Frogmouth (15 page)

He was traveling north.

It was night.

He was traveling unseen in the fog like a shadow in a dream. The knives were there. Inside the cocoon their edges glittered silver against the redness.

"Twenty-eight . . ."

Then the sound was still and, as the buzzing began, there was nothing left of it at all.

The events were unstoppable.

The events had begun.

The person inside the cocoon drew a long, soft sigh.

". . . twenty-eight . . ."

It sounded, with the sigh, like some sort of secret, something hidden.

—It sounded, the way it was said, like a prayer.

On the phone to the Federal Police in Australia, Feiffer said to make it clear from the outset, "I've got a single wing feather from a tawny frogmouth,
Podargus strigoides
—"

"Well, good for you." Senior Sergeant Beth Durning, with one of those Australian accents you could use to cut butter, said with what could either have been a very late night sense of humor or a very late night sense of annoyance, "Now give it back. It's illegal."

"Is it?"

"Yes, it is. The Wildlife Preservation and Protection Act states among other things that it is an offense to take, possess, keep or otherwise remove a protected bird or animal from the wild or any part of such a bird or animal or any eggs, young, pelt, claws, feathers or any other—" She faltered, "—bit therefrom. Or words to that effect."

"I see."

"Unless the taker, keeper or person requesting such a bird, animal or part thereof is an agent of a recognized museum in which the object may be kept for scientific study, a licensed zoo or person authorized by the Minister to engage in bird or animal keeping or breeding or has special dispensation for some other reason as stipulated by the Minister or his agent of the Crown." Senior Sergeant Durning said, "Thank you for the confession, Mr. Feiffer. The whizzing sound you can hear in the background is me rushing to get a request form to take three long weeks in Hong Kong to extradite you for this heinous crime." Senior Sergeant Durning said, "The various Australian state police forces usually deal with this sort of thing. The Federal Police get interested when this sort of thing crosses state borders in the gunnysacks of smugglers or go out on jumbo jets to America stuffed in suitcases." In the background there wasn't the sound of whizzing. There wasn't any sound at all. In the Records and Information Section of the big, gray building in Canberra she was alone. Senior Sergeant Durning said, "Presently, the Federal Police have got over five hundred and sixty drug-smuggling cases we haven't even started, two hundred and six we can't get the overtime authorization or money to proceed with, and a growing cocaine and heroin problem that's beginning to reach epidemic proportions." She said lightly, "So you can probably keep the feather." She asked, "You do realize it's two
A.M.
here?"

"Yes." Feiffer said evenly, "We've had something awful happen here—"

"In the zoo. Yes, it made the papers here too." There was a silence. "I thought that was what it was about."

"We found a single frogmouth feather on the scene. Nothing else. Just that. I've been told it's an Australian bird—"

"The tawny frogmouth, yes." There was a brief silence. "I've got the federal copper's
Guide to Protected Birds
here in front of me and the only bird anything like it is from New Guinea—who told you it was the Australian variety? The natural history museum there?"

"Someone reliable. There isn't a natural history museum here in Hong Kong." It was worth seeing how much he could get. Feiffer asked, "Like to start one up?"

"Yes, please!"

"Tell me how many frogmouths a year get smuggled out of Australia and I'll put in a good word for you."

"None."

Feiffer said, "What?"

"None. Zero. Zilch. Numero nothingo. None at all. They're not considered smuggleable birds."

"Why not?"

There was a silence. "They're not pretty enough." The silence had been to think of another way of putting it. There was no other way of putting it. Senior Sergeant Durning said, "That's it. That's always it in the end, I suppose, but in the case of the frogmouth, that's it." There was a sound on the line as if she made a clucking noise. "It's a fairly nondescript-looking bird during the day—it hides in trees and camouflages itself so you don't even know it's there—at least, you don't notice—and at night, when it comes out, it lives in the dark and moves around on the edge of the light. And it walks funny."

He listened.

