Whistling for the Elephants

by Sandi Toksvig

  ‘Get out of here.’

  ‘No really. Ha Ha Splendid Shepherd. He absolutely adored fighting. Used to plunge into the thick of the action with the cry, “Ha ha, splendid! Lots of fighting and lots of fun.” Anyway we were due to attack this particular bridge and we knew the bloody Jerry had called for reinforcements. So you know what he did?’

  ‘What?’ slurred Joey.

  ‘Sent them a telegram.

  ‘Who?’ Harry was having trouble following Father’s near-mute story.

  ‘The Germans. Ha Ha Shepherd sent the Germans a telegram pretending he was the German colonel, saying don’t worry about reinforcements, I’ve already taken the bridge. So they never came. It was brilliant. Fabulous chap. I remember his first officer was captured and he sent him a pair of wire cutters disguised as a ham bone.’

  Harry punched Father on the arm, the way men make friends. ‘You served in the war?’

  Father tried to stand and salute. ‘Certainly did. Royal Horseguards, Major Kane at your service.’

  ‘God damn.’ Harry beamed. ‘Corporal Shlick, sir.’

  The men went off into a World War Two reverie. Through the kitchen door I could see Rocco. He was still sporting my hat and was now lying in a pool of his own devising. He looked at me and chose that moment to emit an explosion of wind so astonishing that it almost lifted him off the parquet, and bounced the hat over one ear. The noise brought Uncle Eddie to the surface.

  ‘Dorothy, do you smell gas? We think we smell gas.’

  ‘I think it’s the dog,’ I replied.

  ‘The dog!’ The men fell about laughing and went back to poking the nether parts of the Schlick house. I stepped over the boards and went and looked at Rocco. By the time I got there he had stopped moving entirely. I knelt down and looked at him. Nothing moved. Not even wind. Under my dark blue cap’n’s hat, I was pretty sure he was dead.

  It struck me as tricky news. I looked at a small embroidery which advised me to Look on the Bright Side and wandered back to the kitchen.

  ‘Mr Schlick,’ I began. Father looked over a beer can at me. He was filthy.

  ‘Ah, my lovely daughter Dorothy,’ he slurred. ‘You know, in our family we only ever send the boys to school but with Dorothy it took ages to make up our minds.’ This remark was apparently hilarious. The men fell about, quite literally, with the result that Harry slipped down through the widest gap in the floorboards. He landed next to Joey, who had fallen asleep beside a pipe. Joey’s stomach rose and fell like a beached whale mindful of the Japanese hunting fleet. I looked down at Harry. I decided I didn’t care if I was rushing the plate.

  ‘Your dog’s dead,’ I said very clearly. The sober voice among drunks.

  He blinked at me. ‘What?’

  ‘Your dog. Rocco? He’s dead.’

  Harry looked at me for a moment and then dug his elbow into Joey. ‘Hey, Joey, wake up. My goddamn dog’s dead.’ Joey blinked back to life for a moment. His greased locks had fallen over his eyes and he couldn’t see real well. ‘My dog’s dead,’ repeated Harry.

  ‘I am a dog catcher. I am the dog catcher,’ replied Joey with what dignity remained. ‘If the dog is dead I do not need to catch it.’ His head fell back on his chest.

  ‘Stupid schmuck,’ said Harry, attempting to climb from beneath the floor. ‘This is so wrong,’ he muttered as Eddie and Father nodded but did nothing. ‘So wrong. I am the goddamn Mayor and I should not be lying next to a goddamn dog catcher who won’t catch the goddamn dog. Judith!’ he bellowed. In seconds she was at his side, followed by the other women. Even Mother had made it to her feet. Harry looked at his wife.

  ‘Judith, the goddamn dog has died and Joey won’t catch it. Tell him to catch it. You and he are so goddamn close, you tell him.’ It was perhaps not the best way to break the news. To put it mildly, Judith fell apart.

