“You know what you are, Oona?” I whispered to her, when I’d found my voice. “You’re the coolest elephant on the whole planet, that’s what you are. You just faced down the best killing machine in the world, and sent him on his way. And now all you can think of is eating again. You are something else, you know that? You’re really something else.”
She farted again then, only gently, but it was enough to release all my pent-up fear, and convert it into laughter, laughter that rang out through the trees. The gibbons were laughing back at me now, the toucans too, and soon the whole forest was loud with laughter all around us.
A feast of figs
or days after that first encounter with the tiger, I rarely strayed further than a metre or so from Oona’s side, insects or no insects. I no longer wandered on ahead of her as I had taken to doing so often. I played it safe, riding up there on Oona’s neck where I knew I was out of danger, and from where I had a much better view and an early warning of everything going on around me. At nights I climbed a lot higher into the trees than ever before to build my nest of leaves and branches, and Oona would stay right below whichever tree I’d chosen all night long, on lookout. I slept lightly, alert to the slightest rustle, half listening for him all the time.
But as time passed, and there was no sign or sighting of the tiger, I grew less anxious. I still slept high in the trees every night, as high as I dared to climb, and I hardly ever went anywhere on foot now, but that wasn’t entirely because of the tiger. I had noticed that all the monkeys around me rarely came down on to the forest floor. It seemed sensible to follow their example, to keep out of harm’s way. For me, as for them, the tiger was simply one of the many dangers lurking in the darkness of the jungle. Even by day, it was more often than not a dark place, a place of deep shadows, cut off as it was almost altogether from sunlight by the thick canopy of the trees above. Better to be safe than sorry, I thought. Sleep high, stay high.
In a strange way I actually found myself missing the tiger. I kept hoping I would see him again. More than that, I was even longing for it. As I lay there one night in my sleeping nest, I kept remembering the tiger poster on the wall of the classroom back at school. I could see it so clearly, lit by the afternoon sun slanting in through the classroom window. That tiger used to gaze down at me with the very same look in his eyes as the tiger Oona and I had encountered on the jungle trail that day. There was a poem underneath the picture. We’d all had to learn it by heart for homework, but I could only ever manage to recite the first verse before drying up. I couldn’t remember even that much now, but the first couple of lines did come back to me, and I spoke them out loud again and again, because I thought it sounded so much how the tiger had looked to me, as if the poet had been there and seen him with me. And anyway, I thought Oona would like to hear it.
“‘Tyger Tyger burning bright, in the forests of the night.
What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?’”
I got a deep rumble of appreciation from down below, and I knew she’d be smiling away down there in the darkness. I wished now that I had learned it better so that I could have recited the rest of it for her. As I went to sleep that night, I tried to see the words again as they were printed on the poster, but all I could visualise were snatches of lines, bits and pieces. However, the harder I tried, the more I was remembering. I hoped it was all there somewhere, deep in my memory, lost for the moment, but not entirely forgotten.
When we did see the tiger again, it turned out to be in no sense a repetition of the earlier stand-off. There was no hissing this time, no trumpeting. This time he came wandering on to the track in front of us, and looked back at us over his shoulder, as if to say: “Are you going my way? That’s fine by me.” I was tingling with apprehension and excitement, and I could feel that Oona remained wary too. She did not show it though. As she walked on she never broke the rhythm of her stride. We followed the tiger through the jungle for most of that morning.
After a while, I began to relax, more and more sure all the time that the tiger was not doing this because he wanted to eat me. It was simply because he liked the company. There could be no other explanation. He had the whole forest to wander in, and yet he had chosen to wander along with us. When Oona paused to eat from time to time, the tiger would lie down in the shadow of the trees nearby and clean himself, then yawn, stretch out and wait until Oona was ready to go on again.
So at ease did I become that day with our new travelling companion that I felt I might even try to talk to him. But then I didn’t seem to know what I should say. I mean, what do you say to a tiger? It was so important to say the right thing, but I couldn’t find the right words. So I decided in the end to recite the poem for him – the bits I could remember anyway – because I felt the words were full of wonder and respect, and I hoped he might pick up on that. Somehow – and to be honest, I have no idea how – when I began to recite the poem this time, every line, then every verse, all of it, just flowed from my memory, almost as if the poet was inside my head and speaking it out for me, maybe because he too knew this was the right moment for his poem to be heard, that this listener was the one he’d written it for, the listener who mattered to him more than any other. I remembered his name then, suddenly. Blake, William Blake. It said so on the poster, right at the bottom.
“Tyger Tyger burning bright, in the forests of the night.
What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry.”
As I spoke it, I so wanted the tiger to listen to me. I was encouraged by his ears, that were turning constantly, backwards, forwards, this way and that. I recited the poem again, projecting my voice this time, so that the tiger should be in no doubt that the poem had been written just for him, and that I was reciting it just for him too. I was so pleased with myself for remembering it. I recited the poem over and over again, to prove to myself that I really could do it, and to drum it into my brain so that I would never be able to forget it.
