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The Tiger
He destroyed his cage
Yes
YES
The Tiger is out
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(TW: Rape mention)
Brooklyn, New York, USA
[Father David O’Brien
is tending to his flock when I arrive. Despite being 83, he is still active
within his church, grown exponentially in the decades it’s been around. I stand
in the back as he finishes teaching a class of teenagers “The Ecchoing Green”
by William Blake. His recitation is almost as wondrous and terrifying as the
words he is reading. When the discussion concludes and we are alone, he begins
talking with great trepidation.]
I knew him as a child. I thought he
was a good boy back then. He would always bring his father lunch, he defended
many children from bullies, and he was always a good Christian. I officiated
his ceremony, and baptized his children. I thought he was a good man. And yet,
seeing him now…
[He pauses.]
I think the news gets him wrong.
They keep saying it was the War or the loss of his family that made him the man
he is. If that were the case, there would be more people like him walking
around: monsters who lash out at the world. Ones who think that the right way
of dealing with the ills of the world is by bashing the skulls of the sick. [He sighs, rubbing his eyes with his thumb
and index finger.]
And where do you think it started?
Lauren Buvoli.
[He interrupts before
I could follow up on that.]
He was a quiet child for the most part, kept a small group
of friends. He would mostly listen to what other people were talking about. It took me a while to notice it. I was walking
by his house one night; I think he was twelve at the time. His parents were
having an argument, as many parents do. I couldn’t tell what they were arguing
about, and he never mentioned it in confession. I only saw because I happened
to glance by while walking home. There they were, arguing.
And in the background, I could see
him. There was no expression on his face, no obvious sign that he was even
listening to what his parents were prattling on about. Save one: his eyes. He
had the dead eyes of a tiger in a cage, waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting
person. And yet, they implied something bigger. Something that wouldn’t be
caged at all, save if it wanted to. They were the same eyes that would haunt
newspapers for years to come. It was then that I realized what he had done.
And that was? [Father David says nothing, instead he gets up to
leave. He motions me to follow.]
It began when he was ten years old. His mother had told me
that he had a fascination with stories, and she thought it would do him some
good if he joined my reading group. For the most part, even now, the group
consisted of teenagers whose parents wanted them out of the house, but not on
the streets. They mostly didn’t care, letting two or three of their peers lead
the discussion. Back then it was just Lauren Buvoli.
She was always kind. She never said
a bad word to anyone, never knowingly hurt anyone and when told she unknowingly
did so, she always tried to be there to help heal the wounds. She was his only
friend. [Pauses.] There was one
discussion, before it happened, that I think helps paint a picture as to why he
did it. [Pauses.] All of it.
We were discussing a different
Blake poem than the one you heard today: The Tyger, do you know it?
Yes, ah “Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright” and all that?
Yes, and what do you think of it?
It’s all right, bit overrated, but all right. I honestly prefer London
or the Newtons Sleep poem.
[His tone briefly hardens]
Fair. There’s one line in that poem that always struck me: “Did he who made the
Lamb make thee?” It represents how the very act of God’s creation is so
powerful, so awe-inspiring, that our mere mortal minds can’t comprehend the
scope of it. Indeed, I feel that’s a common theme within Blake: the horror and
wonder of creation itself… of the somewhat terrifying power of God himself. For
God creates both angels and devils. It is God’s vision of the world that guides
the narrative of life forward into the unknown pathways that make up his design.
I could tell immediately that the
line also entranced him. Though he kept to himself, I could always tell he was
invested by the poems. He seemed to be the kind of listener who encountered
works like Blake and Kipling from a more solitary position. I thought, at the time,
that he would be a great scholar if he could only exert himself just a bit
more.
When I asked him about the line, he
said, “Does it mean… God didn’t make the Tyger?” Initially, I laughed off the
assumption, as one does to the assumptions made by children about the nature of
the universe. I said, “If he didn’t make the Tyger, who did?”
“I dunno. Someone who don’t make
things like lambs?” When he was twelve, and looking at his parents with his
dead eyes, I realized that there was an aspirational tone to that response.
Like he wanted to be the thing that the creator of lambs wouldn’t create: a
horror upon humanity, a blight upon God’s creation made by something that looks
to God with a misplaced envy, expressed solely by destruction and misery. When
I looked at the news, and saw what he became… [Pause.] It shouldn’t have surprised me.
I tried to correct his error, explicitly
told him what the poem was about, but he wouldn’t budge. Lauren tried to
mediate the tension between us by suggesting that the poem could be read both
ways. But this was a matter of the nature of God; two distinctly binary ways of
reading the poem, diametrically opposed to one another. God is not a
contradictory being who does and does not create things. There is no demiurge
out there, defiling God’s design. There is only God. Sometimes children just
don’t know what they’re talking about, you know?