Senior Sergeant Durning said, again amused or irritated, "And in case you think I'm being metaphorical, let me tell you that even though I sit out the lonely hours here in a deserted bloody great stone building looking out at the lights of other deserted bloody great stone buildings, I'm shatteringly beautiful, the object of much unrequited love and when I walk on my four-inch stiletto high heels in my silk stockings and long-wearing serge uniform dress cars crash into plate glass windows." She said suddenly, "I've never been to Hong Kong. What's it like?"

Feiffer said, "Full of plate glass windows." He asked, "If it's so ugly and not worth taking, how would it have gotten here to Hong Kong?"

"It sure as hell didn't swim."

"On a boat?"

"Maybe. As more and more of the outlying areas around our towns and cities get cleared for development more and more birds and animals seem to be coming into the suburbs and along the coast." Senior Sergeant Durning said, "I've got a room in one of the monoliths the government here in Canberra calls apartment blocks and we've started to get crested pigeons feeding on the verandas." She said quickly, "It's a sort of bush pigeon. A few years ago you never saw one. It's possible frogmouths could be moving closer to the coast—maybe even to the docks to pick up things on the wharves: small mice or grasshoppers or whatever they eat. It's possible it could have got on board a ship and been trapped."

"And then what?"

"And then, out of its natural habitat, say on a ship, it would have died."

"And then?"

"
And then it would have been in bloody Hong Kong and that's your department!
"

"Sorry."

"You don't believe I'm ravishingly beautiful. If you did you wouldn't talk to me as if I was bloody thick!"

"I do believe you're ravishingly beautiful." Feiffer said, "Since I happen to be heart-stoppingly handsome I'm used to being surrounded constantly by beautiful women. Consequently, I have no respect for them at all."

"In Australia, Customs and Quarantine go over any ship that docks. Anything like a dead bird would be automatic bell-ringing time. It'd go straight into a plastic bag and then in a sealed box to the government vet and then, if it didn't have rabies or tsetse fly or ten thousand other diseases birds can take from one country to another, it'd be unceremoniously burned in an incinerator." Senior Sergeant Durning said, "Also, by the time it reached Hong Kong in the hold of a ship it would have been dead for days. It would have stank." Senior Sergeant Durning said, "Take my word for it, any bird that high anywhere in the world—Hong Kong, Australia or bloody Timbuktu: the moment that bird was even vaguely noticed by someone from Quarantine it would have been straight into a sterile plastic bag, straight to a vet for examination, straight back into the bag and then—psst . . . straight into the nearest convenient vaporizer, feathers and all."

"Then what the hell have I got?"

"What you've got is the feather from a tawny frogmouth." She paused briefly. Maybe she was ravishingly beautiful. She was certainly efficient. "And if I were you, I think I'd hotfoot it down to beautiful downtown Hong Kong Quarantine and I'd ask them in no uncertain terms if they've been doing their job properly why the hell did I have it!"

She asked, "Okay?" She asked, "And your government vet— what's his name?"

"Hoosier."

"And I think, if I were you, I might have a little word to friend Dr. Hoosier too." She waited to see what he was really like.

Feiffer said, "Thank you very much indeed."

"Okay." Senior Sergeant Durning said, "Fine." She wasn't beautiful or ravishing at all. What she was, was good.

Without another word, in the deserted stone building at night that housed the Australian Federal Police Records and Information Section, she hung up.

In the fog, through the cocoon's redness, there were water and trees. There was a bubbling sound, like a fountain.

There were faint noises and movements. The trees, through the grayness of the fog, were like bars.

"
Daisy
. . ."

That event was finished. They were all, merely, events, happenings with no chain, no progress, no causality; they were merely unstoppable events.

In the cocoon, the knives glittered.

In the cocoon, there was a buzzing.

Fog and night and all the sounds and rustlings.

The cocoon was opening, cracking, breaking. There was a whisper, a rasp, white-pupiled, dead, unblinking eyes: the person inside the cocoon.

"Jakob . . . !"

He escaped the body, the cocoon.

He went forward into the fog.

