Jamrach's Menagerie (21 page)

It missed and he dragged it back and had it recoiled and rethrown in a second. It missed again, and again. The dragon frothed, convulsing, voiding itself from both ends and soaking the ground with sudden spurting shoots of piss. He got it with the fifth throw. The rope dropped magical y over its head during an upward thrust, pure luck or genius I’l never know. Dan was sweating and red in the face. He stepped back, throwing the end of the rope to Tim and immediately swinging another coil down from his shoulder and getting ready to throw again. Tim hauled off and tied his end to a tree, his lips moving as if he was singing or praying and his eyes glazed.

The whole thing took only a few minutes, I suppose. We came from the hide when Dan cal ed us, when the monster, stil furiously kicking and heaving, was secured to the trees by three strong ropes, one at each end and one in the middle. Nine or ten foot long, that thing was, and stinking to high heaven. I sometimes think my life has been overful of stench. The creature was caked in its own shit and piss and vomit, and the carcass of the boar was beginning to stink too. The air of this place was now thick and hot with a smel that made me think of Bermondsey pure sel ers, their hal ways ful of buckets of compacting dog shit for the tanner’s gate. It was the kind of smel that makes wal s cringe and plants curl and die.

They cut the stake away. Al of us helped now. My heart was hammering like mad, my cheeks were burning and I felt funny, as if I was coming down with a fever. Our faces were wild and tight and surprised, and we laughed at one another amazedly. Dan quieted us. The Malays were laughing too, and a sense of suppressed carnival seized us. Dag, the strong one, hacked down a young tree to which we tied the creature – I could not cal it a dragon seeing it like this, not a dragon, it never was – swaddling it very securely like a terrible mad baby so it couldn’t struggle too much and damage itself. Al of us got covered in its filth. It was a giant reptile with a dreadful head al coated with its own slime. It struggled al the time, a frantic pounding panic it could do nothing to control. It was possessed. If it got loose it would rip us al limb from limb.

It took al of us to carry it. We’d been out for two days, but for part of that time we’d backtracked. It took us a day to reach the ship, going downhil al the way. The animal struggled nearly al the way, only fal ing quiet from exhaustion from time to time just long enough to get the strength back to kick a leg, twitch a few muscles, clatter its jaws, jerk like a landed fish, flop and gape and shudder.

Dan walked alongside me and told me how me and him were going to put the dragon in the cage. We had to go in quick while it was in a daze, he said, and take the ropes off the head and tail. The one round its middle would stay for the time being.

‘Here’s what I think, Jaf,’ he said. ‘I think we put him in head first, then I go in and take his head while you get the tail. Think you can do that?’

‘Have a go,’ I said.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘the tail’s no less dangerous than the head, fact it’s probably worse, it’s got a life of its own and no intel igence. Think of it like a big pulse that might throb at any second. Al the power’s in the tail. Get in and out fast and be ready for anything. Don’t take chances.’

‘Sure,’ I said.

That tail in an enclosed space, I was thinking. But Dan would be in there first holding its head (the teeth, the jaws that snap) and everyone would be standing by. And I was the one who was good with animals. I felt like laughing. Dan said we weren’t too far from the shore now, though God knows how he knew. The dragon was giving up, just hanging there with no more than the odd kick now and then. It was starting to get dark, but there was a big moon, thank God; and thank God no other beasts came near, no scorpions ran, no snakes hissed and bit unseen in the grass. It was dark when we arrived. The Malays went ahead with flares and we fol owed them out from the tree line and saw a moonlit bay, faces in the flickering light madly grinning and staring, everyone running to greet us, al lit up orange against the black. A big fire burned down by the sea.

Captain Proctor came running, his face fat and pink and eager.

‘My God!’ he was crying over and over. ‘My God!’

Samson ran after him, but stopped short and put his head down when he saw the dragon and began to bark. Proctor grabbed his col ar, muzzling him with one hand. ‘I’l tie this one,’ he said breathlessly, hauling him away.

