In Search of the Blue Tiger

by Robert Power

  It reminds me of the things Great Aunt says, that confuse me so. ‘You’re odd,’ the Great Aunt says sometimes. ‘Just like him. That so-called father of yours.’

  But Mrs April has a different tone about her. A different way of saying the words. I stare at the flaking paint of the bandstand to hide my confusion.

  ‘Don’t look sad, little Oscar,’ she says, gently rubbing the back of her hand across my cheek.

  Her touch.

  ‘I’m not. Just my shoelace,’ I mumble, blushing, bending down to retie the double-knot.

  ‘And the other one, the other one needs fixing,’ I say, still bent over, the blood and shame rushing to my head like a torrent. I can’t look up at her. This woman with kindness in her voice. For if I do, she would know I know so much and trust so little.

  I kneel as if waiting to be knighted. The sun beats down on my back, searing through my woollen jumper like a sword.

  ‘Shall we have some cake?’ she says, her voice kinder than an iced-sponge, more soothing than a cream-soda.

  I turn my head to look up to her. She is silhouetted against the sun. Although her face is dark I can feel the beauty of her smile.

  ‘If you want to, you can come to my house. We can have tea and cake. You can tell me more about your research.’

  She smiles down at me with a softness that asks nothing, hides nothing.

  She has a light in her eyes that is no part of my world of adults. She is offering me cake. Cake and tea. I can taste it in my mouth. This kindness.

  I fumble once more with my shoelace. A good tug to impress her that my endeavours are needed. To let her know I am just the sort of boy who would not want to worry an adult by skipping along with a lethal shoelace straddling in tow.

  ‘No thank you, the cake. No thank you,’ I hear myself say.

  ‘Well, perhaps another time,’ she says.

  ‘Yes … the dog … I must go,’ I say hurriedly, lest the blushes return.

  ‘Come on then, Stigir,’ I shout to my dog and leap into the air.

  Stigir jumps up from where he lay and we gambol along the path. Of this I am sure. Of this I am safe. I throw him an imaginary ball; he runs an imaginary chase. Over my shoulder I watch Mrs April. She shields her eyes from the sun, plotting our progress. I can tell she is impressed by our playfulness, me and the Stigir dog. She knows nothing of our real world, where wild animals come out at night, where no one tosses an imaginary ball, no one skips in the park on a bright sunny day. I watch her, even though she thinks I am at play. She stands tall and straight. From the lake a swan beats its wings and raises itself from the water, pulling away from the surface, forcing itself skywards, until it is fully in the air, coasting towards a distant destination.

  I might get no cake today, but the sun in the park, the swan in the sky, and the librarian lady watching the boy and the dog make me happy.

  Later on in bed, some sound of waves in the distance, a cat upsetting a dustbin, a comforting rattle of wind on the windowpane, I think of what the cake might have been. I picture a large round fruitcake, one slice invitingly cut. Some crumbs have fallen onto the plate. A solid silver knife lies on its side, waiting patiently to make its next mark. Most delicious of all, just visible in the heart of the cake, is a bright red cherry. Cherry red. I can taste it in my mouth. Cherry. Cherry cake.

  ‘Next time,’ says my dream, ‘next time she asks, I will.’

  SEVEN

  OSCAR DISCOVERS WERE–ANIMALS

  ‘Of wild creatures, a tyrant; and of tame ones, a flatterer.’ Bias

  Blue Monkey has come down from the shelf and is sitting with me on the bed as I read aloud. Blue Monkey is very wise, but he never lets on that he knows all this, that he’s always known this. For he is kind and shares in my sense of wonder and discovery. And he is patient and shows great interest in all I have written down.

  ‘I am so excited, Blue Monkey,’ I say as I reread the latest entries in my scrapbook. ‘These are real clues.’

  Stigir pricks up his ears at the sound of my voice. I hold the book open and wait for Stigir as he sidles up beside us and lays his head on my lap.

  Today in the library I read the second part of the book: Man meets animal in flesh and claw. It is even more astonishing than the first part.

