The kid looked into the cage with wide eyes. The tiger looked back,
bored.
There was an area behind the tent where people from the audience
could walk around and get a glimpse of the backstage bustle if they wanted,
during the daytime, anyway. It wasn't exactly encouraged, but neither was
it discouraged; some performers found it annoying, but more of them found
it oddly flattering. In the interest of safety (and keeping insurance
premiums down) Jake, like his father before him, made sure that sawhorses
were laid out in a pattern that subtly but unmistakably let pedestrians
know where they were and were not allowed.
The kid was leaning on the sawhorse, just barely an arm's length
from a real life tiger. He stood there for minutes, just looking at the
colossal cat, studying the grace of it's form, the regality of its bearing,
noting the size of its claws, the length of its teeth when it yawned. The
kid was fascinated.
From time to time a roustabout or tumbler would cast a glance the
kid's way as he or she walked by, to make sure the boy wasn't some idiot
that would try to put his hand in the cage or engage in some equally
moronic stunt; but that glance was all it took to assure them that the boy
had the wisdom to respect the cats from a safe distance.
The kid looked at the lion. At its eyes. The tiger met his gaze. A
chill of excitement trickled up the kid's spine.
What secrets did the tiger hide behind those calm, intelligent eyes?
Lekya watched the kid from across the yard. He'd been watching him
the whole time. He shook his head. The kid wouldn't get much out of of
Shermie, there; not a lot running through that cublike brain. Shermie was
good-natured, though, as tigers go; he was just slow and easily distracted.
Oh well.
Still, looking at the kid, standing and staring in amazement at the
creature of legend and myth that reclined lazily upon a bed of straw less
than an arm's length away, behind bars set almost wide enough apart to
crawl through (but we wouldn't be doing that!), seeing the kid entranced
like that reminded Lekya of his own days as a boy, half a century and half
a world away....
Lekya had been looking out through bars for so long that it had
seemed to him that bars were all the world was made of. Blessedly, he had
few memories of the Camp at Treblinka; he remembered smoke, and crowds, and
hunger, but that was it. Memories of the Displaced Persons camp, the
allegedly "humanitarian" prisons built by the allied conquerors for
survivors of the Nazi horrors, were stronger, though only marginally more
pleasant. Misery surrounded him, and the night sky was a backdrop for the
sound of wailing that welled up from every anguished bunkhouse.
It was worst for the gypsies; their kind drew no sympathy from the
occupiers, and their people had no voting bloc back in the states to ensure
that they were treated humanely. Later Lekya would hear many sad, horrid,
disturbing stories of the abuse undergone by Lekya's fellow Romany at the
hands of the so-called rescuers... but Lekya had been well treated.
Orphaned, he lived in the camp for nearly a year, and both the gypsies
inside and the Allies in charge saw to it that he was taken care of.
Lekya was five years old.
It took relief agencies all of that year to locate a surviving
relative of Lekya's, not surprising considering the general mistrust his
people had then as now for authorities of any kind. Lekya had a
great-uncle, Buna, who had found a refuge of sorts in a legitimate circus
in Turkey; after the war the circus had returned to Romania, and Lekya
found himself traveling far over strange terrain, shepherded by a teenaged
cousin, to live with this strange old man whom he had never met.
Lekya did not know at the time what a "circus" was, of course, and
the rough-and-tumble of the small hill-country Eastern European circus was
a far cry from even the humble tent show put on by McCrae. But he felt the
warmth of the people from the moment he entered the circle of wagons, felt
their hearts open to him. He felt at home.
As fate would have it, Uncle Buna was a lion-trainer.
Buna and his handful of scraggly cats had managed to survive the
food shortages of wartime through the generosity of a well-off caliph who
had a warm spot for tiger shows; when some busybody would ask Buna how he
could justify feeding the cats when so many people were starving, he would
just growl at them and they would go away. But Lekya understood.
Not at first. He was too young to even think of the question, and
far too young to have much to do with the big cats, beyond the cleaning of
their cages and the fetching of their food. But later, when he had grown
into what one might call a "strapping youth", muscular from the hard work
of circus life, gruff from years with the even gruffer Uncle Buna.
