Frogmouth

by William Marshall

  "I'm not going to arrest you."

  Chao said intensely, "Think. Think. If you are learning about things, if you are reading books about things—think!"

  "There are millions of birds in the world!"

  "Are there?"

  Feiffer said sadly, "No."

  "Think . . . Harry?"

  Feiffer said, "Yes."

  "Harry . . ."

  He could smell the formalin. In the next room, like some sort of ancient Nile priest, he embalmed the bodies of something sacred, something that would never come again. In the main room, there was only his single bed, a gas stove and an old refrigerator and, everywhere, everywhere, the birds. Feiffer said, "Who the hell are you?"

  Chao said, "Chao Kai Sun." He had a strange, otherworldly smile on his face. "I'm a policeman. Like you." Chao said, "I'm a detective senior inspector stationed in the New Territories on the border at Lo Wu." He took the feather in its glassine envelope and looked at it, then looked up again. Chao said, "You asked me what I wanted from you—"

  There was a silence.

  Chao said softly, "Harry, if you see any birds—any wonderful or strange birds—dead on the road, over the years . . . would you bring them to me?" Over the harbor, the bird had sailed and risen on currents of warm air, not hunting, not even reconnoiter-ing, but merely sailing in the warm air. It had been doing it simply because it liked it—there was no other reason or explanation. Chao said, "Because one day, all the birds will be gone. Like coal and oil and things from the earth. Coal and oil can be substituted, alternatives can be found. But when all the birds have gone what in God's name can we ever put in their place?" Gently, handing the feather back to Feiffer, Chao said, "It's from a frogmouth. Podargus strigoides, a mopoke, sometimes called a nighthawk— vaguely related to the family of owlet-nightjars." Chao said, "Not from here. From Australia. It's a wing feather from an Australian tawny frogmouth."

  He smiled his odd, secret smile.

  He had nothing. The room in which he lived, except for the birds, was nothing. He had only, for his own reasons, the one thing in his life that made his life livable.

  Detective Senior Inspector Chao, looking suddenly bright and excited, said, "Wait. Wait here. In the next room I've got a book with a picture of a real one in flight! Wait! Wait here! Wait and I'D show you!"

  He touched it with his fingers. While he waited for Chao, he reached out without thinking and touched the falcon on the wing. It was soft, downy. He found himself, gently, tenderly, with the lightest of touches, stroking it.

  Without warning the redness turned into pressure. The cupola, the cocoon contracted, grew tight, shrank. There was a pain, a buzzing.

  Inside the redness, on the street, there was a whisper, a rasp, "—Jakob!"

  On the street no one heard or noticed anything.

  "—Jakob!"

  It released. It stopped.

  "—JAKOB!!"

  It was imprisoned. All the thoughts, the name, the pressure was like something loose and maddened inside the cupola, turning the redness into blood, tearing the cupola, the cocoon to shreds, never breaking through it—birds maddened in a cage.

  "JA—KOB!"

  It wouldn't go away. Nothing would go away. It was expanding, gaining pressure, finding no way out, imploding on itself.

  "JA . . . KOB!!!"

  It was getting worse. The birds, loose and screeching inside the cocoon, smashing against it as they fought to get out, were falling, spinning, sailing down in torrents of redness, then, reviving, coming back, smashing at it again, screeching and calling.

  "JAKOB!!"

  From inside the cocoon, from inside Jakob's cupola, nothing, nothing at all could get out.

  There was an elderly man at the Russo Harbin Hong Kong Trading Bank autobank machine with money in his hand.

  There was an elderly man at the Russo Harbin Hong Kong Trading Bank autobank machine with no money in his hand.

  There was Auden ready.

  There was Auden running.

  There was a crowd with feet like Frisbees.

  The crowd with feet like Frisbees was going, "Aiiyaa . . . !" Their Frisbees, hitting the ground seconds after the Tibetan Tornado's hands hit the money, Auden's hamburgers hit the street, and Auden, waving them back, threatening to hit someone, were going flap! flap! flap! There were feet everywhere. Feet were coming down on the ground in a variety of noises.

