by Unknown
There was a disturbance, like a sudden snow squall, outside the window, and Tom looked up to see a flock of birds settling on the holly tree—or, rather, not settling but fluttering about it, as quick and random in their movements as a cloud of gnats, skipping daintily from branch to branch, trading places, covering the tree so thickly that they appeared to be a kind of mobile foliage, a mass of shimmering olive, with, here and there, winks of gorse-yellow, winks of scarlet. Even through the double-glazing of the window, he could hear them at it—a continuous metallic zinging like the tuneless fiddle-bowing of cicadas in tall grass.
“Finbow! Come up here—quick as you can!”
Though he knew waxwings from the bird book, he’d never seen them in life. He got the binoculars off the windowsill and brought the holly tree into swimming close-up. The birds were better than their pictures—trim dandies, the sheen of their plumage bright beyond reason in the gloomy overcast.
“What?”
The puppy was nipping at Finn’s heels.
“Look!”
“Birds,” Finn said, sounding cheated.
“Waxwings. Here—” He passed him the binoculars, and Finn sighed theatrically before holding the glasses to his eyes.
“You see their crests?”
“Yeah. They look like they got bike-helmets on.”
“Try counting them. How many do you think there are?”
“Millions.”
“What are they doing?”
“I dunno. Nothing. Playing?”
“I think perhaps they’re eating berries.”
Yet, as Finn said, they appeared to be up to nothing in particular. Not feeding, not fighting, not mating, they seemed impelled by simple restlessness and exhibitionism, like college athletes showing off their muscles.
“Can I go get a cookie now?”
“Oh, if you have to.” Tom took down the Peterson guide from the shelf and looked up the cedar waxwing: sleek . . . gregarious . . . nomadic . . . fly and feed in compact flocks.
Abandoned, he stood at the window trying to see patterns in the brilliant commotion. He focused the binoculars on a single bird, held it in view for a few seconds, but lost it after the third branch. The same thing happened with the next bird. As soon as one gained a distinct identity, it dissolved into another or vanished into thin air, leaving behind it a momentary fixed image of skittering wings.
Tiring of the exercise, he trained the binoculars on the ship that was sliding out from behind the tree, moving hardly faster than walking speed. Laden to the level of its bridge-deck with containers of ill-assorted colors, it lay low in the water, its hull stained with gouts of rust. A limp flag hung straight down from the pole on its stern. As the ship came clear of the tree, he read PANAMA CITY painted in flaking letters below an indecipherable name. A Sunday ship. Tom knew the routine: evading the longshoremen’s overtime rates, it would anchor here in the bay overnight, then cross to Harbor Island on Monday morning for unloading.
The ship drifted to a standstill. Stick-figures were moving around on the bow. If he opened the window, he’d be close enough to hear the rattle of the chain—and it was this thought that made him turn the binoculars back to the holly tree to see that the waxwings were gone. There’d been no flurry at the edge of his vision; the only mark of their departure was the empty Sunday silence. It must have been the decision of a split second—that mystifying flock imperative to be up and away on a whim. He raked the sky in search of them, but found nothing except a single gull wheeling in the middle distance. He blamed his own inattention for letting them escape. Had he kept on watching, they’d be there still.
He peered intently into the depths of the holly, on the off-chance that a straggler or two might have stayed behind. No luck. But as his eyes grew used to the darkness of the leaves, he could see the short bristly stalks where the red clusters had been. The waxwings had stripped every berry off the tree.
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, OCTOBER 2004
Copyright © 2003 by Jonathan Raban
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Random House Children’s Books for permission to reprint an excerpt from The Cat in the Hat Comes Back by Dr. Seuss. TM & copyright © by Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. 1958, renewed 1986. .
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Pantheon edition as follows:
Raban, Jonathan.
Waxwings : / Jonathan Raban.
p. cm.
1. British—Washington (State)—Fiction. 2. Repairing trades—Fiction.
3. Seattle (Wash.)—Fiction. 4. Illegal aliens—Fiction. 5. Immigrants—Fiction.
6. Authors—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6068.A22 W39 2003
823’.914—dc21
2003042997
eISBN : 978-0-307-43014-4
www.randomhouse.com
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