" 'A
nd God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and the fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And it was so.' " Standing on the edge of the fog-shrouded artificial lagoon in the Hong Bay Botanical Gardens off Beach Road, the commander, at 6:00
A.M.
, said softly, "The Bible. Genesis." The fog was lying low on the ground, blue and swirling above the water. The commander said, "I was here first. After the radio room took the call I came straight here and I was here first." Gazing out across the lagoon toward the stands of bamboo and banyan trees rising out of the mist like fingers, in his overcoat he looked old and impermanent. He looked ill. He hadn't slept. The commander said, "Someone, probably scavenging in the park, called it in about five. One of the cars from North Point caught it." He looked across the expanse of thinning fog past the trees toward the harbor. "I sent them to call for help and to close off the gates." He was alone. He had been alone there for over twenty minutes. The commander said, "They were here first, birds, animals—it's in the Bible. It's why we—" He asked suddenly, "I've given up smoking. Do you have a cigarette on you, Harry?"

"Yes." Feiffer offered him his pack and took out his lighter.

The commander said, "Okay: the layout of the area is this. Dead center there in the fog which should clear in the next half hour or so there's a little artificial island. The lagoon is also artificial, full of saltwater pumped in from a pipe in the harbor. The area is part of the park and the park is left open all night so anyone could have come in. Surrounding the lagoon is a circular walkway and"—he nodded to his right—"over there is a bamboo forest and, beyond that, clumps of oak and elm, alder and birch. The lagoon is full of reeds and water lilies and the bottom supports various crustaceans, small frogs and tadpoles—"

He could see nothing. Feiffer said, "What happened, Neal?"

"The fog should clear quite soon. I heard the weather forecast on my car radio on the way over and according to them—ninety-percent correct in their forecasts like weather forecasters all over the world about ten percent of the time—the fog is giving way. By about now it should all be gone and just be a light mist which will give way in turn to a warm, slightly humid day with occasional flashes of harmless heat lightning from the disturbance caused by the typhoon." The commander said, "I've had North Point call in Hoosier and Forensic, your uniformed people from their beds, and if you need it, because I believe it's quite deep out there in the center of the lagoon, you can have divers from the Water Police or uniformed men with grappling hooks, whichever you like."

"All right."

The commander, not hearing him, asked, "Is that all right?"

"That's fine, Neal."

"I think I've thought of everything."

"That's more than enough." Feiffer, standing to one side of the man, not wanting to move in front of him and see his eyes, asked gently, "Do you know what's happened?"

"The fog comes and goes. When I was here first it was clear." He shrugged. The commander said, "The Weather Bureau says it'll clear soon."

"Do you want to go home, Neal?"

"
No, I don't want to go home!
"

In the lagoon, hidden beneath the fog, there was absolutely no sound at all. The fog was not moving. It was still. It hung there motionless, hiding something. There was no wind, no sound. Whatever it was— Feiffer, touching the man gently on the shoulder, said earnestly, "Look, you haven't slept—"

"I'm still in charge here!"

"I know that."

"You may be in charge of the investigation, but I'm still in charge of you!" The commander said suddenly, "Christ in heaven, whatever happened to bloody discipline? There was a time when people who believed in God and read the Bible weren't treated like senile lunatics! There was a time when a man like that was looked up to and considered to be bloody moral!" The fog was swirling around him. The commander, brushing it away, said, "Christ in heaven, there was a time when people didn't do things like this! When people knew how to behave! When the world was regulated!" It cleared. Out in the center of the saline lagoon, the fog cleared and the top of the little island became visible, like the cone of a volcano. The commander said tightly, "It's clearing. They said it would and it is." The commander, looking away as if it was something he could not bear to see, something offensive, said, "There it is—now you can see." The commander, looking back, his mouth twisted, some vise tightening at the sides of his mouth, said in a rasp, "And God saw it and He saw that it was good." The commander shouted suddenly, "Look at it!
Look at what someone's done!
"

The commander, taking his hands out of his pockets and holding Feiffer's eyes, said in a strange, soft, low voice, "Look at it, Harry, because I can't. I can't."

The commander said, shaking his head, "I can't. I don't know why. I don't understand it, but I can't." The commander said, "It's wrong. It's all too wrong. I'm too old. It's too wrong for me and I just—"