Whistling for the Elephants Read online

  ‘She brought some class to John Junior’s shows. Before that he had done nothing but the elephants with a few side-shows. Terrible stuff Although, I remember I liked the tap-dancing goat.’

  My head was spinning. Tap-dancing goats? The builders had gone back to banging and I decided I ought to get on with business.

  ‘I was wondering about this dog.’

  ‘The dog!’ boomed Mr Torchinsky, slapping the table loudly with his hand. ‘Of course, the dog. Still dead, still got to deal with it. A big dog or a little dog?’ He put the magazine back in the bag and opened the drawer to put it away.

  ‘Well, sort of medium. It wasn’t mine. It was Mrs Schlick’s.’

  ‘Rocco? Judith’s Rocco died?’ Completely unexpectedly, tears welled up in his eyes. ‘She’ll be so sad.’

  ‘Yes. That’s why I thought maybe if you had a spare box. A small one, not small like Mrs Torchinsky has in the front, but a medium-small one. A dog-size one. I don’t have much money but…’

  ‘Of course, a box. No charge. No charge. Poor Rocco. I’ll drop something off to Judith.’ Mr Torchinsky ushered me out, looking at the floor as he walked. As we got to the door he patted me on the back. ‘Come back any time, though God willing next time it will be better news.’

  Mrs Torchinsky was just returning with a box of cookies as I left. She smiled at me and her moustache did that spreading thing again. As I collected my bike I could just hear her yelling, ‘No charge? No charge? What are we, a charity?’

  Having sorted the coffin I thought maybe I should get a card for Judith. Something with flowers and sympathy on. The only place for that was up the other end of town at the Pop Inn, next to Abe’s Ice Cream Parlour (Specialty — the Kitchen Sink — 56 Flavours of Ice Cream Served in a Single Container). It was the middle of the day and Sassaspaneck wasn’t exactly buzzing but as I rode up Main Street I realized I was looking at the place differently. This was a much more exciting town than Father realized. It wasn’t about smallpox and Indians. It was about tiger tamers and polar bears walking up to the A&P. It was about beautiful women whom men married off magazine covers and rich men who collected strange creatures and built crazy houses.

  The Pop Inn was the coolest place in town. They sold everything a kid could want — Peter, Paul and Mary records, brass peace symbols on leather thongs, posters of Picasso doves, op-art posters and Coke bottles melted into unusual shapes. I liked the Susan Politz Shultz posters best. Especially the ones with pictures of Jonathan Livingston Seagull on them which told you that Friendship is For Ever. It was kind of a racy place to go to because it was run by Hubert Thomas and he was the only black man in town. Hubert was the first black person I had ever known to say hello to. He was married to Ingrid, who was a white girl from Iceland. They didn’t have any kids but Father was keen to explain what would happen when they did.

  Father was always happy to explain everyone’s behaviour in terms of genetics. I think he was comfortable with that, as it just involved diagrams and showing how Mother’s family input had marred his family’s hitherto perfect genetic history. Hubert’s potential offspring were the perfect illustration for Father’s genetic lectures. The first time we met Hubert and Ingrid, Father took me straight home and did pages of long arrows joining up little black and white bubbles. ‘And if you look at this chart, it will show you the percentage chance for what colour the children will be in the Thomas household.’

  In the event they adopted a kid from Phnom Penh, which rather put paid to all Father’s hard work. I think Mother was always uncomfortable with Hubert. Certainly he was a man who liked to speak his mind. After the barbecue Harry had invited my parents to one of his Mayor’s Cocktail Parties to which Hubert, as a local store owner, had also been invited. Mother had never been to a party where a black person was drinking instead of serving. Hubert just kept smiling at her until she finally had to speak.

  ‘Uh … haven’t we met before?’ she managed to mumble.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Hubert earnestly. ‘After all, we all look alike.’

  Mother never got used to saying ‘black’ instead of ‘Negro’ and would describe people as ‘white’ or ‘not white’ instead, thinking it sounded more polite. I wonder what Hubert felt like as the only black person there, carrying his label on the outside. He had just put a poster up in the window when I arrived.

