Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [5]
I remember swimming up through wild waters, the howling of a million shells, endless, timeless confusion. I was no one. No name. Nowhere. Then came a point where I realised I was nothing and that was the end of the nothing and the beginning of fear. I never had a lostness like that before, though many more were to come in my life. Voices came, piping in from the howling, making no sense. Then words—
he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead, oh, lord mercy—and the hardness of stone, cold beneath my cheek, sudden.
A woman’s voice.
A hand on my head.
No no no his eyes are open, look, he’s … there, fine boy, let me feel … no no no you’re all fine …
he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead …
there you come, son …
here you come …
And I am born. Wide awake sitting up on the pavement, blinking at the shock of the real.
A man with a big red face and cropped yellow hair had me by the shoulders. He was staring into my eyes, saying over and over again: “There, you’re a fine boy now … there, you’re a fine boy …”
I sneezed and got a round of applause. The man grinned. I became aware of a huge mob, all bobbing their heads to see me.
“Oh, poor little thing!” a woman’s voice cried out, and I looked up and saw her at the front of the crowd, a woman with a startled face and mad wiry hair, wild goggly eyes made huge and swimmy by bottle-bottom spectacles. She held a little girl by the hand. The crowd was like daubed faces on a board, daubed faces with smudged bodies, bright stabs of colour here and there, scarlet, green, royal purple. It heaved gently like a sea and my eyes could not take it in, it blurred wildly as if blocked by tears—though my eyes were dry—blurred and shivered and whirled itself around with a heaving burst of sound, till something shook my head awake again and I saw clearly, clearer than I had ever seen anything before, the face of the little girl standing at the front of the crowd holding her mother’s hand, drawn sharp as ice on a mess of fog.
“Now,” said the big man, taking my chin in his fist and turning my face to look at him, “how many fingers, boy?” He had an accent of some kind, sharp and foreign. His other hand he held up before me, the thumb and small finger bent down.
“Three,” I said.
This brought another great murmur of approval from the crowd.
“Good boy, good boy!” the man said, as if I’d done something very clever, setting me on my feet but still holding me by the shoulders. “Fine now?” he asked, shaking me gently. “Very fine, brave boy. Good boy! Fine boy! Best boy!”
I saw tears in his eyes, on the rims, not falling, which seemed strange to me as he was smiling so vigorously and showing a perfectly even row of small, shiny white teeth. His wide face was very close to mine, smooth and pink like a cooked ham.
He hoisted me up in his arms and held me against him. “Say your name, fine boy,” he said, “and we’ll take you home to Mamma.”
“Jaffy Brown,” I said. I felt my thumb in my mouth and whipped it out quick. “My name is Jaffy Brown and I live in Watney Street.” And at the same moment a dreadful sound rose upon the air, as of loosed packs of hounds, demons in hell, mountains falling, hue and cry.
The red face suddenly thundered: “Bulter! For God’s sake, get him back in the crate! He’s seen the dogs!”
“My name is Jaffy Brown,” I cried as clearly as I could, for by now I was fully back in the world, though my stomach churned and heaved alarmingly. “And I live in Watney Street.”
I was carried home as if I was an infant in the arms of the big man, and all the way he talked to me, saying: “So, what will we say to Mammy? What will Mammy say when she hears you’ve been playing with a tiger? ‘Hello, Mammy, I’ve been playing with my friend the tiger! I gave him a pat on the nose!’ How many boys can say that, hi? How