had taken one dog back up there and he hadn't been seen again. Maybe she
changed him back to a man? We were hopeful.
My German was pretty rusty, and though
it started to come back with practice, Jurgen and I ended up speaking mostly in
English.
As it turned out, I was lucky Jurgen
was a shepherd, and I was lucky he was my friend. Some of the other dogs, and
some of the bigger ones especially, would pass the time by humping on each
other. I guess men in prison are the same everywhere, even when they're not men
any more. Being that I wasn't at all interested in their games, and being that
I was a smaller dog than average in the kennel, I would have been in pretty bad
shape if it hadn't been for Jurgen defending me. Those bad boys were already
onto me during my first day, and I really almost did get it good. But Jurgen
barked twice and rushed at them, and they scattered. So my friend Jurgen was
top dog, and I was grateful for it.
But really I wasn't at all happy in
that fenced-in little yard. I could work on my German, and I could learn a lot
of dirty words in Chinese, but I was in despair at the thought I'd never be a
man again. But also: I never in my life had much liked being in all-male
company, and the fact that all these men were dogs scarcely made things better.
Even Jurgen was a typical man in one respect: all he did was talk shop. He
talked about what companies he had worked for, different pain-in-the-ass bosses
he'd had, and how he thought Asia was where the future was. All of this was
tedious as usual, even if it had the novelty of coming from the mouth of a
handsome German shepherd more than twice as tall as I. Oh, yes: he also talked
about American movies, which was another subject that interested me hardly at
all. He told me he had once wanted to be a special effects man and try to get
into Hollywood, but how it was almost impossible for Europeans.
"It was just a youthful
dream," he said. "Everyone dreams of some nonsense when they're
young."
And then: "What did you dream when
you were young? What did you dream of doing?"
I really should have told him. It was
an honest question, after all. But of course he wouldn't have understood, so I
lied.
"I wanted to be an
astronaut," I said.
"An astronaut?" he exclaimed,
his shepherd ears pointing up more sharply than usual. "An astronaut?
Really?"
"Yes. Why not? I wanted to work on
space stations."
"Hah! That's even more ridiculous
than my dream. That's really a winner!"
If he'd had hands and if I'd had a
proper shoulder, he'd probably have reached over at that instant and patted me
on it with warmth and comradeship. As it was, he just stood there next to me
with his doggy jaws widened in a kind of smile, looking as if he were taking a
pause in a happy game of fetch. We'd had our ridiculous dreams, both of us.
Somehow that touched his heart, so that I was glad I didn't tell him about my
real dreams, which would only have confused him. He was a warmhearted guy,
Jurgen. I wonder where he is today.
VIII.-- The food she gave us was in
small, dry, brownish pebbles. It wasn't too bad, though, and there was enough
of it. It kind of tasted like ground-up bones mixed with cardboard mixed with
gravy. But she did feed us well, the bitch.
IX.-- What is that awful hemming and
hawing? What is it? It's like the music of Headache itself. It comes and
retreats, and then comes on again, up there in the darkness. It's starting to
get on my nerves. It sounds like a hundred sci-fi ladies running metallic
fingernails on chalkboards. What in hell is it? I've never heard anything like
it, and it's up there, up in the sky.
Am I sick? Someone put their hand on my
forehead. Their paw. Oh, it's no use. If I'm sick here, I'll die for sure. It
must be two in the morning. Why aren't the others awake? The noise is driving
me nuts!
I remember lying there for nearly an
hour, suffering a cranial annoyance like nothing I'd ever known before. It
seemed like sound, but it seemed also like a kind of electrical wavelength. It
tickled the nerves at the root of my teeth.
In exasperation, I decided finally to
wake Jurgen and ask him if he heard it.
"*Es gibt hier zuviele
Menschen*," he said. "*Es gibt auch zuviele Pfledermausen*."
But what did *Pfledermausen* mean? What
was that? I couldn't remember that word. *Pfledermausen*. *Pfleder* is flying.
I knew that part. And *Mausen* is mice. Flying mice. Bats. So they were *bats!*
What Jurgen had said was: "There are too many people here in Taiwan. There
are also too many bats."
So there were bats careening around in the
darkness above us. I could hear their squeaking because as a dog I had
high-frequency hearing. And really it was an awful noise they made.
Dogs in the tropics have a rough time
of it if they have to put up with such a racket every night. Crickets are endearing,
nightingales are the stuff of secret trysts, but those bats sounded like nails
on chalkboards and nothing more. I felt I'd go mad if I had to listen to it
much longer. But there was something I didn't get.
"Why weren't there bats here last
night?" I asked Jurgen in English. "I mean, I've been here a few
weeks now, and I've never heard these bats before."
"The people who live on the roof
must be having a party on their patio," he said. "That's what I
thought last time the bats came. I've heard the bats once before. The people up
there probably turn on a lot of lights for the party, and the bats come for the
insects. Can you see it's a little lighter over on that side?"
Jurgen gestured with his muzzle.
