Three cakes plus three tables plus one mighty jungle beast equals my latest episode of BRYAN THE TYGER. If you read it, I hope that you do not feel too much shock and awe. (I really just mean for it to be a playful waste of time.)
P.S.
In other news: my Public Private Diary is fully printed; also I made a list of my latest novels that have been printed but not included in any collection.
I now deliver the
following speech to the nuns: “Dear Mother Abbess Lilith and Sisters Maria and Sophia,
I have had the time of my life here, this afternoon; I am glad that I spent my day
in the convent library flirting with you three damozels, and I look forward to engaging
in frequent future flirtings; but now I must go and dash around out-of-doors, for
altho I may seem tame, I am too wild to hold. Is my name not Bryan the Tyger? Therefore
it would profit nothing for me to stay any longer with you in the nunnery, meditating
the thankless Muse so strictly and tending the homely Shepherds’ trade. Instead,
I wish to be in the open air, on the ringing plains of windy Troy, with my fellow
warriors, drinking down the delight of battle. So don’t try to stop me when you
see me dashing off into the sunset — I’ll return, if Fate wills me to live. Do not
try to saddle me.”
“Nay, Tyger, return! Nay, Tyger, return!” chants
my trio of well-loved nuns as I gallop away.
The first scene that lures my attention from the imminent warfare
that I believe it is my destiny to partake in is a series of very lengthy banquet
tables at a festival. On these tables are the longest cakes I have ever seen: from
end to end, they are frosted with thick white icing. There are three equally spaced
tables placed parallel to each other, and each of the tables has its own iced cake
thus spanning the entire distance of its surface.
So I hide in the shrubbery nearby, to see what will happen with
this triune display of extra-long desserts.
Soon a chef shuffles out of a nearby tabernacle – the type of
tent used by armies or traveling circuses. (I can tell he’s a chef because he’s
wearing that special hat: a tall pleated toque blanche boasting 100 folds.)
This man now uses a piping bag that is filled with red-colored buttercream to decorate
the seemingly endless span of each cake’s face with a run-on sentence in lavish
calligraphy. As I watch him do this, I keep presuming that the bag of icing will
run out, so that he will be forced momentarily to leave and go fetch a replacement,
but this never does happen: it’s as if there is a guardian angel watching over this
chef from behind the curtain of spacetime, who keeps secretly replenishing his supply
of red buttercream icing when it runs low. In other words, it is a miracle that
just one piping bag suffices to embellish all three cakes.
Now I suppose that my readership would like me to give the exact
wording of each of these sentences that the chef inscribes on all three cakes. But
I shan’t do that. Why not? Well, first, because I’m a Tyger, and therefore I cannot
read very well. Secondly, because I don’t much care. And lastly, because when I
strain to focus on the chef’s handwriting in an attempt to note all the words down
in my pocket-sized detective’s notepad, I can’t even finish jotting the first cake’s
message before running out of paper. Moreover, just now, one of the festival’s attendees
shouts:
“Hey, why is the shrubbery on fire, yet it remains unconsumed?”
This villager is referring to the place where I am hiding to
observe the cake-decorating procedure.
Now another villager sez: “Let us turn aside, and see this strange
sight, why those shrubs are not burnt up.”
So that’s when I realized that my cover had been blown. This
“fire” that they keep referring to is my natural fur – I am what is known as a Burning
Tyger; my natural habitat is the Forest of the Night.
I saunter out of the shrubbery and say: “Peace, be still, I am
not come to harm you. I was just on my way to do battle with certain other foemen,
and I stopped and hid here because I got curious about these three interminable
cakes that your chef just prettified with his red cursive scripture. I was trying
to record their messages in my notebook, but then you all started snooping around
and getting too curious, which compelled me to expose myself. Thus: here I am, Bryan
the Tyger, affronting your vision.”
After the first three words of my speech above, the
festival’s attendees begin to scream; and they keep screaming, and their screams
increase in volume and intensity, as my speech continues. Then more villagers who
were initially unaware of the threat of my presence end up joining in on the screaming.
By the conclusion of my address, the entire village is shrieking in terror, so that
my final catchphrase (“Here I am, Bryan the Tyger, affronting your vision!” which,
by the way, serves as the slogan on all the adverts for my adventure) must appear
onscreen in bold, gold subtitles whenever this miracle is shown as a movie.
So that’s the reason I can’t give you the verbatim wording of
the messages on each cake. I can only relay their gist:
·
The first cake’s message was a lengthy, rambling
outburst in praise of the country of England.
·
The second message was the same type of thing, except
in praise of Germany.
·
And the third was a variation of the first two but
praising France.
Now here is how this scene ended — pay close attention:
As the villagers are all crying and panicking, I shake my head
and roll my eyes; then, mostly for show (as I do not much believe in the power of
prayer) I lift my face up to the sky and roar:
“Forgive them, for they know not who they irk.”
I then leap bodily upon the first cake, and all four of my legs plop firmly into its icing. I am now standing in the cake. The village is screaming. I begin to walk forward, from one end of the cake to the other, spanning the entire length of the table; all the while stepping directly into the cake, and each step splashes icing and soft sweet residue messily everywhere. — Also, just as I begin this famous cakewalk, I feel the call of nature, as if Fate heard my ironic complaint above and is eager to aid me. (This, by the way, marks the point when I start to have faith in the power of prayer.) So, from my very first steps, all the way to the bitter end, as I trample over each of the three long cakes on the three long tables, I am peeing as I go. – And I blast a strong stream, for I am a Tyger.
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