Chinese Boy hasn’t returned to the park. I scour the Internet for news about the mafia. Sometimes I imagine they put him on a horrible boat and sent him back to his country. Or that they punished him for running off to the park during work hours. Every once in a while I stop by the greengrocer’s and buy a cabbage for Lavender to play with. There are days when I’m sure I’m going to run into him at any moment, in the most unexpected place. Yesterday, at a second-hand bookstore, I bought a book written entirely in Chinese.
RARA AVIS
NOW, SITTING IN an evangelical church that he found open by accident in the middle of the night, he speculates that his life changed forever, perhaps by divine design, perhaps by a whim of fate, that day when, on his way home from the university, he crossed the park, backpack slung over his shoulder, taking a shortcut to get there faster. Suddenly the facts congeal at a point in his memory, which today, when he tries to retrieve them, makes them appear as a single event: hearing the plop of something falling straight down before his eyes; stopping in his tracks; looking down to discover, where the rounded tips of his sneakers ended, a thing sparsely covered by fine, brownish-gray feathers; lifting his eyes instinctively to find the place it came from and spotting a low-flying chimango; hearing the screech of the chimango and at the same time watching it ascend and circle over his own head; understanding that the thing at his feet was the chimango’s victim, and not knowing what to do till it opens one eye, and then seeing, for the first time, as if he himself had opened his eyes at that moment, the pinkness of a wound; redirecting his gaze upward and gesturing theatrically with his arms to drive the chimango away; seeing the chimango give up and leave; and then standing there alone before that thing, wounded and with one eye open, making him feel all the loneliness in the world; looking around because he doesn’t know what else to do; squatting to witness how, from the mass of its upwardly-stretched body, a head and a beak emerge, and two eyes that seem to brim over with terror; extending a hand to touch; feeling the warmth and trembling, the horrific confirmation that this thing is, indeed, alive, and that he ought to do something about it. Looking all around once more, not a soul anywhere, and it’s growing dark; deciding, at last, to pick up the animal, which, on being grasped from the back, extends a pair of very long legs; accommodating the creature in his left hand; feeling it curl up till it assumes the perfect shape of an egg; and walking, walking with that warm, throbbing thing, all the way home.
Putting it in a box and beginning to think about what to do, how. Not knowing where to seek help, nor what sort of creature the thing is, which, on closer examination, seems to be a pigeon chick, gangly and rustic. Surfing the Internet and coming across a couple of videos that explain everything, or nearly everything. Realizing that he urgently needs to go out again, to the pharmacy seven blocks away, to buy baby cereal, a syringe to feed it, and iodine solution to clean the wound. Once more braving the cold—more intense now because it’s almost nighttime, walking, wondering why this thing had to fall from the sky, walking, arriving at the pharmacy, asking for the baby cereal and seeing how the clerk smiles at him the way you smile at a father who’s good to his son and who goes shopping for his wife, but he has no son, no wife, no girlfriend, no family, nothing but that creature; wondering why he hadn’t just left it where it fell so that the
chimango might carry it off again; then asking for the syringe, and the iodine solution after that; and explaining, as if making excuses for himself, that it’s to feed and heal God-knows-what kind of a chick that he found in the park; the clerk looking at him indulgently, the way you look at an idiot who’s trying to revive some dumb bird; noticing that the clerk is pretty cute, but at that moment unable to summon any feeling but hatred toward her; forcing a goodbye, paying with the last of his money for the month; walking; and wondering what he’ll find when he gets home; weighing the possibility that he might find it dead; inexplicably hoping he won’t; picking up his pace; opening the front door; reaching the kitchen in two steps; peeking into the box and seeing it there; still vibrating, like the tuning fork he uses to tune his guitar. He goes back on the Internet, turns on the video and follows the instructions: first the iodine solution and a speck of cotton that he dips in it and gently swabs on the wound, wondering if it burns, and if in any case that burning isn’t life itself. Finally he prepares the food, places it in the syringe, opens the bird’s beak, introduces the paste little by little so that it won’t choke, taking care not to cover its nostrils, the creature’s round eyes