In Search of the Blue Tiger (5 page)

Over the next week I look at my scrapbook each evening, reading out facts and legends to the little dog who tugs at the tassels of my bedspread as we sprawl on the floor. In bed I tell Blue Monkey the story of the day. Most nights I dream of a tiger moving through an exotic landscape. I hear its soft paw prints on the hard ground and feel its fur brush against my eyelids as I sleep.

But I need to know what is in the slate-coloured book. What is the secret the adults want to keep from me?

The next day I return to the library.

A watery sun catches the few yellowing leaves left on the horse-chestnut trees fringing the main street. I wonder how the librarian will be. As I speed along on my bike, I imagine asking for the mysterious book.

‘That one's far too grown up for you, laddie,' she will scowl, and everyone in the library will turn to stare, huge books in their hands. ‘It's far too special and wise. Now run along next door and find a nice picture book.'

But I will stand my ground, hold her stare and say: ‘I saw Father smash Mother's face on the headboard of their bed in the backroom. The blood flew up the wall like the spray from a wave, frothy and red. It slid down the wallpaper like the receding tide on a sandy beach. I stood in the doorway and Father looked up, his back arched, shouting at me to leave the room, his hands holding Mother's hair as if it were the reins of a horse. I am old enough. I demand the book with the slate-grey cover.'

With these thoughts in my mind I prop my bike against the wall. I swagger through the large swing doors of the adult library like a cowboy and walk up to the desk. The lady librarian is seated there. She smiles. She is not as I imagined. Not what I had prepared myself for. But that is okay – I learned long ago that being an adult is hard: they can be sad and distant on the sunniest of days, and bright and breezy when a storm is brewing.

‘Excuse me, Miss, but I wondered if there were any more books on people and animals.' I hold open the scrapbook. ‘I've filled lots of pages, but I want to fill the whole thing.'

The library is empty of people. There are no piles of books in front of her. She seems to have time for me.

‘You seem to like serious books?' she asks, looking over the top of her glasses.

‘I think I do,' I say sheepishly. ‘But I do want to be a tiger and I've just got a new dog.'

‘What is your name?' she asks.

‘Oscar. Oscar Flowers.' I decide Oscar Flowers the First might be confusing.

‘Well, Oscar, what have you found most interesting in your reading so far?' she asks. Her eyes sparkle.

‘All of it really. The facts, the legends. Like how animals used to be able to speak to people and animals were wise, but when one tiger spoke the man tricked him and burnt him at the stake. That's why tigers have stripes – the burn marks.'

She is listening, but I don't think she quite understands. I try to explain.

‘Like Jesus and the marks on his hands and feet. When he was crucified. Well, the tiger was burnt at the stake and the rope made marks on his skin.'

I haven't thought very much about any of this before, but it seems to make a lot of sense, so I carry on.

‘Tigers make me feel they're from another place. Visiting. To see if they want to stay here. Like Jesus. But men treat them so badly. Killing them and crushing their bones and leaving their babies with no parents to look after them.'

‘So you've learned a lot,' she says, looking at me in a kind way. ‘You like legends, you say?'

I nod, I do.

‘Well, I've just read a nice one in a new book we bought for the library. I'll show it to you if you're interested.'

‘Is it about people and animals?' I ask.

‘Yes, in a way. People and nature. More nature than animals.'

She thinks for a minute and then goes on to tell me her story.

‘Well, the legend I read was about a country called Nepal – that's far from here, where it's warm and sunny. It tells how the mountains first came to that country. Once, all mountains had wings. They flew around the world as they pleased. But the God of Rain wanted to bring water to the Nepalese, so he cut the wings from the mountains. The mountains fell to earth, forming the huge mountain range we now call the Himalayas. The wings floated off into the sky and turned into clouds, which clung to the mountains. That is why, wherever you see mountains, there are clouds to bring rain to replenish the earth.'

She smiles at me again, warmly. Her face opens up and I see a friendliness in her eyes. I have never seen it before. Not before now. Not from where I come from.

‘I can tell you are a scholar,' she says, standing up. ‘I have so many young boys coming here, asking for books, who are far from serious. Now follow me, there is one more book I think might help you. Though as I said before, you can't take any books out, as you are a special visitor to the adult library.'

She turns to see me follow: ‘You can call me Mrs April.'

I sit at the same desk as before, watching her scanning the shelf where the slate-grey book was left. She is tall, thin as a stick. Her hair is held away from her face in a peach-coloured hairclip, shaped like an oyster. She wears a long chocolate-coloured skirt stretching to her calves. Around her neck she has a ring of beads like tiny apricots. This lady, reaching for a book, her long fingers covered in rings of white gold and caramel glass, looks so beautiful to me at this moment.

‘There you are,' she says, placing the small volume in front of me. ‘This will give you some more information for your project.'

I turn it over. It has a title that sets my heart racing:

Man meets animal in flesh and claw

The book is in two halves. The first is subtitled:

Man-Eaters: On Land and Sea.

Inside are fantastic pictures. One shows a polar bear dragging a man from his tent on the ice. Another has a huge eagle flying high above the mountaintops, a struggling baby tightly gripped in its talons. In another, an alligator seizes the leg of a man in its powerful jaws, blood and flesh dripping through the torn trouser-leg. Sharks and wolves, grizzly bears and lions, pythons and crocodiles. A world of immense danger.

My heart jumps to discover a whole chapter on tigers.

