Chapter 1 #6
Madame! he said. Tell me: How long does it seem to you? That I’ve been gone? To me? It seems like five years! Vraiment! Five years of toil. Resulting in a tremendous achievement. As you will now see! Let us begin.
Begin what? I said.
In response he performed a stiff, hideous dance of anticipation.
Sweet Christ, my charge whispered.
Steady, I said.
Commencons! the Frenchman shouted.
—
A bird swooped into the room, a single bird.
It landed on the bedpost at the foot of my charge’s bed, let out a bright, summoning call.
More birds arrived, of various species, zipping in through the walls and ceiling until they were positively everywhere: hotfooting it along the mantel; offering rapid-fire bows while perched on the rim of the floor lamp’s shade; formed into orderly, phalanx-like rows across the bed (even across the frail body) of my charge.
Hooded warblers, s’il vous pla?t! the Frenchman called.
A pair of birds crossed the room and landed, one on each of the Frenchman’s shoulders.
From beneath the female (yellow and green like the male but lacking his black hood), the Frenchman drew a creamy-white egg, brown-spotted at one end, out of which a new example of the species began to peck its way.
Unprecedented spring heat wave! the Frenchman cried.
The baby bird seemed to wither, made several pathetic attempts to drink a liquid not there, then perished in the Frenchman’s cupped palm.
Necklace-throated dayhawk! the Frenchman called.
A bird with an iridescent blue neck ridge left its perch and merrily circled the room.
Catastrophic wildfires during breeding season, three years in a row! said the Frenchman.
Overcome by smoke, the dayhawk dropped to the carpet, bounced, lay still.
Allen’s hummingbird! the Frenchman said. Cerulean warbler, purple finch, royal tern, sage thrasher!
A single member of each of these species rose and hovered before us, the Frenchman’s intention being, it seemed, that my charge should admire the care with which each had been made: the slight purple arc hidden there among the gray underbelly on this one; the shift, on that one’s wings, from flaming orange to the darkest (nearly black) wine red; the jewel-like precision of the gradations on the beak of this fellow, which, if inspected closely, was seen to contain as many as nine distinct colors.
Each is a miracle, the Frenchman said. Brought about by millions of years of change. Unaware of the larger miracle of which it is a part, yet a vital link in what is to come. Lost forever. Think upon that dreadful phrase, monsieur! And then: repent. It is not difficult. I have done so myself.
He invented the engine, I explained.
Quelle horreur, mumbled the Frenchman.
Christ Almighty, said my charge.
I know you, mon frère, the Frenchman said. I was you. A partial man, comically incomplete, shortsighted and greedy, living only for today and what might be wrung from it.
Go fuck yourself, my charge shouted. You don’t know a goddamned thing about it.
At the sharpness of this rebuke, a female loon (regal, red-eyed, alarmed) exploded out through the wall, giving off a glorious, coyote-like flight yodel.
Lark bunting, the Frenchman gasped, suddenly short of breath. Nashville warbler.
His strength, adversely affected by the apparent failure of this grand effort, began to wane.
Bobolink, he managed to whisper, as if, his depleted energy notwithstanding, he could not bear to omit a single imperiled species.
Defeated, he propelled himself weakly up into the air, ascending rather as a feather falls: by a series of small curves, retrograde motions, momentary mid-flight stalls.
At the ceiling he hesitated.
Weak as he was, the molecules of the plaster presented a formidable obstacle.
The birds rose as one and shoved him up through it.
—
Hearing my charge’s agitated mumbling, his wife came over to adjust his medications, the orb of her thoughts intruding upon mine just long enough for me to anticipate, as she was, the taste of the cup of tea she was about to leave the room to go downstairs to make.
For a moment, the three of us were one.
Or, rather, I was simultaneously one with each of them in turn.
Viv, Vivvy, Momma Lifeforce, Angel, he was thinking.
How he loved her. They’d been a team forever.
Although in truth he hadn’t loved it much when she’d wander into one of his business meetings sweetly bringing in iced tea or muffins.
They’d had to have a little chat about that.
Stern chat. Tears had been shed. By her.
By way of saying: Hon, I see your point, I was wrong.
Thereafter: no more interruptions. They’d laughed about the whole thing.
Later. She’d admitted it: that talk had done her good.
