Whistling for the Elephants (11 page)

‘Dorothy,
do you smell gas? We think we smell gas.’

‘I
think it’s the dog,’ I replied.

‘The
dog!’ The men fell about laughing and went back to poking the nether parts of
the Schlick house. I stepped over the boards and went and looked at Rocco. By
the time I got there he had stopped moving entirely. I knelt down and looked at
him. Nothing moved. Not even wind. Under my dark blue cap’n’s hat, I was pretty
sure he was dead.

It
struck me as tricky news. I looked at a small embroidery which advised me to
Look
on the Bright Side
and wandered back to the kitchen.

‘Mr Schlick,’
I began. Father looked over a beer can at me. He was filthy.

‘Ah, my
lovely daughter Dorothy,’ he slurred. ‘You know, in our family we only ever
send the boys to school but with Dorothy it took ages to make up our minds.’
This remark was apparently hilarious. The men fell about, quite literally, with
the result that Harry slipped down through the widest gap in the floorboards.
He landed next to Joey, who had fallen asleep beside a pipe. Joey’s stomach
rose and fell like a beached whale mindful of the Japanese hunting fleet. I
looked down at Harry. I decided I didn’t care if I was rushing the plate.

‘Your
dog’s dead,’ I said very clearly. The sober voice among drunks.

He
blinked at me. ‘What?’

‘Your
dog. Rocco? He’s dead.’

Harry looked
at me for a moment and then dug his elbow into Joey. ‘Hey, Joey, wake up. My
goddamn dog’s dead.’ Joey blinked back to life for a moment. His greased locks
had fallen over his eyes and he couldn’t see real well. ‘My dog’s dead,’
repeated Harry.

‘I am a
dog catcher. I am
the
dog catcher,’ replied Joey with what dignity
remained. ‘If the dog is dead I do not
need
to catch it.’ His head fell
back on his chest.

‘Stupid
schmuck,’ said Harry, attempting to climb from beneath the floor. ‘This is so
wrong,’ he muttered as Eddie and Father nodded but did nothing. ‘So wrong. I am
the goddamn Mayor and I should not be lying next to a goddamn dog catcher who
won’t catch the goddamn dog. Judith!’ he bellowed. In seconds she was at his
side, followed by the other women. Even Mother had made it to her feet. Harry
looked at his wife.

‘Judith,
the goddamn dog has died and Joey won’t catch it. Tell him to catch it. You and
he are so goddamn close, you tell him.’ It was perhaps not the best way to
break the news. To put it mildly, Judith fell apart.

‘Don’t
say that. You don’t mean it,’ she cried over and over and over. Mascara
streamed down her face. Aunt Bonnie patted her on the back and lit a cigarette.
Mother decided it was a good time to be helpful and fainted. Father, who had
been having something close to a good time, was mortified. He tried to bring
Mother round and then he tried to lift her. Meanwhile Harry was in the hall, shaking
the clearly deceased Rocco. Sweetheart stood beside him just crying silently.
It was mayhem. Father simply could not lift Mother and began to feel faint himself.
Aunt Bonnie took him outside to cool off, which left Judith hysterical. Joey
woke up and, not knowing what had happened, leaped to Judith’s defence.

‘What
happened, what happened?’ he yelled. No one said anything so I said:

‘Judith
is upset because Harry.

That
was as far as I got. Joey heard the words ‘Judith’, ‘upset’ and ‘Harry’, turned
around and punched Harry. Judith screamed and for reasons I will never
understand grabbed me and began crying on my shoulder. Everything was a little
confused after that. In the end it was Uncle Eddie who carried Mother back
across the road. Eddie was so strong, it was nothing to him. He salvaged her.
We had to go out the back way as no one liked to move the dog. I think
Sweetheart helped Mother to bed.

I sat
in the Schlicks’ sitting room with Judith, waiting for her to calm down. She
sobbed for a long time but it dripped right off the plastic covers. When she
calmed a little I tried to be helpful.

‘I
loved that dog,’ she said. ‘He was my baby.’

‘Yes,’
I said.

