Night of the Animals(73)

“You mean the tipple?” asked Cuthbert. “You say ‘booze,’ awlright? Flōt.”

“The Flōt jinn,” said Muezza.

“Gin is fine, too.”

The cat trotted away toward one of the main zoo paths, and stopped and turned around to face Cuthbert. When Cuthbert got to where he was standing on the path, he saw for the first time one of the Green Line markers, painted on the path, which he’d seen on the sign during his day visit. It was the same flat, broccoli green as the animal-group signs, the shirts of the zoo staff, and any of the cafés’ serviettes.

Muezza said: “I should tell you: this is an incomparable night for me, too. It is just as all the cats of the zoo have always said, brother. There is the line painted the sacred color, and if we follow it from here, it takes us to the Shayk. I also believe this line, if you follow it farther, will take you to the otter friends you wish to free, and, inshallah, to the Gulls of Imago, and ultimately to your wondrous lost Drystan. Naturally, because of my entrapment, I have never seen these things or the line myself. I never thought this night would come!”

Cuthbert did not know what to think. He said: “Let’s see this Shayk then. He offers a cure, for my—condition?”

“The Shayk can do many things. I can make no promises.”

“Well, on then, anyhow. A rat or two for you, and a cat for me.”

Cuthbert knew he would see this Shayk, one way or another, no matter what he did. So he would go with Muezza. He would seek out the otters, and help them get into the Regent’s Canal. Perhaps the otters would know where to find the Gulls of Imago. He thought of the disused canals of the Black Country, how the water turned green and luminous as one passed through the abandoned industrial landscapes toward the rural west. He did not mind following green lines—for a while, anyway. At the very least, it was somewhere to go. It was away from the aliens, away from the Black Country, and away from the Red Watch. Most of all, it was away from himself.





freeing the black panther


WITH THE SAND CAT TRAILING, CUTHBERT—STILL spiring, still in a state of Flōter’s hallucinosis—paced west and then north, and ended up passing the flamingos. The birds were all sleeping on little islands. They looked like he felt on Flōt—leggy, sleepy, solitary, needing nothing. Cuthbert thought they were shaped like beans, and he kept repeating a phrase, in his head, “Them’s like beans, they are. Them’s like beans. Them’s like beans.” For a moment, he waved his bolt cutters back and forth like a giant pair of conductor’s wands. Oh, he liked those concrete islets. “Them’s like beans!” he sang aloud.

Muezza looked at him and shrugged.

“You are funny sometimes, brother. You act human.”

The flamingos’ necks curled back like shepherds’ staffs, and their beaks rested upon nests made of their own pink-feathered backs. Cuthbert did not see how they could be so peaceful, nor why they stayed on their islands (there was no cage or netting anywhere), but he resisted his urge to awaken them. He did not often care for birds, especially the genomic clones people often thought of as posh. Pigeons, magpies, seagulls, and starlings—dowdy city birds were what he liked best. But he liked these things.

“How do you talk to a flamingo?” he said aloud, half-hoping that Muezza would offer some animal-world answer. The cat was watching the sleeping birds charily. The question seemed a critical matter to Muezza.

The cat answered: “I would not bother, really. These are ugly, self-important creatures. I have heard that lawn-worshippers in America, the kind of people who poison neighborhood cats, put effigies of them on their lawns. Blasphemous!” He paused, and looked down, speculatively. “When I was a kitten, I saw them in the reeds, near a great dying lake, but they stopped coming. But the nomads never liked them, nor did the camels or cattle or foxes. And then all the water dried up. My grandfather said thousands used to come, long ago—but no more.” Muezza snapped out of his contemplation and gave a little chirping laugh. He said: “It is said they are pink because they are so vain, and they are already beginning to burn in hell, at the command of Allah.”

Cuthbert did not like to think of them this way. This strain of moralism in Muezza was a challenge. He said, “I find them rather sprucy, myself. But I agree, there is something wrong with flamingos. They’ve got ’em in Birmingham, too, you know. Genomic clones, of course.”

“But these birds, they are real. Among the last on earth,” said Muezza. “Still, they are not a blessed color. As I said. Let’s move along now, and you will thank me eternally for taking you to the great angel of all animals. I believe he is going to end all your problems.”

Cuthbert did not like the sound of that.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I feel you’re not telling me something. And I still need to find the otters, and the Gulls of Imago.”

The cat said, “As for these birds you keep harping on about, dear saliq, you might just ask another bird. Try one of the local herons or mandarin ducks. And be faithful, Kitten-Man. You mustn’t fear the Shayk. Through the Shayk, and through you, all things are possible now.”

“Kitten what?”

“Oh, never mind,” hissed Muezza, aggravation splintering his voice. “Brother.”

THE TWO OF THEM walked a bit faster now along the Green Line trail. It curved back from the flamingo pond past a big, open plaza and then toward the other big cats. The plaza, with its potted junipers, precision-cut rows of yellow and pink peonies, and abstract bronze-cast of two baboons (with trapezoids meant to resemble ears) stood in contrast to the steel mesh, dirty cement, and scratchy glass of the big cat enclosures. The paws painted on either side of the Green Line, every few meters and as large as footballs, seemed distinctly feline now to Cuthbert. It was almost as if the London Zoo management’s contrivance to help guests “not miss a thing!” was in fact designed to appeal especially to an escaped sand cat with the soul of a ninth-century Islamic warrior. The thought disturbed Cuthbert. At one point, as they walked, Muezza encountered the paws and skipped from one to the other, as though playing hopscotch. The cat seemed not merely happy, but full of a hajji’s ecstasy.