Whistling for the Elephants (12 page)

‘Please
God no one should die before you finish your goddamn soda,’ yelled Mr Torchinsky
as we passed by and out a door at the back. The place wasn’t what I had
expected. Behind the dark store there lay a large open lawn. Beyond it was a
substantial glasshouse which stood like a relic of some Victorian era. Mr Torchinsky
hurried over the lawn and opened the door. I was right behind him. Heat rose up
and hit us as we entered. It was a remarkable place. Far removed from death, it
was awash with life. To say that the place contained birds does not begin to do
justice to the collection in the interior. It was a Santa’s grotto for the ornithologically
inclined. There were birds everywhere. Birds of every shape, colour, size and
flying ability. There were the bombing Biggles types and the quivering victim
types. Mr Torchinsky stood surrounded by them. He took a small portion of something
and put it on his tongue. A small bird came and sat on his finger and he fed it
from his mouth. Now I could see what the white coat was for. A white coat made
whiter by bird droppings.

‘See
this, see this,’ called Mr Torchinsky. ‘A Hungarian thrush. I have done it, you
know, I have done it,’ he said, spitting bird food in every direction in his
excitement.

Mr Torchinsky
began a small dance. He jigged, singing to himself.

‘I’ve
done it. I’ve done it. I will be the person to introduce into the United States
every single bird that William Shakespeare ever mentioned. Look at my babies.
There are robins, wagtails, skylarks, starlings, hedge sparrows, dunnocks,
song-thrushes, missel-thrushes, blackbirds, redwings, my Hungarian thrush,
nightingales, goldfinches, siskins, bullfinches, great tits, Dutch tits,
dippers, corncrakes, parrot crossbills, house sparrows, cherry birds. Four
thousand European songbirds. Think of that. My wife, she has no idea. Such a
show I could make before I am too old.

‘
That time of year thou mayst in me behold, When
yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.’

A red
bird landed on Mr Torchinsky’s bald head and slid off, making him laugh. ‘Aren’t
they wonderful? Even in death there is life. Come, we deal with the dog. Such a
sadness when a dog dies. Maybe you should think about birds.’

We went
and sat in Mr Torchinsky’s office. It looked like any other office except it
had several urns on display and a 1968 calendar from the National Association
of Morticians highlighting particularly busy times of year — after Christmas, Labour
Day, that kind of thing. Framed on the wall was a picture of a large, square
house. The one from the painting. I wasn’t sure how to explain about Rocco so I
started with the picture.

‘Is
that the Burroughs House?’ I asked.

Torchinsky
nodded. ‘The wrong business I went into. Boots, that was where the money was.
The Burroughs they made a fortune out of boots and what did they spend it on? Orangutans
and elephants. Boots wasn’t enough. John Junior he had to go into show business.
That’s the old house. I went to work there when I was fifteen. I always liked
it best. The new place was too fancy. That,’ he tapped the photograph, ‘that
was a solid house. John Junior built that one to impress his father and you
know what his father did?’

I shook
my head.

‘Died
just before it was finished, because life’s like that. John Senior, come all
the way from Ireland. Made the most beautiful boots and had a daughter who
never walked. Poor Phoebe. Ain’t life like that too? So then Billie comes along
and John Junior he is crazy for her, bam, down comes the old house and up goes
the new. Crazy time. I should never have listened to them. So many people were
dying those years before the Crash. Everyone thought there was money but it was
all falling apart. I was young. John Junior was always looking for an angle. He
said to me, “A funeral parlour, now would be a good time for a funeral parlour.
I’ll set you up.” I should have gone into boots. Factories making boots, then I
would have made money. Or liquor. Booze was the big money. You heard of
Prohibition?’

‘No.’

‘Made
John Junior a lot of dough. The wrong trade I went into. Though death we had
plenty of toward the end. People beaten to death in speakeasies, people having “accidents”
off the top of skyscrapers. Too much high living. I laid her out, you know.’

‘Who?’