  They were after the money. Auden, a second and a half behind the Tibetan, still on Old Himalaya Street, yelled in Cantonese, "Hayp, hayp, hayp!" It wasn't Cantonese. It didn't mean, "You are interfering in a police pursuit." It meant, "Hayp, hayp, hayp!" His feet were connected to his lungs. He heard his feet say, "Hack, hack!" and, not turning, not giving a legal order to anyone, Auden, looking down at his feet, ordered them, "Run!"

  Where the hell was Spencer?

  The Tibetan made the base of Sagarmatha Hill. He stopped. He looked up. He had the money in his hand. No one shot him. He turned to look back. He heard a steam train somewhere off in the distance, or a tea kettle. He looked around to see what it was.

  It was Auden. Obviously, there were holes in Auden's lungs somewhere: that was what was making the funny whistling noise. Auden, getting angry at his feet, said, "Run!" Auden said, "Natasha!" That part of his anatomy that would have drawn new strength from a contemplation of Natasha wasn't in the feet area.

  The Tibetan began up the hill. He didn't begin up it: he took to the air, he took the steps two at a time—his feet weren't running, they were dancing across the steps. He went up like Nureyev, the steps disappearing under his feet like an escalator.

  Where the hell was Spencer? Auden, getting to the first step and making a superhuman effort to mount it, wondering why the escalator seemed to have stopped running the moment he got onto it, put it into his mind to say, "Halt in the name of the Law!" No one had ever tried that. Maybe they had. Auden's lungs, speaking in tongues, said, "Ha—nim—ah—!"

  Halt in the name of the Law!

  Ha . . . herr—ha . . .

  "On!"

  Halt in the name of the Law!

  "Halt—" He got it! He got the first word! He was on step twenty-three and he got it. Auden, pounding, his lungs falling to pieces, a funny sort of darkness appearing at the top of the hill as evidently night came in four hours early this time of year, yelled, "—in—" Behind him, the crowd was flapping hard on their Frisbee feet. The Frisbees were evidently in the air: there were slapping sounds as someone missed catching one and fell down the hill. He turned around. There were lots of red faces behind him. He saw someone raise his eyes up to heaven and then, receiving a blessing, fall down dead, rolling down the stairs like the baby carriage in The Battleship Potemkin.

  Auden said, "—the—" It got the Tibetan's attention. You could tell he was wearing the Tibetan down. He stopped to look back and scratched his nose.

  They didn't have the staying power, the yellow hordes.

  They didn't. Behind Auden, the yellow hordes were falling by the wayside like shot soldiers. They were only after the money anyway. Auden, still pounding, not making any ground, hearing that funny sound from his lungs, yelled, "—name—" He had left out "in." He went back on his lungs a few inches on the tape: "— in—" It didn't make sense. Auden, with a supreme effort, yelled,"—stop! Stop in—stop!" He had plenty of air in his lungs: he could feel it coming back. The reason why was that he was sitting down. Auden, sitting, looking up as the Tibetan watched him, yelled, "Stop—stop—stop!"

  "I CAN'T!"

  It wasn't the Tibetan. It was Spencer. Spencer was at the top of the hill, coming down. Spencer, out of control, flailing his arms to set up an air brake to his body, yelled as the Tibetan ducked as he went by, "I thought I'd head him off! I'll aim at the people behind you!" He couldn't. They had all fallen down. Spencer, going like a hang glidist about to take off, yelled in a fast-receding voice as he went down the hill, "I wasn't going to catch him for you—I was just going to slow him do . . . wn . . .
!"

  The Tibetan was above him. He had hard, black eyes and a set face. He wasn't even puffing. Auden, squirming as the Tibetan's hands reached out for his throat, said, "Help! Help!"

  He was falling, going backward down the stairs.

  Auden, gasping, not getting any words out at all, short of breath, about to be throttled in record time, squirming on the steps, said in a whisper, "Natasha—oh, Natasha . . ." and then the Tibetan grabbed him.

  The Tibetan, looking concerned, lifted him back from the abyss and setting him on his feet asked him in a soft melodious voice, "I hope you don't mind my asking . . ."

