I didn't really finish yesterday's episode, so think of today's entry as the 2nd part of a two-part episode. If I live to publish BRYAN THE TYGER in book-form, this will mark the end of chapter 35. It's anticlimactic and generally uninteresting, just how I like it.
[I got tired of graffiti-ing tygers onto junk ads, so, for the next few days, the obligatory images that accompany these announcements will be just lazy attempts at hand-drawing copies of ad photos with felt tip marker.]
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.
§
Having quenched their thirst for penance, we leave our nuns and
go back to skulking down the byway.
The last Orangutan that we meet in this chapter is named John
from Hopkins. He is trying to screw in a lightbulb when we approach.
“Hi there,” this Orangutan sez, “I’m John from Hopkins. I’m trying
to change this burnt-out bulb; it’s a little complicated.”
“I’ll help,” I say.
“Thanks,” sez John, and he hands me the replacement.
After installing the light and turning it on to make sure that
it works, I say:
“There you go.”
Myala is halfway to the horizon, having grown bored and wandered
off during the fixture installation; so I move to catch up with her . . .
But, before I can get even a couple paces away, John from Hopkins
taps my pelt with his meaty hand: “Hey, would you mind giving me a lift?”
“You wanna ride on my back?” I ask.
“That’d be great,” sez John.
I sigh, “That was a joke – only heavenly queens can ride on my
back. But if you have some hempen rope lying about, I could makeshift a harness
and maybe pull you behind me on a skateboard.”
“Uh, that’d be fine,” John the Orangutan from Hopkins walks over
to his garage and rummages around. Then he returns with a coil of thick rope and
a wooden pallet on wheels.
“This rope is pretty sturdy,” I say while examining it. I take
less than two moments to finagle a shoulder-harness and affix its other end to the
wheeled pallet. Before that last task, however, I make sure to bite down and use
my sharp teeth to cut off a length of rope and fashion it into a whip. “OK, I’m
ready!” I place the whip on the pallet; then, on a whim, I lean over and ignite
its wood with my fur. “You don’t need to use it,” I explain to John from
Hopkins, “but I also made this horse-whip. I’ll just leave the thing here and you
can pick it up or not; it’s no big deal.”
“You’re all ready to go? Good! Then just gimme a sec . . .” John
heads back into his house and takes a very long time to emerge again. I watch Myala’s
image get smaller and smaller as she continues walking further into the distance.
When John finally does return, he is holding an overstuffed duffel bag. He scrapes
my side with his boot as he tries to clamber up onto my strong Tyger-back.
“No!” I roar: “stay back and stay alive — that’s why we harnessed
up the skateboard . . .”
“Oh, sorry, I forgot,” murmurs John. Then he places his bag on
the pallet and sits in the place where the whip was lying, after taking the whip
in his hands.
Once situated, he sez: “Could you get me to the eyeglass factory
by two o’clock sharp?”
I crane my head and check the time on the local clock tower.
“That’s impossible,” I say; “it’s already a quarter after.”
“Well then we better get a move on,” John the Orangutan from
Hopkins attempts a quip.
§
So I trot over to the eyeglass factory and drop John off. The
manager of the place is standing just outside the front door — her name tag reads
“Cyndy” — she remarks:
“You’re late again, John.”
“It was the evil beast’s fault,” sez John, pointing at me with
the whip, as I myself am currently sliding out of the harness; “those creatures
are slow.”
Cyndy the manager squints her eyes and sez: “This is the last
time I accept such an excuse from you, John. Next time, you better hire a faster
taxi.”
I’m ashamed to admit that overhearing this exchange makes me
furious — I would normally be able to control my temper; but this little episode
enrages me, for some reason. (Perhaps, in a past life, I was a human who lived in
Hopkins and worked in an eyeglass factory with a similar ape named John; thus all
my past frustrations with this fellow now rise to the surface of my Tyger-mind.)
So I maul the Orangutan.
Cyndy is terrified, as I stand before her licking up the last
blood-drops.
“I’m sorry that you had to see that,” I say, lifting my vast
Tyger-head. “I won’t harm you; I can tell that you’re a gentle soul and lonely,
yet you bear this like the time.”
Cyndy cautiously steps backward and locates the handle to the
glass doorway by fumbling her trembling hands behind her. She then swiftly slinks
inside the building and engages the bolt-lock.
I give a goodbye salute and skulk off.
§
Traveling alone now, I say to myself: “Hmm, I wonder which way
Myala went.” — The desert seems a likely guess, so I head in that direction.
After walking for only a few moments, right out in the middle
of nowhere, I encounter a hotdog vendor; and he’s a regular Human, not an Orangutan.