‘I don’t
know how I’m going to say goodbye to him,’ she moaned.

We had
never stayed anywhere long enough to have a pet so I wasn’t sure either.

‘Maybe
we could have a funeral,’ I suggested hesitantly. ‘So you could say goodbye.
We had one for Father’s mum and Mother said it made her feel great.’

‘Oh,
Dorothy, do you think we could? Would you help me?’ I didn’t know why she was
asking me but I couldn’t think why not. I shrugged.

‘Sure.’

‘You must
be such a comfort to your mother. If my Pearl was here she would have helped
me.’ This notion set her off again. Then Harry came in with a steak on his eye
and I decided it was time to go. Back at home I sat up waiting for Father. I
guess he had been in the Schlicks’ yard all that time. When he finally came in
he went straight to his papers in the dining room. I went to talk to him. I had
a lot of questions. It had been a very different evening for everyone. Maybe it
was a good time to talk.

‘Father?’
I started.

‘Hmm,’
he said, not looking up.

‘Why
did Harry treat Judith like that?’ I asked.

‘Like
what?’ His head snapped up. ‘Whatever he was doing it is none of our business.’

‘But he
was hurting her at the barbecue and it wasn’t nice. I know everyone had had a
lot to drink but…’ Father looked closely at me.

‘What’s
happened to your accent?’

‘Nothing,’
I mumbled, trying to remember how to say the word ‘nothing’.

‘Well,
keep it that way. While I am delighted you are having the full American
experience I would appreciate it if you left some of the more unpleasant vowels
at the front door.’ It was a very long sentence for him. He looked back at the
table and carefully began to open a new letter from the British Library. I
backed away and went out into the front yard. It was obviously not a good time
to ask about funerals.

It was
still warm out and the cicadas were clicking away in the night air. The Pontiac
gleamed in the moonlight. It was so powerful and sleek-looking. I didn’t think
about it. I went inside and took the keys off the hail table. It was an
automatic car. There was nothing to it. I sat on the very edge of the seat,
peering over the steering wheel, slipped the car into R for reverse and pulled
out into the street. I drove up to the Dapolitos’ and past them to the Yacht
Club, turned around and went back down to the stop sign. I didn’t think about
anything. Just drove round and round in circles. Travelling and not arriving.

Chapter
Six

I have to be honest and
say that I wasn’t that keen on Rocco when he was alive. He was really too
drippy for a pet. But now he was dead I felt bad. I kept thinking about
Sweetheart crying and I wanted to do something to help. Anyway, the funeral had
kind of been my idea so I went to the only place I could think of. I had often
parked my bike against the window at Torchinsky’s Funeral Parlour on Main
(Est.
1928)
while I went to get a piece of pizza from Tony’s. Tony didn’t want
bikes in front of his place because he liked to show off in the window, tossing
dough in the air and making it land on the tray. Putting your bike in front of Torchinsky’s
was okay. It wasn’t like Torchinsky’s had a big display which you could
obscure. They couldn’t exactly do embalming or whatever to bring in the
customers. The window was done in basic black with a large framed map of the
cemeteries in the area marked with their religious denominations. It made it
look as if they charged by distance of delivery.

There
was organ music playing when I entered but otherwise the place was as quiet as
you would expect for the departed. I can’t say it was exactly cosy — but it
was
a place of embalming. In my great Chinese order embalmed things were second
only to ‘Those Belonging to the Emperor’. The store had to be an important
place. A leatherette sofa stood against one wall with framed photographs of
floral tributes hanging all around. There was a large wooden table with several
small boxes on it which Mrs Torchinsky was polishing. She looked up at me as I
opened the door.

‘So
what do you think?’

‘About
what?’

Mrs Torchinsky
held up a miniature coffin complete with brass handles. ‘The new oak. I think
it looks nice.’

The
coffin was maybe ten inches long and three inches wide. It was perfect but I
couldn’t think what you would use it for.

‘It’s a
little small,’ I said.

Mrs Torchinsky
laughed. ‘It’s only for display. Unless maybe you have a dead gerbil. You don’t
have anything dead, I’m right?’

