As a matter of fact, the professor is the only one among us who appears perfectly content with the food I serve straight from The Family Frying Pan. So when Professor Slotinowitz volunteers to tell us a story we don’t quite know what to expect. Another of his endless theories perhaps? Or, at best, a hasty, tasteless meal cooked in a laboratory on a Bunsen burner while some pointless experiment occupied his mind which, when solved, will not put an extra crumb on his family table. That is, of course, if the professor ever had a family. It is difficult to imagine that the simple act of creation, the business of making a baby, could be grasped in a head so filled with theories, equations and scientific complexities.
‘I was once the keeper of the Tsar’s birds, of the Royal Aviary,’ he begins, ‘for I have always had a way with birds, a natural affinity, even if I say so myself.’
I nod, remembering the incident with the breakfast crumbs, though I can see that this information surprises the others.
‘Perhaps you can catch us a brace of plump partridges for tomorrow night’s dinner?’ Mrs Olga Zorbatov quips. ‘Partridge and Potato Pie served with a sweet Madeira wine.’She claps her hands to her breast, ‘Oh my, oh my!’
The professor chooses to ignore this remark. ‘As the Royal Ornithologist I was visited by bird salesmen from all over the world carrying cages of exotic birds. The great blue and yellow macaw, the exotic keel-billed toucan and the crimson topaz hummingbird from South America. The noisy pink and white galah, and parrots and rosellas of every colour from the Antipodes. From the Solomon Islands and German Guinea, the bird of paradise. Proud chickens with plumes as bright as peacocks and leg feathers of crimson and blue from China and regal peacocks themselves from the forests where tigers roam on the slopes of the Himalayas in the Kingdom of Nepal. Grey parrots from the Congo River in Africa which live for a hundred years, and blue doves from the spice island of Zanzibar. From the bitter soda lakes of German East Africa, the glorious lesser pink flamingo.
‘Men of every colour and creed came to my door. Africans, black as polished ebony wood, with filed teeth and silver bangles banding their upper arms. Yellow-skinned Mongolians and shy, imperious, saffron-robed Tibetans, their eyes dark clove slits set in flat calm faces. Turbaned men from Afghanistan with fierce hooked noses and eyes as hard as tektites. Men from Bolivia, draped in brilliantly coloured blankets, who wore bowler hats and smoked thin cigars, which they held in slender coffee-coloured fingers.
‘Enough, Professor!’ Olga Zorbatov interrupts, ‘Except for the chickens from China there is hardly a decent morsel in your grand aviary! I read once in a book that parrots tasted bitter as aloe oil and the peacock, when it is plucked of its fancy finery, is no more pleasure to eat than a common spatchcock taken from the pigeon loft.’
The professor is no Mr Mendelsohn and well used to interruption. Academics quarrel all the time and interjection is as common as spectacles to men of learning, so Mrs Z’s comments are water off a duck’s back.
‘Tsar Nicholas took some pleasure in his aviary and I believe he thought it well worth the upkeep, which was considerable, but it was his daughter Princess Tatiana who loved to come each morning to see the birds.’ The professor smiles. ‘She was a pretty little creature with a brilliant musical ear and she would spend an hour or more each morning talking to the birds. She could emulate the exact tone, rhythm and intonation of every bird call in the great glass-domed Imperial Aviary. And repeat the honks and quacks of the geese, swans and wild duck which swam in the ponds and lakes created around it. She could as easily mimic the honk of the snow goose as she could the raucous squawking of a sulphur-crested cockatoo, and in the very next breath she might create the soft cooing of a blue dove or the call of the English nightingale. There seemed to be no bird call, no matter how strange, that didn’t come to her ear naturally. She seemed quite capable of talking personally to the birds, which would flutter and dance excitedly in the air around her as she entered the aviary.
