It was a drab morning with traffic like an afternoon shadow that slunk through the streets with a sinister cough. A little girl in a pink frock with flowers across the stomach skipped by an unusual tiger, who looked funny in a dress shirt standing solidly on four paws beneath the blue and white striped awning of a small persistent greengrocers.
Three pomegranates: £0.75p.
One red apple: £0.16p.
What a cheap apple, thought the girl in the pink frock.
She saw the tiger between the pumpkins and a pile of sacks which all contained onions. She smiled like daybreak. The pumpkins weren’t quite ripe and still had patches of green on their orange sides, whilst the onions smelt a little too ripe. This is often the case with the produce in a greengrocers, she thought. Perhaps the severity of the pavement and the faces of the customers constantly watching the sacks of onions made them turn bad quicker than they otherwise might in the vegetable rack at home. It wasn’t for the tiger to pay much attention to either the vegetables or to the little girl who stood alone in the street. In front of him she asked from nowhere:
“Where are we going to go?”
The tiger blinked slowly. If he hadn’t been covered head to toe in luxurious striped fur that was as warm as a good coat I think he would have blushed.
“We could go to my place,” he said quietly. The little girl thought he had a slightly Germanic accent, but found it unlikely. After all, there aren’t many tigers in Germany. “It’s just this way.”
He started off down the street, past the butchers and the turf accountancy and the church and some dogs sniffing at a lamppost, and the little girl took a big bite out of a juicy red apple and quickly skipped after him.
*
They had seemed to walk for hours and hours, all the way out of town, over the old bridge, over the new bridge, through the cemetery where Gravedigger Pete said hello and rubbed his eyes in disbelief at the sight of the tiger, until eventually they both stopped, a little out of breath.
“This is it,” said the tiger. He gestured towards a charming cottage hung thickly with ivy. The windows were clean here.
“I didn’t expect tigers to live in houses like this,” said the girl sweetly. She is sweet, thought the tiger.
“Caves are a crude myth, dummy.”
She belched while the tiger opened the front door with a heart shaped key. Everything clicked into place.
There was only one room, full of glass boxes each about the size of a standard single bedroom.
“WELCOME!” came the exclamation.
“What the heck is… that?” The girl felt warm tears flowing down her face but was unable to ascertain mentally the emotion with which they were connected.
“It’s tiger time!”
Good God almighty!
*
Draw a thick black line about three inches long. Cross it.
*
It was like an explosive and dangerous dream without enough blankets. I am a naughty boy.
“You twisted awkward gangling shit.” The face looks like a cookie jar.
Tiger bones rattling rhythmically, hauntingly down a steel fire escape. Dong, dong, dong, dong, thud. Is this a Chinese preparation? Scrap the olives. All reasons are inexplicable.
Breezeblock fashion show, red cage white dais, snarling paw fuck frenzy.
The little girl had her socks pulled up to her knees and her black leathers had shiny silver buckles and she looked very smart standing sobbing with her swollen red face.
“Where’s my twenty-five you fucker?”
“Watch yourself around that because that’s likes um they’s self, hear me?”
And like slow motion cinematography:
Apple core falling,
Brown-turning before our eyes,
Floor-contact-apple-core-crushed,
Pulse my vein eyes,
Flare my nostrils,
Quiver my lips,
Cock the sails.
I had never heard a scream like that before, as though hair became wet of its own accord, drip drip. Tiger: reading a newspaper; Tiger: preparing vegetables; Tiger: a wicked smile.
In a residential part of town the porch man exterminates flies in honour of his dead wife – the porch leers and creaks like his dead happy wife – who still sits in her easy chair and whom he lovingly fucks every night and tenderly dresses every morning, his dead dead wife.
“I’ll wipe your chin dear… ummsperm…”
“Whaddaya think of the place?”
Answers in a saucepan.
*
Dad catches up on the newspapers and mum makes fish-steaks for tea and the condiments remind me of a party bag, laid out on the midweek tablecloth.
*
The tiger raised a paw gently to the little girls hand and smiled warmly.
“Perhaps somewhat overwhelming?” he asked, and referenced their surroundings with a well-placed head movement. The little girl nodded and almost broke a moist smile. There were businesslike tigers all over the place, some in the glass boxes and some doing regular activities about the house. One tiger sang Aretha Franklin and watered plants. Undoubtedly it was a significant amount of stimuli for one so small to take in, thought the original tiger sympathetically.
A sign said: PLEASE FEED THE TIGERS!
Another said: YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A TIGER TO LIVE HERE… BUT IT HELPS!
Good old-fashioned tiger humour, thought the girl. “What do you guys do here?” she asked. “I was scared just now but I think I’m okay. Can we play some games? Or maybe just have some fun? That would be excellent, Tiger.”
Tigers have faces too, and this one said something about never having children in the ever-so-slight raise of an eyebrow while he looked around for a red rubber ball.
*
“Now what shall we do now what shall we do?” pressed the little girl to a tiger who was tired. Playing ball could be tiring after a hard day spent wearing a shirt.
“Maybe it’s time you got going? I’m sure your parents are beginning to get worried, after all. You have been here for three days now.” He seemed to be talking with an air of nervousness, like he had stolen a lucky deck of adult playing cards.
The little girl put on her sour face. This made the tiger wince. He had seen it one too many times and thought about snarling, but dismissed it with an air of civility.
“But I like it here with you tigers,” she said pleadingly.
“I know, and we like having you. But you must go.”
They looked at each other for an amount of seconds.
“Okay,” she agreed, and kissed him lovingly on the forehead and skipped out of the front door without saying thank you.
Heaving breath of tiger relief.
*
“Yes officer, this dinner’s been on this table for three days, just waiting for her to come home to her beloved old mum and daddy. A man in the high street last saw her with a tiger!”
The officer frowned past his moustache.
“Those… fucking tigers, missus. I knew it was only a matter of time before trouble started with those furry sons of bitches. I have a stressful job, sir.”
“You don’t mean…”
“I’m afraid so, couple.”
Heads hung with choking gasps. The vengeful insistent eyes of the frustrated policeman: “Better get the boys.”
The boys can’t change what hasn’t happened, but nobody thought of that, did they?
*
The last thing the tigers saw was a flash of unusually blue sky as stretch-guy police officers unloaded their rifles through the open front door.
*
And the little girl just got home, in proclamation:
“What a wonderful time I’ve had mummy!”
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