  ‘Don’t say that. You don’t mean it,’ she cried over and over and over. Mascara streamed down her face. Aunt Bonnie patted her on the back and lit a cigarette. Mother decided it was a good time to be helpful and fainted. Father, who had been having something close to a good time, was mortified. He tried to bring Mother round and then he tried to lift her. Meanwhile Harry was in the hall, shaking the clearly deceased Rocco. Sweetheart stood beside him just crying silently. It was mayhem. Father simply could not lift Mother and began to feel faint himself. Aunt Bonnie took him outside to cool off, which left Judith hysterical. Joey woke up and, not knowing what had happened, leaped to Judith’s defence.

  ‘What happened, what happened?’ he yelled. No one said anything so I said:

  ‘Judith is upset because Harry.

  That was as far as I got. Joey heard the words ‘Judith’, ‘upset’ and ‘Harry’, turned around and punched Harry. Judith screamed and for reasons I will never understand grabbed me and began crying on my shoulder. Everything was a little confused after that. In the end it was Uncle Eddie who carried Mother back across the road. Eddie was so strong, it was nothing to him. He salvaged her. We had to go out the back way as no one liked to move the dog. I think Sweetheart helped Mother to bed.

  I sat in the Schlicks’ sitting room with Judith, waiting for her to calm down. She sobbed for a long time but it dripped right off the plastic covers. When she calmed a little I tried to be helpful.

  ‘I loved that dog,’ she said. ‘He was my baby.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know how I’m going to say goodbye to him,’ she moaned.

  We had never stayed anywhere long enough to have a pet so I wasn’t sure either.

  ‘Maybe we could have a funeral,’ I suggested hesitantly. ‘So you could say goodbye. We had one for Father’s mum and Mother said it made her feel great.’

  ‘Oh, Dorothy, do you think we could? Would you help me?’ I didn’t know why she was asking me but I couldn’t think why not. I shrugged.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You must be such a comfort to your mother. If my Pearl was here she would have helped me.’ This notion set her off again. Then Harry came in with a steak on his eye and I decided it was time to go. Back at home I sat up waiting for Father. I guess he had been in the Schlicks’ yard all that time. When he finally came in he went straight to his papers in the dining room. I went to talk to him. I had a lot of questions. It had been a very different evening for everyone. Maybe it was a good time to talk.

  ‘Father?’ I started.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said, not looking up.

  ‘Why did Harry treat Judith like that?’ I asked.

  ‘Like what?’ His head snapped up. ‘Whatever he was doing it is none of our business.’

  ‘But he was hurting her at the barbecue and it wasn’t nice. I know everyone had had a lot to drink but…’ Father looked closely at me.

  ‘What’s happened to your accent?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I mumbled, trying to remember how to say the word ‘nothing’.

  ‘Well, keep it that way. While I am delighted you are having the full American experience I would appreciate it if you left some of the more unpleasant vowels at the front door.’ It was a very long sentence for him. He looked back at the table and carefully began to open a new letter from the British Library. I backed away and went out into the front yard. It was obviously not a good time to ask about funerals.

  It was still warm out and the cicadas were clicking away in the night air. The Pontiac gleamed in the moonlight. It was so powerful and sleek-looking. I didn’t think about it. I went inside and took the keys off the hail table. It was an automatic car. There was nothing to it. I sat on the very edge of the seat, peering over the steering wheel, slipped the car into R for reverse and pulled out into the street. I drove up to the Dapolitos’ and past them to the Yacht Club, turned around and went back down to the stop sign. I didn’t think about anything. Just drove round and round in circles. Travelling and not arriving.

  Chapter Six

  I have to be honest and say that I wasn’t that keen on Rocco when he was alive. He
was really too drippy for a pet. But now he was dead I felt bad. I kept thinking about Sweetheart crying and I wanted to do something to help. Anyway, the funeral had kind of been my idea so I went to the only place I could think of. I had often parked my bike against the window at Torchinsky’s Funeral Parlour on Main (Est. 1928) while I went to get a piece of pizza from Tony’s. Tony didn’t want bikes in front of his place because he liked to show off in the window, tossing dough in the air and making it land on the tray. Putting your bike in front of Torchinsky’s was okay. It wasn’t like Torchinsky’s had a big display which you could obscure. They couldn’t exactly do embalming or whatever to bring in the customers. The window was done in basic black with a large framed map of the cemeteries in the area marked with their religious denominations. It made it look as if they charged by distance of delivery.

