The Conjurer's Bird

by Martin Davies

  Anderson had done his research. He knew all there was to know about the bird from Ulieta. Which, frankly, wasn’t that much. In May 1774, Captain Cook had brought his ship, the Resolution, to the island of Ulieta. Ulieta was small, one of the spattering of islands in the blue Pacific that came to be known collectively as the Society Islands. Cook stayed there some days, to make repairs and trade with the local people. On the first of June, despite the enervating heat and a crew weakened by stomach disorders, Johann Forster, the ship’s naturalist and a difficult man, insisted that an expedition be sent ashore to gather specimens. A number of birds were shot and killed that day, but there was only one of them that Forster didn’t recognize. After he had recorded his observations of it, the specimen was passed to his son, Georg, one of the ship’s artists, who made and colored a drawing of the bird. Immediately afterwards the bird was cleaned and its skin preserved for mounting.

  It was not an unusual day’s work for either father or son. There were many new specimens that voyage, many creatures to record, draw, and preserve. That day in Ulieta would have been of no great interest to anyone if it hadn’t been for one thing: that single specimen collected by Forster remains the only bird of its kind ever recorded, anywhere, ever. Andrew Garrett went to Ulieta in the 1850s but could find no sign of it. Subsequently others tried and failed. We’ll never know if the species was once widespread. We can’t guess at its song or the shape of its nest or the mating rituals it acted out. We only know that the individual handled by Forster was one of the very last of its kind. If the expedition that morning had taken a different path, or if the aim of one sailor had been a little less precise, then the extinction of an entire species would have passed without our knowing. It would have vanished from the planet unmarked by humankind.

  We can’t even agree on its name. Forster named it Turdus badius, bay thrush, a Latin name that never fails to raise a smirk among my more scatologically minded students. Another naturalist, Latham, who studied the specimen back in London, named it more precisely and recorded it as Turdus ulietensis. James Greenway, writing nearly two hundred years later, wasn’t even convinced that the bird was a kind of thrush. He listed it simply as “the Mysterious Bird of Ulieta.” Which is as good a name as any.

  When the Forsters returned to Britain the following year, the specimens they had collected on Cook’s expedition were theirs to dispose of. Johann Forster was permanently in financial difficulties, and on his return he sought help from Joseph Banks, the naturalist on Cook’s previous voyage. Banks was a young man with money and a future, and he was generous toward Forster. In return, Forster presented him with specimens. One was the bird from Ulieta—we know this because a man called Latham saw the bird in Banks’s collection at some point in the 1770s and recorded it in his book A General Synopsis of Birds. It’s good that he did, because after that there is no further record of that specimen. The specimen, like the species itself, simply disappeared.

  It would be tempting to question the evidence of Latham and Forster—to speculate that the bird they examined was just a variation on some other, more common species—but we can’t argue it away so easily. Because Georg Forster’s drawing still exists, safe in the hands of the Natural History Museum. It shows us exactly what the bird looked like. You can go there and see it for yourself if you like.

  The Rosebery Bar was no less full when Anderson finally finished speaking, but the atmosphere had begun to change. The afterwork drinkers with trains to catch had moved on, while those who replaced them were relaxing into the evening. Somewhere out of sight a pianist had started to play and someone at the bar had dimmed the lights in sympathy. Suit jackets drooped on the backs of sofas, ties were looser, and feet in black tights had crept from their shoes and were curled up discreetly on the red leather sofas.

  I drained my drink slowly and looked at Gabriella, then at Anderson. Both were watching me, but if they were looking for a reaction, all they got was a raised eyebrow. I can’t deny a little buzz of excitement at the story he was telling, but I was puzzled. Anyone who was interested in extinct birds knew the only ever specimen of the Ulieta bird had disappeared in the eighteenth century. People might even joke about finding it somewhere, like a lost Botticelli tucked away in an attic. But no one seriously imagined the lost specimen still existed. Taxidermy wasn’t very advanced back then, and birds were notoriously hard to preserve. Museum records are full of eighteenth-century specimens that simply fell apart after about seventy or eighty years. Every collection had its wastage. The bird from Ulieta was just one of thousands that didn’t make it.