He understood the first time he walked into the big cage with the cats.
"Here, Lekya," Buna had said to him on that day, when he was on the
cusp of adolescence, "It is time you faced the cats."
By that time Lekya had spent many hours with his uncle's tigers,
and they all were familiar with Lekya and his scent. He cleaned their
cages, fed them huge dinners of raw red meat, and served as Buna's second
>from outside the cage, watching the tigers, keeping an eye on their moods
so that he might be able to shout a warning to Buna if one of them was
about to turn on him. He had even been up-close with Buna's most trusted
cat, Dascha, when Buna took her out of her cage one night. Lekya had been
thrilled and terrified, though Dascha had regarded him with a very tigerish
disinterest.
But Lekya had never been inside the big cage with all the tigers at
once, and he certainly hadn't expected to be given the opportunity at his
then-so-young age. But Buna knew his cats, and he knew his nephew; if he
felt that Lekya was ready, then it must be so.
Lekya's heart thudded into his throat.
"Go ahead, boy," Buna said, from behind him, "If you would face the
big cats you must face them as a man not a mouse. Be confident! I am behind
you!"
Lekya reached out and placed his hand upon the door to the Big
Cage. In the years since the war the circus had prospered, as people
flocked to find inexpensive ways to forget their innumerable troubles. Buna
had doubled the number of cats from three tigers to six, and the cage where
he faced them was no longer the rickety and rusty mesh hazard that he had
used in the past but a much sturdier modern model (though, as Buna often
said, the cage was more for the audience's peace of mind than anything
else; he had never seen the circus cage that could provide more than a
momentary obstacle to a tiger that was determined toward freedom). The cage
rattled under Lekya's hand, and two of the tigers looked over to watch him
enter.
"Go on boy, I'm right behind you," Buna said.
Lekya stepped through the door and stood facing a half-dozen cats,
who were quickly becoming interested. He heard the door shut behind him,
and wanted to glance back to make sure that Buna was, indeed, standing
behind him as promised, but didn't dare take his eyes off the cats for as
much as a millisecond.
The cats weren't sure what to do about this unusual visitor to
their territory; they saw Buna behind him, but didn't know what the trainer
expected of them. Solczyka, the oldest, started to step down from her
barrel. Lekya knew he had to do something.
The chair and whip were hanging from the side of the cage. Without
taking his eyes off of the cats Lekya removed them from their pegs and
brandished them as he had seen Buna do. "Solczycka, ho!" he shouted, trying
to make his youthful voice resonate with the confidence of one who expects
to be obeyed. The effect was somewhat comical, but he also made the correct
move with the whip, which Solczycka recognized as her cue to get back onto
the barrel. With a snarl she strode once around the stand, then leapt back
onto it and took her expected position on her haunches, front paws together.
Lekya grinned. "I did it!" he exclaimed, glancing back to see
Buna's approval.
Buna was not inside the cage.
Lekya didn't panic, nor linger his eyes for more than the second it
took to recognize his situation. He immediately returned his gaze to the
tigers, attempting to let them know that he was in charge. They watched
him, but didn't move.
"Up! Ho!" Lekya made the gesture with the whip that was the signal
to stand on hind legs; a simple trick.
The cats just looked at him.
Most people would have panicked. But most people shouldn't be
standing in a cage with tigers. Lekya stepped confidently forward, and
raised the whip again. "Up! Ho!" The nearest tiger roared disapproval...
but it raised its front paws into the air, as it had been well-trained to
do. Seeing the first tiger do its trick, the other two followed suit. Lekya
held the whip aloft for several moments, until the first tiger began to
show signs of restlessness. He then lowered the whip and the cats lowered
their front legs back into a resting position on their stands.
"Well done!" Buna said, clapping Lekya on the shoulder. Lekya had
been so intent on the cats that he never heard Buna open the two doors to
the cage and ease inside. When Buna saw Lekya startled reaction to his
sudden presence, he laughed heartily.
"So Uncle Buna is scarier to you than a cage of man-eating tigers,
eh! Haha, that is as it should be! Come with me Lekya, that's enough for
today! You have done well; next time we try some harder tricks!"
