Sebastian

by Alan Field

  I nearly fainted away again with terror. Standing by the mayor was a giant of a man with a great fur hat, and a ginger beard cut off square at the end. He raised a large hand - nearly as big as me - to salute the crowd. The clapping died away.

  “I am pleased to be the guest of your mayor,” he said in a voice like thunder. “And I am most interested to see your baby Yeti - most interested.” He nodded in my direction as though he could actually see me.

  The circus started with the horses, of course, and followed with the trapeze act. Then Sandro went on in his joke motor car which gradually fell to pieces and finally exploded, and had everyone helpless with laughter - except the giant Alexander Gregorovitch Topolovsky. After that Vittorio tried to get Ludo to do some tricks but he kept snoozing and falling off his stool. The crowd jeered and he had to be wheeled off with Vittorio looking very cross.

  Then it was my turn. I tried to be brave, of course, but with my squeaker all tied up in knots and the stuffing going round and round in my head, it was difficult. Aldo played the longest drum-roll I’d ever heard, and Luigi and Sandro pulled me into the centre of the ring in the menagerie wagon.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” shouted Luigi. “Here is the most fantastic creature in the whole world. The only specimen to be seen by mortal eyes. The dreaded Yeti!” More a dreading Yeti at the moment, I thought. “This savage animal roams the frozen and desolate places of Northern India, and,” he added, with a sidelong glance at the Russian explorer, “the vast plains of Siberia. Few people have ever seen a Yeti and lived to tell the tale afterwards. Our honoured guest Alexander Gregorovitch Topolovsky is an exception, of course.” He bowed in the direction of the fur hat and ginger beard. “This specimen was caught by my brother, Vittorio Spaghetti, while he was crossing the Himalayas last year. Even though it was only a Yeti cub it was so ferocious that my brother had to shoot it. So look closely, ladies and gentlemen, at this priceless stuffed animal, the like of which you will never see again.”

  Just like a speech on television, I thought. Only it was going to be the last one I would ever listen to. I could see the giant getting to his feet already, rubbing his big hands together and looking straight at me as though he could read my thoughts.

  The crowd went very quiet and all I could hear was Sandro’s teeth chattering.

  “Yeti, eh. You say he’s a Yeti?”

  “B-baby Yeti,” corrected Sandro.

  Alexander Gregorovitch Topolovsky would have made a very good Yeti, I thought. Just a few more ginger whiskers and you wouldn’t have known who lived up there under that fur hat.

  “I am the greatest living authority on the Yeti,” said the explorer. “And I wish to examine your specimen.”

  He knelt down by the cage and took a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles from his pocket, and threaded them on. He’s bound to notice all the black powder, I thought, and waited while his glittering eyes bored through me.

  In a flash, before any of the brothers could do anything, he clicked the catch of the door and grabbed me in his great hand. My hour had come. No more cocoa at bedtime - no more travelling bear.

  “Fantastic!” he growled. “Extraordinary! The best specimen I have ever seen.” He started dusting all the black powder off me. “He’s rather dirty, of course, but otherwise perfect. Perfect.”

  The crowd cheered and Luigi and Sandro were frozen with astonishment. I couldn’t pinch myself like it says in books to see if you’re dreaming - but it was true. He had mistaken me for a real Yeti.

  “On behalf of the Ukranian Institute of Zoology,” boomed the giant. “I offer a thousand roubles for him. To have such a fine specimen in the museum at Kirovogorsk would be an honour. An honour, gentlemen.”

  Luigi and Sandro looked pleased and perplexed at the same time.

  “It would be an honour, of course, Alexander Gregorovitch,” said Luigi, “but you see we’re very - well - fond of him.”

  “Aha!” said Alexander Gregorovitch, “but in Kirovogorsk he would be the wonder of the scientific world. Millions would flock to see him. I would give lectures about him, he would even be photographed and appear in all the papers.” Luigi and Sandro nodded sadly.