  There was organ music playing when I entered but otherwise the place was as quiet as you would expect for the departed. I can’t say it was exactly cosy — but it was a place of embalming. In my great Chinese order embalmed things were second only to ‘Those Belonging to the Emperor’. The store had to be an important place. A leatherette sofa stood against one wall with framed photographs of floral tributes hanging all around. There was a large wooden table with several small boxes on it which Mrs Torchinsky was polishing. She looked up at me as I opened the door.

  ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘About what?’

  Mrs Torchinsky held up a miniature coffin complete with brass handles. ‘The new oak. I think it looks nice.’

  The coffin was maybe ten inches long and three inches wide. It was perfect but I couldn’t think what you would use it for.

  ‘It’s a little small,’ I said.

  Mrs Torchinsky laughed. ‘It’s only for display. Unless maybe you have a dead gerbil. You don’t have anything dead, I’m right?’

  ‘No, but I wanted to ask about a small, you know, box. It’s for a dog.’

  ‘For a dog?’ Mrs Torchinsky shook her head. ‘On this we should one day retire.

  The organ music stopped and a scratching sound started behind the curtain. The record had finished. From the next room I could hear rhythmic banging. Maybe someone was trying to get out of one of the oak coffins.

  ‘Builders,’ said Mrs Torchinsky. ‘Building a new chapel of rest. In our lifetime we should get some rest.’ She was a comfortable-looking woman but kind of pinched in at the waist. Her grey hair had been given the general direction of a bun but it had rebelled and hung in wisps all around her plump face. It wasn’t a bad thing. It sort of hid the hair which grew on her top lip. She had quite a moustache. I had to remember to ask Sweetheart if Mrs Torchinsky looked like the bearded lady she had talked about. I didn’t know how much beard a woman could have. Mother got little hairs on her chin. I knew that, even though she always put the tweezers away if I came in when she was using them. Mrs Torchinsky put down the baby coffin and moved a black cotton drape to put the record back on. From beside the record player she got her coat and hat.

  ‘Ralph!’ she called to the back of the store. ‘Ralph, I gotta go out and get cookies for the builders.’

  A surprisingly loud voice boomed from the back. ‘They want cookies they should build a bakery.’

  ‘You got customers.’ Mrs Torchinsky put on her coat. ‘For a dog.’

  ‘A dog I can do,’ yelled the voice. ‘A dog would be good. Bite the goddamn builders in the ass. Are you people never going to be finished?’

  The question was answered by more banging. Mrs Torchinsky buttoned her coat.

  ‘My husband will see to you.’ She turned to go, then turned back. ‘I’m sorry for your loss. May the dog rest in peace.’ It was very professional. She smiled, pleased with herself It was fascinating. It made her moustache spread sideways. She left. I waited for a moment until Ralph Torchinsky appeared. He looked like an undertaker. He was dressed like an undertaker. He just didn’t talk like one. But the surface picture was great. In his late fifties, he was kind of spooky-looking. He had a slight deformity on his back and you couldn’t tell if it was just a stoop or an actual hump. It pushed his bald head down, as if he spent all his time making sure clients stayed below in their graves. He wore fantastically thick spectacles with glass you could have cut from a whiskey tumbler. Maybe he couldn’t see into the graves at all. Maybe the stoop and the bad eyes had developed from years of trying to look sympathetic and efficient at the same time, or maybe he had always had it, I don’t know. He wore grey striped pants and a tailcoat with an old-fashioned wing—collar shirt. Over the top of his funereal outfit he had a white lab coat. I wished I hadn’t come. Maybe he was in the middle of cleaning up some dead person. I was sure I could detect the waft of something chemical about him. Anyway, he looked the part of a funeral man but the voice was bad casting. It was much too loud.

  ‘So you lost your dog?’ he bellowed. ‘What kind of dog was it?’

  ‘It wasn’t actually my…’

  ‘I hate this music,’ announced Mr Torchinsky loudly. ‘Why can’t we play anything else? Forty years I’ve been listening to goddamn organ music. In all those years I never figured out why people want you to be so goddamn quiet in funeral parlours. It’s not as though you could wake any of the clients. Band music. That would cheer people up. I love band music. Sousa. There was a man. Come.’