as wide open as can be. And then a sleepless night, sleeping just a little; rising at dawn, running to check on it, watching it stand and secretly, internally, celebrating; going to the University so as not to give up the vices of the chronic student; returning home, eating something, drinking water because there’s no more juice or wine; feeding the creature, and giving it water, too; having a mate, then a sandwich for dinner, sleeping, getting up, going to check on it, feed it, rejoicing at its hunger and how its wound is healing, going to the University, getting home, eating—both he and the creature—playing the guitar, the creature spying over the edge of the box, then sleeping, getting up, going to check, taking it out of the box, watching it suddenly move, eat, shit, drink water, growing unbelievably fast, and suddenly thinking that what fell out of the sky is something like a ñandú, and one day shooing it out to the little square of grass on his tiny patio, drinking, eating, sleeping, shitting—he and the ever-expanding creature that looks more and more like a ñandú; noticing one day (but he’s already losing sight of which day it is) that a strange, hard thing is growing on its head, and one afternoon seeing some black feathers pop out, silky and fine as hairs, and noting that the protuberance on its head is turning into something like a bony crest, and beginning to imagine that it’s not a ñandú, that it has to be something else; and consulting with a veterinary student who says no, no idea, but he’ll try to find out; and getting up in the middle of the night, after a murky nightmare, and going over to the counter for a glass of water, looking out at the little patio, determining that the creature’s face and part of its neck are completely covered with minuscule rainbow-colored feathers, and standing there, staring, the creature, in turn, with its now enormous feet, staring right back at him. Becoming aware that by now it must come up to his knees, and realizing, after surfing the Internet, that what he has in his house is a cassowary, an Australian bird, huge and solitary, flightless and potentially very aggressive, with its sharp talons and rigid crest, even to the point of causing human deaths. Wondering again and again where that Australian cassowary might have come from, thrown to his feet by a chimango, in any case a local species; wondering, incidentally, why him, and beginning to doubt everything, the chimango, the entire episode, his memory, his eyes, which now contemplate the oversize creature, strange and lovely, curled up in one corner of the patio. And unable to feel fear or fright, but only sorrow for it, a cold, blue sorrow; deciding then to find a more appropriate home for it, asking here and there, taking it to a neighbor’s farm, but it doesn’t last long there, having kicked against the wire fence with its talons and frightened the dogs, the chickens. Discovering, when they return it to him, that the creature recognizes him, producing very strange, but friendly, sounds—as if communicating with one of its own—and lies down at his feet. Receiving offers, then, from people who want to buy it, fearing the intentions of some of those people, finding out that there’s a vedette in Buenos Aires who wants to make herself an outfit from the exotic plumage of his cassowary, seeing it plucked alive, to prevent its plumes from losing their shine and to allow for the possibility of their growing back; becoming aware, also, of clandestine animal fights, fights to the death, on the outskirts of the city, and feeling nausea and disgust at the mere idea of having saved the creature just to hand it over to its death or to a hellish life in exchange for a few pesos; trying to get in touch with environmental associations to return the cassowary to its habitat, but finding it too expensive and impractical; allowing it to enter the apartment, so as not to confine it to the territorial meagerness of his patio; knowing that this decision is like resigning himself to chaos and the unforeseen; sharing spaces, being invaded, becoming even more disorganized than he was before; looking it in the eye one day and realizing that things can’t go on like this and once again not knowing what to do. Finding himself one afternoon in the midst of his turmoil, peeling an orange and hearing a gut-wrenching screech coming from the patio and going outside just like that: startled, with a half-peeled orange in one hand and a knife in the other; seeing it come toward him, and suddenly, without knowing how, understanding that the knife blade has disappeared and lodged itself in the dense black plumage beneath its maw; detecting a bit of blood spurting out; suddenly managing to kneel and receive the cassowary’s head, which falls, like an offering, against his chest, the serene eyes fixed on him, and all the turquoise of the head and neck feathers spilling over his hands.