Tigerheart

  He did not understand why she had left or where she had gone. All he knew was that there was a great deal of tumult late one evening, and the next morning, her bassinet was empty. His mother spent a full week sitting in a rocking chair in the nursery, staring at the empty bed, saying not a word, while his father stood somberly by and occasionally rested a hand upon her shoulder.

  They did not speak to Paul much about the matter except to say that Bonnie would not be with them anymore. Paul, being a wise young fellow, considered the matter and asked if Bonnie had fallen out of her pram and been taken away to the Anyplace by The Boy, making a rare exception and adding a girl to the ranks of the Vagabonds.

  Paul’s father said gently, “Something like that,” and his eyes were a bit wet.

  But Paul’s mother’s eyes were not wet at all. They were hard as steel, hard as the metal of a blade, and her voice as cutting, and she said, “You are not to fill his head with such nonsense anymore. He must learn to accept the world for what it is, with all its unfairness and cruelty. You have treated him like a child and left him ill prepared to deal with reality, and I insist you stop at once.”

  Paul had never heard his mother speak in such a way. It was as if she had been transformed overnight. Paul knew and understood about changes. Knew that at some point, child turns nearly overnight into adult through some mysterious event, the nature of which no one could quite explain to him. He had never, though, considered the possibility of adults likewise undergoing a change and transforming into something as different from adult as adult was from child. That, however, was what happened to Paul’s mother; and whatever it was that she had become, it left her like the mother he’d known in name and visage only. It was as if someone else had set up housekeeping within her. His mother was a mere shade of herself.

  Paul, she simply treated indifferently. She would speak words of love on rare occasion, but they were distant and halfhearted. Paul’s father appeared even more bewildered by the metamorphosis, and she seemed angry with him day and night. Paul could not conceive what his father might have done, and Bonnie herself was hardly in a position to shed any light on the subject, what with being restricted to sitting out on a branch and not entering Paul’s room.

  His parents knew nothing about Bonnie’s return or her new place of residence, for she cautioned Paul repeatedly that it would be best if he said nothing at all. Nevertheless, it finally slipped out one night when he heard his parents speaking very, very loudly, in such harsh tones that they were almost unrecognizable as themselves. He heard his father say something about it not being his fault, and his mother said she knew it wasn’t; and he claimed that he was being treated as if it was, and she claimed he was wrong and being unfair to her and being insensitive; and for that matter she had been concerned that the baby looked off somehow and she had wanted to call the doctor but he had said no, she was imagining it, and if only he had listened; and then he replied that, see, there she was blaming it on him, and on and on until Paul could stand it no longer.

  He thudded on their bedroom door, standing there in his newly laundered pajamas with the feet on the bottom because he was always losing his slippers and the bare wood floors could be quite cold these winter days. Patrick Dear threw open the door, his eyes red as if he were about to cry, the very notion of which terrified Paul because he was of the opinion that mothers cried rarely and fathers never. “Satisfied? You woke him!” said his mother, and she looked angrier than Paul had ever seen her; but he knew that the next words out of his mouth would surely make everything all better.

  “Bonnie is happy,” said Paul. “I just thought you would want to know that. I speak to her every day and she’s perfectly content; and if it’s her absence that’s making you upset, you can stop now. Because you always say that you just want me to be happy, and I figure it’s much the same for her, isn’t it?”

  His parents looked at him in puzzlement, and his mother scowled fiercely at him then and told him not to joke about such matters.

  Paul explained very patiently that he was not joking at all. That his initial questions about whether Bonnie had flown off to the Anyplace had been answered by Bonnie herself, who was perched out on the tree branch that came near Paul’s bedroom window.

  “There’s naught but birds there,” his father said in bemusement.

  To which Paul said, “Yes. Exactly. Remember that all babies are birds before they come to live with their families? Well, some babies, when they forget and desire to fly but cannot because the windows are closed, change back to being birds and slip out up the chimney or when the front door is open. And this is not such a terrible thing; because babies like that weren’t truly ready to give up being birds in the first place, and would have been terribly miserable children and adults if they’d been forced into it.”

  “Really,” said Colleen Dear in a voice that sounded as if it was supposed to be a question, but wasn’t actually.

  “Yes. Bonnie told me so. She’s a house swallow now. She perches outside my window every day, and we talk and laugh and she tells me about what being a bird is like and I tell her what being a person is like. Honestly,” Paul added a bit sadly, “she doesn’t seem all that interested in the life of being a person. I told her I couldn’t imagine spending my life eating worms, but she told me she couldn’t imagine spending her life not flying. And I can understand that. I’d eat worms if I could fly. Wouldn’t you?”

  “I might at that,” said Paul’s father. “To fly like a bird…or The Boy…”

  “Right. That’s it. Close the door,” said Paul’s mother in a voice that sounded not angry or cutting but as vacant as an empty cookie jar—once the home of something delectable but now devoid of any hint of sweetness.

  Paul went back to his room and climbed into bed, hoping that what he had told his parents had helped matters. Instead, later that night, his father stole into his room, kissed him gently upon the forehead, and said, “Your mother and I think it would be best if I left for a time.”