  Close the Zoo it said in big red letters. Hubert was wearing a pair of flared jeans with a piece of bright orange fabric sewn in a great triangle into the flare. The pants finished early on his hips and there was a gap of black midriff before his sleeveless tank top started. He had short Afro hair and the widest nose I had ever seen. I was fascinated by his nose and looked at it every time I was in the store.

  ‘Hey, Mama,’ he called as I came in the door. He lifted his right hand in a laid-back peace symbol.

  In the face of such a greeting I still wasn’t sure what to do. It made me become rather formal. It brought out my father in me.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ I said, nodding curtly and moving to the card display.

  Hubert was talking to a young woman. She was not a very big woman, more like a cross between a child and something full-grown. Very thin and not real tall. Like a kind of elf. She had very short, chopped-at black hair held tight with a leather thong round her forehead. She wore a strange collection of brilliantly coloured garments. She appeared to have dressed by passing blindfolded through a tie-dye workshop. She was very modern. Really cool. She fitted right in with all the stuff Hubert sold. In fact, she was such a perfect customer for the store she looked like you could order one. Hubert was in full flight about something. He had a lot of opinions, but then you were supposed to.

  ‘You’re wrong. The place has to go. It is discrimination against animals. They are being held there against their will.’

  The woman shook her head and spoke slowly. She had things to say but there was no hurry. She didn’t look as though she could rush at anything. ‘That’s not why they want to close the zoo. They want to build like some football stadium or something.’

  ‘The place has a bad history. If I had been here forty years ago I would have been a freaking freak show at that place.’

  ‘No way, man. It’s not that kind of place. It’s like a sanctuary. It’s cool.’ The young woman shook her head for emphasis and a small bell tinkled on the back of her leather head thong. Hubert was getting worked up.

  ‘Don’t tell me no way. Do you know where I am from?’

  ‘I don’t know. Like Albany?’

  ‘Not now. I mean in the past.’ Hubert stood up proud and tall in his flares. ‘I am a Bobangi from the Ubangi —West Africa, the Congo. That place, your zoo, they used to bring the Ubangi over here just for people to stare at their lips.’ Hubert banged the counter for emphasis.

  The young woman frowned. ‘Like why?’

  ‘They had big lips. It was part of their culture. People would buy fish and bananas and come just to watch them eat. It ain’t right. Paying money to watch good people eat.’

  ‘It isn’t like that now. You should like, come out and see.’

  ‘I ain’t takin’ part in no oppression. It has got to go.’

  I wanted to ask whether the Ubangi men would have had big lips too, or just the women. I tried to imagine Hubert with discs under his wide nose. It must have been quite something. I realized I was staring at him. He raised an eyebrow at me.

  ‘Yes, baby?’

  ‘Just this card, thank you.’

  We had Rocco’s funeral the next day. Harry dug the grave in their backyard. Mr Torchinsky came out in his pinstripe suit and delivered a plain pine box. He paid his respects to the dog and stood even more humped than usual in the presence of actual death. I wanted to ask him more about Billie and Grace and John Junior and the tigers but I thought maybe it was a bad time. Anyway, he had to go. There had been a pile-up on the thruway and he had a busy afternoon. Uncle Eddie came over and helped Harry put Rocco in the coffin. Then he
banged the lid on the box and stood looking solemn with his big hands folded. Aunt Bonnie didn’t come. Just Uncle Eddie, me, Harry and Judith. Judith was all in black. Black ski pants and a black mohair sweater with a picture of a white poodle on. The sweater was kind of tight and the embroidered poodle bobbed up and down as she sobbed. She just couldn’t stop crying, and I must say I had a tear in my eye. Though for me it wasn’t so much the dead dog as the smell. I did feel moved by the occasion but the fact is that somehow Rocco was still with us. There was an acrid odour which pierced through the pine box and was almost unbearable. It was terribly hot and the scent burned the inside of my nose. Judith choked her way through the few words from the Hallmark greeting card I had bought.

  ‘When we have love,

  It comes from above.

  You gave me your heart

  And though now we’re apart

  You are where you belong

  In God’s happy throng.’

  ‘That was so beautiful. Dorothy, did you want to add something?’ she asked when she had finished reading.

  The answer was ‘not particularly’, but there were so few of us I thought I’d better. I cleared my throat.

