by Ruskin Bond
II
After a week the show shifted and Pompoon accompanied it. Mrs Kavanagh, who looked after the birds, was, a little fortunately for him, kicked in the stomach by a mule and had to be left at an infirmary. Pompoon, who seemed to understand birds, took charge of the parakeets, love birds, and other highly coloured fowl, including the quetzal with green mossy head, pink breast, and flowing tails, and the primrose-breasted toucans, with bills like a butcher’s cleaver.
The show was always moving on and moving on. Putting it up and taking it down was a more entertaining affair than the exhibition itself With Jimmy Fascota in charge, and the young man of the frock coat in an ecstasy of labour, half-clothed husky men swarmed up the rigged frameworks, dismantling poles, planks, floors, ropes, roofs, staging, tearing at bolts and bars, walking at dizzying altitudes on narrow boards, swearing at their mates, staggering under vast burdens, sweating till they looked like seals, packing and disposing incredibly of it all, furling the flags, rolling up the filthy awnings, then Right O! for a market town twenty miles away.
In the autumn the show would be due at a great gala town in the north, the supreme opportunity of the year, and by that time Mr Woolf expected to have a startling headline about a new tiger act and the intrepid tamer. But somehow Pedersen could make no progress at all with this. Week after week went by, and the longer he left that initial entry into the cage of the tiger, notwithstanding the comforting support of firearms, and hot irons, the more remote appeared the possibility of its capitulation. The tiger’s hatred did not manifest itself in roars and gnashing of teeth, but by its rigid implacable pose and a slight flexion of its protruded claws. It seemed as if endowed with an imagination of blood-lust, Pedersen being the deepest conceivable excitation of this. Week after week went by and the show people became aware that Pedersen, their Pedersen, the unrivalled, the dauntless tamer, had met his match. They were proud of the beast. Some said it was Yak’s bald crown that the tiger disliked, but Marie swore it was his moustache, a really remarkable piece of hirsute furniture, that he would not have parted with for a pound of gold—so he said. But whatever it was—crown, moustache, or the whole conglomerate Pedersen—the tiger remarkably loathed it and displayed his loathing, while the unfortunate tamer had no more success with it than he had ever had with Marie the Cossack, though there was at least a good humour in her treatment of him which was horribly absent from the attitude of the beast. For a long time Pedersen blamed the hunchback for it all. He tried to elicit from him by gesticulations in front of the cage the secret of the creature’s enmity, but the barriers to their intercourse were too great to be overcome, and to all Pedersen’s illustrative frenzies Pompoon would only shake his sad head and roll his great eyes until the Dane would cuff him away with a curse of disgust and turn to find the eyes of the tiger, the dusky, smooth-skinned tiger with bitter bars of ebony, fixed upon him with tenfold malignity. How he longed in his raging impotence to transfix the thing with a sharp spear through the cage’s gilded bars, or to bore a hole into its vitals with a red-hot iron! All the traditional treatment in such cases, combined first with starvation and then with rich feeding, proved unavailing. Pedersen always had the front flap of the cage left down at night so that he might, as he thought, establish some kind of working arrangement between them by the force of propinquity. He tried to sleep on a bench just outside the cage, but the horror of the beast so penetrated him that he had to turn his back upon it. Even then the intense enmity pierced the back of his brain and forced him to seek a bench elsewhere out of range of the tiger’s vision.
Meanwhile, the derision of Marie was not concealed—it was even blatant—and to the old contest of love between herself and the Dane was now added a new contest of personal courage, for it had come to be assumed, in some undeclarable fashion, that if Yak Pedersen could not tame that tiger, then Marie the Cossack would. As this situation crystallised daily, the passion of Pedersen changed to jealousy and hatred. He began to regard the smiling Marie in much the same way as the tiger regarded him.
‘The hell-devil! May some lightning scorch her like a toasted fish!’
