Jamrach's Menagerie Read Online Free

.
    ‘Here he is, Mr Jamrach. He’s had his creamy doodah.’
    I fol owed him in. The great, red-faced Jamrach came down through the murk with a smile and cried: ‘Ha! Jaffy Brown!’ He punched me gently on the shoulder. ‘Did you have a good supper last night?’ He bent down with his face so close I could count the red veins in the whites of his eyes.
    The air was heavy, lush and rotting, fil ed with traces of bowels and blood and piss and hair, and something overal I could not name, which I suppose was wildness.
    ‘Mutton stew,’ I said. ‘It was lovely.’
    ‘Excel ent!’
    Mr Jamrach stood up and rubbed his palms together. He wore a business suit that made him look stout, and his hair was parted in the middle and slicked down with oil.
    ‘Bulter,’ he said to a pale young man scowling and picking his nails behind a very untidy desk, ‘get Charlie out.’
    Bulter stood, long and thin, flounced round the desk and stopped before a large cage. A wonderful, outrageous bird perched attentively, watching the dim room as if it was the most wonderful show. The bird was al colours, and its beak was bigger than its body.
    ‘Come out, Charlie, you stupid bird,’ Bulter said, lifting the latch.
    Charlie danced with delight. Didn’t he crawl as gentle as a sleepy kitten into Bulter’s arms and nestle up against his breast with that hard monster beak and the downturned head bashful? Bulter stroked the black feathers on top of the bird’s head. ‘Daft he is,’ he said, turned and placed Charlie in my arms. Charlie raised his head and looked into my face.
    ‘He’s a toucan,’ Tim said.
    ‘Got the touch, you have,’ Bulter said to me. ‘He likes you.’
    ‘Likes everyone,’ Tim said.
    Charlie was a sane and wil ing bird. So was Flo, the parrot in the lobby. The birds that came after were not.
    Mr Jamrach led me through the lobby and into the menagerie. The first room was a parrot room, a fearsome screaming place of mad round eyes, crimson breasts that beat against bars, wings that flapped against their neighbours, blood red, royal blue, gypsy yel ow, grass green.
    The birds were crammed along perches. Macaws hung upside down here and there, batting their white eyes, and smal green parrots flittered above our heads in drifts. A host of cockatoos looked down from on high over the shril madness, high crested, creamy breasted. The screeching was like laughter in hel .
    ‘This is how they like it,’ Jamrach said.
    My eyes watered. My ears hurt.
    ‘They flock.’
    ‘They’re crying out for parrots,’ Tim Linver said sagely, bobbing alongside with a loose and cocky gait.
    ‘Who is?’
    ‘People is.’
    I turned my head. Smal ones, pretty things, blue, red, green, yel ow, in rows behind the wire, good as gold and quiet.
    ‘My parakeets,’ said Jamrach. ‘Lovely birds.’
    ‘In and out in no time, this lot.’ Tim rocked back on his heels, speaking like a man, as if the entire operation belonged to him.
    The second room was quieter. Hundreds of birds, like sparrows but done out in al the colours of the rainbow, in long boxes. A wal of bluebirds, breasts the colour of rose sherbet. The air, fluty with song, like early morning.
    ‘Six shil ings a pair,’ Tim said.
    The third and last bird room was completely silent. Al the way up to the ceiling, tiny wooden cages piled on top of one another, in each one a bird just the right size to fil the space, al of them mute and stil . More than anything I’d seen, this room bothered me. I wondered if Mr Jamrach would let me have one. I could tame it and it would fly free in our room and sing.
    Out into the dazzling yard. Bulter from the office was there with another man, sweeping up outside a pen. A camel chewed behind the bars. A camel has to chew like it has to breathe. I know that now. Then, I might as wel have stepped into a picture book. The animals were the stuff of fairy tales, the black bear with the white bib, the sideways-looking eye of the baby elephant, the