Radiance

She was the animal wrangler on The Virgin of Venus. Almost as tall as you.

ERASMO

You first saw her leading six tigers to the set, dressed as a squid-princess so that she could direct the animals without seeming out of place in the shot. She had on a crown of tentacles and stars. The alpha tiger was called Gloucester.

SEVERIN

I was twelve. She let me ride him home. He had fur like a chimney brush and he licked my face all over.

ERASMO

Your father loved her selfishly for once—for himself, for herself—and they were happy. The tigers moved in. She refused to dye their fur. They were a constant, cheeky orange eyesore in Virago.

SEVERIN

Ravens, too. And parrots who could all say one line of Chekhov each, but nothing else. A brace of black bears; four peacocks; two pythons; an albino deer; a komodo dragon; several lynx; seven ponies; and a tame, elderly kangaroo.

ERASMO

They all had something wrong with them. The albino deer, the aged kangaroo, one of the bears was missing an eye…Which one?

SEVERIN

Gonzalo. Trinculo had had his hind foot mashed in a trap.

ERASMO

The peacocks were deaf. The pythons had eczema. Half the ravens had broken wings and the other half couldn’t stop imitating babies crying. Gloucester had a stomach condition and could only eat meat ground up to slurry and mixed with milk, which Amal fed him by hand three times a day.

SEVERIN

The komodo dragon—Andromache—seemed all right at first. The only one of the lot fitted out for life in this world. But she fixated on Percy. Wouldn’t leave him alone. Insisted on sleeping with the pair of them every night or else she’d put up this terrible hue and cry, keening like a broken trumpet till they relented.

ERASMO

You tried to learn that cry.

SEVERIN

But they wouldn’t let me sleep with them.

ERASMO

Amal collected broken beasts.

SEVERIN

So naturally she collected us. The tigers slept in my room when they weren’t working. When I had tea parties, only tigers were invited.

ERASMO

Amal was the first person in your life who didn’t slather you with attention.

SEVERIN

[laughing] Hey.

ERASMO

Hey yourself. Not even six tigers could give you enough attention to let you rest easy. Hey, let’s talk about you a little more, and then we can address the issue of whether or not the world revolves directly around Severin Unck. I like Amal. I’ve never met her, but I like her. She had her zoo and she was in love with Percy and she treated you a little better than the deaf peacocks but not quite as well as Gloucester the tiger. You didn’t need your meat slurried, after all. There’re whole weeks when you were that age where there’s no film of you at all.

SEVERIN

Don’t let Percy hear you say that.

ERASMO

I like thinking about a version of you that doesn’t look for a camera all the time.

SEVERIN

Amal said once that I needed her tigers more than I needed a mother. That I had all the wildness of a plate of cheese. And a little tiger shit was good for a girl who lived in a fairy tale.

ERASMO

[His smile is enormous, frank, warm.] I can be a tiger if you want. What big teeth I’ve got.

SEVERIN

[ignoring him] She left anyway. One of the younger tigers, Cortez, bit off most of her hand when they were doing The Jupiter Circus. She was putting the bellhop’s hat on him and he just took it off at the wrist. No matter how you think you know a beast, she said in hospital, no matter how much love you’ve spent on him…then she waggled her stump. But she had an extra-wide bed brought into her room so that Cortez could lie next to her while she recovered. He rested his big old head in her lap and never moved from her side. She slept with her good arm around his scruff. Percy didn’t come to visit once. I suppose a twelve-year-old can’t begin to guess what goes on inside a marriage, most especially a marriage primarily concerned with lenses and the half-tamed. But when Amal got her clean bill of health she went to her chalet on Mount Ampère and sent for the rest of her animals.

ERASMO

Except two.

SEVERIN

Except Gloucester. I found him sprawled on my bed with his belly ready for scratching and a note round his neck that had instructions for his slurry on one side and on the other: No matter how much love you’ve spent.

ERASMO

And?

SEVERIN