‘To this remarkable talent Tatiana added another, an affinity with numbers, in this she was an equal genius.’ The professor pauses, looking up at the stars, and then allows himself a sigh, ‘If ever I should have had a child I would have wished it to be Tatiana, daughter of Tsar Nicholas. Indeed, I came to think of her in much these terms and could hardly wait for her to appear each morning when, after talking to the birds, she would take breakfast in the lodge with me. Here I gave her lessons in algebra and geometry and soon we moved into the realm of higher mathematics and abstract equations. What a delightful mind the child had and if Russia should ever have a queen, another Catherine the Great, it will be well served if they should choose the Princess Tatiana.’
‘Ah, that is not likely, there is an heir at last, the continuity of the Romanoffs is now assured,’ Olga Zorbatov says smugly.
I think to myself, We are all fleeing from the tyranny of Tsarist Russia and here is Mrs Z being a royalist, pompous as anything. Besides, she is interrupting too much and the professor’s story is becoming really quite interesting.
‘Is it true Prince Alexei has a rare blood disease and will not make old bones, perhaps not even grow to be an adult?’ I ask. I heard this rumour from a monk who sold us a sack of potatoes at a monastery we had passed on our travels. He told me that one of their kind, a monk named Rasputin, had been selected by the Tsarina to be with the heir to the throne of all the Russias as his spiritual healer and that God had granted this monk the gift of stopping the boy from bleeding to death. I did not find this altogether strange, for it has been my observation that the Gentile God is very involved with blood in one way or another.
‘It is quite true, the prince is a sickly child and often covered in bruises and there is a lot of loose talk, more than this I cannot tell you,’ the professor says, before adding, ‘Though I admit to having been told a little more in the utmost confidence.’
‘Then it is true!’ Olga Z says triumphantly, shaking her head up and down and pouting her lips. ‘A queen for Russia, eh?’
‘That is not what I said, Mrs Zorbatov, it was only a chance remark. Tatiana is a remarkable young lady, or was, until the Indian myna bird came into my life and completely spoiled our relationship.’ The professor scratches his head and says ruefully, ‘Now that I am gone from her life, one must suppose, she will be taught needlework and how, with good grace, to bear intolerably boring conversations.’
This last remark stops all the speculation about the condition of the Prince Alexei, heir to the Russian throne, and we all grow silent. The professor is about to get to the juicy bits.
The Indian myna bird is a most unprepossessing bird, not much bigger than twice the size of a sparrow with dull brown and pale yellow breast feathers, though it has a bright eye ringed with black and a lively, busy manner. It gives off the impression of intelligence as it cocks its head at human sounds and seems naturally curious. Easily tamed, it can be made to learn tricks and to emulate a number of expressions of the voice, so that there are those who believe that it can not only learn to speak but can understand what is being said as well. I must point out to you all that this is not true. The Indian myna, like the parrot, can learn sounds if they are constantly repeated, but has no comprehension of their meaning.
As I said before, it was the habit of the Princess Tatiana to take breakfast at my lodge, which also served as the gatehouse to the greater bird sanctuary. It was here that the bird salesmen with their exotic species would come. Princess Tatiana would often accompany me to the gate to look at the day’s offerings. Sometimes she would urge me to purchase an exotic and beautiful specimen, and after I had carefully examined the bird to see that its feathers hadn’t been dyed or new ones skilfully sewn to old with minute stitches or gummed to truncated quills, I might do so. But first I carefully questioned the salesman as to the bird’s habitat so that we might place it within the great glass aviary where it was most likely to survive.
On the morning of the Indian myna bird, we had been offered several fine specimen
s, including as I recall a rufous-tailed jacamar from the tropical rainforests of the Amazon, which I was obliged reluctantly to refuse. It is a bird that lives mostly on butterflies, and the butterfly house in the aviary had for some reason, probably a malfunction of the temperature, destroyed all this season’s butterfly pupae. The chances of our keeping the jacamar alive through the winter were not very good, while the price being asked for the exotic bird was not inconsiderable. Despite the disappointment of the princess I was forced to conclude that the Tsar’s money could be better spent elsewhere.
