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  In Search of the Blue Tiger

  A NOVEL

  In Search of the Blue Tiger

  A NOVEL

  ROBERT POWER

  First Published 2012

  This e-book edition 2012

  Transit Lounge Publishing

  95 Stephen Street

  Yarraville, Australia 3013

  www.transitlounge.com.au

  [email protected]

  Copyright ©Robert Power 2012

  This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher.

  Every effort has been made to obtain permission for excerpts reproduced in this publication. In cases where these efforts were unsuccessful, the copyright holders are asked to contact the publisher directly.

  Cover photograph: Ito Koichi (Zeissism)

  Author photograph: Kip Scott

  Cover and book design: Peter Lo

  Printed in China by Everbest

  This project has been assisted by the Australian government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

  Cataloguing-in-publication entry is available from the

  National Library of Australia: http://catalogue.nla.gov.au

  ISBN: 978-1-921924-33-0 (e-book)

  With love, as always, to my father and mother, Richard and Beatrice, and to my three sons, Tom, Dominic & Louis.

  ONE

  OSCAR IN THE HOUSE OF ADULTS

  ‘How little one counts, I think: how little any one counts; how fast and furious and masterly life is; and how all these thousands are swimming for dear life.’ Woolf

  I live in a house of adults who never tell the truth. At night, when they think I am sleeping, I sit on the half-landing, peering through the banisters, looking out, listening for clues.

  Then she, the Mother, says: ‘All that I do for you. What more can I do? You treat me worse than an animal. You’re a pig to me and I’m your dirt.’

  He, the Father, might laugh, or curse, or say nothing at all. This night he says: ‘I treat you like an animal, because that’s all you are. A cow and a bitch.’

  Then the phone rings right beneath me. It’s on the mahogany table, the one with the heavy paperweights.

  She picks up the receiver. Then she puts it back down without speaking.

  I wonder about the words. The way they speak to each other. The bitch and the pig and the cow. Like the spoon and the dish and the cow jumping over the moon.

  But, like all small boys, I try my best to make sense of the world of grown-ups. You see, there’s no sister or brother to talk to and no happy cousins to visit (no one visits and we visit no one). But I’m not completely alone. I do have Blue Monkey to help me through all this mess. As always he waits patiently for me in my bedroom.

  My name is Oscar Flowers, I am eleven years old, and this is the house I live in. I like to call it the House of the Doomed and the Damned. There aren’t many occupants, just me, the Father, the Mother and Great Aunt Margaret. And Blue Monkey, but he’s not Doomed nor Damned, and I like to think neither am I. But that remains to be seen. Blue Monkey is my very best friend, even though I am the only one who can see him. I’m not much interested in other children. Well, except for the Fishcutter Twins, who I watch out for at school. They’re older and odder than me and seem to be apart from all the others, just like I am. They float around the playground, oblivious to all the childish things around them. I like watching and listening to them talking to each other, if I ever get close enough. Sometimes, though not very often, the Twins look at me as if they’re about to say something, or else I’m supposed to say something to them. But then they move off somewhere else, leaving me gazing at an empty space. It makes me happy all the same, that brief moment, as they never take any notice of anyone else, not even the teachers.

  I hear a lot these days. Hear and see things best left alone.

  Like on one unexceptional evening, the day after my tenth birthday, with the moon watering the lawn through the long window, the Father says to the Mother: ‘So when you’ve stopped playing the madwoman, be sure to mop the blood from the carpet. And the vomit, clear up the vomit. We don’t want your Aunt Margaret to get the wrong impression.’

  I venture forward, staring through the balustrade. There she is, on all fours, her long black hair dank and limp around her face. Frightened as I am, I catch a glimpse, just a glimpse, of him. Sitting in the armchair, over by the fire, legs crossed, composed, smoking a cigarette. Plumes of smoke waft into the empty spaces of the huge room. I watch it rise to the ceiling. I smell the bitter choking smell of our house. The house full of adults who never tell the truth, where sadness echoes and rosary beads click a lament.

