by Robert Power
‘Ah, you admire my altar,’ says Brother Moses, standing behind me. ‘It’s my special collection to remind me that God and mystery are everywhere, in all sorts of unexpected things.’
‘Unexpected things?’
‘Yes,’ he says, stroking his statue of the saint, ‘like in feathers and stones. So when I find something I especially like, on a peaceful beach or under a tree, I bring it back here and put it on my altar. To remind me.’
‘To remind you?’
‘To remember that God is everywhere.’
‘Not just himself?’ I say, thinking of the one and only Yahweh and the Kingdom Hall’s message that ‘there is no God but me.’
‘No, I don’t think of God like that. It’s only a word and a word is not always a person. God could just be G.O.D. Like the Great Out Doors. I think God is about beauty and goodness. It can be in things, in actions, in people,’ says the Brother, picking up a statue of a saintly figure. ‘Like this wonderful fellow here. Saint Augustine. He was an amazing philosopher. Centuries ahead of his time. In fact, time was one of the topics he was most interested in. I’ve got all the books he ever wrote. Look over there,’ he says, pointing to a stack of books by the door. ‘If you ever want to know some secrets of the universe, delve into my Saint Augustine pile.’
As he places the statue back in its place on the altar I look at the column of books and long for secrets ahead of their time.
Brother Moses taught me something very exciting. He said GOD does not have to be one thing. He said GOD could as easily be the Great Out Doors as anything else and that no one really knows exactly what GOD is. And I got to thinking and thought that GOD is the opposite of DID. And DID is the Dark In Doors. This sounds good to me, as the Great Out Doors is brighter and stronger than the Dark In Doors. And the Dark in Doors is how I remember a lot of the time in the House of the Doomed and Damned. So GOD is now and DID is then and GOD can be all it means to me. And I don’t feel any of us are Doomed or Damned anymore and no one has all the right answers.
‘Are the books too heavy for you?’ asks Brother Moses, peering over the top of the huge pile that he holds in his own arms.
‘No,’ I say, as I wobble behind him, balancing the shifting stack, trying to follow him as we carefully ascend the spiral stairs leading to the depository on the mezzanine floor.
Following Brother Moses’ directions to stack them according to size, I sort and shelve the volumes in their rightful places. It is peaceful and quiet in the room.
Silence is a nice place.
When we have finished, I sit down next to Brother Moses on a bench beside a table in the small bay window. He takes a bag from his pocket and offers me a toffee. I take one, stuck to another.
‘Go ahead, treat yourself,’ he says, gesturing me to take both. ‘It’s so nice to have someone to work with. But I don’t know that much about you,’ he adds, sucking on his sweet. ‘Tell me what you like.’
He must know all about Mr Fishcutter, they all must know. But no one here has made me feel bad. They have all been friendly to me, as if they understand I did not mean to do wrong.
‘I like reading and writing,’ I say. ‘And I like walking with my dog. In the fresh air. I like turning corners in places I have never been and seeing what is there.’
‘And what do you like to read and write about?’
‘Tigers. Especially, I like anything to do with tigers.’
It is not yet time to tell Brother Moses that I want to be a Blue Tiger, but I do tell him about my scrapbook.
This morning a dream whispered in my ear, so I woke up. In the memory of the dream I was with Blue Monkey, who I have not seen since I’ve been on the island. We were in the monastery library and I was using a huge needle to sew the spine of a book where the pages had fallen apart. When I looked up, the stained-glass window of Saint George and the Dragon had come alive. The battle raged in the foreground, but it was the background that drew my attention. There stood the Blue Tiger on a distant ridge. He was looking past the warring man and dragon and into my eyes. His stare was strong and full of recognition. I lay in bed, listening to the birds waking me up, the image of the tiger fresh in my mind. So I got up, even though dawn had barely broken, dressed, took out my blue crayons and drew a picture of the Blue Tiger on the front page of my scrapbook (that you are now reading). If you turn to the front you will see it. That’s the way he looked at me. Just the way he is looking at you now.
