by Tom Michell
“It wasn’t a fluke, either!” said Jack, getting a word in for the first time. “He could do it each time he tried—we timed him! He just made it look so easy!”
“And you should see his butterfly!” said Danny. “He lifts himself almost out of the water! He can swim far better than I can,” he added generously. “He can swim faster than anything! How did you know? Why didn’t you tell us before! You did know, didn’t you? That’s why you wouldn’t discuss it until I had a team selected on merit?”
I listened until they had let it all out of their systems.
“The answer to your question, Danny, is Juan Salvado, that remarkable bird who is sleeping out on the terrace even as we speak,” I said, whereupon I related the events of the evening when Diego swam with the penguin.
There was no mistake. That was the turning point. Overnight, Diego appeared to grow three inches and was just unrecognizable in the morning. Even his clothes seemed to fit him better. He had earned the respect of his peers. Over the next few weeks he leapt up the fortnightly academic orders and became a popular member of the house. Success breeds success. When at last the swimming gala was held, the results were as everyone anticipated: he won every race for which he was eligible to enter and broke every college record that he was allowed to contest. The encouragements shouted by the watching boys were genuine, even from rival houses.
School House did not win the interhouse rugby cup that year, missing out by a whisker. However, as a result of the points from the swimming gala, School House did win the more prestigious interhouse sports shield; Diego was a minor hero, and everyone wanted to be his friend. In time, Diego took almost every college swimming record. He even became sufficiently good at rugby to represent the college in matches, and he passed all his public exams with creditable grades. And never again did he ask the question “Can I swim?”
Pets cannot fit into the life of the “intrepid explorer.” They are too much of a responsibility. But Fate had made my “path less traveled by” meet that of a penguin, and I am so glad our paths crossed. I wouldn’t have changed anything except for one crucial detail, which has troubled me ever since. It has been the gnawing canker, the cloven-hoofed incubus that has hovered over the oft-repeated history of Juan Salvado and taunted me as I have recounted the children’s version that should have been.
I became exceptionally fond of that bird. I had gone to South America to discover the exotic, the unusual, and something about myself, and I had found all three in abundance. I enjoyed the company of Juan Salvado on our walks around the college grounds and in our talks on so many quiet evenings as the bustle of the day and the light subsided, sitting on the terrace under the stars with a glass of wine and a few late-night sprats. No one could fail to have been lifted by the welcome that bird gave me every morning and evening.
Our lives were largely dominated by routine. Juan Salvado was a fastidious bird. Each morning he would make a series of preparations for the day which involved ensuring he looked his absolute best. Every single feather received attention as the penguin placed each one precisely in order, clean and undamaged. That most dapper of little men, Hercule Poirot, was no more attentive to his appearance than Juan Salvado. Most of this operation was conducted with his beak, which worked with such delicate nimbleness. Those feathers he couldn’t reach with his beak he preened with his toes, which was something he also had a habit of doing when he had been asked a particularly challenging question, as though he were scratching his ear in concentration. And so his life in the college continued, a cycle of sprats and swims, preening and pampering at the hands of his many fans.
As the holidays approached and further adventures beckoned, a colleague, Luke, volunteered to look after Juan Salvado at his house nearby. Luke was married with a little boy, so from then on the penguin spent time during the holidays with them, if not with Maria, when I was away from the college. This was an excellent arrangement that enabled me to travel safe and secure in the knowledge that Juan Salvado was content and well looked after with sufficient care and company. He was happy and I was free to pursue adventures.
Juan Salvado never appeared to be troubled by the summer’s heat in Buenos Aires. He lived outside, where he could walk with grass underfoot, be shaded by trees, enjoy the cooling breezes from the river, splash in his tin bath, and even on occasion swim with or without students in the school pool.
And so caring for Juan Salvado dovetailed into my college routine very easily, largely due to the enthusiastic support of the boys during term time and with Luke and Maria’s assistance during the holidays. Occasionally a day dawned on which there was a particularly memorable event, but most days were unremarkable, they simply flowed into one another, following the same pattern. Juan Salvado, it seemed, was a bird of routine, just as the boys in a boarding school are required to be.
That particular morning is etched in my mind. I knew what had happened before Luke said a word. I could see it in his eyes.
I had been away with friends in the south of the province, and Juan Salvado had stayed at Luke’s house. I had returned late the evening before—too late to wake Luke’s family and visit the bird—and after a short night’s sleep had gone to collect my post first thing. That was where he found me.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
I gritted my teeth and waited, heart hammering in my chest.
“He was fine all the time you were away, but then a couple of days ago he didn’t eat anything when I went to feed him. I wasn’t unduly concerned, because it was hot and…” His voice trailed off. “I buried him in the garden later the same day. I had to; it’s too hot now, and I didn’t know when you’d be back. I couldn’t wait. I am sorry.”
