Sebastian (5 page)

Chapter 8: Magic Bear

I spent the night in the giant's bedroom in the hotel in the town - still in my wicker basket - and the next morning we caught the train for Paris. I was put in with all the luggage and through the cracks I could see labels saying things like

HANDLE WITH CARE

And

DO NOT DROP

And

THIS END UP

I wondered what it said on mine.

“Valuable zoological specimen, eh!” said a voice in reply. “Do not stand on head. Avoid throwing.” I should think not. “It belongs to the Russian explorer, Alexander Whatsisnamesky,” the voice went on, and I could see part of a moustache and a watery blue eye peering through the wickerwork. “It looks like a kind of rodent,” the voice concluded, and then blew its nose and shuffled off down the carriage.

The train started off with a clang and soon we were rattling along on the way back to Paris. It was there that we had to catch the express to Plotyslaw, the giant had said, so that we could get another train to Russia.

Travelling in the picnic hamper was not much fun. You might just as well have been a tomato sandwich or a jelly as a bear. I don't suppose jellies ever thought of anything, so they didn't get bored like me. I tried counting baby Yetis jumping over a fence but they didn't seem to be very good at it, and I didn't get to sleep till nearly a thousand of them had jumped over. Then it hardly seemed a minute when I was woken up again by the shuffling feet carrying me outside in the basket and putting me into a smelly old van. We bumped along through the Paris streets and I thought about Geraldine somewhere in all the crowds. If only she knew at this moment where I was. A police car passed us, hee-hawing away with its siren, and I half hoped it might be Sergeant Pigeau come to rescue me. But it died away into the distance.

When we reached the other station the giant came to fetch me out of the van. I could recognise his rumbling voice.

“Come, Comrade Yeti,” he said. “From now on you travel with me.”

We sat in his compartment with a back-to-front notice on the window saying, ‘Reserved for Mr Topolovsky and the Members of the Ukranian Institute of Zoology!' He put me on the seat opposite to him.

“Soon we shall all be here,” he said, clasping his big hands together. “There will be Professor Leonid Levsky who is an expert on the woolly mammoth, Drosky our official poet, and Professor Ivan Ivanovitch who knows all about old fossils.”

I remembered we used to have an old fossil at home. Amanda said he kept the sweet shop on the corner.

“And also my colleague Pyotor Potsky, the second world expert on Yetis. He will bring his microscope and naturally will want to examine you more closely. Possibly he may dissect you.” I'd heard of insect, but ... “Cut you up to see what you're made of, that is,” said the giant lighting up a cigar. “Of course we would sew you together again afterwards.”

No, you wouldn't, I thought, going all goose-fur. As soon as you found my squeaker ... Yetis were certain not to have squeakers - howlers or shriekers perhaps - but squeakers mark you out as a stuffed bear for certain. Once they found out they would just throw all the pieces through the window and that would be the end of me - spread between Paris and wherever we were going.

“But Pyotor won't join us until we get to Plotyslaw,” the giant went on, puffing smoke through his nose like a dragon. “Perhaps Drosky will write a poem about you in the meantime.”

I must have dropped off to sleep because when I woke up, there in front of me was Drosky the poet, with gold-rimmed spectacles and untidy grey hair falling round his ears, reciting very seriously:

Yetiski, Yetiski,

Come from afar

He's going to Moscow

To see the Tzar.

“No, no, comrade,” said the giant. “To see the President.”

“Doesn't rhyme,” said Drosky, shaking his head. “You can't say ‘Come from afar to see the President'.”

“What about ‘Come from the Occident to see the President'?” suggested another man with a little white beard.

The poet sighed and ruffled his hair and altered his poem. Then they all recited together:

Yetiski, Yetiski,

Come from the Occident

He's going to Moscow

To see the President

and finished helpless with laughter.

Our journey was made up of Drosky thinking up all kinds of silly poems, everyone reciting them, and then all passing round bottles of water labelled ‘Vodka' to drink. The giant offered me a sip but I didn't like the look of it.

The train went on and on, all through the night and through the next day, and I began to be afraid that we might get to the edge of the world where all the horrid things lived. But at last we arrived at Plotyslaw where we had to change trains. The giant popped me back in the hamper and the porter took me off on a little truck.