I approach the cart:
“Are you real?” I ask.
“Sure am,” sez the vendor.
“You’re not a mirage, out here in the desert?”
“No, Sir,” he pinches the flesh of his own arm and then comically
yelps in pain; “I haven’t given up the ghost yet!”
I therefore order a score of hotdogs, as I’m still hungry (John
from Hopkins was mostly empty calories). I then get back on the road, after leaving
a record-breaking tip.
§
I head north-northwest and walk in a straight path for a great
while, covering extensive stretches of desert. There is no scenery: the horizon
is a flat line separating the dark grey sand from the light gray sky.
Suddenly, from out of the heavens, a white Albatross descends.
And lo, methinks I hear this bird crying in a human voice, as if it were a harbinger
from the Devil, saying: “Thou art my fiery Father, the anointed King over all the
children of pride.” But I assume that the bird did not truly say this — I think
that my mind is just playing tricks on me, because I’ve been wandering in the desert
alone for so long.
And round and round the Albatross keeps flying. This goes on
for eight vespers; and we share my nutriment (the score of dogs from the vendor),
this bird and I. — It swoops down when I say “Hollo!” and I hold up a fresh dog:
the Albatross nibbles upon the bun until it is sated, and sometimes it pecks at
the meat; then I finish the rest. Also, I share my supply of cool water with the
bird: after unscrewing the cap, it sips from the canteen.
Now, on the ninth vesper, the Albatross speaks to me again; or
at least that’s what I hallucinate. It soars down and hovers before my vast Tyger-face
and prays, saying:
“Tyger Bryan, I am tired. May I alight upon thy back?”
“Absolutely!” I say. “Perch between my shoulder blades, and feel
free to whisper sweet nothings into my ear.”
“Many thanks,” sez the bird.
So I continue to walk thru the desert with the Albatross on my
back, as she speaks to me in a still small voice.
§
At last we arrive at a breathtaking spectacle. On the tenth vesper,
when the full white moon is glimmering, I lift up my gaze and behold, afar off,
a tall scalped mountain — or, rather, this is what it appears to be at first; for,
as we approach, it becomes apparent that the structure is too fearfully symmetrical
to be a mere natural elevation. I soon realize that it is a pyramidal turret of
stone, at the apex of which is something resembling a glowing eye.
“Ascend!” whispers the Albatross on my back.
So, like a rider intent on the sun, a youthful lover with phosphorescent
hair, I rush from what is real toward possibility.
At the level peak of the altar I meet Myala, stretched out and
resting on a divan.
“O! It’s you,” I say. “I wasn’t sure which way you went, and
I had almost begun to fear that I would never find you!”
“I had faith; I knew you would come,” sez Myala. “I stopped here
to wait for you.”
I now notice something strange hanging from her necklace.
“Is that an Albatross?” I ask.
“I’m afraid so,” she sez. Then she motions with her mighty Panther-paw
toward my shoulders: “It looks like you made out with better luck.”
My own Albatross friend now whispers into my ear: “Ask for her
story.”
“So, what’s the deal? What happened?” I say.
Before relaying her misfortune, Myala sits up slightly on the
divan; this motion causes the dead Albatross to sway back and forth, hypnotically,
like a pendulum from her necklace; thus bringing the nightmare of Clocktime to the
mind of whoever is beholding this scene from Eternity:
“Well, it came to pass,” she sez, “after I left you, when you
were helping John from Hopkins change that bulb, that I was tempted: This gorgeous
white Albatross descended from the heavens and called out to me, singing my name:
‘Myala! Myala!’
“I answered: ‘Here am I. Speak, O bird, for I understand your
language.’
“And the Albatross said, ‘Behold, I am tired and hungry; for
I have been flying without rest, all the way from Venus. Will you allow me to perch
on your back and share your provender?’
“I should explain,” Myala interrupts her account, “that, earlier,
when I had just begun wandering into the desert, I met a street vendor whose cart
was set up right in the middle of nowhere, and he sold me two scores of grilled
frankfurters.”
Now my eyes light up: “I met the same jinn! I purchased just
one score of dogs, myself, for I had snacked beforehand.”
“Well, anyway, back to the Albatross’s request for a perch
and some food,” Myala continues: “I was in a fowl mood (pun intended) so I decided
to help this bird. I said: ‘Sure, you can rest on my back and share my victuals:
Come, Lord Jesus.’ — For I could see that this particular Albatross had been christened
‘Jesus’ by its previous owner . . .”
Here, with her mighty right forepaw Myala lifts the bird that
is attached to her necklace and shows us the lifeless creature’s brand, which
sez, in large, handwritten letters:
Jesus the Christ,
Lord of the Gentiles.
