Free Giraffe by J. M. Ledgard Page B

the barge, filing down giraffe hooves.
    “We haven’t been formally introduced,” he says. “I’m František Vokurka. Call me Franta.”
    His name means “cucumber,” but he is a slight man with stained rodent teeth. He wears a stethoscope. There is an exceptionally long tongue depressor in his shirt pocket.
    “Emil Freymann,” I say, holding out my hand.
    “I know who you are,” he says. “No need to worry about the giraffes. No need to worry about any of it. One died on the voyage. The rest are in good shape.”
    “I read your report.”
    “I want you to know that what Hus said yesterday was nonsense.”
    “The new subspecies? The assisted flight?”
    He nods. “This idea of his that the giraffes are engaged in some sort of migration.”
    “They’re captive.”
    “Of course they are.”
    “The safari park?”
    “I’m all against it,” he says, turning over the beans on his plate. “The slopes are too steep. They’re grassy. The giraffes will fall and break themselves on the ground when it rains. They’ll be like girls in high heels coming home from a country dance.”
    “They might get up again,” I say.
    “They would be as good as dead,” he says. “Their legs would be fractured in many places and could never be put back together.”
    “Did you tell Hus this?”
    “Many times.”
    “What did he say?”
    “He’s a careerist. He said the committee has passed the safari park proposal. He said the giraffes had the right to walk free.”
    “They were free.”
    “He means they have the right to walk free in ČSSR. He said the giraffes should be allowed to discover where they have migrated to.” Vokurka pushes back his plate. He starts playing with his tongue depressor. “Let me tell you of migration,” he says.
    “Please do.”
    “Last year, after quite another voyage, I found myself disembarked at the Romanian port of Constanta. I had a day to myself before taking the evening train to Bucharest. I walked from the modern port to the old part of the town, which contained decaying mosques, villas, and a museum displaying Roman antiquities. I walked as far as the marina. Some men were setting up a fairground ride there; it had eight arms, and at the end of each was a carriage that circled, I suppose, at great speed, but would always start and stop at the same point, going nowhere, no matter how many revolutions it made. Turning back toward the port, I came upon a shutdown casino in which swallows were nesting. They were newly returned from Africa. I watched them fall from their wattled nests in the eaves, like cliff divers, and rise vertically again, all the while reflected in the long windows and shadowed on the white and gold rococo plasterwork. I was hardly aware of the sun setting into the land. The swallows gave me a sense of the true meaning of migration.”
    “Which is?”
    “Certitude. The certitude of returning home. Swallows fly with utmost joy, ever so lightly, from Africa to Constanta and on to our ČSSR, over grasslands, deserts, seas, marshes, forests, mountains, all of these. They are joyful because they are forever returning home. ČSSR is home, all places in between are home.”
    “Unlike the giraffes.”
    “Who have no home now, but only crates.”
    “Could you tell me how the one giraffe died on the voyage?” I ask. I look at him blankly, as I have been instructed to by the shipping company, in order to produce uneasiness in the listener, so that they open up.
    “Let me first state that giraffes are not meant to stand on the deck of a ship for weeks at a time.”
    “Granted.”
    “All went well for the first part of the voyage,” he says. “The engine gave out off Zanzibar, but those were pleasant days. We passed around the Cape of Good Hope in calm waters and saw no storm until we were off the coast of Mauritania. Even the storm petrels fell upon our ship that night seeking shelter. I fled to my bunk below the waterline and clung miserably to myself. There was