Russell Hoban - The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

‘Here!’ shouted the constable. He pulled Jachin-Boaz from the lion and thrust Gretel back.

Jachin-Boaz, strong as a madman, hurled himself with arms flung wide at Gretel and the constable, slamming them against the telephone kiosk. Gretel and he together shoved the constable out of the way for long enough to open the door, then pulled him savagely inside.

‘No, you don’t,’ said the constable, his face red. He had been in family situations many times before, and more than once had had the combatants turn on him like this. Simultaneously he gripped the wrist of Gretel’s knife hand and brought his knee up into Jachin-Boaz’s groin.

‘Imbecile!’ gasped Jachin-Boaz, sinking to the floor with the pain. In a red and golden haze with black and shooting lights he felt a rage too big for his body, too strong for his voice, immense, unlimited by time, amber-eyed and taloned.

‘Good God!’ said the constable, staring through the glass door. ‘There’s a lion out there!’

‘Aha!’ said Jachin-Boaz, exulting. ‘You can see him now! How do you like him! He’s big, he’s angry. He can say no to anybody, eh?’

The constable, jammed between Gretel and the side of the telephone box, was writhing desperately while Gretel, bloody knife in hand, glared at him wildly. ‘I beg your pardon, madame,’ he said. ‘I am trying to get to the telephone.’ He looked away from the lion, dialled his station number, looked back again.

The constable identified himself, reported his location. ‘What I think we need here’, he said, ‘is the fire brigade with a pumper. Big net too. Stout one. No. Not a fire. Animal situation, actually. Yes, I should say so. With a strong cage, you know, as fast as they can. Ambulance too. Well, let’s say a large carnivore. No, I’m not. All right, a tiger, if you like. How should I know? Yes, I’ll be here. Goodbye.’

As the constable rang off there was a screech of brakes, followed by a crash. Looking past Jachin-Boaz the constable saw two cars stopped on the road, the front of one and the rear of the other crumpled together. Both drivers remained in their cars. Jachin-Boaz and Gretel were looking beyond the cars at the pavement and the parapet along the river.

‘Where is it then?’ said the constable.

‘Where is what?’ said Jachin-Boaz.

‘The lion,’ said the constable.

‘Lions are extinct,’ said Jachin-Boaz.

‘Don’t try that on with me, mate,’ said the constable. ‘Look at your bleeding arm.’

‘Spiked fence,’ said Jachin-Boaz. ‘Stumbled. Fell. Drunk again.’

‘What about you, madame?’ said the constable.

‘I walk in my sleep,’ said Gretel. ‘I don’t know how I got here. This is very embarrassing for me.’

‘You two stay here,’ said the constable. He opened the door of the telephone kiosk, looked all around, and stepped out. The motorists were still there, sitting in their cars with their windows rolled up. The constable went to the first car, motioned to the driver to lower the window.

‘Why’d you stop?’ said the constable.

‘Quite extraordinary,’ said the driver. ‘Somehow my foot slipped off the accelerator and came down on the brake. I don’t know how it happened.’

‘What did you see in front of you when you stopped?’ said the constable.

‘Nothing at all,’ said the driver.

The constable walked back to the second car. ‘What did you see?’ he said.

‘I saw the car in front of me stop so suddenly that I hadn’t time to stop myself,’ said the driver.

‘Nothing else?’ said the constable.

‘No, indeed,’ said the driver.

The constable took the names, addresses and registration numbers of both drivers, and they drove slowly away.

A polyphonic blaring was heard as a fire brigade pumper, an ambulance, a fire brigade car and a police car, all with flashing lights, arrived at high speed and slammed on their brakes. Armed men came out of the police car.

‘Where’s the tiger?’ said the firemen and the police together.

‘What tiger?’ said the constable.

‘I take a dim view of practical jokers, Phillips,’ said the police superintendent. ‘You called for a pumper and a stout net and an ambulance and some people from the zoo with a cage. Here they are now,’ he said as a van pulled up. ‘Now where’s this large carnivore or tiger or whatever?’

‘That call must have been made by this chap here impersonating me while I was unconscious,’ said the constable. ‘I was trying to break up a fight between this couple, and in the struggle my head struck the corner of the telephone box with such force that I was rendered totally unconscious for a short time.’

‘Did you ring up for all this then, while impersonating a police constable?’ the superintendent asked Jachin-Boaz.

‘I don’t know,’ said Jachin-Boaz. ‘I feel confused.’ He was feeling faint. He had taken off his jacket and wrapped it around his arm, and it was now thoroughly soaked with blood.

‘What happened to his arm?’ the superintendent asked the constable.

‘Spiked fence,’ said Jachin-Boaz.

‘She had a knife,’ said the constable. ‘Best give it me now, madame,’ he said.

Gretel gave him the knife. There was no longer any blood on it.

‘Are you putting them on a charge?’ said the superintendent.

‘I believe’, said the constable, ‘that these people are in a mental state that makes them a danger to themselves and to others, and I think that we had better have them committed for observation under the Mental Health Act.’

One of the men from the zoo came over to Jachin-Boaz. He was small and dark, looked from side to side constantly and seemed to be sniffing the air. ‘I don’t suppose I could have a look at this gentleman’s arm?’ he said.

The police constable unwrapped the bloody jacket from Jachin-Boaz’s arm, peeled away the blood-soaked torn shirt sleeve.

‘Yes, indeed,’ said the man from the zoo to Jachin-Boaz. ‘Very mental. How did you come by these particular teeth-marks?’

‘Spiked fence,’ said Jachin-Boaz.

‘Knife,’ said the constable. ‘Also, she may have bitten him during the struggle.’

‘Regular tigress,’ said the zoo man smiling, showing his teeth, sniffing the air.

It was full morning now. The sky had got as light as it was going to be that day. The clouds over the river promised rain, the water ran dark and heavy under the bridges. Cars, cyclists and pedestrians were active on the embankment. The pumper, with horn blaring and light flashing, went back to the fire station. The ambulance, also flashing and blaring, followed with Jachin-Boaz, Gretel and the constable in it. The police car followed the ambulance.

The zoo van stayed where it was for a time while the little dark man walked all around the telephone kiosk, back and forth before the statue of the man who had lost his head for some notion of truth, and up and down the pavement along the embankment. He found nothing.

The world seemed to be owned by a freemasonry of petrol stations, monster tanks and towers and abstract structures of no human agency or purpose. Wires hummed aloft, giant steel legs stalked motionless on frightened landscapes past haystacks, mute blind barns, wagons rotting by dung-hills on tracks to isolation where brown dwellings shrugged up from the earth. We knew it long ago, said huts with grass on the roofs. Hills went up and down, cows grazed on silence, goats stared with eyes like oracle stones. Cryptic names and symbols in strong raw colours flashed signals one to the other across the roofs and haystacks, across the stone and lumber of towns and cities. Flesh and blood spoke ineffectually in little voices of breath, feet hurried, plodded, pedalled. Faces passed on the road asked unanswerable questions. You! exclaimed the faces. Us!