I waited ages while various trains came in and out, and it was getting dark when finally I was wheeled away and put in another luggage van. The whistle blew and we were off again. I tried not to think about the professor and his microscope. How long would it be before they came for me? I wondered. Drosky would have to alter his poems because I wouldn't be seeing the Tzar or the President.

The train clattered on through the night and the next day. Nobody came to fetch me. It was a good thing stuffed bears didn't need to eat, otherwise I should have been starving. Amanda used to be starving for her tea at four o'clock every day.

At last we arrived. The train stopped. Off I went again, first on a truck, then in what seemed to be a taxi, then up a lot of dark, echoing stairs and finally dumped down on the floor. Nobody had said a word. Perhaps they had all got cross with each other and were not speaking any more.

The lid creaked back and a face looked in - not a face I recognised. Perhaps it was Professor Pyotor come to dissect me.

“Goodness me. Oh dear me,” said the face. “What are you doing in my props basket ? Where did you come from?”

Where did
he
come from was a better question, I thought. Very agitated he seemed, and not a bit like a professor.

“My act is ruined, ruined,” he said, wringing his bony hands together. “Such a journey too. All the way from Plotyslaw in a third class carriage, and no restaurant car. It's really too much for someone of my talent. I mean, playing to all those Poles was the end, but what will the Parisians do to me with no white doves, pigeons or rabbits?”

He paced up and down making tragic faces and waving his arms. “It was that big Russian fellow. He must have taken my props instead of you.” He read the label on the lid. “I suppose you must be valuable but you look just like a teddy bear to me.”

He picked me up, brushed off the remaining dust and put on my jersey. “Well, you're back in Paris now and you'll have to help me with my act - I'm an illusionist, sort of magician you see. The Great Zingo - fantastic, fabulous, unbelievable feats of wizardry.” His eyes shone for a moment then clouded over. “Instead of my birds and rabbits,” he said, “it will have to be you. Still, I suppose it might be rather fun really.”

Well, that was a relief! I hadn't been very keen on going to Russia with all that snow and wolves, and being in a museum. I would have liked to see the giant's face though when he opened the basket and all the illusionist's birds flew out.

“This is the Comedy Theatre of Montmartre,” said the Great Zingo, opening another case and getting out a top hat, lots of packs of cards and some coloured silk handkerchiefs. “We must do a rehearsal first before the eight o'clock performance.”

Then from another box he took some sheets of cardboard shaped like faces with the features painted on. “My audience you see,” he said. “I must have somebody sitting in the front row when I rehearse.”

We made our way down a steep, wooden staircase which led to the back of the stage. Everywhere was dusty and there were ropes hanging down, and trees and houses all made of cardboard. He pinned the faces to long sticks like lollipops and arranged them along the front row of seats.

“Now my first trick will be an easy one, with the rings. Then I shall shake you out of some handkerchiefs, pull you out of a top hat and make you vanish in my vanishing cabinet - that is, if it's arrived. Oh yes!” He pointed to a tall, wardrobe-looking thing at the back of the stage, all painted black. “Then for my finale I shall do sawing the bear in half! You needn't be scared though,” he said, noticing my worried look. “It doesn't really cut you in half. That is, it shouldn't if the trick goes right.”

He went through his routine and I discovered all sorts of places to hide, false bottoms in boxes and big pockets in his coat. Every now and then he would dash down to the seats to turn the cardboard faces back to front - one side they were laughing and on the other side looking astonished with their mouths open. “I usually have my laughter machine,” he said, “but nobody's here to turn the handle.”

We finished rehearsing and went off to get ready for the act. He put a little red cap with a tassle on my head.

“It used to belong to a monkey,” he explained, “but it fits you nicely.”

Down below I could hear the orchestra tuning up and the noise of everybody coming in. It reminded me of the circus and I wondered what Sandro was doing. The Great Zingo sat in front of his mirror, all surrounded by little lights like a fair, and trimmed his moustache and rubbed red powder on his cheeks to make them glow.

We were the last to go on. “Top of the bill, you see,” he explained. It didn't seem to make sense to me: I would have thought we were bottom.

On the stage it was brilliant with lights and I could only just see the first few rows of seats and the rest faded into blackness.

We did all the usual tricks, and then one called ‘passing the bear through a brick wall'. It was really made of wood with the bricks painted on but very hard all the same. The Great Zingo knocked it all over with his stick to show everyone it was solid. Then with a quick twist of his wrist threw me straight at it. ‘Squashed bear', I thought, but a second later I was through the other side, and everybody was clapping. I never found out how it worked.