Getting the dragon in the cage was easy. It was exhausted. Gabriel, open-mouthed, wide-eyed and very serious, lifted the bars high and we pushed the thing in. It was my turn now. Me and Dan. We went in to remove the ropes. Dan took the head, I the tail. I didn’t think. I seized it, loosed the knot and slid the rope smoothly, pul ed it away and was out of the cage, Dan after me a second later.

Gabriel dropped the bars, Yan and Simon shot the bolts.

A deep, roaring cheer went up. The dragon shot al of its limbs out at once as if stabbed, raised its head blindly and went wild again, a renewed frenzy so punishing and despairing that it struck us al dumb. If you could have seen that monster flickering in the firelight, beating itself senseless against the sides of its cage. I prayed to God Joe Harper’s work held good. But the cage was solid, timber and steel, and the dragon was weaker by now of course. Even so, it continued a good half an hour with its writhing and lashing and hissing, til at last it fel into an agonised drooling stasis, slit-eyed, flat on its bel y with four fat stumpy legs and long tail spreadeagled. Twenty cruel talons flexed and clenched with a rapid unconscious innocence, like the hands of a baby screaming with colic.

8

It was
my
time now. Tim’s part was done. I was the boy who was good with animals. I was to accompany the dragon at al times now. It was me stayed with it rowing back in the boat, me stayed with it when they hauled it over the side, me loosed it from the cage into its pen under the fo’c’s’le head. It was me and Dan hosed it clean as we could, gentle as we could. The hogs started going mad at the smel of it, and Wilson and Gabriel had to shift them away aft. And when we’d cleaned the poor dragon we hosed ourselves clean, and threw our filthy clothes over the side as a bad lot and got fresh ones. To be clean and dry and safe on-board
Lysander
. To sleep tonight in my bunk. The smoky old fo’c’s’le my home. I was dreaming on my feet, awake and talking as you do when real y you know you are asleep. You begin to think you’re in one of those dreams where you think you’re awake, and then you’re not sure, and then it al starts to go funny and you know you must be dreaming, but you’re dreaming in a dream, and suddenly it’s al layers going in and in and in, like the rings round an old tree stump or striations in an elaborate rock, and you get scared. Then you wake up. But sometimes I wonder whether I ever real y did wake up again. These dreams are so real and true, I don’t suppose it much matters one way or the other. You could say I got lost in the rock striations.

The pen was the size of a smal room and had a pool about six foot square in one corner, drainable from the deck, and a trapdoor to put food through. It was sheltered from the weather, with straw and greens and sand, and even a rock or two to make the creature feel at home. No one should go near it but me and him til it was settled, Dan said, shooing everyone away.

‘Give it peace,’ he said. ‘Pity the poor thing.’

Wilson made a great feast of best salt beef and sweet potatoes, and we ate and drank til stuffed and told our tale a hundred times. However we told it, something was missing.

How say? The awe, as if I’d come to the edge of a big hole in the earth and peered in and seen something wild and unspeakable looking back. Tim wore a constant diffident smile and joked about the whole thing, and the laughter of relief, slightly mad, bil owed in gales about the deck. They must have heard us on the island, al those strange creatures, and the lonely beast must have heard us in his pen. I thought of him in his misery. I would restore him to life and health if I could, and bring home to England a thing of wild splendour that would do me proud.

That night I slept dreamlessly, waking bright and sparkling from a crystal spring, renewed.

It was with some cockiness that I performed my ministrations to the wretched thing that first morning under the gaze of dozens of eyes. No more slaving for me. No more swabbing and scrubbing, hard sand in my cuts. My new responsibilities gave me a leg up the pecking order.

Already I was the one they were consulting on questions of dragonology. As if
I
knew. They were mad to see it, but I’d only let them near one at a time and not too close, not wanting to upset it again now it had quieted down. It had gone into a corner of the pen and was lying flat with its eyes closed, breathing hardly at al . When Dan went in it didn’t move. We had sticks but we didn’t need them. I thought it was dying. Actual y it was gathering strength.

The last thing I remember of that island is the sound of things crying in the trees as we sailed away.