  “It’s a duty you owe to the world,” went on Alexander Gregorovitch with a flourish of his big hands. “We would, of course, credit you with his discovery. He would be known henceforth as the Vittorio Spaghetti Yeti.”

  Nobody asked me my opinion. I don’t think I liked the idea much anyway. In Siberia it would be jolly cold. Toots used to say they sent you to Siberia when you were very naughty, and that there were wolves there.

  “All right, all right. For the benefit of the world, we let him go,” said Luigi. Sandro was wiping away a tear.

  “You send us a post card, eh?” said Sandro, patting me on the head. “You be a good little Yettino for Sandro.” He turned away to hide more tears.

  All the other brothers came out to pat me on the head. The giant looked on with amusement.

  When I was finally handed over, the crowd cheered and the mayor got up and made a speech saying that France and Russia would now be united and that one of Italy’s sons would be forever commemorated in the Ukranian Institute of Zoology.

  After the show, the giant put me in a wicker basket - the sort we used for picnics at home - and the brothers put in my jersey. Aldo had sewn on some of his gilt buttons as a souvenir, and Sandro put in the false nose so I would remember him.

  I set off on my new adventure, jogging up and down in the wicker basket, and listening to the giant’s footsteps crunching along the road.

  Chapter 8: Magic Bear

  I spent the night in the giant’s bedroom in the hotel in the town - still in my wicker basket - and the next morning we caught the train for Paris. I was put in with all the luggage and through the cracks I could see labels saying things like

  HANDLE WITH CARE

  And

  DO NOT DROP

  And

  THIS END UP

  I wondered what it said on mine.

  “Valuable zoological specimen, eh!” said a voice in reply. “Do not stand on head. Avoid throwing.” I should think not. “It belongs to the Russian explorer, Alexander Whatsisnamesky,” the voice went on, and I could see part of a moustache and a watery blue eye peering through the wickerwork. “It looks like a kind of rodent,” the voice concluded, and then blew its nose and shuffled off down the carriage.

  The train started off with a clang and soon we were rattling along on the way back to Paris. It was there that we had to catch the express to Plotyslaw, the giant had said, so that we could get another train to Russia.

  Travelling in the picnic hamper was not much fun. You might just as well have been a tomato sandwich or a jelly as a bear. I don’t suppose jellies ever thought of anything, so they didn’t get bored like me. I tried counting baby Yetis jumping over a fence but they didn’t seem to be very good at it, and I didn’t get to sleep till nearly a thousand of them had jumped over. Then it hardly seemed a minute when I was woken up again by the shuffling feet carrying me outside in the basket and putting me into a smelly old van. We bumped along through the Paris streets and I thought about Geraldine somewhere in all the crowds. If only she knew at this moment where I was. A police car passed us, hee-hawing away with its siren, and I half hoped it might be Sergeant Pigeau come to rescue me. But it died away into the distance.

  When we reached the other station the giant came to fetch me out of the van. I could recognise his rumbling voice.

  “Come, Comrade Yeti,” he said. “From now on you travel with me.”

  We sat in his compartment with a back-to-front notice on the window saying, ‘Reserved for Mr Topolovsky and the Members of the Ukranian Institute of Zoology!’ He put me on the seat opposite to him.

  “Soon we shall all be here,” he said, clasping his big han
ds together. “There will be Professor Leonid Levsky who is an expert on the woolly mammoth, Drosky our official poet, and Professor Ivan Ivanovitch who knows all about old fossils.”

  I remembered we used to have an old fossil at home. Amanda said he kept the sweet shop on the corner.

  “And also my colleague Pyotor Potsky, the second world expert on Yetis. He will bring his microscope and naturally will want to examine you more closely. Possibly he may dissect you.” I’d heard of insect, but ... “Cut you up to see what you’re made of, that is,” said the giant lighting up a cigar. “Of course we would sew you together again afterwards.”

  No, you wouldn’t, I thought, going all goose-fur. As soon as you found my squeaker ... Yetis were certain not to have squeakers - howlers or shriekers perhaps - but squeakers mark you out as a stuffed bear for certain. Once they found out they would just throw all the pieces through the window and that would be the end of me - spread between Paris and wherever we were going.