  “All right,” said Paul, unfazed, for he was accustomed to his mother and father doing what they thought best, and did not expect them to change their behavior at this late date. “When will you come back?”

  “I wish I knew,” said his father.

  Paul stared at his father for a long moment, the slightest glimmer of what was being said beginning to illuminate his brain. “I thought grown-ups knew everything,” he said.

  “I wish we did.” He ruffled Paul’s hair, which was something Paul had never been too fond of, but he offered no protest now. “Take care of your mother.”

  “I think she’s supposed to take care of me.”

  “Yes,” said his father, “but for the time being—perhaps a very long time to come—you are to be the grown-up man of the house.”

  “But I do not wish to grow up.”

  “All children, except one, grow up.”

  “Am I that child?” Paul watched his father’s face carefully for a reaction. “Am I The Boy?”

  Patrick did not answer him. Instead he hugged him once more, then stole out of the room, noiseless as a shadow.

  Paul sat there in the darkness for a long, long moment, and then there was a tapping at the windowpane. He slid out of bed, padded across the floor, and opened the window wide. A small, brown swallow fluttered in and nestled on his outstretched finger. It cocked its head slightly and said, “You told them, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Paul said with a sigh.

  It fluffed its feathers and said, “I warned you not to. I knew this would happen. I told you so. Why didn’t you listen to me?”

  “I did,” he insisted. “Listening and doing don’t always have to be the same thing.”

  “Fair enough,” said the swallow.

  “Can you stay with me always?” Paul said.

  “No, because I’m already forgetting about my time as a baby. I’m thinking more and more about nests and winter habitat and such. Soon I will simply be another bird, and no mat
ter how much you remind me, I won’t recall.”

  “I will always remember you,” Paul assured his sister.

  “We’ll see,” said the swallow, and then turned on his finger, hopped off, and flew away into the night sky.

  Chapter 2

  The Irishman with the Curious Profession

  Things don’t happen all at once.

  Even those things that do seem to happen all at once, such as automobile accidents, don’t really. They are the last act in a lengthy series of actions that have led, slowly but inevitably, to the supposedly “sudden outcome.” You may be standing on a street corner and your head snaps around and, two drivers—one in a blue car, one in a white car—are sitting there, looking quite stunned, having collided with each other, because this was not remotely what they had planned for the day. Be aware that the first step along the long and treacherous path resulting in this “sudden” happenstance occurred twenty-three years earlier when the driver of the blue car was told by his mother, “Today is the day! You’re getting your first haircut!” Off they went to the barber, who had a rather superb tonsorial facility; and there he had a haircut that was most revelatory because suddenly this mass of stuff hanging from the top of his head was no longer obscuring his vision. So splendid an experience was it that he resolved, right then and there, to come to this very barber once a month, on that same Monday, so the hair would not hang in front of his face again.

  Had the haircut been any less superb, had the day been anything other than Monday, he would never have been in the wrong place at the wrong time and run afoul of a speeding motorist who had his entire own story with which we will not bore you. The point is that he brought himself to this pass, and it may have seemed accidental; but looking back at the course of his life, it was unavoidable. This is what is referred to as foresight aftersight. You may as well perfect it, because there are some walks of life where it is an absolute necessity. In any job, for instance, where one of your responsibilities is determining how to blame other people for various mishaps.

  So for Paul, although it may have seemed very sudden that he was sitting in front of a doctor explaining recent events of his life and being told how he was going to be taking some medicine so that he wouldn’t be sick anymore—the fact was that it was not sudden at all. Rather, it was the culmination of a series of events that had led, inevitably, to discovering that he was apparently quite ill. Which was odd because he had never felt quite so healthy.

  The beginnings of his abrupt meeting with Those Who Would Help Him stemmed from his ongoing endeavors to be the man of the house, as per the instructions of his father. His first attempt to meet this vital need was to strut around and say, in what he fancied was a most grown-up voice, “Looks like it’s going to be one of those, eh!” or “I should say!” or “Tut-tut” or “Will we be attending that thing this evening?” But his mother kept looking at him oddly and finally told him to stop talking that way because he was ridiculous. He wanted to be grown-up, not ridiculous, and he did not realize you could be both at the same time, and oftentimes are.

  So he decided to seek out advice from others on the best way to proceed. Normally he would have gone to his father for advice, but if his father had been around, he would not have been in this predicament in the first place. Instead he decided to seek guidance from the denizens of Kensington Gardens.

  He sought out the pixie folk, but couldn’t manage to hold their attention long enough to ask his questions. This is a common problem when it comes to pixies. If you flip a coin in the air while calling “Heads or tails?” a pixie will as likely cry out, “Coin!” or “Beer!” or “Balloooooon!” The pixies did, however, tend to give him very queer looks, as if they thought they should know him but were not quite sure.

  So he consulted whatever animals he could find. He spoke to the birds nesting in the trees, the mice hiding among the high weeds, and the cats who were seeking out the mice but were generous enough to take a few moments to chat with Paul. He asked all of them what he could do to assume his mandated position as Man of the House.

