In Search of the Blue Tiger

by Robert Power

  In my dream, or in my awaking, I cry when it can no longer be real. That I can no longer be the tiger. I cry from the frustration of not knowing the meaning of the fur coat. I cry because I am disturbed by the way the fishmonger stares at Mother and the smiles she returns. My tears are anger because the fur coat will not give me the strength and claws and teeth of a real tiger. The weapons I need to ambush the Father, to protect the Mother. To tear the boxer fists from his arms, to rip the face from his head. But most of all, I cry because the spell has been broken, the game is up and everyone is who they are. The Mother by the stove. The Father at the table. If it is Friday there might be fish for dinner. Not because we are Catholics (which we are of a kind), but because the Mother has taken to wearing a fur coat and the fishmonger has forearms like the legs of a racehorse.

  TWELVE

  OSCAR CATCHES SIGHT OF BLUE MONKEY OUTDOORS

  ‘My mind misgives, some consequences yet hanging in the stars.’ Shakespeare

  It was shortly after dreaming deeply of him, about a week after the Dilip incident and the sighting at the window, that I first saw Blue Monkey outdoors. Initially, it was more of an impression than anything else, a feeling that someone was watching. The copper-beech hedge fluttered in the wind, its leaves seemed to be tinged with an edge of deep sea blue. It was as if the world had stopped to announce a special event. The way a silent heaviness tells us snow is on the way. And then nothing. All returned to normal. I carried on the game I was playing with Stigir.

  I was in the garden, counting up to twenty-five while Stigir hid. I was watching a battle between red ants and black ants on a patch of earth under the cherry blossom tree. One red ant, I called him Goliath, was a real champion. Black ants swarmed over him, but he tore them limb from limb. Even when he lost a leg or two he kept fighting. I hummed a tune from school to accompany the battle scene.

  ‘He who would valiant be ’gainst all disaster,

  let him in constancy follow the master.

  No foe shall stay his might, thou he with giants fight,

  he will make good his right to be a pilgrim.’

  Again, I had a sense of someone nearby. I trailed off my singing and looked up from the carnage. And there he stood, relaxed and grand under the old chestnut tree on the fringes of the orchard. At first it was hard to make him out, the dappled sunlight shone from behind him, the silver-topped cane he held in one hand catching the light. But Blue Monkey cut an exquisite figure, every inch the gentleman. He clearly came from somewhere else, though he never spoke a word to me. Not once.

  Often after that I felt his presence. A blue shadow, just out of sight; the reflection in a stream as I leant over to drink; a figure on the edge of a copse as darkness fell. He never spoke, but his being there was enough. Even on that first sultry afternoon, when he stood but ten yards from me, the battle of the ants raging at my feet, the strains of a hymn in the air, the ghost of the cherry blossom hanging in the trees, I knew that would always be enough. That somehow he would be around forever to protect me. To help me. A guardian.

  Tiger Fact

  Things people do with tigers:

  In Tibet, rugs were believed to protect people from dangerous creatures such as scorpions, snakes and insects. The tiger rug was placed on luggage for protection when travelling. Judges sat on tiger rugs when giving verdicts or deciding punishment. Rulers always had tiger rugs on their thrones to show how important they were. Mnong people used the teeth and claws of a dead tiger to ward off evil. Powdered teeth were used to cure dog bite. The nerves of the tiger were mixed with alcohol to give long life.

  The rain has been falling in torrents. All the dips and hollows in the school playground are filled to brimming. It is lunch-break and everyone is confined to their classrooms to play boardgames, do jigsaw puzzles, or else huddle in groups to chat away the weather.

  But we have found a special place to be alone. Behind a curtain of damp duffel coats and balaclavas, hung steaming from pegs, I sit on a lukewarm radiator, waiting for Perch and Carp to begin. I had found a note in my slipper bag telling me to meet with them. So now, instead of staring up at Mrs April’s window, they stare at me. I shift uneasily, uncomfortable in their gaze. They know the thoughts in my head and I want them to tell me. Soon enough they do.

