Ariel, Zed and the Secret of Life

by Anna Fienberg

  ‘A monkey!’ exclaimed Zed. He took a step closer. He watched the long tail now wrapping snugly around the bedpost.

  Zed shuddered. Yellow fever, that was the disease monkeys carried in these tropical zones. This animal was probably riddled with it. And it was sitting on his bed! All its hairs would by now have infiltrated that skimpy blue coverlet; he’d most likely breathe them in on his pillowcase and wake up delirious in the morning.

  He stared at the monkey, his nostrils quivering. The monkey stared back. Its eyes grew huge under its wrinkly brow, and it sucked in its cheeks, as if in horror.

  ‘Tsk, tsk, tsk,’ it went, clicking its yellow teeth and rocking back and forth like a small, hairy person in a panic.

  Zed studied the worried little face that must have looked old, he thought, the day it was born. It reminded him of something painful and he felt a sharp twinge, as if he’d been bitten inside. At the zoo, once, he’d seen a monkey that had been used in a science experiment. Its mother had been taken away and in her place they put a piece of wood with sticks for arms and legs. The idea was to see if the baby monkey noticed the difference. It did. Zed had never forgotten its poor stunted body, all bald and patchy, and its empty eyes. It looked as if it didn’t know how to grow up. At the time, Zed knew just how it felt. He had tried to rescue it but the whole thing had grown complicated, involving police and searches and long sermons from his mother.

  Now Zed stretched out his hand to the monkey on the bed. It began to squeak, leaping from side to side like an animal in a trap. Still as a tree, Zed burbled softly to it, keeping his hand outstretched. The monkey crept forward. It put its leathery nose and mouth into Zed’s hand and sniffed. Then it made a decision. It crawled into the circle of Zed’s arm, nibbled at the hairs there, and went to sleep.

  Zed hardly breathed. He stroked the fine dark fur, feeling the body warm against his skin. He watched the monkey’s chest move up and down, so regularly, its white tufts of hair growing like sideburns down its cheeks. In that moment Zed felt strangely happy. He could have gone on being a tree, a jungle even, for just as long as the monkey wanted.

  7. EXPLORING

  ‘MR JONES is his name,’ said Ariel, buttering a piece of toast.

  ‘How would you know?’ replied Zed.

  ‘Bertha told me this morning. I’ve been up for ages. “Mind out for Mr Jones,” she said, “he’s liable to get under your feet.” I thought you were sharing a room with one of the seven dwarfs!’

  Mr Jones sat on Zed’s lap, peeling a banana for breakfast. The skin he gave to Zed, the fruit he sucked loudly through his two front teeth. When he had finished, he climbed up on Zed’s shoulder and began to search slowly and meticulously through Zed’s curls for anything else he might nibble on.

  Ariel stared in amazement.

  ‘Mr Jones is a very clean and polite animal,’ said Zed hotly, by way of justification.

  ‘How would you know?’ asked Ariel, in her turn.

  ‘You can tell by his eyes—bright and lively, and his shiny fur. I’m looking after him, so you needn’t worry. I saw him first, and he stays in my room.’

  ‘I’m not worried,’ said Ariel, ‘but watch out for yellow fever.’ Great whizzing fizzballs, she thought, why couldn’t they just share the monkey between them? Zed was so plugged up he’d burst one day. It was like going on holiday with a boa constrictor: he swallowed everything whole, and gave nothing back.

  But seeing his face, with that new, secret smile, she softened. Maybe he likes having something all his own, she thought. It was a new idea, and it made her silent. She was glad that for once she’d held her tongue; maybe even words could stamp on those special feelings. For a moment she saw Zed’s quiet, absorbed face in a different way.

  Ariel finished her breakfast and stood up. ‘I thought I’d bicycle into town and have a look around. Do you want to come?’

  The thought of another long bike ride back through the orange groves made Zed feel exhausted. His bottom still ached and, curiously, so did his knuckles. He supposed this was from clenching so hard on the handlebars.

  ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll just explore a bit around here. Examine the insect life, and so forth.’

  And play with Mr Jones.

  The first thing Ariel saw as she approached the town was a huge stone archway with the words ‘Welcome to CHAPTER ONE’ engraved at the top. More like entering a book than a town, she thought, and felt a sudden chill down her spine as she pedalled through the shadows of the great, grey arch.