Just as I began it for the umpteenth time, the tiger stopped in his tracks, and turned to look up at me. At that moment I had no doubt whatsoever that he had been listening, no doubt that he knew these words were about him, and for him. His eyes burned into mine, just for a moment, and I felt there was no hunger there any more. It wasn’t mere curiosity either. It was a meeting of minds. Shortly after this, the tiger lifted one of his front paws, shook it as if he’d just stood on a thorn, then sprang lightly away into the shadows of the trees, and vanished. I could tell at once, that unlike me, Oona was glad to see the back of him. She was much more at ease now that we were on our own again.
That walk through the jungle proved to be the longest the tiger ever stayed with us, the longest he hung around. He did show himself to us several times more after that, just to remind us he was still there, I thought, just so we didn’t forget him. But I needed no reminding, and I certainly couldn’t forget him. I felt his presence about us all the time. I heard him roaring at night too, heard the hullabaloo of alarm he created in the forest wherever he went.
Then one morning we came across him swimming in a jungle pool. I was sure he knew we were coming, that he’d been waiting for us. Oona watched him for a while from the bank, but when there was water to be drunk and mud to wallow in, and no crocodiles, Oona never hesitated for long, not even for a tiger. Keeping a safe distance from him, she lumbered into the water, and was soon indulging in all her usual flamboyant water sports, creating as much noise and kerfuffle as she could, slapping her trunk into the water and hosing herself down.
I knew what was going on here. Very deliberately, very ostentatiously, she was claiming the pool. So, in the same spirit, I joined in. I leaped off her back with a great whoop, and cannonballed into the river. The tiger clearly did not appreciate this disruption to his tranquil morning swim. In the end he swam away to the far bank where he climbed out on to a rock, shook himself dry and stretched himself out in the sun, ignoring us both. I showed off for him, diving underwater, d
isappearing for several moments and then appearing elsewhere.
Then I thought I’d show the tiger my best trick of all. With Oona standing in deep water, I clambered up her trunk, stood on her back, balanced myself, punched the air, yelling “Up the Blues”, and then leaped off. When I surfaced I checked to see if the tiger was enjoying my antics. But he looked deeply unimpressed, far too busy washing himself to be interested in anything I was doing.
But I did notice that, as he was licking his paws, he kept giving us occasional surreptitious glances. And that made me think that this tiger was pretending. He may not have been fascinated by all our frolicking, but he did stay. I had the distinct impression that even if he wasn’t going to show it, he liked having us there, he was enjoying our company – at a distance. I was busy skimming stones, I remember, telling Oona how Dad had taught me to do it, how the secret of success was to find a flat stone, when I saw the tiger get up, and give us a long look. Then with a twitch of his tail, he padded across the rocks, sprang down on to the beach, and disappeared into the jungle.
But this wasn’t the last time I saw him, because after that I saw him in my dreams almost every night. By day I’d look for him everywhere and never see him, but by night he’d be there padding through my dreams, down on the farm in Devon maybe, having tea in the kitchen with us, or in the classroom at school gazing up at the poster of himself and reading the poem, or we’d be back in the jungle together, and I would be there walking alongside Oona and the tiger with my hand resting on his neck, and he’d be like a brother to me. And once, he was even walking with me and Oona and Dad down the Fulham Road on the way to Stamford Bridge to watch Chelsea play. The four of us walked out on to the pitch, and there were 40,000 fans cheering us. That was far and away the most amazing dream I’d ever had in all my life. I always wanted to dream it again. But I never could.
I told Oona about it one day, the day I found the tennis ball. In order to explain the dream better to her, I had to remind her first about how I used to go to matches at Chelsea with Dad, and all about the pork pies and the crisps, about how Mum hated us eating ‘all that rot’ as she called it. I knew I must have told Oona everything about myself several times over by now. So it certainly couldn’t have been the first time I’d mentioned football. But this was the first time that I’d been able to show her what football actually was, and how it was played. It didn’t bother me one bit that she didn’t look remotely interested – I told her anyway.
I’d just discovered the tennis ball in the river. Increasingly now, I kept coming across rubbish floating in the river, or caught up in the rocks maybe: plastic bags, Coca-Cola cans, all sorts, and once even a long yellow T-shirt, with horses galloping across it, that came down to my knees; a handy find. It was a bit on the big side. But I discovered I could adapt it into a fishing net too, so that meant I could at last discard what was left of my shorts.
And now I had found a tennis ball.
I gave Oona a demonstration of John Terry heading the ball, then of Lampard scoring a goal from a free kick into the top right-hand corner of the net. I raced along the river bank afterwards, arms raised above my head, celebrating wildly, showing her how it was done at Stamford Bridge. Oona wasn’t even looking. She was enjoying herself far too much, lolling in the mud, rolling in it. Rolling in mud was Oona’s ecstasy time, but I hated it when she had her mud baths because she would stay smelly and then dusty for days afterwards. I knew she loved mud, and that she needed mud to keep her cool, that it kept the parasites away; but as I pointed out to her, often, it was me who had to sit on her when she was smelly, and the more smelly she was the more she attracted the insects. I ticked her off every time she did it – not that it did any good.
