by Sylvia Torti
The conversation hung between them, a swelling silence that grew. He despised the quiet evenings at the house and so he bought a folding cot, called home and left a message that he’d be working late.
A few months later, she’d spoken across the silence of the living room. “I guess I’m just not that interested in birds in cages anymore.” This time there was no anger in her voice. He remembered standing up and walking out of the room. He remembered the drive back down the winding canyon to the university. The night, turning and turning on his cot. The next morning, he drove back to their house, spoke to her even before she got out of bed.
“It’s because of you and Ed, isn’t it?”
She fixed him with a look, and he immediately felt shame. A violation of his friendship with Ed, a violation of his memory.
“I suppose so.” She sat up and stretched, her eyes blinking at him and the sunlight of the morning.
He waited. She offered nothing more.
“And?”
She pushed back the covers, as if brushing him away, and stood.
“Come on Sarah. That’s all you’re going to say?”
Her back to him, she took off her nightgown and began to dress. “It’s not what you think. Besides, Ed’s dead.”
“Damn it, Sarah! You’re so bloody verbal, so good at getting all your thoughts and emotions into neat little packages, everything described perfectly with just the right amount of emphasis on each word, and now I’m getting the silent treatment?”
She buttoned her blouse. She still hadn’t turned around. She spoke in a quiet, controlled voice. “I need some space.”
Afraid of learning more, he hadn’t challenged her.
He rummaged on his desk now for the letter she’d sent most recently and ripped it open.
I was trying to open a space for us. All you ever spoke about was the neuroscience of birdsong, not even the birds themselves, just the nerves and muscles that made a bird sing. You became stingy, told nothing of yourself or your feelings.
“Maybe I had nothing to tell?” he said out loud.
You even quit going out to watch birds. You were only interested in what you could do in the lab. And then you wouldn’t agree to visit Ed and I was so disappointed that you didn’t come. I thought you’d realize it when the birds left. Without the birds, I thought the living room might fill with new sounds.
What bothered him most as he read this letter was that he only had her words on paper. He couldn’t hear her saying any of this. He couldn’t tell if there was regret or relief in her voice.
A kind of fog had settled over his thinking. Certainty. He’d always wanted it and he’d relied on the ability of science to show him what was certain in the world. Of course, at some level he knew science was just one way of knowing. There were truths to be found, but also mysteries he’d never be able to answer. Ed’s absence meant he’d never have the chance to have another conversation about certainty or experimentation or a million other things he thought they’d have time for. The sabotage and death of the birds meant that the muting experiments were over. And he would never be able to ask Ed about Sarah’s trip to Peru, though he guessed he wouldn’t have had the guts to do that anyway. He suspected they had come closer, recognized a long-standing attraction and acted on it, and that Sarah had realized what she’d been missing all the years.
He folded the letter, picked up his bag and drove home. From inside the house, tucked within the spruce trees, he could hear the grumbling of an approaching thunderstorm as it worked its way up the valley and he knew that if he drove out to the ridge he would see the dark clouds, rain already coming down like a shroud being pulled across the sky. One of the few summer storms this year. He heard Munin squawk in her aviary and decided to bring her in so that she could wait out the storm in the house. Outside the moist wind whipped against his face as he descended the wooden steps toward the aviary. Munin spied him, jumped from one perch to another and squawked again. She opened her wings, black in this light and flew toward the door when he approached.
“Back now.”
She flew to the other side of the aviary, perched with her good foot, using her bad leg for balance, and waited. He unfastened the latch and entered the aviary, pulling the door shut behind him. He took a piece of foil from his pocket and held it in his left hand for her to see. Munin cocked her head. He held his other arm straight out so that she could land on his forearm. He flicked his left wrist, but in the dark light, the foil barely shimmered. Munin opened her wings and began to fly toward him, but in the last second there was a gust of wind. The door to the aviary banged opened and with a quick change in angle, she flew out, perching tentatively on the branch of a nearby spruce tree.
David hurried outside after her. “Munin, the shiny stuff’s down here.” He extended his left arm, gently rocking his wrist with the foil. It had gotten darker and the bird oriented toward his voice, studying him, as if she had just realized that she was not within the confines of the aviary. Strong gusts of wind blew his hair into his eyes. He twirled the foil and held his right arm stiff. The bird ruffled and opened her wings slightly before closing them again. He felt a first and then a second drop of water. A gust of wind slapped across his face. The bird puffed up again, this time opening her wings wide, and then she was gone.
How does a relationship end? Beginnings are easy. There are always fixed points. An irresistible voice, a smile, shared interests. An inexplicable tingling on the skin, a wrist taken abruptly, bread bitten straight from another’s hand. The channels of communication open, neurons sensitized, sensory organs available. There is a burst of energy, a frenzy of activity, something like a bird’s zugunruhe before migration. The beginning is fattening, restlessness, take-off, flight. A setting out for destinations unknown, a movement north or south, no questioning of why. The end is less exact. Weariness, suspicion, nostalgia, thoughts and sensations existing without a past or a future. In the end, there is the absence of sound, a cessation of neurons, a magpie’s quiet escape through an open door.
