Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [49]
“Not so.”
“Yes so. It’s not fishing, you know. I know all about fish.”
“No,” said Dan.
“Isn’t it funny,” Skip said, turning to me, “the way a thing can be two different things at the same time?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like wanting to do something and not wanting to do it at the same time,” he said, “like when my brother Barnaby drowned and I went and looked at him on the kitchen table and it was happy and sad all at the same time. Or like when you’re killing a whale and you feel like you are the whale.”
He showed me his sketch. It was his idea of a dragon, a tragic and majestic old thing.
I could understand why Dan wouldn’t take Skip along. Too unpredictable. I wasn’t though. I was good with animals, everyone said so. I had a feel for them and no real fear, only a respect for their powers that gave me a healthy caution. Why should Tim be hunter’s mate and me only a dogsbody? I got Dan on his own later and asked him outright: Why him and not me?
He blew smoke thoughtfully out of the corner of his mouth and said, “One. Because I promised him. Two. Because he’s the best man for the job.”
“Tim?”
“Him for the hunt,” he said, “you to take care of the creature once it’s caught.”
Seas have natures, like people. Since we left the Crozets behind, the change had seeped its way into everything. We were blown still, but the wind was less chilling, batting us along like a cat with a ball of wool. First there were islands here and there, reassuring blots of land upon the vastness of the ocean. Then there were none. The change was a somnolence thrown over us after the islands vanished. Now I saw the earth curve and felt as dizzy as a poor gnat on the brim of a drain. The sea changed colour, became a thirsty blue. But I sensed something more, something I had no words for, something that scared me witless. An enormity. As if something was hidden here, something under the sea, something under everything.
I tried to tell Tim.
“Just my luck,” he said, “to get stuck out here with a lot of lunatics. Christ help us come full moon.”
Now that we were drawing nearer to its homelands, the idea of the dragon was beginning to sink in. Joe Harper and Sam Proffit were working on the cage for it on the deck. Comeragh stood watching. “Make damn sure it’s strong,” he said, shaking out his handkerchief and laughing at the idea of the thing getting out and taking a stroll along the deck. “Down into the fo’c’s’le!” he cried with nasal delight, blowing his nose loudly.
“Aft in the captain’s cabin,” smiled Sam.
Joe thumped the sturdy timber with his fist. “You could put an elephant in that,” he said confidently.
“Or a tiger.” That was me. The cage was much like the one my tiger had escaped from.
Tim piped up. “Jaf was taken by a tiger once,” and everyone looked at me. “Tell ’em, Jaf,” he said. “Go on, tell ’em about the tiger.”
So I had to tell the story again about how I met Jamrach. Or rather Tim told it.
“Great big Bengal tiger! Head this big! And this little squirt here two foot tall walks straight up to it like it’s a little pussy cat and gives it a pat on the nose—”
“Not a pat,” I said, “a stroke. It was a stroke. I wanted to see what it felt like.”
The three of them were looking at me, Sam and Joe and Comeragh, impressed. Mr. Jamrach came out of that story very well, but it was me that was the hero, I knew that by now. Jamrach had bravely wrenched apart the beast’s jaws, that was true—though as I remember it being spoken of at the time, it was more like he got behind it and grabbed its throat and that made it open its mouth and cough me out. How should I know? I saw none of it. I remember being in the tiger’s mouth though, oh yes, I still remember. That’s why I was the hero. Not many had been in a tiger’s mouth. Not a one of them that didn’t in some way envy me that.
“Now there’s a story to tell your grandchildren,” Mr. Comeragh said, smiling. He had a terrible cold and his top lip was red and peeling.
Of course, the story was all over the place an hour later, and I had to tell it again and again so many times over the next couple