‘No,
but I wanted to ask about a small, you know, box. It’s for a dog.’

‘For a
dog?’ Mrs Torchinsky shook her head. ‘On this we should one day retire.

The
organ music stopped and a scratching sound started behind the curtain. The
record had finished. From the next room I could hear rhythmic banging. Maybe
someone was trying to get out of one of the oak coffins.

‘Builders,’
said Mrs Torchinsky. ‘Building a new chapel of rest. In our lifetime we should
get some rest.’ She was a comfortable-looking woman but kind of pinched in at
the waist. Her grey hair had been given the general direction of a bun but it
had rebelled and hung in wisps all around her plump face. It wasn’t a bad
thing. It sort of hid the hair which grew on her top lip. She had quite a moustache.
I had to remember to ask Sweetheart if Mrs Torchinsky looked like the bearded
lady she had talked about. I didn’t know how much beard a woman could have.
Mother got little hairs on her chin. I knew that, even though she always put
the tweezers away if I came in when she was using them. Mrs Torchinsky put down
the baby coffin and moved a black cotton drape to put the record back on. From
beside the record player she got her coat and hat.

‘Ralph!’
she called to the back of the store. ‘Ralph, I gotta go out and get cookies for
the builders.’

A
surprisingly loud voice boomed from the back. ‘They want cookies they should
build a bakery.’

‘You
got customers.’ Mrs Torchinsky put on her coat. ‘For a dog.’

‘A dog
I can do,’ yelled the voice. ‘A dog would be good. Bite the goddamn builders in
the ass. Are you people never going to be finished?’

The
question was answered by more banging. Mrs Torchinsky buttoned her coat.

‘My
husband will see to you.’ She turned to go, then turned back. ‘I’m sorry for
your loss. May the dog rest in peace.’ It was very professional. She smiled,
pleased with herself It was fascinating. It made her moustache spread sideways.
She left. I waited for a moment until Ralph Torchinsky appeared. He looked like
an undertaker. He was dressed like an undertaker. He just didn’t talk like one.
But the surface picture was great. In his late fifties, he was kind of
spooky-looking. He had a slight deformity on his back and you couldn’t tell if
it was just a stoop or an actual hump. It pushed his bald head down, as if he
spent all his time making sure clients stayed below in their graves. He wore
fantastically thick spectacles with glass you could have cut from a whiskey
tumbler. Maybe he couldn’t see into the graves at all. Maybe the stoop and the
bad eyes had developed from years of trying to look sympathetic and efficient
at the same time, or maybe he had always had it, I don’t know. He wore grey
striped pants and a tailcoat with an old-fashioned wing—collar shirt. Over the
top of his funereal outfit he had a white lab coat. I wished I hadn’t come.
Maybe he was in the middle of cleaning up some dead person. I was sure I could
detect the waft of something chemical about him. Anyway, he looked the part of
a funeral man but the voice was bad casting. It was much too loud.

‘So you
lost your dog?’ he bellowed. ‘What kind of dog was it?’

‘It
wasn’t actually my…’

‘I hate
this music,’ announced Mr Torchinsky loudly. ‘Why can’t we play anything else?
Forty years I’ve been listening to goddamn organ music. In all those years I
never figured out why people want you to be so goddamn quiet in funeral parlours.
It’s not as though you could wake any of the clients. Band music. That would
cheer people up. I love band music. Sousa. There was a man. Come.’

He
gestured to the curtained arch which led through to the back of the store. I
had suddenly lost my nerve. Seeing a dog dead had been enough. I mean, it had
actually been quite interesting but I didn’t want to graduate to the real
thing. You know, people.

‘Mr Torchinsky…
it’s not even my dog and the thing is…’

‘Come,’
he repeated and disappeared out back. I had too many English manners not to do
as I was told. Through the cloth arch there was a corridor with several closed
doors. Here the dead no doubt lurked, with fixed grins on their lips and
formaldehyde up their noses. At the end of the corridor, double doors led into a
large room where two workmen were sitting drinking root beer. There were bits
of wood and sawdust everywhere.