  Auden, about to die, said obligingly, "No."

  "—but how's P.C. Wang?"

  At the bottom of the hill, as Spencer crashed like a shot-down aircraft forty thousand feet away, there was a gentle . . .

  . . . boom . . .

  The bird was from the greatest aviary in the world, Australia. On the cover of the book Chao brought there was a photograph of a pair of great white sulphur crested cockatoos. Feiffer had read about them in his books at the library.

  On the open market in America and Asia, smuggled out, live, they brought thirty thousand dollars the pair and, if their reproductive organs had survived being trapped, kept in tiny cages and then stuffed and drugged into smugglers' suitcases or cut-off lengths of galvanized iron pipe wired shut and shipped in with machine parts or enclosed in five-gallon drums purporting to hold corrosive or dangerous urgent chemicals, thirty thousand dollars each.

  In Australia, they were considered to be a pest and they were shot.

  It was, nevertheless, illegal to export them.

  Chao, turning the pages of the book slowly, his eyes on the photographs and drawings of the wonderful birds he would never see and which might not survive into the next century, said softly, "Well, Harry, yes or no? Will you watch the roads for me, or not?"

  Auden said, "Fine." His voice was very soft. There wasn't much of him left.

  The Tibetan said, "Good."

  Auden said, "I'm doing this for him. It's nothing personal."

  "Sure." The Tibetan nodded. The Tibetan said, "Me too. I'm doing it for my family." He had the wad of money in his hand. "I'm not really a thief."

  "I'm not really a runner."

  "I can tell."

  Auden said in a whisper, "Stop in the name of the Law." You had to make it menacing. You didn't have to actually mean it, but at least it had to sound as if you meant it. Auden, falling back into a sort of half-crouching limpness on the step, patting the Tibetan on the hand to terrify him, said, "You damned Tibetan you."

  The Tibetan said, "Nepalese."

  "What?"

  "Nepalese. I'm not from Tibet, I'm from Nepal. It's a small country above India—"

  "I know where it is—" Auden said, "You're a Gurkha!" That explained it. The Gurkhas were the toughest people in the world. When the Gurkhas went to war, their opponents went to peace. No wonder he couldn't catch him. Auden said, "You're a Gurkha!"

  "No. A Sherpa." The Tibetan—well, whatever he was—said, "A Sherpa is a Nepalese who climbs mountains and—"

  Auden, aghast, said, "Awk!"

  The Tibetan, stopping to have a chat, said, nodding, a little concerned that Auden had got it all wrong, "You know, Old Himalaya Street. The Himalayas are in Nepal. Sagarmatha Hill—" He smiled. He sighed. "It reminds me of where I used to play as a boy." He seemed to have tears in his eyes. "I have to get home and I've got no money and Sagarmatha Hill . . . well, you know, you're obviously a man of the world . . ." No, he wasn't. The Tibetan, patting him on the hand where Auden patted him, said to lead him, "You know: Nepal, Sherpas, Himalayas . . . Sagarmatha—"

  Curse this urge for recognition. The Tibetan said, "Sagarmatha! It's the Nepalese word for where I learned to run!" The Tibetan said, "Everest!" He looked at Auden's eyes. They were goggling.

  The Tibetan said with a sigh, "It's the name of a mountain there."

  "Oh." That seemed fair enough.

  Auden said to the Tibetan, "Okay."

  He wondered why, a moment later, someone shot him.

  As the Tibetan, clutching his backside and making yipping noises, began to run again with money falling around him in the air like confetti, Auden thought he should shout—

  Auden said softly, "No."

  Down at the bottom of the hill in the fields of Western France there was the wreckage of what looked like a shot-down three-winged Spad fighter plane with little bits and pieces still falling off as it smoked. It was Spencer.

  On the step, just for the pure, calming pleasure of it, Auden thought he might stay just where he was and watch it for a while . . .

  He stretched up a little to catch some of the money as it fell down around him.

  Someone shot him.

  It was a medium-sized grayish-looking bird with a large head that resembled nothing so much as some sort of Japanese samurai helmet, with a yellow cavernous beak that in some subspecies was used as a trawl as the bird flew openmouthed through the air.