Buna had done what he did to test Lekya's mettle; by placing him
alone in the tiger cage Buna knew he would be able to gauge whether the boy
had the fortitude to follow in his uncle's footsteps, or whether it was
time to send him out to start clown training instead. But the boy was born
to the whip; Buna was glad, but unsurprised. Still, there was one more
test. To be sure.
Later, after news of Lekya's initiation had spread across the
circus, as Buna and his nephew sat down to eat, Buna asked the question, in
between many other questions, and absolutely without any change in tone or
modulation that might cue the boy to the import of these seemingly
insignificant words.
"Tell me, Lekya, what did you feel in that cage?"
Lekya didn't know how to answer his uncle. What had he felt in the
cage, indeed? A strange mixture of emotions... fear, certainly, though he
would not mention that; a sort of determination; even a bit of power when
the tigers obeyed him. But he sensed that Buna was looking for a different
answer, sensed it with an instinctive ability to read the emotions of
others that would, in time, serve him well in the Big Cage. More than that,
he realized that the answer was as important to himself as it was to Buna.
What was it that he had felt in that cage, what feeling could be
that important, yet that elusive? In his mind he placed himself back behind
the thin framework of metal, smelling the sawdust and feeling the leather
of the great whip in his hand.
He stepped through the door, feeling fright and excitement at once,
and then stood alone (though he didn't realize that at the time) only a few
short yards from three of the largest land predators. Staring them in the
eye, meet them as an equal... what did he feel?
"Awe," was the word he used.
Buna nodded, unsmiling. He didn't say another word for a quarter of
an hour, but Lekya knew that he had given the right answer, because this
answered his own question a well.
Awe. What a word. Almost a religious word. But that's how the
experience had been. One minute he had been a boy, barely an adolescent;
then he had stepped through that doorway, and his life had been changed. He
had tasted a bit of Truth, and even if he never sampled it again, it would
be enough to last him for a lifetime.
For in that briefest of instants Lekya had felt something primal
reaching across the space between them; it was as though something that was
of the cats and yet beyond them was acknowledging him, was accepting his
presence. There was a sense of welcoming in that feeling, and also of
danger. It was electric, and set the hair on his neck on end.
He had felt the presence of the Great God of Cats.
For the rest of his life Lekya, who was then and ever would be
agnostic on most other spiritual subjects, would always recognize that at
that one moment he had been in the presence of something that went beyond
man, though it was many years before Buna told him the story that explained
it, a little.
For the moment, was silent, a deep, purposeful silence. And then
he said: "We begin your training tomorrow." With that it was settled. Lekya
would become a lion-tamer.
All this flashed through Lekya's mind as he watched the kid looking
through the bars at Shermie, dumb but regal tiger that he was. And it gave
him a thought. He stepped away, leaving the kid, who had never even noted
his presence, to his fascination.
A moment later he walked up to the kid, stepping softly. He leaned
over. "Psst! Hey kid? You want meet big cat?"
The kid, surprised, whirled, then jumped back a foot in even
greater surprise, for the turn had brought him face to face with Sasha, who
regarded the small human quizzically.
"Easy, relax," Lekya said, "He's friend." Sasha extended his nose
and sniffed the boy inquisitively.
The boy continued to recoil for a moment, then loosened up a little
and let the cat smell him. "That tickles," he laughed, as Sasha's whiskers
brushed against his cheeks.
"His name is Sasha. Go 'head. Pet him."
"Can I? No way!" The boy reached out a hesitant hand and touched
Sasha lightly on the top of his head. He had to reach up to do this. Sasha
responded with a look of forbearance but that did not seem to dim the
excitement of the moment for the boy. "Wow," was all he could say.
"Now, you know the other cats are not like Sasha," Lekya cautioned.
"Don't go put your hand in cage at zoo!"
The boy shook his head, aghast. "No way!" Then he laughed. Sasha
was sniffing his ear and the jets of breath from his enormous nostrils sent
the boy's hair into disarray.
"Sasha and me," Lekya began, "We been together for two decades now,
and a little more. I remember -"
But Lekya got no further. Suddenly there came a shout of horror
across the straw-bestrewn fairground, one that was no more welcome for
having been half-expected.
