by Hal Johnson
“Am I that old, too?”
“Either that or you’re the first one of us to be born since anyone knew to keep track. Which actually isn’t that long ago, so it might not be ridiculous.”
“It isn’t that long?”
“Until two or three thousand years ago, I never left the jungle. Eventually I went exploring, but I was still in Africa, in the lakes region and then the Kalahari. If anything was happening anywhere else in the world, I sure didn’t know about it. The idea that there were a finite number of us, that there were one per species, nobody figured that out until the eighteenth or nineteenth century, probably.”
“Well, why are we? I mean, why are we this way?”
“Why are anyone the way they are, Myron? When I first met humans, I was worshiped as a god. I don’t even remember this part so well. They taught me to speak, but I hated my human form, it was so weak and clumsy. I was already old. My human skin was always old.”
“Why do you live among humans now, then?”
Gloria shrugged. “I like indoor plumbing. I like coffee and cigarettes. I like movies. There are perks.”
“I guess we can’t die?”
“Oh, you can die all right. But you can only get killed by another one of us, and only if he’s in animal form. I could turn right now and tear you to bits, and that would be the end of you. Plenty of us have died—we’ll probably never know how many. Any number of immortal rodents or shrews might have been killed by immortal cats before either even knew they could change. And in the last few hundred years, when we started being able really to travel—there’ve been a lot of deaths in the last few hundred years. Most of the seals got killed by the polar bear, and the polar bear got killed by a rhinoceros, the kind with one horn. And Mr. Bigshot killed her.”
“But that stuff, the claws and the bite, is that the only way to die?”
“I wouldn’t go jumping in any volcanoes to test this, but you do tend to heal fast from any other kind of wound. Have you ever been hurt badly, I mean before the train thing?”
“I once almost choked to death on a piece of ice.”
“And what happened?”
“Well, it was ice. It melted in my throat, and I was fine.”
“That’s a bad example, then.”
“And I’ve been beaten up a lot . . .”
“The point is,” said Gloria, “you’re not in much danger from conventional methods of dying.”
“What about what happened to me before all that? I mean, my accident.”
“Well, that was Mr. Bigshot. That was a lion.”
“Benson said I fought a lion and its mane, but I couldn’t figure out what he meant.”
“No, no, Myron, you fought a lion in Maine.”
“Oh. That’s where they found me, in Maine.”
“Yeah, five years ago Mr. Bigshot, apparently, sensed someone new, an animal he’d never sensed before, but in human form. That was you, whatever you were doing there. He mauled you, but you fell in a river, and, well, Mr. Bigshot hates water. So you floated away toward the sea.”
“I thought lions didn’t hate water, that’s just a myth.”
“Mr. Bigshot hates water. I don’t know anything about other lions.”
“So I floated away, but I didn’t die.”
“No, but you didn’t heal up, either, because your wounds are from lion’s claws. Look.” Gloria pointed a knobby, swollen finger at Myron’s face and traced, one by one, the parallel scars. “It was all the gossip at the time, how Mr. Bigshot found someone new, and killed him.”
“I fought a lion and lost.”
“Everybody who fights the lion loses. Seventy-five years ago he killed the tiger, which no one thought he’d be able to do. But he did it.”
“What was the tiger’s name?”
“You know that he didn’t really have a name. He was a tiger.”
“Oh, I thought because you have a name—”
“Gloria’s not my name. They just call me Gloria because it’s convenient. Do you think they called me Gloria in Bantu a thousand years ago? How long do you think Benson has been called Benson? The tiger was going by the name Bima, but he might as well have been Shere Khan. Bima wasn’t his name, and Arthur isn’t his name, and Myron isn’t yours. They’re just a tiger, or a binturong, or whatever you are.”
“Yeah, what am I?”
“I guess we could go through every animal I’ve known who isn’t you, and eliminate them. But that might not help, since I couldn’t name every mammal, and there might have been some that died before we knew about them, and there might be some we just don’t know because they’re isolated, or in hiding, or never show up for reasons of their own. And it’s not always easy to tell how many there are supposed to be. I mean, there are supposedly three species of zebra, I saw on the TV, but I’ve only known one immortal zebra. Are the other two dead, or in hiding, or did they never exist, and you only get one zebra? I don’t know.”
“So I could be anything.”
“Well, you couldn’t be a prairie dog, and you couldn’t be a jaguar, and you couldn’t be a hippopotamus, because I know all of those. It’s hard to tell your ethnicity, without a face, but your skin’s too light to be from some places, if you wanted to cross off those possibilities. So there are lots of things you couldn’t be, but there are still lots of things you could be.”
“Okay, just two more questions. Why did Mr. Bigshot want to kill me?”
“Maybe you were talking dirt about his mother. But probably he just wanted to know what you were. When we die we turn back into our true form. Curiosity, you know.”
“Because cats are curious?”
Gloria was obviously beginning to get bored, looking around the room. “Mr. Bigshot is curious. I don’t know about other cats. He’s probably still interested, plus he’s mad about you thwarting him once, or three times now. And he must’ve read about you ripping all your clothes off, at your school. Ripped clothes are a sure sign one of us is around.”
