The Joy of Storytelling…
This is a fairy tale I have been telling my three-year-old son recently. I took whatever I remember from my readings of these stories many years ago, and pieced the fragments together as best as I can. I am certain some of these stories were quite similar to each other and my memory of these fragmented in my head. Bringing these back from the vaults of my memory recounting to my son, turned this futile patchwork into a beautiful memory. The retellings of this story have given me endless joy, the tale itself morphing with each telling, as my son eagerly chimes in. When he is eating I tell him this story, or rather an abridged version of this story.
We both know the beginning and the ending by now and we sort of agree in principle to keep them that way. But the middle we toy with, sometimes subtracting if there isn’t enough time but mostly adding, as if turning this into something heavy on purpose. Sediments of the first story feed the next story, and the next…
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A long time ago there lived a Journalist who travelled to work by train. On the way the train broke down and he stepped out, smothering his yawn with an open palm, to stretch his legs and get some fresh air. It was a desolate land with tall grass stretching all around, punctuated with thorny bushes and some swamps. The driver of the train, a short, stocky man with worn out teeth approached with a lopsided gait as he announced the train would be back on tracks anytime soon. The Journalist dug his hands into his trouser pockets and fished out a chocolate which he bit into, scanning the surroundings for something to do in the meantime.
As the clouds cleared and the sun came out the Journalist saw in the distance a glorious mansion with towering walls and giant trees with lopped branches. He was curious, and he took his pen and paper as he began sketching the outline. In his mind he pictured the aristocrats who lived there, away from the hubbub of the city. He went over to the front of the train where the driver was upending a bag of coals into the furnace. He enquired about the nearest train station which turned out to be just eight kilometres away from where they were.
The journalist bid farewell to the driver and made his plan — he was going to visit the mansion and offer the aristocrats a story of their life in the country, to be printed right away in the next edition. On the way to the mansion he thumbed the book of paper clippings he always carried with him — this was a montage of his previous work printed in some of the well-known weekly magazines, some on the topics of travel, some on leisure, and some on life in general, soul-searching you might even say…
The entrance was flanked by large plinths on which figurines of women held their hands together in a moment of trance, their heads cast to the heavens. The gate was crusted with weeds that splintered under his feet as he made his way inside. At the entrance he came to a stop near the fountain whose walls were lined with moss, wild grass clogging the mouth, and the water itself murky with spits of spider webs here and there…
In the main hallway he announced his presence, calling for the aristocrats he had pictured in his head. But he did not hear a reply. He held his satchel out, brandishing like a talisman as he summarised the purpose of his visit as best as he could. But the large hall with its curved dome, its red swags, and its cavernous rooms held its breath, like a child hiding in a cupboard. A sibilant sound issued from the floor above, a roll of shawls tumbling down the stairs, pulling into view a glorious mane and the leonine head wrapped in it. The lion climbed down the stairs, unhurried, his soft paws soundless and his tail undulating as if it were a swing for an invisible child. But as he came closer the Journalist found the lion was not as strong as he looked from the distance — tussocks of hair matted and falling, claws chipped, and teeth unflattering…
The journalist reiterated the purpose of his visit like a doll with strings keyed to repeat the same thing over and over. The lion swung his head from side to side as he advanced toward the Journalist, placing his heft on a low table, his head with the voluminous mane now very close to the journalist. With a thud the journalist dropped his satchel, genuflecting before the beast.
In the hours that followed the journalist and lion communed over food the Journalist cooked with a chicken ripped in half that he found in the kitchen. What happened to the staff at the mansion? He asked the lion afterwards. The journalist was no longer a blithering baboon — he had regained his composure and scribbling away in his notepad with a pointed pen. The mansion was once teeming with life — the garden outside in full bloom yearlong, and the water in the fountain kept clean as from an iceberg. And he was a feral beast, his sharp teeth never far away from tearing away the tender loins of a deer, the hot blood gushing out slathering his lips, his mouth a metronome for the dying pulse…
But he was selfish, he couldn’t see past his own needs and desires, a savage. One day he had come upon a woman caught in the swirls of a boisterous river. He followed as the woman eddied past him, carried by the current of the river, and when she called for help he threw a long stick for her to climb to safety. On the embankment with her back rested against the trunk of a tree, between shallow breaths, she asked him to carry her to the mansion where she promised to feed him a feast every day of his life.
In the mansion he looked after her while the nurses and staff brought her food to eat and herbs to recover. As promised, the lion received a feast every day, lavish treats with fresh chicken marinated in simmering sauce, leg of lamb coated in spicy oils, and so forth. As days went by colour returned to the woman’s cheeks, skin turning from pale to youthful, eyes from bleary to cheery, and her voice from croaks to croons… They went hunting together, she with a long-barrelled rifle that she had inherited from her father who was a forest ranger, and he, the lion, with his claws and dagger-like teeth… They killed birds sometimes, and deer other times when he protested with her. She nagged him to be civil, pressing her cheeks to his mane, and whispering like wind, the flaps of his ears involuntarily fluttering in response. Sometimes she got down from her horse and climbed him, her narrow body supine, as he shot through the thickets like a released arrow. On one of their hunting trips he said he loved her, the beast finally tamed… She reciprocated but he could see her mind vacillating. She was betrothed to another man, their marriage not too far in the future.
This turned the lion into the despicable monster that he was — he slinked out at night under the watchful gaze of a full moon while the leaves crunched underfoot and the treetops signalled an impending heresy, swinging madly as if possessed… The poor man had no idea why he was being killed — the lion in one quick sweep of his feet landing like an explosion of muscle and meat on him. It only took one bite of those magnificent jaws — life decamped from that poor man in less than the time it took the lion to lick his chops.
When he returned his lover was still asleep, her cheek pressed to one of her hand while the other hand lay languid in moonlight that filtered through the diaphanous curtains.
The journalist could not believe his ears — the woman upon hearing the demise of the prince stopped being as cheery as before, like a key had stopped turning in her back. Her skin turned pale, lips chapped and the face, that beautiful face of hers, it had turned into a desiccated fig, and those round eyes that the lion longed to see his ardour reflected in had lost all sight. When she died the staff paid their respects and never returned to the mansion. Since that day the lion had been living by himself, all alone in that mansion which was once alive…
The journalist having taken pity offered to stay with the lion. He caught some chicken and rabbits in preparation for the feast which he felt would mend a broken heart. After tossing the herbs and soup bones in a pail and put it on the stove, he made his way to the fountain to fix the clogged pipes. He leaned down to pick at some roots that were lining the pipe’s entrance, his eyes catching something bright in the lolling water. Clearing the vines he saw several mounds of moss — he scooped one of these to scrape and found it to be a skull, the gouged eyes now filled with shoots of grass. One by one he gathered what turned out to be bones and skulls, lined with moss and slipping out of his hands. His heart raced like a deer’s caught in the crosshairs of a rifle, skin on his back rippling with fright, as the heft of the lion landed on him, bolting him to the bed of the fountain…