  Part II: Were-animals: when people become animals

  People CAN change into animals. You think there are only were-wolves. This is not true, there are many other kinds:

  Were-crocodiles (see page 11)

  Were-pigs (see page 15)

  Were-tigers (see page 25)

  Were-crocodiles

  Are-crocodiles

  Nile-crocodiles

  Smile-crocodiles

  Lycanthropy is the word for a human being changing into a wolf. There are two types: the first type is when a person goes mad and thinks they are a wolf. This may come with a craving for blood. The second type is when a person becomes a werewolf.

  I’ve heard of were-wolves, in fairy-stories. Like I’ve heard of vampires, ghosts, and other scary monsters. But I’ve never heard of were-tigers and other were-animals and never in a true adult book from the reference section of the adult library. Outside my bedroom window I can see the moon. It is not quite full, but full enough. I stroke Stigir on the back of the neck, to feel his closeness, to know he is there. He responds by putting his head on my knee. He gives my leg a lick to show he is on my side, to tell me not to be scared.

  ‘Stigir, Blue Monkey, there are were-tigers,’ I say, reading from my book. ‘People who can change into tigers. And were-pigs and were-crocodiles and were-horses.’

  I close the curtains to keep the night out. I sharpen my pencil in readiness. The trimmings fall onto my writing desk, curling and spiraling, uncoiling like a snake. A were-cobra. Things changing from one thing to another. I look around the room. A clock, a wall, the paper of my scrapbook. I feel the paper. It was the bark of a tree, a were-tree. One thing one minute; another the next. Then I understand. It all becomes clear.

  The Father, the Mother, the Great Aunt. They are all were-animals.

  She can taste the blood. Inside and outside her body. She hears the heavy breathing of his sleep as she turns her head to see his face. The bruises of her cheek and jaw make her wince, but she stays silent. She sees the scratches on his face, feels the skin under her fingernails. His arm is heavy across her back, the weight of it pins her to the bed. This is her man. Whatever they may say. Whatever they may think.

  Outside the door she hears her son. He is counting. 13 … 14 … 15 … 16. His dog is there too. The sound of its paws shuffling on the wooden floor. She can do nothing for this boy now. For she is here, in the space of the bedroom, in her world. The one she has created.

  … 22 … 23… 24 …25.

  She surveys the chaos of the room. Clothes torn and strewn, dressing-table overturned. Hairbrush, make-up, jewellery, scattered to the four corners. By the bedside she spots the upturned bottle, a dreg of whiskey inside. She stretches out and picks it up, straining not to wake him, not to have to fight over the last drop. She gulps it down in one. She drifts off to sleep. The strong arm of her sailor husband across her aching and exhausted body, the sound of numbers in her head, and the faint recollection of a blue shadow passing in the corridor outside the bedroom.

  Through the small barred window of the cellar, the low morning sun lightens up the corner where my grandfather’s trunks and boxes stand in a pile. I haul one down, throw open the lid and search through it like a smuggler. This trunk is old and battered, with faded P&O liner stickers worn into its leather. Inside are neatly folded dress shirts and old-fashioned breeches with buckles at the hems. The smell is of olden days. With a sense of guilt in disturbing the past, I lift the piles of clothes carefully from their resting place, feeling underneath for hidden treasure. I pull out a worn and tattered folder, loosely tied by a red ribbon. The knot falls away and some photos and papers tumble to the floor.

  One of the pictures is o
f a couple standing in a country lane. The man wears a great-coat and wide-brimmed hat and the woman has on a fur-lined overcoat. She too is wearing a hat, a small rounded one that covers her forehead. It is hard to see her eyes as she is looking down to the man’s outstretched hand as he offers her something, some candy maybe, from a paper bag. She reminds me of Mother, but heavier, with rounder cheeks and an easy smile.

  I sit on the floor and sift through the papers. One catches my eye. At the head of the paper is a royal crest wrapped around a latin motto that means nothing to me. Also at the head of the paper is an etching of a large building on a hill, set in parkland.

  What is written, in sloping, old-fashioned handwriting, is signed with a flourish by Doctor Edmond Fox, Fellow of the Royal Society of Psychiatrists.