But in a short while this mood was displaced by one of anxiety; he became even abject. Then, strangely enough, Marie’s feelings underwent some modification. She was proud of the chance to subdue and defeat him, but it might be at a great price—too great a price for her. Addressing herself in turn to the dim understanding of Pompoon, she had come to perceive that he believed the tiger to be not merely quite untamable, but full of mysterious dangers. She could not triumph over the Dane unless she ran the risk he feared to run. The risk was colossal then, and with her realisation of this some pity for Yak began to exercise itself in her; after all, were they not in the same boat? But the more she sympathised the more she jeered. The thing had to be done somehow.
Meanwhile Barnabe Woolf wants that headline for the big autumn show, and a failure will mean a nasty interview with that gentleman. It may end by Barnabe kicking Yak Pedersen out of the wild beast show. Not that Mr Woolf is so gross as to suggest that. He senses the difficulty, although his manager in his pride will not confess to any. Mr Woolf declares that his tiger is a new tiger; Yak must watch out for him, be careful. He talks as if it were just a question of giving the cage a coat of whitewash. He never hints at contingencies; but still, there is his new untamed tiger, and there is Mr Yak Pedersen, his wild beast tamer—at present.
III
One day the menagerie did not open. It had finished an engagement, and Jimmy Fascota had gone off to another town to arrange the new pitch. The show folk made holiday about the camp, or flocked into the town for marketing or carousals. Mrs Fascota was alone in her caravan, clothed in her jauntiest attire. She was preparing to go into the town when Pedersen suddenly came silently in and sat down.
‘Marie,’ he said, after a few moments, ‘I give up that tiger. To me he has given a spell. It is like a mesmerise.’ He dropped his hands upon his knees in complete humiliation. Marie did not speak, so he asked: ‘What you think?’
She shrugged her shoulders, and put her brown arms akimbo. She was a grand figure so, in a cloak of black satin and a huge hat trimmed with crimson feathers.
‘If you can’t trust him,’ she said, ‘who can?’
‘It is myself I am not to trust. Shameful! But that tiger will do me, yes, so I will not conquer him. It’s bad, very, very bad, is it not so? Shameful, but I will not do it!’ he declared excitedly.
‘What’s Barnabe say?’
‘I do not care. Mr Woolf can think what he can think! Damn Woolf! But for what I do think of my own self.... Ah!’ He paused for a moment, dejected beyond speech. ‘Yes, miserable it is, in my own heart very shameful, Marie. And what you think of me, yes, that too!’
There was a note in his voice that almost confounded her—why, the man was going to cry! In a moment she was all melting compassion and bravado.
‘You leave the devil to me, Yak. What’s come over you, man? God love us, I’ll tiger him!’
But the Dane had gone as far as he could go. He could admit his defeat, but he could not welcome her all too ready amplification of it.
‘Na, na, you are good for him, Marie, but you beware. He is not a tiger; he is beyond everything, foul—he has got a foul heart and a thousand demons in it. I would not bear to see you touch him; no, no, I would not bear it!’
‘Wait till I come back this afternoon—you wait!’ cried Marie, lifting her clenched fist. ‘So help me I’ll tiger him, you’ll see!’
Pedersen suddenly awoke to her amazing attraction. He seized her in his arms. ‘Na, na, Marie! God above! I will not have it.’
‘Aw, shut up!’ she commanded impatiently, and pushing him from her she sprang down the steps and proceeded to the town alone.
She did not return in the afternoon; she did not return in the evening. She was not there when the camp closed up for the night. Sophy, alone, was quite unconcerned. Pompoon sat outside the caravan, while the flame of the last
lamp was perishing weakly above his head. He now wore a coat of shag-coloured velvet. He was old and looked very wise, often shaking his head, not wearily, but as if in doubt. The flute lay glittering upon his knees and he was wiping his lips with a green silk handkerchief when barefoot Sophy, in her red petticoat, crept behind him, unhooked the lamp, and left him in darkness. Then he departed to an old tent the Fascotas had found for him.
When the mother returned the camp was asleep in its darkness and she was very drunk. Yak Pedersen had got her. He carried her into the arena, and bolted and barred the door.