The monks treat me like a boy and it’s nice. In the early evening we play tag in the cloisters. They always let me catch them, though I never let on that I know this. Brother Saviour sometimes ruffles my hair when I play well. I like him doing this, it makes me feel good inside, like sea-breeze and sleep and chocolate all rolled into one. He doesn’t know, but when he does it, I freeze the moment. He has spoken with the Abbot, who says that Stigir can come and live with me here. He has arranged to pick him up from Mrs April at the end of the month when he goes to Tidetown.
Meal times are nice and I’m learning the rules. No one talks at dinner, so you watch the monk in front of you and take the same number of potatoes that he does. Today for dinner I had three potatoes, one piece of fish, a big leaf of cabbage and two carrots.
This island is unlike Tidetown. It has a different feel, a different taste to the air. The coast is softer, the clouds seem lighter, less threatening. I like the way the monks move through the courtyards and orchards, how they greet each other, a hand on a shoulder. There is no suspicion here, nothing nasty in the woodshed. I do miss Mrs April, but I know she will visit as soon as she is able and she sends me a postcard every week. I keep them by my bed so I can look at the pictures before I go to sleep. The one that came yesterday shows a beach with two children building sandcastles. On the back she wrote that Stigir was just fine and he knows he’ll be coming to stay with me in a short while. She is busy planting celery in a trench by the back wall of her garden.
I wonder how Blue Monkey is and I even miss the strangeness of the House of the Doomed and Damned, which is so familiar to me. I think about my time in the cellar and my treasure trove of books and trunks of mysteries from the past. But I’m learning plenty already in the month I’ve been here. The library is full of wisdom and knowledge I’ve never dreamt of. One ancient book was written by a wise man who had suffered terrible things (like Job, but without the boils). He said he survived because he had found a purpose in his life. Brother Moses helped me understand by saying that people long for happiness, but it is purpose that is all-important. It was very late one night when we finished the book. Brother Moses toasted bread on the open fire. ‘What is your purpose, young Oscar?’ he asked me. I said it was my search for the blue tiger, even though I wasn’t really sure what I might find. He smiled, handed me some buttered toast, and said that searching for a blue tiger was purpose enough for anyone.
Saint Augustine was born on the 13th November 354 and died on 28th August 430. When he was 18 he had a son called Adeodatus. Saint Augustine marvelled at the mystery of life and the world around him. One thing that interested him a lot was time. He questioned whether the future or past really exist. To his mind only the present is real and yet it is almost too quick for us to grasp. Once it is here it is gone and the present that is about to come is the future. He answers the riddle by saying that the past can only be thought of as past if one is thinking about it in the present. He says there are three times. This is how he described these three times: ‘… a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future … The present of things past is memory, the present of things present is sight, and the present of things future is expectation.’
These are my three times with Stigir, as today I stood in the door of my cell:
Present of things past: I remember flying the kite with him and Mrs April and how he tugged on the string.
Present of things future: I’m looking forward to showing him the strawberry patch and playing on the beach at Open Bay.
Present of things present: I hear the wheels of Brother Saviour’s cart. I hear Stigir bark. I see him trotting across the cloister. I feel love in my heart and the wet lick of his tongue on my cheek.
So … I’m in the present past, present future, and present present, and Stigir is with me!!
The sky strains under the weight of a huge grey cloud that hangs just above the horizon. A small fishing boat moves slowly beneath it, hoping it can creep by without being noticed. Brother Saviour and I sit shelling peas on the beach. It was his idea to come down here.
‘If we’re going to shell peas for lunch, we might as well do it with a view,’ he had said.
So here we are, Stigir chasing the tiny breakers back and forth, always surprised when they nip his heels or splash his face.
‘Well then, Oscar, how do you like your job in the library?’