  ‘We saw you,’ begins Carp.

  ‘On the bridge,’ adds Perch.

  ‘With the dog.’

  I focus on the buckle on my sandal. It is worn and chipped.

  ‘We saw you at our house.’

  ‘From the window.’

  ‘You were watching.’

  ‘Following.’

  The rain is beating hard on the window above our heads. I feel I have done wrong, but I don’t know what it is I have done. They are pressing down on me, these Twins. I can feel it on the back of my neck, on the weight keeping my head bowed.

  ‘You know.’

  ‘About them.’

  ‘Our father and the Jezebel.’

  I look up, confused. Is there another woman?

  Perch exchanges glances with Carp.

  ‘About our father and the librarian,’ says one.

  ‘Animals in consort,’ says the other.

  I nod my head (though I don’t know what ‘consort’ means), then stare back down to the floor.

  There is a silence. The sound of the other children in nearby classrooms rises to the surface. Children at play. Busying themselves with games and make-believe while we weigh ourselves down with this adult world. A world where men and women glance over each other’s shoulder, looking out for the unexpected blow.

  ‘But the Truth is found in the scriptures,’ says Perch, breaking the silence.

  ‘The answer to all our questions,’ adds Carp.

  Perch takes a notebook from her bag, opens it up, lays it on her lap, so she and her sister can read from it.

  ‘You will learn of the Truth through our studying the Bible together,’ says Carp.

  ‘God told Abraham to take his only son,’ says Perch.

  ‘Isaac,’ adds Carp.

  ‘And to go to a mountain in Moriah and offer up his son for burning.’

  ‘As a sacrifice.’

  ‘To prove his faith in God.’

  In my mind’s eye I see Father holding me in front of him as if he had just rescued me from the flames of a ravaged building. Only to place me on an altar and offer me to the fire.

  ‘Abraham did as he was told. He took Isaac to the mountain in Moriah, built an altar and tied him on top of a stack of wood.’

  The coats flutter and flap as some children race through the cloakroom on their way to the toilets. Outside, the day is darkening with rain, which seems to be sucking the light from the sky.

  Atop the mountain, Isaac’s eyes bulge in shock and disbelief. If he’d been me nothing would surprise him.

  ‘Abraham had the knife at the ready and was about to slit Isaac’s throat,’ continues Carp.

  ‘But God said, “Stop, you have shown your faith.” ‘Then Abraham saw a ram caught in a bush nearby. He took the ram and used it as a sacrifice.’

  Perch and Carp turn to each other and then to me, as if expecting applause.

  ‘Well?’ says Carp.

  I glance from one to the other. They are unnerving in their unity, in their alikeness. I see an image of them, together as always, standing over the altar, with me tied and bound. A rush of fear, excitement, pleasure runs through me, like the time I stood in Mrs April’s bedroom.

  ‘Well?’ says Perch.

  ‘Would he,’ I reply, ‘would Abraham have done it if God had told him to?’

  ‘We’ll see,’ says Perch.

  ‘Jehovah God moves in mysterious ways,’ adds Carp.

  Chewing on a hazelnut I open my Grandfather’s dictionary, searching for the Cs. There’s a scuttling sound behind me. It must be a mouse or a rat, not expecting me to be in the cellar so early in the morning. I’ve been up since dawn as the word has been on my mind all night and I wan
t to understand what the Twins meant and to write it in my scrapbook. Consort, consort. Here it is.

  A wife or husband (especially of royalty); a ship sailing with another; keep company; harmonise; associate; sharer; a group or players of instruments, especially playing early music. So if Mrs April and Mr Fishcutter are animals in consort, as one of the Twins said to me (I can’t remember which one), then:

  • they are not husband and wife

  • they are not ships

  • they are not part of a musical group.

  So they must be: keeping company; harmonising; associating and sharing. And this is what the Twins dislike.

  Then I notice something written in the margin on the opposite page of the dictionary. It’s in a fine handwritten script in blue ink, with an arrow pointing to the word ‘consentient: agreeing, united in opinion; concurrent; consenting.’ I guess the note is from my Grandfather. It reads: ‘Word used in solicitor letter to Dr Edmond Fox, 23 March.’ I think it’s to do with Grandmother and the hospital and her teeth and everyone agreeing about something.

