How the leopard lost his spotted coat by John Tan

HOW THE LEOPARD LOST HIS SPOTTED COAT (From ALICE BOOK THREE) “O BEST BELOVED, listen O – listen to this lame imitating of Rudyard Kipling – mannerisms just-so, a la Kiplingsque – a half-baked tale and rank and sinewy tiffin served up from the sultry jungles of India with its dangers a-lurking around all throughout its scorching bright or gloomy days and dark and hot or dank clouded, rain-imbued and wet, tropical nights. It touches largely upon a White man, returning from home leave, and his equally English wife… of whom, it sufficed to say, considered together as a pair, William Makepeace Thackeray’s remark, ‘Some cynical Frenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction: the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated,’ justly, might have been truly applicable. As the title of the tale indicates it also concerns a leopard, not only the titular but the real villain; in this particular case, one big kitty cat that spends its macho life hunting in Bundelkhand and slumbering insensibly by day in the gloomy jungles of the Western Ghats. Sing, I shall! -- of the White man who was a rising star according to the administration in White Hall on the off-go; for starters, who seemed to be tied up in a running gag with the gulls in many a government's clerical and secretarial departments who laughed hot-headedly at his jokes! On his way across the subcontinent to Calcutta, his train collided with a water buffalo -- O! -- so I sing tremulously of his intrepid, throbbing heart at his being jolted out of his jejune complacency; for, ever since his traveling down to Bombay to receive his letters of appointment -- having stepped off a P & O ocean-going steamer: he had abandoned his smart, foppish London tailoring. Indeed, as soon as he crossed the Equator he had decided to change his clothes and shaved, very religiously. Now, dressed in immaculate white ducks, he made no verbal complaint and calmly got out from First Class to inspect or survey the damage, chin in hand... He did not think it was the Indian Peninsula Railway Engineer’s fault. He thought it was the mangled bullock’s fault! Ugh, the crash was a horrendous one and he discovered and counted some of the brown passengers in the intermediate-and-also the third class was injured and some of them, dead. The front of the engine having toppled over, was derailed, and some of the coaches had run smack into one another or sprawling close to its sunken and broken tracks. Now, Mrs. Majoriebanks-Fesk whose husband (the colonial government appointee) was the only relation she had -- was stuffing a chicken breast into her mouth; for she loved to eat exceedingly -- when, she felt the smart and mortification of being hurtled off her balance and from her tippy-toes, but, as the couple was none the worse after the crash both exchanged a look of resignation at being thrown upon their own resources suddenly, being the only English people who were still alive, -- for the nonce in the middle of nowhere – the nearest government station being a hundred miles away – through strange digestion was going on inside her unbridled stomach. James Fesk, looking upon himself to organize the survivors with officious discipline and administrative promptitude got a reliable and knowledgeable Parsee off at once to send a wire to report the accident and beg for fast government assistance; for he was a man of the big practical Imagination, and it would look good for him among the natives and his future position, as he was on his way to Calcutta to accept his new job as Under-secretary to the Governor in Calcutta, to which post he had been promoted. The leopard was fifteen miles away from the accident site and having just awoken atop an acacia tree it was feeling vaguely hungry. At that very same moment, fifteen miles away, James Fesk took out his watch, and look at it in the umbrageous half-light. It showed three o’clock in the afternoon. By five o’clock the leopard was eight miles away. Finding a river in the general direction where it wanted to go; and so with a leap, it sprang into the lukewarm silvery brown water and resurfaced with resurgent pride in its strength and prowess and let out a guttural roar. By nightfall, which visited the survivors of the railway crash after the briefest of dusks, a wet wind rustled the perennially green leaves and the crumbly treetops, and as a hushed, slightly warm rain began to trickle down, it began to plaster the English clothing of both the