“Arthur changed, but he didn’t rip his clothes.”
“Binturongs are small. I split a seam on the robe I was wearing, and that was a loose robe too big for me. Trust me, mention ripped clothes and all of us know what’s up.”
“How does Mr. Bigshot have people work for him? Is it because he’s the king of the beasts?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, I don’t have a king. I was a queen, once upon a time, but I don’t have a king. Mr. Bigshot has minions because he can beat everyone else up, now that the tiger’s gone. Or else no one wants to try their luck on him. So when he says he’s in charge, he’s in charge until someone comes around who’ll say no.” Gloria stood up. “I’m paying the check, you leave the tip.”
“I don’t have any money.”
Gloria sighed and dropped a dollar on the table. “Well, do you have any other questions?”
“I don’t know, um. Why is this place called Shoreditch? We’re nowhere near the shore.”
“It’s named after some part of London. Okay, it was great to meet you, Myron. I hope I was able to fill in some things for you. Best of luck.”
“Wait, you can’t leave yet.”
“Don’t worry, I’m just going to pay the check.” But she didn’t pay the check; she just left.
3.
The waiter accosted Myron when he tried to go, but he couldn’t bring himself to actually touch the boy, so Myron walked out unhindered. He had a lot to think over, but he was also in a state of panic. His whole plan, since he dragged himself away from the train tracks, had been to go to Shoreditch and ask Gloria what to do next. And now as it turned out, it wasn’t that she didn’t know what to do; she just didn’t seem to care.
Myron ran down the street, looking all around. Not long after he’d been adopted, when Myron was still so very confused and even spoke with a strange accent that some people said sounded Canadian, the Horowitzes had taken him to an amusement park. Already dizzy from the teacups, Myron had wandered away from his ne
w parents in the crowd, and the half-hour before he, or rather a security guard, found them again was filled not so much with terror—terror is so common an emotion among children that a terrifying day is hardly remarkable—as with despair. This, despair, Myron was becoming reacquainted with as he tore through the streets of Shoreditch. Except he was hardly aware, yet, that it was despair he was becoming reacquainted with. He was too terrified.
With just such a complicated mixture of emotions blinding him, Myron knocked over two perverts and a policeman (who was too fat to follow him) and managed to avoid, narrowly, being squashed by a plumber’s van. “Gloria!” he shouted, again and again, and then he stopped, when he remembered that this was not even her name. She had no name, and neither did he.
Finally, out of breath, and growing leery of the many glares that a deformed, careless, running boy will garner, he slowed down to a walk. He had found Gloria once before, he could find her again the same way, if he wanted to. But it was clear, he’d decided, that Gloria was unreliable, and he was probably better off contriving a new plan, without her. So of course, no sooner had he decided this than he rounded a corner and, his hackles suddenly tingling, he saw across the street Gloria, with her sack, bumping into a well-dressed man. A pair of glasses fell off her head and hit the sidewalk with a crunch.
That’s odd, Myron doubtless thought. I didn’t know she wore glasses.
“Sir! You’ve broken my spectacles!” Gloria, meanwhile, was shouting.
“Er, I’m sorry? But you bumped into me.”
“Impossible! I was standing still, and you walked right into me.” Gloria really chewed the scenery. She needed these glasses for her job as a bus driver for the orphanage. She could not afford another pair, and without the money bus driving brought in she would not be able to afford her dialysis. Also, the orphans would not be able to get to the clinic to be treated for their eczema.
“This is all very sad, but I did not bump into you. And how bad could their eczema be, anyway?”
At that moment Gloria turned around. She pointed right at Myron. “Johnny!” she called. “This man broke my glasses, and I can’t get you to the clinic!”
“Good Lord!” cried the man.
And, after the man had departed, Gloria sauntered over to Myron, counting the roll of bills. “Bourgeois idiot, he’s obviously not from around here,” she was muttering.
“Why did you leave?” Myron asked.
Gloria shrugged. “I figured I’d already told you everything you needed to know.”
“You stuck me with—”
“Okay, so I didn’t want to pay the check. I figured they wouldn’t make you, I figured the waiter’d be too busy looking at you to recognize me if I came back in. Once the idea got in my head, it seemed too good an opportunity to pass up.”
“What about the help you’re supposed to give me? Why did Arthur want to bring me to you if this is all you can do for me?”
She secreted the bills somewhere under her neckline. “Mass, Myron, you don’t think Arthur was really bringing you to me?”
“He said he was heading for Gloria in Shoreditch. How else would I have found you?”
“He didn’t want to bring you to me, he just wanted his doomsday device back.”
“Doomsday device?” Myron shook his head. “This just gets stupider and stupider. Did you give him the doomsday device?”
“Of course not,” Gloria said. “I haven’t seem him in seven or eight years. And when I saw him last, that’s when he gave me the device.”
“You’re just telling me lies, aren’t you? How did he tell you all about me, like you’ve been claiming he did, if he didn’t come right here after he lost me?”
“Myron, you have to start thinking things through better. You could be in real danger if you act stupid like this. He phoned me, of course. He called me from the road. What year do you think this is?”