  “But Pyotor won’t join us until we get to Plotyslaw,” the giant went on, puffing smoke through his nose like a dragon. “Perhaps Drosky will write a poem about you in the meantime.”

  I must have dropped off to sleep because when I woke up, there in front of me was Drosky the poet, with gold-rimmed spectacles and untidy grey hair falling round his ears, reciting very seriously:

  Yetiski, Yetiski,

  Come from afar

  He’s going to Moscow

  To see the Tzar.

  “No, no, comrade,” said the giant. “To see the President.”

  “Doesn’t rhyme,” said Drosky, shaking his head. “You can’t say ‘Come from afar to see the President’.”

  “What about ‘Come from the Occident to see the President’?” suggested another man with a little white beard.

  The poet sighed and ruffled his hair and altered his poem. Then they all recited together:

  Yetiski, Yetiski,

  Come from the Occident

  He’s going to Moscow

  To see the President

  and finished helpless with laughter.

  Our journey was made up of Drosky thinking up all kinds of silly poems, everyone reciting them, and then all passing round bottles of water labelled ‘Vodka’ to drink. The giant offered me a sip but I didn’t like the look of it.

  The train went on and on, all through the night and through the next day, and I began to be afraid that we might get to the edge of the world where all the horrid things lived. But at last we arrived at Plotyslaw where we had to change trains. The giant popped me back in the hamper and the porter took me off on a little truck.

  I waited ages while various trains came in and out, and it was getting dark when finally I was wheeled away and put in another luggage van. The whistle blew and we were off again. I tried not to think about the professor and his microscope. How long would it be before they came for me? I wondered. Drosky would have to alter his poems because I wouldn’t be seeing the Tzar or the President.

  The train clattered on through the night and the next day. Nobody came to fetch me. It was a good thing stuffed bears didn’t need to eat, otherwise I should have been starving. Amanda used to be starving for her tea at four o’clock every day.

  At last we arrived. The train stopped. Off I went again, first on a truck, then in what seemed to be a taxi, then up a lot of dark, echoing stairs and finally dumped down on the floor. Nobody had said a word. Perhaps they had all got cross with each other and were not speaking any more.

  The lid creaked back and a face looked in - not a face I recognised. Perhaps it was Professor Pyotor come to dissect me.

  “Goodness me. Oh dear me,” said the face. “What are you doing in my props basket ? Where did you come from?”

  Where did he come from was a better question, I thought. Very agitated he seemed, and not a bit like a professor.

  “My act is ruined, ruined,” he said, wringing his bony hands together. “Such a journey too. All the way from Plotyslaw in a third class carriage, and no restaurant car. It’s really too much for someone of my talent. I mean, playing to all those Poles was the end, but what will the Parisians do to me with no white doves, pigeons or rabbits?”

  He paced up and down making tragic faces and waving his arms. “It was that big Russian fellow. He must have taken my props instead of you.” He read the label on the lid. “I suppose you must be valuable but you look just like a teddy bear to me.”

  He picked me up, brushed off the remaining dust and put on my jersey. “Well, you’re back in Paris now and you’ll have to help me with my act - I’m an illusionist, sort of magician you see. The Great Zingo - fantastic, fabulous, unbelievable feats of wizardry.” His eyes shone for a moment then clouded over. “Instead of my birds and rabbits,” he said, “it will have to be you. Still, I suppose it might be rather fun really.”

  Well, that was a relief! I hadn’t been very keen on going to Russia with all that snow and wolves, and being in a museum. I would have liked to see the giant’s face though when he opened the basket and all the illusionist’s birds flew out.

  “This is the Comedy Theatre of Montmartre,” said the Great Zingo, opening another case and getting out a top hat, lots of packs of cards and some coloured silk handkerchiefs. “We must do a rehearsal first before the eight o’clock performance.”

