Simons - The Tiger Catcher

For Tania, my last child, the joy of my life

A safe fairytale is not true to either world.

J.R.R. Tolkien

Contents

I SHOULD HAVE KISSED YOU. JULIAN LAY NAKED ON HIS BED, clutching the red beret, staring at the ceiling. I should have kissed you the last time I saw you.

After half a night passed like this, he gave up on sleep, jumped up and began to get ready. He had a lot to do to be in Greenwich by noon. Dont dawdle, the cook told him. You have very little time. You have a picosecond inside of a minute. And dont get stuck. Where youre going, the opening is wide enough for one man, but not for all men.

And what was Julians wise response to this?

How long is a picosecond?

One-trillionth of a second, the exasperated cook replied.

Julian dressed in black layers. He shaved. He slicked back his unruly brown hair and tied it up so it didnt look like what it wasa bushy mane on a man who long ago stopped giving a damn. Julian was square-faced, square-jawed, straight-browed, granite-chinned, once. His hazel eyes looked gray today, huge, sunken into his gaunt cheeks, the dark bags under his eyes like somebody clocked him, the full mouth pale. He had lost so much weight, he had to punch a new notch in his belt; his jacket couldve fit two Julians inside.

It took him a while to get out; he kept forgetting this, that. At the last minute, he remembered to text his mother and Ashton. Nothing too alarminglike Im sorrybut still, he wanted to leave them with something. Jokes to make them think the old Julian wasnt too far away. To his mom: I used to feel like a guy trapped in a womans body. Then I was born. To Ashton: You cant lose a homing pigeon, Ash. If your homing pigeon doesnt come back, what youve lost is a pigeon. But he did leave a separate note for Ashton on his dresser.

As instructed, Julian left his cell phone at the flat, his wallet, his pens, his notebooks. He left his life behind, including the words he had written just yesterday called Tiger Claws.

What do you ask of life

At night the world you cant change

desire drunkenness rage

Flies by

While you lie flat on your back

Under claws and lizards

In the purple fields.

He brought four things: a fifty-pound note, an Oyster fare card for the tube, the crystal on a rope around his neck, and the red beret in his pocket.

At Boots at Liverpool Street, he bought a flashlight. The cook said he would need one. And then the trains were slow like he was slow. Julian waited forever for a change at Bank. At Island Gardens, he looked down into his hands. They had been clenched since Shadwell. Lately hed been staggering, foundering, drowning. Without time, his wandering life had filled up with nothing but watery impressions, his days were without architecture, without frame or matter, a muddle, a madness, a dream.

But not anymore. Now he had purpose. Lunatic, foolish purpose, but hey, he was grateful something was being offered to him instead of nothing.

In Greenwich, the flat landscaped park below the Royal Observatory is lined with crisscrossing paths called Lovers Walks. Deep inside the park, on top of a steep hill with a wild garden, for centuries the British astronomers have studied the skies. Today, on a blustery day in March the garden was nothing but bare branches whipping about, blocking the view of what Julian was climbing to the top of the mountain to find.

He felt idiotic. Did he buy a ticket? Did he loiter until the appointed hour? The cook told him to find a telescope called the Transit Circle, but the Observatory was home to so many. Where was this enchanted spot where all impossible things became possible? Julian caught himself scoffing and felt ashamed. His mother taught him better than that, told him never to mock the thing you were about to fall on your knees in front of.

Which way to the Transit Circle? Julian asked the cashier behind the table.

The pretty girl smoothed out her hair. George Airys Transit Circle? Right through there. I can take you, if you like. Will it be just one ticket for you? She smiled.

Yes, he said. And no, thats fine, Ill find it. Do you sell pocket watches?

Yes, in our gift shop. Do you need a compass, too? Maybe a tour guide? She tilted her head.

No, thank you. He wouldnt look up, wouldnt meet her gaze.

With the girl hovering nearby, Julian bought a watch in an unopened box. She wanted to test it to make sure it worked, but he said no. He didnt want her touching it, imprinting his brand-new timekeeper with her own spirit.

You wont be able to return it if somethings wrong with it, she said.

Thats all right, he said. Im not coming back this way. Whatever happened, he wouldnt be coming back.

Thats a shame. She smiled. Where are you going? When he didnt answer, she shrugged, a friendly girl marking time. Look around, she said. Take your time.

Julian had almost nothing left from his fifty. He hid the remaining pound coins in a souvenir vase along with his Oyster card. Was that wrong, to hedge his bets? No, he decided. Even people who sought out miracles were allowed to be cautious. That was hima cautious man seeking out a miracle. He had some time to kill so he wandered around killing it. It was only eleven oclock. He tried to remember all the things the cook told him, but there had been so many. At noon, the sun will pass through a pinhole in the glass crosshairs overhead, the cook said. A beam of light will strike the quartz in your hands. The blue chasm will open. You must hurry. The rest of your life awaits.

It sounds difficult and complicated, Julian said. The cook stepped back from the grill and judged him up and down, a cleaver in his hands. You think this part is complicated? Do you have any idea what youre about to do?

No. Julian had no idea. He knew what he had been doing. Lately, nothing. But way back when, he did things, like mark time with his baby down the road from his Hollywood dreams. Sun beating down on palm trees and lovers, Volvos parked in secluded corners. Windows open. Joy flying in, like wind. Julian wasnt a skeptic then. Well, like he always said, there was a time for everything.

Wheres the Prime Meridian? Julian asked a gruff older guard inside one of the rooms in the pavilion.

Youre on it, mate, the guard replied. His name tag said Sweeney. He pointed to an enormous black telescope. Youre in the Transit Room. And thats the Transit Circle, right on the meridian line. Over nine feet long, Airys telescope looked like a field gun aimed at the stars. It was flanked by a set of glossy black stairs, their base set into a square well slightly below the main floor.

Through the open door, pale sunlight. The brass line marking 0.0 longitude was riveted into the cobblestones in the courtyard. Julian watched the tourists hamming it up on the line, one foot in the east, one foot in the west, standing on each others shoulders, taking pictures, posing, laughing. He checked his new watch.

11:45.

His hands trembled. To steady himself, he grabbed the low iron railing that separated him from the telescope, the retractable roof open, the patchy sky above him.

He was so utterly alone.

A strange, vast, rainy, foreign city. London like another country unto itself. Julian glanced back at the guard. The portly man sat on a stool, an elbow on the wood table, indifferent to Julian, as was the whole universe. There was a window behind Sweeney, a glimpse of taupe leafless trees blowing about in the sharp wind. It had been so gusty in London the last few days, like an eyewall of a hurricane passing through.