  ‘Dear Lord, well, you have Rocco now. She—’

  ‘He,’ said Harry.

  ‘He was a… a… poodle. I don’t know if you’ve had a pet before … well, of course you have. I know Joseph and Mary had a donkey and that must have died but anyway … now you have someone to walk through … um …’ I tried to think of somewhere God might walk with a dog,’… the valley of the shadow of death… Amen.’

  I thought it possibly sounded a little Catholic, but Judith hugged me to her as Uncle Eddie and Harry lowered the box into the ground. Afterwards, Uncle Eddie went back to work and Judith went inside. I followed Harry into his fish place. If he knew about fish I thought maybe he knew about tigers too. Harry set about vigorously cleaning one of the tanks.

  ‘I’m so sorry about your dog,’ I started.

  ‘It’s bad for Judith, that’s all.’

  ‘Still, at least he was happy.’

  ‘Happy?’ Harry stopped working and looked at me. I felt flustered. I didn’t think suggesting his dog had been happy would be controversial. Grown-ups were funny sometimes.

  ‘I mean here. He must have been happy here.’

  ‘Listen, kid, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Animals aren’t happy. It’s not like people. It’s all about instinct, that’s all. He ate because he was hungry, he went after girl dogs because he was a boy dog, he died because he was old. It’s genes and instinct, that’s all.’ On the wall behind his head, Harry’s daughter Pearl grinned out from a picture taken on a beach. I wished I hadn’t come in.

  ‘Maybe there was a girl dog he really liked,’ I tried.

  ‘We’re talking about animals here. Mating is about reproduction. That’s all. Happy, unhappy. It doesn’t come into it.’ Harry stopped his work and went into adult lecture mode. ‘London Zoo. They used to have a bear pit, right? In it lived this brown bear. The pit had a large wooden pole in it. The public could buy scraps of food to throw on top of the pole to get the bear to climb up so they could see it above the bars. This bear never climbed on a Tuesday. Now what is that? Was he unhappy on a Tuesday or had he decided that Tuesday was his day off? No. It was simple. Monday was half-price at the zoo and lots of people came. The public spent a lot of time feeding the bear on a Monday so on Tuesday he wasn’t hungry.’ Harry wiped his hands on a towel and turned back to one of the centre tanks.

  ‘Look at this.’ He picked up a small crab from the tank and placed it in another. In the corner of the crab’s new home sat an octopus. Harry put his face right up to the glass to see what was happening. ‘Watch. The assassin of the water tank stalks his victim.’

  The crab sat quietly, unconscious of any impending doom. Slowly the octopus made its move. A gruesome shadow appeared over the small crustacean. The shadow seemed to be moving backwards, as if to mislead the prey. Then silently, opening like a parachute, the octopus settled over the crab and began to sink down remorselessly. A horrible tentacle darted out and down, flicking under the victim’s shell and turning the crab over, helpless on its back. The tentacles hugged the crab to death and then a great horny bill at the heart of the eight-armed murderer began its fell work.

  ‘Instinct. Survival. See, the aggressive male does better. Food, mating, space. It’s his job.’

  Chapter Seven

  The next day I was sitting on the dock and something was new. I wasn’t wearing my cap. The day after Rocco’s funeral Judith had come over with it. Mother had gone back to bed and Father was gone on the train. Judith was crying and I didn’t want to open the screen door to let her in.

  ‘I brought your hat, Dorothy.’ She began weeping again. Through the mist of the grey flyscreen I could see tears dripping off the peak. I opened the door a crack and took the sodden hat but I couldn’t wear it. I figured if anything had cooties then it was a captain’s hat pulled off a dead poodle. Now I sat on the dock without it. I had spent so long hiding under the hat’s brim that I wasn’t used to having the sun on my face. I quite liked it. I tilted my head back and felt the worn grey boards under my fingers. I felt different. More grown-up, which was good, because I was building up my nerve. I wanted to go to the zoo, the Burroughs zoo, Billie and Grace’s place, but I was scared it wouldn’t be what I had imagined. I wanted it to be a place of tigers and tension, bears and bravery. Romance, I wanted it to have romance. I knew it lay just outside town but as it happens I went the long way round on my bike. I didn’t realize I could have cut straight over the river and through the Burroughs property.