[I feign agreement. We
finally arrive at Father David’s office. He pulls out an old photo book,
featuring various decades’ worth of poetry groups led by Father David. He turns
to a black and white photograph featuring various teenagers. At his request,
the photograph will not be reprinted within this edition. His finger leads him
first to a pair of sweethearts from an old romantic comedy. She has long, dark
hair and the body of someone who could be an actress or a model in two years.
Her smile is infectious. Meanwhile, her companion has darker hair and a body
that will grow up to be a soldier, though tall for his age. He is not smiling,
nor is he grimacing. He doesn’t even appear to care about what’s going on
around him. Father David tells me she’s Lauren Buvoli. He does not say who he
is. His finger moves to another girl. Like Lauren, she has dark hair, though
much shorter than Lauren’s, and body of someone equally, yet differently
beautiful. She invokes sadness.]
Her name was Sue Carmenelli, and she committed suicide the
night I read The Tyger. Lauren was walking him home when it happened. Sue was
just standing in the middle of the road, waiting… she got her wish. Four weeks
later, Lauren joined her.
Suicide?
[He nods.] She slit
her wrists.
Was there a connection?
Of course there was a connection! Are you familiar with the
Rosas?
Oh.
Yes, them. Vincent Rosa, the youngest of the bastards, he
raped those girls. Raped them until they were of no use to him. Supposedly, it
was because he wanted to have a kid, but he never stopped any of the parents
who committed the sin of abortion. He never chose any girl of his age. He just
did it to have a power over things he saw as beautiful. I conducted service for
both of their funerals, and I could see the anguish on their parents. No one
should lose a child that young, let alone in a way that damns them to Hell.
Maybe that’s why Tony Buvoli drunk himself to death.
Maybe that’s why I went to pay Albert
Rosa a visit. I didn’t go alone; I wasn’t suicidal. I was joined by Henry
Tully, two others… and his father. We let Henry do the talking, as he was the
best of us at it. Some said that he could convince the devil himself to turn to
the side of God. I don’t know if that’s true, but he was a great speaker. He
was always polite to Rosa; grateful that the monster let us have what little
time we were permitted. Henry pleaded to Rosa to keep his son in check, to stop
him from raping our girls. Rosa never interrupted, and requested that we do the
same for his response.
Once Henry stopped talking, Rosa
took out a shotgun and broke every single one of Henry’s fingers with the butt.
Rosa’s men held us, making sure that we were watching Rosa break our friend’s
fingers. He never spoke when he did it. He was like God creating a Tyger:
something monstrous. [Father David
realizes that he’s shaking, and stops.] I thought we were going to die that
night. Instead, we were thrown onto the streets, without a word or a care. [Pause.] Henry’s hand never recovered.
[He slumps into his
chair.]
Two days later, Vincent Rosa was found burned alive in a
makeshift grave next to Lauren Buvoli’s. When he heard the news, Albert Rosa
died of a heart attack. His successor had better things to do than seek
retaliation. It was as if God had granted all of our prayers and made sure none
of us were punished for it. But God’s design requires agents to carry out His
will.
We all wondered who had done it. We
wanted to know who to thank. [A small
“heh” comes out.] Perhaps it was a rival family, unconnected to our
tragedy. Or it might have been Sal Buvoli, Lauren’s older brother returned home
from war long enough to tell his sister goodbye. In truth, I believed it myself
for two years. And then I saw his eyes, and knew who murdered Vincent Rosa.
In truth, I’d be more forgiving if
Rosa died a simple death. His father, a former soldier, would have had a gun
locked away. With his quiet nature, he could have discovered its location and
used it to kill Rosa. If it was to simply avenge his friend, and nothing more,
he would have done so. But he wanted Rosa to suffer, to be the one to begin the
burning. He wanted to hear Rosa’s screams.
He wanted to be something too
terrifying to be made by God. But God makes all creatures, great and small, beautiful
and terrifying. God is the sole creator of all things. He wanted to be the
Demiurge to God’s creator, but had to settle for being the Tyger. Perhaps he
knew I knew what he did. Maybe that’s why the first family he exterminated were
the remaining members of the Rosa family.
[He pauses, turning
away from me, until finally he sighs.]
“When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did He smile, His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?”
Some say it was the war that made
him a monster. Others say it was the death of his family. And perhaps there’s
some truth in that. But the fact it, this was always in him. He was always
going to turn out the way. [Pause.] Because
he always wanted to.
{An Excerpt from “The Thirty-Six Year War: An Oral History
of Frank Castle” by Ryan Chakk}
(Next Time: England,
October-November 1987)
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