We had all but concluded our inspection of the birds for sale that day when the princess stopped at an enormous gilded cage beside which sat a most imperious-looking man on a small carved stool. At first appearance he seemed to be an Afghani, though in some respects different. He had none of the savage, bearded looks of his countrymen nor did he have the ubiquitous rifle slung about his striped ankle-length jalabi robe. Moreover, his face showed not a single scar and while his nose was large and carried the distinctive hook of his tribe, it was offset by a neat moustache and a well-clipped goatee beard. And his hands were a contradiction, soft with his fingernails well manicured and rather long. He bowed his head respectfully when the Princess Tatiana approached, though he did not kneel and place his forehead on the ground, nor even did he rise.
I was first alerted to the situation when I heard the princess laugh and I looked up to see the large and, I must say, rather ostentatious cage. ‘Look, Professor, a little brown bird of no value whatsoever and even less charm in this big and silly cage,’ she called out to me.
She had barely said this when I heard her laugh again, but as I could see her lips, I knew at once that this second laughter, so perfectly like her own, came from the small brown and yellow bird with black-ringed eyes and bright yellow legs which appeared a trifle too big for it.
The princess looked in surprise at the little bird then she clapped her hands, ‘Oh, we must have it!’ she exclaimed. ‘You must buy this laughing bird at once, Professor.’
‘It is not for sale,’ the man seated beside the cage said quietly. His manner was not in the least impertinent, but he was definite in his resolve.
‘Come now, my good man,’ I said in somewhat of a superior tone, ‘I am not so easily duped, the bird has no value but the cage is of silver, though I’ll vouch there is too much lead in the mix. It is the cage you wish to sell, is it not?’ I did not wait for his reply before continuing, ‘Well, it is the bird we want and you may keep the gilded cage and sell it to some silly, degenerate nobleman of which Russia has far too many splendid examples.’
Tatiana giggled, the royal palace was constantly filled with slack-mouthed suitors from the nobility, some of whom would have great difficulty counting to the sum of their bejewelled fingers.
The Oriental ignored my rudeness. ‘The bird is a gift from the Queen of Persia for the Princess Tatiana but it must be won by her in fair competition,’ he said quietly.
‘Competition? A gift to be won? Who will challenge Her Royal Highness?’ I laughed at the indignity of the proposal, ‘The Queen of Persia? And what in and what for?’ I sniffed. ‘The prize, a silly little brown bird?’
‘The Indian myna bird is not a silly little brown bird and this one is bred of generations of Persian royal birds beginning in Asia Minor since time was an infant. It has an astonishing intelligence. The challenge will be at mathematics and bird calls!’
I must say I didn’t like this arrogant and confident manner in the least but before I could protest the princess exclaimed, ‘I should like that, I should like that very much indeed!’ She turned to me, ‘Professor, you must invite our new friend to breakfast in your lodge where the competition will take place. I shall order something nice for him from the kitchen, and you and I will have English porridge with honey as usual.’
‘No, Princess,’ the turbaned gentleman said quickly. ‘The Queen of Persia has sent sweetmeats from the Orient. I will try this thing you call porridge and you must eat of our food, which I know will delight your palate.’ He rose slowly and extended his hands to show a ruby ring on each forefinger with an Arabian script carved into the stone. ‘I am the brother of the Sultan of Arabia, who also sends you greetings.’
It was plain to see that Tatiana was impressed, after all, it is not every day you meet the Sultan of Arabia’s brother.
‘We shall have to call the royal taster and your governess and at least two referees, I shall be one and another must be found,’I said.
‘By all means,’ the sultan’s brother said. ‘Will you allow my servant to accompany me?’
We had barely noticed the presence of the bearded little man who had stood quietly some paces behind the sultan’s brother.
‘Certainly,’ the princess said. ‘He can also be the second referee if you like.’
The sultan’s brother smiled. ‘He is only a servant, Princess, he will carry the cage and then sit at my feet and sleep.’
The servant carried the great gilded cage into the lodge and set it up in the breakfast room behind a chair where the sultan’s brother was invited to sit. Then, clasping his hands together as though in prayer, the servant bowed to us and took his place cross-legged at his master’s feet, where he appeared almost instantly to fall asleep.
