Frogmouth (11 page)

There was no light in the dead, cold eyes as they walked. The dead, cold eyes saw only the redness.

T
hat's a peregrine falcon." Dead, mounted on a stand made of a broken tree branch set in stones and grass to resemble some sort of natural perch, it was a beautiful, multicolored bird of prey that looked like a small eagle with a beak like a razor. In his little, unpainted workroom and living area on the second floor of Number 83 Generalissimo Chen Street, Chao, touching it reverently on the head with the gentlest of touches from his long delicate fingers, said, "It comes here to Hong Kong very rarely from the high, wild places in China. Tell me, what would you do if you saw it lying dead on the road?" Everywhere in the little room there were stuffed and mounted birds, eagles, hawks, owls, in the corner what looked like a small collection of Chinese pheasants, finches, a kestrel about to take wing on a papier-mache rock, even tiny bee eaters and hummingbirds. Chao Kai Sun, touching the wing of the falcon and stroking, asked, "Well, what would you do?"

"All these birds you have in here are on the list of endangered species."

"All these birds I have in here are dead." He was a small birdlike man himself. His eyes were bright and sparkling as if he lived some sort of intense inner life. It made his age hard to guess at. He could have been anywhere from twenty-five to forty-five. Chao, waving away whatever thoughts about him Feiffer was having, asked, "Well?"

"I don't know much about birds—"

"You know enough to know that all these—the hawks, and the falcons and the owls are endangered." He seemed to hop across the room to a workbench and return before he had even gone. "So is this. This is a common sparrow at first sight. In fact, it's a particular subspecies of sparrow that—"

Feiffer said, "Do you know what bird this feather came from?" He had it in his hand. He had offered it to Chao twice, but the man had not touched it. He didn't need to touch it.

Chao said, "Yes, yes, I know." He said tightly, "You haven't answered my question."

"Are all these birds illegal?"

"Yes!" Chao, looking happy, said, "Yes, every one. They have all been killed by the most effective and wholesale killer of flying birds in the world—the car aerial." The door to the next room was ajar. From it, Feiffer could smell the smell of formalin and preserving fluids. Chao said, "And I killed not a one. Each one of them, at one time, lay dead on the road or in a field in the New Territories or in a dirty gutter waiting to be eaten by rats or carrion and I, personally, killed not a one." There was something he wanted. It could have been absolution. Chao, his voice going up, said, "If you arrest me and I argue my case in court, the letter of the law says that possession of endangered species is as much a crime as the possession of a deadly weapon—if I go to court I will go to jail."

"And what will happen to your birds?"

"There is no natural history museum here in Hong Kong so there are no dusty storerooms or drawers in which to store them for the mice, so they will all be destroyed." He touched the falcon. "This was found on a rubbish tip in Icehouse Street." He tapped at the glorious bird's sternum. "It was almost cut in half by an aerial after high winds had forced it into the city and then heavy rains had forced it to come down onto the roadway to hunt in the light of a streetlamp." Chao said, "What was I supposed to do?
Let it rot?
"

"What are you doing with it now?"

"It is an endangered species." Chao, pleading his case to someone, not Feiffer, said, "Each new area of agricultural land that is rezoned to industrial or residential use slaughters more birds in a moment with the destruction of trees and habitats than a dozen men could do with shotguns in a month!"

"All your birds are dead!"

"If they were alive there would be no need to protect them."

"You're not protecting them. What you are doing is making decorations for drawing rooms—"

Chao said, "You've read a book on taxidermy."

"Every museum curator says that private—"

"There is no museum here in Hong Kong."

"You are not a museum."

"If a museum is ever formed in Hong Kong I will run it."

Feiffer said tightly, "Do you sell these birds you collect?"

"I do not." Chao said, "Once, the famous example, there were dodos in the world—large stupid birds like the mutton bird and now—"

"Like the passenger pigeon."

"Yes." He stopped. He seemed to soften. Chao said, "Look, listen: all the wild places where birds lived—where they bred and were free and high—all those places are going. They are being forced down to us, to civilization because all those places are gone—" Chao said suddenly as if in answer to a question that had not been asked, "I would never trap a bird! All the birds I have here died in the city and were brought to me by people who saw their beauty about to be turned into—"

"What people?"