  He gestured to the curtained arch which led through to the back of the store. I had suddenly lost my nerve. Seeing a dog dead had been enough. I mean, it had actually been quite interesting but I didn’t want to graduate to the real thing. You know, people.

  ‘Mr Torchinsky… it’s not even my dog and the thing is…’

  ‘Come,’ he repeated and disappeared out back. I had too many English manners not to do as I was told. Through the cloth arch there was a corridor with several closed doors. Here the dead no doubt lurked, with fixed grins on their lips and formaldehyde up their noses. At the end of the corridor, double doors led into a large room where two workmen were sitting drinking root beer. There were bits of wood and sawdust everywhere.

  ‘Please God no one should die before you finish your goddamn soda,’ yelled Mr Torchinsky as we passed by and out a door at the back. The place wasn’t what I had expected. Behind the dark store there lay a large open lawn. Beyond it was a substantial glasshouse which stood like a relic of some Victorian era. Mr Torchinsky hurried over the lawn and opened the door. I was right behind him. Heat rose up and hit us as we entered. It was a remarkable place. Far removed from death, it was awash with life. To say that the place contained birds does not begin to do justice to the collection in the interior. It was a Santa’s grotto for the ornithologically inclined. There were birds everywhere. Birds of every shape, colour, size and flying ability. There were the bombing Biggles types and the quivering victim types. Mr Torchinsky stood surrounded by them. He took a small portion of something and put it on his tongue. A small bird came and sat on his finger and he fed it from his mouth. Now I could see what the white coat was for. A white coat made whiter by bird droppings.

  ‘See this, see this,’ called Mr Torchinsky. ‘A Hungarian thrush. I have done it, you know, I have done it,’ he said, spitting bird food in every direction in his excitement.

  Mr Torchinsky began a small dance. He jigged, singing to himself.

  ‘I’ve done it. I’ve done it. I will be the person to introduce into the United States every single bird that William Shakespeare ever mentioned. Look at my babies. There are robins, wagtails, skylarks, starlings, hedge sparrows, dunnocks, song-thrushes, missel-thrushes, blackbirds, redwings, my Hungarian thrush, nightingales, goldfinches, siskins, bullfinches, great tits, Dutch tits, dippers, corncrakes, parrot crossbills, house sparrows, cherry birds. Four thousand European songbirds. Think of that. My wife, she has no idea. Such a show I could make before I am too old.

  ‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold, When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang

  Upon those boughs which shake against the co
ld, Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.’

  A red bird landed on Mr Torchinsky’s bald head and slid off, making him laugh. ‘Aren’t they wonderful? Even in death there is life. Come, we deal with the dog. Such a sadness when a dog dies. Maybe you should think about birds.’

  We went and sat in Mr Torchinsky’s office. It looked like any other office except it had several urns on display and a 1968 calendar from the National Association of Morticians highlighting particularly busy times of year — after Christmas, Labour Day, that kind of thing. Framed on the wall was a picture of a large, square house. The one from the painting. I wasn’t sure how to explain about Rocco so I started with the picture.

  ‘Is that the Burroughs House?’ I asked.

  Torchinsky nodded. ‘The wrong business I went into. Boots, that was where the money was. The Burroughs they made a fortune out of boots and what did they spend it on? Orangutans and elephants. Boots wasn’t enough. John Junior he had to go into show business. That’s the old house. I went to work there when I was fifteen. I always liked it best. The new place was too fancy. That,’ he tapped the photograph, ‘that was a solid house. John Junior built that one to impress his father and you know what his father did?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Died just before it was finished, because life’s like that. John Senior, come all the way from Ireland. Made the most beautiful boots and had a daughter who never walked. Poor Phoebe. Ain’t life like that too? So then Billie comes along and John Junior he is crazy for her, bam, down comes the old house and up goes the new. Crazy time. I should never have listened to them. So many people were dying those years before the Crash. Everyone thought there was money but it was all falling apart. I was young. John Junior was always looking for an angle. He said to me, “A funeral parlour, now would be a good time for a funeral parlour. I’ll set you up.” I should have gone into boots. Factories making boots, then I would have made money. Or liquor. Booze was the big money. You heard of Prohibition?’