  The patient, Alicia Hayes, a 57-year-old female, was examined by me today at the request of her family. I found her to be in sound physical health, with no history of long-standing ailments, nor any known allergies. She is taking no prescribed medications. She talks of recurrent bouts of melancholia followed by florid periods of euphoria. Her present state is that of the former, with recent thoughts of self-destruction, which have led to her family seeking my professional help. She reports hearing voices day and night, the most persistent of which exhorts her to hang herself. This has led to her wandering the lanes after dark, with the express purpose, in her own words, of ‘checking branches to ascertain which will hold my weight.’ I assess her to be of unsound mind and a moderate to severe risk to herself. I thereby commit her to a two-week stay in Stanhope Ward. She should be confined to bed and, in addition to regulation meals, be fed two quarts of fresh cow’s milk at 10am and then again at 6pm.

  There is a scraping of a chair in the kitchen. Peering through a crack in the floorboards I make out the heavy material of the Great Aunt’s house coat. She fills the big copper kettle with water and hauls it onto the stove to boil. Then she sits back on her chair and waits.

  Opening the folder I find another sheet of paper, with the same crest and same signature. Instead of blue, the ink is black.

  The patient was accompanied to my rooms by her husband, Reginald Hayes Esq. He recounted two further episodes of mania and melancholia since Mrs Hayes’ last residency here. She has been in a state of extreme euphoria for more than a calendar month. She presented today in brightly coloured clothes and a sequined turban. Notably, she was bare-footed. Mr Hayes described incidents of incessant singing (day and night): often bawdy Vaudeville songs that are most out of character with her sensibilities. He also spoke of her wandering semi-naked in the countryside around and about and of her delusions of being a great dancer. Over the last three weeks she has been repeating a single verse whenever Mr Hayes asks his wife if she is in need of anything. Neither he (nor I for that matter) have been able to source the quotation. I record it here, verbatim, in the hope of future resolution: ‘Yet, since love’s argument was first on foot, let not the clouds of sorrow jostle it from what it purposed. Since, to wail friends lost is not by much so wholesome profitable as to rejoice at friends but newly found.’ We agreed, at the sum of eighteen sovereigns per quarter year, that Mrs Hayes be admitted and remain under my care until further notice. Upon admission the patient is to be confined to bed rest, restrained as necessary, in a darkened room. She is to be fed double rations at all meal times, with two quarts of cow’s milk three times per day. On day five: extract four molar teeth at both upper and lower jaws.

  Running my tongue along my teeth I wonder how it would be to have all those teeth taken out at once. I’m used to a tooth being pushed out to make way for a new one, but eight at once! Maybe it was to help the milk flow more freely. Closing my eyes I think about being in the dark for so long. I rummage around in the trunk to see if the sequined turban is there. At the very bottom, under my grandfather’s dinner jacket, is a fine silk scarf. I open it wide and feel the soft material cling to my fingers. It is decorated with a flowery pattern of delicate petals weaving between a colourful peacock.

  Wrapping it around my neck I sing under my breath, so that the Great Aunt won’t hear me, ‘Lala … la … tra la la Tralee …’ Swirling and turning, the scarf tightens about my throat. ‘Toora la toora la toora li lai … oh father dear father I think you did me wrong … trala … for to go and get me married to one who is so young … tralee…for he is only seventeen and I am twenty-one…oh the bonny boy is young but he’s growing … Tra la tra la la tra la la la la le … ’

  I unwind the scarf, listening to the sound of my voice trailing off and then to my breathing. I put the papers and photo back in the folder and tuck them safely away under my grandfather’s shirts. I cover my face with the scarf, breathing in and out, sucking the material in to my mouth, feeling the texture on my teeth.

  With care, I place the scarf in the trunk where it belongs and close the lid. Then I remember the piece of cold bacon in my pocket that I’d taken from the pantry. Sitting on top of the trunk, I munch into the fatty meat and think about the next chapter of the story I’m reading. I’ll finish chewing before I dive back into my book. Am I right? Is it a red herring like Dr Watson says, or will Sherlock Holmes fall for the trap and put himself in mortal danger?

  Tiger Fact

  There are many stories of villages and communities of were-tigers. These villagers are easy to spot. In their human form they all lack the groove in the upper lip. These were-tigers live in houses, acting just like ordinary human beings. But if you look closer you can see the rafters are made from human bones and human skin is used for the walls. Several of these villages exist in the Malay Peninsula, the chief of which is Gunung Ledang. Similarly, in Sumatra, Pasummah is the ‘capital’ of the were-tiger villages.