Englishman and the Englishwoman.The downpour was an uncommon, miserable affair. The woman told her husband that she was going a little way off “to powder her nose.” And the Government appointee, for whom it looked like his appointment will be delayed answered her, as delicately as possible: ’Aw -- aw -- do as you please, woman; but, honey pie, do not tear your beige gown and don’t stray off too far.' The woman trekked off, duly clicking her medium heels on some rocky jungle path but the leopard didn’t get a hold on her. Early, as the sun was topping the rim of the smoky distant blue hills, at round about six in the morning, what should be staring at the Government appointee but the leopard, smacking its lips with sensuous, catlike presumption! James Fesk, who had been searching for his beloved wife, wished he wasn’t verily alone; and he had the voluptuous Mrs. Majoriebanks-Fesk to make clever love talk to the cavalier and smiling, robust-looking beast. 'Blast, – I love Millicent too well indeed; but, it seems -- I am for it now! Marge, more than likely, is going to have her wish at romancing other dudes.’ As James Fesk had no magic wand, no lignum vitae, to conjure up his wife to appear before the big and spotted cat, he looked around quickly, feverishly, agonizingly, for a means of escape, with half-vapid and mock-serious attitude; and spat full peevishly: ‘Aroint thee! They’ll ask about me down at Calcutta, you know -- er –Cal – that is – Cal – cut – ta for I’ll be head-quart—‘ 'Headquartered, ha-ha! Shoot, shucks, trol dey le rol, don’t noli me tangere, you know? Fur I haff ‘eard it all before. Uh huh, a Man. But I am bally so famished I could eat my own ‘ead! Like them chocolate fudge; you know?’ The Man protested with a dry, chesty cough of disturbed, real annoyance: the Leopard importuned. It was drumming on a piece of root that had stuck out of the ground; staring longingly at him with shiny, rollicking eyes. ‘Nay, my Phantom will haunt you, my Felis Pardus, you know?’ The Leopard studied the Man and watched him heaving his undersides, his coat buttons popping: one -- two -- three -- Most pleadingly, the Man tried once more: ‘Why don’t you eat your own ‘ead, digest it in your own entrails then -- I mean?’ 'Cute -- my plaguy Man! An’ stain that immaculately painted coat o' mine? It’s my best one in my wardrobe…’ There came a dry rasp from the Man as he breathed through clenched teeth. His slobbering cheeks wobbled and his jet-black eyes thundered with sparks of fire as if it was kindled or spreading among dry shavings. Backing off by the seat of his pants he gained, thereby, a tree under which was overgrown by some strange kinds of suspicious-looking toadstools that glowed luminescent in the dark like bad meat. The big and hungry cat -- with a careless toss of the ‘ead and a deft shrug of the shoulders that forewarned it meant business -- was still advancing upon him -- while, like Alice (as instructed by the obnoxious Caterpillar in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) he was breaking a little from both sides; at first sampling; and then cramming the mushroom fully into his mouth. There was a spring from the leopard and the very next moment, the big cat was tearing the man limb from limb. A sigh whistled from James Fesk’s throat; and at that moment, his face was contorted as if a sharp dirk had been plunged into his stoutest o’ manlike hearts! 'Thankee, Man! Nah, ah will never bite off me own ‘ead, neither for love or money, you know?’ muttered the animal not invidiously but sweetly – with a lopsided, playful snigger – very softly! Then, the Leopard coughed fastidiously: ‘A Man nowt, is very like a large groat arter all, bain’t he?’ Soon he had finished feasting on the man’s meat entirely, and slunk off guilty-like from the scene of the crime. Later in the evening of the same day, the unlucky Leopard was found dead at the foothills of the Western Ghats. A boy who found its carcass could find no mark on its carcass; and chuckling to himself, thinking he shall now earn the money to buy a pair of suspenders -- he began paring off its skin methodically and carefully with a practiced hand. He couldn’t help noticing a discomfited colorless expression of the purest detachment on the kitty cat’s face, as if, in life, it had seen what it wants to see; and heard what is there to be heard. That is why this story is titled: How the Leopard lost its Spotted Coat. The Government appointee was avenged, wasn’t this so? Just so – just so! Did I hear you say, – hehe!