The Listener by Tove Jansson

and looked at the snow leopard again. After a bit, she moved slowly on, stopping occasionally to wait, but Mr Shimomura did not come back. So she made her way laboriously down the bank to the shore. She didn’t dare shout. The island was quiet, and maybe all the animals would started howling at once, and anyway she had no right to be there.
    Mr Shimomura was walking along the water’s edge, through the harbour’s deposits of plastic and paper and fruit peelings. He was collecting bits of wood that the waves had washed ashore. Of course, she thought, with the relief that comes with recognition, he’s collecting oddly shaped twigs. I’ve read that they do that.
    They hadn’t spoken for a long time. They were taking a break. He didn’t show her his twigs, and she didn’t comment. Their solitary wanderings through a closed landscape had simplified something. By and by, they walked back to the empty cages.
    And now the bears came. She glanced quickly at Mr Shimomura. Yes, now he was interested. Not in the brown bears but in the polar bear. It lay on its back with its paws in the air, large and shapeless and dirty yellow against the snow. Its muzzle and eyes were coal black. It looked at Mr Shimomura over its shoulder, raised itself heavily, with the same motions as a sleepy person getting out of bed, and sat down, staring down at the snowbetween its paws. Mr Shimomura did not take out his sketch pad. He just looked at the bear.
    The damp chill was beginning to creep up her legs. This island was really dreadful, unspeakably sad. It cut her off from everything real and alive. It scared her. Why wasn’t he drawing. Was he waiting for the bear to get up? She said nothing, just tied her scarf around her head and hat and waited.
    Finally Mr Shimomura turned to her, and, with a bow and a smile, let her know that now he had finished seeing the bear. They passed a bison and a mink. Behind one of the buildings there were buckets, shovels, and a pair of skis in the trampled snow. There were people who lived and worked out here. But they never saw a soul.
    When she finally found the wolves, the island had darkened in the early dusk.
    “Mr Shimomura,” she said slowly. She smiled, almost shyly. And showed him the wolves. There were three big cages, with a wolf in each cage. All three walked back and forth along the bars, back and forth in a kind of gliding trot, without lifting their heads. Mr Shimomura went closer and gazed at them.
    The wolves’ ceaseless pacing struck her as appalling. It was timeless. They loped back and forth behind their bars week after week and year after year, and if they hate us, she thought, it must be a gigantic hate! She felt cold, suddenly terribly cold, and she started to cry. Her legs hurt, and she wanted to go home. The wolves and Mr Shimomura had simply nothing whatever to do with her.
    It was not certain how long Mr Shimomura studied the wolves, but when he walked away the dusk had grown much deeper. She wiped her face with a glove and followed. As they passed the empty monkey house, he turned around and explained everything by laying his hand on his sketchbook, smiling, and nodding his head. He pointed to his forehead to indicate that he had captured the wolf. He had it. She needn’t be the least uneasy.
    They walked on up the hill. She followed after him in the resigned, irresponsible calm that follows tears, just walked through the snow and felt that now nothing more could be expected of her.
    The outlook tower was locked, but there was a round, open verandah at the bottom, its walls covered with names in pencil and ink. Mr Shimomura brushed snow from the bench and sat down. He put the oddly shaped twigs beside him and sank into immobility. It was now clearly evening. The island below them was dark, but more and more lights were coming on along the half circle of the horizon, and she could hear the city’s continuous dull roar and an ambulance siren that grew steadily fainter and then