  The streets of Chapter One were as narrow as hallways and they twisted and turned so suddenly that Ariel got off her bike and pushed it along beside her. She trod cautiously over the smooth paved stones; they were polished with age and passing feet, and twice she almost slipped. The town was ancient; medieval, it seemed, with its archways and twisting stairs. The walls were humped and rounded under their skins of whitewash, rising up from the ground, Ariel thought, like odd swellings that might at any moment subside.

  On either side the doors leading onto the streets were closed, and Ariel could hear her own steps loud and alone on the stones. Perhaps the townsfolk of Chapter One came out only at night, like possums. Ariel almost felt like tiptoeing, as if she were in a stranger’s house. Close as a corridor the street led on, and Ariel saw that people had put vases of flowers on the window ledges, just as if the streets themselves were part of the their homes.

  But now, up ahead, she heard voices calling, and the street opened up into a large square. Crowded together in the middle were rows of stalls, and people wandered around them, shopping baskets over their arms, squabbling in loud voices over prices.

  ‘Anybody melancholy?’ called a voice behind the plant stall. ‘Why weep and worry, when my “Syrup of Fiore” will put zip back into your life?’

  Ariel saw a forest of pot plants, and a long line of little bottles filled with brightly-coloured liquids.

  ‘What are you selling?’ asked Ariel, peering over the wall of plants.

  ‘Plant potions, natural remedies,’ replied a woman, coming into view. ‘Are you suffering from sadness and shock, weak veins, perhaps a twinge of arthritis in those not-so-young knees?’

  ‘I’m only twelve!’ protested Ariel.

  ‘Ah, I have something for that. “Growing Remedy”, here you are, it’s from the Pituitarus plant. You’ll sprout inches like a plant sprouts leaves.’

  The woman beamed. She had a round face like a healthy apple and muscular arms. Her skin shone, as if she’d just been polished. She could have been an advertisement for country living, thought Ariel, except for the black hat. It was tall and peaked, and kept falling over the woman’s eyes.

  Ariel took a small bottle of lavender water, ‘to cool her temples’ and went off to find some shade. The heat had become unbearable in the square, yawning wide under the sun and filling now with people so that Ariel had to push and elbow her way into one of the cooler, quieter streets.

  She sat down on a stair and closed her eyes. It was strange how the voices dropped away so suddenly, as if the shade under the arches cut off sound as easily as sunlight. She ran a finger along the wet back of her knees and in the hollow of her neck. Sweat lay in tiny bubbles all over her skin, and she wanted to poke out her tongue, like a dog, and pant.

  Into the quiet, then, dropped a sound of glasses clinking. It was a cool, icy sound, as welcome as a wave-slap, and it came from somewhere above.

  Ariel looked up. The stairs she was sitting on spiralled right up to the roof. She crept up until she could see. The roof was flat, decorated with potted geraniums and a beach umbrella. And there, lying on a deckchair in the shade, was the roundest man Ariel had ever seen.

  He wore no shirt, only orange silk pants, pulled in tight at the waist and ankles, and billowing out in between. His glistening belly rolled out pale and hairless, like a dumpling ready for the oven. In one hand he held a glass and in the other a pitcher of iced tea.

  ‘Too hot for wal
king,’ he called down to Ariel. His voice had a rich accent that made her think of deserts and palm trees. ‘Come up and we drink. Is good up here.’

  Ariel thought it would be, and she began to climb the stairs. Round they led to a doorway, first, where long tasselled cords hung in rows, and then on up to the roof.

  ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ said the man, gesturing to a deck chair. He pulled the table lazily toward him and poured Ariel a drink.

  The tea was sweet and cool, and Ariel drank a second glass as quickly as the first.

  ‘You just arrived here, no?’ said the dumpling man, and Ariel nodded. The man smiled, showing a gold front tooth. Ariel, staring at his face, realised that she had never seen eyes so deep and dark and kind.

  ‘I understand everything,’ said the man, and his eyes grew bright, wet with sympathy. Ariel felt that every sorrow she’d ever known was swimming in the depths of those pupils.