I nodded grimly. The Englishman in me was cautious about betraying too much emotion, especially when I had been brought up to be as realistic as possible about the fate of animals, but inside I was crushed. “Thanks for all you have done. I know you did your best,” was all I managed to say, desperately trying to keep myself together. The worst possible ending had happened: he had died unexpectedly and I hadn’t been there.
I walked away to have some time for myself and to think. I made my way back to School House the long way around, following the perimeter of the rugby pitches, to avoid meeting colleagues.
Wearily I climbed the stairs and looked out the door over the terrace and beyond, toward the river. Whenever I had approached the terrace there would be a telltale patter of feet excitedly running up and down, accompanied by the occasional squawk. These sounds had become an integral part of my college life, just as the bells that marked the changing events of the day. Now there would be just a dreadful silence as I passed. No more would the boys knock at my door to collect fish; no more the laughter and delight that he brought to so many.
In my mind’s eye I saw an egg. It was far away on a rocky, windswept shore. Suddenly it tipped and cracked, and a tiny chick drew its first deep breath through its beak. Emerging from the opening was its damp lolling head as it struggled unsteadily to get clear of its shell while the parent birds watched. Next I saw the hatchling being fed. The scene changed and I saw the healthy fledgling Juan Salvado following the adults down to the breaking sea that poured, hissed, and foamed around the rocks and boulders, rushing up the beach between the pebbles and stones and then receding. He looked too young to test himself against that implacable and merciless tide. He hesitated, twice, thrice, and then he rushed after his parents into the sea and took the first strokes of his life with those remarkable wings of his, which had been honed to perfection by evolution through a million forebears. As the water closed over his head, his young muscles instinctively drove him forward through the roiling waters to break the surface again, well away from the dangerous rocks. He bobbed on the surface and rolled from side to side, washing his uppermost flank with his wing. With his feet he scratched and preened his sides and head, and with his beak he tended to the feathers on his breast and back, quite untroubled by the turbulent water tha
t constantly jostled and plucked at him.
Now I saw him again, far, far out from land, in midocean, amid massive breaking waves under lowering storm clouds. In those giant seas, streaked with spume and spindrift, driven onward by the screaming fury of a full gale, Juan Salvado, with a thousand of his kin, skimmed the surface to breathe before submerging again into the quieter waters under the waves, in pursuit of sprats. He swam quite unperturbed by the raging storm and crashing seas. With his wings held out for balance, he surfed ahead of the steepening face of an immense ocean wave and submerged just before the crest towering above him broke, releasing all its pent-up fury as it dashed itself to destruction. It was as though he were the spirit of the seas itself, the very essence of the ocean’s life force, a distillation of all maritime mastery, and therefore quite invulnerable to the maelstrom that raged all about him. He was immune to any combination of wind and water that could possibly occur naturally, for he was the pinnacle of creation’s art; he was in his element and rejoiced in it.
I saw him again, back on land, standing intimately close to his mate and the first clutch of eggs he had sired, and I saw the first egg crack as he watched. I saw his expression and recognized it. I looked, and the scene changed again. Dazzling, sparkling, life-giving sunlight poured down through the warm, clear emerald water. But then insidious wisps of oil appeared, filthy, brown, suffocating. Perfidious gossamer strands. Tentacles that kept growing reached out to smother the sun and to burn, blind, envelop, engulf, choke, and destroy those birds. Like some atrocious, ancient monster, created from the putrefaction of a different age, it had passed through the fires of Hades and had slumbered in its subterranean dungeon, but now it had been awoken and released by humans, and it was far more terrible than any hurricane; against this grotesque monstrosity the birds had no defense at all. The panicking creatures were lost, trapped, terrified, and doomed; they tumbled in an incomprehensible and unspeakable death. Tides and currents eventually washed them ashore.
I saw him on the beach, in a bidet, in a bag; I saw him on a bus and in a bath. I saw him in a swimming pool and on the terrace, eating sprats with Maria. I felt his hard feathers against my fingertips as he pressed his warm body against my hand. I felt his head rest on my foot. Then he looked up at me once more before giving the inimitable penguin head shake, which ran all the way down his body to his bottom, as he settled against me in rest.
But the spirit of the oceans had left, and my mind bubble burst. My vision misted over as my breath caught in my throat and I whispered: “I love you, little bird. I’ll never forget you, as long as I live. Now you can join your mate and your family once more and never again be parted.”
Should I have left him alone that day in Punta del Este? Should I have left him with his own kind and allowed nature to finish what humans had unwittingly unleashed? Should I have left him to go traveling, in pursuit of my own adventure? What good had it done, any of it? What difference would it have made if I hadn’t noticed him move, if I had just continued my walk along the beach? Was it worth feeling so wretched at this parting? It felt as though I had let him down in the end. He had crossed the Styx and the ferryman’s bill was outstanding. A door had closed, denying me the opportunity to pay a debt that I needed to settle. How complicated is the tension that exists between heart and head in humans, for the emotions were entirely irrational, but I suppose it is precisely for the reconciliation of these conflicts that we hold our solemn obsequies—a need unfulfilled for me on this occasion.