It was at times like that, smelly times, that I preferred to run on ahead of her. With no more sightings of the tiger for a while now, I’d taken to doing this more and more, straying further and further ahead. Just as I had sensed the tiger’s presence before, even when I couldn’t see him, now I sensed his absence. He was gone, I was sure of it. Anyway, nothing frightened me that much any more about this place, not even the prospect of meeting the tiger face to face again. I had other company – that orang-utan still shadowed us from high in the branches. He never came closer, but when he wanted to let us know he was there, he would blunder about, deliberately I thought, and shake the branches at us. I was beginning to think of him now as quite a friend, and I noticed that Oona seemed to like having him around too.
I found that as my strength and agility grew, so did my daring. I knew my limitations though. I was no gibbon, no orang-utan. But even so, every tree, every hanging vine, no matter how high or how difficult, was a challenge I relished. I could climb more swiftly now, gripping instinctively with my toes as well as with my fingers, and not looking down. I’d climbed trees a lot, back on the farm in Devon, but always nervously – to be honest, I’d never much liked heights.
But heights didn’t bother me now, not any more. And when I ran, there was a new spring in my legs, an agility and a balance that had never been there. Everything came easier to me. I wouldn’t scramble over a fallen tree trunk as I had before, I would leap it like a deer. I bounded and vaulted and hurdled with consummate ease. I was revelling in my new-found speed and stamina. I felt I could run all day now and never get tired. So when Oona was covered in mud from her wallowing, and stinking to high heaven, I was more than happy to run on ahead for ever if I had to.
But where the trees grew dense and impenetrable around us as they often did, then whether Oona was stinking or not, I’d have to sit up there on Oona’s neck and put up with it, because I knew that for me this was the only way through the jungle. Oona could barge and trample her way through the jungle when it was like this. I couldn’t. Of course she’d always take the easy route along a jungle trail if there was one. But if not, or if she was after particularly succulent fruit or leaves, then she’d just shove her way in and keep going, tearing aside the undergrowth with her trunk, or simply crushing it with her great bulk and treading it underfoot.
When the forest was this dense it was inevitably an uncomfortable ride for me, and a dangerous one too. To avoid the worst of the whipping branches and the tearing thorns that Oona was bludgeoning her way through, I had to lie face down along her neck. It only took one careless glance up ahead at the wrong moment, one lapse of concentration and the damage was done. It had happened all too often in the past – I had scars all over me to prove it. I had learned time and again that an open wound, however insignificant it might seem at first, festered quickly and healed slowly in this humidity, that prevention was always better than cure in the jungle. I knew that sores and cuts and insect bites were a real danger to me, that I had to protect myself.
So that was why I was lying down on Oona’s neck and hugging myself into it so tightly, when one morning we emerged from the jungle and into a clearing. It was safe enough now for me to dare to look up. Oona was standing still, her ears wafting gently, her trunk reaching up into the nearby trees. They were fig trees, and heavy with ripe fruit from the ground up. I sat up then and looked around me. I was amazed at what I saw – a secret horde of figs, an entire forest of fig trees, dozens of them all around the clearing.
“Must be enough here to feed a hundred elephants,” I told her, leaning over and patting her neck. “And you knew it was here, didn’t you? You just follow your trunk, don’t you?” Out of necessity, when orange coconuts and bananas were scarce, I’d had to eat a lot of fruit in the jungle that I didn’t much like, but figs were different. Figs were fantastic. Figs were my favourite. Figs were the best. I knew it was the same for Oona, that they were the delight of her life. It was obvious that we’d be staying put for a very long while, and that by the time we left the clearing, there wouldn’t be a fig left.
I heard the babble of a river nearby, and caught a glimpse of it glistening through the trees, and spotted a kingfisher, bright with sudden colour, knifing through the air. The whole place was aliv
e with hummingbirds. It was a perfect paradise. There was all the water we needed, I thought, and plenty of high trees for safe sleeping nests. “We could stay here for ever, Oona,” I said. “I bet there’re fish in that river too, hundreds of them.” I tapped her neck then with my heel, as I always did when I wanted to be let down. But Oona wasn’t responding, wasn’t lowering herself for me. She wasn’t eating the figs either, and that was strange. I tapped her again and again. She still wouldn’t let me down.
That was when I first began to think we might not be alone, that Oona had sensed something, and wasn’t sure yet what it was. I heard rustling from across the clearing, and saw there were branches shaking, high up in a giant fig tree. I thought maybe that our orang-utan must have got here before us, and had been waiting for us to arrive, that perhaps it was him who had found this place, and not Oona at all as I had supposed. There was more rustling then, more shaking of branches. Then I saw them, half hidden in among the branches, dark shapes drifting through the trees, shapes that became orang-utans, not one, but dozens of them.
I spotted at once at least three mothers with their babies clinging on to them, and there were several youngsters there too, one of them hanging from a branch by a single arm, and all of them gazing in wonderment at Oona and me, unsure, anxious, but not alarmed. They were more like humans than any creature I’d ever set eyes on. Every face was individual, different, and their eyes were filled with feeling and with curiosity. The younger they were the wispier their brown hair was, the more bald many of them seemed to be. They scratched like we do, yawned like we do.
The Classic Morpurgo Collection (six novels) Page 28