Frogmouth Read online

  "Yes, it's true."

  Past the moored boats there were knots of people waiting to come forward and speak to him. George Su, shaking his head to them and changing from Tanka to Cantonese so they would not understand, said, shrugging, "Plumage is the coat which covers birds against the elements just as fur covers animals." He looked down at the feather and then back up to Feiffer. "The number of plumes, secondary, primary and the rest of it including down can range from about a thousand to twenty-five thousand depending on the needs of the bird." He was quoting it from somewhere, from a book he had read in prison or, like Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz, maybe one he had written. "Basically, as well as giving lift for flying, feathers are a form of insulation or waterproofing depending on whether the bird is a land or a sea creature. In this case, it's camouflage." He asked Feiffer directly, "Is this all you've got?"

  "Yes." The piece of black umbrella fabric was nothing. It could have been from any of the fifty-three million black umbrellas manufactured in Hong Kong every year. It had been raining: that was the only reason the umbrella had been there. Feiffer, sitting opposite Su at the plywood desk and trying to see the papers the man had turned facedown when he had seen him coming, asked, "Is it a local bird?"

  "No."

  "How about China?"

  "China is local." Su, smiling, said without force, "Hong Kong is part of China. When you ask if it's local I assume you mean regional. China isn't in the region of Britain, it's in the region of China." He was a man who supplied flags. Su said, still smiling, "Thank God, Harry, we're all peaceful realists these days." He held the feather up for Feiffer to see, sliding his fingernail down its length and, somehow, opening it up. "It isn't a bird from anywhere around here." He slid his fingernail back up the length of the feather and, somehow, closed it again. Su said, "The ornithological zip-fastener. That's what birds are doing when you see them preening. Each main feather is held in shape and in place by a series of little hooks and barbs to give elasticity when the bird flies. Sometimes the hooks become undone and the bird has to run its beak along them to zip them up again." He looked up to see Feiffer's face. "Didn't you know that?"

  Feiffer said, "No."

  Turning the feather quill point-on, Su said, "The little hole running up the calamus—the shaft—is for blood to carry nourishment to the feather." He asked, "Don't you ever watch birds?"

  "Can you help me with anything, George? Anything at all?"

  Su said, "It's a feather. It's from a bird."

  "Someone dropped it."

  "Did they?"

  "Well, did they?"

  He had been in prison. Su said, "How do I know? You ask and I reply."

  "Can you speculate?"

  "On what?"

  "On what the hell it is!"

  "It's a feather. Go ask an expert."

  "You are an expert! I'm asking you!"

  "I'm a man who kept birds in prison!" Su, looking up suddenly as the sound of his voice made all the people waiting for him tense, said, "What birds may mean to me probably means nothing to anyone else except me! I'm a Communist: a New Man—an organized, majority-respecting and self-denying New Socialist whose life is ordered and organized and set and fixed and predictable! The gaps in my existence birds may fill—"

  "Is that what they fill?" Feiffer said quietly, "I watch and see them in the skies sailing and I—" He was leaning forward, his finger pointing at the feather on the table, almost touching it, "—And I don't know what I think."

  There was a silence.

  Feiffer said without tone, "I've never been in prison."

  Su looked at him. Su said after what seemed like a long time, "Yes, you have. Yes, you are. Why else would you stop and look at freedom if you didn't covet it?" He saw Feiffer looking at him. "Dreams, Harry—" He touched at the feather, "This is a night bird. It hides during the day with its camouflage: it answers to no one, considers no one, doesn't hide in the darkness but is most free in it, and—" George Su said with a faint, soft smile on his face, "At night, in prison, before I got permission to keep just a few finches in my cell, at night, in the darkness, in the silence, I could hear the great birds and the swift birds and the birds over the sea wheeling and soaring and calling, moving across a sky I knew nothing about, seeing even my own country from a view I had never seen—a view no one, not even our great leaders had ever seen—and sometimes, I imagined, I thought—" He stopped. He said abruptly, "What there is when you stop to watch something high up in the sky, alone, moving without effort— free—that thing has no name. That thing is dissatisfaction." He said tightly, "That thing—looking, watching, wondering, wanting—that thing put me in prison in China." He looked, not at Feiffer, but at the Tanka-speaking fishermen waiting to see him and addressed them histrionically in the language he knew they did not understand: "All birds and creatures of the wild in the perfectly ordered and well-run modern society, be it socialist or capitalist, should be instantly removed from the sight of the workers lest they interfere with production levels!" He was the Double Flag Man. Somewhere, to someone he was probably liable for assessment. He had been assessed, twice. Twice, he had been found liable. Su said, standing up, with the feather a little from his face, "Plumage. It insulates, protects, waterproofs—that's all. It isn't a hue a man puts on to keep himself safe through life, it is merely a matter of necessity, camouflage."

