The Art of Taxidermy
Page 2
And, like a gift,
one fell from the treetop—
landed with a dull thud at the base,
clambered and staggered.
We sat and waited.
Bagged our specimen, and carried it
through the cold, dark streets, back
to the fretful house to meet with trouble.
HOME
The house reverberated
with the clatter of silver, as Aunt Hilda
set the table, set the cutlery
down sharp.
We have been beside ourselves,
Charlotte. Sick with worry.
She pointed a fork at me
across the table.
Father frowned,
glared beneath bushy eyebrows.
Your aunt is right, Lottie. You must
be home before dark, before night.
We were about to call the police.
Your father could not stop pacing.
My heart is still aching from
the racing and the pounding.
I sat and listened, dutifully
nodded and stared down.
But the shining plates and glinting silver
were bursting with anticipation.
CORELLA
I unwrapped my dead bird,
placed it on my desk,
flicked on the lamp.
The feathers,
luminous,
as white as the frosty lawn
on a bright winter morning.
I stroked the velvety body
studied the details:
the strong feet and sharp claws,
the blue-grey ring around the eye,
the long curve of the beak
and the bright pink patch beside it.
The stretch of its wings
made me sigh.
The unfolding of bones,
the flight feathers like fingers,
the sulphur yellow underside
and tail feathers to match.
I wanted it to wake, to perch
on my shoulder, to cry its screechy cry.
Annie, I whispered, Annie…
Did we make it die?
FATHER’S STUDY
Father was on an outing
and the house was darkening.
It was mid-afternoon and already
the street lamps were glowing.
The fireplace blazed and crackled
in the lounge, throwing
out long, grey shadows
that made me think of Mother.
In Father’s study I sat in his leather chair,
took a cigar from the wooden box,
leaned back, ran it beneath my nose
to smell his smell.
I put on his glasses, round and bottle-thick,
and the world blurred.
I stroked my imaginary beard
and sucked on the unlit Havana.
Outside, rain pelted the window,
the colours of the garden bled together
like an impressionist painting,
like Monet’s garden.
I removed and folded his glasses,
reached for the magnifier
he kept in the ceramic pot with his pens,
the letter opener and an ornamental knife.
I struck a match and lit the cigar,
inhaled and coughed,
wandered around the room
with my magnifier, looking for clues.
I flicked on the reading lamp
and, illuminated in the window
reflected as darkly as my mother,
I saw my ghostly self:
long black hair,
pale-skinned and dark-eyed,
her pointy chin,
her blood-red lips.
I turned away, turned back for clues,
inhaled three short puffs
and coughed out
bitter smoke.
On a bookshelf, in a silver frame,
a black-and-white photograph
of Father (blond) and Mother (dark)
both straight-backed, unsmiling.
In a nearby wooden frame,
there is Father, Uncle Bernard and Opa
with three Japanese men, all smiling,
holding up leafy vegetables.
I returned to the desk, tapped
a roll of ash into the glass ashtray,
then opened the old tobacco tin,
fished out the hidden key,
and opened the drawer full of secrets.
Papers and passports and old photos
and the cool square lines
of Opa’s Luger pistol.
SCHOOL I
For my science project
I took my corella to school.
Packed him into a small box,
cushioned on a soft, clean towel.
At the front of the classroom
I lifted him out, held him up.
Ew. Yuk. Gross.
Has it got maggots?
Does it smell? I bet it stinks.
How long’s it been dead?
How did it die?
Be quiet class! Mr Morris said.
I told them where I found
my specimen.
I recited memorised facts.
The little corella is also called:
little cockatoo,
short-billed corella,
bare-eyed cockatoo,
blue-eyed cockatoo,
blood-stained cockatoo.
Corellas feed on fruits, grains,
seeds of grass and bulbs;
sometimes small insects.
They nest in tree hollows
lined with wood shavings.
They are social.
They live in large flocks.
The girls wrinkled their noses.
Some boys wanted to throw him around.
A new kid in the class
stroked the soft, white feathers.
JEFFREY I
He was as dark
as the corella was light.
His skin was rich like earth,
his eyes, oily brown,
his eyelashes, long and thick.
