The Red Panda
by Robert Garnham

 

 

For a long while Dan thought that the zoo didn’t even have a red panda. He’d walked past its enclosure several times that first week and not once seen it. Visitors had obviously remarked on the red panda’s reticence because the zoo had put up a sign which read, Sssh! The Red panda is very timid. Try looking up into the tree, with an arrow pointing upwards. It would have been the ultimate con, he supposed, that the zoo didn’t actually have a red panda. It had a cassowary, and it had an ibex, but he didn’t know for sure that it had a red panda.

When he’d told his friends that he’d got a job at the zoo as a sweeper, they had laughed.

‘Are you sure you didn’t think that you were going to be a keeper at the zoo?’, Alan had said, that night in the pub. He guffawed as if it were hilarious.

‘Sweeper’, he’d said. ‘You know. With a broom’.

‘Take my advice’, Brett said, leaning across the table. ‘Don’t use the leaf-blower near the lion. They’ll make you go in his cage and tug the chewing gum out from his mane’.

‘Tell it to hold still!’, Alan added. ‘Hold still, lion! Stop fidgeting!’

They both laughed.

Dan wasn’t sure what it was that they found so funny - the fact that he was going to be working at the zoo, or the fact that he had got himself a job in the first place. He sipped his beer and laughed along with them. He didn’t know why he spent time with Alan and Brett. When the football was on, Alan would shout at the players on the screen in the pub and swear at them, and bring up their nationality or their race or their religion as if these had been contributing factors to whatever they’d supposedly done that had displeased him. And Brett was weird. He would pay each time he went to the bar with a note, so that by the time he left he had a pocket full of loose change. Once he bent down to do up his shoelace and all these coins tipped out his pockets and rolled onto the sticky carpet. Kirk, the barman, had said that he could swap the coins for notes if Brett wanted, but Brett couldn’t understand how this would help. He presumably thought that it meant he would lose out. Dan supposed he only hung around with these people out of habit.

His first week at the zoo went well and he’d got into the habit of arriving each morning through the staff entrance, going to the shed where the brooms and the cleaning equipment were kept. His immediate boss was an older woman who showed him where everything was and helped him through the health and safety training modules that the personnel department insisted everyone take. He’d learned about the emergency protocols, just in case something escaped. Monkeys, apparently, were the most prone to this.

By the end of that week he felt comfortable enough to daydream. The paths of the zoo wound around the various enclosures, and not many of the visitors dropped litter. The worst that he had to deal with were the leaves from the trees, but it was just easier to brush them to one side. He daydreamed about football, and about his side winning the premiership, and how disappointed Alan would be, because of course, he supported the team that were considered to be the rivals of his team. He daydreamed about winning millions on a lottery scratchcard. He daydreamed about getting drunk, and he was still daydreaming about getting drunk when he passed the red panda’s enclosure.

‘Pass us a fag, will you?’, someone said.

But there was nobody near.

‘I don’t . .  I don’t smoke’, Dan said, looking around. He didn’t know who he was talking to.

‘Come on. Just one ciggie’.

The red panda was glaring at him.

‘I’m gasping, here’, the red panda said.

Dan was perturbed by this development. A talking red panda was bad enough, but one which, on very little evidence, assumed that he smoked cigarettes, was all the more worrying.

‘Honestly, I haven’t got any’.

‘You can get your paws on some, can’t you?’, the red panda asked. ‘I’ll pay you back, honest I will’.

‘Sure’, Dan said. ‘Because you’re obviously rolling in cash’.

‘I’m good for it. Trust me. Come on, now. Just one pack of cigarettes. That’s all I ask’.

It had to be a joke, didn’t it? Red pandas didn’t talk, and yet there it was, sitting right on a branch of its tree next to the chain link fence, earnest eyebrows, and deep set, knowing eyes, glaring right at him. Dan looked around to make sure that nobody was watching, or that this was all a set-up.

‘OK’, he said. ‘I’ll get you some cigarettes, but it won’t be until tomorrow’.

‘I suppose I’ll have to hold on a bit then, won’t I?’, the red panda said.

‘You will. And another thing. Do you have the money right now?’

‘Ah. Yes. Ha ha. All tied up, I’m afraid. Investments, and high interest accounts. Tell you what, bring the ciggies tomorrow and I’ll pay you then, OK?’

‘Fine’, Dan said.

That night, he didn’t mention the red panda to Alan or Brett. They would have made fun of him and questioned his sanity. In any case, Alan was in a maudlin mood because he’d had another row with his estranged son, AJ, who’d moved to Cornwall and was engaged to be married and hadn’t asked him to the wedding, and Brett was morose because his sister’s husband had been in hospital all day after dropping a fence panel on his foot, and he’d had to spend the day looking after their dog. Dan’s problems with the red panda didn’t seem quite so urgent as the issues that his friends were going through and the atmosphere between them all was muted, until the football came on. For some reason, once he’d had a few pints, Brett had taken to howling like a wolf, and Dan kept telling him to be quiet, but he kept on howling, saying that it was because his birthday was just before Halloween.