  Later that night I turn once more to Blue Monkey. As always he sits in the same place: high up on the shelf in the corner of my bedroom, invisible to all but me. The top hat and silk waistcoat he wears give him a regal presence. Like a true king he never speaks to me, but I know he listens. So I tell him, in the softest of tones, in the voice of the Confessor, of the words the Father uses, the blood of the Mother, and the way her voice sounds when he hits her. I look up at Blue Monkey, his expression never changing, no matter what terrors I recount. He is always there, always ready for my whisper in the dark. He listens. He is my true friend and that is enough.

  I lie on my bed, trying to work it all out.

  A bitch is a female dog and a cow is a cow. So I draw a picture of the Mother as a dog with udders. The Father is a pig, a wild boar, all bristles, red eyes and fierce-looking tusks. In the left corner I draw myself as my favourite animal, the tiger, about to gobble him up. I give it a title in my best handwriting:

  The tiger tries out his claws & teeth on the wild pig & the cowdog yelps with glee.

  There are clues here. Clues to this strange and dangerous world of adults. Bitches and pigs, cows jumping over the moon, little dogs laughing to see such fun, wolves at the door. People as animals and animals as people. One of my favourite books that I’ve read over and over is about the boy who lives in the jungle. Once I read it to the end and then straight back to the beginning again. The boy is all alone, but he gets to know the way the animals are and who will help him and who he should be scared of.

  And all the while, whenever she’s around, Great Aunt Margaret gives me such funny looks. She knows I am trying to know. She sees things in me none of the others notice.

  But like all small boys, I take what I get and get what I take.

  Tiger: ‘Take that, pig … you’ll never harm the cowdog again.’

  Cowdog: ‘Go get him, Tiger, you’re my hero!’

  Pig: ‘Oink!! Ouch!!!!! You, win, Tiger, you win. Oink!! Ouch!!!!’

  I’ve wanted to be a tiger ever since I first saw one. The memory is so clear. It comes back to me often. All I need to do is close my eyes.

  I am at the circus with the Mother and Father. We are late and the show has begun. In the centre of the ring is a tiger on a blue-and-white plinth. He is majestic. Awe-inspiring. Strong and solid. But I am not afraid. There is more menace, more violence, in the room at the top of our house than in all the cages of lions and tigers, leopards and panthers.

  I imagine myself as the ringmaster. I wear a long tailcoat of tomato red, tight black breeches and a shiny top hat. In my left hand I hold a whip, trailing and curling in the sawdust like an eel. My other hand rests on a wooden chair, which I use to keep the wild animals at bay, at arm’s length, so to speak. We are encaged. Outside, the jugglers and tightrope walkers display their skills: catching burning bat
ons on the tips of noses, balancing on a shoestring. A man with a long moustache spins plates. A woman the size of a button climbs into a fruit box. A trumpet sounds, cymbals clash, lights are dimmed. Then a single beam is projected from an arc light hanging from the roof of the tent. It picks me out. The bars of the cage appear like stripes across my face. The audience holds its breath as I take a bow, as I move centre stage, ready to perform. This ring-mastery. This circus of life.

  I turn out of my dream world and towards Mother. I am sitting between them, the Mother and the Father. I look up at her: she is crying. A tear runs down her cheek as the horses gallop around the perimeter of the ring, their manes rippling and flowing, the sawdust flying from the clippety-clop of their hooves. The audience whoops and laughs, but we sit silent. Me, the Father, the Mother.

  I look back into the ring as a drum roll rumbles the audience to silence. A spotlight picks out the tiger, standing alone on the plinth. The ringmaster comes forward, holding high a flaming hoop on a long metal pole. The audience gasps. The tiger, fearless and powerful, tenses his muscles and prepares to spring. The drum roll fades away, the spotlight turns to blue, and the tiger leaps through the hoop with a grace and energy that bewitches the crowd.

  I want to be a tiger. I want to be fearless. I want to be powerful.

  When I am a tiger, this is the sort of tiger I will be.