At first Anton didn’t discuss Rebecca with David, but her absence, like that of the birds, was palpable. In the weeks following their last conversation, Anton kept returning to the one thing he didn’t want to think about: Rebecca’s outrage. He had gone once more to her apartment, but when he knocked on the door, she didn’t come out. He cupped his hands and peered in through the dark window. He tried the doorknob and realized the door was unlocked. The place, which had been sparse when Rebecca lived there, was now bare. She had left a futon mattress, complete with sheets, and the bed light, but when he opened the closet door he saw an empty rack that before had been crammed with her clothes. Even the air smelled of something else, not lemon, something other than her, a musty smell as if the apartment had been closed for a long time. All traces of Rebecca were gone, as if she had never lived in that place.
He heard her asking: Doesn’t it bother you to work on them?
His answer: Of course.
“You think she did it?” Anton asked David in one of their last conversations. “Is that why you fired her?”
“I didn’t fire her, Anton. The market went south. I downsized.”
Unsure what he meant, Anton didn’t respond.
“Look, Anton, I don’t know if she did it. There were, how many, eight, ten people working in this lab the last couple of months? Plus, the weekend animal care folks. Do I suspect her? Yes.”
“She didn’t do it,” Anton said.
David raised his eyebrows.
“I know her.”
David looked out the window for a moment and then he turned back to Anton. “Just because you’re sleeping with someone doesn’t mean you know them.”
Anton shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” David said.
Right after the sabotage, Anton had wanted to tell David that he had suspected her too and then to confess how bad this thought made him feel, but to do so, he would have had to reveal their relationship and he ha
dn’t wanted to do that. Now it was clear that David had known about it all along. Perhaps Rebecca was right. He was a coward.
“You don’t have to leave,” David said. “We can order more birds, begin again.”
Again, David seemed to already know Anton’s plans.
“How do you know?”
“I got a call from Gianetti. He wanted a reference. He asked about new technical skills, the neuronal work. I told him you were a master, had figured out the muting technique.”
“Gianetti needed a reference? Has he got early dementia? He’s the reason I came here. He knows my work.”
“Anton, I hope you find the memory traces. I really do.”
The rest of September was hot as usual in the valley, but cool at David’s house. Below the conifer trees, night came earlier than in the valley. David sat on the deck at dusk, a whisky in hand and stared at the empty aviary, the door propped open. Every couple of days he still went down to put food inside in case Munin returned, but so far, he’d only been feeding raccoons. He swirled the glass. The two ice cubes clinked together, melting, and the water formed little eddies in the whiskey. He thought about the part of the poem in which Odin, the half-blind Norse god, worries about his two ravens: Hugin and Munin. Thought and Memory.
I fear for Hugin
That he may not return,
Yet more am I anxious for Munin.
One would always have new thoughts. It was the memories that went astray. He took another sip of the whiskey and felt the burn at the back of his throat. He didn’t have much of a taste for the drink, but lately, he’d been thinking about Ed and that had been Ed’s nightly ritual.
“After a day in the forest, you feel invincible,” Ed had said. “You sit at the lodge, feet up on the railing, a cold whiskey in hand, and watch the day go dark. You listen. Half the world goes to sleep. The other half wakes up.”
David heard a hermit thrush, its melancholy song clear and piercing, as fitting as any this night. He thought about the time in Louisiana when he had accompanied Ed to a fundraiser for a local conservation organization. As a challenge Ed had offered his ears and bet a thousand dollars that he could identify the birds on any tape brought to him from any place in the world. His only requirement was that he be given the name of the country where the recording was made. The challenge was put up for auction. A local businessman and avid birdwatcher bet ten thousand dollars that he could stump the bird man. Ed accepted the bet. On the agreed evening, in front of an audience of fifty, Ed sat alone on stage, smiling sheepishly at the murmuring crowd of bird fanatics gathered to watch him. The businessman walked up and ceremoniously placed a cassette player onto the table and said “Bolivia.”
Ed sat down and pressed the play button. The recording was low-quality and scratchy. Ed listened, cocked his head, finished listening to the tape, re-wound and listened again, this time taking notes. After the second re-wind, when he again pushed the play button, he began to name each species of bird as it sounded on the tape, skipping just one. Everyone was impressed. He’d just earned the conservation organization ten thousand dollars, but David could tell that Ed was disturbed. After the clapping ended, Ed went back to the one bird he hadn’t named. He played it over and over.
“That,” he said, leaning into the microphone, “sounds like an antwren in the Herpsilochmus genus, but I know all those wrens. It’s not one I know.”
Two years later, in Pennsylvania, David received a reprint of a paper reporting the existence of a new species of antwren, which lived only in remote tropical forests of Bolivia. David looked at the drawing of the small, brown bird. Across the top, Ed’s scribble. The one I heard on that Bolivian tape. Ed had identified, by sound alone, a species new to science.
It was dark on the porch now. The whiskey had warmed. There was no burning, just the heat of the drink going down. Unlike Odin, Ed had never worried over memory. Ed was a man who had never forgotten a song, not even the song of a bird he’d not yet heard.