I was overwhelmingly aware of the privilege it had been to have known and loved that remarkable bird. At that moment the sense of loss was almost overpowering; the pain of parting is the toll demanded by fate for all the joy brought to us by loved ones, and I felt inconsolable. He had recovered so well and appeared to be so content. What a sentimental fool I am, I thought; he was just a penguin. But what a penguin!
And so it was that I never said goodbye to Juan Salvado. Hasta la vista, amigo mio. It has been something I have regretted ever since, a very private chapter that I couldn’t quite close.
Why had this penguin come to mean so much? That, at least, is easy to explain. Anybody who suddenly moves far from family and friends and pets they love feels a raw, vulnerable emptiness. It is inevitable, even despite the sensational compensations. Nature abhors a vacuum, and it was into that space this Juan Salvado rushed. At first he occupied it, and then he filled and dominated it. It wasn’t big enough for him, and so he stretched it, expanded it beyond measure. I didn’t think about it—it just happened—and then he was gone.
Of course, time moves on, and new family, friends, and pets jostle for position in our hearts, but the vacancy left by previous occupants never fills. We keep our loved ones alive through our memories, our conversations, and our stories, but we don’t necessarily choose to reveal how much they really meant. We don’t have to. Anybody who has ever lost a pet knows. I haven’t been any less fond of any of our dogs. Kipling warns us in his poem “The Power of the Dog” to beware of “giving your heart to a dog to tear.”
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we’ve kept ’em the more do we grieve;
For when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short time loan is as bad as a long—
So why in Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?
My time with Juan Salvado, eight short months, was a short-term loan compared with the lifetime of a dog, but our relationship had every ounce of the same impact, if not more, because of the particular time in my life when our paths crossed. An impetuous twenty-three-year-old from the English countryside, I didn’t really consider the consequences of taking him from the beach that day, beyond the immediate necessity of saving his life. I was in the happy position of being able to afford the luxury of supporting a passenger, although I sometimes wonder whether I should regard him as a passenger at all. Salvado or Salvador? Saved or savior? Both names were applicable in their way. After all, it hadn’t been possible to decide who had adopted whom when he was chosen as a team mascot, or who had benefited more from the relationship he had with Diego.
As traveling companions go, Juan Salvado was demanding. He needed to be fed and watered, exercised and entertained, but, by virtue of the many willing helpers at the college, the burden on me was very light. He ate some seven pounds of sprats every week, which probably cost me a few thousand pesos a day, about as much as a few boxes of matches, certainly less than a bottle of beer. In return, I had something beyond price, and the responsibility at that time in my life was no doubt character-forming. Like so many of the people I met on my travels in South America, Juan Salvado had so little, but gave so very much.
His extraordinary personality captivated all who met him. Not only was he a good listener, but he engaged people in conversation, answering them with his head and his eyes. There will come a time, I expect, when humans have learned enough about animal behavior to realize that animals can communicate with us and each other to a far greater extent than we currently give them credit for, and at that point this narrative will perhaps appear less fanciful. One day, I believe, we will be able to confirm that many animals have the capacity to understand and process information to a far more sophisticated degree than opinion currently holds.
Juan Salvado learned lessons faster than many humans I have known. The way he recognized that I intended him no harm on that first day when I was cleaning him—shown in the way his behavior changed so suddenly and the way he cooperated with me—was nothing short of extraordinary, to my way of thinking.
After that first day he showed no signs of fearing me, or any human. In fact, he adored us. When he heard the noise and chatter of pupils moving around the college he would rush up and down the terrace in eager anticipation of company. When he heard footfalls on the stairs he would
hurry across to the door, anxious to see who would come out onto his terrace. But he never stood behind the door, because he instinctively understood it would have hit him. There were many aspects of his behavior I couldn’t explain—for example, why he never went onto the rugby field when boys were playing, or why he never collided with the side of the swimming pool a second time, although he would swim within a whisker of it at great speed. I cannot explain how he appeared to know what he was allowed to do—what was safe for him to do—in the realm of humans and what was not. When walking, he never wandered off; when swimming in the pool he would get out with the last swimmer. Perhaps the greatest mystery of his conduct, for me, was his dogged refusal to leave me and swim away after I first cleaned him.
Was Juan Salvado motivated by something more profound than an empty gut? Undoubtedly. Even when full to bursting point, he would still rush to greet new company coming onto his terrace. He, too, had a need for companionship; that is part of the nature of penguins. But whatever human company Juan Salvado was enjoying, the faithful bird would always come to me when I went out onto the terrace. He would always choose me. It was my side to which he’d return. In so many ways our relationship was like that of dog and master, although I’m certain he wouldn’t have acknowledged his role as that of the dog! I firmly believe there is much more for us to learn about the intelligence, communications, and emotions of wild creatures, whose capacity for those things is greater that we generally give them credit for.