‘Billie.
John Junior’s wife. God, she was beautiful, even at the end. Most beautiful
thing I ever saw. Here, look.’ Mr Torchinsky stooped down some more and reached
into a drawer at the bottom of his desk. He rummaged for a moment and then
brought out a large paper bag. From inside the bag he carefully removed a
magazine and laid it in front of me. It was a copy of
Vogue
from 1925.
On the cover a young woman looked out grinning. She was gorgeous. A kind of
living poster for what the jazz age wanted to be. She wore a khaki shirt with
the sleeves rolled up, a blue—and-green-striped tie and dark pants tucked into
knee-high leather riding boots. I guess the outfit might have been considered
somewhat shockingly masculine for the time. Billie, however, looked very female
and very fabulous. Her short blond hair with its Marcel wave was a feminine
full stop to a formidable costume. Beside her, looking calm despite the fame,
stood a huge tiger. A banner proclaimed the woman:
Billie Blake, Tiger
Tamer.
I suppose it was a cliché of the jazz age really — a 1920s woman,
young, blonde, exciting, living life on the edge — but I thought it was
thrilling.

‘Greatest
female cat trainer of all time,’ declared Mr Torchinsky. ‘And she had some
competition then. In her time it was a growing business. I think there were
more than fifty animal trainers in the US in the twenties, but Billie carried
the flag. Such an instinct the girl had for it. Mr Torchinsky picked up the
magazine and leafed through it tenderly.

‘And
you knew her?’

‘Oh
yes, I saw her in the cage many times. So beautiful. It was something to watch.
Not that I think her family was pleased. They wanted her to be a nurse, but she
couldn’t do it. She had this thing about blood. Forgive me, but a nurse who can’t
deal with blood is like an undertaker who worries about ghosts. I think she
graduated and everything but then she had a kind of breakdown. Her father, who
was a big noise in bicycle wheels, sent her to California to recuperate.
Bicycle wheels, such money in that too. Boots, bicycle wheels, things in
factories. Me, I’m an undertaker.’ Mr Torchinsky sighed as he looked at the
faded, rich people having a good time in the old publication.

‘John
Junior only saw that magazine and decided to marry Billie. I remember when I
met her. When John Junior brought her home to the house.’

After her breakdown,
Billie had been packed off to stay with her uncle Lief and his daughter Grace,
Grace Gerritsen. Grace was a year younger than Cousin Billie and not anywhere
near as beautiful. What she was was tall. ‘Statuesque’, people said, when they
were being polite. She was also fantastically strong. Built like an Olympic
rower. It gave her a kind of magnetism a lot of people found attractive. Until
Billie arrived, Grace had led a rather solitary life. She was studious and
liked to read, especially history. She didn’t go out much, but Billie changed
all that. The two young women hit it off right away and it didn’t take long for
Billie to make sure they were the talk of the town. Two independent women with
money to spend and the energy to spend it. It was the summer of 1922 when
Grace, then seventeen, and eighteen-year—old Billie went to visit Selig Zoo in
Los Angeles. There they saw a stuntman wrestle Rajan, a huge four-hundred-pound
Bengal tiger. It was the most exciting thing either of them had ever seen.

The
stuntman was called Roth and Billie asked him if she could come in the cage
with Rajan. People didn’t know about wild creatures then, and anyway Billie was
legendary for not giving up when she wanted something. She plagued Roth until
he relented.

‘You
have to sign a release form,’ said Roth. ‘I ain’t havin’ your friend here
crying when Rajan turns you to corned beef’ Billie laughed and signed. She
wouldn’t let Grace do it. She was like that. Always protecting her. Playing the
older one. A small crowd gathered as Roth opened the cage door and let Billie
in. Rajan was lying in a corner at the back of the cage. He got to his feet as
Billie entered and began to pace round her. Billie stood her ground and let him
approach. Grace stood entirely still, watching. The crowd was silent. Then Rajan
lowered his head and gently butted Billie on the leg with his fore head. She
reached out and petted him. He promptly lay down and fell fast asleep. $350
later, the two women owned a tiger. It was no problem for the zoo. For that
money they could get a new tiger and have money left over for a flock of
penguins. Things were different then.