David called Ed to congratulate him. “Once I get going on this neuroscience research I’m going to put you in a box, stick electrodes in you and take some scans while you’re identifying birdsong. I’m going to figure out how you do it.”
Ed laughed. “Sure, I’ll be up the Tambopata River. Just give me a call.”
As David took the last sip of whiskey he heard Ed’s voice, the sound clear. Ed was saying, You forget yourself. You could walk out into the forest, listen for as long as you want. You could keep going, and no one would ever find you.
Before he left the States, Anton went to the deli. Reading his face in an instant, Francesco came around the stainless steel counter, his apron dusted white and crisp with flour. The balls of soft dough and strips of pasta waiting to be cranked through the machine were left without a thought, even though they would be ruined from too much time in the dry air.
As soon as Anton sat down, he began talking. He told Francesco about Rebecca and David, about how he’d remained silent, kept the relationship a secret, about the muting and stuttering and sabotage.
“I think she is responsible,” he said. “She asked so many questions about the birds, morals, right and wrong, and her behavior lately was either incredibly sweet or angry.”
Francesco listened. When Anton was done, Francesco brushed the flour off his hands with a dry towel, went to a cupboard, took out two small glasses and a bottle of port.
“I lied to David. I denied that she could have been involved even when I think she was. I saw her a few times on campus with her camera, but she told me she wasn’t taking pictures anymore.”
A quick pull on the old cork and Francesco filled the glasses half way up.
“I didn’t ask her about having seen her with the camera.”
Francesco wrapped two fingers around his glass and raised it. “There is always risk in speaking.”
They tapped glasses ceremoniously, making little sound.
“And when I went back to her house, she was gone. Why wouldn’t she tell me?”
Francesco waited for Anton to continue.
“I feel like I betrayed David.”
They drank, emptying the small glasses.
“I also feel like I betrayed her,” he said. “Why do I feel this way?”
“Because you loved.”
Anton shook his head. “I don’t know if I did, really. There is so much I didn’t share with her. Couldn’t share.”
Francesco reached for the bottle and filled their glasses again. “We are rarely brave.”
Anton left the States, returned to Europe, and established himself in Gianetti’s laboratory in Turino where he was free to work on memory, which continued to be elusive and slippery. He felt confused by what had happened with Rebecca and disappointed that he and David had never accomplished much with the birds. He was back to mice, horribly passive creatures, but better suited to finding the keys to memory. He reacquainted himself with the work culture of Italy, to the regular lunch hour when everyone left the lab instead of eating over their desks. He drank espresso after lunch and chatted with his new colleagues. There was a hollow feeling whenever he thought of her and so he tried not to. He waited for his mother’s letters from Africa, for her upcoming return.
Fall was short that year and snow fell early in the Alps. The first chance he had, he went to his grandfather’s house in the mountain village in Südtirol where he’d spent summers as a child. He bought snowshoes and hiked for hours over the wet snow and then he ventured higher into the silent mountains, the snow deeper and harder, layers of crystallized water packed upon layers of crystallized water. Come spring there would be the sounds of bells on sheep, bleating goats, barking dogs. The migrant birds would return and nightingales would sing from early morning through most of the night. He was happy to be back in Europe but not as happy as he thought he would be. There was a sense of relief but also some disappointment that he couldn’t precisely understand.
He mentioned his depressed state to David. Time
, David had written back, give yourself time. You’ll find the excitement again. It always comes back. Science is part of you. You can’t stop it. But he hadn’t expressed himself well to David. It wasn’t only a problem with science. He listened to the crunch of his shoes on the snow and remembered a conversation he’d had with Rebecca.
“So how does this bird-poem end?” she asked.
She was standing next to the open window, her hair still long, hanging over her back, the air coming in, the sweat of love-making evaporating off his skin. She lay down next to him and rested her head on his shoulder, her arm over his chest, her fingers massaging him.
“After the long trip through seven valleys,” he told her, “the birds arrive at the holy land. Only thirty remain. They are broken, their feathers ripped. They are hungry and very, very tired, but the door keeper tells them they cannot come in. They should turn around and go back. The birds say no. They feel tricked, disillusioned. They have traveled a long way. They want to see their king. They insist.”
“Finally, the keeper opens the door. Inside it’s bright, so bright that they cannot see. He hands each bird a piece of paper and tells them that once they read it, the real reasons for their journey will be revealed. The birds grab the papers and read.”
“What do the papers say?” she asked.
“Lists of sins, their sins. The birds feel shame and then they are angry because they feel like they flew the long journey for nothing. Then a big light comes toward them and at that moment, they see their god, and you know what god is?”
She shook her head.
“Themselves. A mirror. Apparently, in Persian, the two words have the same meaning. The Simorgh, which means thirty birds, see the Simorgh, which is the name of their god.”
The substance of their being was undone,
And they were lost like shade before the sun;
Neither the pilgrims nor their guide remained.
The Simorgh ceased to speak, and silence reigned.