Jamrach's Menagerie

by Carol Birch

  The last thing I remember of that island is the sound of things crying in the trees as we sailed away.

  We paid off the two Malays and said goodbye to them on Flores, where women pounded roots and children crowded our boats, and a man with a milky eye made bamboo cages for birds, domed on top and gorgeously painted. An hour or two I watched as a palace took shape, three storeys joined by wooden pegs, each one smaller than the one beneath. ‘Will you paint it like the others?’ I asked, but he couldn’t understand me. There’s a nice life, I thought. Skill and patience and a beautiful thing coming into being. I’d have watched him all day but there was work to do. We took on fruits and greens then headed north through the Makassar Strait between Celebes and Kalimantan, sailing east across clear coral seas, east of the Philippine Islands, on ever further north towards the East China Sea. The first few days were hot and calm, a light breeze blowing from the south. A most islanded part of the world this is, and very beautiful, and for the first week or so I had no concern but the bright glittering blue world arise and afall around me, the bloodred sunsets, the birds that screamed upon the spars, and the creature in its pen. He wouldn’t eat or drink, just lay flat and drooling in his corner. I watched over him like a mother with a sick child. I tempted him with morsels of raw meat and fish, tried him with bread and papaya and cheese and dumpling, offered him a live hog. Nothing. His eyes were open but stony still and empty. The only indication that he was actually still alive was the rapid rhythmic movement of his flattened belly as he breathed. Now and again I let the others have a look, but most lost interest pretty quickly, apart from Mr Comeragh, Skip and the captain. And Dan, of course. Dan was always there. Comeragh and the captain came to look now and then, but Skip couldn’t keep away.

  ‘Can I draw him?’ he asked, so I let him.

  ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’

  ‘Boy,’ I said confidently, though I’d no idea. Such a big ugly thing. Of course, he could have been a delicate maid of a dragon for all I knew.

  ‘Think he’ll wake up?’

  ‘He is awake.’

  ‘Doesn’t do much, does he?’

  ‘Give him time.’

  ‘What you calling him?’

  I laughed. As if he was a pet. ‘Dunno.’

  ‘I know,’ Skip said, ‘call him Bingo.’

  ‘Bingo?’

  ‘Yeah. What’s wrong with it? Good name for him. Hey, Bingo! Bingo!’

  ‘He’s not a dog,’ I said.

  ‘So?’

  Bingo was stupid. I resisted it for a long time, but it stuck anyway. There’s no dignity in a name like Bingo. I never used it.

  ‘How’s Bingo today?’ Captain Proctor would hail me jovially.

  ‘Fine, sir.’

  ‘Good, good.’

  ‘Here,’ Wilson Pride would say, leaning out the galley door with a bone, ‘see if Bingo wants this.’

  But Bingo never wanted anything.

  ‘Think he’ll last?’ I asked Dan.

  He drew the corners of his mouth down. ‘Hard to tell,’ he replied. He’d tied a stick onto a ladle and with this was pouring water from a bucket onto the dragon’s snout in hopes of making him drink. The dragon’s eyes were closed. ‘I’ve seen worse than this come round,’ Dan said. ‘They grieve, see. You would, wouldn’t you? Far as he knows he’s died and gone to hell. You could do this, Jaf, look. Just don’t get too close.’

  I wasn’t afraid. The poor beast was too beaten. I approached and Dan handed me the ladle. I dribbled water on the creature’s snout. Nothing.

  Always nothing. Nothing and nothing and nothing. Every day I went in and talked to him. ‘Hello, you stupid old dragon,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you up and about yet? What on earth is the point of you, hey? I know it’s bad, but you could at least make an effort.’ I loosed his rope and made him comfy. ‘You won’t want for nothing where you’re going,’ I told him. ‘This Mr Fledge, he’s filthy rich. A madman. You’ll be his pride and joy, believe me.’

  Nothing and nothing and nothing, then suddenly, about six days in, he drank. I was about four foot away from him with my stick and the clumsy ladle thing upended over his nose. His eyes blinked, the long yellow ribbon of his tongue shot out and the great crevasse of his mouth opened, pink. His little sharp white teeth grinned for a second. It made me jump and my sudden movement jerked him in my direction.