IV
Marie Fascota awoke the next morning in broad daylight; through chinks and rents in the canvas roof of the arena the brightness was beautiful to behold. She could hear a few early risers bawling outside, while all around her the caged beasts and birds were squeaking, whistling, growling, and snarling. She was lying beside the Dane on a great bundle of straw. He was already awake when she became aware of him, watching her with amused eyes.
‘Yak Pedersen! Was I drunk?’ Marie asked dazedly in low, husky tones, sitting up. ‘What’s this Yak Pedersen? Was I drunk? Have I been here all night?’
He lay with his hands behind his head, smiling in the dissolute ugliness of his abrupt yellow skull so incongruously bald, his moustache so profuse, his nostrils and ears teeming with hairs.
‘Can’t you speak?’ cried the wretched woman. ‘What game do you call this? Where’s my Sophy, and my Jimmy—is he back?’
Again he did not answer; he stretched out a hand to caress her. Unguarded as he was, Marie smashed down both her fists full upon his face. He lunged back blindly at her, and they both struggled to their feet, his fingers clawing in her thick strands of hair as she struck at him in frenzy. Down rolled the mass, and he seized it; it was her weakness, and she screamed. Marie was a rare woman—a match for most men—but the capture of her hair gave her utterly into his powerful hands. Uttering a torrent of filthy oaths, Pedersen pulled the yelling woman backwards to him and, grasping her neck with both hands, gave a murderous wrench and flung her to the ground. As she fell Marie’s hands clutched a small cage of fortune telling birds. She hurled this at the man, but it missed him; the cage burst against a pillar and the birds scattered in the air.
‘Marie! Marie!’ shouted Yak, ‘listen! listen!’
Remorsefully he flung himself before the raging woman, who swept at him with an axe, her hair streaming, her eyes blazing with the fire of a thousand angers.
‘Drunk, was I!’ she screamed at him. ‘That’s how ye got me, Yak Pedersen? Drunk, was I?’
He warded the blow with his arm, but the shock and pain of it was so great that his own rage burst out again, and leaping at the woman he struck her a horrible blow across the eyes. She sank of her knees and huddled there without a sound, holding her hands to her bleeding face, her loose hair covering it like a net. At the pitiful sight the Dane’s grief conquered him again, and bending over her imploringly he said: ‘Marie, my love, Marie! Listen! It is not true! Swear me to God, good woman, it is not true, it is not possible! Swear me to God!’ he raged distractedly. ‘Swear me to God!’ Suddenly he stopped and gasped. They were in front of the tiger’s cage, and Pedersen was as if transfixed by that fearful gaze. The beast stood with hatred concentrated in every bristling hair upon its hide, and in its eyes a malignity that was almost incandescent. Still as a stone, Marie observed this, and began to creep away from the Dane, stealthily, stealthily. On a sudden, with incredible agility, she sprang up the steps of the tiger’s cage, tore the pin from the catch, flung open the door, and, yelling in madness, leapt in. As she did so, the cage emptied. In one moment she saw Pedersen grovelling on his knees, stupid, and the next...
All the hidden beasts, stirred by instinctive knowledge of the tragedy, roared and raged. Marie’s eyes and mind were opened to its horror. She plugged her fingers into her ears; screamed; but her voice was a mere wafer of sound in that pandemonium. She heard vast crashes of some one smashing in the small door of the arena, and then swooned upon the floor of the cage.
The bolts were torn from their sockets at last, the slip door swung back, and in the opening appeared Pompoon, alone, old Pompoon with a flaming lamp and an iron spear. As he stepped forward into the gloom he saw the tiger, dragging something in its mouth, leap back into its cage.
The tale on which the following story is founded is legendary, and may or may not be true. It is, however, acknowledged that Thomas Otway, the poet, died in extreme poverty. Cibber’s Lives of the Poets (1753) gives currency to this story of his death, and Dr Johnson quotes it in his Life of Otway, adding, ‘I hope it is not true.’ Otway was born in 1652 and died in 1685. His fame today rests on his tragic masterpiece, Venice Preserved.