  Proverb for the day: ‘The poor useth intreaties; but the rich answer roughly.’

  It was another one of Mrs April’s ideas. Like cake-eating and the chess games. It was she who showed me the old kite in her cupboard and suggested the outing to Boxton Hill.

  ‘The next windy Saturday afternoon,’ she said as we unravelled the knotted, tangled string. The kite was blue and green, like the grass and the sky. She promised to teach Stigir and me how to make it screech the language of the wind, loop the loop and skim the flower-tops.

  Two Saturdays had passed and not a breath of air stirred the uppermost tips of the trees. But on the third, I woke to hear the rustle of leaves and the flutter of the curtain against the open window.

  ‘It’s kite day,’ I announced to Stigir. I knew Mrs April would be ready for us. When I had stopped by the library the previous morning, she’d said she sensed in her bones the wind would be up.

  ‘And you’ll be hanging on to that kite for dear life,’ she said with a smile which set off a dart of lines from the corners of her eyes.

  ‘It’s us,’ I say as she opens the door, the wind sending leaves cartwheeling down her hallway. ‘It’s Stigir and me.’

  ‘So it is, and so it should be,’ she says brightly. ‘Just the day for kite flying on the hill. Wait there and I’ll be with you in a jiffy. No point in wasting this wind.’

  I look at Stigir. His fur is on end, like a wave on the crest. A dustbin lid clatters to the ground in the next-door garden, the telephone wires whistle. And there is Mrs April standing in the open doorway. She wears a long dark-blue greatcoat over a maroon woollen dress. On her feet are blue Wellington boots, in her hand a wicker hamper.

  ‘Here,’ she says, ‘you can carry this, Oscar.’

  She hands me the kite. It is like a skeleton wrapped in a papery skin. I hold it in front of me like it might be my own dead child. We close the garden gate behind us and start our procession up the avenue to the place I now name Kite Hill.

  We climb over a stile by the old graveyard, pushing our way through the brambles. Stigir lollops on ahead, as me and Mrs April pick our clothes free from the inquisitive fingers of the thorn bushes.

  ‘I think they want us to stay awhile,’ laughs Mrs April. ‘But we’ve no time to stop and chat today. We’ve a wind to catch.’

  All of a sudden we are in the open. The grassy knoll opens up before us. The sea slopes away to the east, the hilltop rises off to the west. There is no one around; we are alone. Stigir is almost at the top, waiting his turn to fly the kite. Me and Mrs April make our way up the side of the hill.

  ‘Here,’ she says. ‘Let’s fix the kite here.’ She puts down the hamper and I lay down the kite.

  We put it together, each limb fitting into a socket, stretching its skin over the frame. A resurrection.

  She is showing me something new. Something else. I watch her and she is unaware I am watching. I study her face as I copy her movements. Unreeling the string. A spinning motion from hand to hand. She looks so easy. She doesn’t know, she needn’t know, that for me this is the first time. The first flying of a kite on a windy hill.

  I stand where she tells me. I hold the string tight as she launches the kite into the sky. The wind collects it like a gift, lifting it high up. I feel the tension as the kite tugs a promise of freedom. It soars, like a hawk, hovering and then swooping towards an imaginary prey. Then off again in pursuit. I feel every movement. Every sensation fires through my fingertips. Mrs April stands close by, her face turned skyward, watching me looping and writing my thoughts in the chalk of the clouds. The green of the grass, the blue of the sky, the blue-green of the sea way down below us. All captured in the leaping and looping of the kite I juggle on the end of the string.

  I am lost in this moment. I am here in this moment: the wind, the air, Stigir running between my feet. He wants to play. He wants a go at this kite flying.

  ‘Mrs April,’ I shout above the wind, above my excitement. ‘Can Stigir have a go? Can we teach Stigir how to fly a kite?’