Then we did ‘find the bear' with three big cardboard tubes set up on a table. A man from the audience was invited to play the game. I sat on the table and the illusionist put one of the tubes over me, and then shuffled the tubes around at great speed. The man had to guess where I was, but he never managed it. This was because I was in a secret compartment at the top of the tube, of course.

The vanishing cabinet was fun. Once you stood in it a little spring swivelled you round quick as a flash and there you were in the back of the cabinet, where it was dark and musty-smelling. Everybody clapped after each trick and the Great Zingo bowed low in his black cape.

Our last act was ‘sawing the bear in half'. There were cries of Oooh! from the crowd when the magician produced a fearsome-looking saw, all silver with rows of sharp teeth. I could feel my squeaker rattling as he held me up high in the spotlight.

“This brave bear ...” he started to say, when suddenly there was a piercing voice from out of the darkness.

“My babee, my little bear! Stop! Murder!”

The Great Zingo stood with his mouth open like one of his cardboard faces. It was Géraldine! There was a sound of running feet and she appeared at the foot of the stage, waving my telescope.

“Give him back. Thief, coward!” she shouted. “Give back my little babee.”

The Great Zingo recovered from his astonishment, and as Géraldine started to climb on to the stage, he popped me into his sawing-in-half box, picked it up and dashed off into the wings with Géraldine chasing him. All round the back of the stage we went, and out again; down into the orchestra pit, and up the gangway. The audience was cheering Géraldine on and I could hear the Great Zingo puffing and panting. Round the theatre we went and back down towards the stage. Just as we got near it, the false bottom came out of the box and me with it. I went rolling over and over and then it went dark. I had ended up right under the steps. In the distance I could hear Géraldine shouting at the Great Zingo and stamping her foot.

“An illusion, dear young lady,” he was saying. “There is no bear at all. See for yourself.”

Géraldine went on arguing and then I heard the voices of officials saying soothing things like ‘perhaps the young lady was mistaken' and eventually it all went quiet. Everybody left and the lights were switched out.

Some little mice came out to play and I went all sad inside.

Chapter 9: Bear For Sale

The morning couldn't find its way to where I was lying but I knew it had come because I heard the clanking of dust-pans and swish of brooms on the stage. The traffic began grumbling again in the distance. All of a sudden a snake thing with a flattened head appeared and hissed at me. It made a lunge, and then retreated; and then another lunge. This time it grabbed me by the foot and before I could think of what Amanda did about snake bites in the Brownies I was hauled off, with my head bumping up and down.

When the thing had dragged me into the gangway, I could see it was really only a vacuum cleaner.

“Ah!” said the lady with the flowered apron, looking at me as though I were a fish she had caught. “Someone's little toy - but he's very dusty.”

She vacuumed me all over and it was very tickly. I wanted to explain who I was and demand to see the British Ambassador like they do in books, but she stuffed me into a shopping bag - head first next to a long loaf of bread. Napoleon said - according to Toots - that an army marched on its stomach, but I seemed to spend most of my time marching on my head.

Off I went again, jogging up and down in the bag, with lots of stops on the way while the lady talked to friends. I was pulled out occasionally and waved about and then put back again.

Eventually we went through a door that said ‘Ting' and I guessed it was a shop.

“Look what I found this morning in the theatre. It was under the stairs by the orchestra pit. What do you think it is?”

A man with a papery face and tired eyes looked at me.

“It's not a giraffe,” he said, and then went into a fit of wheezing and giggling.

The lady gave him a stony look so he stopped and put me on a pair of scales. “Just 900 grammes,” he said. “Now, how much would you like?”

“Be serious, Henri,” said the lady. “How can we sell him if we don't know what he is?”

The man scratched his nose and said, “Well, I suppose he must be a sort of bear - a sloth bear, I'd say.”

“Very well then, sloth bear,” said the lady. “Make out a ticket and say ten francs.”

The man took a piece of white cardboard and wrote:

SLOTH BEAR 10 francs

“Put ‘cheap',” said the lady.

He wrote:

CHEAP SLOTH BEAR 10 francs

and hung the ticket around my neck with string and put me in the window of his shop.