HUNGER
BY PHILIP LINDSAY
On Tower Hill, not very far from the execution block, the dirty old sign of the Bull creaked in the slight wind. It was a faded, dusty bull, a bull with goitre and rickets, a bull that had monstrously pathetic eyes and the most twisted of horns, as queer-looking a beast as any to be found between the pages of Mandeville. It flapped above an ancient door that had great hinges on it, although any passer-by might well have wondered what treasure could lie in such a house for it to be guarded so securely; but the great hinges and the long black bolts inside were not nailed there to keep out thieves, but rather to keep out honest bailiffs and the watch.
The Bull was not the sign of a public-house—although liquor could be bought inside cheaply enough—it was the sign of what was known as a ‘sponging-house’. No gay sponging-house this, such as men were beguiled into down towards the Strand, where the bold-painted Cyprians ogled from dark doorways and from narrow, curtained windows. This was a filthy, aged house, a dirty thieves’ house that revolted one by the grime on its walls and its scabby paintwork.
On the top floor—it had two storeys and an attic—lay a poet, a once-famous poet, Master Thomas Otway, whose plays had drawn crowds as vast as Dryden ever drew, whose tragedies had made all fashionable London weep, whose riotous lewd comedies had drawn the women for the first night and made them come a second time with vizards strapped over their faces to hide their blushing. He lay now in the attic of the Bull, in a room so tiny that he might already have been coffined. And dead indeed he looked, his once handsome, pudgy features sharp and greenish with starvation, his collar-bones almost poking through the skin, his eyes seeming enormous in their violet hollows, his uncut hair straggling to his shoulders—for he had long since pawned his wig.
Thomas Otway, poet and dramatist, soldier and drunkard, fool and lover, genius and simpleton; poor Thomas Otway, who had known the envy and applause of hundreds, lay starving under the low attic roof, his eyes gazing blindly upwards.
It was 14 April 1685, Tuesday in Holy Week.
He had forgotten when last he ate; he had forgotten the very taste of food and of wine. He felt that he was dying, but that did not trouble him, for he suffered no pain. For all he felt, he might have been dead already; and dead one would have thought him as he lay under the verminous sheets, except that feeble tremors ran along his fleshless shanks; and now and then he would move his thin lips soundlessly, and his swollen tongue, dry and aching, would rove from corner to corner, tickled by the whiskers on his unshaven chin and upper lip.
All the torments of starvation were finished now, after racking his belly as if with hot coals. He lay at rest unable to weep, unable almost to think. And lying thus, his mind wandered at its own will, brought suddenly pictures before him, shouted old words into his ears, pushed him from memoried scene to scene. Like a bored man at the theatre he lay back, tired and bemused, watching the antics of his past rush by him as if it was all somebody else’s life....
The crowded playhouse, and his first play, Alcibiades. His first attempt at acting while he was still an undergraduate at Oxford; Mrs Aphra Behn, most kind and motherly of lovers. Mrs Aphra Behn had given him a part in a play of hers. What play could it have been? He had been
the king, that he remembered; but when he had come to speak his part, the spittle had turned hard in his throat, and he had been able only to grunt and gape at the jeering pit that sloped up to the row of boxes holding the lovely painted women.
‘How shall I now divide my gratitude
Between a son and one that has obliged me
Beyond the common duty of a subject?....’
That was what he should have said. He had to open the play after the prologue was spoken, but he found he could say nothing. He could only gape and stutter.What intense misery that had been! Kind Mrs Aphra Behn! She had forgiven him; she would forgive anybody anything. The kindest of women.
Not like Betty Barry.
As his mind flung the picture of Elizabeth Barry before him, his thin lips twitched and the eyelids slowly covered his staring eyes. She was the only thing in all the world that could hurt him now. And yet she was not beautiful. ‘Slattern Betty Barry.’ Who had called her that? It was not true. Cold and wicked she was, and not very beautiful, but she was no slattern. Strange how so great an actress, so passionate and lovable a creature on the stage, should be so icy and brutal in her private chamber!
