Jamrach's Menagerie: A Novel by Carol Birch

Author:Carol Birch [Birch, Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780385534406
Amazon: 038553440X
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2011-06-14T07:00:00+00:00

‘To Jaf,’ he said, knocking it back.

‘Wil you real y retire?’ I asked. We were back on the fo’c’s’le deck. Simon had gone down and got his fiddle and was tuning up, bright pluckings of the strings.

‘Certainly,’ Dan replied, merry, loose in his gestures. ‘Al things must pass. I shal end my il ustrious career on a pinnacle of glory with this magnificent creature.’

The sun had gone down an hour since, and the sea danced with crazy light.

‘It’l be kind of like death, won’t it?’ Skip said.

‘What wil ?’

‘Dan giving it al up.’

‘Death in life,’ said Dan, ‘life in death. Oh, my comrades!’

He’d gone into funny ham-acting mode again.

‘When you think about it,’ Skip said, ‘al we ever do is die.’

‘What are you talking about, madman?’ Tim pushed him.

‘Why can’t you ever talk sense?’

‘The big god told me I didn’t have to make sense,’ Skip said. ‘ It doesn’t have to make sense. I don’t have to make sense.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Tim said, ‘you never do.’

‘How many years since you went to sea?’ I asked Dan.

‘Forty-three,’ he said without hesitation.

I looked at him, wizened of mouth, one eye wandering very slightly, tried to see him as a green boy like us. It wasn’t that hard. He was one of those who more or less stay the same from birth to death.

‘It’s like Bingo,’ said Skip. ‘Like his old life on the island and his life now …’ Simon struck up a sleepy tune. ‘… Like me when I was three years old.’

‘You talk shit,’ said Tim.

‘Three years old,’ Dan said, sitting down with his back against a barrel and his legs sprawling out in front of him.

‘Three years old doesn’t last. I want to see my children grow up.’

‘Al those things are real y dead. Me then. It then,’ Skip said.

‘You’re cracked.’

‘He means,’ said Dan, lighting up his pipe with a serene air, ‘that we’re like snakes shedding skin after skin.’ He sighed extravagantly at the thought of it, took a deep pul on the tobacco, pursed his lips and coaxed out a few smoke rings.

Much later, reeling home to my bunk, I came up with Gabriel and Simon.

‘You seen Skip?’ said Gabriel

‘No.’

‘He’s sitting with old Bingo.’

‘Come see,’ said Simon. ‘What do you make of this?’

He didn’t see the three of us watching. He was sitting cross-legged in front of the dragon’s door talking to it.

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