‘Heaps. And I’ve been reading about Saint Augustine,’ I say, splitting a pod between my fingers, flicking the peas with my thumb into the huge copper pan with a ping. ‘The saint from Brother Moses’ altar. The good Brother has leant me a book all about him.’
‘Excellent,’ says Brother Saviour, examining a blackened pod and then tossing it for Stigir to chase.
‘I like the things he did. He was really interested in time. What time is and whether we can travel through time.’
‘And what did Saint Augustine make of it all?’
So I tell him what I’ve learned. In turn, Brother Saviour tells me about a scientist who reckoned that if we could move really fast and get close to the speed of light then we could travel into the future.
‘Do you think we could really travel through time, Brother Saviour?’ I ask.
‘Well, it’s a real puzzle. When you think about it we travel faster now than ever before. From one space to another. Like me and you from Tidetown to here. The horse and carriage brought us here much quicker than if we had to walk. So you could say we travelled through time by getting here sooner than we might have done. But, I’ll show you one thing that’s really amazing,’ he says, ‘that kind of proves that time travel can really happen. Some scientists have discovered wormholes that are like secret passages into the future.’
‘Where are they?’ I ask, as eager as on the first day at school.
‘Oh, they’re so tiny no one has ever seen one and they keep opening and closing before you can get near them. But this is how they work,’ he says, picking out a pea from the pan in one hand and a pebble from the beach with the other. ‘Imagine you live on the Pebble Planet and want to travel to the Pea Planet. But it’s so unbelievably far away that it’d take you more than your whole lifetime to get there even at the speed of light. Now, imagine the pan is a wormhole. It’s a completely new dimension and allows you to get from the Pebble to the Pea without travelling the distance between them. And these very clever scientists have discovered that these wormholes allow you to travel into the future and leave the past behind just as it is. So when you go back it’ll still be there.’
‘Like Saint Augustine said all these years ago,’ I say. ‘Present past, present present, and present future.’
‘Exactly,’ says the Brother, as a single pea pings from his thumbnail and lands at my feet. We both laugh. With my tongue I can feel the wobbly tooth at the back of my mouth: the last of my baby teeth. It is hanging by a single thread and if I twist it I can almost break it free. I like the sharp pain of the sinew as it stretches, hanging on to the end. Something of the sensation of the tooth, the sound of the peas dropping into the pot, and the warmth of the sun, make me feel safe and at ease.
‘If I could time travel, I’d like to go back in time and visit my grandmother in hospital. Then I could ask her about her teeth.’
‘About her teeth?’ replies the Brother, looking up from his work.
‘The doctors took her teeth out because she was singing too much and wanted to dance along the country lanes.’
‘Ah,’ he says, ‘to stop her dancing and singing. You know, Oscar, when people are different, others find that hard. Great people are often deemed mad because they have imaginations that challenge. Ideas, dance steps even. Then people feel the need to find ways to bring them back to earth.’
‘Like taking out their teeth?’
‘Yes, to free the germs of madness.’
‘And drinking milk?’
‘To weigh them down.’
‘She wouldn’t want to smile much,’ I say, twisting the tooth with my tongue, rotating it on its thread. With one last flick the cord snaps and the tooth is released. I roll it around my mouth and then swallow it whole, easing it down my throat until it is deep inside of me. I imagine I am inside the big shiny copper pan with all the peas flying around my head like green stars. When I look behind me I can see my house and Mother and Father waving to me. And when I look forward I see the Cutty Sark, just like it is on the front of my old scrapbook with the Blue Tiger standing on the deck. It is the way Brother Saviour described time travelling and wormholes. My house and the Cutty Sark are times and places apart: like A and B; like the pea and the pebble. And when I look to the side all I can see is the shiny surface of the pan, a copper-coloured mirror, and the image of me looking at me to see what time travelling is really like. There are so many fantastical things in the world. I can’t wait to see them all.