‘What difference does that make?’, Dan asked.

‘I’m a werewolf!’, Brett yelled. ‘Arooooo!’

 Alan was shouting at the TV screen because a football player had just fallen over. He started yelling at him and then adopted a stereotypical and very racist approximation of a Chinese accent.

‘Why are you doing that?’, Dan asked.

‘Because the bastard’s Chinese!’

‘That’s got nothing to do with him falling over’.

‘Aroooo!’, Brett yelled.

Dan thought about going home. But it was a rainy night and the beer was good and the football was on, even if his company was annoying. When he finally left them just after midnight to go back to his small flat, he remembered the red panda’s cigarettes. He went to the convenience store next to the train station and he asked for a packet.

‘What kind?’, the assistant asked.

The store was brightly lit. There were colours everywhere, logos and packaging and vivid advertising. He didn’t know anything about cigarettes.

‘I don’t know’, he sighed. ‘Just . . . Anything’.

 

’ . . . And I just don’t even know why I hang around with them’, Dan explained, the next morning. ‘They do my head in’.

‘You feel that your life would be worse off without them?’

‘Exactly. Like I’m somehow missing out on something’.

The red panda sucked in a lung-full of smoke and held it, contemplatively, in his chest. He then breathed it out.

‘There’s that old adage’, he said, ‘that we cannot choose our families . . .’.

‘It’s not that I choose to spend my time with them. We just kind of - you know - the same way that planets are formed. We just kind of got together’.

‘Perhaps you just need to lay down a few ground rules’, the red panda said. ‘Tell them that some aspects of their behaviour annoys you’.

‘I can’t do that’.

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t have any right to start changing people. Anyway, I’ve known them for too long. They’ll wonder why I didn’t mention sooner’.

         ‘Perhaps you should just divorce yourself from them, if it’s that bad. Give them the old heave-ho, you know? They’re just pub acquaintances, even if one of them howls like a wolf and the other is a blatant racist. What difference does it make to your life?’

‘I’d feel bad’, Dan said.

‘Then you obviously care about them more than you think’.

‘I suppose so’, Dan said. ‘Oh - visitor!’

The red panda clamped the cigarette between his lips, waved his paws around in the air to dissipate the smoke, and then scampered up the trunk of the tree into the higher branches.

‘Mate!’, he whispered. ‘Tell me when the coast is clear!’

 

The weekend was always when Dan spent more time at the pub. Instead of a drink after work, he would go on Saturday afternoon and watch the football, and usually do the same on a Sunday, too. The pub was more crowded at the weekend and it wasn’t guaranteed that he would be able to sit with Brett or Alan. On this occasion he was able to perch himself at the end of the bar and crick his neck sideways so that he could watch the game on the big screen. The green grass of the football pitch reflected back from the glasses hanging in front of Kirk at the bar. He enjoyed the game. He was glad that he hadn’t totally taken the red panda’s advice in splitting from Brett and Alan, which would have meant finding another pub to visit, but at least, sitting here on a crowded afternoon, he was able to demonstrate to them that he could visit the pub without necessarily gracing them with his presence.

‘Aroooo!’, he heard at one point.

But he started to feel a bit bad. Sure, they were annoying, with their quirks, but weren’t they human beings, worthy of the same amount of respect as anyone else? And wasn’t it sort of childish, that he should sit purposefully at the bar without even checking to see if there was a spare seat at their table? Hadn’t they invested emotional value into their relationship with him, even if they weren’t actually aware of this? It wasn’t their fault that he found them annoying, that one of them howled like a werewolf and the other was blatantly - and stupidly - racist. Dan sighed. He hopped off his stool, grabbed his pint, and wound through the weekend drinkers to their table.

‘Afternoon, lads’.

Brett gestured to the empty space at their table.

‘Take a pew’.

 

’The thing is’, the red panda pondered, the next morning, ‘You’re a weak individual, if you don’t mind me saying. You lack discipline and you are afraid to stick to your morals. These will always be’, he said, sucking in a mouth-full of smoke from his cigarette, ‘your most defining characteristics’.

‘I cannot help who I am’.

‘You need to figure out what it is that gives you comfort in life. Is it the clarity of your own beliefs, or the companionship you feel when you’re with them?’

‘Does there have to be a choice?’

‘Or’, the red panda said, lowering his voice and pointing a paw at Dan’s face, ‘or do you feel somehow superior by hanging around with them? Is that it? Whenever you’re with them, do you congratulate yourself on not being like them? Sure, you may see your status in this world and in society as lowly - (for heaven’s sake, you’re just a sweeper in the zoo) - but does being with them make you feel that you’re not totally at rock bottom?’

‘What’s happened to your voice?’, Dan asked.

‘Just a sore throat. Yes, so what do you say, young man, about my hypothesis, hmm?’

‘There may be some truth in it’, he replied. ‘But I don’t think you’re in any position to psychoanalyse me, based on the few conversations we’ve had.’