  ‘Of course,’ she replies. ‘Of course he can have a go. Every good dog should fly a kite.’

  Stigir holds the kite in his mouth and listens carefully as Mrs April shows him the ropes. The wind swirls and twists. Layering on itself, then taking off in a new direction. I watch as Stigir runs up and down the hill shaking his head from side to side, the kite stopping and starting, falling and rising. Mrs April claps and encourages.

  But at a distance, watching them at play, as a seagull rears into view like a banshee rent from the ground, something shifts in me. The elation is punctured as I stand alone, away from the action. I am lost. No longer a part of this scene. As suddenly as I am found, I am lost. The wind catches something in me. A sadness. A feeling that this is not for me. This moment of happiness, this kite flying. My heart has shrunk to the size of a pea and I am lost.

  In my mind’s eye I see her with the fishmonger. No longer with me and Stigir on a hill with a kite. She is under a streetlamp, held close by Mr Fishcutter, under his spell. The wolf in man’s clothing. She turns to look up and down the street, to see who is coming or going. The expression on her face is wild, alive, and I cannot understand it. But I know she must be aware, she must be careful. I know better than she what hides behind his kiss. The claw and fist, the claw and fist behind the kiss. Her lipstick turning to blood, her face broken and bruised.

  Then Stigir growls a bark without releasing his grip. The kite is cutting a colour against the sky. Mrs April smiles at me. There are no smudges of ruby-red lipstick; no look I cannot understand. If I allow myself to, I could rejoin the moment. But they do not know, they cannot tell, how these feelings well inside me. That the loop of a kite traces the slice and twist of the fishmonger’s knife gutting a sturgeon, spilling the soft white roe onto the chopping block. They are up and away on the grassy slope, chasing the wind.

  As I watch them I am aware of another figure. He stands on the very crest of the hill and holds a silver telescope to his eye, trained on the horizon. I follow his line of vision as a huge galleon ship comes into view, gliding easily through the broiling waves. Mrs April and Stigir are playing happily, oblivious to his presence. But Blue Monkey turns in my direction, tipping his top hat in salutation. The smell of the fishmonger fades away. I turn and run after the kite, a skip in my step.

  Today is Sunday, the day after Saturday night, which means madness in the House of the Doomed and Damned, because the Mother sits in the kitchen and weeps softly because her battered and bruised face hurts and she must not complain too much or the Father gets angry because Saturday night must be forgotten (until next week).

  There are two good places to go: the picture house, or the pool by the quayside.

  It is raining, so I go the picture house for the Matinee, even though it is in Italian, is in black and white and has already started. None of this matters, for inside it is dark, it is peacefu
l, and it is anywhere but my house.

  On the huge screen a young boy stands in the street with his father, looking in though the window of a restaurant. They are both dirty, poor and hungry. A rich boy is inside, eating a huge pizza, and the poor boy looks up at his father longingly. The father counts the coins in his pockets and takes his son inside and uses all his money to order his boy the delicious pizza. He eats with gusto, competing with the other boy to see who can stretch the mozzarella cheese the furthest. At the end of the film, the father, in desperation for money, steals someone else’s bike and is caught. Crowds gather around to chastise him and the little boy is lost in their midst. He begins to cry as the crowd mill around him and he loses sight of his father. He is lost and abandoned and he so much wants his dad, even though he is a thief.

  It is nearly dark and I should be getting home. The dusk is stealing the colour from the trees and grass, but my lesson with Perch and Carp is not yet over. I was walking back from school when they came up beside me and said I should follow them to the clearing in the wood, up by the old derelict cottage. Here we have been this last hour as they tell me of the promises of the second coming of Jesus and the horrors of Armageddon.

  ‘When we have finally witnessed to all the Worldlings, given each a chance to embrace the Truth, then Jesus will come again,’ exclaims Carp, waving her arms around to take in all the trees in the wood and all the Worldlings in the World.

  ‘Then all the graves will open and all those who have died before the Second Coming will be given another chance. All will be raised from the dead to prove themselves during Jesus’ thousand-year reign,’ says Carp.