  A blue tiger: an animal friend for Blue Monkey. My body has navy-blue stripes on a powder-blue background. I am the father to twenty-five tiger cubs from five tigresses. I am the best tiger father in the world. I do not roam away, but protect my cubs from hyenas, eagles, spitting cobras and other snakes in the grass, and the packs of wild dogs from the forest. I make sure my cubs have nice food to eat and a warm place to live. As they grow up I teach them the ways of the forest and take them on hunting trips, showing them how to stalk a peahen. I hide them in the long grasses to watch as I creep up on sambar deer at the waterhole.

  There are rules for the cubs. Everyone needs rules so as to know what is right and wrong and when to expect a wallop. Here are the rules I teach my cubs:

  Only kill animals to eat.

  Always have the sun at your back when tracking a prey. A bit like taking a photograph.

  Be wary of people. They are unpredictable and may do you harm at any moment.

  Enjoy the beautiful things in the forest.

  Don’t try to eat a porcupine.

  Look out for loose leaves on the forest floor: they might be a cunning cover for tiger traps, and tiger traps are deep and wide and have spikes at the bottom of the pit.

  Keep close to your parents: they will protect you and look after you and care for you and love you and cuddle you until you get big.

  Be careful of snakes in the grass. The ones with the nicest patterns and prettiest colours are the most dangerous.

  NB (which stands for Nasty Beasts, I think): this is not always true. Black Mambas are plain blackish and very dangerous. (Tip: if chased by a black mamba run perpendicular, which means at right angles, to the direction they are heading. They get angriest if you are in the way of their hole in the ground. If you stay in the way, or run towards the hole, the snake will bite you and you will be dead.) Spitting cobras are not nicely coloured either (NB: wear sunglasses). Just beware of ALL snakes.

  I get a real surprise one break-time at school. I’m watching a spider winding a wasp up in the corner of a web. I sense someone is close by. When I turn around, there’s Carp Fishcutter staring straight at me, with her twinny sister, Perch, standing a couple of feet behind. I think I’m the only one at school who can tell them apart. It’s nothing to do with how they look, more to do with how they speak, how the air is around them, and how each makes me feel.

  In the faintest of whispers Carp, who is the more powerful of the two, says to me: ‘When Jehovah let Adam and Eve into the Garden of Eden he told them to give all the animals names. And they did.’

  She looks at me for a second or two more, then she and Perch walk off to continue their circuit around the perimeter of the playground. They are both as tall and slender as pencils, with perfectly straight coal-black hair stretching down their backs like capes. Their skin is as pale as their eyes are dark. Today they wear identical bottle-green cardigans and grey pleated skirts. On their heads they have woollen berets, with matching scarves knotted at their necks. They walk close together and their arms remain still by their sides. I see they are as much in their own world as I am in mine.

  I feel warm and excited. I can hardly believe they have spoken to me. I feel an enormous smile spreading over my face. When I turn back to the web I see that the wasp is now safely cocooned and the spider is eating the head of a bluebottle as it struggles to free itself from the sticky silk threads. The more it struggles, the more it is trapped.

  No one knows I’m here. The Mother and Father are too busy tearing each other apart. The Great Aunt will be listening, flicking through her rosary beads. So when I ease open the cellar door and creep down the stairs to my hiding place none of the three will have noticed my empty bed. First, I count to twenty-five for luck and then push the little buds of cotton wool into my ears. Next I nestle into the cosy space under the floorboards and pull the blanket over my head.

  The gaps in the planks let light through from the kitchen above. All around me, like the walls and turrets of a miniature castle, are my piles of books. Some are from the library in town. Others, my favourites, come from the chests and trunks I found when I first explored the cellar. The Mother said they were leftovers from her father’s library and I was not to touch them. When I first came down here she wagged a finger and said I was to stay out of the cellar, as there were rats and dust and spiders. But I have claimed this space as my own. No one seems to care much where I am in the house, so if I’m down here I am as much out of the way as any place else.

  There’s nowhere I’d rather be than amongst these dusty books of adventure and King Arthur, the sea and Captain Bluebeard, the prairies and Custer’s Last Stand, and of boys who run away to sea, who hide in barrels and munch through apples until the smell of the salt air and the rocking of the ocean tell them they are too far from shore to be sent back home.