  Then from another box he took some sheets of cardboard shaped like faces with the features painted on. “My audience you see,” he said. “I must have somebody sitting in the front row when I rehearse.”

  We made our way down a steep, wooden staircase which led to the back of the stage. Everywhere was dusty and there were ropes hanging down, and trees and houses all made of cardboard. He pinned the faces to long sticks like lollipops and arranged them along the front row of seats.

  “Now my first trick will be an easy one, with the rings. Then I shall shake you out of some handkerchiefs, pull you out of a top hat and make you vanish in my vanishing cabinet - that is, if it’s arrived. Oh yes!” He pointed to a tall, wardrobe-looking thing at the back of the stage, all painted black. “Then for my finale I shall do sawing the bear in half! You needn’t be scared though,” he said, noticing my worried look. “It doesn’t really cut you in half. That is, it shouldn’t if the trick goes right.”

  He went through his routine and I discovered all sorts of places to hide, false bottoms in boxes and big pockets in his coat. Every now and then he would dash down to the seats to turn the cardboard faces back to front - one side they were laughing and on the other side looking astonished with their mouths open. “I usually have my laughter machine,” he said, “but nobody’s here to turn the handle.”

  We finished rehearsing and went off to get ready for the act. He put a little red cap with a tassle on my head.

  “It used to belong to a monkey,” he explained, “but it fits you nicely.”

  Down below I could hear the orchestra tuning up and the noise of everybody coming in. It reminded me of the circus and I wondered what Sandro was doing. The Great Zingo sat in front of his mirror, all surrounded by little lights like a fair, and trimmed his moustache and rubbed red powder on his cheeks to make them glow.

  We were the last to go on. “Top of the bill, you see,” he explained. It didn’t seem to make sense to me: I would have thought we were bottom.

  On the stage it was brilliant with lights and I could only just see the first few rows of seats and the rest faded into blackness.

  We did all the usual tricks, and then one called ‘passing the bear through a brick wall’. It was really made of wood with the bricks painted on but very hard all the same. The Great Zingo knocked it all over with his stick to show everyone it was solid. Then with a quick twist of his wrist threw me straight at it. ‘Squashed bear’, I thought, but a second later I was through the other side, and everybody was cl
apping. I never found out how it worked.

  Then we did ‘find the bear’ with three big cardboard tubes set up on a table. A man from the audience was invited to play the game. I sat on the table and the illusionist put one of the tubes over me, and then shuffled the tubes around at great speed. The man had to guess where I was, but he never managed it. This was because I was in a secret compartment at the top of the tube, of course.

  The vanishing cabinet was fun. Once you stood in it a little spring swivelled you round quick as a flash and there you were in the back of the cabinet, where it was dark and musty-smelling. Everybody clapped after each trick and the Great Zingo bowed low in his black cape.

  Our last act was ‘sawing the bear in half’. There were cries of Oooh! from the crowd when the magician produced a fearsome-looking saw, all silver with rows of sharp teeth. I could feel my squeaker rattling as he held me up high in the spotlight.

  “This brave bear ...” he started to say, when suddenly there was a piercing voice from out of the darkness.

  “My babee, my little bear! Stop! Murder!”

  The Great Zingo stood with his mouth open like one of his cardboard faces. It was Géraldine! There was a sound of running feet and she appeared at the foot of the stage, waving my telescope.

  “Give him back. Thief, coward!” she shouted. “Give back my little babee.”

  The Great Zingo recovered from his astonishment, and as Géraldine started to climb on to the stage, he popped me into his sawing-in-half box, picked it up and dashed off into the wings with Géraldine chasing him. All round the back of the stage we went, and out again; down into the orchestra pit, and up the gangway. The audience was cheering Géraldine on and I could hear the Great Zingo puffing and panting. Round the theatre we went and back down towards the stage. Just as we got near it, the false bottom came out of the box and me with it. I went rolling over and over and then it went dark. I had ended up right under the steps. In the distance I could hear Géraldine shouting at the Great Zingo and stamping her foot.