The royal taster and the governess were summonsed together with one of the royal accountants who had come to work early. Soon the table was covered with the most exotic food. Chocolates and Turkish delight and all manner of dried fruits and nuts and little sweet cakes, all of this supplied from a great bag the sultan’s brother’s servant had given to my servant. Wine was brought for the adults though the sultan’s brother asked only for water with a little juice of the lemon added.
A plate of steaming porridge was brought for him along with a goblet of water. He dipped a spoon into the porridge and then lifted it to his imperious nose and sniffed. ‘No smell? Perhaps just a hint of honey?’ Then he tasted it, though very tentatively, on the tip of his pink tongue. He pulled a face, more a polite grimace, and then placed his spoon down. ‘I have already eaten,’ he said, handing the plate back to a servant to take away. He waved his hand across the table filled with eastern delights. ‘Eat, please. Enjoy, compliments of the Queen of Persia.’
I’m not at all sure I was pleased about the way he was taking over and I must admit it was a very strange breakfast. But the princess seemed happy enough and seemed to relish all sorts of delicious bits and pieces and soon declared herself wonderfully satisfied even though the royal taster looked decidedly sick from the overly rich food.
‘Now for the competition, Sultan’s Brother,’ Tatiana said. ‘How do the rules go?’
‘No rules, just sounds and numbers. You may keep the Indian myna bird if you can make a bird sound with your throat or make up a mathematical calculation it cannot repeat exactly or answer accurately.’
I must admit I laughed out loud. ‘Sir, your bird is soon lost.’
‘Shall we make a wager on that?’ the sultan’s brother offered gently.
We all laughed. ‘You do not know what you are saying, sir, the princess is gifted in emulating the song of birds and also in mathematics. Besides, we are servants of the Tsar and cannot wager money on his daughter.’
‘Oh, but I can!’ Princess Tatiana cried. She turned to the young clerk. ‘I have money of my own, money sent to me by Queen Victoria and other money, have I not?’
The accountant nodded his head glumly, not at all sure that he was authorised to make expenditure on behalf of the young princess.
‘Good! Then, Professor, you shall wager for me!’
The sultan’s brother reached for a leather bag somewhere in his striped robes and counted ten English gold sovereigns onto the table. ‘Shall we start with only a small wager? I do not wish to embarrass the princess.’
I looked at the ten gold coins in dismay. ‘I do not have the authority!’ I stammered.
‘Yes, you have, I just gave it to you,’
Tatiana cried. ‘Let’s get on with it please, Professor.’
‘I only have the Tsar’s money, which I use for the purchase of birds,’ I said helplessly.
‘The fifteen-year-old princess sighed and clucked her tongue. ‘You will be repaid every kopek should I lose, which I shall not.’ She turned to the sultan’s brother. ‘Shall we begin? What bird call shall I make, Professor?’
I placed ten gold coins on the table to the value of the English sovereigns. ‘The Common Potoo, Nyctibius griseus,’ I replied. This strange relative of the nightjar can be heard on any moonlit night and comes from tropical South America. It has a most difficult to emulate warble of several notes, as though three or four different birds are in harmony, and it was one of the bird calls Tatiana found at first most difficult.
Almost at once the strange, plaintive cry of this ugly little bird which, as a matter of interest, has the additional ability to distort its body so that it might appear to be a part of a log or a wayside stone, came from the princess. It was well delivered and those around the breakfast table who heard it smiled, as it was indeed a most complex call.
Our smiles were almost instantly wiped from our faces, for Tatiana had barely drawn breath again when a precise emulation of the sound came from the myna bird. My ear for birdsong is perfect and both the princess and I knew that we had lost our wager.
The sultan’s brother added my coins to the pile in front of him, ‘Shall we wager double your last bet on the next call?’
‘Yes, yes, the English nightingale, a complete stanza!’ the princess exclaimed, clapping her hands gleefully.
Almost immediately she started to sing in the beautiful call of the nightingale. It was an enchanting sound and masterful in its rendition, and brought tears to the eyes of those who listened. But no sooner was it over than the little myna bird repeated it as perfectly as she had rendered it. The sultan’s brother raised his eyebrows at me and I was forced to nod, then he took the twenty gold coins from my side of the table and added them to the pile in front of him.
The Family Frying Pan Page 5