  “Tell me, Anderson,” I asked, “why would a man like you suddenly decide to look for something like that?”

  “What if I told you I was an enthusiast?”

  “I wouldn’t believe you. You’re a businessman. You find things on commission for the sort of people who can’t enjoy anything unless they own it. Cash for dinosaur remains, endangered species on demand, that sort of thing. Why would you spend time looking for something that probably disintegrated two hundred years ago?”

  He smiled to himself, a quiet, confident smile.

  “It might have survived. Specimens of that age do exist.”

  “Very, very few. How many? Perhaps a dozen. It’s hard to imagine this was one of them. Joseph Banks was the preeminent scientist of his generation. He didn’t just lose rare birds. If this one blipped off the radar at some point, it’s because it fell apart. And if it had survived, there’d be records. In two hundred years someone would have mentioned owning the rarest bird in the world.”

  Anderson had caught the waiter’s eye again, and more drinks were arriving.

  “You may be right, Mr. Fitzgerald. And yet I intend to find it nevertheless. The rewards for doing so would be…considerable.”

  “Yes?” It seemed unlikely. “Who’s interested in stuffed birds nowadays? Oh, I don’t deny it would be quite a coup—the natural history establishment would be overjoyed. But there’s no money in museums.”

  “Sadly true, Mr. Fitzgerald. But museums were not the market I had in mind.”

  Anderson took another sip and sat back as if that was all he had to say on the subject. It was left to Gabby to explain.

  “Fitz, have you ever heard of the Ark Project?”

  For a moment I thought she was referring to something in our past, and I had to blink away a glimpse of rain forest. But it was apparent from her tone and the focus of her eyes that her thoughts were very firmly in the present. Anderson, his legs now stretched out in front of him, pushed himself back into the conversation.

  “The Gene Ark, to give it its full title. It was set up in Canada by Ted Staest. Have you heard of Staest?”

  Only vaguely. A Canadian. A man famous for being rich. I passed.

  “Ted Staest owns one of the big North American pharmaceutical companies—brands in every country, you know the sort of thing. Staest’s big thing now is DNA. The Ark Project is basically his own personal DNA bank, Mr. Fitzgerald. He collects genetic material from rare and vanishing species and stores it. The idea is to invest in rare DNA the way you or I might invest in art or antiques. He holds it against potential increases in value.”

  Gabby sensed my scorn. “It’s true, Fitz. I know it sounds crazy, but there’s a scramble going on to own genetic coding. Even the pharmaceutical companies aren’t sure of its value, but no one wants to let the others get it first, so they’re spending now and they’ll ask questions later. They keep the public interested with high-profile talk, rebreeding extinct species, that sort of thing. But it’s the bioengineering possibilities that they’re interested in.”

  The Rosebery Bar began to seem a strangely foreign place. The crowd had started to thin slightly and the pianist had taken a break to the accompaniment of some pattering applause. I looked around at the people who remained—people in their twenties, buying drinks I couldn’t afford in a world I had no time for.

  “But the Ulieta bird would be two hundred years old
. It would just be a dried skin. There couldn’t possibly be material of any value in that, could there?”

  Gabby and Anderson looked at each other, and Anderson shrugged.

  “Who knows? Techniques develop all the time. And to be frank, Mr. Fitzgerald, I don’t think Ted Staest cares very much either way. He’s a man who knows the value of publicity, and he’s very taken by the story of that missing bird, the rarest bird in history. ‘The Mysterious Bird of Ulieta’ would make good headlines, wouldn’t it? Turning up a specimen like that would help get the Ark Project in the news. The rarest bird in the world, patented by Ted Staest.”

  “And he is paying you to find it?”

  “He is paying me to find it first. It’s hard to keep that sort of thing quiet. Where there’s a market, there are always others hoping to cash in.”