  Feiffer asked, "How big was the bird, do you think?"

  "Big. At least eighteen inches, maybe two feet long." Su said, "It isn't from around here." He asked, smiling, "Am I making you uneasy?"

  "I don't know."

  Su said, "Smell it." He handed over the feather. There was the faintest odor about it, emanating from the point, from the calamus, the blood hole in the shaft. Su said, "Carbolic acid." Su said, "I don't see birds as objects, as possessions—"

  "Are you saying it came from a caged bird?"

  "Carbolic is sometimes used to clean metal cages. Yat's would have used a high pressure hose." Su said, "When I left prison I let all my birds go. I don't own birds anymore and maybe, I never did, but whoever dropped this—"

  "Are you saying someone carried a caged two-foot-long bird into Yat's and then—" Feiffer said, "It was in the umbrella! It was caught in the umbrella and then when the owl ripped at it it fell out and—"

  "—and it could have been in there for years. Or if it started raining and the umbrella was simply found in a trash can or in the gutter or—"

  Feiffer said, "It was raining before the killing started. It was raining before whoever did it left home." He turned the feather over in his hand, "What the hell is it?"

  George Su said softly, "I don't know." There was still that faint half smile playing about his lips. It was not sadness, it was something else. The Double Flag Man said, shaking his head, "I don't know. All my life I seem to have been saying the same thing to different people. I watch birds. They do something to my soul, but what it is, I don't know." All he had in the world was his table and his flags and something, all his life, he had never been able to put a name to. Su said, shrugging, "Once, in China in prison, one of the guards threatened to have me deafened so I couldn't hear the birds anymore." Su said, "But I hear them. Some of us— including you—always hear them." He raised his hand for the knot of fishermen waiting for their documents and flags to come forward. Su said, "I'm a busy man. It's a feather. What else do I know of scientific value? Nothing. Nothing at all." He saw Feiffer carefully slide the feather back into its long glassine evidence bag.

  The Double Flag Man said a moment before the fishermen reached him to get their documentation and their flags and to plead their cases, "I'm sorry. All I am is a man who, when he has the time, watches birds."

  What if you leaned against the wall and it opened up and you found yourself in 1786?

  E = mc2. There was something in there about things like that happening.

  E = mc2. Knowledge gave you power. So did a short-barreled .38 Special Colt Airweight in a Berns-Martin u
pside-down shoulder holster.

  But not much.

  What gave you knowledge and power was decisiveness.

  He decided.

  In the Detectives' Room, the strongman armed, O'Yee, holding Lim's eyes with his own in a glittering stare, said in a voice so faint Lim had to come forward to hear, "Well . . . um . . . what do you think?"

  All the man Feiffer had was a feather. In the emptied-out kiosk, Dr. Hoosier, with Lee still watching in terrible silence, began to work on the owl.

  It had been decapitated.

  Kneeling on the stone floor with a piece of plastic sheeting under his knees, drawing a breath, he reached simultaneously for the two sections of the owl—head and body—and drew them together so he could work on them to what point God only knew with his knives.

  It was nothing.

  "I am a feather for each wind that blows."

  It was only a feather.

  Probably, evidentially, it was nothing at all.

  In the Russo Harbin Hong Kong Trading Bank, the chief teller said nodding toward the rear wall behind the counters, "Mr.

