Jamrach's Menagerie Read Online Free Page A

head of the giraffe, immense, coming down at me from the sky to wet me with the heat of its flexing nostrils. I grew light of mind from the gorgeous stench. A wilderness steamed in the air al about me. And then I saw my tiger in his cage, with a lion on one side and some dog things on the other. The lion was a majestic and dreadful cat with the stern, sad face of a scholar and wild bil owing hair. He looked me in the eye for a whole moment before turning away in total indifference. A thick, pink tongue licked out, carressing his nostrils. The hair stood up on the backs of the dog things. My tiger paced, rippling, thick tail striking the air. Little black fishes swam on his back.
    Scimitars, blades, dashes, black on gold, black on white.
    Heavy-headed, lower jaw hanging slack, backwards and forwards, steady:
    three paces and a half – turn—
    three paces and a half – turn—
    three paces and a half—
    ‘See!’ said Jamrach. ‘This is the bad boy. He knows he’s been a bad boy, he is shamed, see.’
    ‘Has he got a name?’
    ‘Not yet. He hasn’t found his buyer yet.’
    ‘Who buys a tiger?’ I asked.
    ‘Zoos,’ Tim said.
    ‘London Zoo,’ I said. I’d never been there.
    Tim and Jamrach laughed as if I’d said something funny.
    ‘Not just zoos,’ Jamrach said, ‘people who col ect.’
    ‘How much for my tiger?’ I asked.
    ‘He is a ful -grown Bengal tiger,’ Mr Jamrach said. ‘Two hundred pounds at least.’
    Tim babbled: ‘Two hundred for a tiger, three hundred an elephant, seventy for a lion. You can pay three hundred for some lions though. Get the right one. An orang-utan, now that’s three twenty.’
    We went up a ladder to a place where there was a beast like a pie, a great lizard mad and grinning, and monkeys, many monkeys, a stew of human nature, a bone pile of it, a wal , a dream of smal faces. Baby things. No, ancient, impossibly old things. But they were beyond old and young.
    The babies clung fast beneath sheltering bel ies. The mothers, stoic above, endured.
    ‘And here …’ Jamrach, with some showmanship, whipped the lid off a low round basket. Snakes, thick, green and brown, muscled, lay faintly flexing upon one another like ropes coiled high on the quay. ‘Snappy things, these,’
    Jamrach said, putting back the lid and tying a rope round it.
    We passed by a huge cat with pointed ears and eyes like jewels that miaowed like a kitten at us. Furry things ran here and there about our feet, pretty things I never could have imagined. He said they came from Peru, whatever far place that was. And right at the end in the darkest place, sitting down with his knuckles turned in, was an ape who looked at me with eyes like a man’s.
    That was al I ever wanted. To stay among the animals for ever and ever and look into their eyes whenever I felt like it.
    So when, back in the smoky office with the pale clerk Bulter lol ing behind his desk once more drinking cocoa, Mr Jamrach offered me a job, I could only cry, ‘Oh yes!’ like a fool and make everybody laugh.
    ‘Very smal , isn’t he?’ Tim Linver said. ‘You sure he’s up to it, Mr Jamrach?’
    ‘Wel , Jaffy?’ Mr Jamrach asked jovial y. ‘ Are you up to it?’
    ‘I am,’ I said. ‘I work hard. You don’t know yet.’
    And I could. We’d be fine now, Ma and me. She was on shifts at the sugar bakers, the place with the big chimney, and I was starting as pot boy at the Spoony Sailor that very night. With al that and this new job, we could pay our rent up front.
    Tim came over and bumped me roughly with his shoulder.
    ‘Know what that means, Lascar?’ he said. ‘Clearing up dung in the yard.’
    Wel , no one could be better suited for that than me, and I told them so, and that made them laugh even more. Mr Jamrach, sitting sideways at his desk, leaned over and folded back the white paper cover from a box next to his feet. Very careful y and with the utmost respect, he lifted out a snake, one greater than al the others I’d yet