  “Okay,” I said carefully, trying to draw it all together, “so a rich Canadian wants to find a nonexistent bird specimen because he thinks it will boost his share price. That’s bizarre, but I can just about get my head around it. What I can’t see is why you’re telling me about any of this.”

  Again Anderson looked at me appraisingly. It was Gabby who answered.

  “Karl won’t be the last to contact you, Fitz. People remember all the work you did on extinct birds. They’ll want to know what you can tell them.”

  Anderson nodded. “Fifteen years ago, Mr. Fitzgerald, your research into extinct birds was known to everyone in the field. We know you visited museums and collections all over the world, collections that no one else had ever properly studied. You collected maps, drawings, inventories, letters, all in your famous wooden chest. We all waited for you to publish, but you never did. If anyone has any information that might lead to the Ulieta bird, it would be you.”

  “So you think I might be able to help you find it?”

  “You have contacts. You know the sort of people who might have heard rumors. I’m sure you could make some calls, see what you could find.”

  “And if I can’t find anything?”

  He looked unconcerned, and took a slow, relaxed sip of his drink.

  “To be honest, Mr. Fitzgerald, I have a lead already. But I thought you’d be interested in joining me in this. And if you can make the search quicker and easier for me, that’s all to the good.”

  “And why did you think I’d be interested in looking for it?”

  He paused and looked me directly in the eye.

  “Because you never found anything like the Ulieta bird, Mr. Fitzgerald. All that time searching for specimens of extinct birds, but you never found one like this. Oh, you found some rare specimens, all right, but never the specimen of a bird lost without trace. And to find the only ever specimen of a bird seen only once…Think of it! This is your chance, Mr. Fitzgerald.” He sat back and let his words sink in. “As long as I get the bird, I’m happy for you to have the headlines. And I would of course pay you for your time. Fifty thousand dollars was the sum I had in mind.”

  If I felt incredulous, I tried not to show it. Instead I took a long swig of beer and did some rapid calculations. Fifty thousand dollars was a pretty significant sum to someone like me. If Anderson was prepared to send that sort of money in my direction, how much was he expecting to make? One hundred and fifty thousand? Two hundred thousand? Too much, surely. No one would pay that. Stuffed birds weren’t in fashion.

  I lowered my glass, and to avoid Anderson’s eye, I looked around for a waiter. Perhaps I was behind the times. After all, this specimen would be a one-off, a one-in-a-million curiosity…

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “I figure for you to come all this way on the off chance that it might still exist, that must mean someone’s offering some pretty weird money for it. How can it possibly be worth that much?”

  Anderson smiled and shook his head. “Let us not exaggerate its importance. It would be an amazing find, yes, and Ted Staest would pay well for it. But I’m over here on a different piece of business and looking for the Ulieta bird is really just a favor for Ted Staest. As a client, he could mean a great deal to me in the long term. So if I can sort this for him without too much fuss, then that’s good business. I’m not even too bothered about covering my costs.”

  I watched him closely as he signaled for refills. He seemed relaxed enough, but I was still suspicious.

  “What brings you here, then, if it’s not the Ulieta bird?” I asked.

  “Oh, various things. Botanical art, mainly. Do you know much about eighteenth-century botanical art, Mr. Fitzgerald?”

  “Not much.”

  “There’s something of a rage for it at the moment, particularly in the States. There are one or two pieces I’m hoping to pick up while I’m over here that I suspect could be very valuable indeed. Very fashionable and extremely rare. The best possible combination.”

  He spoke as if the paintings were completely without interest to him so long as a profit was assured. I looked across at Gabby and then looked back at him.

  “What happened to you, Anderson?” I asked softly. “Once upon a time you were a pioneer. I saw you interviewed when you found those plesiosaur remains. You glowed with pleasure. And it wasn’t to do with money back then.”

  For the first time that evening he looked a little annoyed, but his tone when he spoke was utterly unruffled.

  “We all make our choices, Mr. Fitzgerald. After all, you were a serious scientist once.”

  He let his hand fall back to the table so that it rested against Gabriella’s arm.

