Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [125]
Much later he got round to telling me that what he really wanted to know was what it tasted like. Was it like pork? He’d heard it was like pork.
“A bit,” I said. “Not quite.”
“How not like?”
“I dunno.”
“Was it nice?”
I didn’t answer.
“Won’t you tell me?”
“No.”
He wanted a story. A thing of horror. I have a story, a terrible one. But I’ll tell no tales. He doesn’t understand at all: it’s not that kind of a story, not horror but grief I have to deal with. Too much to tell. What shall I do with it?
Live with it.
So I rolled home and went back to bed, and if anyone came round I hid upstairs. They let me. There’s freedom in madness, I didn’t need to justify anything. The world owed me a little peace. I put my head back down under and let the sweet fishes nibble my nose. Oh, sweet sleep, sweet, sweet, sweet …
For about eight months I went on like this. Somewhere in the middle of it all Dan came to see me. I was lying on my bed dozing, and he walked in and kicked my foot. “Shake a leg, Jaf,” he said.
I got up on one elbow.
“Stinks in here,” he said. “Look what I brought you.”
A bit of skrimshaw, the likeness of a parrot carved on it.
“It’s walrus,” he said. “I thought you’d like it.”
“Nice.” I turned it over and over in my hand.
“How are you, lad? Your ma says you’re not up to much these days.”
“True. Still tired, I suppose.” I was yawning as I spoke, and he laughed. There wasn’t a chair, so he sat himself down on the floor under the window, his coat hunched up about the back of his head. He fished out a pouch of sweet tobacco, and we sat and smoked as the darkness in the corners of the room turned blue. Little and old and twisted he looked sometimes, but the way he sat and smoked still carried a curious quality of youth in it, and his hair was still vigorous. Had a nasty cough though.
I asked him: “How is it? Life ashore?”
And he smiled and said, “Precious.”
Half an hour did we sit? I don’t think it was longer. We didn’t talk much. He said from now on he would devote his life to watching his children growing up, and to the study of natural history, and he asked me what I would do. I didn’t know.
“I’d say we have a duty, we two.” His face was indistinct, but I could see the smoke spuming out of his nostrils.
“Don’t give me that,” I said.
He laughed. “I know,” he said, “I know what it’s like. But I’m older than you. It makes a difference.”
“Wisdom? Huh!” I said. “When I look around me, Dan, I don’t see a lot of old, wise people.”
He laughed again. “Who’s claiming wisdom? I’m only saying being old makes a difference. We came through, we have a duty to make the most of it.”
I was sick of people telling me how lucky I was. I didn’t feel lucky. If there was a God, I thought, he must be a twisted sort. All of them gone and all that pain and fear, and not a one of them deserved it.
“Listen,” I said, “there’s no meaning in it. Just chance. Random, pointless. There’s no other way of seeing it.” My anger grew. “I might not have gone. I nearly didn’t. Some other boy would have got my place. Remember George? Jumped ship at the Cape? Chance! He’s alive and they’re dead. That’s all it is. Blind chance.”
It was the longest speech I’d made since my return.
Dan’s head was now completely obscured by smoke. “You’re right,” he said.
We sat in silence for a while. The room grew darker and the smell of stew rose up from beneath.
“So, what are we to do?” He was invisible. “Shall we die?” A spasm of coughing. “Or shall we live?”
A longer silence.
“A hand is dealt,” he said. “You take it.”
I felt I ought to speak: “And that is my duty?”
“It is.”
I was tired, so I lay down and closed my eyes.
“I’ll be going,” he said.
I didn’t open my eyes. He groaned as he pushed himself up from the floor. “These old bones.” He heaved a sigh.
He stood for a moment as if waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t. Then he said: “I know what it’s like. I have it too. The melancholics.”
I still didn’t speak.
“You should come to dinner at our house, Jaf,” he said, “when you’re feeling up to it.”
“Thanks. I will,” I