  ‘Is hot,’ he went on mournfully, ‘but you can bathe in the ocean. Is good, the ocean—green and cold as the emerald. Ah, jewels, they are for thieves. Me, I have a heart of gold. My own mother says so. “Ali,” she says, “throat-slitting is not in your nature. Boiling thieves in oil is not for you. You have a heart of gold.” Is true.’ And his sigh was like a veil of misfortune in the trembling air.

  There was a pause while the man sipped his tea. Thoughtfully, Ariel sipped hers. Although this man was certainly different, weirder, you might say, than any of the kids at school, she felt perfectly at ease with him. It was a pleasant feeling, knowing that the person you were with couldn’t be anything other than himself. It made Ariel feel light and free, the way she had when she first stepped into the Captain’s house. She felt she might say anything now, and that whatever it was, it would probably be all right.

  ‘You have such kind eyes,’ she said, as that was what she was thinking.

  ‘They are the windows of my soul,’ replied the man, and he sighed so deeply this time that his belly shivered like a jelly. ‘There is something you need? Something you like to see?’ He had a new energy now, and he even rose up onto an elbow. ‘My shop is downstairs—and this is your first visit. If you see anything you like, take it. I believe in wisdom, not wealth,’ and he slid down again into his chair, closing his great kind eyes as if the world and its greed were too much for him.

  Down below, through the tasselled doorway, it was as dark as a cave, and just as cool. A sign on the wall said ‘Ali Baba’s Treasure Shop’. Ariel started. She hoped the forty thieves weren’t waiting in the shadows.

  It was difficult to move in the gloom as objects were sprawled over the floor and piled on benches as randomly as shells tossed up on the shore. Amongst it all Ariel found: whale’s teeth in a velvet box, peacock feathers, ruby earrings, a princess gown sewn with tiny crystal roses, tweezers for nose hairs, a sapphire-studded penknife, a false moustache, a hundred wigs, a poison ring and a strange clock with centuries painted on instead of hours. It was a beautiful clock, enamelled in turquoise and violet and red, with two wings flying behind. It was the most magnificent thing in the shop.

  ‘Is better not to touch this one thing,’ said a voice from behind. Ariel jumped.

  Ali sadly took the clock from her and said, ‘If you change the hands of this clock, you end up in different century. Is inconvenient.’ And he smiled his tragic smile.

  Ariel nodded fervently, and shuddered.

  ‘Maybe you belong to past century,’ he went on, staring at the clock. ‘I do, and I tell you, is too much robbing and throat-slitting back then. Is all cut, cut, slit, slit. Is inconvenient. This is only my opinion. Is better you wait for School tomorrow before you go on any journey.’

  ‘Will you be at School, too?’ asked Ariel.

  ‘Oh yes,’ replied Ali gloomily. ‘I have sword-fighting lessons.’ Slowly he rolled out of the shop, reminding her to take anything else she fancied.

  Ariel was left to wander amongst Ali’s treasures, picking up a sapphire brooch here, a camel saddle there, trying to decide which thing was more splendid. And while she looked, she thought with a tingle of dread and excitement about tomorrow, when she would enrol at surely the weirdest school in the universe.

  Meanwhile, back at Bertha’s, Zed and Mr Jones walked amongst the fruit trees. It was rather a slow walk as Mr Jones stopped to eat much of the view, swinging from tree to tree with his long tail, his teeth furry with fruit.

  Eventually the grove opened out into a clearing where a small pond glistened, fringed with lilies. Zed saw frogs hopping in the shallows, their little hands green as limes. Beds of flowers made rainbow squares in the grass, and a fountain sprayed water like stars between them.

  Zed sat down by the pond and wiped his forehead. He stared at the profusion of plants. Orchids with scarlet petals, hibiscus and frangipani—if you threw down a seed here, Zed thought, it would probably turn into a flower the next day. All around there were new leaves waxed tight and shining, ready to burst, the heat shimmering so that even the air seemed alive.

  Zed plucked a flower growing near his knee. He put his nose into its hollow, deep and pink and veined. The perfume was delicious; it made him think of his mother.

  Zed groaned. It was worse to be unhappy in this kind of tropical paradise, than, say, in Bombay. Here, even the plants screamed out at you to be happy. These hysterical flowers, the luscious fruit, this impossible greeting card sky—here it was almost shameful to be miserable, like making a rude noise in a silent room. Here he couldn’t blame his misery on the room or the cold or the war. There was just him, Zed, in paradise.