  The color of dark, burned wood, the bird hid by day, becoming invisible, and only at night became fully alive and animated to hunt.

  When it hunted, it fell upon a small creature in the light with its great, sharp beak and, catching it surprised, skewered it to the ground, returning to its branch in the darkness with its prey often still alive.

  There, if it had not delivered a death blow, methodically like a kingfisher, it beat its prey to a pulp and then, at once, silently, unseen in the night, devoured it whole.

  It came down in the night and killed without mercy, while the hours of darkness lasted, without ceasing.

  It was an Australian tawny frogmouth. It was from somewhere far away.

  In Chao's, Feiffer said quietly, "Thank you very much."

  He had not answered Chao's question. Briefly, he had forgotten it.

  He was thinking, instead, of the night.

  8

  From the Lost Secret Journal of the Reverend Baron O'Yee Concerning the Awful Happenings in Salem-on-Yellowthread Street in the Year of Our Lord 16——

  . . . Quasimodo, my loyal Chinese servant, and I at last resolved to seek a solution in the dark cellars of the old building, the true depths of which had not been plumbed for centuries . . .

  On the stairs, Lim said helpfully, "I could ring the Japanese Embassy and ask them if what Mr. Hurley said—"

  Hurley, the old doddering clerk and historian, I dismissed from my mind—

  Lim said, "I could ask them how many English-speaking people they killed down there." Lim said, "They wouldn't mind. The Japanese can be very helpful when it comes to law and order."

  I silenced Quasimodo's babblings with a look. Though of vastly different stations in life, the loyal fellow told me with his deferential voice and his entire demeanor how he would, if needs must, follow me through any vicissitudes and brave any danger that Providence might thrust upon us.

  Lim said, "I don't mind waiting upstairs until the phones start working again."

  O'Yee said, "Shut up." At the bottom of the stone stairs to the basement below the cells, he flicked on the lights.

  The lights didn't work.

  Trusting to my old bull's-eye pocket lantern which 1 had thought to bring along for just such a situation, together, resolved in heart, we went bravely on.

  We paused outside the door to the Crypt. I heard a faint gasp from my trusty companion.

  Lim said in an undertone, "Oh, shit . . ."

  Science and Reason have failed us. The terrible Affliction that seems to have befallen us, Gentle Reader, is beyond the powers of mortal men. The great door to the Crypt, to the last secret, was before us. Dare I rap mightily on its plywood? For the sake of my companion, I dared not.

  O'Yee ordered Lim, "Come back here!"

  . . . Slipping the old brass-plated tin bolt made by some ancient Taiwanese boltsmith or his children, I drew open the portal.

  The portal went creak . . . The wood was
warped in the doorjamb. O'Yee gave it a kick.

  Darkness.

  Darkness.

  Darkness, the terror of all creatures who live in the light.

  Lim said, "There's something in here! I heard it move!"

  It behooved me to settle his fears though I must confess my own stout heart was pounding. I laid my calming strong hand upon his—

  Lim said, "Something touched me!"

  O'Yee said, "That was me!"

  Poor superstitious dolt. Illuminating my own familiar face for the simple clod in the yellow beam of the lantern I—

  Lim said, "Oh, Christ!"

  O'Yee said, "It's me you stupid oaf!" O'Yee said, "I thought you said you were a Buddhist."

  Lim, who would have said anything, said, "Yes." Lim said, "There's nothing in here. There isn't even dripping slime on the walls. The walls are just brick and the floor is just cement and there isn't anything else in here." Lim said, "You touched me. I thought it was something else, but it was you, sir, and the sound I heard was just you—just your shoes scraping on the cement which hasn't got anything on it because the cellars are empty and no one's used them for years and there isn't anything in here—the place is very empty—and can we go now?"

  O'Yee said, "I heard something."

  Lim said, "No, you didn't. I did, but it wasn't anything. I heard your shoes on the cement or maybe it was your pocket flashlight making electrical noises and if you heard anything it was probably me thinking the noises you were making—" Lim said, "Oh—!"