Out of the corner of my eye I can see Mrs April looking at me from her desk. She smiles and pulls a face of horror and alarm. I stifle a laugh, reassured. I open my scrapbook at a fresh page. In large block capitals, which later on I will colour in blood red, I write:

Man-eating tigers have killed over one million people in Asia during the last 400 years, about 2,500 per year. Here's a good example: during one year in Riau Province, Sumatra, thirty people were killed by tigers, compared with twenty-five deaths by murder. And tigers aren't murderers, they are only doing what is natural. Maybe they're getting their own back for that man who burnt the first tiger at the stake after the tiger trusted him so.

When I become a tiger, I will be a man-eater. Then I can eat the Father when he's a man. Or at night, when he's a wild pig, I can hunt him down and watch the fear grow in his eyes as I trap him in the forest.

One legend says anyone who identifies the whereabouts of the tiger will be the next victim. The ghost of the last victim of the man-eating tiger rides on its back and chooses the next, pointing out anyone who betrays the tiger's movements.

I draw a whole-page picture of a man in a purple cloak on the back of a tiger. The hooded figure points to the lighted room of a house in the village in the near distance. I am so engrossed in my reading and writing I barely hear the bell ring to signal the library is closing.

Mrs April taps me gently on the shoulder.

‘It is time to go, I am afraid,' she says. ‘Don't worry. I'll keep the book to one side, so you can use it any time.'

I look down at my picture. The man is pointing to someone. Trying to tell the tiger something. The house I have drawn reminds me of my house. There is a lit window. What is going on in there? What are the sounds I am straining to hear?

If animals eat people, do they become like them? If people eat animals, do they become like them? Like Jonah inside the whale. Is he a whale or still a person? Cannibals eat people to get their wisdom. Is that why the tiger eats men?

‘Come on then, Oscar. No more time today.' Mrs April is standing by the door. She has a coat over her arm and a bag in her hand. ‘Time to go home.'

‘But the second part of the book,' I say. ‘I never got to see what was in the second half of the book.'

‘There will always be another day, young Oscar,' she says with a smile. ‘Just be glad of that.'

The next day I dream a dream.

I have my scrapbook under my arm. I look at the cover. The figurehead on the Cutty Sark is a Bengal Tiger. The book feels much thicker and heavier than I remember it to be. I am walking in a jungle and come to a clearing. There in front of me on a rough path is a tiger. I sense it is on patrol, marking its territory. I feel no fear as it turns its head towards me. The colour and texture of its fur is like marmalade. Its presence grips me in a spell. I hold up my book and try to speak, but no words come from my mouth. The tiger just looks on, keeping me in its sights.

When I wake up, the dream wet on my tongue, I get my scrapbook down from the shelf and open to the next blank page. This is what I write.

I must learn everything about tigers, so that when I become one I will know how to be and what to do and when to do it. I will collect a new tiger fact every day and write it down here. If I don't understand it exactly, that will be OK as it will make sense when I get older. I have found one book in the school library on tigers. I will search in the cellar for more. My tiger fact collection will be my manual for being a tiger, like the one I got to make a crystal radio (but better, because that didn't work no matter how hard I tried and anyway the Father threw it in the bin in a mood – the manual, not the radio, that's still in lots of bits in the box). He always gets angry when he can't do things. Like when we played cards once and he couldn't follow the rules, so he kicked the table in the air (clubs and hearts, diamonds and spades flying across the kitchen). We don't play card games anymore and no one makes anything.

Even though men have done their best to kill all tigers, there are still more different types alive than there are extinct.

Scientific names of tiger (Panthera tigris)
Remaining sub-species:
Bengal: Panthera tigris tigris
Siberian: Panthera tigris altaica
South-Chinese: Panthera tigris amoyenis
Sumatran: Panthera tigris sumatrae
Indo-Chinese: Panthera tigris corbetti

Extinct sub-species:
Caspian: Panthera tigris virgata
Javan: Panthera tigris sondaica
Balinese: Panthera tigris balica

‘The joys of meeting pay the pangs of absence; else who could bear it?'Rowe

A Thursday in the park, walking my plum-coloured dog. The sun is bright and warm for this time of year. One of those fantastic crisp days lighting up the sky, before winter finally snuffles it out. Somewhere over by the lake I hear music. The sun is low, so I shield my eyes. The light is reflected off the brass instruments of the Salvation Army playing in the bandstand. They are playing a jaunty tune to a group of children. Recognising the melody, I sing along.

‘The animals went in two by two, hurrah, hurrah.
The animals went in two by two, hurrah, hurrah.
The animals went in two by two, the tiger and the kangaroo …'

My dog barks in appreciation. Then he barks a different bark, as if something strange has caught his attention. It's then I spot the Fishcutter Twins on the edge of the crowd by the bandstand. They wear identical navy blue overcoats and bottle-green berets. Although they are a distance away, I sense they are watching me. I want to go towards them. I want to ask them about names and animals and Jehovah. I tug on my dog's lead to pull him in their direction, but he refuses to move. Then I see another figure walking on the pathway between us. With a gasp, I realise it is her.

Under her jacket she wears a white blouse with an emerald green lizard across her bosom. I see the lizard; then I look at the ground. She is here. Away from the library. Walking outside in the park. Walking, not sitting or shelving. I am to meet her away from the safety and haven of the library. She holds a cream canvas parasol in a gloved hand. The lace trim of the glove against her wrist.

She gets closer. I stare at my dog. His tongue hangs from the side of his mouth like a slice of honeyed ham. I feel my face flush and redden.

‘Oscar, how nice to see you,' she says with a smile. ‘And what a lovely little dog.' She bends to stroke my dog's head. ‘He is such a wonderful colour. He's almost mauve.'