Whistling for the Elephants (14 page)

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.