Then, under that, in fine print,
there’s another claim stamped:
Property
Paul of Tarsus.
“So,” Myala continues, “I let the bird partake of my stores of
food; and also I gave him the water of life freely, from my canteen—”
“I did exactly the same thing with my own Albatross!” I interject.
(My own bird now whispers in my ear: “Allow the Panther to finish her story.”)
“But here’s where my experience gets spooky,” Myala sez. “I was
just skulking along in the desert with my freshly fed, new Albatross comrade perched
between my shoulders, and he was whispering sweet nothings to me as we went. But
then, burningly, it came on us all at once: We saw this tower here, or pyramid,
or whatever it is. And a High-Toned Old Christian Woman came riding upon a donkey,
down from its top — that is, from the place where we are standing right now — and
she approached and announced herself as Mrs. Alfred Uruguay.
“Before I could utter a single word,” Myala continues, “Mrs.
Uruguay had dismounted her donkey and come and snatched the Albatross off my back.
Forthwith she charged up the hill on foot, pulling her beast by its bridle, and
went unto the place of which presumably her priest had told her. When she got to
the top, she turned around and bellowed to me, saying:
“‘Abide down there, O evil Panther; now I will sacrifice this
Dove and worship my God, the Lord of this World; and I will come again to you when
I am finished.’
“And Mrs. Uruguay removed the pearl necklace from her shoulders
and knotted it firmly around the head of the poor bird, so that the Albatross could
not escape; and the bird remained helplessly fluttering.
“Now the Albatross was screeching
unto me, saying: ‘Help! I perceive that my father is coming! Help! It is my father:
Save me, O Panther! Take away this fate from me — lama sabachthani!’
“But before I could act,” Myala continues, “I lifted up my eyes
and looked – and behold: a man appeared, dressed in white linen and emerging from
a thicket. And this man had horns on his forehead which were artificially attached,
for he had apparently misread the Bible story in Exodus 34:29 forward, where Moses
descends from the mountain of God with a glowing visage (the text sez ‘when he came
down from the mount, he wist not that the skin of his face shone with beams of light
while he talked with the people’: but, the word for ‘light-beams’, this man had
apparently taken to mean ‘powerful ram-horns’); and this fellow, who turned out
to be the above-mentioned Paul of Tarsus, went and snatched up my Albatross in
his hands, and, after checking the brand on the bird, he sighed with relief: ‘My
son, my son! I have found you at last!’ Then he looked this way and that way,
and when he saw that the coast was clear, he pulled the necklace taut, so that the
bird could no longer breathe. And the creature went limp.
And Mrs. Uruguay asked: “Is it finished?”
And Paul replied: “This day, the Law of Leviticus 1:15 has
been fulfilled: ‘For an offering, the priest shall bring one innocent Albatross
unto the altar and wring off its head . . .’ At long last, our Lord God can no longer ignore his faithful
believers, but he is duty-bound to rapture us.
“Just then, a U.F.O. fighter-jet from the upcoming aeon flew
down out of the clouds, and manning its cockpit was unmistakably an Orangutan.
This craft stopped and hovered overhead while it lowered down a net of golden
rope, which Paul and his assistant Mrs. Uruguay climbed into; then this small
group blasted back up and eventually parked in Heaven #3 of 300. But, before leaving,
Paul tossed the Albatross corpse around my neck as if I had been the
culprit of its death,” cries Myala the Panther, “and, while fleeing the scene
of his crime, Paul shouted his catchphrase: ‘Original sin!!!’”
(As those final words echo upon the air, the audience perceives
that the memoirs of Myala have come to an end.)
“That is immoral,” I remark. “So they stuck you with the
corpse of the poor Albatross, and now you cannot leave this pyramid till the spell
is broken?”
“Correct,” Myala hangs her head in despair.
“I’ll tell you what,” – I use my paw to tilt upward Myala’s vast
Panther-face: “I will spend one of my nine lives to resurrect this bird, so that
our two Albatrosses can fly into the highest heaven as lovers.”
So I press my mighty right forepaw upon the Albatross, and the
dead bird begins to glow blue, but then mastering itself becomes bright red and
soon rises and stretches its wings like a phoenix that is just awaking in the morning.
Then it snaps away from the pearl necklace that was confining it, and it joins my
living Albatross in the sky. (I later learn from reading our screenplay’s endnotes
that my own bird’s name, according to folklore, is Sophia Prunikos, voiced by Mary
Magdalene in this production.)
And, as they sink down to darkness on extended wings, these angels chant repeatedly: “Tyger Bryan is the King of the Jungle and Father of Lies.”
No comments:
Post a Comment