  Nyet." What he was nodding at was a dusty portrait of a man wearing what looked like a batwing collar and an expression that turned widows and orphans awaiting eviction from the bank's property to jelly. He wasn't. He was nodding to a sign in English and Chinese next to the portrait. The sign said IN THE EVENT OF A ROBBERY ATTEMPT STAFF ARE OBLIGED TO LAY DOWN THEIR LIVES IN DEFENSE OF THE BANK'S MONEY OR FACE INSTANT DISMISSAL. He wasn't nodding at either of them. He was nodding at the invisible speak balloon that ran from Mr. Nyet's set, closed mouth to the sign and then back again. The chief teller said, "We're a small bank, we don't have a guard."

  Spencer said, "Right." He had a wad of money in his hand he had picked up at the base of Sagarmatha Hill. He glanced at the brass-plated plastic nameplate behind the chief teller's section of the counter and read his name. He was a full-blooded Southern Chinese wearing a white shirt, dark tie and dark banker's trousers. His name, according to the plate, was Ivan. Spencer said, "Right, Ivan." Contrary to popular belief, all Chinese didn't look the same. In the Russo Harbin Hong Kong Trading Bank all the Chinese looked the same.

  Ivan, nodding at them as they stood at their section of the counter watching, said to introduce them, "Sergei, Igor, Nicholas and Natasha." They nodded. Spencer looked to see which one was the girl. Ivan, still nodding, said, "The bank feels Russian names give a certain feeling of Zurich bank vaults to a small bank." He asked, "How's Mr. Auden?" He had redeemed the customer's lost money from the autobank. He began counting what was left. There wasn't much. Ivan, glancing over at Auden sitting in one of the chairs by the deposit and withdrawal form counter by the door, said in a whisper, "If Mr. Nyet were here, he'd fire me for saying it, but I went outside after the hit and saw the race." In the chair, Auden had his shoes off and was looking at his socks. They seemed to be making pulsing whoom, whoom noises. From the look on his face, he seemed to be thinking as he looked. Ivan said, "He must have feet made of pure rawhide."

  If he hadn't, he did now. Auden, looking up at the sound of a human voice, said, "Hee . . ." His shoes were laid out side by side on the floor next to him. He looked at his feet and thought he would have to get new shoes. His shoes seemed to have shrunk. Auden, with a strange, odd, funny sort of totally destroyed feeling that, in its own way, had a sort of sensuous glow about it, said to acknowledge the presence of the voice, "Ha . . . he . . . ah . . ."

  Spencer said intimately to Ivan, "He's in a bad way."

  "He almost got him."

  Spencer said, "Yes." He felt responsible. Spencer said with what he thought was a Russian accent, "The nature of man is to suffer." It was Tolstoy.

  Ivan said with another nod, "Then you've come to the right place." The whoom, whoom pulsing sound was getting louder from Auden's feet and there was a peculiar reddening coming to his face. The man just sat there rubbing, staring at his shoes and making occasional pee-wit sounds. Ivan, finishing counting, said, "According to the computer, the Tibetan got away with three thousand dollars of our customer's money. You've recovered just over two thousand." He looked across at Auden and said on behalf of the absent Mr. Nyet, "Well done." Judging from his portrait, it wasn't what Mr. Nyet would have said at all. Ivan, glancing to Natasha to offer the bank's full hospitality to one of its most favorite sons, asked Spencer, "Do you think he'd like a glass of water?"

  Auden said from nowhere, "You're not Russians! You're Chinese! I thought the Chinese had broken with the Russians and they were pursuing their own brand of Communism!" All he got from the outside world through the pain was a hazy red blur. Auden, letting go of his foot and looking worried, said anxiously, "Bill? Bill, are you there?"

  "It's all right." Spencer, going over and laying his hand gently on Auden's shoulder, said, "Don't worry." He smiled back at the androids behind the counter. The androids were all looking at Auden and looking worried. Spencer said gently, "We're back in the bank now. The bank has redeemed the customer's money and what we're doing now is counting it so the bank can make the adjustments in its bookkeeping and—"

  Auden said, "It blew away. It blew away and then there were lots of people grabbing at it and then—" Once he'd built a railroad—he'd made it run. Auden said sadly, in tatters, "I almost did it. I was close. Just an inch or two more and I could have—" He had Spencer by the coat lapels. He pulled him down. Auden, lowering his voice, said as the greatest secret of the twentieth century, "I could have done it. If I'd had the breaks I could have done it."

  "You were great."