"I never pay them. They know about me and they—"

"People like George Su?"

"This is his falcon." Chao, smiling, said, "And although you do not know me, you know George Su. You know what sort of man he is. You know that he—"

"I know that he's been in prison twice." It was no good. It was only the letter of the law. Feiffer, feeling like a policeman, asked, "What do you want from me?"

"I am committing a crime."

"Do you want me to issue you a
license
or something?"

"There is no license."

"Museums can get them."

"I am not a museum."

"Then as a recreational exhibit."

Chao said, "I show no one. The birds are not for show—they are dead! They are not birds anymore, but chemically preserved carcasses! They are nothing to see! They are no substitute for seeing the real thing or even seeing a photograph of the real thing in a book—they are not the real thing: they are dead corpses preserved like Egyptian mummies!"

"Then why the hell—"

"Because when all the real, free, living birds are gone— destroyed, shot, cut in half, turned out from their places, reduced to memories, this may be all we have left!" Chao, never a museum curator, said with vehemence, "Do you think a few jade baubles and amulets and scrolls hung on a wall reflect the true, the real glory of the ancient civilization of China—in a museum? Do you think they bear any resemblance to what was real and living then?—Do you? Do you think that these poor dead things resemble—at all—the flight of a bird in the sky or the feeling a man gets when he sees it?—
Do you?
" Chao said, "In the end, like the scrolls and the baubles and the amulets and the dust, this is all we may have left one day!" Chao said, "They lie dead on the road and they are picked up and brought to me. No one is paid for it and I do not sell them or give them back! The people who bring them would not want them while there is a single living bird left—what I do is store them up like some sort of survivalist against the day when everything is gone and all that is left is ashes."

"I'm not going to arrest you."

Chao said intensely, "Think. Think. If you are learning about things, if you are reading books about things—think!"

"There are millions of birds in the world!"

"Are there?"

Feiffer said sadly, "No."

"Think . . . Harry?"

Feiffer said, "Yes."

"Harry . . ."

He could smell the formalin. In the next room, like some sort of ancient Nile priest, he embalmed the bodies of something sacred, something that would never come again. In the main room, there was only his single bed, a gas stove and an old refrigerator and, everywhere, everywhere, the birds. Feiffer said, "
Who the hell are you?
"

Chao said, "Chao Kai Sun." He had a strange, otherworldly smile on his face. "I'm a policeman. Like you." Chao said, "I'm a detective senior inspector stationed in the New Territories on the border at Lo Wu." He took the feather in its glassine envelope and looked at it, then looked up again. Chao said, "You asked me what I wanted from you—"

There was a silence.

Chao said softly, "Harry, if you see any birds—any wonderful or strange birds—dead on the road, over the years . . . would you bring them to me?" Over the harbor, the bird had sailed and risen on currents of warm air, not hunting, not even reconnoiter-ing, but merely sailing in the warm air. It had been doing it simply because it liked it—there was no other reason or explanation. Chao said, "Because one day, all the birds will be gone. Like coal and oil and things from the earth. Coal and oil can be substituted, alternatives can be found. But when all the birds have gone what in God's name can we ever put in their place?" Gently, handing the feather back to Feiffer, Chao said, "It's from a frogmouth.
Podargus strigoides
, a mopoke, sometimes called a nighthawk— vaguely related to the family of owlet-nightjars." Chao said, "Not from here. From Australia. It's a wing feather from an Australian tawny frogmouth."

He smiled his odd, secret smile.

He had nothing. The room in which he lived, except for the birds, was nothing. He had only, for his own reasons, the one thing in his life that made his life livable.

Detective Senior Inspector Chao, looking suddenly bright and excited, said, "Wait. Wait here. In the next room I've got a book with a picture of a real one in flight! Wait! Wait here! Wait and I'D show you!"

He touched it with his fingers. While he waited for Chao, he reached out without thinking and touched the falcon on the wing. It was soft, downy. He found himself, gently, tenderly, with the lightest of touches, stroking it.