“Oh,” Myron said.
“Anyway, he’d know better than to bring that doxy around me.”
“Are you . . . Are you jealous of them?”
“Myron, come here.” Gloria pulled him over to a side street and began walking him along, at a fairly rapid clip considering the way she hobbled. She leaned in to whisper in his ear. “You have to understand this. There’s nothing to be jealous about. Arthur and Alice aren’t dating. Binturongs and lesser pandas don’t date. That would be bestiality—or double bestiality—or whatever it would be, animals don’t get turned on across species.”
“Oh.”
“Maybe that’s what you should do, to figure out what kind you are. Walk around the zoo until you feel something stirring.” She laughed and actually elbowed Myron in the ribs as they were walking, making him stagger several steps. “I told you to get smarter, Myron. You’re going to need it.” She suddenly stopped and, painfully bending over, began rummaging around in her sack, which she was still toting.
“Gloria, I don’t know what to do. A lion wants to kill me, and I can’t find my parents, and I’ve never been on a trip alone before.”
“Chin up, Myron. If you ever had parents, they died ten thousand years ago. Now, I can’t tell you what to do, because if I knew I wouldn’t be a drunk and a gambler and a thief.”
“You’re a thief?”
“Not really—really I’m an expropriator, and a propagandist. A propagandist by the deed.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means where did you get those clothes?” She drew from the sack a cylinder about fifteen inches long and six inches in diameter, wrapped in black duct tape. “I can’t tell you what to do, but here’s something, maybe it’ll keep you busy. You can take this doomsday device and deliver it to Arthur.”
Myron took the cylinder gingerly. “What’s in here?”
They were walking again, Gloria pulling Myron along by the sleeve. “John Dillinger’s wang,” she said.
“What!”
“No, I mean, faith, I don’t know. I never open anything I’ve heard called a doomsday device.”
“I don’t know where Arthur is.”
“Well, he’s looking for you, too, so that should double your chances. And what you can do is ask the Nine Unknown Men, they always know this kind of thing.”
“I don’t know who they are, either.”
“You’re not supposed to, naturally; they’re unknown. They’re in New York City, at the corner of Fifth Street and Sixth Avenue. You should be writing this down.”
“I don’t have a pencil. Literally the only things I own in this world are these stolen clothes and a doomsday device.”
“You do have a mouth on you. Let’s hope you have a brain, too.”
“Corner of Fifth Street and Sixth Avenue.”
“Good. Now the Nine Unknown Men will ask you a riddle, and if you get it right they’ll help you, but if you get it wrong—well, you don’t want to get it wrong. Are you good at riddles?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now listen closely, because this is the most important thing I’m going to tell you. Do you remember that print in the apartment you found me in? The one you said was a painting?”
“Sure.”
“There are certain classes of people who will buy original art but can’t bring themselves to own a reproduction. It’s ‘vulgar,’ or ‘common,’ to own a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, even though of course no one could possibly afford the original Mona Lisa. So what do you think they do, Myron?”
“A reproduction?”
“I mean a poster of the Mona Lisa, not the original.”
“Yes, I know what a reproduction is,” Myron sniffed. “I just don’t understand why you’re telling me this.”
“What they do is they buy a poster of the Mona Lisa, but one that has at the bottom a notation that says what exhibit it’s from. This way they can pretend that it’s not a poster of the Mona Lisa, which is too vulgar for words, but a promotional item, like a movie poster or a concert poster. A souvenir of their trip to the Louvre. It’s
a kind of trick. The people who adopted you, Myron—”
“My parents.”
“The people who adopted you. They’re upper middle class, aren’t they?”
“I don’t know. My father’s a doctor.”
“All the art in their house, I’m betting, was either an actual painting or a poster that said ‘Philadelphia Museum of Art,’ with the date, on the bottom.”
“Maybe.”
“You’ve got to understand, not everyone is like that. Not everyone refuses to hang posters up. Some people are petit bourgeois and not haut bourgeois. Not everyone is going to be from the same world you know. You’re not from the same world you know. Remember that. Ah. Up you go now.”
Myron found that Gloria was muscling him onto a bus. She slipped him a roll of twenties bound with a rubber band.
“This goes to New York,” she said. “I’ll take care of your ticket. The Nine Unknown Men, don’t forget them, either.”
“Wait, why am I giving Arthur this doomsday device? What should I do about the lion?”
“You’ve got plenty of options. Maybe you can use the doomsday device to get revenge, like Hugh Jass.”
“Hugh Glass.”
Gloria nodded appreciatively. “Well, that’s a little better.”
No one sat next to Myron. One person tried, but he threw up and had to change seats. After an hour on the bus, Myron thought to look closer at the roll of twenties. He found that only the top bill was a twenty; the other eight were singles. When he got to New York he learned that Gloria had not paid for the ticket; she had somehow persuaded the driver that some guardian of Myron’s would pay double on arrival. While the driver called the station police, Myron ran away into the cold and shadowy night.
IV. Men, Known and Unknown
New men and new methods might do for other people: let those who would, worship the rising star; he at least would be faithful to the sun which had set.
Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s School Days