  "I was." Auden, rolling on the chair and almost toppling off, said, "I was." All the Chinese looked the same. Why were they Russians? Maybe he was dead. He was staring at a portrait of someone who looked like God. God had a batwing collar and mustache. He looked like Simon Legree looking like God. Auden, moving his hands in front of him to clear the red haze, said, "I did it for Wang!" He had to concentrate to make out what he was saying. He asked himself, "Who's Wang?" Maybe Spencer was dead too. He was there. The picture of God kept blurring and moving in and out. It wasn't a picture of God, it was a picture of his Uncle George. He was back home rooting around in the cupboard under the stairs. Auden, looking disappointed, said, "I scribbled a dirty word on the back of the frame. It wasn't me, it was Robert Phillips down the road!"

  "It's all right, Phil."

  Auden said, "And I got my shoes all dirty on the way home from school and now everyone's going to be cross with me." It was odd the way his body felt. It wasn't as if his body was going to pack up and die, it was as if his body was overpacked, like a suitcase. The connection between his mouth and his lungs had gone—well, that had gone in the first few moments—(Auden's head thought, "In the first few moments of what?")—and now . . . Auden said, "Why aren't I sweating? In the gym I sweat. Why aren't I sweating?" He looked his body up and down. His body didn't mind: it was past caring. Auden said, "I'm not sweating at all!" Auden said, "I'm pulsing! I can hear myself! I'm pulsing!" He had tried to watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos on television one night and got the episode about stars turning into black holes. Auden, collapsing in on himself, becoming a vacancy in the universe, said in a panic, "I can't feel anything! I'm not in any pain! I'm on the outside looking in and I'm a physical wreck and I'm not fit at all!"

  Spencer said gently, "You went beyond the pain barrier, Phil."

  From the counter, Ivan said, "Well done, Mr. Auden!"

  Natasha—which one was Natasha?—said in a girl's voice, "You were wonderful!"

  Auden said in a whisper, "Which one's the girl?" He saw Spencer shake his head. Spencer didn't know either. Auden said, suddenly desperately, "I was shot!" He said staring at the picture of God and the anteroom to heaven where all human failings were gone and you were totally aware and all-knowing and you couldn't even tell the difference between the girls and the boys, in horror, "I was shot dead in the street!"

  "It was an air rifle pellet!"

  "I was shot!"r />
  "It was a tiny little .177 caliber air rifle or pistol pellet. It hit you on the—" Spencer said, hesitating, wondering how the man continued to sit happily in the chair contemplating his socks, "In the rear and it—"

  Auden said, "Someone shot me!" Auden, grasping Spencer hard by the arms and pulling him into the foxhole to say a few dying words in the midst of the barrage in close-up, said, "Bill, Bill, tell—" He pulsed out. Auden said suddenly, smiling sadly, still building railways, "Once, once, Bill, I was good . . ."

  Spencer said, "You were shot on the backside. It didn't even break the skin."

  ". . . it was me. It wasn't Robert Phillips. I wrote the dirty word on the back of . . ."He pulsed back into his body. He stopped pulsing. He began to sweat. He stopped being dead. He began being alive. He stopped not feeling. He felt. Auden said as all the feeling came back into his body, "AARRGGGHHHHG!" He jumped up out of the chair to protect his stinging arse and came down on two raw hamburger steaks attached to the end of his ankles. Auden said, "ARRGGGHHH!" Auden said, "Bill! Bill! Someone shot me!" He had been chasing the Tibetan. "And him! Someone shot him too!" He thought now that he was back from the dead all the Chinese in the bank would look different. They didn't. They all looked the same. IN THE EVENT OF A ROBBERY ATTEMPT STAFF ARE OBLIGED TO LAY DOWN THEIR LIVES IN DEFENSE OF THE BANK'S MONEY OR FACE INSTANT DISMISSAL. He was still staring at the picture of God dressed up as a batwinged, black-eyed, bitter Kaiser Wilhelm in a striped tie. It was too much.

  He hurt.

  He hopped.

  His brain gave out completely and went pop!

  Auden, hurting, hopping, popping, pulsing, yelled in utter, complete, lost, hopeless panic, "Bill! Bill! Bill, why is this happening to me?"