Plus, she’d said, now I have an entirely new sympathy for your workers. Then burst into tears. Again.
Well.
Long time ago. Easy enough to regret a thing. Not good to get in the habit. When you regretted, folks pounced. You were weak with regret, they felt it, they pounced.
Then what? You had less power, could do less good.
So: no regrets.
Ever.
He looked so frail, his wife was thinking. When he was weak like this—in a crowd of taller men, nervously twisting a sheaf of papers, feeling his authority undercut by their superior height—that was when she loved him best.
She was going to spare him every bit of pain she could. And that was that.
She adjusted his pain meds up, up, up.
Then left the room and it was just the two of us again.
—
Your wife seems lovely, I said.
Longing for peace, wishing me gone, awash in the new swell of the drug, he directed his thoughts to a long-completed project involving a tight, clayey sandstone, considerable extraction costs.
His negotiating partner had been an Indonesian.
Baya. Baya Ajung. They’d sat in the hotel lobby taking a third meeting.
Nice fellow, Baya. Had a strange gait. Was sensitive about it.
Would always try to be last to leave the table.
The drug was strong. Too strong. Suddenly the Jakarta evening was full of marching soldiers.
Through the window a sergeant blew him a kiss.
A kiss somehow menacing. The unit marched off to a pier where all good citizens were to gather.
A frightening pier. He and Baya would be late to the frightening pier.
Their food had only just arrived. In this culture, it was considered rude not to spend a fortnight writing out words of praise on thin parchment paper, a roll of which had just been brought to their table by their waiter: praise for the meal not yet eaten.
Baya rose and rushed away, his gait miraculously normalized, calling back: Now I may leave table whenever I wish!
Outside, the Indonesians had done something clever: remade Jakarta into the Grand-Place.
In Belgium. Quite a trick. Good for them.
The Jakarta streets, he found unsavory. Unclean.
Lacking Western organization. Every building in the Grand-Place, save the husk of one, had been destroyed in a 1600s firebombing.
By the French. Goddamned French. What did he have against the French?
He’d lately had something against them but he couldn’t remember what.
The industrious Belgians had rebuilt the whole thing from scratch.
Lots of history here.
Lots. Of. Dang. History.
The Inquisition had burned a couple fellows alive in this very square.
Also: numerous beheadings. Right here’d stood the decapitation gizmo.
Per Luc, their guide of that morning.
Imagine the millions of folks who’d passed through here.
Over the last, say, thousand years. You couldn’t.
The mind wouldn’t hold it. He’d been part of that.
The long march of history. Not such a small part, either.
No: in a relative sense, he’d been more important than many (most) of those millions of souls.
In terms of influence-on-world. He had been, that is, more important to the lives of the people on earth during his time than the vast majority of those dead-and-buried folks had been to theirs.
That was just a fact. Even if you included kings.
Strange but true: he’d had more actual power than most kings of old.
Someone had told him that once and he supposed it was true.
What a thing.
The moon reflected gloriously in the hundreds of melting ancient windows all around. He’d left family and bodyguard behind, wanting to be out in this wonderment alone. Unguarded, free, walking the ancient cobbles, thinking about his place in things.
How’d he done? Mother? Father?
Good.
Pretty darn good, yep, you got that right, folks.
His daughter’s voice chimed in from somewhere: What a life you’ve had, Daddy. You go, buddy.
Julia, Jules. You wouldn’t believe the crap I’m being put through tonight, sweet pea.
As far as birds?
There were still birds, there’d always be birds, birds bred like goddamn rats.
Across the Grand-Place, doors flew open in agreement, emitting an uproar he understood to be the ancient sounds of long-ago parties, brawls, and feasts, an unnerving, summed cacophony of grudges and vows and squeals of pleasure in a multitude of regional accents no longer to be heard on this planet.
Yes, there would always be birds, the long-dead folks seemed to agree.
Thousands of glasses broke at once, and corks popped, and dogs whose legs had been caught beneath moving chairs yelped, and there were sounds of childbirth and hallooing and spirited objection and toasting and sexual congress (from pairs; from grim, voracious groups of three or four; from lonely, hapless self-pleasurers), drunken singing, mournful singing, absent-minded singing, humming, farting, passionate whispering: in short, every sound a human being had ever made here.