Looking up to the tops of the buildings
hemming us in, I could see it was in fact a little bit brighter on one side.
"You are one smart dog," I
said to him. "I think you figured it out."
"I am German," he replied.
"We can figure out anything."
"Yeah!" I laughed. "A
German shepherd! Hah!"
But Jurgen wasn't laughing.
"Are you an East German shepherd
or a West German shepherd?" I continued, hoping to get a smile from him.
"Germany is united," he said.
"All German shepherds and all German people are one."
I looked to the ground. Was he serious?
He still wasn't laughing. And now I wonder: Could Jurgen have been serious
about that? I'm still not sure. I decided then not to pursue it any further.
After all, he was my only real friend in the kennel, and I didn't want to make
him angry. But that idea: "All German shepherds are one"--that was
really a bit balmy, wasn't it? I mean, you wouldn't hear me railing against the
English just because I was a Scotch terrier. But it was true that Jurgen really
was German, and that he really ended up being a *German* shepherd. But that was
only ironic, I thought. That was probably just a joke on the Mistress' part.
But still, maybe Jurgen saw more in it. Maybe he saw it as a sign of the
strength of German blood. Who knows? Maybe he believed a witch could change his
species, but could never efface his essential Germanness. Maybe Jurgen thought
if he were changed into food he would end up being a knockwurst or Wiener
schnitzel and certainly not pasta or wonton soup.
I could have joked with him about all
of this--sometimes we joked about different things--but I never did. I felt
there was something rather literal and straightforward in Jurgen, and I didn't
want to let my humor cause a row between us.
I never got to sleep that night. The
bats never went away. Those people on the roof probably partied all night. But
there were no bats the following night.
X.-- I must have been in the kennel
about three weeks when the bulldozer came. It started in the morning with men
putting up big fluorescent stickers on the high fence that bordered....
[The following excerpt is a chapter
from much later in the novel.]
XXX.--My name is Louis Kemp. I don't
know why I haven't told you that already. Louis Kemp. Try to remember it. Names
are important for men. I suppose I am lucky I can still remember it at all,
given what I'm going through.
I should be a classicist by now. I know
Latin and Greek, the latter quite well, and my German and French are quite
strong too. This is something I keep harping on, I know, but I can't help it.
The fact of my education contrasts so painfully with what has become of me.
Even among the graduate students I knew with an education similar to mine, my
learning usually managed to distinguish itself, particularly my linguistic
learning. At the time of my dissertation defense, my Greek was much better than
that of any of the classicists I knew who'd recently been hired out of grad
school. My scholarship showed nothing amiss either. I'd already published four
papers before finishing my dissertation. So why wasn't there a position out
there for me? I was considered the strongest recent candidate from the
department where I did my PhD., and that department was ranked third best in
the U.S. So rightfully I should have found something. And I should now be a new
faculty member in one of the betters Classics departments, writing papers on
speech genres in Aristophanes and organizing conferences. But what am I
instead? I'm a street dog in Taipei. I am down and out. I have gone to the
dogs. This isn't just a metaphor in my case either. *Metaphor* is a Greek word,
you know, from the verb *metaphorein*. I could go on and on about Greek words.
I could talk about Greek until you were ready to pay me to shut up. The verb
*metaphorein* means: to move something from one place to another; to transport
something. I have been literally transported to the dogs here, carried over to
the dogs. And dogginess has started to reveal itself in me. I have begun to
suffer. I am suffering worse every day.
Is it the summer heat? What is
happening to me? Though it still rains often enough, on many days the hot wind
blows the dust around in little whirling storms. The grit and dust from all the
traffic blows in my eyes, it gets compacted in my fur. The pavement is hot
under my paws, and even the cement in the shade seems laced with an intractable
heat. All of it has begun to boil my blood. Everywhere I find nothing but the
maddening pain of my lust.
Is it the summer heat? It is too
fucking hot in this city! It's intolerable! And I am all covered with this
damned fur. My tears themselves seem to sting in my eyes as if they were semen.
My blood simmers. I find myself chewing on everything that comes along.
No amount of Milkbones could assuage
the burning lust that has taken hold of me. What's happening? There is no rawhide
chew that could take the edge off of the curse I've fallen under. My long,
lipstick-shaped shlong swells out of its foreskin a thousand times a day. It is
getting me down. I need a woman. Finally. I *need* a woman. Or do I?
The dirt of this city has infected my
dreams. This terrible heat, this dirt! I know that the sooty surfaces only make
me randier with their filth. The filth has gotten under my skin, and I want to
dash myself into it, to tear myself in two so that my very heart is pumping
with filth. I want to see my blood mixed with the black grime of the alleys.
I crave an apotheosis of soot and
semen, my doggy teeth digging into the back of some bitch's neck, my canines
(as it were) clenched around her loose leather collar, holding her in place under
me as I thump and thump my doggy dick against the knob of her cervix.