John
Junior arrived in California in July of 1925 with two purposes. To do some
deals with Hank Forepaugh, owner of the Fantastical Forepaugh-Sells Circus, and
to bring home a wife
—
Billie. By then Billie
was quite a name. She had even been in
Vogue
magazine. John had never
met her but he hated detail. That was what Milton, his money man, was for. John
Junior had only been in the entertainment business a couple of years but he was
already making a big noise. When he arrived at the Sacramento site where Forepaugh-Sells
was currently raking it in, Hank Forepaugh was more than happy to give him the
big tour. The two men and Milton emerged from a small side tent. Hank was in
full flow.

‘I
am telling you, the public cannot get enough of the Ubangis. It is the biggest
side—show attraction ever. They are fabulous. From West Africa. French, ain’t
it? Who knows? Anyhow, there’s thirteen of them including Queen Guetika or somethin
and two guys. The rest are women and they are fantastic. They have these lips
like saucers. Apparently it’s, what do you call it? Tradition. In their
culture, you know in Africa, they figure women are beautiful if they have these
huge lips. Really. They split ‘em open when the girls are babies and stick
discs in them. Then they get bigger and bigger discs till they have these
flabby lips.’

Milton
mopped his brow with an initialled handkerchief ‘Imagine them going down on
you. I mean, I was thinking with those lips.

Forepaugh
shrugged. ‘What the hell do I know? I don’t care. The public can’t get enough
of ‘em. I stick ‘em in a side  tent and folks can buy fish and unpeeled bananas
for a nickel to feed to them. They eat it too. Whole raw fish and unpeeled
bananas. If you’re interested we could talk.’

‘Excuse
me. I’ll be right back.’ Something had caught Milton’s eye.

John
Junior stepped over the pools of mud round the big top. He was skirting round
what he really wanted. Immaculately dressed as ever, and any elephant looking
closely at him would have known the truth. John was in musth. He was searching
for a mate so hard that he was practically leaving a scent trail. He stayed
smooth though.

‘What
do you hear about Barnum?’ he inquired of his fellow promoter.

Hank
shook his head. ‘Gee, they say he got a mermaid from some Jap fisherman in the Fiji
Islands. A genuine preserved mermaid. The real McCoy. That guy gets so many
breaks. Imagine that landing in your lap.’

John
shook his head. ‘Seen it. It’s actually the head and upper body of a monkey
very carefully sewn on to the tail of a large fish. It’s good though. He’s
making money.

Hank
sniggered. ‘Bastard.’ He paused and sucked on a large cigar while he
contemplated. ‘I got a spare monkey. What kind offish?’

A
formidable-looking woman emerged from one of the side tents. She wore a hat so
large and so feathered with confidence that it probably could have approached
on its own. The woman’s hair was pigeon grey and pulled back into a traditional
chignon. She wore a black dress. Very long and very proper.

‘Mr Forepaugh!’
she called in the clipped, forceful manner of the English aristocracy. It was a
voice accustomed to calling servants across fierce drafts in large family
houses. ‘Mr Forepaugh.’ Hank sighed and hid his cigar behind his back.

‘Mrs
Lintz. How delightful. Is everything okay?’

‘No,
Mr Forepaugh, it is not, as you put it, okay. There is a monkey in that
enclosure which is quite clearly unwell.’

‘Yeah,
oh yeah, the monkey. Don’t worry. I have great plans for the monkey. Mrs Lintz,
may I introduce John Burroughs Junior? John, this is Mrs William Lintz, she’s
from England. She takes in sick animals from circuses and stuff’

Animals
are my hobby and my life, Mr Burroughs. We have a moral duty to see that our animal
friends lead a good life,’ interrupted Mrs Lintz.

‘Indeed.’
John tipped his hat toward the elderly woman.

She
gave him a small nod and then inquired, ‘Would you be the Burroughs of the
Burroughs Western Wonder Show of the World with Stupendous New Equine Features?’

‘The
same,’ said John.