"William? What the hell! Get away from there!"
The boy's father, running past the sawhorses.
Lekya raised his hands in a calming gesture. "Easy, easy.
Everything's fine."
What worked for tigers seemed also to work for the boy's father,
for he slowed his approach, and the angry fear faded from his cheeks
somewhat. Or perhaps he was considering Sasha, who looked apprehensive.
Perhaps he thought it was better to try to reason this out than to
physically challenge a man who kept a lion as a pet. "William! Come on over
here, boy!"
The boy, William, looked at the cage one last time, and then at
Sasha; and then he ran across the yard to his father. The latter, bolstered
by the moral victory, turned his attention to Lekya, though still keeping
what he hoped was a safe distance between himself and Sasha. "Are you
crazy?That's a freaking lion, for Crissakes! You trying to get somebody
killed?"
"Not just a lion," Lekya responded convivially, "Is Sasha. Smartest
damn lion in the whole world. Thought the boy might like to meet him up
close."
"I don't care if he's Charles Van Doren, you have no right to put
my son's life at risk like that."
"No risk. Sasha, he's a big kittycat. The boy has more risk walking
to school than punching Sasha in the nose... as long as I'm right here,
anyway. Come on over, you see." Lekya waved him over.
The man looked skeptical, but his son convinced him. "Come on, dad,
he's really cool!"
"Ahh, what the hell," he said, and began to tentatively approach Sasha.
"That's the idea. Go on, Sasha, say hello." The lion made a
guttural throat noise, more of an inquisitive "Hrmmm?" that a threatening
roar, but William's father stopped in his tracks nonetheless, then laughed
at his own trepidation and made the last few steps confidently.
"Sorry. It's not every day you get to meet a lion." He reached his
hand out toward Sasha's nose. The lion stretched his neck to sniff it.
"This is Sasha. I am Lekya."
"John Quinlan. Ha, that tickles. Hi Sasha, good boy... Can I pet him?"
"Of course."
"This is incredible... I'm petting a lion!"
"See, dad?" William interjected.
"I'm sorry I flew off the handle back there," John Quinlan said,
"But you have to understand what it looked like."
"Oh, I understand. And kind of expected it. But I had to do it
anyway."
Quinlan looked at Lekya skeptically. "Umm, why? I mean, you were
running a hell of a risk... I don't mean Sasha, I mean the risk of the
Irate Parent, maybe the Irate Parent with Lawyer."
"I know. Still had to."
"Why?"
Lekya reached over and scratched Sasha behind one of his ears.
"It's hard to explain in words. I see your boy looking through the bars,
see him look at the big cats, and I sense that he feels it... feels the
link between man and cat. I look at your boy and know, if he meets Sasha,
then the cats will always have an ally in him. For always."
"An ally?"
"Boy understands. Don't you, William?"
"Um," the boy replied, "I think so... I saw a show the other day on
the Animal Network, how the wild lands are disappearing and the animals
too. I wished I could stop it."
"Can't stop it, though; man expands, wilderness dies. But there
will be people who stand up and see that it stops somewhere, that there are
always lands for the cats... as long as there are people who feel the link."
"Well," the man Quinlan said, "These cats here aren't exactly
living the wild life."
"Eh, is not so bad, I think, because they sense I feel the magic,
that I honor the bargain made by ancient man and ancient cat... to leave
one another alone, that would be. Big cats hardly ever hunt men in the
wild... why do you think that is? Men are slow, weak, and easy to kill, and
up until this century there wasn't a weapon man could make that could make
a Lion fear, yet the Lion doesn't hunt men, even if he's hungry. Why? The
Old Bargain. Folklore, maybe, but in lore is often truth."
"So you agree with the stuff those Tiger, Tiger characters are on
about."
"No! I mean, some of what they look for is the same as what I look
for - better treatment of animals, proper care, proper feeding. But Good
God! They make decent animal people look like ready to go psycho at any
minute, like mailmen. Ha! I believe in law and order too but don't believe
in lop off hands of pickpocket... unless hand is in my pocket, eh?"
"I heard they made a threat to your circus."
"What?"