What I really desire is to mount the
stewardess. I've seen her pass the cafe four times now: always walking swiftly,
always dragging her little flight bag on wheels. But how can I go about it? If
I jump as high as I can, I could just manage to bite her ass. My teeth would
pierce right through the purple fabric of her Air China skirt, right into the
unseen white flesh of her lovely thigh. But how would that be enough? It
wouldn't be nearly enough for this cursed wave of lust I'm under.
I've had it with this! Something must
be done, and it must be done soon. I'm about ready to go to a vet and get
myself neutered. This is no life!
What is the species I need? My dreams
are rent by the confusion of my being. I dream of sleek wolf-ladies bent over
on curb-sides, everything done doggy style, their chins scraping against the
cement as I do them from behind, their fangs flashing forth from their lips
with every thrust. I dream of girls with five-inch red leather leashes fixing
them firmly to fire hydrants, the ground but a puddle of reeking urine. I bang
furiously against their little haunches, that quick, no-nonsense thrust of
dogs, and they snarl at me in pleasure mingled with pain. They have women's
bodies, but dog's souls: they are inarticulate.
This can't go on! My dreams have
recycled everything of my human past: it all comes forward in line--my high
school teachers, old loves, neighbors--it all comes forward and I lift my leg
on it. I mark it with the dog's world. My memory is being caninized!
Everything is awash in urine and lust,
the urine a kind of propaganda, the signifying thrust of a politics, the lust
being the heart of the matter, the real agenda of this quest to mark the territory
that is my past.
I dreamt I was at my high school prom
again, dancing with my date. The urine began to run down my leg and onto the
floor, slowly making a puddle. The boys began to notice my puddle; they fled
the room in fear. That's just how I wanted it. Then all the girls, abandoned by
their dates, fixed me with their eyes. They began to strip off their clothes,
piece by piece, in admiration of the great puddle I had made.
What kind of a doggy dream is that!
Through the medium of my dreams, my new physiology is beginning to recast my
memories, so that I fear I will no longer have anything left of them. They will
finally become just so many scenes of kennel love, the girls who were my
obsessions in high school taking on ever more canine qualities: Karen K.
becoming a sleek, blond poodle trimmed in all the right places; Amy T. becoming
a gaunt little miniature greyhound with a hungry look in her eyes; Julie
R.--her Angora sweater!--a chubby lapdog that can't stop licking your ears,
down your neck, your hands and wrists, and on and on.
If this continues, I will certainly
forget that I was ever human. My human identity will be washed away by these
waves of canine lust as thoroughly as poodle piss is washed away by a
hurricane.
....
----[The Taipei Zoo was finished and retitled A Taipei
Mutt. It was published in 2002 by Cheng Shang
Publishing. Some links to reviews
can be found at: DRAFT.]----
There are street dogs everywhere in
Taipei. One sees them always and everywhere, and they are a dirty, hunkering
bunch.
I feel for the street dogs. Many of
them limp from having been hit by cars. Others have little hair left on their
bodies: it’s been eaten off by the skin rashes they develop from splashing through
puddles laced with oil, from sleeping on soot-covered pavement, from the
humidity and heat of this sub-tropical city. Some look as if they were nothing
but one big itch, their skin appearing almost to boil with scabs and open
sores.
Street dogs here live off garbage and
the detritus of night markets. There are occasional dear souls--women
usually--who make a point of feeding the dogs of their neighborhood. My
neighborhood has one such woman: she lives across the street from me. The dogs,
however, far outnumber the people trying to help them.
Street dogs are necessarily street
smart. I notice them waiting for walk lights to turn before they cross the
street. I'm not sure if they’re responding to the changing light itself, or if
they are just watching the traffic. It’s interesting, though, that some dogs
make a point of walking to a crosswalk before they’ll venture off the sidewalk.
For their own safety, they know to avoid jaywalking. Once at the crosswalk,
they stand waiting for the light to turn. And they do this whether or not there
are human pedestrians standing there with them. The point is that these dogs
are not simply taking their cue from crowds of humans: they themselves know the
best way to cross the street. When the walk light turns, they’ll glance at the
traffic to be sure it's safe, then they’ll cross. Some dogs, it is true, aren’t
so smart as this, but I’ve watched this doggy crosswalk routine more than once,
and know it is something many street dogs have mastered.
I feel for these Taipei dogs. I’ve seen
too many of them broken down with injury and disease, on their last leg.
Sometimes I buy dog food for the dogs in my neighborhood. I’ve done this only
rarely though. I admit I’m not as faithful as the woman across the street.
The biggest of our neighborhood's
dogs--he is like a large, greying black bear--has taken to following me from my
bus stop to the door of my apartment building.
[The rest of Letters from the Taipei Zoo deals
with my own arrival in Taipei, rather than with the fictional arrival of Louis
Kemp. The letters are in chronological order, beginning with one of my first
letters to H.]
8/8/96,
Taipei
Dear H.:
The sentence came to me the other day,
and I thought I would perhaps write that
I love to ride the bus and watch the crowded shop signs, banners, and marquees pass by. I’m at the point where I can identify a character here and there, but still the general effect is opacity. I