  I was away, out of the cage and the bolts shot. Safe with the bars between us I gave him encouragement. ‘Good boy!’ I said. ‘That’s the way!’

  His piggy little eyes watched me suspiciously, and not a movement more I got for the rest of that day. After that came a few more days of stillness, when only his eyes moved, watching me as I watched him, as I forked his hay and cleaned the pool. You’re only an animal after all, I thought. All the dread that had somehow gathered about his image was by this time dissipated in me. I’d seen his fellows feed and it was fearsome, but if my years at Jamrach’s had taught me anything it was that a fierce and ugly demeanour could sometimes veil a complex soul, and that he was. Those eyes were no more stupid than a rock is stupid. In the worst throes of its madness those ancient eyes had remained fixed as stars, brightly aware, receiving what befell with the clarity of a sage. All life and death the same, the same pain and feeding and fighting and dying. All of that was in the depths of the creature’s eyes. All that and all the wildness of his life. No, he was not stupid.

  There came a time when I knew he was going to live. He ate a hog. It was a good time for it to happen, just after supper when everyone was hanging around on deck. I’d given him live ones before but he never took any notice. This time, ten minutes after I put the hog in and it had gone for the trough and was rootling about in the greens, I saw that he had one eye on it, watching intently. Poor old pig never had a chance. Never saw anything quick as that in all my time at Jamrach’s. The way that thing was still as a stone then – suddenly six feet away, near the end of his rope – snap! With the pig in his mouth. It was a horrible thing to see. Its scream, pure high terror, brought everyone running. He had it by the neck. Sucked and wolfed its whole head and all of its neck sideways in, down to the shoulders and the beginning of its kicking front legs, mouth stretching impossibly like a snake’s, shaking it all the while from side to side, rolling and banging it about on the ground. Down his throat he hauled it in a series of violent gulps, chomp, chomp. A ragged cheer went up. Four or five convulsive efforts and only the back feet remained sticking out, mercifully still.

  Then it was gone; no more hog, and him there champing his lips. His tongue flicked out and in.

  ‘Good boy!’ I said.

  He rewarded me with a short hiss.

  ‘That’s fucking disgusting,’ John Copper said.

  ‘No it isn’t,’ said Gabriel. ‘You expect it to eat with a knife and fork?’

  Dan laughed. ‘Boys,’ he said, lifting his shoulders and rubbing his hands together like a street corner magician, ‘I believe we’ve done it. I believe we’ve made our fortunes.’

  It was me. I made the dragon live. Catching it was only the beginning; making it live was the thing. It was only then I allowed myself to feel relieved, and to realise how much I wanted to get home. Home. Ratcliffe Highway with money in my pocket, the hero returns. Buy Ma a new dress. A bonnet. And Ishbel, what would she want? Buy her a good night out somewhere swanky, that’s what she’d like. Treat her. Dance with her. Drink with her, tell her my tales. What would I take back for her? Fans and beads and feathers.

  ‘He’ll do fine now,’ said Dan. ‘He’ll do fine and I may very well retire.’

  ‘You won’t retire.’ Tim slouched on the windlass, grinning. ‘Can’t see you sitting by the fireside for long, Dan.’

  ‘A-ha-ha,’ said Dan, ‘that’s where you’re wrong. There is nothing in this world I long for more than to see this voyage out and turn my face from sea for ever.’

  ‘You, Mr Rymer?’ the captain smiled. He was there with Mr Rainey and Henry Cash.

  ‘M
e, captain,’ Dan replied.

  We stared at the dragon and it stared back, motionless apart from an occasional flicking of the tongue.

  ‘Old Bingo,’ the captain said. ‘Suppose they’ll name it Rymer’s Dragon? They name things after their discoverer, don’t they?’

  ‘Immortal!’ cried Dan, who’d drunk a fair amount with his supper and was in warm crinkle-eyed mode. ‘I’ll drink to that. And to the fat bonus every manjack on this tub’s well earned. Felix boy, run get my cup.’

  ‘They should name it after this boy here, if anyone,’ Mr Rainey said brusquely, flicking a hand in my direction. ‘He nursed it through.’

  Me.