  I’d like to say it was his first mistake, but even before his hand touched hers, I knew I wasn’t going to help him. That just made it easier. I stood up. For Gabby’s sake I decided to be honest.

  “Look, Anderson, there’s nothing in my notes that will help you or anyone else. Even fifteen years ago, a bit of a myth had built up around them, but it’s all just paper, a lot of observations about some old specimens no one much cares about anymore. I’d be taking your money under false pretenses.”

  I swallowed. I was trying hard to keep my voice low.

  “There’s another thing I should say,” I went on. “I don’t believe that bird still exists, but if by some miracle it had survived all this time, I shudder to think of it being pulled apart in a lab, tested and analyzed and washed with chemicals in pursuit of some genetic conjuring trick.” I paused and met his eye as calmly as I could. “I think it might be you who doesn’t understand its value, Mr. Anderson.”

  I nodded to Gabby as I turned away, but I didn’t look back. Fourteen years on, and she still had the same effect on me. As I walked away, the same old image went with me—a bare room and a crumpled bed, an electric fan churning the heat, and with it, always, unbidden but inescapable, the sound of Gabby’s voice. Only now she was with Anderson. And I was glad there was nothing I could do to help them.

  Beyond the Mecklenburg’s revolving doors the rain had almost stopped, leaving the roads shiny under the streetlamps. The buses were still running but I chose to walk, my mind turning over everything I’d heard since the start of the evening. Halfway home I stopped at a late-night coffee place. The place was still empty, waiting for the post-pub crowd to pass through. In two hours it would be packed. I claimed a corner for myself and thought about Gabby—how she’d been, how she’d looked, how I felt. How Anderson had sat so comfortably beside her. Gradually, as the rain started to fall again, I began to think about the lost bird that had brought them here. Anderson’s search seemed too bizarre to be true. A unique bird, an unexplained disappearance, an infinitesimal possibility that somewhere the sole specimen might still exist. It was an amazing thought, the sort of discovery I’d dreamed about once. But surely not possible? I should have been laughing at the idea—but Anderson wasn’t the sort of man who inspired much humor.

  My mind was still turning over that thought when I left the café and stepped out into the rain. It took me a little while to walk home, and when I got there it took me a little longer to grasp the meaning of the br
oken front door that greeted me. Its small windowpane had been smashed through to the hallway, and beyond it Katya was sitting at the foot of the stairs, looking out over the shattered glass.

  ON FIRST seeing her face, he decided that she was not, after all, beautiful.

  She was, indeed, very much as the people of Revesby had described her—her hair brown, her figure slight, her features neat but ordinary.

  For a moment his disappointment kept him on the edge of the clearing, in the cool of the oak trees. Beyond their shade, where the woman sat drawing, he could smell the sun on the hot earth. The afternoon light showed her very clearly: a slim figure in white muslin, her skin slightly freckled, a frown of intense concentration deep on her forehead as she drew. Glimpsed through the trees, moving in and out of the shadow, her form had struck him as uniquely graceful, and more than once its promise had brought him back to the woods in the hope of satisfying his curiosity. But now, with his wood nymph exposed as a sun-browned girl, he hesitated, and he might have turned away into the shadow had she not at that moment looked directly at where he stood.

  Her gaze embarrassed him. She was alone in the woods and he had been observing her quite openly. A gentleman, he thought, would bow and withdraw.

  And yet he stepped out into the sunshine, clearing his throat and looking down as he did so to hide his confusion. When he looked up again she had risen to her feet and was facing him with her drawing-book folded across her bosom.

  “My apologies if I have disturbed you,” he said, advancing. “I often walk this way and did not think to find this remote spot so happily tenanted.” He extended his hand. “My name is Joseph Banks.”

  She looked down at his hand for a moment but didn’t take it. When she spoke her voice was quiet.

  “I know who you are, Mr. Banks. Revesby is too small to permit otherwise. Even those who wish to avoid each other are not always able to do so.”

  “Then I am pleased that is not the case today.” He smiled, and indicated her drawing book. “I see you are an artist.”