Without warning the redness turned into pressure. The cupola, the cocoon contracted, grew tight, shrank. There was a pain, a buzzing.

Inside the redness, on the street, there was a whisper, a rasp, "—
Jakob!
"

On the street no one heard or noticed anything.

"—
Jakob!
"

It released. It stopped.

"—
JAKOB!!
"

It was imprisoned. All the thoughts, the name, the pressure was like something loose and maddened inside the cupola, turning the redness into blood, tearing the cupola, the cocoon to shreds, never breaking through it—birds maddened in a cage.

"JA—KOB!"

It wouldn't go away. Nothing would go away. It was expanding, gaining pressure, finding no way out, imploding on itself.

"JA . . . KOB!!!"

It was getting worse. The birds, loose and screeching inside the cocoon, smashing against it as they fought to get out, were falling, spinning, sailing down in torrents of redness, then, reviving, coming back, smashing at it again, screeching and calling.

"
JAKOB!!
"

From inside the cocoon, from inside Jakob's cupola, nothing, nothing at all could get out.

There was an elderly man at the Russo Harbin Hong Kong Trading Bank autobank machine with money in his hand.

There was an elderly man at the Russo Harbin Hong Kong Trading Bank autobank machine with no money in his hand.

There was Auden ready.

There was Auden running.

There was a crowd with feet like Frisbees.

The crowd with feet like Frisbees was going, "Aiiyaa . . . !" Their Frisbees, hitting the ground seconds after the Tibetan Tornado's hands hit the money, Auden's hamburgers hit the street, and Auden, waving them back, threatening to hit someone, were going flap! flap! flap! There were feet everywhere. Feet were coming down on the ground in a variety of noises.

They were after the money. Auden, a second and a half behind the Tibetan, still on Old Himalaya Street, yelled in Cantonese, "Hayp, hayp, hayp!" It wasn't Cantonese. It didn't mean, "You are interfering in a police pursuit." It meant, "Hayp, hayp, hayp!" His feet were connected to his lungs. He heard his feet say, "Hack, hack!" and, not turning, not giving a legal order to anyone, Auden, looking down at his feet, ordered them, "
Run!
"

Where the hell was Spencer?

The Tibetan made the base of Sagarmatha Hill. He stopped. He looked up. He had the money in his hand. No one shot him. He turned to look back. He heard a steam train somewhere off in the distance, or a tea kettle. He looked around to see what it was.

It was Auden. Obviously, there were holes in Auden's lungs somewhere: that was what was making the funny whistling noise. Auden, getting angry at his feet, said, "
Run!
" Auden said, "Natasha!" That part of his anatomy that would have drawn new strength from a contemplation of Natasha wasn't in the feet area.

The Tibetan began up the hill. He didn't begin up it: he took to the air, he took the steps two at a time—his feet weren't running, they were dancing across the steps. He went up like Nureyev, the steps disappearing under his feet like an escalator.

Where the hell was Spencer? Auden, getting to the first step and making a superhuman effort to mount it, wondering why the escalator seemed to have stopped running the moment he got onto it, put it into his mind to say, "Halt in the name of the Law!" No one had ever tried that. Maybe they had. Auden's lungs, speaking in tongues, said, "Ha—nim—ah—!"

Halt in the name of the Law!

Ha . . . herr—ha . . .

"
On!
"

Halt in the name of the Law!

"Halt—" He got it! He got the first word! He was on step twenty-three and he got it. Auden, pounding, his lungs falling to pieces, a funny sort of darkness appearing at the top of the hill as evidently night came in four hours early this time of year, yelled, "—in—" Behind him, the crowd was flapping hard on their Frisbee feet. The Frisbees were evidently in the air: there were slapping sounds as someone missed catching one and fell down the hill. He turned around. There were lots of red faces behind him. He saw someone raise his eyes up to heaven and then, receiving a blessing, fall down dead, rolling down the stairs like the baby carriage in
The Battleship Potemkin
.

Auden said, "—the—" It got the Tibetan's attention. You could tell he was wearing the Tibetan down. He stopped to look back and scratched his nose.

They didn't have the staying power, the yellow hordes.