  The trouble was, he still missed his father—no matter where he went, the ache went with him. It was as if he had an ache now instead of a father. Imagine if Dad had been here to explore the Island with him. Dad would have known all the names of the plants, even that strange one that looked like pink cats’ tails. When they went camping, he’d always pointed out the bugs and birds and things in that quiet voice of his, and they’d sit up for hours talking about how the world began, and the Ice Age, and if there’d ever be another one.

  Well, the only way to survive, he decided now, was not to care about anything too much. In the future he wouldn’t love anyone, only quite like them, and that way it wouldn’t hurt when they disappeared. He’d only barely notice; skin-deep it would be, like a graze.

  Mr Jones leapt into view and pulled at Zed’s sock. Zed smiled. Being a monkey must be better, he thought. Bananas, and a lack of snakes would be enough to make a monkey happy. But then he remembered the zoo monkey, and the empty eyes. No, what he, Zed, would like to be was a jellyfish: a kind of transparent anemone, through which tropical colours flowed, not even touching the sides. He would just float around, letting food and water and the world wash through him, without filters, without feelings.

  ‘Mr Jones!’ Zed called now, standing up.

  The worried face came into view, the long tail draped neatly over his shoulder. Zed felt a shot of warmth creep into his throat. Mr Jones. Now there was a dependable friend. A serious type. Zed hadn’t felt so much affection for a long time. He hoped Mr Jones was young and in good health. It would be terrible to lose him now. Typical, in fact.

  The monkey climbed up Zed’s leg, his fingers catching on Zed’s knee. ‘Ow!’ cried Zed, and bent down to examine his graze. The cut from yesterday was still open, with a soft yellow crust seeping along the top. Pus! It was infected, just as he’d suspected. Nothing healed, he knew, in these tropical places. It was the heat. Maybe he’d get gangrene and they’d have to chop his leg off. Hop-a-long Zed, they’d call him. No, he’d have to get serious now, with these Island people, about chemists and ointments and things. Bertha surely hadn’t reached her ripe old age without the help of modern medicine.

  With Mr Jones on his shoulder he turned back into the banana grove. He was thinking so hard about his knee that he didn’t see the sun gilding the leaves, or the flock of parrots rising up into the air like a sudden flame. He wanted to see a doctor, an
d soon.

  No-one was home. Zed sniffed the familiar smell of camphor and children’s socks (always around, oddly enough, even without the children), and sighed. The long table was laid out for two, a bowl of salad heaped in the middle. But there was no sign of Bertha. Zed tiptoed toward her room and put his ear to the door. He heard a faint snoring like a train rattling away at a great distance. Bertha, he saw now, would be of no help.

  ‘What do you want a doctor for?’ Ariel demanded, helping herself to salad.

  ‘In case you haven’t noticed, I have an infected knee from a deep wound.’

  ‘Well, you can ask about all that at School tomorrow,’ Ariel said breezily.

  ‘What is this School everyone keeps talking about?’ Zed growled.

  ‘Oh, the Islanders here have lessons in subjects that, er, interest them.’

  ‘You mean craft classes and so forth? Adult education?’

  ‘Kind of.’ Ariel finished crunching her lettuce and said, ‘Don’t you want to know what I did today?’

  ‘Umm,’ said Zed.

  Ariel launched into a description of the town, Chapter One, of Ali Baba’s treasure shop, and showed him the ruby earrings she’d taken for her mother.

  ‘And I chose this for you.’ Ariel brought out a rather grubby notebook, bound in leather. Half the book had already been written in, and was signed ‘Lewis Carroll’.

  ‘This notebook is very precious,’ Ariel explained. ‘Mr Carroll is the famous author of Alice in Wonderland, you know. He must have been here at some time or other, checking on Alice. I wonder what she did wrong—maybe she didn’t want to leave the Hatter’s tea party. Or maybe she didn’t like mushrooms. Well, aren’t you pleased?’

  Zed shrugged. ‘If this was real, it would be in the British Museum. You’d believe anything.’ Of all the presents she could have given him, this dirty old used book was a joke. She probably picked it up at the last moment, he supposed, on her way out. That’s all she thought he deserved.