  Don’t know why that moved me so. Rainey with his big, dark face and troubled eyes was the only one on the ship I was scared of. Not the captain. Just as Gabriel said when we were starting out, the captain was not right for a captain. I’ve known a few now and they keep themselves apart, the captains do, but not Proctor. Proctor strolled about the deck with a faint smile on his freckled face, hoping to be liked. Sometimes he joked: ‘And are you an able roper, I say, Mister Roper? Ha ha! Are you an able fellow?’

  Ha ha ha. Rainey though, Rainey could strike you quiet with one sour look.

  And here he praised me up before all.

  Rightly too, rightly so.

  Fair man, Mr Rainey, I thought. Goes to show you never can tell.

  ‘Quite right,’ said Dan, throwing an arm about my shoulders. ‘Jaf’s the one.’

  Felix appeared with his cup of gin and he raised it high. ‘To Jaf,’ he said, knocking it back.

  ‘Will you really retire?’ I asked. We were back on the fo’c’s’le deck. Simon had gone down and got his fiddle and was tuning up, bright pluckings of the strings.

  ‘Certainly,’ Dan replied, merry, loose in his gestures. ‘All things must pass. I shall end my illustrious career on a pinnacle of glory with this magnificent creature.’

  The sun had gone down an hour since, and the sea danced with crazy light.

  ‘It’ll be kind of like death, won’t it?’ Skip said.

  ‘What will?’

  ‘Dan giving it all up.’

  ‘Death in life,’ said Dan, ‘life in death. Oh, my comrades!’ He’d gone into funny ham-acting mode again.

  ‘When you think about it,’ Skip said, ‘all we ever do is die.’

  ‘What are you talking about, madman?’ Tim pushed him. ‘Why can’t you ever talk sense?’

  ‘The big god told me I didn’t have to make sense,’ Skip said. ‘It doesn’t have to make sense. I don’t have to make sense.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Tim said, ‘you never do.’

  ‘How many years since you went to sea?’ I asked Dan.

  ‘Forty-three,’ he said without hesitation.

  I looked at him, wizened of mouth, one eye wandering very slightly, tried to see him as a green boy like us. It wasn’t that hard. He was one of those who more or less stay the same from birth to death.

  ‘It’s like Bingo,’ said Skip. ‘Like his old life on the island and his life now …’ Simon struck up a sleepy tune. ‘… Like me when I was three years old.’

  ‘You talk shit,’ said Tim.

  ‘Three years old,’ Dan said, sitting down with his back against a barrel and his legs sprawling out in front of him. ‘Three years old doesn’t last. I want to see my children grow up.’

  ‘All those things are really dead. Me then. It then,’ Skip said.

  ‘You’re cracked.’

  ‘He means,’ said Dan, lighting up his pipe with a serene air, ‘that we’re like snakes shedding skin after skin.’ He sighed extravagantly at the thought of it, took a deep pull on the tobacco, pursed his lips and coaxed out a few smoke rings.

  Much later, reeling home to my bunk, I came up with Gabriel and Simon.

  ‘You seen Skip?’ said Gabriel

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s sitting with old Bingo.’

  ‘Come see,’ said Simon. ‘What do you make of this?’

  He didn’t see the three of us watching. He was sitting cross-legged in front of the dragon’s door talking to it.

  ‘It’s not just the dark, see,’ he was saying, ‘it’s the way it takes your power away. It’s a matter of thought really. Very horrible though.’

  He stopped and hummed tunelessly for a few seconds before resuming. ‘And in you it may be worse,’ he said, ‘there’s more in you than a three-year-old boy, I suppose. I wonder how old you are.’

  The dragon’s eyes were open but it was completely still, lying flat with its great head resting between its clawed hands.

  ‘Come on, Skip,’ said Simon kindly, ‘don’t go barmy again.’

  He turned his head. ‘Don’t think I didn’t know you were there,’ he said. ‘I know everything.’

  We took on supplies at the island of Formosa. There was a bird market, three dozen or so small fat creatures, yellow, green and white, all crammed in one box, worse than at Jamrach’s. I wished I’d bought a cage, a bamboo palace. Two or three in there, I thought, spreading wings, rising through the height of it. I’d put in strong twigs instead of straight perches, with leaves maybe. There’s a thought. West lay China, Yan’s country.