  As well as were-tigers, people can become were-elephants, were-horses and many other animals. The leyaks in Bali were people who could change themselves into animals to cause trouble for others. In West Java, especially around the town of Kuningan, there are lots of reports of people changing into pigs. Through the process of babi ngepet or babi jadi-jadian, someone could sell their soul, or the soul of one of their children, in order to become a were-pig. This would enable them to go into the homes of other villagers, stealing from them without being recognised.

  In Borneo, accounts of were-crocodiles are common. One famously describes a Dayak chief who suffered from a rare skin disease. Each day he would bathe in the river to gain some relief. Some villagers noted their chief talking with a large crocodile that had joined him for his bath. Then they noticed the chief’s skin changed to crocodile scales. One day, the chief disappeared after bathing. He had become a were-crocodile.

  The moon is full. There’s a crow on the branch of a leafless tree. Given the time of night, it should be an owl. But this is no ordinary scene.

  The sharp eye of the crow spies the two figures below. They are placing twigs, dry grass and pinecones around a neat pile of coloured paper. Each sheet has a carefully scripted symbol drawn in thick black ink. There are crescents and stars, mystical serpents and maze-like knots.

  Perch strikes a match and it lights up the grin on Carp’s face. For a moment she holds it in front of her mouth, almost kissing the flame with her moistened lips. The sisters gaze at each other and laugh, setting the flame abobbing to and fro.

  Then Perch throws the match on the bonfire and the flames leap into life.

  Carp reaches into the pocket of her coat and from her clenched fist casts a handful of powder into the fire. Blues and greens shoot up from its midst as the sheets of paper twist and curl, sending thick scraps of ash dancing upwards, spiralling and coiling into the cold and dark beyond.

  Perch takes two worn library tickets from her pocket. They belonged to their dearly departed Mother and have her name neatly written in the tell-tale hand of Mrs April, the librarian. Perch licks her thumb and scratches and smears the ink to a smudge. Then each sister spits on the cards and Perch crumples them into a mulch. When tossed on the fire they sizzle and coil, and the
sisters throw back their heads, raising their arms to the blackened sky.

  In the branch above, the crow shudders and shakes his feathers, surprising himself with an action normally reserved for the dawn.

  The sisters join hands. In perfect unison (their exquisite and special skill) they bend and swirl in a dance with the flames.

  ‘Pain and suffering to the Jezebel, the Harlot, the Tidetown whore,’ chants Perch.

  ‘Until we meet again, Mother dearest,’ howls Carp.

  ‘After the fearful and mighty Day of Judgement,’ shrieks Perch.

  Then, in harmony, they sing the song of the psalmist:

  ‘O wherefore the flames,

  On who the wrath of Jehovah will fall.

  O wherefore the flames,

  Beware the flames of Hades, all.’

  Across town, Mrs April turns awkwardly in her sleep as a sharp pain stabs her spine. She groans and stretches, finding herself more awake than she expects to be. She opens her eyes wide to let in the dark. The shapes and shadows dance about the room and she fancies she hears the paws of a cat in the corridor.

  ‘Silly, old bat,’ she says to herself, to break the mood, reminding herself that the stray cat who once scratched the furniture in the hallway had long since disappeared down the lane.

  She fumbles to reach for her glasses, gasping as the pain shoots up her back, and squints at the clock. Noting it is far too early, she pulls the blanket up to her chin, breathing deeply to keep the pain at bay.

  ‘I must be careful humping all those books to the top shelf,’ she thinks to herself, rubbing the small of her back with her fist.

  Outside, she hears the whistle of the wind in the trees; inside, she hears her mind wandering down the avenues of her past.

  First comes Mr Preachwell, the vicar, who comforted her in the months after her young husband’s tragic death, and then, a week after Easter, took her by the hand and led her gently to the bedroom in the attic of the vicarage. She remembers well the sweet smell of the clematis that climbed to the open window (to peek in on the lovers?). And remembers (was it a year later?) when he came to her in the library (she was atop the step-ladder, then, shelving books: how ironic) to tell her he was off to Kenya to spread the word of the Gospel. He smiled up at her; she smiled back, knowing his ambition was to be fulfilled. But hers? She was a young woman, still open to hope and adventure, but her mother was ill and needed her only daughter.