He wore knee-high, white socks,
black school shoes, polished—no scuffs.
His grey shorts and light-blue school shirt
were crisply ironed—with neat creases
down the length of each sleeve.
His long slender fingers
stroked the bird.
He’s a beauty, he said.
Where did you come from? I asked.
From a mission. Long way.
He was the most beautiful boy
I had ever seen.
His quiet grace
and the stone stillness of him
reminded me of the Egyptian room.
WINTER II
When the robinia
turned skeletal and
exposed the wattle bird’s
woody nest,
Annie and I went back
to visit the corellas.
The day was grey clouds.
Frozen rain
and blustery winds
whipped our hair
and bit our faces.
Dry, claw-shaped leaves
chased us
as we scurried away from the house.
A willy wagtail flitted
and sashayed
on the path ahead.
There were always birds.
But the lizards and snakes
were sleeping.
The ants had built high towers
around their nests, and
people were inside by their fires.
Puddles reflected miniature scenes—
the dappled sky, branches of trees,
the flight of birds, distant hills.
Annie splashed in them,
star-jumped and leapt.
Dressed in a yellow raincoat and boots,
she was like sunshine.<
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BIRDS
The corellas were grazing
with a scatter of galahs.
We sat on a fallen log
and watched them squabble and tussle,
beat their wings and waddle
like hook-nosed old men
with their arms tucked
behind their backs.
In the west, a distant rainbow
and shafts of sunshine
brightened the sky,
but not far away the clouds
were black and thick.
A prong of lightning flashed
and a roll of thunder
exploded the flock as if
a bomb had been dropped.
Annie gasped and smiled
with square white teeth.
Quick! she grabbed my hand
tugged me up
and we galloped away.
We ran across the paddock into
a thicket of trees and stopped
to listen to warbling birdsong.
I searched the treetop,
and looking back were
the red-brown eyes of magpies.
Look! Annie pointed to
a large untidy nest in the tree.
I wonder if it has any eggs,
she said as she climbed.
I followed—stretched and tugged,
heaved and hauled
myself behind.
There were no eggs,
but from that high-up branch
I could see all around.
Smoke rose from the chimney
of a distant house where a car pulled up.
A dark boy climbed out and
strolled to the door in the rain.
HEAT
At home, in the steaming air
and the sound of gushing water, I peeled off
wet jeans and socks,
lugged my sodden jumper over the tangled
snakes of my hair, then wrote
‘Annie & Lottie’ on the foggy mirror.
When I was naked, about to dip my toe
into the scalding bath,
Annie appeared beneath the water.
Her eyes were closed, her hands clasped.
Her hair floated and danced
around her face like yellow seaweed.
I plunged my foot in and she disappeared.
I took her pose—eyes closed, hands clasped—
and sank into the hot, hot water.
It stung my skin. My ears filled with silence.
My hair floated, tickled my nose, and I tried
to imagine what it would be like to die.
BETRAYAL
When I entered my room,
my hair twisted in a towel,
I smelt something wrong,
something too clean,
too sweet.
I flicked the light and saw
the emptiness.
The nothingness.
My beautiful creatures
were gone.
I ran to the lounge. Father!
He was in his favourite chair,
reading the paper,
smoking a cigar,
his calm legs crossed.
They are in the shed, Lottie.
He looked at me
over reading glasses.
Your aunt moved them.
They are fine.
Aunt Hilda emerged
from the kitchen:
Charlotte. They smell.
It is unhygienic, unhealthy.
We will have the authorities out.
No, we won’t. No one cares.
That is not fair.
Your father and I discussed it.
We agreed it is for the best.
Your best.
I looked at Father.
He did not disagree.
He nodded solemnly and said,
Lottie, think of the shed
as your laboratory.
SCHOOL II
I sat next to Jeffrey
in the lunch shed.
He nodded, said nothing,
continued to chew
white triangular sandwiches
filled with cheese and
something green
like gherkin or cucumber.
His lunchbox sat open on his lap,
the lid tucked beneath.
Inside, neatly stowed, was an apple,
a lollipop, a slice of fruitcake.