‘Maybe’, the red panda said. ‘But who else will do it?’

It was only later on, as he was on his lunch break in the staff canteen, that Dan thought, well, why does anyone need to do it at all?

 

Dan was busy for the rest of his shift. There had been a child’s birthday party at the petting zoo and he was tasked to clean up afterwards, and the children had made much more mess than he had anticipated. He was weary as he walked back to the shed where the brooms were stored, and his shoulders ached from all the sweeping. He hardly noticed the commotion. The frantic rushing of the zoo staff hardly registered at all. He decided that he would get the bus back into town, have a couple of pints, and then go home for a good night’s sleep.

There was obviously an emergency with one of the animals, he reckoned, as he clung to the metal pole of the bus. Perhaps one of them had escaped. Most likely it wasn’t one of the dangerous creatures, because they hadn’t put the zoo into lockdown like they would have done if it were a tiger or a lion. Dan had his backpack over his shoulder, which contained a mac and his lunch box, and a lady sitting in the seat in the aisle kept waving her hand in front of her face whenever he stumbled nearer to her.

‘You reek’, she said, ‘of cigarettes’.

‘I don’t smoke’, he replied.

‘It’s your backpack’, she said. ‘It absolutely hums’.

He took it off his shoulder and put it on the floor of the bus. He assumed that one of the zoo cleaning staff had been smoking cigarettes in the broom shed.

He got off at the bus station and walked to the pub, which was just around the corner. There were a few people in there, with Kirk behind the bar, and sure enough, Alan and Brett in their usual booth, which had a good view of the big screen. Dan got himself a pint and went over to sit with them.

‘Evening, lads’.

He placed his backpack on the seat.

‘Make sure no-one nabs it’, he said. ‘I’m off for a slash’.

The toilets were at the back of the pub. He did what he had to do and washed his hands, and was only half-conscious of a commotion coming from the bar. Shouting, raised voices, laughter, even a scream, and one or two cries of astonishment. It’s all kicking off here tonight, he thought, as he dried his hands. He went through the door and back to the bar,

It was the voice he recognised first.

‘And that bloody koala!’, he was saying. ‘I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him! Bloody clingy, too, he is. You know what they say about marsupials?’

The red panda was standing on the table between Alan and Brett. A small crowd had formed around him.

‘Stupid idiot Aussies!’, Alan yelled.

‘Never trust a marsupial’, the red panda said. ‘Because they carry too much baggage!’

The place fell about with laughter.

‘Too much baggage!’, Alan repeated, laughing hysterically and banging the table. ‘Bloody Australian idiots!’

‘Arooooo!’, Brett yelled.

‘Arooooo!’, the red panda howled, joining in.

And then the two of them howled together.

‘Arooooo!’

‘What’s going on?’, Dan asked.

‘Oh, here he is’, the red panda said. ‘Mr Serious!’

‘Mr . . . Bloody . . . Australian idiot!’, Alan said.

Dan wasn’t Australian.

‘And the flamingos’, the red panda said.

‘Pink bastards!’, Alan yelled.

‘Arooooo!’, Brett added.

‘The flamingos really get on my tits.’ The red panda noticed Dan’s pint on the table. ‘Oh’, he said, ‘Don’t mind if I do!’

He picked it up and started guzzling it down.

‘Mate’, Brett said, when he’d finished howling. ‘He came right out of your backpack!’

‘Bloody . .  Bloody . . . What country do red pandas come from?’, Alan asked.

‘Life and soul of the party!’

The red panda finished guzzling and let out a very long belch.

‘Hey!’, he yelled out to Kirk. ‘What time does the footie start?’

 

Dan just had to leave the pub. The red panda was getting on his nerves. How could someone act like that, and go against the very advice that he had given? It felt personal, and it felt insulting, and Dan wondered if the red panda was trying to create animosity and break up his friendship with Alan and Brett. Or perhaps, he wondered, as he walked home, perhaps the red panda was trying to show to him that there was no reason to be annoyed by the behaviour of his friends, that they were tolerable, and that their characteristics and their quirks should be accepted and, indeed, celebrated? In truth, Dan just didn’t know what to think.

The next morning, he walked to the zoo. He arrived through the staff entrance as normal, and he went straight to the cleaning shed where the brooms were stored. He was met by the head sweeper.

‘The manager wants to speak to you’, she said.

He felt a sinking sensation inside of himself. He knew what it would be about and he wondered why he had sort of expected to get away with it. He walked over to the administration building next to the gift shop feeling the dread crawl from his chest. He knocked at the door of the zoo’s chief administrator.

‘You wanted to see me?’, he asked.

‘Ah, yes’, she replied, standing up from behind her desk. ‘I understand that you are one of our sweepers?’

‘That’s correct’.

His heart was thumping.

‘Wonderful’, she said. ‘In that case, I have a little project for you. In fact, some might even see it as something of a privilege. We need you to go and sweep out the red panda’s enclosure. For some reason, it’s littered with cigarette butts’.

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