Mrs April is in her garden pruning back some old raspberry canes, thinking about the taste of jam. Something in the swish of a low-lying branch that she pushes aside captures her attention. Swish and then silence and then the movement and shudder of the branch. She watches it coming to rest and suddenly she feels unusually alone. She shakes her head to ward off the feeling and whispers something under her breath about being a silly biddy. Then she remembers what it all must have signified. A summer’s day. A bicycle ride. Was it her first excursion out with her husband to be? The husband she would grow neither young nor old with. The memory of a hot, hot day, with flies buzzing and the grass long and straw-coloured from lack of rain. In the near distance a small café. Cream tea: scones and raspberry jam. A seed stuck between her teeth. The funny face she pulled trying to dislodge it with her tongue. His smile. The warmth of the sun. The delicious taste of raspberry. The look in his eyes. And the sudden realisation that love could be hers.
She straightens up and rubs her back, thinking a nice hot bath would help the day along. Then she realises how much she misses Stigir. Of course, she was happy to hear that Oscar was allowed to have him in the monastery, and it gave her great pleasure to learn from Brother Saviour how well Oscar was settling in. But nonetheless she felt sad to see Stigir walking away up the path and just now she would have liked to clap her hands and see him scuttle out from the shrubbery and into her arms.
‘Maybe I’ll get myself a dog,’ she thinks. ‘Why ever not?’
‘But first a hot bath,’ she says out loud, ‘and a nice cup of tea.’
I am nearly asleep, happily tired from clearing leaves in the orchard, when I hear a tap on the window.
‘I have something special to give you,’ comes the familiar voice of Brother Saviour.
I open the door and he hands me a small object wrapped in cloth.
‘I’ve carved this especially for you. I’d love to wait with you and see you open it.’
He stands by the door as I sit on the edge of my bed and unfold the package. The mysterious object rolls in my hands as the cloth unfurls until the small wooden figure lands in my lap.
It is a beautifully carved tiger, painted blue, with darker blue and white markings. It is the most wonderful of gifts. I can barely find the words to thank Brother Saviour, but I do.
‘Thank you, so much,’ I say quietly, ‘it is lovely.’
I place the Blue Tiger on the window ledge above my table. When I stand back to admire it I realise that I have begun to build my own altar, to find my own way to God. I take the candle from my bedside and place it next to the Blue Tiger. With Brother Saviour quietly watching me, I walk
outside to the cloister, pick up a small smooth stone, pluck a daisy from the lawn, bring them back inside and place them on the ledge. Taking the matchbox from my drawer I light the candle and step back. Here is my altar: unique, spontaneous, and complete as summer. I close my eyes and something wells up inside of me that I push back down. But as I look up at the altar, noticing how the light illuminates the scene, the feeling re-emerges.
I need to tell someone.
For the first time ever I trust a man enough to tell.
So I do.
It comes from the core of my being in a gush. Brother Saviour closes the door, sits on the bed next to me and listens. He says nothing, then listens some more. He is gentle when I sob and holds me tight, still attentive even when my words are muffled against his chest.
He puts his hands to his face, a cross between prayer and surprise. He looks at me kindly, his gentle eyes searching around the room for the words he wants to use.
‘Oscar,’ he says quietly, when I finish speaking sometime later, ‘I’ve heard other boys tell me stories like yours. You have seen things that no small child should see.’
He strokes my hair. Not the way he does when I’m playing well at tag, but gently and calming. We are quiet together for a moment and I feel sleepy and safe. I hear his voice, as if it is coming to me in a dream.
‘We live by the sea and grow up with tales and sights of shipwrecks. But if that’s all you ever know of the sea then you can’t ever see its beauty, its gift, its life. You have to grow to trust that the sea can be vast and safe and beautiful. If you see too many shipwrecks as a boy, then there’s a chance you’ll grow to be a man who finds calm and peace elusive, hard to come by.’