Night of the Animals(46)

But the animals noticed him—especially the lions. They were beginning to speak at him again, imploring him to stay.

“You can’t delay your solemn duty any longer,” Arfur the lion moaned. “You can’t—unless you want to look weak. You can’t go now.”

“I’ll return tonight—I promise,” he answered. “A promise is a promise.”

The lions roared angrily in reply. And there were monkeys crying, antelope nickering, and bobcats screeching miserably, threatening to escape the zoo themselves if left behind.

Stay! they all begged.

“Leave off now!” he pleaded, so loud that everyone around him looked at him, this man with dirty hands, this irritating Indigent, talking to himself.

He left the area quickly, trotting toward Camden Town station. After a while, he turned around and he saw that the Watch Auxiliary was back near the same queue. The hovering officer irked him, but Cuthbert also felt a new, feral kind of satisfaction, too, something he could not recall ever feeling so intensely.

He said aloud, to all the beasts, “Ta-rah, animals, ta-rah!”

Will you come back? many of the creatures asked.

“Oh, will I,” he gasped. “And soon. And this time, the true prince of England will come again, in all his furry glory.”





the words of a wise chihuahua


CUTHBERT DECIDED TO HEAD TOWARD HIS ABANDONED IB. It was a dicey move, to hide there until night, but by now, he reckoned, the Red Watch would already have tossed his IB and departed. The IB grounds and hallways always offered one certainty: apart from the occasional mugger, rapist, or psychopath, no one cared about you.

Using one of the ￡5 coins from the kind wealthy woman outside the zoo, he took the No. 29 bosonicabus from Camden Town, just north of the zoo, to Finsbury Park—a district that had remained resistant to gentrification for three centuries—and from there, he walked from Finsbury Park’s raucous station to the Indigent estate where he’d last lived.

A few teenage Indigent boys loitered in front of IB Building 3, the great pillar of reinforced concrete ignominy he’d once inhabited, and as usual, the boys were trading insults and venting bluster. Cuthbert felt uneasy.

One skinny-faced kid with a sharp chin, who wore a preposterously tall sky-blue speedfin on his back (such fins worked with glider-discs, a mode of transport the boy would almost certainly never be able to afford), was hurling a hardened hurtball at his mates, over and over, aiming below the neck (yet holding back a bit on his pitches, too). In the fading light, the glowing ball marked the air in red gashes. The game, a dangerous pastime often played in stairwells and lifts, was popular among Indigents in their towering IBs. The object was to throw the pointillion-cored, steel-studded ball at one another with the full intention of causing bodily injury. One normally went for the head in hurtball, and games often devolved into out-and-out fights. Cuts and blood were commonplace, concussions never unexpected, and deaths from cranial hematomas frighteningly common.

As Cuthbert approached, he took a deep breath. He wanted to get away from the boys, and he feared they could perceive this. Just as he passed, the sharp-chinned kid fired the ball very hard, its glowing neowool rasping the air. A red blot whooshed past Cuthbert’s face. The ball glanced off the back of a boy who had skin colored like burned sugar and a very round face with dark freckles.

“Just look at the cunt,” the victim said, rolling his eyes and wagging a finger at the ball-tosser, but obviously in some pain. “He couldn’t hurt shite.”

“Fuck off,” said the thrower. “You’re a tosser, mate.”

For a second, Cuthbert felt he was also being addressed. He wanted to seem neither too interested nor too aloof—either might irritate them. He tried to step past them fast. Even these boys probably feared causing any trouble that might bring the Red Watch down on them all.

“’Allo, boys,” he said.

There was swapped between the boys, only half-secretly, a snicker, then a girlish tittering, and a showy punch on the arm. But the moment Cuthbert started to turn around to look, the giggling stopped. He could feel his heart thumping, his chin trembling. A kid with huge, watery eyes stepped into his way. “You’re not allowed out here, now are you, fat man?” he said to Cuthbert.

Cuthbert said nothing and kept walking.

“Give us a pound.” The wet-eyed boy ran in front of Cuthbert and stood there.

Cuthbert leaned in close to the boy and reached to put a hand on each of his shoulders but stopped short. “Now beware, child. The tigers are coming, and lions and bears. They’ll be all over the estate by tomorrow—you’ll see.”

The boy’s lips formed an oval, then he pulled back and grinned furiously. “’E’s off his f*cking chump!” The others laughed at the remark. “Off his f*cking chump! Off it! I bet e’s the one the Watch was ’round for to have a pop at. A facking scrote!”

The skinny-faced boy thrust himself in front of the other, with a trace of fear on his face, and said to Cuthbert:

“Excuse me f*cking dicksplat, gent. ’E’s sorry, isn’t he?” The skinny-face punched the other boy in the side, who screwed up his face in agony.

Cuthbert started to tug on his own earlobes and fumble with his hands. He sidled around the boys, rubbing sweaty fingers together and trudging forward. He imagined what it would feel like to be hit on the back of the head by their hurtball. What if he found himself on his knees on the pavement, dizzy? He would kneel as placidly as a churchgoer, blinking his eyes, watching bits of light swarm like flies across the IB.