  The first book I open is precious. Its cover is leather, and, as always, I read the inscription on the first page. It is beautifully written in maroon ink. ‘To Reginald, on his 9th birthday, love as always, Mama xxx.’

  I imagine my great-grandmother sitting at a desk, composing the words of love, dipping a nib in an inkwell, making the marks on the paper, waiting for them to dry, wrapping the present in gift-paper and then tying a bow.

  I open the book to the page I have marked with a ribbon and begin to memorise the next Proverb.

  ‘How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? And the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?’

  ‘I won’t speak for the rest of you, but he’s driving me to distraction,’ says Great Aunt Margaret, who lives in the old coach-house across the lawn. ‘With his moods and tantrums, his fads and fancies. His crazy ideas. I heard him say the other day he wants to be a tiger. The boy should be seen to.’

  ‘Where do you think he gets it from?’ whispers Mother as she listens to her Aunt’s rantings, the dusk settling into the drawing-room like a tide.

  ‘I’ll swing for him one of these days,’ continues the Aunt, ‘I see that Father in him, those black moods, that mop of hair. You wait and see,’ she warns, looking with contempt at her seated niece, who averts her eyes. ‘He’ll turn out much the same and do much the same. Better off at sea, all of them. Men. Under the waves, fish nibbling at their eyelids.’

  Mother holds her hands in her lap, staring down at the thread and tapestry of the carpet. She says nothing. The Aunt takes up a seat in the large bay window looking out over the herb garden, waiting as expectantly for her tea as for her prediction to come true.

  ‘Where’s the tea?’ she booms. ‘I come over here to keep you company. You have n
othing to say, you have no opinion and there is nothing to eat or drink.’

  The folds of skin on her neck and chin wobble like a giant iguana.

  ‘I want cake,’ she roars, ‘tea and cake!’ And she claps her hands as loud as she can, as if she expects the door to open and a maid to magically appear, wheeling in a tea trolley laden with confectionary. Instead, Mother hands her a plate of cakes from the sideboard.

  Minutes later, her mouth full of chocolate éclair, fresh cream foaming from the corners of her lips, she glares across the room at her sister’s daughter.

  ‘He’s right that husband of yours, you’re useless, you’re no use to anyone. No wonder he goes off to sea at every chance. No wonder he does what he does when he comes back. No surprise the boy is turning crazy.’

  Then she falls silent, letting her eyes do the work, her fingers flicking through her rosary beads as if she were at the guillotine.

  ‘More tea, Aunt?’ says Mother.

  It is approaching winter and the room darkens, but neither moves from where they sit to light a candle.

  TWO

  OSCAR GETS A SURPRISE BIRTHDAY PRESENT

  ‘Every gift which is given, even though it be small, is in reality great, if it be given with affection.’ Pindar

  It is early in November and the town readies itself for the weather. Down by the quayside the fishermen join forces to patch up the harbour wall. They tell each other stories of perfect storms, waves to swallow cities and shoals of cod colouring the sea like snowfields.

  Father is a seafarer, a trawler-man. Sometimes when he is away at sea, sketching the line of Moby Dick under the surface of the Berring Sea, or fending off the marauding pirates in the Azores, I go down to the quayside to watch the ships being loaded, the seagulls swooping and screeching, the water lapping reassuringly against the seawall. Some days, I sit with the oldest fishermen as they mend their nets. I listen to their stories of press gangs and galleons. I am spellbound, clutching my knees, entranced by the tales. The sounds of the cudgel on unsuspecting flesh and the rhythmic beat of the drum as the oarsmen plough through the waves ring through my mind. Other times, more often alone, I imagine myself as the boy Christopher Columbus, watching the masts of the tall ships creeping over the horizon. I put aside disbelief and knowledge, clear my head, and take on the role of discovery. ‘Eureka,’ I shout, as the body of the ship follows the mast into view. ‘The world is round! Listen everyone, I’ve discovered the world is round!’