We paid off the two Malays and said goodbye to them on Flores, where women pounded roots and children crowded our boats, and a man with a milky eye made bamboo cages for birds, domed on top and gorgeously painted. An hour or two I watched as a palace took shape, three storeys joined by wooden pegs, each one smal er than the one beneath.

‘Wil you paint it like the others?’ I asked, but he couldn’t understand me. There’s a nice life, I thought. Skil and patience and a beautiful thing coming into being. I’d have watched him al day but there was work to do. We took on fruits and greens then headed north through the Makassar Strait between Celebes and Kalimantan, sailing east across clear coral seas, east of the Philippine Islands, on ever further north towards the East China Sea. The first few days were hot and calm, a light breeze blowing from the south. A most islanded part of the world this is, and very beautiful, and for the first week or so I had no concern but the bright glittering blue world arise and afal around me, the bloodred sunsets, the birds that screamed upon the spars, and the creature in its pen. He wouldn’t eat or drink, just lay flat and drooling in his corner. I watched over him like a mother with a sick child. I tempted him with morsels of raw meat and fish, tried him with bread and papaya and cheese and dumpling, offered him a live hog. Nothing. His eyes were open but stony stil and empty. The only indication that he was actual y stil alive was the rapid rhythmic movement of his flattened bel y as he breathed. Now and again I let the others have a look, but most lost interest pretty quickly, apart from Mr Comeragh, Skip and the captain. And Dan, of course. Dan was always there. Comeragh and the captain came to look now and then, but Skip couldn’t keep away.

‘Can I draw him?’ he asked, so I let him.

‘Is it a boy or a girl?’

‘Boy,’ I said confidently, though I’d no idea. Such a big ugly thing. Of course, he could have been a delicate maid of a dragon for al I knew.

‘Think he’l wake up?’

‘He is awake.’

‘Doesn’t do much, does he?’

‘Give him time.’

‘What you cal ing him?’

I laughed. As if he was a pet. ‘Dunno.’

‘I know,’ Skip said, ‘cal him Bingo.’

‘Bingo?’

‘Yeah. What’s wrong with it? Good name for him. Hey, Bingo! Bingo!’

‘He’s not a dog,’ I said.

‘So?’

Bingo was stupid. I resisted it for a long time, but it stuck anyway. There’s no dignity in a name like Bingo. I never used it.

‘How’s Bingo today?’ Captain Proctor would hail me jovial y.

‘Fine, sir.’

‘Good, good.’

‘Here,’ Wilson Pride would say, leaning out the gal ey door with a bone, ‘see if Bingo wants this.’

But Bingo never wanted anything.

‘Think he’l last?’ I asked Dan.

He drew the corners of his mouth down. ‘Hard to tel ,’ he replied. He’d tied a stick onto a ladle and with this was pouring water from a bucket onto the dragon’s snout in hopes of making him drink. The dragon’s eyes were closed.

‘I’ve seen worse than this come round,’ Dan said. ‘They grieve, see. You would, wouldn’t you? Far as he knows he’s died and gone to hel .
You
could do this, Jaf, look. Just don’t get too close.’

I wasn’t afraid. The poor beast was too beaten. I approached and Dan handed me the ladle. I dribbled water on the creature’s snout. Nothing.

Always nothing. Nothing and nothing and nothing. Every day I went in and talked to him. ‘Hel o, you stupid old dragon,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you up and about yet? What on earth is the point of you, hey? I know it’s bad, but you could at least make an effort.’ I loosed his rope and made him comfy. ‘You won’t want for nothing where you’re going,’ I told him. ‘This Mr Fledge, he’s filthy rich. A madman. You’l be his pride and joy, believe me.’

Nothing and nothing and nothing, then suddenly, about six days in, he drank. I was about four foot away from him with my stick and the clumsy ladle thing upended over his nose.

His eyes blinked, the long yel ow ribbon of his tongue shot out and the great crevasse of his mouth opened, pink. His little sharp white teeth grinned for a second. It made me jump and my sudden movement jerked him in my direction.

I was away, out of the cage and the bolts shot. Safe with the bars between us I gave him encouragement. ‘Good boy!’