  Being animals, all their advice centered upon bringing home the fruits of a good hunt to feed the family. The notion intrigued him, especially since all the animals seemed rather set that it was the wisest course. He was embarrassed to admit, however, that he had never hunted anything in his life.

  He had pretend hunted, and this may seem like something of a digression, but it is actually terribly relevant. So kindly do not jump ahead but instead pay strict attention.

  Paul had pretend hunted during a number of his excursions into the Anyplace. The circumstance of the hunt had been real enough, but the locale assured it of being merely pretend. Thus Paul had not felt any guilt over, say, taking the life of a helpless creature.

  His partner in the endeavor—more than his partner; his mentor and spiritual guide—had been the merely magnificent snow tiger.

  He could not remember the first time he had encountered the snow tiger on the shores of the Anyplace. He had always simply been there, and he had belonged to Paul and only Paul—if animals could be said to belong to anyone other than themselves. The snow tiger, as his name suggests, had fur as pure white as untouched snow; and when he moved, his muscles could be seen stretching and snapping taut beneath his hide. It may well have been the snow tiger who, at Paul’s birth, bequeathed him the ability to converse with animals that The Boy had eventually helped him master.

  Many was the time that Paul would run through the jungle or along the shores with the snow tiger at his side in adventures so vivid that—when Paul awoke—he needed to pick brambles from his bedclothes or sand from between his toes. Sometimes he would even sit astride the great beast, and the ground would blur beneath them as the snow tiger sprinted in pursuit of his prey.

  Occasionally the snow tiger would express interest in hunting other humans, but Paul would sternly scold him about the practice, and the snow tiger would back down. Paul always suspected in the back of his mind that the snow tiger might well be off hunting humans when Paul wasn’t around. When asked about this, the snow tiger would hem and haw and then point out how absolutely perfect the weather was, and shouldn’t they be off stalking small game, for the gnawing in his stomach was becoming impossible for him to ignore. And Paul would fix him with an annoyed look that he inevitably could not maintain for long, and then they would be off on their adventures again. Adventures that Paul typically could not remember but wished he could.

  Paul loved the snow tiger more than he loved himself. And since humans put their own interests above anything else (even the most unselfish of them—and you know who you are, so do not offer protests, because you will not impress me), that was and is a remarkable achievement.

  Anyway…that is Paul’s snow tiger.

  Back to Paul’s present situation, which presented a quandary to the animals upon learning that most humans did not hunt for their food but instead depended upon others such as grocers to provide it for them. Several of them loudly expressed their astonishment that such creatures as humans, lacking even the most fundamental self-reliance, had not simply starved to death long ago. Finally, one noble mouse took pity on Paul and volunteered his services. Instructing Paul to take the mouse’s tail ever so gently between his teeth, the mouse then dangled from Paul’s mouth in an ever so convincing act of playing dead. Paul had told the accommodating rodent that his mother would most likely have no interest in eating the mouse since she was, in fact, a vegetarian, but certainly she would appreciate the gesture and realize that Paul was at least endeavoring to step up to the responsibilities that had been thrust upon him.

  The actuality of how matters subsequently unfolded did not meet with Paul’s imagined scenario. In fact, the moment Colleen Dear turned around in the kitchen and saw her son with a seemingly dead mouse hanging from between his lips was so calamitous for all concerned that we would be best served if we glossed over it. Suffice to say there was much screaming and scampering and then leave it the
re. We will instead mercifully draw a curtain over the entire sorry affair and move on, rather than dwell upon the most tragically misunderstood gift since that day long gone when the denizens of Troy peeked out from behind their walls and said, “Look at the smashingly thoughtful wooden horse the departed Greeks have left us to apologize for ten years of harassment! Let’s bring it inside, make merry sport, and drink ourselves into a stupor, for what harm could possibly befall since our enemies are nowhere near?”

  Of far more import to our narrative are the events that transpired after Paul’s majestic shot at adulthood woefully misfired.

  Paul’s mother brought him straightaway to a doctor. But it was not the doctor that Paul normally went to. His office didn’t have that odd smell to it, and, cheerily, his mother assured him that no needles would be involved.

  Furthermore, the thing Paul found most exciting about the experience was that he got to be in the office with the doctor, just the two of them. Since every other trip to a doctor had involved his mother being there the whole time and doing all the talking, Paul had to believe that this was a step closer to the coveted grown-up status.

  The doctor, whose full name was Doctor Something Very Long That Ended with “witz,” had a round face and a smile in his eyes. He said gently, “All right now, Paul. Tell me why you came home with a mouse hanging from your mouth.”

  So Paul did just that. He told the doctor all about the mouse and birds and pixies and cats, and how all of them spoke to him. He spoke of how it seemed the most natural thing in the world, and he had always been able to do it except he had not known it until recently when his mirror image began speaking to him. And the mirror image, by the by, turned out to be that of The Boy, which made Paul think that perhaps he himself was The Boy and had simply forgotten it somehow. But he was not sure, and needed to reflect upon it further.