That evening as he was strolling in the Queens Botanical Garden, he ran into Elbert Chang, the director of the opera project. Elbert had been jogging, and as he stopped to chat with Fanlin, Bori took off for an immense cypress tree, flitting into its straggly crown before landing on a branch.
“Come down,” Fanlin called, but the bird wouldn’t budge. He just clasped the declining branch and looked at the men.
“That little parrot is so homely,” observed Elbert. He blew his nose, brushed his sweatpants with his fingers, and jogged away, the flesh on his nape trembling a little. Beyond him a young couple walked a dachshund on a long leash.
Fanlin turned as if he were leaving, and Bori swooped down and alighted on his head. Fanlin settled the bird on his arm. “Afraid I’m going to leave you behind, eh?” he asked. “If you don’t listen to me, I won’t take you out again, understood?” He patted Bori’s head.
The parakeet just blinked at him.
Fanlin realized that Bori must like the feel of the wooden perch. He looked around and found a branch under a tall oak and brought it home. He dismantled the plastic bar, whittled a new perch out of the branch, cut a groove on either end, and fixed it in the cage. From then on, Bori slept on the branch every night.
Proudly Fanlin told Supriya about the new perch, but she was too preoccupied to get excited. She sounded tired and merely said, “I’m glad I left him with you.” She didn’t even thank him. He had planned to ask her about the progress of the filming, but refrained.
The composition for the opera was going well. When Fanlin handed in the first half of the music score—132 pages in total — Elbert Chang was elated, saying he had worried whether Fanlin had embarked on the project. Now Elbert could relax — everything was coming together. Several singers had signed up. It looked like they could stage the opera the next summer.
Puffing on a cigar in his office, Elbert gave a nervous grin and told Fanlin, “I’m afraid I cannot pay you the first half of the advance now.”
“Why not? Our contract states that you must.”
“I know, but we just don’t have the cash on hand. I’ll pay you early next month when we get the money.”
Fanlin’s face fell, his mothy eyebrows tilting upward. He was too deep into the project to back out, yet he feared he might have more difficulty getting paid in the future. He had never worked for Elbert Chang before.
“The bird looks uglier today,” Elbert said, pointing his cigar at Bori, who was standing on the desk, between Fanlin’s hands.
At those words, the parakeet whooshed up and landed on Elbert’s shoulder. “Hey, hey, he likes me!” cried the man. He took Bori down, and the bird fled back to Fanlin in a panic.
Fanlin noticed a greenish splotch on Elbert’s jacket, on the shoulder. He stifled the laughter rising in his throat.
“Don’t worry about the payment,” Elbert assured him, his fingers drumming on the desktop. “You have a contract and can sue me if I don’t pay you. This time is just an exception. The money is already committed by the donors. I promise this won’t happen again.”
Feeling better, Fanlin shook hands with the man and stepped out of the office.
Upon signing the contract for The Blind Musician three months earlier, the librettist, an exiled poet living on Staten Island, had insisted that the composer mustn’t change a single word of the libretto. The writer, Benyong, didn’t understand that, unlike poetry, opera depends on collaborative efforts. Elbert Chang liked the libretto so much he conceded to the terms the author demanded. This became a problem for Fanlin, who had in mind a musical structure that didn’t always agree with the verbal text. Furthermore, some words were unsingable, such as “smoothest” and “feudalism.” He had to replace them, ideally with words ending with open vowels.
One morning Fanlin set out for Staten Island to see Benyong, intending to get permission to change some words. He didn’t plan to take Bori along, but the second he stepped out of his apartment, he heard the bird bump against the door repeatedly, scratching the wood. He unlocked the door and said, “Want to come with me?” The parakeet leapt to his chest, clutching his T-shirt and uttering tinny chirps. Fanlin caressed Bori and together they headed for the train station.
It was a fine summer day, the sky washed clean by a shower the previous night. On the ferryboat Fanlin stayed on the deck all the way, watching seabirds wheel around. Some strutted or scurried on the bow, where two small girls were tossing bits of bread at them. Bori joined the other birds, picking up food but not eating any. Fanlin knew the parakeet was doing that just for fun, yet no matter how he called, the bird wouldn’t come back to him. So he stood by, watching Bori walking excitedly among gulls, terns, petrels. He was amazed that Bori wasn’t afraid of the bigger birds and wondered if the parakeet was lonely at home.
Benyong received Fanlin warmly, as if they were friends. In fact, they’d met only twice, on both occasions for business. Fanlin liked this man who, already forty-three, hadn’t lost the child in him and often threw his head back and laughed aloud.
Sitting on a sofa in the living room, Fanlin sang some lines to demonstrate the cumbersomeness of the original words. He had an ordinary voice, a bit hoarse, yet whenever he sang his own compositions, he was confident and expressive, with a vivid face and vigorous gestures, as if he were oblivious of anyone else’s presence.
While he was singing, Bori frolicked on the coffee table, flapping his wings and wagging his head, his hooked bill opening and closing and emitting happy but unintelligible cries. Then the bird paused to tap his feet as if beating time, which delighted the poet.
“Can he talk?” Benyong asked Fanlin.
“No, he can’t, but he’s smart and even knows money.”
“You should teach him how to talk. Come here, little fellow.” Benyong beckoned to the bird, who ignored his outstretched hand.
Without difficulty, Fanlin got the librettist’s agreement, on the condition that they exchange views before Fanlin made any changes. For lunch they went to a small restaurant nearby and shared a Hawaiian pizza. Dabbing his mouth with a red napkin, Benyong said, “I love this place. I have lunch here five days a week. Sometimes I work on my poems in here. Cheers.” He lifted his beer mug and clinked it with Fanlin’s water glass.
Fanlin was amazed by what the poet said. Benyong didn’t hold a regular job and could hardly have made any money from his writing; few people in his situation would dine out five times a week. In addition, he enjoyed movies and popular music; two tall shelves in his apartment were loaded with CDs, more with DVDs. Evidently the writer was well kept by his wife, a nurse. Fanlin was touched by the woman’s generosity. She must love poetry.
After lunch they strolled along the beach of white sand, carrying their shoes and walking barefoot. The air smelled fishy, tinged with the stink of seaweed washed ashore. Bori liked the ocean and kept flying away, skipping along the brink of the surf, pecking at the sand.
“Ah, this sea breeze is so invigorating,” Benyong said as he watched Bori. “Whenever I walk here, the view of the ocean makes me think a lot. Before this immense body of water, even life and death become unimportant, irrelevant.”
“What’s important to you, then?”
“Art. Only art is immortal.”
“That’s why you’ve been writing full-time all along?”
“Yes, I’ve been making full use of artistic freedom.”
Fanlin said no more, unable to suppress the image of Benyong’s self-sacrificing wife. A photo in their study showed her to be quite pretty, with a wide but handsome face. The wind increased, and dark clouds were gathering on the sea in the distance.