  There was no one at the ticket booth when I arrived. I felt nervous. I don’t know what I expected but I knew it mattered to me. I leaned my bike against an old sign advertising the wonders of Geritol and slowly made my way in. The ticket booth was set into a re-creation of a small Tibetan temple. Once you’d paid your money you were supposed to pass through into the temple and then on into the park. The temple was tiny and contained only an ancient relief map of the zoo and a large tiled mosaic of St Francis of Assisi. He was petting some deer while looking warily at a lion which slumbered at his feet. A few of St Francis’ face tiles had fallen off and he didn’t look at all well. The loud shriek of a peacock heralded my entrance.

  The bird was entitled to shriek. He was a fine figure of a peacock. I don’t know whether he was giving me the eye or was just generally proud but he presented his full fanned-tail feather glory to me as I emerged from the temple. Perhaps he had theatrical blood, for as I turned to face him he slowly closed his wide fan and revealed the zoo behind him. Even faded as it then was, it was wonderful. Well, I thought so. The place probably wouldn’t be allowed now, but no one knew about zoos then. Animal liberation was still a long way down the list. America was only just waking up to blacks and women. Stonewall was still a dream in a silk-stockinged boy’s eye.

  Behind the turquoise and emerald shimmer of my shrieking friend stood a large statue of a woman animal tamer holding a tiger at bay. She wore strange men’s trousers and a collar and tie permanently pressed in bronze. I knew it. This was the great Billie Blake. Even in bronze she was stunning. I touched her hand, willing her to me. I wanted her to come to life. I wanted to talk to her about great cats and being brave. Behind her a giant carousel of motionless creatures — horses, ostriches, giraffes — waited patiently as their paint peeled. The carousel stood in a small square with four large cages placed one at each corner. They contained animals but I couldn’t see what. I didn’t go look because a familiar voice made me jump.

  ‘I thought you wouldn’t come back,’ it said. ‘You ran.’

  I turned and saw my insect lady from the house. ‘Sorry,’ I said, always ready to be apologetic, to be English and in the wrong.

  ‘Do you like colours?’ she asked.

  ‘I guess.’ To be honest it wasn’t something I thought you had to have an opin
ion on.

  ‘How many colours can you see in Mr Honk? The peacock?’ I didn’t really understand the question. I plumped for an easy one.

  ‘Blue.’

  ‘Really? Just blue?’

  ‘Well, no… uhm… green, yellow… lots,’ I said.

  She nodded. The woman spoke very quietly, as if she was trying not to take up too much room with her voice. It didn’t bother me. I came from a family of partial communicators.

  ‘That’s it. Lots of colours,’ she said. ‘Well then, here’s what I don’t understand. Say you’re a trichromate. Well, you are, ‘cause you’re a primate. You can make a range of colours out of three basic ones but Mr Honk and dogs and cats, they’re dichromates. They only have two basic colours. So why does Mr Honk need all those colours if Mrs Honk doesn’t appreciate them?’ I couldn’t think.

  ‘Maybe it’s for us.’

  ‘For us,’ she repeated. ‘I hope so. Come on.’ The woman led the way. She had very thin legs and seemed to walk on the very tips of her toes, making no disturbance in the air. She was still dressed all in brown just like the other day. She probably hadn’t noticed that I had changed entirely, what with no hat and no tie. We walked around the outside of the carousel square, past a Spanish-style house and on to a large, formerly white, gazebo-shaped building. It was topped with a white dome and a weather-vane shaped like a pig. The woman opened a door in the side and pushed through some thick, weighted curtaining. I followed her into an intense tropical heat. Plants were growing so thickly inside that the view of the rest of the zoo was entirely obscured. Small cages were dotted about with light bulbs hanging above them, and butterflies flitted above our heads. The woman reached down for a small cage made of mesh net, picked it up and put it on a stool.

  ‘Would you like to see the most remarkable event in the natural world?’ she asked, looking straight at me. I supposed that I would. It was not an everyday offer. We bent down to look into the cage together. Inside were a number of leaves on stalks. They appeared to have small pearls on them, some darker than others.