Fanlin wasn’t very familiar with Bori, a small pinkish parakeet with a white tail, and he had never let the bird enter his music studio. Supriya used to leave Bori at Animal Haven when she was away, though if a trip lasted just two or three days, she’d simply lock him in the cage with enough food and water. But this time she was going to stay abroad for three months, so she asked Fanlin to take care of the bird.
Unlike some other parrots, Bori couldn’t talk; he was so quiet Fanlin often wondered if he was dumb. At night the bird slept near the window, in a cage held by a stand, like a colossal floor lamp. During the day he sat on the windowsill or on top of the cage, basking in the sunlight, which seemed to have bleached his feathers.
Fanlin knew Bori liked millet; having no idea where a pet store was in Flushing, he went to Hong Kong Supermarket down the street and bought a bag. At times he’d give the parakeet what he himself ate: boiled rice, bread, apples, watermelon, grapes. Bori enjoyed this food. Whenever Fanlin placed his own meal on the dining table, the bird would hover beside him, waiting for a bite. With Supriya away, Fanlin could eat more Chinese food — the only advantage of her absence.
“You want Cheerios too?” Fanlin asked Bori one morning as he was eating breakfast.
The bird gazed at him with a white-ringed eye. Fanlin picked a saucer, put a few pieces of the cereal in it, and placed it before Bori. He added, “Your mother has dumped you, and you’re stuck with me.” Bori pecked at the Cheerios, his eyelids flapping. Somehow Fanlin felt for the bird today, so he found a tiny wine cup and poured a bit of milk for Bori too.
After breakfast, he let Bori into his studio for the first time. Fanlin composed on a synthesizer, having no room for a piano. The bird sat still on the edge of his desk, watching him, as if able to understand the musical notes he was inscribing. Then, as Fanlin tested a tune on the keyboard, Bori began fluttering his wings and swaying his head. “You like my work?” Fanlin asked Bori.
The bird didn’t respond.
As Fanlin revised some notes, Bori alighted on the keys and stomped out a few feeble notes, which encouraged him to play more. “Get lost!” Fanlin said. “Don’t be in my way.”
The bird flew back to the desk, again motionlessly watching the man making little black squiggles on paper.
Around eleven o’clock, as Fanlin stretched his arms and leaned back in his chair, he noticed two whitish spots beside Bori, one bigger than the other. “Damn you, don’t poop on my desk!” he screamed.
At those words the parakeet darted out of the room. His escape calmed Fanlin a little. He told himself he ought to be patient with Bori, who was no different from a newborn. He got up and wiped off the mess with a paper towel.
Three times a week he gave music lessons to a group of five students. The tuition they paid was his regular income. They would come to his apartment on Thirty-seventh Avenue in the evening and stay two hours. One of the students, Wona Kernan, an angular woman of twenty-two, became quite fond of Bori and often held out her index finger to him, saying, “Come here, come here.” The parakeet never responded to her coaxing, instead sitting on Fanlin’s lap as if also attending the class. Wona once scooped up the bird and put him on her head, but Bori returned to Fanlin immediately. She muttered, “Stupid budgie, only know how to suck up to your boss.”
Fanlin was collaborating with a local theater group on an opera based on the legendary folk musician Ah Bing. In his early years, Ah Bing, like his father, was a monk; then he lost his eyesight and was forced to leave his temple. He began to compose music, which he played on the streets to eke out a living.
Fanlin didn’t like the libretto, which emphasized the chance nature of artistic creation. The hero of the opera, Ah Bing, was to claim, “Greatness in art is merely an accident.” To Fanlin, that kind of logic did not explain the great symphonies of Beethoven or Tchaikovsky, which could not have existed without artistic theory, vision, or purpose. No art should be accidental.
Nevertheless, Fanlin worked hard on the music for The Blind Musician. According to his contract, he would get a six-thousand-dollar advance, to be paid in two installments, and twelve percent of the opera’s earnings. These days he was so preoccupied with the composition that he seldom cooked. He would compose from seven a.m. to two p.m., then go out for lunch, often taking Bori along. The bird perched on his shoulder, and Fanlin would feel Bori’s claws scratching his skin as he walked.
One afternoon at the Taipan Café on Roosevelt Avenue, after paying at the counter for lunch, Fanlin returned to his seat to finish his tea. He put a dollar tip on the table, which Bori picked up and dropped back in Fanlin’s hand.
“Wow, he knows money!” a bulging-eyed waitress cried. “Don’t steal my money, little thief!”
That night on the phone, Fanlin told Supriya about Bori’s feat. She replied, “I never thought you’d like him. He wouldn’t get money for me, that’s for sure.”
“I’m just his caretaker. He’s yours,” Fanlin said. He had expected she’d be more enthusiastic, but her voice sounded as usual, mezzo-soprano and a little sleepy. He refrained from telling her that he missed her, often touching her clothes in the closet.
• • •
It was a rainy morning. Outside, the drizzle swayed in the wind like endless tangled threads; traffic rumbled in the west. Lying in bed with a sheet crumpled over his belly, Fanlin was thinking of Supriya. She always dreamed of having children, and her parents in Calcutta had urged her to marry. Still, Fanlin felt he might be just her safety net — a fallback in case she couldn’t find a more suitable man. He tried not to think too many negative thoughts and recalled those passionate nights that had thrilled and exhausted both of them. He missed her, a lot, but he knew that love was like another person’s favor: one might fall out of it at any time.
Suddenly a high note broke from his studio — Bori on the synthesizer. “Stop it!” Fanlin shouted to the bird. But the note kept tinkling. He got out of bed and made for the studio.
Passing through the living room, its window somehow open and its floor scattered with sheets of paper fluttering in a draft, he heard another noise, then caught sight of a shadow slipping into the kitchen. He hurried in pursuit and saw a teenage boy crawling out the window. Fanlin, not fast enough to catch him, leaned over the sill and yelled at the burglar bolting down the fire escape, “If you come again, I’ll have you arrested. Damn you!”
The boy jumped to the pavement below, his legs buckling, but he picked himself up. The seat of his jeans was dark-wet. In a flash he veered into the street and disappeared.
When Fanlin returned to the living room, Bori whizzed over and landed on his chest. The bird looked frightened, his wings quivering. With both hands Fanlin held the parakeet up and kissed him. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Are you scared?”
• • •
Bori usually relieved himself in the cage, the door of which remained open day and night. Every two or three days Fanlin would change the newspaper on the bottom to keep the tiny aviary clean. In fact, the whole apartment had become an aviary of sorts, since Bori was allowed to go anywhere, including the studio. When he wasn’t sleeping, the bird seldom stayed in the cage, inside which stretched a plastic perch. Even at night he avoided the perch, sleeping with his claws clutching the side of the cage, his body suspended in the air. Isn’t it tiring to sleep like that? Fanlin thought. No wonder Bori often looks torpid in the daytime.
One afternoon as the parakeet nestled on his elbow, Fanlin noticed that one of Bori’s feet was thicker than the other. He turned the bird over. To his surprise, he saw a blister on Bori’s left foot in the shape of half a soybean. He wondered if the plastic perch was too slippery for the parakeet to hold, and if the wire cage the bird gripped instead while sleeping had blistered his foot. Maybe he should get a new cage for Bori. He flipped through the yellow pages to locate a pet store.