The Hirsute Civil Servant

By Aileen Hennes

This text started as a short story with the title « Full Moon Over Berlin », as such it won first price in the George Moore Literary Awards in 2001. It will shortly be published as a full novel by Pegasus Publishers.

Par Aileen Hennes

Ce texte a d’abord été une nouvelle titrée « Pleine Lune sur Berlin », elle a remporté le premier prix aux George Moore Literary Awards en 2001. Elle sera prochainement publié comme roman chez les éditions Pegasus.

The « I » in this fable is an orangutan. As far as he knows he’s always lived in the zoo where he believes he is employed as a functionary to educate people about nature. Although he may vex ironic about his futile mission – visitors average 18 seconds in contemplating him – he’s basically good natured; even complacent about his lot. There are the regulars and his keeper, whose antics keep him amused. As for the rest of the visitors, he has a way of distinguishing them as either 15 or 4 million year people depending on their attitude; that is to say if they seem to think that our common ancestors parted ways a long time ago, or relatively recently. Occasionally, when it all becomes too much for him, there is ‘the Java’, a gunny sack which he pulls over his head by way of escape.

One night, he’s abducted from his cage. A small bird comes to get him and the orangutan finds himself on the tundra in the far north of Norway. He doesn’t know where he is, or why, but then comes along a woman he’s met before in the zoo. She’s a noaidi (shaman) who wants him for her journeying animal. They go on a mission to the capital to get her son – a gyneacologist -back to Lapland.
But the young doctor, whose business is thriving, cannot be persuaded to give it up. Mother and son fall out and the orangutan is left wandering about Oslo with a wad of money that the doctor has given him. The problem is that he doesn’t know what money is for…

At about the same time Bastfeldt – a living legend, hunter and fisherman – arrives in Oslo. He’s come with a bribe for the office manager at the Department of Fisheries in order to get a larger – much larger – quota of cod than anyone else. The doorman of the Department of Fisheries forgets to pick him up at the airport. The easily insulted hunter must be appeased so the manager goes looking for Bastfeldt – who is easily identifiable in his customary polar bear jumpsuit – but in a case of mistaken identity he picks up the orangutan instead. The ape and the real Bastfeldt are destined to meet in the manager’s office. The resultant competition of alpha males subjugates the Department of Fisheries during an uncanny twenty four hours.