Well, I could see what sort of place it was. There were old prams, gramophones, faded paintings of cows dabbling their hooves in rivers, and a stuffed head. It had a morose expression and judging by the dust on its nose had been there for a very long time. A kind of buffalo I suppose it was. It was no good trying to talk to it. You had to be born stuffed, and not have stuffing put into you later on. It wasn't the same thing at all.

Outside it had started to rain, and the drops were chasing one another down the window. It was like being on the stage in a way - except there was no audience. Nobody looked my way. They were too busy hurrying along.

All the days seemed the same sitting in the window. A spider made a web between my paws and came to live in my left ear. It reminded me of the Sleeping Beauty, except she had Prince Charming to look forward to. Hardly anyone came into the shop, and the lady went off every morning to clean at the theatre. Once I thought I saw Géraldine's grandfather shuffling down the street, but he never turned and looked in my direction.

Never give up hope, Diddy used to say when he hadn't been for a ride in Amanda's bicycle basket for some days. I was almost beginning to think I had no hope to give up when one afternoon I found a little girl dancing up and down in front of me. She was shouting up at her Daddy and pointing at me. The shop door dinged and they came in.

“I must have him, Daddy. I must,” she was saying. “I've never seen such a marvellous bear.”

Well, it did me good to hear that after so long. Her Daddy was giving me the sort of look reserved for unwanted presents, but he took out his wallet and paid over the ten francs.

“Mind your coat, dear,” he said, “he's so dusty.”

“Oh, I don't care, Daddy, he's beautiful.”

She hugged me till I squeaked.

We caught a taxi and swept off to the Champs Elysées and stopped at a very posh hotel all in marble with men in bow ties standing about.

“I'm Annette,” she said, as we swished up in the lift. “And you're S-e-b-a-s-t-i-a-n. What a lovely name!”

I had quite recovered my self-respect after she had brushed my hair, cleaned out the cobwebs, and straightened my jersey. She insisted we all went down to dinner together, and I sat opposite her on a striped velvet chair.

The waiter seemed very amused to see a bear come to dinner and asked Annette politely: “What will the young gentleman have, Mademoiselle?”

Everyone was very merry, including Annette's Mummy and Daddy, and the waiter kept pouring out wine from a bottle he kept in some snow in a silver bucket by the table.

“Tomorrow we go back to England,” said Annette. “I don't suppose you've ever seen England, Sebastian, but it's nice really, even though they have schools and things. I've got a super swing in the garden - you'll love it.”

She tucked me up at the bottom of her bed that night, and the next morning we caught the plane home. It was much more exciting than being in the parcel. Annette held me up to the window and I could see rolling white mountains stretching into the distance.

“They're the clouds, Sebastian,” she said.

I looked carefully for the cloud giants Toots used to talk about that caused the thunder but there was no sign of them. A car was waiting for us at London Airport and it was not too long before we arrived at Annette's home. I had to shake hands with her Grandma, and was introduced to Albert, the tabby cat who had a collar with a little bell on it.

“To stop him catching so many birds,” said Annette. “Come on, I'll show you my room.”

It was an old house and had four flights of stairs. She had the very top room with a window seat and a sloping ceiling. There were pictures of television stars pinned up everywhere. I didn't see any more bears sitting about and there only seemed to be dolls.

“Daddy always said bears were for boys and girls ought to have dolls,” Annette explained. “You can have my little desk to sit at - it's too small for me now anyway and just right for you.”

It was a nice little desk, with a lift-up lid for putting things in.

“I suppose,” she said, “somebody did own you once? I mean, you didn't spend all your life just sitting in that shop in Paris?” I would have liked to tell her the story of my travels, but ... “Still, you're mine now and you're my most favourite ever,” she said, giving me a kiss on the head.

We all sat down to tea together in the big kitchen and I had a red and white checked serviette tucked into my bow tie. Annette put me a pot of honey and a spoon. I was glad she didn't help me to eat it though, because last time at home it all ran down my chin and I had to be cleaned with carpet shampoo.

The next day, Annette's Daddy had to go to work. He went off in striped trousers, and a black coat and bowler hat.

“He's a stockbroker,” said Annette. “He has to share out people's money in the stock exchange. Sometimes they have crashes and over-takers. And they all have points and Daddy takes a special pink newspaper every day to see who's won. Sometimes he gets very cross. Like bingo really.”