My lunch was a mandarin
and a Vegemite sandwich on rough-cut bread
wrapped in brown paper.
We sat silently, side by side,
swung our long thin legs
back and forth, back and forth:
black and white,
black and white.
SCHOOL HOLIDAYS I
Aunt Hilda insisted
I sit in the lounge by the fire
and learn to knit.
We started with a scarf.
Knit one row, pearl one row.
Back and forth.
There was some solace
in that mindless act,
in the warmth of the fire.
Aunt Hilda was pleased
with my efforts: happy that I
had performed a girlish act.
Eventually, I escaped
to the shed, to my lab,
to visit the dead.
Father had put up shelves
and cleared a space
for my specimens.
It was not unlike his own lab,
with its chair and desk,
oil heater and bright lamp.
BLACK GOLD
Annie and I went to stay
at Oma’s house
in the country, by the sea.
One morning
I woke in the thin light
to the sound of wailing.
I pulled back the curtains.
Circling over the small dam
were large black birds.
Annie! I called.
She rubbed her sleepy eyes
and joined me at the window.
I pulled on gumboots,
wrapped myself in a thick, dark coat
and hurried outside
to stand beneath the whirling birds
bigger than crows.
Cockatoos!
Long, graceful wings,
flight feathers like
splayed fingers.
They floated through the air.
Yellow-cheeked,
yellow-tailed.
Not at all like the corellas.
Elegant,
with a slow, deep wing-beat.
They wailed their eerie wail—
Wee-ahh, wee-ah, wee-ahh
and more birds came.
Like giant bats
they landed
in the eucalypts.
Annie and I crept,
working our way to them.
But with a clap of wings
and a mournful cry,
they fled.
OMENS
In the kitchen
Annie and I dabbed
paintbrushes at pictures
in a paint-by-numbers book.
It was a simple scene:
a small house on a hill,
with a plume of smoke billowing
from the chimney.
Oma was at the sink,
humming and slicing
onions and cabbage
for dinner.
Her gun-grey hair,
wound in a tight bun.
Her face as wrinkled
as the corpse of an apple.
Holz für das Feuer,
she said over bird-like shoulders.
Wood. Before supper.
We pulled on our coats
and our boots
and headed to the woodpile.
A blustery wind
blew us along the path.
The air was thick with sea salt.
I could taste it on
my lips
as we gathered chunks of wood
and made our way back.
Clouds of pink coral
drifted above us,
almost close enough
to touch.
And then we heard the wailing
and stopped
and scanned,
and there they were.
Black-and-yellow cockatoos.
They flew overhead.
The yellow panels
of their tail feathers
looked to be painted on
with a thick square brush.
When Oma called
Abendessen! Lottie! Dinner!
we ran back to the cottage,
put the wood in the basket near the fire
and sat down for our meal.
All through dinner
the birds circled,
crying their sorrowful cry.
I could not see them
through the window
I could see only
the dappled sky.
Oma. The birds,
the black cockatoos,
I said and looked up
to where they might be.
Oma peered at me
through small clouded eyes
and shook her head.
Funeral birds.
Bad. Bad omen.
But they’re beautiful.
She did not answer.
She chewed her cabbage
and meat, and the deep lines
of her mouth puckered.
OMA AND OPA AND OMENS
As we travelled homewards
I scattered the long silence,
asked why black cockatoos
are a bad omen.
Father continued to drive
looking ahead at the grey road.
His brow creased when he said,
It is because of the war.
I watched the lump in his throat
rise and fall,
and rise and fall again
as he swallowed.
Black cockatoos swirled
like an ominous cloud
around the farm one year—
around the time that Opa died.
He died unexpectedly
during the war.
And now when Oma sees
a flock of black cockatoos
she thinks something terrible
will transpire.
But Father, they are so beautiful
and graceful, and
they don’t screech like corellas
or sulphur-crested cockatoos.
Father smiled. You are right.
They are beautiful and graceful
like black kites.
It is nothing, just superstition.
FUNERAL BIRDS I
I researched Oma’s cockatoos:
the yellow-tailed black cockatoo,
also called yellow-eared cockatoo