  ‘Which part are you from?’ I asked him, me and him on deck one morning patching our clothes, looking towards the coast. ‘Are we near your home, Yan?’

  He shook his head. ‘Far south of here,’ he replied, ‘Tsamkong.’ His black hair was growing long and parted above his brow in two thick waves.

  ‘So we passed it by. Don’t you feel like jumping ship and going home?’

  He smiled. His face was burned by the sun, the skin very tight and shiny across his bones.

  ‘I go home in three more years,’ he said. ‘And you? When for you?’

  ‘In two.’

  ‘I go home rich,’ he said, ‘if the goddess allows.’

  That long coast could be seen as a lilac band shimmering far away, but soon we left it behind and followed a string of islands east towards the Japanese whale grounds. The seas were full of fishing boats and Chinese junks laden with salt. In the hottest part of the day the dragon would lie in his pool, but for most of the time he stayed absolutely still, raised up a little on his front legs, stirring only to eat the fish and birds and hogs I thrust through the hatch into his pen. In time he ate anything: our slops and leftovers, anything. I never trusted him. He was sly. It took two of us to muck out his pen, me with broom and shovel, Dan on guard with stick and gun. Even though we always kept him tethered, he was dangerous. He watched. Once he turned his head in my direction, opened his mouth very slowly and widely and gaped at me, a long, dream-like moment. A membrane of slime stretched shining between upper and lower jaw. Then, just as slowly, he closed it. A horrible display.

  How was it we became so afraid of the dragon? Not just as anyone would be afraid of a wild animal with claws and teeth, but as if it was something more. We took on bad luck with that creature. Who was it first said that? In time we were all saying it. It began with a sickness. All of us went down with it apart from Abel Roper and Wilson Pride, but not all at the same time, thank God. It’s filthy and foul on a ship when everyone’s voiding from either end. Then poor Samson died. That was a horrible thing and that was because of the dragon. Samson had the run of the ship till the dragon came on-board. Joe Harper had erected a rough barricade to keep him away from it, but he got through on this particular terrible morning and ran by the cage, and the thing must have dashed at him. I was up on watch and all I heard was a horrible yelping and a lot of shouting and running about. First thing I thought was that the dragon was loose and eating people, but things calmed down quickly so I knew it couldn’t be that bad. An hour later when I came down I found out the dog was dead. Scared to death, poor thing: expecting nothing, a bit stupid, and suddenly this monster. He ran shrieking, and the captain caught him in his arms and he went into a sort of fit. Whether it was that, or whether he’d caught his head a good wh
ack on the corner of the tryworks as he fled, he died twenty minutes later. He got a sea shroud as good as any and we committed him to the deep, all of us standing round with bowed heads. Captain Proctor said a few words. Samson had been with him for twelve years, he said. He’d found him in the port of Cadiz and carried him in his pocket through the Bay of Biscay in a storm when he was no more than a pup a few weeks old. A true old sea dog, happier on deck than land, it was fitting the sea should be his final resting place. John Copper cried, and when the sea had closed over Samson’s earthly remains, the captain disappeared into his quarters and was seen no more for the rest of the day.

  ‘Time’s changed,’ said Skip. ‘Have you noticed?’

  This was later, after supper, me and Skip and Tim sitting by the dragon in a row, legs sprawled out in front of us, sharing a pipe.

  ‘How so?’ asked Tim.

  ‘It has. How long since we left the dragon island?’

  ‘Two weeks,’ said Tim.

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘It’s about – I don’t know, a few weeks.’ I frowned. I lost count. ‘More than two.’

  ‘Well, don’t ask me,’ said Tim. ‘I don’t even know where we are. It’s hot. It’s all the same to me. I’m fat-witted.’

  ‘Much more than two.’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ said Skip. ‘Time’s gone funny.’

  ‘Bloody heat,’ I said.

  ‘There’s a thought.’ Skip passed me the pipe. ‘How will you keep Bingo warm when we get to colder climes?’

  ‘Oh.’ I’d never thought about it, truth to tell. ‘Dan’ll know.’

  ‘Is he asleep, you think?’ asked Tim